Free Grave Concerns by Rebecca Tope

even try to explain that he would never dare embark on marriage again. It had been too traumatic the first time for that to be within his power. He knew he could never stand there a second time mouthing those promises. He could never find words to reveal just how gruelling his marriage to Sarah had actually been. Nobody would believe him, anyway. They’d think he was mad.
    And maybe I am mad , he thought to himself. Mad with the frustration of never being able to tell anybody how it really was. Mad with the blurring of the facts as time goes by. Who can say, now, what was real?
    Yet suddenly, now, on this special anniversary, when he was permitted to indulge himself all day with self-tormenting memories, he remembered a man who just might understand how he felt. A man who was in a marriage thatseemed, from what Simon had glimpsed of it, to be not unlike his own. He rummaged through an old address book and located the number. Perhaps the man would be at home. If not, then so be it. He felt he was rolling a dice, letting fate take control.
    The phone was answered on the third ring. ‘Willard Slater here,’ said a familiar voice.
    ‘Simon Gliddon.’
    ‘Hello!’ Willard sounded unusually jovial. ‘I was just thinking about you. Seems you’ve got your revenge on the old bat, then?’
    ‘What?’ Simon’s mind went blank. ‘Say that again.’
    ‘The lady we all love to hate, as they used to say in the films. Come on, man, you know what I’m saying.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Simon spluttered, ‘but I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’
    ‘I understand,’ Willard soothed. ‘Just my little joke. So to what do I owe the pleasure?’
    ‘It’s the anniversary today. I wanted to talk to you.’
    It was Willard’s turn to splutter. ‘Me? Funny sort of choice,’ he said in loud self-denigration.
    ‘We used to talk,’ Simon reminded him. ‘You were always a good listener.’
    ‘That was different. I was your tutor. And it was a long time ago. And we talked more abouteconomics than affairs of the heart, if I remember rightly.’
    ‘Perhaps we did,’ said Simon, putting the phone down, limp with disappointment.
       
    Jeffrey hadn’t been very enthused by the prospect of adding a pets’ cemetery to the Peaceful Repose Burial Ground. ‘Have to make a fence round it,’ he said gloomily. ‘And keeping track of what’s in there’ll be no fun. All shapes and sizes. Are you going to have horses? Hamsters? It’s a minefield, Mr Slocombe, I’m warning you.’
    ‘It’s too lucrative to refuse,’ Drew told him. ‘And it’s a good idea, really it is. Look, we’ll pace it out now and stick some pegs in, and you can make a start on the fence next week. Simple sort of post and rail arrangement would probably be best.’
    ‘Costs a fortune, that does,’ said Jeffrey.
    ‘Not if we do it ourselves. It’ll keep Maggs occupied, too, if she helps you. Meanwhile, we’ll put the labrador here, look.’ He pointed to a shallow hollow where the grass was tussocky and the sunlight was dappled by the flickering shadows of one of the beech trees. ‘It’s a lovely spot.’
    ‘Too good for a dog,’ grumbled Jeffrey, clearly determined not to look on the bright side.
    The interment next morning went well enough.Drew and Maggs lowered the plain rectangular box into the two-foot-deep grave, while Mr and Mrs Grainger sniffed wordlessly. Poignantly they threw a doglead and well-chewed toy on top of the coffin. ‘We’ll never have another dog now,’ Mildred said. ‘We’re getting too old to exercise it properly.’
    Drew smiled sympathetically, though Hubert looked as if he could handle a lively dog without too much difficulty. But a dog could last twelve or fifteen years, and by then the man would be over eighty, he supposed. Pity to have to plan so far ahead. It was only a split second between that idea and the returning awareness that he should be doing much the same thing himself. After all, he had a