place all day.
After a long time of searching the narrow dirt streets – it was frightening for me with so many strangers shouting and so many dogs barking and hundreds of shacks stretching as far as I could see, and me worrying about Mama waiting in her coffin on the platform back at the station – I found the church that Mama had attended as a child.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ I said, leaning tiredly against the door round the side that said ‘Vestry, knock first’. ‘My mother has died and wishes to be buried in your churchyard with her ancestors.’
The minister looked up from his desk and ran his eyes over me in Mama’s black funeral coat.
‘Where are you from?’
‘I have come from Cradock today, sir, with my mother’s coffin on the train.’
At first the minister said he was too busy to help and that he did not know of any living relatives at his church with our name. Once I said that I could pay him from the money Master had given me, he agreed to bury Mama. I had to be careful with the money, for it had to cover the cost of the coffin, the train fares, the donkey cart from the station to the church and then from the church to the cemetery. I could never repay Master for his kindness, but at least I could show that I was grateful by giving him back what was left over.
The minister put on a creased white robe – why did he not have someone to iron for him? – and sat alongside the driver.
I squatted in the back, holding on to the coffin to stop it slipping off the back of the cart. It took a long time to get to the cemetery. I felt sorry for Mama being jolted so hard along the uneven roads. I clutched Madam’s roses and looked out over the head of the minister and the driver and the horse. The sea was out there somewhere, as blue as the sky, and I longed to see it with ships on it like I had read about, and that had carried our piano to Cradock House, but the land in that place was flat and the township stretched beyond the horizon and no one can see further than the horizon.
Unlike where Master Phil was buried, this cemetery had no grass and the wind threw grit from the bare ground into my face. But I believe God the Father does not think any less of His children if they have a poor funeral with no congregation. It does not mean they are less worthy than those buried in a cathedral with crowds watching and an organ making the walls shake. Mama served other people all her life. God would be pleased with her, I was sure.
There could be no service like Master Phil’s, of course, but the minister and I sang Abide with Me over the hole that had been dug where the coffin would go, and where I placed Madam’s roses, delicate and beautiful against the broken earth. Although the wind stung our faces, it also surely carried our voices up to heaven where God – and I hope Master Phil – were listening. I gave the minister some extra money and he said he would put up a sign with Mama’s name so that I could find it if I visited again. Even so, before we left, I tried to fix in my mind where Mama’s grave was amongst the many hundreds of mounds. It lay in line with a distant shack with a tin roof like the kaia back in Cradock, except that there was no bony thorn tree but a straggly creeper over a piece of fence. In the other direction was a tall light – taller than any light I had seen before – that shed an orange glow even although it was still the day. Where the two directions met, was Mama’s grave. Behind me, in the rutted street alongside the cemetery, a lively group of children kicked a ball, their voices rising into the air with Mama’s soul.
* * *
By the time I got back to the station, the last train of the day had already left and so I sat on a bench through the night, holding on to my leftover money, closing my ears to the shouts of drunken men in the dark beyond the dim platform light, until the first train of the next day appeared through a grey dawn. It started to rain. Other passengers
After a long time of searching the narrow dirt streets – it was frightening for me with so many strangers shouting and so many dogs barking and hundreds of shacks stretching as far as I could see, and me worrying about Mama waiting in her coffin on the platform back at the station – I found the church that Mama had attended as a child.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ I said, leaning tiredly against the door round the side that said ‘Vestry, knock first’. ‘My mother has died and wishes to be buried in your churchyard with her ancestors.’
The minister looked up from his desk and ran his eyes over me in Mama’s black funeral coat.
‘Where are you from?’
‘I have come from Cradock today, sir, with my mother’s coffin on the train.’
At first the minister said he was too busy to help and that he did not know of any living relatives at his church with our name. Once I said that I could pay him from the money Master had given me, he agreed to bury Mama. I had to be careful with the money, for it had to cover the cost of the coffin, the train fares, the donkey cart from the station to the church and then from the church to the cemetery. I could never repay Master for his kindness, but at least I could show that I was grateful by giving him back what was left over.
The minister put on a creased white robe – why did he not have someone to iron for him? – and sat alongside the driver.
I squatted in the back, holding on to the coffin to stop it slipping off the back of the cart. It took a long time to get to the cemetery. I felt sorry for Mama being jolted so hard along the uneven roads. I clutched Madam’s roses and looked out over the head of the minister and the driver and the horse. The sea was out there somewhere, as blue as the sky, and I longed to see it with ships on it like I had read about, and that had carried our piano to Cradock House, but the land in that place was flat and the township stretched beyond the horizon and no one can see further than the horizon.
Unlike where Master Phil was buried, this cemetery had no grass and the wind threw grit from the bare ground into my face. But I believe God the Father does not think any less of His children if they have a poor funeral with no congregation. It does not mean they are less worthy than those buried in a cathedral with crowds watching and an organ making the walls shake. Mama served other people all her life. God would be pleased with her, I was sure.
There could be no service like Master Phil’s, of course, but the minister and I sang Abide with Me over the hole that had been dug where the coffin would go, and where I placed Madam’s roses, delicate and beautiful against the broken earth. Although the wind stung our faces, it also surely carried our voices up to heaven where God – and I hope Master Phil – were listening. I gave the minister some extra money and he said he would put up a sign with Mama’s name so that I could find it if I visited again. Even so, before we left, I tried to fix in my mind where Mama’s grave was amongst the many hundreds of mounds. It lay in line with a distant shack with a tin roof like the kaia back in Cradock, except that there was no bony thorn tree but a straggly creeper over a piece of fence. In the other direction was a tall light – taller than any light I had seen before – that shed an orange glow even although it was still the day. Where the two directions met, was Mama’s grave. Behind me, in the rutted street alongside the cemetery, a lively group of children kicked a ball, their voices rising into the air with Mama’s soul.
* * *
By the time I got back to the station, the last train of the day had already left and so I sat on a bench through the night, holding on to my leftover money, closing my ears to the shouts of drunken men in the dark beyond the dim platform light, until the first train of the next day appeared through a grey dawn. It started to rain. Other passengers
Similar Books
