No Graves As Yet Read Online Free PDF

somewhere we haven’t thought of yet,” Joseph concluded. He stood up also. “Go to bed now. It’s nearly two, and there’s a lot we have to do later.”
    “There was a telegram from Hannah. She’s coming on the two-fifteen. Will you go and meet her?” Matthew was rubbing his forehead sore. “She’s going to find this pretty hard.”
    “Yes, I know. I’ll meet her. Albert will drive me. Can I take your car?”
    “Of course.” Matthew shook his head. “I wonder why he didn’t drive Father yesterday.”
    “Or why Mother went,” Joseph added. “It’s all odd. I’ll ask Albert on the way to the station.”
             
    The next day was filled with small, unhappy duties. The formal arrangements had to be made for the funeral. Joseph went to see Hallam Kerr, the vicar, and sat in the tidy, rather stiff vicarage parlor watching him trying to think of something to say that would be of spiritual comfort and finding nothing. Instead they spoke of the practicalities: the day, the hour, who should say what, the hymns. It was a timeless ritual that had been conducted in the old church for every death in the village. The very familiarity of it was comfortable, a reassurance that even if one individual journey was ended, life itself was the same and always would be. There was a kind of certainty in it that gave its own peace.
    Just before lunch Mr. Pettigrew came from the solicitors’ office, small and pale and very neat. He offered his condolences and assured them that everything legal was in order—and that he had been given no papers to keep recently. In fact, not anything this year. A couple of bonds in August of 1913 were the last things. He did not yet mention the will, but they knew it would have to be dealt with in time.
    The bank manager, the doctor, and other neighbors called in or left flowers and cards. Nobody knew what to say, but it was done in kindness. Judith offered them tea, and sometimes it was accepted and awkward conversations followed.
    In the early afternoon Albert Appleton drove Joseph to the railway station at Cambridge to meet Hannah’s train from London. Joseph sat beside him in the front of Matthew’s Sunbeam Talbot as they followed the lanes between the late wild roses and the ripening fields of corn already dappled here and there with the scarlet of poppies.
    Albert kept his eyes studiously on the road. He looked tired, his skin papery under its dark sunburn, and he had missed a little gray stubble on his cheek when he had shaved this morning. He was not a man to give words to grief, but he had come to St. Giles at eighteen and served John Reavley all his adult life. For him this was the ending of an age.
    “Do you know why Father drove himself yesterday?” Joseph asked as they passed into the shade under an avenue of elms.
    “No, Mr. Joseph,” Albert replied. It would be a long time before he called Joseph “Mr. Reavley,” if he ever did. “Except there’s a branch on the old plum tree in the orchard hanging low, an’ tossled in the grass. He wanted me to see if Oi could save it. Oi propped it up, but that don’t always work. Get a bit o’ wind an’ it goes anyway, but it tears it off rough. Leaves a gash in the trunk, an’ kill the whole thing. Get a bit parky an’ the frost’ll have it anyway.”
    “I see. Can you save it?”
    “Best to take it off.”
    “Do you know why Mother went with him?”
    “Jus’ liked to go with him, mebbe.” He stared fixedly ahead.
    Joseph did not speak again until they reached the station. Albert had always been someone with whom it was possible to sit in amicable silence, ever since Joseph had been a boy nursing his dreams in the garden or the orchard.
    Albert parked the car outside the station and Joseph went in and onto the platform to wait. There were half a dozen other people there, but he studiously avoided meeting anyone’s eye in case he encountered someone he knew. The last thing he wanted was conversation.
    The train