Clover Moon Read online

  ‘You could buy a plain black bonnet, but it wouldn’t stretch to a coat, let alone a frock and new boots. Can’t you dye an outfit black, dear?’ Mr Dolly asked.

  ‘I haven’t really got an outfit, not one that’s suitable,’ I said, too embarrassed to explain that I simply had the ragged dress I stood up in. The only other garment I could call my own was my nightgown, and that had been confiscated by the disinfectors.

  ‘Well, we’ll have to put our thinking caps on,’ said Mr Dolly.

  He scratched his head as if he were wearing one already, not looking right or left so as not to catch anyone’s eye. His wore his white hair past his shoulders, and his faded scarlet velvet cloak seemed more suitable for opera-going, so folk might well have stared even if he hadn’t had his huge hump. He was a very small man to start with, and his crooked back made him hunch over and lean heavily on his carved cane.

  Uncouth little boys called after him, and adults muttered horrid words and imitated his jerky gait. Mr Dolly took no notice, walking as briskly as he could in his black patent boots. I hurried along beside him, hoping he hadn’t seen or heard them, though that seemed impossible. When we reached the marketplace some hateful urchin threw a rotten tomato at his back. Mr Dolly turned as best he could, shook the tomato disdainfully off his cloak and carried on walking.

  ‘It’s very fortunate that both the missile and the cloak are red,’ he murmured. ‘The stain shouldn’t be very noticeable.’

  I burned for him. I seized my own tomato from the gutter, turned towards the laughing boy and aimed. I caught him full in the face, which was very satisfying.

  Mr Dolly tutted at me, but he still smiled. ‘I think I should take you with me for protection every time I go for a stroll, Clover. I had no inkling you had such devastating aim!’ he said.

  ‘I thought you said we were going somewhere quiet.’

  ‘We are, my dear. Come with me.’ He led me down the lane from the marketplace and then up the steep slope towards the great grey church of St Anne’s, with its strange coloured windows and long thin spire.

  ‘I thought you weren’t a religious man, Mr Dolly,’ I said.

  ‘You’re right, Clover. I have no faith, but that doesn’t mean I don’t find solace in a churchyard.’ Mr Dolly was panting with the effort of climbing the hill. He leaned even more heavily on his stick.

  ‘Perhaps you might hold on to my shoulder while the road is so steep?’ I suggested. ‘Though I’m scared I might contaminate you.’

  ‘I told you, dear, I don’t mind the thought of dying,’ Mr Dolly wheezed, standing still to catch his breath. ‘It’s a shame I am not a churchgoer. It would be pleasant to believe in a carefree eternal life in Heaven.’

  ‘Do you find your own life so very hard?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m used to it now, but when I was your age I was very unhappy.’ Mr Dolly spoke calmly, though there were tears in his eyes. We went through the lych gate and walked between the great yew trees. He sat down gratefully on an old wooden bench and struggled to catch his breath.

  ‘My parents were ashamed of me and sent me away to school when I was very young,’ he said, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief.

  ‘Ashamed? Because – because of . . .?’

  ‘Because I was born a hunchback,’ said Mr Dolly matter-of-factly.

  ‘How cruel and stupid of them!’ I declared.

  ‘Perhaps. But I received a good education and a love of learning. It was a relatively humane establishment. It was the other boys who were the problem. If I’d had your fiery spirit I’d have fared much better. I was too meek and craven. I always longed to find a friend.’

  ‘I’m your friend, Mr Dolly,’ I told him. ‘You’re my best friend now that Megs isn’t here.’ I started crying too.

  ‘Oh dear, forgive me for being such a self-pitying old fool. I’m snivelling over times long gone while you’re going through fresh agonies,’ said Mr Dolly, passing me his handkerchief.

  It was a struggle to wipe my nose while wearing the yellow silk scarf.

  ‘Take it off now.’ Mr Dolly felt my forehead, looking carefully at my face. ‘You seem healthy enough to me, though that cut will be a while healing. If there really is an afterlife I can’t see that stepmother of yours growing wings. She’ll be writhing down below, with all the other wretched devils.’

  ‘If only my own mother hadn’t died,’ I said.

  ‘Can you remember her, Clover?’

  ‘Yes. She was good and kind and sweet and gentle. At least, I think she was. I seem to remember her holding me in her arms, singing to me. But perhaps that’s just fancy. I make up so many things and they seem so real that it’s hard remembering what’s true and what isn’t. Yet when something terribly true happens, like Megs dying, it doesn’t seem real at all. There’s a part of me that thinks she’ll be back at home, sucking her thumb on the doorstep, waiting for me.’

  Mr Dolly waited patiently beside me as I willed it to be true. I could see Megs stroking her nose as she sucked her thumb. I saw her short straggly hair sticking up at the back where she’d lain on it. I saw the patches in her pale print frock. I saw her skinny, mottled legs, scabs on the knees because she fell over so frequently. I saw her old brown boots, both soles flapping so they could no longer be padded with newspaper. But as soon as I thought of her boots I remembered that little grubby foot dangling.

  Mr Dolly waited until I had stopped sobbing.

  ‘I’ll miss her so,’ I said. ‘Did you have a special sister, Mr Dolly?’

  I wondered if he’d made dolls for her when they were children. Perhaps they played games together, and that was why he understood girls and their concerns so perfectly.

  ‘No, I had brothers,’ said Mr Dolly, in the tone he’d used for the boys at his school. ‘But when I was grown up I always longed for a little girl.’

  ‘Were you ever married?’

  ‘It’s hardly likely, is it, my dear,’ said Mr Dolly sadly.

  ‘If I were older I would want to marry you, Mr Dolly,’ I said. ‘You’re the loveliest man I’ve ever met.’

  ‘I shall treasure that remark until my dying day.’

  I looked about me at the old tombstones, so moss-covered you couldn’t read who lay underneath.

  ‘Will Megs be buried here?’ I whispered.

  ‘I think the new graves are behind the church.’

  ‘She won’t like it at all. She’ll be so lonely. I’ll have to come and visit her every day,’ I vowed.

  ‘Is your mother buried here?’

  ‘I don’t know. Pa’s never taken me to see her. He’ll rarely talk about her.’

  ‘Shall we take a little stroll and see? Then we can imagine her looking after your sister when she’s laid to rest here.’

  This was such a comforting idea that I ran up and down the rows of recent gravestones at the back of the churchyard reading every one. I hoped Mother would have a beautiful white marble angel spreading her wings above her grave, or even a small cherub. But when I eventually found her I saw that she didn’t even have a proper gravestone with an elaborately carved loving message. She had a small flat rectangular stone inscribed with her name, Margaret Moon, the date of her birth and the date of her death.

  ‘Oh!’ I said, thrilled to have found her but horrified to see such a paltry memorial stone. It was almost like a gravestone for one of Mr Dolly’s penny specials.

  I knelt down, trying to work out the shape of Mother’s coffin underneath.

  ‘Do you think there might be room to bury Megs here?’ I asked Mr Dolly.

  ‘I should think so.’

  ‘I need to be there for her funeral! Then I can ask the men who dig the grave. I must be there – but I can’t turn up in this ragged dress,’ I said, plucking at it in despair.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do, dear,’ said Mr Dolly. ‘When is the funeral?’

  ‘On Friday.’

  ‘Then come and visit me on Thursday. I’m not promising I can work a miracle, but I’