Bones of Birds and Leaves

Bones of Birds and Leaves – First Draft – Martin Holdcroft

FX/ WIND/RAIN/TRAFFIC/CHURCH BELLS

They’re all at mass. It’s the only time I ever get to go round in peace and quiet and check that everything is in order. Not that there’s much to worry about these days, it must be…let me see…five years… since we had a really noticeable movement.

Down there, things move so slowly. 

I’m kidding myself of course, there’s no way I can do anything about the mess. But I suppose I’m only here to watch, to watch and comment. Some of them need to have things explained, described. Again and again and again.  

Louie always makes me cross, he’s so adamant that he knows everything that’s going on, but I just know that when he does find out that he’s lost more of himself to the ground, he’ll suddenly cry out and disturb the young ones into a frenzy. The problem is that Louie just can’t stomach being told what’s what by a woman. He was head of his family and now he can’t even keep his few remaining bits together. Poor thing. Good job those miserable years with that feckless husband of mine prepared me for this kind of thing. I’ve learnt, as all married women do, that sometimes you have to deliver information as if it were a surprise to you too, to keep the peace and all.

And if there’s one thing that I’m here for, it’s to keep the peace.

We don’t do so badly here though, for peace. Fifty eight marked graves, and one unmarked one, and there isn’t a truly bad one amongst us. We’ve learnt to get along, to keep ourselves to ourselves when we need to, and to make the best of our situation.  I know that pride is one of the seven deadlies and all, but I do consider myself a pretty good.. now what would I call myself? A housekeeper? No, no, you don’t call it that, I’m not here serving tea and blacking the fireplaces. Ah! I know, that French thing with the auld woman who sits on the doorstep interfering in the lives of her neighbours, a concierge!

Sometimes my interference is welcome, most welcome, and that’s the most satisfying thing about being in my….position. Other times, of course, my interference is resented, ah well you can’t keep every pig in the sty happy, as my old father used to say. What bothers me most though, is when my interference isn’t understood, isn’t responded to. That always leaves me barer and colder than a birch in January. When you can’t help, it’s a sin I tell you.

You see, when you first come here you can’t see it, can’t see what it is. You’re still filling up and emptying with ideas and feelings that have nothing to do, nowhere to go. It’s only after a while, sometimes years, that you see what it is you’ve become, how you are and all. We call that “the staying”. When you reach “the staying” you accept that you’re staying and stop waiting for something….something new.

Some of the young ones here, God bless them, they never arrive at the staying. They sit there looking out for their escape, their rescuers, their relief. They won’t be told, they won’t be consoled or helped. Young Gudrun, for example, hushes me the same way every day, to listen out for her dear daddy’s carriage on the road. She doesn’t hear the traffic on the road just beyond the wall, or the aeroplanes that pass overhead filling everything with horrid noise. But she tells me that the sound of my gentle whisper makes it impossible for her to hear. So I leave her be. When the snowdrops bloom above her, she never leaves her watching and listening to appreciate the sunlight dripping through the blossom, she’s always waiting.

But heavens! It’s not all gloom! Listen to me, anyone would think that we didn’t know how to conduct ourselves socially, well don’t you go thinking that at all. There are times here when the conversations babble and flow and it’s busier than a Lyons tea room on a Saturday lunchtime! We have six families here and they’re always engaged in some drama or other. Fine bunch of people, the best, I tell you.

The very old ones are the sweetest, they made me feel so welcome when I first arrived here, me in my situation and all, but they still made me most welcome. I can’t possibly remember how long ago it was now, so don’t go asking me that one! I can’t remember much at all before the staying, it wears me out trying to remember other things, other times. I don’t bother anymore.

Anyway, I’ve got plenty here to keep me occupied, plenty. There’s always somebody in some kind of hoo-hah about something, and I’m the one to settle them down and stop the terrors and the despairs taking over, oh yes, got to keep those under control.

You see, it’s too easy to just think, “oh they’re all dead and buried and there’s nothing left to worry them “. But we do worry, you see. And we might be dead and buried but things still bother and still get in the way.

Honoria, bless her saintly self, she must have been in her nineties, and she’s not at all able to handle all this. She keeps asking me to come down and sort out her accommodation. She claims that it’s full of the bones of birds and rotting leaves, and that they need clearing out. How could I tell her? What would be the point? How would you feel? Being told that bird bones and rotting leaves were your last remains.

That this woman who once couldn’t cross a room without a marriage proposal, whose children and grandchildren are now spread across the world, that she was now just little groups of litter wedged between the collapsed walls of her casket.

I don’t know how I could tell her that, it would break my heart.

Don’t go taking me for some soft ejeet though, I’m as practical and as clear-headed as anybody. I see the caskets and the bones, I see the way that the earth closes in on them, inching down on them over the years and years. I have first-hand knowledge of what happens down there. Nobody sees it like I do. Not anybody. When the rains took half of the far side of this place, when everything over there became soft and lost all shape, I was there to settle people down. I took the rains on, and won. We didn’t lose one, not one. I suppose that’s why I’m here. I suppose that’s my job. It’s what makes me different to the others here.

They can’t see what I see, they can’t do what I do. Sometimes I stand on the side of the road and watch the cars going by. I never look inside the cars, it’s too awful. Once I did look, by accident. There are things which you should never see once you’re dead, and living people is the worst of them. There was a man. In his car. I was out there one morning when I looked at him. I couldn’t say what it was, but it was like looking at everything that is the most wrong at the same time. He was concentrating on the road ahead, and his eyes were terrible, terrible. For weeks afterwards I could see him and his road-ahead eyes, it was awful.

But that was an accident and I’ve no intention of making that mistake again. Now when I’m out on the road I keep my eyes away from looking at the living. But I can still shout at those awful cars, and the trucks, they shake the ground and that really gets me every time. In the summer there’s a carnival which passes by our place, I’m out there after it’s over, shouting and screaming at the rubbish and the filth which is just waiting to be blown over to our little corner, I can barely stop myself from running out there during the carnival and screaming at the top of my voice, “TAKE YOUR FILTHY PACKETS AND STREAMERS HOME WITH YOU!”. It’s not funny, having your grave made filthy by this stuff.

Go on say it, you’re a miserable old dead woman, Well I’m afraid that’s what I’m reduced to and you’ll just have to accept it.  Anyway, there’s worse things to be, I promise you. Sometimes we have visitors, no, not real visitors. We have things visit us who aren’t so lucky, aren’t so settled. I can’t let them stay here, they just wouldn’t fit in. Apart from that, they bring such a lot of disturbance. They need something we can’t provide. They need their answers and we have none for them.  They can’t be helped. All we can do is ignore their rambling and their fidgeting and their dashing about.

Real visitors are most welcome though, oh I tell you the days of real visitors are a real joy, real joy. Even the ones who don’t bring flowers, the ones who never pick a weed up, most welcome. I’ll tell you how good real visitors are, even the ones who turn up to take pictures of their girlfriends in those little leather bikinis, or to smoke their drugs, they’re welcome too. We like the feeling of their feet on the little paths between the stones, it makes everything more forgiving, more bearable.

Louie, you know, the one who drives me mad, he gets lots of visitors. Italians you see, ever so dutiful, ever so. They all turn up, children and all. Louie’s place is a big expensive one, all marble and photographs and columns,  and I suppose they want to get value for their money, so the whole family turns up and they have a right good visit. He’s so proud of them too.

There’s lots here though who don’t get any visitors. Some of them haven’t got anyone left to visit. Some of the visitors end up here as well, but that’s life I suppose.

They’re still down at mass, oh how I miss it so. Apparently there’s candles too, which are warm and shine on like the sunlight. But I miss the songs of mass most, those beautiful songs. I’m not allowed down there, not even allowed near there. It’s my curse, that’s for sure.

I’m the unmarked grave here, they didn’t know who I was. I was washed up on the shore with just my rosary, so they gave me a plot and a little stone marked “ A good catholic woman perished at sea “. I’ve had a few visitors myself you know, nosy parkers one and all, trying to work out who I am.

The point is, I’m not one of them, and I’m not one of them either. I’m flaming stuck in-between, forgive my language. So for now I’ll have to carry on keeping an eye on everything, keeping the peace. Making sure there’s none of that despair creeping in and setting everyone off. It’s my calling and I’m not one to shirk my responsibilities. If I were a good catholic woman as the stone says, then I should behave like one. That’s all there is to it. That’s all there is to it.

BREAK- RAIN HAS STOPPED - BIRDSONG

It’s all going to be over now. There were visitors, and even the priest, the one with the briefcase, they all came down. Apparently they found out who I was, they found me on the internal net or something, these Americans.

They’re putting a new stone on me. They’re having a service and all. It’s tomorrow morning. I’m scared. What will happen? Doesn’t anybody think about me? Will I end up with the rest of them, just shuffling around my little patch, soaked and squashed to smithereens? Oh but I shouldn’t complain, mustn’t complain. I’ve had my time here as a free one, had all that time. Maybe I’ll get to attend mass again. I’ll like that, to hear those sweet songs, voices that make everything beautiful for a while.

But who will be there for me? Who will see off the travellers with their endless fidgeting and wailing? Who will calm me when the earth comes pressing down?

Here they come now, and they’re laying flowers on my ground. I hate lilies, when they go off they attract the slugs so. Mind you, if I’m not going back up there again when this is all done, the slugs can have their lilies. It won’t be my business anymore.

SOUND OF PRAYERS, SEAGULLS, TRAFFIC, CHURCH BELLS.