Chapter Thirty Three

M ara presses the answer button on her phone, doing a quick calculation. It’s the end of the working day in Adelaide. ‘Afternoon,’ she says. She offers nothing further.

‘Where are you?’ No greeting. He’s querulous. ‘I’ve been ringing that cottage place for a day, no answer.’

A day? He could have tried her mobile if he was worried.

‘I’m in Eccleshall, and –’ the instinctive desire to share her news adds a buzz to Mara’s tone ‘– I’ve found him, here, at the Royal Oak, where he wrote the letters.’

‘Found who?’

Her buzz deflates. ‘Aaron Appleby, the mysterious forebear. The reason I’m in England.’ Not the whole reason. The admission pops into Mara’s head. She lets it hover, annoyed with Peter’s lack of interest.

‘Ah, umm, good.’

He could at least pretend. Mara moves off the subject. ‘Is it urgent if you’ve been trying to catch me for a day?’

Throat clearing and, ‘I wanted to say I’ve thought about what you said and changed my mind. You should stay, as you want to.’

The statement is made with rote-like precision. Mara frowns, waits for an apology, an explanation.

‘Well, thank you,’ she says when the silence extends into awkwardness. She represses her sarcasm. ‘I’m pleased we see eye to eye on this.’

‘Yes.’

More woodenness. Has Peter become a puppet?

‘I’m just off out to explore churchyards,’ Mara says. No reaction. ‘What are you doing this evening?’ she adds.

‘This evening?’ The wooden tone collapses into one of mild confusion. ‘Umm, finishing up here shortly then home for an early night. Been hectic.’

‘As ever.’ Mara tucks the phone into her shoulder to lock the hotel room door. She walks along the landing to the top of the stairs. ‘I’ll be in Barnley tomorrow evening, call me there.’

‘Fine. Have a good time in the cemetery.’

Mara presses the end call button and drops the phone into her handbag. An odd conversation, one a hostage might make under duress. What the hell is going on? Tired of puzzling over conundrums, Mara pushes the worry aside until later. Right now, she has a mission to accomplish.

Dropping the outsized key on its wooden tag at reception, Mara walks out onto the High Street and turns left. The distance to Holy Trinity is not far, on the other side of the street on the edge of the town. The square-towered building, built of reddish bricks, sits well apart from the road, with the churchyard to the front and side. A fancy lych gate frames the paved path to the church itself.

Mara doesn’t immediately begin scouring gravestones. Instead, she continues on to the arched opening of the porch, through open wooden doors and into the nave. The interior is sparse. Grey stone walls with pointed arches, largely devoid of sculptures, and rows of dark wooden pews give it a gravid air, a sense of ponderous authority. Mara shivers in the chill gloom and is preparing to head outside to the warm brightness when a door behind the altar opens. A man in a clerical collar emerges, sees Mara and raises a hand in cheerful greeting. The heavy atmosphere lifts like fog defeated by sunshine. Mara waits for him to approach.

‘Can I help, or are you just browsing?’

‘I’ve come to look at the graves,’ Mara says.

‘Family history?’

The cheery vicar has been down this route before.

‘Yes.’ Mara pauses. ‘You don’t have a register, do you, which covers 1897?’

He taps his chin. ‘Sorry, the old registers went to the Records Office a few years ago. Our current one starts in 1910, if I recall.’

Mara dithers. If Grant Barnaby’s theory is correct, Aaron could be in the current register. More likely however, is that if he died here, it was when he vanished, so she would be wasting her time.

‘Thanks,’ she says. She glances over her shoulder. ‘I’ll wander around out there, see what I can find.’

‘Call out if I can help in any way,’ the vicar says. ‘I’m John Cooke.’ He extends his hand.

‘Mara Ash.’ She shakes the hand, which is cool and dry, and heads into the daylight.

There’s no rhyme or reason to the layout of the graves Mara can identify, except in a newer section which she ignores. She works her way methodically over the short grass, grateful Holy Trinity buries its dead in reasonably neat rows.

The task is not onerous. The sun warms her head, and birdsong from the surrounding tall trees provides a musical background. The road is distant enough to soften the traffic noise. Mara’s pace slows as she becomes involved in the lives recorded here. The tragedies of too young deaths, of husbands outliving their wives by thirty years, and wives widowed for longer. There are family plots for those whom Mara assumes are the great and good of the community, with markers going back generations. She ponders this depth of history, of being embedded in the roots of time, the certainty of home.

Stopping to drink from her water bottle, Mara squints at an inscription on a large stone topped by an angel above the grave of a Judith Parry, 1864 to 1938. The epitaph reads Together in life and death . No other name is inscribed. Nor is there any Beloved wife of …. Mara smirks. Had Mrs Parry’s husband refused to be buried with his wife? Had she deluded herself of his faithful love all the years of their marriage? Poor woman. It’s enough to make one hope there is no afterlife and this betrayal is never discovered. Mara giggles and moves to the next grave.

Her heart stops.

Here lies Aaron Appleby, died 1917, aged 56 years .

And underneath, in a barely smaller font:

Also known as Adam Parry 1897 to 1917, beloved companion of Judith .

The birdsong fades, the distant traffic mutes. Mara side steps to the first grave.

Together in life and death .

Her giggles shame her.

Who the hell was Judith Parry and why was Aaron Appleby – husband to Hester – her beloved companion and bearing the name Adam Parry?

This new puzzle jigs in her brain. Until her mobile rings. Mara jumps, pulls her bag from her shoulder and finds the phone. The caller ID is the home number in Adelaide. Peter? She hesitates. It might be Josie. She answers.

‘Hi, Mum.’

Thank God.

‘Hello, darling. Having fun racking up Dad’s telephone bill?’ Go for it, Josie, Mara wants to say.

Josie snorts, amused. ‘I won’t be long. I was sitting here watching mindless rubbish on tele and remembered you said you were going to a place with one of those weird English names to try and find your Mr Appleby. Any luck?’

‘That’s kind of you.’ Unlike your father. ‘And yes, about two minutes ago I found his grave.’

‘Wow! Does this mean you can find out what happened to him?’

‘Well, things have gotten a bit complicated.’ Mara spots the vicar, Reverend Cooke, coming out of the church. Her brain clicks into research gear. ‘Listen, sweets, I have to catch a priest, I’ll tell you about it in the morning.’

‘Catch a ...? ’Josie snorts, more loudly. ‘Better rush.’

‘Oh. Are you having a nice evening in with your dad? Who cooked, or was it takeaway?’ The question springs from suspicion and recent experience. Mara asks it as she hurries between the graves towards the reverend.

‘Dad? Not seen sight nor sound of him.’ Mara hears the shrug. ‘No idea where he is, never do. Busy, busy man.’

‘Always. Bye, sweetheart, call you tomorrow.’ Mara ends the call, tucks this new treachery into storage with the rest, and increases her stride.

Reverend Cooke spots her and makes his way toward her. ‘Everything all right, Mrs Ash?’

‘Yes, yes.’ Mara stops, damp from the hurry and the humidity. ‘I found the grave –’

‘Congratulations.’ His beam is genuine.

‘If you have a minute to spare, can I show you something and ask if you can shed any light on it?’

Reverend Cooke glances at the clock on the square tower and Mara’s gaze matches him. Ten minutes to midday.

‘I can give you five minutes,’ he says cheerfully. ‘Have a meeting in the rectory at noon with the treasurer who, for a man so precise with figures, is congenitally unable to figure out a clock. Never on time.’

Mara says thank you, and returns to the two graves.

‘Hmm.’ Reverend Cooke scratches his chin after Mara explains the issue. ‘I see your puzzlement.’ He stares beyond the graves to the line of trees which separate the rectory from the graveyard.

Mara watches his face, the furrows deepening in his middle-aged brow.

‘Of course.’ He gives a sharp nod. ‘The Parrys live out at Castle Farm at the edge of town, have done for generations I believe. They worship here on occasion.’

‘Might they know about this?’ It wasn’t like it was hundreds of years ago. Mara’s optimistic imagination conjures an ancient relative who knew Judith, knows the story which has been passed down in family lore, can recall Aaron, or Adam, himself.

‘I’ve no idea.’ The vicar rubs his chin. ‘If you come with me to the rectory, I’ll give Campbell Parry a ring, ask if he’ll chat to you.’

Mara restrains her jig of joy, says, ‘Your meeting? I don’t want to be a nuisance.’

‘You won’t be.’ He bestows a smile. ‘Un-Christian though it is, it’ll be my pleasure to have our treasurer wait for me for a change.’

***

The Fiesta swings into a levelled dirt track overhung with summer-green beech trees which must be glorious in autumn. Mara checks the dashboard clock. She’s right on time, half past three. The track ends in a gravelled circle. Mara keeps left, parking in the shade, facing the house. She switches off the engine, rests her hands on the steering wheel, and takes in the substantial stone farmhouse, worthy of the name Castle Farm. Tall windows either side of a heavy bright red door are bordered by thick ivy which hugs the walls to the wide gables. Chimneys at either end boast several pots.

It’s the kind of house Mara would love to call her own, and which Peter would pooh pooh as cold, impractical and in need of constant maintenance. No romance in his lawyer soul. Mara examines this idea which has bubbled out of nowhere. She adds it to her store, with Peter’s odd behaviour and his lies. A lot to ponder, later. At this moment, she is here, where Aaron might have lived his last years, where the mystery of his disappearance might be solved. Finally. Hopefully.

She briefly reviews what she has found to date. Aaron and Hester were married. Aaron had been in Eccleshall, for unknown reasons, at midsummer 1897, having been in Shrewsbury the day before, apparently to visit parents he hadn’t seen for six years and to fulfil a duty involving a family called the Wards.

Aaron had written to Hester from Eccleshall how he was disappointed in the outcome of his duty and was on his way home. Yet, he died in Eccleshall twenty years later, buried under two names.

Grabbing her handbag, Mara slips from the car, crunches across the gravel, and lifts the heavy, polished brass knocker, fingers crossed.