The Unchaste

Faith

The thunderstorm last night had beleaguered the Ivybrough Kirkyard over the moors, besetting the eastern wall of the old cemetery with its shrill, insistent winds and that, now came the hearsay, had fallen off. The weathered boulders lay sprawled among the grasses this morning, having crumbled inward on the muddy sidewalk, invaded and overrun by stubborn chickweeds and crab-grasses. The ancient Hawthorne stood twisted along the smashed headstones, like windswept head of an inert maiden, gazing sadly down the lane.

Delilah carelessly tugged at Chester’s leash as the beast engaged itself into a recreation with the sloppy, little snails. The air was stale with rotten whiff of leaves and twigs and damp from remains of the recent rain. The graveyard was derelict and tranquil, as it should have been and only now and then_ lapwings squealed in a call for their mates. Ivybrough had been long outnumbered by the integers of graves. Only the old deads were buried over here. The newer ones had a brand new graveyard encumbered down the village.

The storm of the midnight had dented six graves, but only two suffered the serious wreck. Rest had either lost their headstones, or had only been stressed deeper down the earth by fallen boulders.

The grim church sentinel now stood on the ruined end of the yard, with a spade in his hand, examining the degree of damage suffered. He did not take long to decide whatever needed being settled on. Dead, it so seemed; did not have care much for Vanity.

A drift of haze later, the gravedigger stepped out of the churchyard and Delilah stepped into it.

The pathway had taken decay. The un-cobbled pavement had some serious cracks enthused along it and when Delilah stepped onto the green_ her shoes were filled with murky water and the hem of her skirt had been veiled in a severe sorrel of mud.

Eight years ago, Jake Sharpe had been buried in Ivybrough.

It was important for so many reasons that Jake had been remembered after all these years. While alive he didn’t alter much in the lives of the four hardy, insurmountable savages_ his death brought an end of childhood for Delilah, Andrew and Richard_ the fourth one being Jake himself. Like a thread broke, and re-knotted, it wasn’t one thread anymore. It was two.

Separate.

Tuberculosis took him away.

Two-ber-Q-Losses.

Delilah’s first heartbreak was the day Jake smiled the last smile in his sleep, one last heartbeat and then silence. A young heart grown old. Richard lost his best friend, and for he was a man-in-making, his agony was endured with silent, wet bunching of eyelashes, as Delilah recalled it. Andrew, being the oldest, had been the most conscientious one. Grief was in his eyes, on his lips_ a sad smile. Always. Assuring the younger ones that all will be well again.

But a river never flows reverse and theirs didn’t either.

Delilah’s and Andrew’s father’s demise in London was the next blow. The staggered steps never got chances to firm back onto the solid ground; Delilah was demanded back to London by her ‘uncle’, saying how her stepmother had no say on the girl’s upbringing anymore and then again_ Delilah needed to be a lady.

So she left all she had. Had known. And past, when she looked back at it, had been the only happy thing Delilah had carried with her to the London. Even back then, the northeastern blasts of chill and windswept moors were preferred over the luxury of London’s Barden Hall.

Parting with Andrew was an unutterable anguish and Jake was dead. Richard Winter, because he wasn’t ever an indulged boy for Delilah, faded away in the mist and haze of shuffling present and retreating past.

Today, at the Ivybrough Kirk, Delilah sat down on her knees beside the wet, Ivy lined tombstone of Jake’s half sunken grave and kissed the stone in salutation. First love, though elusive and provisional is may have been, it was precious. An inventory of Childhood for Delilah. And death of Jake had only made it more stoic, and way more lasting than it had ever been even when Jake Sharpe had a heart that thrummed.

She remembered how Jake used to say, that if he were to race the northern breeze down the moors, he would outrun it by at least two breathes. Delilah used to say ‘Bullshit! You would at least surpass it by five breathes.’

‘But would you outrun it now too, Jake?’ Delilah wanted to ask the silent catacomb. ‘If I dare you today. Can you race the wind today and triumph it over, now that you are the sky itself that I breathe in? The dust and the ashes, where are you? Do you still haunt the crag and linger in the back marsh of Windsor, hoping for a chase from young Bentley, the stableman who so hated you because your grin appalled him? Even he cried when you stopped waking up. Would you still slap the moss on Andrew’s back without his knowledge and act like nothing happened while I and others would laugh, befuddling him to all limits? Would you still make that friend of yours laugh because none other than you seemed to possess that art? Now that I am here, and Andrew and Richard is here too_ will you be back?’

A sudden draft hauled Delilah’s face from the north, announcing the imminent rain and_ Did Jake win or the wind?_ Delilah shuddered at the chilling hilarity of it.

She left Jake’s side and ambled back to the cracked, un-cobbled path, calling for Chester.

She, however, stopped when she reached the eastern wall of the cemetery, where the stones had fallen and damaged the grave.

One particular tomb, now irretrievably ruined, had wooden splinters poking out from the shattered crypts of the coffin. A little skull, that of a child’s_ long dead, was placed beside it_ probably by the guard. The vault of the skull was cracked. The sutures had probably defragmented, every bone now falling apart. Delilah touched the rotund globe and it crumbled beneath her finger; the slightest pressure had it turned into utter bone dust.

It was so tiny. It was so sad.

Delilah humbly pushed the skull back into the coffin before foxes and stray dogs could hunt it down. In doing that, she also did the mistake of looking up at the Tombstone and suffered a sudden, swift shock.

It read, the headstone, in placid carving of chisel cutting through rock_

Faith Winter.
1849-1857.
Taken from us so suddenly. Lent to us thus briefly.