A Grave in the Cotswolds Read Online Free PDF

which seemed idiotically sloppy, in retrospect, although Mrs Simmonds had clearly said the field was hers. She had deceived me, I realised, with a sickening sense of having been betrayed. If she had admitted that there was the slightest chance of local council involvement, I would have refused to accede to her wishes. The first rule of one-off natural burials in anything other than a cemetery or churchyard was – Don’t Tell The Council. Don’t ask their permission, don’t casually phone them to check that it’s all right with them. Leave them out of it. Generally speaking, burials fell under the jurisdiction of the Parks and Recreation Department, often headed by an earnest little jobsworth who would seize this deviation from the usual run of daily paperwork with relish. Mythical regulations about waterways and notifiable diseases would surface and proliferate until any chance of conducting the proposed burial vanished under the weight of obfuscation. There would have to be specialist reports on the density of the soil, the potential consequences for rare moths or molluscs, the appalling difficulties involved in parking eight or ten vehicles on the roadside for the funeral, delaying everything so drastically that the proposal could only be abandoned.
    And the law was, in effect, on our side. Once the burial was accomplished, it was pretty well permanent. Retrospective complaints could safely be ignored. Usually. The fact that this land was unconsecrated meant an exhumation could be more readily carried out than if the grave had been in a churchyard, although it would still be a serious procedure, with any amount of paperwork. I became aware of a dawning collection of doubts. I had made a mistake, a gaffe, and was already quailing inwardly at the potential consequences.
    The police did not drive me to Broad Campden in a locked car with a stout female officer beside me. They let me go by myself, in a car with expired road tax and bald tyres. The man on my doorstep insisted I had to go and hear what Mr Maynard had to say. ‘He said he’d meet you by the grave at eleven-thirty. I think that gives you plenty of time, doesn’t it?’
    ‘Can’t I just phone him?’ I pleaded.
    ‘Sorry.’ He shook his head.
    ‘It’s Saturday. Why isn’t he at home planting potatoes?’
    A shrug suggested that I was wasting time for both of us. ‘All right,’ I conceded, as if I had a choice. ‘Let me go and tell my wife.’
    Karen took it serenely. ‘What a pain,’ she said. ‘When will you be back?’
    I visualised the tedious drive, an hour and a half each way. ‘Hard to say,’ I replied. ‘But definitely long before dark.’ Darkness fell at about seven, the equinox less than a week away.
    The children had no plans for the weekend. They would watch too much television, but also play with the chaotic jumble of toys in their bedroom, Stephanie herding her Playmobil figures on and off the brick trains that Timothy fashioned for them. Karen might read to them or organise some cutting and sticking, or drawing. Or she might not. They were unlikely to go outside, any of them. Karen had once grown most of our vegetables, but somehow that had all withered away since her injury. If I had been at home, I might have taken them on a walk by the old canal, watching the nesting birds and pointing out the new spring flowers. My mother had done the same for me and it must have been in the blood.
    So I drove all the way back to Broad Campden, where the council officer had arranged to meet me, the police liaising between us in a way I found surprising. Until, that is, I realised that they hoped this would see the end of their involvement. From their point of view, I was the best chance of calming the whole thing down, and leaving poor Mrs Simmonds where she was.
    Mr Maynard was waiting for me, standing in the gateway to the field, on the spot where policewoman Jessica had planted herself in order to chastise me about my car. The associations