Dust to Dust

Beth pulls up the handbrake and turns off the engine. Sighing, she reaches over to turn on the radio, letting the voices of the station hosts wash over her as she watches the stationery traffic in front, willing it to finally move. She glances over to the passenger seat at the limp cardboard box overflowing with the few remaining things she had cleared out of her Mam’s cottage that day. The final few trinkets marking a life completed. Not much to show for it, Beth thought. Reaching over, she rummages in the box until her hand closes around the old familiar shape. Well this had been a surprise. Whilst emptying the boxes under her Mam’s stairs, some unopened since the move twelve years ago, she’d found a box with her name scrawled hastily on the side in a childish pink marker pen. Beth eagerly opened her old box, remembering the day when they had packed up the big house and she insisted to her mother that she wanted to write her own name on her own box. She had thought herself fully grown aged nine, she was big enough to do things herself. 

Beth turned the stuffed monkey around in her fingers until two wonky eyes met hers. She had loved this little guy so much growing up, when she thought he had been left behind in the move she had cried for days. Beth had always wanted to go and knock on the door of the old house and ask the new owners if she could go up to her old bedroom and look for him, but Mam would never let her. And here he was all along, Beth thought, slipping Monkey into her jacket pocket.

She didn’t blame Mam for not searching hard enough; that year had been awful and the move was a disaster without Dad. Dad had always been the organiser in the family, he would never have let a box be misplaced and forgotten, especially not one of hers. Beth remembers Mam putting on a brave face and trying to make moving day into a fun game, but remembers seeing tears on her Mam’s cheeks as she locked the front door and posted the keys through the letterbox. 

Beth undid the two tiny brass buttons and opened the monkey’s red waistcoat, revealing the fur still soft and plump underneath. The rest of the monkey’s fur was worn and grey with age and with love. She poked a finger into the hole in the back seam, remembering the time when the dog had gotten hold of Monkey and pulled half of his stuffing out. Monkey never squeaked again after that, they never did find his squeaker. Dad had fixed him as best he could and Beth remembers he replaced the squeaker with her second favourite thing that year - her prized conker. This was the biggest, shiniest, most indestructible conker Beth and her Dad had ever seen, and when it started to dry out and crack after months of being battered Dad had found it a new home inside Monkey’s tummy. Beth could still feel the smooth skin through the hole in the back, and smiled.

Beth remembers the huge conker tree at the end of their long garden, with the low brick wall stamping a line between their garden and the wilderness of nettles and brambles beyond. She remembers mucking about under that huge tree with Dad for hours, looking for conkers and playing on the wonky swing Dad had made with some rope and an old piece of wood. She used to go rummaging endlessly in the huge piles of leaves, discarding inferior conkers over that low wall and saving the best ones to show Dad. Mam was always annoyed with her for wrecking her clothes and getting spiders in her hair, but she was furious the day Beth lost the silver and opal ring. It had been Beth’s grandmother’s. Beth wasn’t supposed to take it out of Mam’s jewellery box, but she’d worn it on so many days and put it back without Mam knowing and she’d gotten into the habit of wearing it more and more. It fit perfectly on her middle finger and Beth had loved to gaze into its pearlescent shifting depths in the dappled light of the conker tree. Mam spent hours looking for it under the tree, but never did find it.

The traffic began to move slowly and Beth restarted the ignition and crawled forward. Spotting the dirt track up ahead on the left and the sign for Dalkeith Farm, she suddenly remembered coming this way many years before. The track led to the back of the old Ferguson farmhouse. Beth used to go over for playdates with the youngest Ferguson lass when she was a girl. Beth turned sharp left and took the bumpy dirt track up towards the house, kicking up the dust in her wake as she approached the farm. Beth didn’t recognise the old man who glared angrily at her as she drove across the paved yard, chickens skittering out of the way as she bumped up onto the road the other side of the house and sped off towards the village. Her old village. Beth hadn’t been this way for years, not since Mam moved them away to the cottage after Dad went into the hospice. Was it a year or was it two before she went off to boarding school? Beth couldn’t remember. Since moving away for university Beth felt like a stranger to that town that she had never really called home. Approaching the old village, hedges and trees gave way to a smattering of houses and Beth on auto-pilot turned right at the green into the cul-de-sac and stopped in front of the last house, breathing heavily. 

The house was gone. A pile of charred wood, rubble and signs saying “DO NOT ENTER” lurked in its place. The beige pebble-dashed bungalows on either side stood just as they always had, taunting Beth with their sameness. The old wrought iron front gate stood stoically closed, as if it pretended not to notice the wreckage that now lay sprawled behind it. Beth turned off the car’s engine and the sound of the birds leapt to life, joining the bungalows and the gate in their obstinate normalcy. Stepping out of the car Beth expected to be hit by the smell of burnt ash and feel the heat of the embers, but there was nothing, just the scent of an ordinary autumn breeze. 

Beth gradually became conscious that she was being watched, and turned to meet the gaze behind her. “Mrs Douglas!” she smiled, stepping towards the old lady’s front garden where she stood leaning on the wall, watching her. 

“No good just standing there lassie, you may as well make yerself useful,” the old woman called over her shoulder as she walked back into the house, leaving the door ajar.

Beth stepped across the threshold closing the door behind her and made her way into the kitchen.

“I didn’t realise you’d still be…,” Beth trailed off.

“Alive and kicking? Well, I’ve not run any marathons lately but I will do if it gets our Sarah to stop talking aboot that ruddy old granny’s home,” the old woman huffed as she lowered herself into a chair, waving with one hand towards the kettle.

Beth laughed as she picked up the kettle and filled it from the tap.

“Now where have you been hiding yerself all these years our Beth? I told your old Mam not to be a stranger now, and did I hear a peep out of you girls? Not even a Christmas card!”

Beth smiled patiently while Mrs Douglas coughed into a hankie, then lit another cigarette.

“Aye, Mam moved us down to Peebles,” Beth explained while making the tea. “We didnae come back again after Dad… you know”.

“Aye pet, I know. Well ye’re here now! To what do I owe the pleasure? I may be older than Jesus, but I know ye’ve not come here just to make me a brew!”

“We lost Mam this summer, I was clearing some things out of the cottage as the sale’s going through in a few weeks,” Beth said, placing a cup of tea by the old woman’s elbow.

“Ach i’m sorry pet,” Mrs Douglas placed her hand on top of Beth’s. “Yer Mam was precious.”

“Thanks,” Beth mumbled into her tea, not meeting the old woman’s eye. “Do you know what happened to our house? How long has it been like that?”

“Ach that house is cursed I swear to it,” she said, crossing herself. “Two years since I've had to look at that sorry pile, and the bleeding council won’t lift a finger to come and put it right.”

“But how did it happen?”

“Something to do with the electrics they said, but I don’t think they know what set it off, they spent so long poking and prodding aboot in there. First off they said it might’a been done deliberate like, gave the poor Matlocks the right run around on the insurance!”

“The Matlocks - are they the ones who moved in after us?”

“Aye pet, them and their two wee boys. One was about your age and always getting into mischief just like yerself, always running aboot in them woods behind your old place, just like you used to.”

“Ah I loved playing back there. Is that old conker tree still there?”

“Do I look like i’ve the time to go hop skipping down there in that jungle? I’m a busy woman, got to keep our Sarah on her toes!”

“Tell me more about the Matlocks. D’ye know if they liked the house? They didnae change it much did they?”

“They wernae the friendliest bunch, not like your old Mam who I couldnae get outta that chair once the fancy took her. I remember the bairns mostly, ‘specially that youngest one. Always reminded me of you,” she said dreamily.

“Where did they move on to?”

“Och, just some fancy pancy new estate up near Portobello, those ones that all look the same. Now do us a favour and hop up tae that top cupboard will yeh? I’ve had some tins of cat food rolling around up there for christ knows how long and these cats willny let alone, it’s driving me potty!”

Beth did as instructed, and finding the cat food along with the remains of a dead mouse, she brought both down from the cupboard. “I think mebbie this is what the cats were…” she smiled as she turned back and saw that the old woman had nodded off in her chair. Beth moved the half-finished cup of tea back onto the table and placed the tins of cat food beside her. Throwing the mouse in the bin Beth spotted a notepad and pen on the fridge. Writing Mrs Douglas a note with her address and phone number in Halifax, she let herself back out into the cul-de-sac.

Beth was about to climb into her car and head home when she thought again about the old conker tree, wondering if it was still there. Beth walked briskly across the road and down the side of the old house. The fencing was mostly still standing and covered in more “DO NOT ENTER” signs, but the panels near the end hadn’t fared too well and Beth squeezed through easily. The long garden was vastly overgrown but she could just about find the path that ran down the middle. Picking her way through the long grass and rounding the bend at the end Beth spotted the old tree. There it is, she said to herself, ducking under an old broken gate she came to a standstill under the familiar boughs. It had hardly changed at all. Bigger, perhaps, but otherwise just the same. The ground was strewn with dozens of spiky green husks turning to mulch, and scattered far and wide were the dark brown ping pong balls she used to treasure. Oh they would be spoiled now, left to rot, they should have been collected weeks ago, Beth thought. She reached down to pick one up, squeezing it and feeling it flex under her fingers she dropped the conker into her jacket pocket. 

As she turned to go Beth noticed something that had changed since the days when she claimed this tree as her own. Where the trunk of the tree kissed up against the brick wall there was a gap that hadn’t been there before. Someone or something had carved that cleft in the bark, peeling it back, revealing a lighter layer of wood underneath that caught her eye and created a sort of nook. Beth crouched down to get a better look, and reaching into the opening her fingers closed around something cold and metallic. Pulling out the object Beth saw that it was an old tin, the kind that you would get given at Christmas filled with boiled sweets. The tin was rusted shut and it took her a few minutes to work off the lid which finally gave way with a pffft. Inside the tin lay a boy’s treasure trove, forgotten all this time under the tree. Beth took out the items one by one and lined them up on the wall: a swiss army knife, a swimming badge, a tamagotchi that had long since given up the will to live, and a silver opal ring, tarnished, scratched and slightly misshapen. Beth held the ring up to the light, watching the dappled autumn sun dancing over the surface of the opal. She returned the rest of the contents to the tin and was about to replace the lid when she hesitated, reached into her pocket and nestled Monkey inside the tin. She closed the lid and pushed the tin back into its hiding place. Sliding the ring onto her middle finger Beth took one long last look up at the tree, then turned and walked back up the garden.