It was two bus rides from home to the impressive stone frontage, like the approach to a castle, with its lofty gatehouse, and crenelated parapets. Go through the vaulted, arched entrance, then up the broad flight of steps, maybe two or three dozen, to the level turning space, outside the crematorium, on the right. We look left, instead, to admire, yet again the 6 or 8ft square, marble slab, on which reclines the effigy of a young girl, in her last sleep, allegedly the likeness of the departed. Then walk on, over the brow of the hill, and a little way down the slope beyond.
There would be tears, on arrival, then down to business. First, out came the improvised kneelers- folded towels in plastic bags, to enable them to get to grips with clearing out the old flowers, wilted heads and slimy stalks, festering in the last of the water. All the rubbish was wrapped in paper, and given to me to consign to the rubbish basket, 100yds away. In my other hand I carried the empty hot water bottle, to draw water from the stand pipe, by the waste bin. In very cold weather, the hottie would have carried hot water from home, and it would still have been warm enough to melt the ice in the vases.
Like all the newly bereaved, they had first bought the green-painted metal vases, with the 6” nail incorporated into the bottom, to skewer it down, and keep it in position. Then, like all those before and after them, they turned up one winter’s day to find the bottoms rusted out, and incapable of holding water, any more. So the next step, which only comes with tearful experience, was heavy, glass vases, of an inverted bell-shape, so that as the water froze and expanded, it would creep up the outward sloping walls of the vase, rather than just blow the sides out.
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| Weeding and Weeping |
So I would come back with the water, to find them both on their knees, one using the garden shears to clip the grass on the sides of the raised mound, while the other weeded the bare earth on the level top, the pair of them silently weeping, all the while.
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| At the Standpipe |
I still can’t bear the sight or smell of Chrysanthemums, and won’t have them in the house. The flowers were usually bought from Mr. Jimmy Langton, of Booth & Langton. Between the Norfolk Market Hall, a huge, cavernous, glass roofed , Victorian edifice, and the open Shambles, or flea market, Jimmy was to be found in a covered, walk through market hall, probably a huge stable, originally, with double doors at each end, and maybe eight or nine stalls down each side- what were called ‘quiet standers’ in market parlance. Unlike, say, the Pottery King, in the Shambles, who could ‘bark’ his wares- ‘Look at this 72pc dinner and tea service, Missis. Am I asking a tenner? I am not. Am I asking £7 10s? No! Genuine Coalport wossname, this is, Missis’- and so on, while the quiet standers were required to behave like shopkeepers- that is, wait for an enquiry, deal with it, then quietly stand and wait for the next.
I remember one Christmas, the game dealer, at the door opposite the Norfolk Market Hall, had a huge stag laid out. Its body and hind quarters were drawn back up the door, while its magnificent crown of antlers was pulled forward, along a trestle table, and in its mouth, a big red rosy apple- what else?
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| Stag |
I didn’t see whether the stag was cut into or not, but I bet it sold a hell of a lot of rabbits, with or without heads. At that time, you wanted a rabbit with its head on, so you knew it wasn’t a cat.
Years later, wearing my shop-fitting designer’s hat, I met Jimmy Langton again, when we were engaged to fit out a new unit for him, in the proposed new market. I had to go down to the market for the start of his working day- 6am, to find out his requirements. Over starter pints of tea laced with Scotch (too late, I discovered Jimmy’s love of the ‘Cratur’) he reminisced about his old days, while setting out his stall. He told me of a woman who had a standing order for a dozen red roses, every Christmas Eve, and one year he forgot them. When the customer arrived and found he had nothing for her, she was distraught.
“What am I going to do? What can I take to the cemetery, tomorrow?”
“What?” Jimmy cried. “You’ve been taking them to the cemetery, all these years? These are my babies! They won’t last a night at this time of year! I’m sorry Missis, but I don’t want your custom. You’ll have to go somewhere else”. He told me he was really upset- close to tears, to think that he had been unwittingly sending his lovely roses to be killed. He told the woman he was very sorry, but he couldn’t let her take his lovely roses to the cemetery, to murder them, and this was for all the world and his wife to hear. So it’s not surprising that he finished his story with-
“Mind you, I didn’t half do some trade, in the next half hour!” I didn’t tell him what Jane and Betty had been doing with his Chrysanths. All the while he talked, he kept topping up our pint pots with whisky. Eventually, he had to send his lad to fetch another bottle from the ‘Vaults’, a pub of sorts, established in the old stabling, under the Market Hall. Like the steelworks, the market trade was ‘accommodated’ by the licensing laws. The Vaults was an experience, to say the least.
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| The Vaults |
The straw on the floor wasn’t there for effect, neither were the old horse stalls, nor the mangers, and the toothless old crones, and the gaitered and cokered gents, all sitting on crates, around barrels for tables, were all pure Hogarth. I left the market sometime, mid-morning. I clawed my way to the office, climbed up onto my stool, and spent the rest of the day preserving the illusion that I was really, really concentrating on Jimmy Langton’s brief.
*
Leslie’s grave was originally intended to take Jane and Charlie as well, which is why Leslie went a full six or eight feet deep. The family grave was purchased in perpetuity, and I still have the receipt for £5 10s. but in the event, Charlie and Jane were cremated ,as previously related, so Leslie is alone. Over the brow of the hill, down abreast of the Garden of Remembrance, and maybe 20 or 30 yds to the left of it. There is a small, upright, stone grave marker (too small to satisfy cemetery regulations, so Jack Connah smuggled it in, in a hold-all) and it just bears his initials- L.E. incised and painted black
I last visited the grave when I went to Grace’s funeral, in 1997, and the black paint of the letters was still intact. It’s unlikely anyone will visit it again, but in the last few lines, the door has been left open, as it were.