When Lily Was Here

The Peace of Hood: a futile horn (a novel)

Prologue: When Lily Was There

At first, the boy digs with his hands. He scoops up the sodden earth and banks it behind him, the same way the mangy dogs dig the muddy banks of the Thames.  One of the dogs from the river sits, watching him. He is heavily built with black fur and amber patches, and missing a front leg. He has followed  him from where he salvaged the body, the body of his sister. The dog’s gaze is fixed on him. He says it over to himself again, ‘the body of my sister,’ but no matter how many times he says it, it will never sound right, it will never sound true. And he has dragged her to this place of rest. His mouth is dry and ridden with a sourness that tastes like poison.  

         The endless rain has soaked into the ground, making the task easier. The earth shifts in the wake of the young boy’s purposeful movements and is flung down in sticky clods, shot through with worm and grit. 

         He smells the rot once deep in the earth. Disturbed. It is turned over, the fetid matter now turning to ooze and exposed to the air. He smells the dank crawling things that have no name. A soup of decay. They squirm, many segments rubbing flesh together and moving apart. Is this where her body must go?

            Occasionally, through a veil of rain and grime, he glances at the corpse lying on the edge of the slowly deepening hole. There - in her dirty-pink ragged frock and the scar on her cheek from the stone that got past him. He fights back all feeling. He must get the job done. His whole being is channelled into this one single effort. His breathing is chopped and he feels a beating pulse at the back of his head. 

         Before her death is announced he must do this for her, leave her in a place that is safe and sacred and away from the dark river. Mr Miller said, ‘Jim, this is a place where angels tread.’  He doesn’t know much about that but it sounds like a good thing. Close by, he sees a statue of one of them with its granite arms raised up. Lily will rest by it.  And here the world can’t take her from him and give her a ceremony that he doesn’t understand. As far as they are all concerned, she is lost to the river and never found. That is his story.

         Leaning against the wall of the cemetery, almost hidden by the tall weeds, is the remains of a shovel. Abandoned by a gravedigger. Though the shaft is broken, it can still be used in the hands of a small boy. He grabs the tool and continues his efforts with renewed vigour. He is no stranger to hard labour. He is known by the name, not long ago reserved for hogs – a mud lark. Most of his days are spent with the river at low tide, scavenging its ruined banks for bits of coal, old iron, rope, bone and copper nails that he can sell. The bounty from passing ships. The copper nails are the best. They are hard to find but they fetch a tidy sum. The coal he sells to his neighbours for one penny per pot. Any iron, bone or rope he sells to the rag shops. And there are plenty of them, up and down the alleys and in the courtyards, close to where he lives. The most he ever earned in one day is four pence. Most days, it is no more than tuppence.

         But in all his short life of toil his digging has never been for this. It is not for the likes of a young scrap like him. Not until now. Only this is different. This is not for money. This is an act of love. And a dig without end.

         She always trailed behind him, making those strange squeaking sounds. She never uttered proper words. Father said that she was useless to them. No one would have her. She was an extra mouth and she couldn’t do much of nothing. Her brain was all wrong. But Jim wanted her. Lily was his. 

         At night they lay on the rough floor by the cold hearth and Lily spoke her silent words using the movements of her hands and the expression of her face.  It was her own language.And only Jim could understand.

         The nights when she developed a fever, Jim stood vigil, night after night. He only slept when her ague finally broke. No one else came near. Except the occasional visit from the neighbour who had been Lily’s wet nurse. ‘Good boy,’ she whispered, stroked his face and left.

         And as he ranged over the muddy banks, Lily was often there, silently by his side, and he stood up to the other boys and received all their punches and pokes and jeers and all thatwas meant for Lily.

And when he saw the boys running off, it was too late. They looked furtively behind as they left the scene. The scene of her death. He dropped his pot of coal. The one penny pot of coal that had snatched away his duty to her. He moved, as if through solid air that was unbreathable. He moved, towards the oozing quagmire where the boys had stood. In his head he would never arrive. He stayed forever moving towards the place, where the world had stopped. And still as his hair turned grey and he moved with a stoop and a limp from a musket ball, the moment never left. Yet there she was. Quite peaceful. No struggle. Not anymore. The mud rose up to embrace her. And she fell face down into the watery shallows, held down by the tangled mesh of broad leaves and golden chaliced flowers that bore her name. 

His grief is here. And he digs to keep her safe from the demons and spirits of the river. This is where his heart lies. The adults will shed no tears.  There will just be an unspoken relief that she is gone. And any ceremony will be hurried, scraped together from pennies of well-meaning neighbours. Better she remains here. He can do it all. All that is needed.

         Jim kneels. The rags that hang from him are stiff with dried mud. They crack and crumble as he moves. This is the last image he will have of her. But it is just one, the last of many. All the pictures he will keep,  and remember their bright colours and vivid shapes. And he kisses her frozen face and his lips become chilled against her skin. All warmth is gone. Her lifeless state enters him and creeps into his bones.

         With Lily’s first cry came the final sighing breath of their mother. And the ceremony that cast Mother into the earth remains with him: the  few handfuls of dirt falling and tap-tapping on the coffin lid, as if it is about to swing open in response to the scattering call of earth and she will rise-up from her open grave, and the sing-song chant of the reverend continues – ‘we therefore commit her body to the ground…’ and that is all that is left to hear. Jim hates it all. As he remembers stumbling into the room to see his mother, crushed in the arms of a customer. He was a well-paying one so Jim was shouted at and told to leave. His face burns with the memory. At least Lily never knew. Her mother is now the granite angel who stands over her in stony silence. She is committed to final grace. And the rain that still falls is for his sister and mother, washing away all shame and sin of living in a world that had no place for them.

         ‘Take her with you,’ Father said the moment she left the wet nurse neighbour. ‘I don’t want to see her face. She is your responsibility now.’

         The memory intrudes unbidden. Jim breaks it by leaning over to stroke the dog. The dog is large and powerful. It could shake Jim in its jaws like a rag doll. Jim shivers. But the dog presses his head against the palm of Jim’s caressing hand. Jim smiles for the first time in days, in weeks. One day, when grown to a man, he will have a dog just like this.

         Jim’s strength is waning. He sucks in air as the feeling of death presses down on him. His arms ache. His legs are trembling. He takes Lily in his arms and carefully places her into the hole. The depth will suffice. It is deep enough to keep out clawing predators. She can remain at peace. But he can’t bring himself to pile the soil directly on top of her. He curses. Why didn’t he cover her in something? Found some cloth. Anything.  But there is nothing. So, he takes off the rags that was once a shirt and places it gently over her face and upper body. And then he hugs the mound of earth that has risen like a wall over the hole and pulls it down on top of her. Dropping and sliding, it fills the open grave, covering all he has loved in a blanket of rich earth.  In a few moments it is done. Lily is buried.

         He stands over the grave, his bare feet gripping the freshly turned soil. The wind picks up, whipping his naked chest. And he welcomes it. Any feeling is better than the one that threatens to consume him. He gasps for air. It’s all been sucked away. And still he stands and does not bend to the wind or to the pain that grips him. He remembers snatches from the Book of Common Prayer but this will not do. It is not their story. His voice sounds strange in the darkness of the graveyard. He sounds new and alien. The dog cocks its head as Jim starts to speak.

         ‘Goodbye, Lily, you were a funny thing. But you were mine as I am yours. And that’s all I have to say…’ Jim shuffles and after a moment’s pause he adds, ‘Goodbye, Lily. This dog will watch over you. He’s my friend, so he’s yours too.’

         The century is dying. Its rebirth is just a few hours away. He has heard people talk about hope. Hope that the new age will give them better fortune and some relief from the muck and disease, and bellies forever tight with hunger. Mr Miller said, ‘everyone needs hope,’ and tousled his hair as he always did. 1800 will usher in a new belief – a new time of opportunity.

         Jim doesn’t know. He watches the three-legged dog, watching him still. All he knows is this, and now she is dead. He does not know how to move on from here.  Without Lily the days, the hours have no shape. They are formless and full of nothing. The nothing of loss. What pictures will he have? How will he think and feel from here? What will he be? And it is this emptiness that now howls to stand up and be seen. And painted. 

         All his life, since he has been aware of himself as a thinking, breathing person, separate from the rest, he has been inexorably moving towards the smell of gunpowder, grapeshot and vomit, the sounds of cannon, drums and the screams of men, and the sight of rider-less horses drifting aimlessly through powdered smoke.

         Yet when the church clock strikes twelve and ushers in a new century, James Hood will still be just Jim. He is still fifteen years away from bearing witness to the carnage in a muddy field outside the little Belgium village of Waterloo; he is still eight years away from marching with Old Nosey to drive Boney’s armies out of Portugal and then out of Spain in a series of blood and guts battles, leaving him forever changed; he is still thirty years away from finding the murdered corpse of Thomas Baldermere in the Thames; he is still twenty years away from burying his own daughter and later reading of the death of his wife; he is still forty years away from raising a glass to being alive; and he is still years away from knowing so much more about life and death and the spaces in between.

         Jim and the dog stay in the cemetery, sitting with Lily, until the start of the new year. And the church bells start to toll and he hears the sound of people in the alleyways and courtyards banging on their pots and pans.

         ‘This is it, boy,’ he whispers into the furry ruff of the dog. His ears are pricked in response to the sudden cacophony. ‘A new year. A new century.’

         When he returns home, he knows he will have many questions to answer about Lily. But he doesn’t care. None will be about love. None about the real Lily. He wants to stay but he knows that he must leave. There is no point in staying. And he may as well get it over with. The last string holding him to the family is cut. The Fates have measured the time now ending. It is severed and soon he will be away. As soon as…

         The dog picks up a new scent. His head lifts up into the wind. Jim watches him leave. The dog starts to run as fast as any dog he’s seen. In a few moments he will be gone. The boy wonders at the grace and speed of the dog, running freely on three legs.