Ghosts

I trod cautiously along one side of the mound, made my usual apologies and poured water from the can over the marble stone. The rain and wind always left a dull film.

A limestone one would have been far less labour intensive and would have seen me out. Who is going to come after I've gone? You're kidding yourself if you think anyone else is going to do this.

But as with life, so too with death: you can only have what's in the catalogue. Marble is in vogue. No one wants a soft stone that will be illegible in a hundred years. We all want to live forever. Either that or find anonymity under a rose-bush.

I picked out the dead flowers and accumulated leaves from the dull anodized pot. Something was tucked behind the wilting roses and carnations. A piece of paper folded into a clear plastic bag. I pulled it out and opened the bag. A note. Blue ink had smudged where the rain had got in.

The paper had dried crispy. It must have been there for some time. Since last month, probably. My last visit. I unfolded the note. The writing was firm but had blotted. "Do you come here to be alone, or to be with ghosts?".

Still crouching, I looked up around the graves at the people kneeling, standing and fetching water from the scattered taps. Nobody seemed to be watching, and yet somebody clearly had been. "Who are you?" I scanned my memory in vain for faces that would fit the voice, re-read the message and threw the scrap of stained paper on top of the dead flower heads. I chewed my lip as I finished wiping down the stone.

With a sigh, I picked up the rubbish and pushed myself upright, wincing as my knees cracked. I stepped backwards and murmured a few words to the bones and ashes that lay beneath the turf, or maybe to my own memories, and began the walk across the sprawling site to the car.

Just before reaching the bin, I unravelled the note and read it again. I searched my pocket for the pen that I always carry. Crouching to hold the stiff paper flat on my knee, I wrote "Neither. I come because someone erected a stone. I take the ghosts away with me."

I dropped the note into the mesh bin along with the spent roses and carnations and headed past the conifers, fresh photographs of dead teenage drivers and the crumbling stones carrying the names of Herbert, Ethel and Elsie.