It was years since he’d been down here. He parked on a side road and walked up to the gates, feeling a lurch of anxiety: the place looked different and he couldn’t remember which way to go. After a while he got his bearings, walking through the huge, flamboyant graves with their biers and angels and elaborate carvings to the more modern sections behind.
He found the place. The lettering on the grey, mottled marble had originally been painted in gold. A lot of it had faded though the carved dedication still ran clear.
ANDREW COLIN BUTCHERS
1 MAY 1974 – 22 JUNE 1983
BELOVED SON AND BROTHER
REST IN PEACE
He gave a heavy sigh, felt the old sensation of grief lodge in his chest. Never done with it. He had been fifteen when Andy had gone, Andy just nine. He had been drenched in guilt and impotent rage. Why hadn’t he been kinder to his brother, why had it been him and not Ian? The last memory he had was lodged like a splinter in his heart; telling Andy not to touch his tapes again or he’d bloody batter him, the flash of resentment on the lad’s face. And Ian had driven himself half mad with blame. If he hadn’t yelled at Andy he might have gone out to play later. Five minutes – it would have saved him. Ian had worked away at the guilt, poking at the wound, helping it to fester and sting.
He had never said anything to his parents. Couldn’t. They had folded, collapsing in on themselves, behaving like zombies: blank, empty, hollowed out.
As that first Christmas had approached he’d found himself drowning. He barely slept, he stayed off school. He had stomach-ache and terrible migraines. There was no point to anything anymore.
One afternoon he bought a bottle of rum at the corner shop. He took it up into the little wood near the railway cutting. The trains went through every half hour. He drank the rum in big gulps, burning him as it went down.
It was cold and the light was fading as he finished the bottle. He checked his watch and scrambled clumsily down the bank. It was thick with brambles which cut painful gouges in his legs and his hands and arms.
He stood at the side of the tracks, feet unsteady on the large lumps of gravel. It was nearly dark and there was no lighting along this section of the track.
He strained to hear the train coming but the rails and the overhead wires were silent. He caught the sound of scrabbling from the bank opposite. Some creature moving about: cat or squirrel or hedgehog.
