Page 30 of The Perfect Blend
I knelt beside the headstone and cleared the grave of leaves. I took out the old vase and replaced it with the new one. It was a gorgeous evergreen arrangement with all of Mum’s favourite Christmas foliage. The bright red holly berries almost glowed against the deep lush greens. She would have loved it.
“I’ve been flirting with a new guy, Mum,” I confided softly, crouched before her. “You’d think he was very dishy.” She would have, too. She’d thought Henry Cavill was the sexiest guy alive, and Zach was kind of a more rugged down-to-earth version.
“He’s the first guy I’ve seriously looked at since Pete and it's really exciting. I’m being careful though Mum, don’t worry. I know how you worry. He’s a good guy by all accounts. Remember that boy I used to play with when we went up to the Spencer’s farm for Christmas? Zach Spencer? Well, that’s him, he’s come back to town and we’re working together on some really exciting stuff up at Bluebell Ridge Farm. It’s going to be great.”
I stood up.
“Anyway, I just came up to let you know how I’m doing and to give you your Christmas flowers. Love to Granny and Grandad. Bye Mum, love you,” I said, before turning away from the headstone to face the church. “Come on, Beanie.”
I started picking my way carefully down the frozen hillside, following the centre path that cut through the middle of all the graves. I’d never understood why people talked to graves until my Mum died. But shortly after she’d passed, I had found myself wanting to talk to her, and so one afternoon I sat down in front of the grave, and started updating my Mum on my life. Once the grief counsellor had assured me that this was a perfectly normal coping mechanism and I wasn’t losing it, I regularly came up here to chat with her as my life progressed.
It hurt so much that she never saw me get out of that awful relationship, that she’d barely seen me start my business, that there was so much of my life I would never get to share with her again, big or small. No more shopping trips. No more days out. No more advice and unconditional love when I messed up and needed someone to turn to. No more watching Bridget Jones together whenever it was on TV, and howling with laughter at the best bits like it was the first time we’d seen it. I would never again see her eyes light up with laughter or with love when I made her proud.
It soothed the ragged edges of my grief to come up here and talk to her, even if it didn't make sense to some people. Even if I never got a reply.
Sharon, Aunt Eileen and Uncle Bert were family, and they loved me and they had loved Mum, but they couldn’t fill the gap, and without Mum’s warm kindness to soften it, their brand of love sometimes had sharp edges. Dad was Dad, and whilst our father-daughter bond was stronger than ever, it also highlighted the bond I had lost.
I missed her.
It was hard to talk about my Mum, and in the end it had come up with Zach in a text conversation about the market.
Will your Mum be coming? I’d love to see her again.He’d texted.
She passed away three years ago. But she would have thought it was wonderful, you know how she loved Christmas.
There had been a break in text, and I wondered if it hurt him to know. He’d been friendly with Mum all those years ago, and she’d always mothered him and spoiled him at Christmastime. She’d known his own mum wasn’t always the nicest person to be around.
I’m so sorry to hear that.Came the eventual reply.She was a very special lady, you must miss her.
Everyday.
I know it was a while ago now, but if you ever want to talk about it, I’m here.
Thank you.
The conversation had drifted to more practical matters, but it was nice to have someone offer to talk. I’d cried on Zoe’s shoulder many times over the years, and had some emotionally limited conversations with Aunt Eileen and Sharon. But that was it in terms of a pool of people I could talk to. It was nice to be able to talk to a guy with empathy. When my mum had died, Pete had acted as if I’d had some kind of illness and couldn't bear to hang around the grief. It might have been why it took me so long to break up with him, it was too much to lose someone else, even someone as unsupportive as Pete. I wondered what it would have been like if I’d been with Zach back then.
My mind easily filled with images of him supporting me, holding me, taking care of the things I couldn’t, just being there when I needed him. Was I projecting, or was my gut right that this time, I was actually going after someone worthwhile? I felt like I was in a better place now than I’d ever been before, healed to be more resilient. Seeking out the right kind of people, knowing my own worth, and understanding how the patterns of my past had come to pass. Tentatively, I thought Zoe was right. Things with Zach felt genuine. It felt like a path that had always meant to be explored. Maybe I didn’t need to worry so much.
My eyes fell on a group of graves to the right of the path, the Spencer family graves. Two in particular caught my eye. One was the newest, the shiny granite grave belonging to Jim and Dot, and next to it was a much older weathered limestone one, speckled with lichen. This grave belonged to Zachs great-grandparents and buried with them was the person who was at the centre of the Spencer family gossip, Zach’s grandmother. Poor Jane Spencer. She had died really young. The circumstances were never spoken about by the family, but it was not long after having Zach’s mother out of wedlock with an unknown father. It had been a scandal, and Zachs ‘Uncle’ Jim and ‘Aunt’ Dot had taken in the child, Jim’s little sister’s daughter, Bev. Nobody knew for sure what had happened or why, but around this time the youngest and only other remaining Spencer sibling, John, stopped speaking to his brother. Nobody ever found out why, and he was always a reclusive guy, staying up at his farm with his family. I didn’t know if I’d even ever seen him.
The scandal added to the cloud of gossip surrounding Bev, and she was a real young tearaway under the pressure of it, or so my Mum had said. Bev matured into a woman who hated the village she’d grown in, and had a less than close relationship with the only family she’d known. It meant that she only took her kids up here at Christmas, and Mum said even then she’d come more to make sure she got her annual Christmas gift of money than from any sort of familial obligation. Once Jim and Dot died their graves would have remained bare if not for the flowers my mother brought up on occasion. I was gratified to see that someone, and I presumed it was Zach, had put a nice arrangement of greenery and Christmas baubles on each grave. It only added to the difference between him and his mother.
Bev was also only mildly more committed to her children than their father, a man who, according to gossip, was a no-good transient figure hardly ever at home. Now that I was older I had reflected on the pieces of information Zach had let onto when we were kids, and understood he had a childhood containing periods of neglect and sometimes meanness. Mum said Dot was always worrying after the children and despairing at their upbringing. I didn’t know it at the time, but the reason she always brought me up to the farm around Christmas-time was on an ask from Dot, that the kids might make friends up here. Me and Zach got on like a house on fire, and while the slightly older Selene humoured us occasionally, mostly she was out in the barn with the farm horse or helping Jim or Dot. Their Mum would spend most of her time away from the farm down in the pubs in town. It was a contrast for the kids then, that my Mum took such an interest in them when she visited, and they seemed to dote on her in return.
A memory came to mind of a young Zach smiling shyly as Mum opened the enthusiastically but poorly wrapped present from him. She’d laughed in delighted pleasure as she pulled out a pair of fluffy earmuffs. The year before she had complained all Christmas about her ears always being cold and he’d remembered. He had confided in me that he’d saved some of his Christmas money from last year to buy them. Mum had kept those earmuffs for years until a baby Beanie had chewed them up the year before she’d died.
I was smiling at the memory as I rounded the corner of the church and nearly bumped into Mrs Sheila Jones, who’d orchestrated the meeting between me and Zach at the pub. She seemed to be everywhere recently.
“Oh, hello dear!” Sheila chirped, face rosy and hands full of flowers.
“Hello, Sheila. How are you doing? Are you on the rota for the church flowers this week?” I asked pleasantly.
“I most certainly am. Are you up here to see your mother?”
“I’ve just dropped by her Christmas arrangement.”
“Ah, I’m sure she’d love that. Always a delight when your mother did the church flowers, Robin. She did love her arrangements,” Sheila said, voice warm with nostalgia.
