‘I thought, as you usually visit the cemetery in the mornings, the afternoon would be a good time to have a quick tidy-up of your mum’s plot.’
I did usually visit earlier in the day, and it worried me a little that he sounded so familiar with my movements. Was there an upper age limit to being a stalker? I dismissed the thought as ridiculous.
‘You came here just to tend to my mother’s plants?’
The waxy grey of his cheeks was replaced by a raspberry-coloured flush. Shame on you, my mother chided from somewhere very close by. Embarrassing a nice old man like that.
‘No, no,’ refuted Henry, looking flustered. ‘I was tidying up Bee’s plot today,’ he explained, nodding in the direction of the rows of graves on the other side of the path. ‘And once I was done with that, I thought I’d just have a quick tidy-up over here too.’ He inclined his head towards a collection of gardening paraphernalia that I now noticed was neatly lined up beside Mum’s headstone.
‘That’s really kind of you,’ I said, looking at the peonies, which seemed to have almost doubled in size since I planted them. They all looked remarkably healthy.
‘They’re looking good, aren’t they?’ Henry said, and there was something about the pride in his voice that told me that wasn’t just a happy accident.
‘You’ve been watering them?’
He seemed to have regained his composure now. ‘Now and then,’ he admitted. ‘And I’ve given them the odd drop of plant food too.’ He smiled, and for a fleeting moment I caught a glimpse of what a handsome man he must have been in his youth. Not quite as good-looking as Rhys, admittedly, but even so, I could imagine how easily his wife Bee’s head must have been turned when they met.
‘Well, it’s very nice of you to help keep the flowers I planted alive, but truly, you don’t have to split your time here doing garden maintenance on two plots.’
Henry gave a small shrug and began gathering up his tools and dropping them into a canvas bag. ‘It really is no trouble, Ellie. I like to keep busy, and if I’m being totally honest, I really miss the big garden I used to have at my bungalow.’
With the tools now packed away, Henry moved to the bench, and it felt totally natural to take a seat beside him.
‘Have you moved house recently?’
He gave a nod. ‘Yes. After my wife passed away, I didn’t need such a big place anymore. So, I’ve moved into one of those retirement village places.’ He gave a small regretful expression, his nose wrinkling.
‘You don’t like it?’
His eyes twinkled and I sensed that buried somewhere beneath the passage of the years was a wicked sense of humour.
‘It’s full of old people.’
I’m not sure if it’s considered bad manners to laugh quite so heartily in a graveyard, but I couldn’t help it.
‘I think that’s the general idea, isn’t it?’
He gave a sad smile. ‘Also, there are more elderly couples there than I’d been expecting.’ He gave an old man’s sigh. ‘Perhaps I’d have liked it a whole lot more if my Bee could have been there with me.’
My heart ached a little for him, despite knowing next to nothing about him and his late wife.
‘And I miss gardening,’ he added, taking us back in a circuit to where our conversation had begun. ‘Which is why I like to tidy up the odd weed or two that I might spot on other people’s plots.’ He gave a little chuckle. ‘It’s the first time I’ve been caught red-handed, though.’
I’m not usually a very touchy-feely kind of person, so I totally surprised myself by leaning across the bench and gently patting his age-spotted hand. ‘Well, you can tidy up my mother’s plot anytime you feel like it. I don’t mind at all.’
He smiled as though I’d bestowed a gift on him, and I felt a sudden pang for his loneliness.
‘You’re a very kind young lady, Ellie. Very thoughtful.’
It was my turn to smile, but mine had a wry twist to it. ‘You only say that because you don’t know me very well.’ I looked across at the black granite headstone. ‘I don’t think I was terribly good at being a daughter.’
That seemed to really trouble him for some reason.
‘Did you and your wife have any children?’ I asked.
I was going to have to stop asking him questions, because the ones I was posing seemed to put too much regret on his face.
‘Sadly, we weren’t able to have any,’ he said. The pain of that fact must have been thirty or forty years old, and yet it still looked fresh in his eyes. ‘There wasn’t so much help available for couples like us who were struggling back in those days.’ A sudden image ofMel flashed into my thoughts, with her injections, hospital visits, and constant aching grief for something she’d never had and might never get to experience. It made me wonder why those same yearnings didn’t run through my own veins and I couldn’t help looking towards the plot beside us.