A Class Act Read online

  2 The Heavens

  ‘The Grim Seeker’ searches the firmament called Heaven.Gen.1.8

  You are sat among your own thoughts on a sun-warmed bench. The bench itself is on the rim of a wheel - a service road that circles the perimeter of the cemetery. There are four main spokes, wide pathways, which lead out from the little redbrick church at the hub. You warm your palm on the metal arm of the bench as you look out beyond the sea of dying wreaths, across the riot of headstones, to the deep blue-green of the holly and the purple rhododendron that lie beyond. The last rays of the sun continue to burn down on your head.

  You are sat among your own thoughts on this still summer’s afternoon. It is late but even the shadows remain warm. Warm and long. The heat from the wooden slats at your back is still shifting its energy. It gives a slightly surreal, vaguely vibrant sensation to the otherwise static scene in front of you. You cross your right leg over your left, deep among your own thoughts, when suddenly there is disturbance.

  It is nothing really. You know it is really nothing. But you feel the bench’s heat dissipate. It is as if the plug has been pulled out. The warmth is deliberately going. At the same time a figure appears in the near distance; perhaps fifty or sixty yards away. It is a woman. She is strutting, unselfconsciously, from headstone to headstone, picking her way across the uneven, parched yellow of the graveyard grass. She is unaware of being watched and you don’t want to risk moving. This is clearly an important assignment for her, though what she is doing is not obvious. She is finding it difficult to cross the rough ground between so many graves. She appears to be looking for someone - someone’s headstone perhaps. She is unaware of you. But you - you are so conscious of her that your senses feel like they’re wired to the very earth itself. The slightest movement from you might cause her to stumble. Your mouth is dry. The sweet smell of jasmine rushes up your nostrils. Your body has taken all of the heat out of the bench now and a chill is suddenly driving through the uncut grass at your feet. You almost feel too embarrassed to move. You don’t want to interrupt this, her quiet moment.

  Her awkwardness is accentuated by her inability to control her heels. She is lifting her skirt now. Her black skirt – tentatively - to just above the knee. She is wearing black tights. Her other hand holds on to her black hat even though there is no wind. No wind to speak of. Just this thin pink light as the sun drops. Everything remains clear, sharp at the edges, but now there is a blending of colour, a monotone, to the evening.

  You sense that there is something private going on. Something so private that an innocent onlooker could be mistaken for a voyeur. Could be accused. You try to move. You uncross your legs and look for the best, the least intrusive route to take. But she glances up. Away from the stones, away from the bones. And she looks directly at you. It’s then that you notice how surprisingly tall she is. How tall and black against this thin, pink light. You look up again for the blue of the sky, something to relieve the monotony of rosy grey. Something to give you hope. But just then she turns. It’s like death is staring at you. It is not a bad or a frightening feeling but it has poignancy nonetheless. It lasts only the briefest moment. She turns away. It seems that she has decided to abandon her mission now. You are about to get up, to take this opportunity to leave. To go back. But then, suddenly, alarmingly, you can’t remember why you were there, why you had come to this cemetery in the first place. But that isn’t the immediate problem.

  You can’t remember where you are going to go next. Or, even more strangely, what your name is. You wonder about the early onset of Alzheimer’s but decide that if you keep going in one direction something might come back to you. You have a vague feeling that it usually does. Something always comes back to you and then you can move on. You just need to find your bearings and rid yourself of that woman. The ‘Grim Seeker’ you decide to call her. It is somehow important to give her a name; an appellation, a reference point.

  Perhaps it’s the walking - you begin to feel warmer again. Sometimes, when you sit for a long time in the sun you begin to lose track of things. Your senses play tricks on you. You are striding more purposefully now and, once you have convinced yourself that the woman - the Grim Seeker - is no threat at all, you slow your pace, turn round and smile to yourself. You are back where you were. Among your own thoughts. Knowing where you are going and, more crucially, what you are going to do next.