Guardian of the Graveyard by Judy Mitchell

‘He’ll not go down there. They’ve got a plot at St Mary’s. Had it for ages. His mam and dad were from there and have been keeping a space warm for him these last ten years.’

The three men fell silent, finished their drinks and then shouted the landlord for a last round.

‘That one was your last. Time to go home.’

On the following night they had news. The crackling, wet cough that had slid Jack Priestley into semi-consciousness on the previous day, had taken their neighbour to his Maker that morning. When they went to pay their respects, gone was the tell-tale bloom of pink on his cadaverous cheeks: gone the eerie, ruckling sound bubbling up from his exhausted chest. His eyes that had bulged and stared, had finally closed. A peculiar, suffering look he had for almost a year, had left his features in peace.  He was silent.

As they had thought, he was to be laid to rest at St Mary’s with his father and mother, both gone long before him but patiently saving his place.

It had all started as a drunken conversation between the three old miners slumped across the bar. Those who overheard their beer-fuelled deliberations urged them to change their tune, to talk about something more joyful than speculating who would be the first burial at the new parish church and become, according to legend, the Guardian of the Graveyard. But more than eight months after its consecration, the new burial place remained empty with grey, bare earth lapping the new church’s stone walls. It had been months since the builders’ carts had taken away the last of the stone, the sand and the lime and the tools used to bring the sacred place to life. A sexton had been appointed, a man from the village, slow and quiet. Each day, he turned over in his calloused hands, his recently acquired spade and fork and then restacked the wooden coffin boards against the wall by the vestry, ready for the day when there would be a call for his services. But there was no call.

The three continued to ponder who would be the first and become the spirit who would protect the place and the departed from evil forces. For weeks, towards closing time, the talk would start again, always raised by the same three as they looked into their empty glasses. Then with their speech blurred, their eyes smeared with coaldust and rivulets of sweat that had coursed down their faces during the working day, they each took on a look of melancholic curiosity as they leaned on the bar.

When Benjamin and Sarah Chapel’s second born, a girl, arrived well before her time, they shook their heads in despair, never expecting her to see out her second day. Surely the Guardian was not to be a child?  Such a tiny, dark bundle with both fists clenched, her thumbs pointed upwards. By the third day her hungry cries were hiccoughing across the back-to-backs and down the black alleys, defying the naysayers. Years later, many of her family would remember that determination and defiance which she carried into her adult years and which served her well when she beat off an attack in Nair Woods by a drunken miner lodging with her family, intent on wicked pleasure.

And so, the nightly, macabre deliberations of these old men continued. They commented on the unusually hale and healthy state of the oldest men and women in the village and wondered if they each held some secret talisman that kept them away from death’s dark embrace.  

On the Sabbath and in their Sunday best, the three made their way to the church with their families down freshly tamped paths bordered by a soft, lime sheen of new grass shoots. Later, when the north wind blew harder up the hill, tall, dark green tussocks peppered the new grass, bent by the tumbling weather. Stubby, bare trees stood like angry circus dwarves around the perimeter of the graveyard, stunted horse chestnuts and beech trees planted to provide shelter from the wind, but not for many years.

At the Black Bull, the conversation again turned to the emptiness of the graveyard.

‘Our Billy says they should have buried a black dog under the cornerstone of the place so that its ghost would be Guardian. A Church Grim he said it was called.’

‘What happens if it turned on folk? It might never let us in.’

‘Well, I’m not over-keen on going in to stay. Don’t know about you?’

‘We’ve all got to go some time.’

‘Aye, but I don’t want to have to creep in to avoid getting bit.’

‘Take your missus with you, she’ll scare ‘owt off.’

They finished their beer and looked at the landlord in hopeless expectation of another round.

‘No.’ he stated, anticipating their question.

His single word was final and he was not prepared to argue. He watched them stagger out on to the road and heard the sharp ring of their clogs as they stumbled on the frost-rimed earth. He reached for the handle to lock the door and looked up at the full moon in the ruby sky and the sharp pinnacles and pediments of the new parish church silhouetted down the lane.

 

The explosion on the following afternoon shook the doors of every building for miles. A row of tiles on the school roof slid rhythmically down to the ground. Glasses in the Black Bull rocked and rattled on the shelves. The vicar, dressed in a long, dark cloak, came out of the vicarage, crossed the graveyard and made his way quickly towards the mine, a mile away. A stream of men and women hurtled from their doors and joined him in the rush to the pithead.

Two days later, all the bodies had been brought to the surface. Some so badly burned in the explosion and fire that had ripped through the workings, that their families could not be sure it was them. The Inn remained closed until the last of the dead was brought out and plans were made to hold the inquest.

The burials followed the day of the verdict. On that night, three pints were pulled and placed silently on the bar, the gaze of those in the inn, carefully avoiding the sight of the deep amber liquid untouched in the glasses.