Split by Kristina Lloyd

Author:Kristina Lloyd [Kristina Lloyd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2007-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

9

THE GRAVEYARD OF Heddlestone’s church is a romantic tumbledown affair of cracked, tilted tombstones, overhanging trees and creeping ivy. The light was fading, and the air was cold and damp, the ground uneven with coarse yellowing grasses. It’s a place you could imagine sumpy earth giving way, leaving you knee-deep in a splintered coffin, an upthrust skeletal hand waving hello.

I’d brought the black dog with me, Noah, and he was merrily snuffling around the base of graves while I squinted at lettering that had worn away to a ghost’s script. A mist hung over the moors and we were both wrapped up, me in hat, scarf and gloves, Noah in a dog jacket. I wasn’t there for any particular reason. I’d been in the workshop all day and I just fancied a walk. It was a part of the village I hadn’t yet explored. After seeing the graveyard, I reckoned I’d have ‘done’ Heddlestone. It’s not very big, and there isn’t much to see or do.

Jake’s surname is Duxbury and I was probably hoping to see an historic Duxbury or two. There’s a newer, tidier area beyond the drystone wall but in the original churchyard, none of the dates is recent. I wasn’t having much luck with the Duxburys but it hardly mattered. It was fascinating and so sad. How young these people were when they died, adults in their twenties and thirties, and so many kids too.

I wondered if any of them were Betty’s Bastards from the orphanage. It was strange to think that Jake’s house was once home to all those children. What a life: no family, no roots, and you end up on the edge of this lost village, surrounded by miles and miles of moorland. But then it was probably better than being in the workhouse or getting sent up a chimney.

Through the trees, streetlamps in the village bloomed, hazy pockets of amber-peach warming the cold slate and heavy stone. The moors beyond Heddlestone had practically disappeared, their substance seeping into the fogged greying light.

I dawdled towards a yew tree, the ground in its deep green shade soft with dropped needles. Yew trees – graveyard trees – are said to have mythical properties but all I could think about then was how the roots were meant to poke their way through corpses. I remembered a news items from years ago of a yew tree being uprooted in a storm, its exposed roots decorated with bones and skulls and looking, in my mind, as if a grisly Christmas tree had emerged from the underworld.

Nonetheless, I still wanted to take a closer look. Yew bark is beautiful, thin outer layers peeling away to reveal salmon-pink wood. Sometimes the trunks are hollow and I was going to inspect it when I smelt a drift of cigarette smoke on the air. It was a strong smell from nearby and yet there was nothing nearby except graves and the tree. The surrounding drystone wall was still some distance from me so the smoke couldn’t have come from beyond it.

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