Broken Stones of England

The gravestones formed crumbling waves which lapped against the gnarled and immovable trees. Ripples of them were heaped against the boundary wall of the graveyard and their various curved heads undulated in a single swell against the ivy-covered coping stones. Each pulled slab bore the traces of the earth from which it had been torn, a clean tideline which separated roots from carved words. We tore the earth asunder as we pulled out those stones like rotten teeth, as we wrenched bodies and bones out of the dank soil.

With each lifting there would be a moment when, with a juddering sigh, the earth released its hold on the stone. The body beneath would be pulled away, newly nameless, to make way for the inevitable march of progress. I heaved shoulder to shoulder with men and boys with my cap pulled low and my collar high, hoping to blend in with all the other labourers. The first stone I helped pull was for a Mary Orford. Our palms grew stubborn seams of dirt from the work and I imagined Mary’s hand curled around nothingness as we pulled away her name away from her. She was Mary no more. Seeing the men in their filthy boots stomping through the graveyard, staggering under the weight of the dead, whistling, and joking amongst themselves, made me feel a heavy despair.

After that first day I dragged myself home and swore to Martha that I could not go back to that place. All those people ripped away from their names and heaped together higgledy-piggledy in some trench, who would remember them now? My arms ached and my nails were full of grave dirt, no matter how hard I scrubbed. Martha said nothing but rubbed my shoulders and brushed out my long hair, which was still half-coiled from having been tucked under my cap all day. She kissed my cheek. We both knew I would go back the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. We sorely needed the money, and no one asked too many questions at the graveyard.

I awoke for my second day at the graveyard with a deep throbbing soreness in my bones. Martha had already left for the day and I was alone in our narrow bed. I got dressed quickly and tucked my hair away under my cap, transforming into the capable looking man I pretended to be for the world. I slipped on my heavy canvas jacket and felt an unfamiliar weight in the breast pocket. It was a neat little black notebook. I opened the book to the first page and saw in Martha’s neat hand “Lest we forget.” Below that she had entered the details from Mary Orford’s stone, name printed with dates below. I slipped the book back into my pocket and set off up the filthy street. I felt the outline of it knock against my hip, so conspicuous to me that I imagined it was burning through the layers of cloth to my skin. I usually walked with my head down so as not to draw attention to myself, a woman trying to pass for a workman, but that day I couldn’t help but look about me. Martha’s notebook seemed like the antidote to the guilt I had felt the day before. I couldn’t stop the breaking of body from memorial, but I could record and remember. With each stone we lifted that morning I chanted the details in my head, the talisman of my notebook bumping against my leg, eager to have me fill in the next name and the next.

I started to wonder what I should do with all these names. As the weeks went by, I would flick through the pages, noticing those who shared the same surname or who had died in the same year. They looked jumbled on the page and I liked to think of them as new neighbours thrown together in a crisis. They may not like one another but they had to tolerate one another as they stood like families queuing for the standpipe or the privy. Mary Orford was still my favourite, but many more had come after. Martha and I would take turns to read from the little book. We wondered over the youth of some, marvelled at the age of others, weighing up how many more days we had had or had to come in comparison. Had any of them lived like us, flourishing behind closed curtains?

Martha wondered over the places they might have been to, which always lead to the places we might go to one day. She spun stories like silk while I pulled tufts of cotton from her hair. We could start again in the countryside somewhere. We could pass ourselves off as spinster sisters and open a shop selling reels of thread and bright candy coloured fabric from heavy bolts. I could see her standing there in front of glass jars full of bright shining buttons, but it was more difficult to see myself. I always came back to grave dirt and rain and the sooty city streets. I wondered sometimes whether we might start again abroad. We could carry the notebook of names with us and chant them to one another as we tilled the earth, sewing them into fertile ground along with the crops.

One morning, a few weeks into my work, the weather was particularly nasty. The air was thick with darkness and pelting rain. The graveyard was awash with muck and men stood ankle deep in cloying mud like tar, heaving at each stone, slipping and sliding without hope of purchase. I pulled my hat down over my eyes and tugged uncomfortably at my layers of sodden clothing, thankful for the thick woollen jacket which hid me. I had left my notebook at home. I couldn’t risk the artefact in weather like this. I held each name in my head like a pearl instead, stringing bead after bead onto a single chain to make up a shining necklace. Each gem was unique in size, shape, colour, and weight. It worked well as a tool for my memory and I imagined clinking each one along like a child with an abacus.

We had just pulled the stubborn stone of one Emily Haward when I fell heavily into a yawning pit still studded with the remains of a burial. Half-rotten wooden shards poked free from the liquid mud and I had a sudden vision of ancient shipwrecks complete with their long-lost skeletal crews. I instinctively pushed both hands down to push up and away, but my fingers sunk deeper into the slick earth. Hands reaching for anything solid, I felt something beneath the mire. I managed to wrap my fingers round it and in the confusion of my eventual rescue, and the laughter of the men who hauled me back to land, I managed to tuck it away in my jacket pocket before anyone saw.

That evening Martha made me strip down while standing on newspaper in front of the fire. She hauled kettles full of water for me to have a bath despite my protestations. I sunk into the tin tub and watched as the grave dirt bloomed away from my skin in the water. I rinsed out my mouth, gargling the gritty sand from the gaps between my teeth. Martha was putting my sad workman’s clothes to soak when she found the little package I had so unceremoniously removed from the grave. As I climbed out of the tub, she plunged it into the filthy water, scrubbing away clods of soil to reveal a tarnished metal tin. The lid was stuck tight, but Martha finally pried it up with a butter knife.

Inside, glinting darkly against one another, were handfuls of precious stones. The brilliance of rubies, emeralds, diamonds, and sapphires was studded with the lustre of milky opals and pearls. We blinked into the hoard, which had been pulled from the very depths of a nondescript tomb to rest on our crumb-covered table. The possibilities of our future were counted out as we lay jewel after jewel in neat rows. How much money was there in these? Riches untold surely? As our tea grew cold Martha had us sailing over the sea for America with jewels sewn into the hems of our gowns. We would start lives as respectable ladies in a big farmhouse with a fortune of $20 000. Neither of us knew how many of our pounds and shillings $20 000 was, but it sounded like such a princely sum, worthy of our heap of treasure. The exotic sound of the word “dollar” felt round and pleasing in our mouths. The black notebook sat, well thumbed, on the table next to our loot. I told Martha that we’d soon be able to mark each name in gold leaf in a sumptuous illuminated manuscript, but that we should always keep the original text.

We were drunk on the possible power of our windfall as we lay in bed that night, the tin of jewels tucked under our shared pillow. We agreed that we should continue as normal for a while longer, at least until Sunday, when we could decide what to do. Just five more days. The next morning was fine and the sun glinted off the shrinking puddles in our street. My clothes were still damp from the day before, but I didn’t care. Martha had a rare morning off from her drudgery at the factory and, emboldened by our luck, she linked her arm in mine and walked with me to the graveyard. At the gate she drew me close against the rough brick wall for a fleeting, dry lipped, tea tasting kiss. We had never dared to show such affection in public before, even with me dressed in my man’s clothes.

The liquid earth was well on the way to becoming solid once more when I started work, some of the men looking at me with new interest after seeing me with such a beauty on my arm. Usually that level of scrutiny would have made my stomach flip with sick dread, but on that day I was proud. Martha and I were destined for great things. I wrote down name after name that day in a rounder, jauntier hand than usual, smiling and thanking each one for the bounty they had laid at my feet. Flit after flit Martha and I had flown over the years, at first separately and then together, flying from the distrust and hatred which usually followed us. Now was the time when we could root ourselves somewhere new and colossal, where the old troubles couldn’t find us.

I wondered later whether they had followed me home that night. Those men with their strong arms which had pulled me from the grave, boots as heavy as mine were with grave dirt. I think it was them who set our poor little house on fire that Saturday when neither of us were home to stamp out the spark. Perhaps they spirited the jewels away in filthy handkerchiefs before they set the flames dancing, or maybe they never found them. Martha and I stood hand in hand before the conflagration. Our dreams of a bounteous future flapped and crashed around the charred kitchen table like a panicked bird, wings streaked with ash and burned to holes by bright flame.

Martha led me away from the crackling flames, down our street, round the corner, and on to a nearby park. Sitting on a bench, Martha reached into my pocket and drew forth the little notebook, which looked so drab and dog-eared to me then. Using a hairpin, she pulled free a near invisible row of stitches from the book’s spine to reveal a small clutch of glittering gems held fast by more of her careful stitching. I kissed her tenderly on the cheek. We could rebuild.