Gruss moaning, all good people. I greet you well.

We've only just got the house back to ourselves, though we'll lose it again late next week, Friday having been set as the day of my brother-in-law's funeral. I wasn't close to him, incidentally - he's my wife's loss, though he wasn't particularly familiar with her. He moved away decades ago, and we scarce heard from him or saw him since. He never married, though, so there's only us - my wife being the oldest sister - to take care of his affairs and see him burried.

All the bustle and commotion this past week has been far too distracting for me to digest such news as there has been, and so I have nothing worthwhile to post in that regard.

I do have something, of my own, which I proffer as my gift and apology to you.

Now, to give you the wider context, some time very close to Christmas in 1971, I was on one of those old back-loading open platform double-decker busses that were still, at the time, to be seen in great numbers on British roads. These busses had a sort of bench seat along the width of the bus, behind the driver, so anybody sitting there would be facing everybody else on the lower deck.

Sitting on the bench seat of this bus were two young ladies, both with long dark hair, both attractive. I should think them to be about 19 or 20. They were attired no differently from any other young woman of that era. Doubtless they were doing what I was doing, going into the city - Coventry - for some Christmas gift-buying. They chatted quietly and bothered no one.

As the bus clattered - as those old diesels were wonted to do - into the northerly suburb of Radford, it stopped and admitted some young men, five in all, perhaps in their mid-20s. They got on noisily, and went straight down the aisle to take up seats opposite the young ladies.

It was quickly evident that these young men knew those young ladies, and hadn't placed themselves where they did for nothing.

They began with a sort of sneering talk I didn't at first understand - "Been grooving the night away, girls?"

It was a minute or two, as this sneering escalated into a threatening derision, spoken loudly for the edification of the whole bus, before I realised what was going on - that these young ladies were lovers, and these young men were making a public sport of them.

The young ladies both drooped their heads low, as if their hair would hide them. They were ashen, clearly frightened and utterly humiliated.

They made a dash to get off as the bus slowed for its next stop, and I - feeling that this was all wrong - followed. I wanted to make sure they were all right. We stood together for several minutes as they got themselves composed. They were both very close to tears, but each of them was very attentive of the other. That impressed me. From our brief conversation I gathered this hadn't been the first time something like this had happened. They decided to abandon their plans, and go home.

Remember, this was the England of the early 70s. Nobody was "out and proud" at that time. This kind of love was hidden. The discovery of it could have very serious consequences.

Anyway, they were most grateful for my attentiveness, and we parted. I thought - the callous behaviour they were subjected to is going to hang over them all Christmas, and long beyond. Nobody should have to live like that.

I had no idea of the names of these young ladies, where they lived, what work they did, or anything about them beyond what I'd witnessed on the bus, and the embarrassed little they were telling me afterwards.

I watched them walk away, into the December gloom, and ever since have wondered - what became of them?

All of which is by way of explaining the first paragraph of what I'm sharing below.

The circumstances are as here - it is the mid-spring of 1970, the days are rapidly opening out, and my protagonists find themselves in deeply rural Fillingley. The protagonists are, of course, based on those caught up in the incident on the bus. This is a little tale set within a larger tale (which I'll tell you something about later in the year).

If you can trouble to read it, I'd care to ask you two questions:-

Did the young women entertain a lonely old woman, shunned these fifty years gone by, who, sensing her end, takes a final walk and seeks human connection with two others she knows to be out-casted, before dying that evening?

Or was that Mrs Tockton's ghost visiting the garden, she already dead or dying, to deliver her message and be remembered, unaware that she is, in fact, a ghost?

You tell me - because I'm not entirely sure what I have written.

================================

On a mild Friday evening in early May, Miss Auderway and Miss Ellis were kneeling side by side in their front garden, with their skirts pinned up and their gloves abandoned on a warm flagstone, when they paused at the sound of a voice, and hoped its owner had not witnessed a squeezing of hands and the quick pecking kisses they had just exchanged. It was a voice that did not belong to the garden, nor to the decade, nor—so it seemed—to any hour of the clock that had ever yet ticked. It had a careful, old-fashioned cadence, as though each word had been dusted and set in its place before being spoken.

“Good evening, young ladies. I am Mrs Tockton, relict of the late Mr Barnswick Tockton, former wife to Mr Yarnold Hamswith de Newgate, née Clementine Rigours. My current residence is Oldpast Cottage. I am quite sure that my left arm is longer than my right, and that my right eye is larger than the left.”

The speaker came just inside the gate. She was very small, but so upright that she seemed taller than she was. Her dress was a faded dove-grey silk, cut with a narrow waist and a generous skirt, and her hat was pinned low on her white hair, which was coiled in a manner no hairdresser had attempted for fifty years. There was lace at her throat that had yellowed into the colour of old paper.

The young women exchanged a look of surprise.

“I’m Maria,” said she. “And this is Tina. We were—well—we were just—”

“Weeding,” said Mrs Tockton, archly.

“Yes—weeding,” Tina agreed, rising with Maria to her feet. “Can we do something for you, Mrs Tockton?”

“Mrs Tockton, widow,” said the old lady, with gentle emphasis. “Yes. I believe you may. You see, I have lost something.”

“Nothing valuable, I hope,” Maria ventured.

“No, my dear girl. I have lost myself.”

Tina smiled, but something in Mrs Tockton’s eye made her think better of progressing into a grin. The eye in question was pale blue and surprisingly large, so that when it fixed upon Miss Ellis she felt she was being intimately inspected through a lens.

“Would you like to sit down?” invited Tina.

Mrs Tockton considered the rough planks laid across some rocks that currently passed for a garden bench. “No, thank you. If I sit, I may not rise again, and I am not yet done with standing. I like to know that my legs are there, and standing is the best way to know it. Do you mind if I come in?”

“Not in the least,” said Maria, stepping aside to hold the gate.

Mrs Tockton passed through with a slight inclination of the head, as though she were entering a drawing-room. She looked about her with interest. The garden was not large, but it had promise, and the young women had clearly been working hard upon it.

“You see,” Mrs Tockton said, “it used to be that one could tell where one was by what one wore. When I was young, my mother would not have permitted me to leave the house without a hat. Now I see young ladies bareheaded and unashamed. The world has mislaid its landmarks, and so have I.”

Maria wiped her hands on her skirt. “We are very new to Fillingley, and know nobody. Are you our neighbour, Mrs Tockton?”

“No—I reside at Oldpast Cottage,” said Mrs Tockton. “It is just beyond the churchyard, the one with the leaning yew. It has been my home since—” she paused, frowning faintly “—since I married Mr Barnswick Tockton. Or perhaps since just after. I find that I am always slightly out of time.”

“I really think you should sit down, Mrs Tockton,” said Tina, “—or come inside for tea.”

“No, I should enter no door but my own,” said Mrs Tockton, with great firmness. “My place is at Oldpast Cottage. Now, about myself: I was born Clementine Rigours, when Queen Victoria was still alive and the world was certain of itself. I was married off by my father, on account, he said, of my being born old-fashioned, and useful only to be stood in various parts of a room as a sort of decoration. I married Mr Yarnold Hamswith de Newgate, of the noted local family. Taking the advice of my dear Pa, he hung me about various parts of Newgate Hall, displayed me on walls, and placed me in empty corners. Mr Yarnold Hamswith de Newgate also spent a great deal of time in London, when he ought really have been off fighting the Kaiser and his villainies.”

Mrs Tockton hemmed, and made a refined little cough.

“Mr Yarnold Hamswith de Newgate did not lead a respectable or a faithful life, and the fruits of that life were visited upon me. I pressed for divorce, of course, but all my respectability was gone in the scandal. Mr Yarnold Hamswith de Newgate died, most horribly, soon after. I found succour only in the arms of Mr Barnswick Tockton, who was a man of great horticultural accomplishment, though considered by many to be but a simple rude gardener. He died off very quickly, in a most horrible manner, leaving me with a small income, a garden full of cabbages, and a large amount of silence. And now—now these fifty years past I have been Mrs Tockton, widow, and find that I have never fitted.”

“Fitted into what?” Maria asked.

“Into the world,” Mrs Tockton replied. She held out her arms. They were thin and white, and it was indeed true that the left appendage was a little longer than the right. “Look at me. I was made for parlours and pianofortes, for afternoon calls and careful tea. I was made to smile and simper, and always say the right and most meaningless thing. But these fifty years that have passed since the expiring of Mr Barnswick Tockton, have passed in silence. Children shy from me, and grown men cross the road. Even the vicar would rather I did not sit in his church.”

“But you’re still you,” said Tina.

Mrs Tockton smiled. “Ah, my dear. There is a question.”

“What do you mean?” asked Tina.

Mrs Tockton hesitated. “I mean that sometimes, when I walk, the ground is a little less solid than it ought to be. That sometimes people look through me, as though I were a pane of glass that wanted for cleaning. I feel in some way faded, like a mist getting burned away by the sun. I mean that Oldpast Cottage has begun to forget me.”

“I’m sure that’s not possible, Mrs Tockton,” said Maria.

“Everything forgets,” Mrs Tockton replied gently. “Houses are very good at it. They keep only what they need.” She sighed. “Once, I was necessary, in a very unnecessary way. Now I am only an old woman with too many memories, and memories are very heavy.”

The light, barely noticed, began to change, the evening tilting toward night.

“You said you had lost yourself,” Maria said slowly. “Perhaps you need to tell someone who you are. All of it. So it doesn’t get mislaid.”

Mrs Tockton’s eye brightened. “Do you think so?”

“Why, yes,” said Maria. “My friend and I shall be delighted to listen.”

Mrs Tockton straightened, as though she had been waiting for exactly that permission, but passed Maria a look that she wasn’t entirely convinced by My friend.

“Very well,” she said. “But it will take some time.”

And so she spoke.

She meandered through her childhood, in a house that smelt of lavender and polish, and was thick with servants, of a Pa who always seemed to be negotiating away one of his eight daughters, of a Ma who had taught her to embroider her name in careful, looping letters. She told them of Mr Barnswick Tockton, who had loved cabbages more than people but had loved her enough, and of the sudden shrinking of her world upon his passing.

She told them of the war, of blacked-out windows and rationed sugar, of the clear moonlight night she had stood in St Wilfred’s churchyard and watched the sky above the city burn.

“And now,” Mrs Tockton said at last, “I am here.”

“Yes,” Tina said softly. “You are here.”

Mrs Tockton looked down at her hands. They were trembling. “But I am fading. I can feel it. I do not wish to be forgotten like an old coat, pushed to the back of a dark cupboard.”

Maria reached out impulsively and took one of her hands. It was cool, but it was solid.

“You won’t be, I am sure,” she said.

Mrs Tockton smiled, but it was a fragile thing. “You are kind. You are the kindest young ladies I have met in fifty years. But kindness is not memory.” The old woman straightened herself again. “That will do,” she said. “I feel heavier.”

“Is that good?” Maria asked.

“In this case, yes.”

The sun had set. The garden was growing dark.

Mrs Tockton looked at them both with her large eye, the other seeming to travel elsewhere. “Thank you, young ladies. You have done me a great service. Oldpast Cottage will remember me now. It will have no excuse. I fancy, sometimes, to see shades of Mr Barnswick Tockton sitting in his old corner, where he would muse for hours on the merits of runner beans and sweet potatoes. He was more than twice my years when I married him, you know, and now I am twice his when he took his leave.”

She turned toward the gate, and at the threshold she paused.

“One more thing,” she said. “You may one day find that the world does not seem to have been built for you. When that happens, do not shrink. Speak. Fight, as I never did. It is the only way.”

And then she was gone, her grey dress disappearing into the gathering dusk.

For some time Tina and Maria sat in silence on the rude plank bench.

Finally, Maria said, “Do you know, Tina, there were moments just now that Mrs Tockton seemed—”

“I know,” said Tina. “As if she was here—but wasn’t.”

And somewhere, a small cottage, the one with the leaning yew, remembered the sound of an old woman’s voice, and was glad.

On the following Monday, word came to Barton’s General Store that old Mrs Tockton had been found dead in her cottage. She had been discovered by the vicar's wife, who had noticed no lights shining from Oldpast Cottage over the weekend. It was supposed that she had died on Friday evening, about dusk. There was no indication of distress; she had simply taken up her chair and not risen again. The funeral was held that Thursday, attended by the vicar, his wife, and the Misses Auderway and Ellis, who, learning of it, went to stand at the back of St Wilfred’s to pay their respects, and regretted they had not known Mrs Tockton longer.