Red Roses
It was a sharp, bright day. The leaves were turning, splashes of gold and red in the trees, the ornamental flowerbeds painted with a sparkling rime of condensation. Not yet time for frosts, but almost. The black Mercedes slid up the drive and came to a rest behind a parked hearse. A service was going on in the little chapel. Mycroft could hear singing as he paused for a moment in the back seat, his hand on the door handle. They were singing 'Abide with me'. What twaddle, he thought.
'Do you want company, sir,' Anthea asked. Her thumbs were welded to her blackberry, but her eyes held a tender expression of concern. Mycroft offered a thankful smile but shook his head.
'Come back in an hour,' he told Clive, his driver, patting him on the shoulder as he made to get out. Clive had already pressed the release for the boot. Inside was a huge bouquet of red roses. Mycroft hefted them in the crook of his elbow and strode off across the neat green lawns, threading his way between the gravestones.
There are strict rules in British municipal cemeteries - what kinds of monuments you can put up and when - but there seemed to be an increasing trend for plastic windmills and wind chimes these days, Mycroft thought, as he stepped through the wet grass. More recent graves were adorned with mountains of flowers arranged in the shapes of letters: MUM or SHANE, for example. Mycroft could feel his mouth twisting as he passed. He knew it was snobbish of him. He shouldn't care what other people did to celebrate their loved ones, so long as it comforted them. But somehow, his fastidious nature was repelled by all this ostentatious mourning. It seemed to cheapen the whole thing to him. My God, one grave even had foil helium balloons floating over it, for heaven's sake!
She was under a tree, near the edge of the graveyard. He had paid for an expensive blue slate headstone, carved with elegant letters in the style of Eric Gill, nothing too fancy, just her name and dates and at the bottom, a single word, 'Beloved'. Sitting in the urn in front were the remains of the roses he had brought the previous week. He tidied them away, and carefully arranged the new ones, then went to find one of the watering cans the council so thoughtfully provided so that he could top up the water. Once that was done, he crouched down beside the grave and plucked out a few dandelions to neaten things up.
He had paid for a small stone bench to be set at the foot of the tree beside her, too. Normally the municipal authorities did not allow such things, but Mycroft was not above leaning on a few local officials to move things on a bit. It saved him having to sit in the wet grass, although he had to dust the seat off with his large linen handkerchief before he would risk his Saville Row posterior on it. Today, a few leaves had fallen, so he had to brush them off too.
The service had finished and the mourners were following the coffin out for the interment, in a grave on the far side of the cemetery. Mycroft watched them wandering in dark-hued bunches like confused crows, sniffing into fists of tissues. Then he turned back to the slate headstone, ran his hand lovingly over its smooth grey surface.
'I love you,' he whispered. 'I miss you. Every day, I miss you.'
He had told nobody. Why should he? He was by nature a man of secrets. They had even dragged a couple off the streets for witnesses at the wedding, rather than ask anyone they knew. He had kept her away from his family, especially from his luridly addicted brother. He never thought he would be grateful for Sherlock's lust for heroin until she died. It gave him a reason to keep going, gave him something else to focus on. Forcing Sherlock to get clean had mirrored his own fight to escape his addiction to her love.
'Do you remember, darling? The first time I saw you?'
The pain came, thick and fast, choking him when he thought of her, with the sun in her hair. She was so breath-takingly beautiful, slender and wistful, lazy like the summer afternoon she walked through, trailing her lace hem through Hyde Park. He had been sitting on a bench, but he stood up to meet her as she approached, even though they were strangers, stood up as if he had been waiting for her all his life.
'You thought I was a madman, didn't you? Perhaps you were right.'
There was always something ethereal about her, something impermanent. He had known he would never be able to keep her. She told him so from the start. Not much time, she said. We have to make the most of it while we can, Mycroft.
'Oh, darling, why couldn't you have waited just a little bit longer?'
The tears streamed down his cheeks, just as fresh and keen as the day they had brought her here and laid her in the cold, wet ground, in the middle of a hail storm. Mycroft had stood by the gaping grave, with the ice smarting on his skin, and longed to throw himself in with her, which he afterwards supposed every widowed man felt too. It seemed too cruel to leave her here to lie alone in the cold.
'One day, my sweet. One day I shall come and join you, and I'll warm you up, I promise.'