FOR REMEMBRANCE

Written by Peter Bayliss
December 1986

       ne of the paving slabs had been removed from the middle of the patio. In its place was a small bush with narrow, deep-green leaves.
      "Rosemary for remembrance," said Lysette as she pinched the leaves and smelt the tips of her fingers. It looked strange. In the middle of the patio, though not the dead symmetrical middle. Growing from the bare earth, as if the builders had run short of paving at the last minute and the house-owners had never noticed. The plant looked as if it might have accidentally grown there like a weed. I said something jokingly to the old man about the convenience of having an herb growing so near to the kitchen.
      "It's not that," he replied. "In fact, there's rather a curious story behind it, you know. It's one that you might not believe. But if you come into the house, I'll tell you about it." So we followed him indoors.

      Lysette and I had been looking at houses for the past six months. Nothing we had seen suited us until now. But everything here, from the situation to the size of the garden and the number of rooms, was perfect. And, most important, the price was within our agreed range. The owner was a retired insurance salesman called Tom Buchanan. His wife had died two years ago, he told us, and he was going to move south to share a house with his widowed sister.
      "We only had the one child, a daughter called Clara," said Buchanan. We were sitting in the lounge, sipping tea from delicate willow-patterned teacups. "She died when she was ten, of scarlet fever." He shook his head sadly. "Of course, people think nothing about children having scarlet fever these days, what with all these modern drugs and antibiotics and things."  
      He told us this had happened forty years ago, but that his wife, Sally, had never really accepted it. "My God," he said, "those were difficult times." There was a pause, and he took a pipe and tobacco pouch from his pocket. "I hope you don't mind if I smoke," he said. "The pipe is a great comfort to me, especially when I think about my wife and little Clara."
      The old man filled his briar and lit it, puffing out billows of pearly-grey smoke. "It was just before Christmas, twelve months after our daughter had died," he continued, "Sally was sitting in this room here and I was upstairs. I heard her calling out, 'Tom, Tom, there's Clara in the garden! I tell you, it's Clara!' Well, I rushed downstairs and tried to calm her. I told her she'd been dreaming and calling out in her sleep. But she was convinced she'd seen our little girl standing outside - on that bit they nowadays call the 'patio'."        

He told us this had happened two or three times. "It was always the same. Sally would call me and swear that she'd seen our daughter. 'Clara's alive and well,' she'd say.       Of course, there was nothing there. And I was beginning to worry, you know, about her health. 'We'll fix up an appointment to see Dr. Franklyn,' I told her. "That was all very well, but then one day when Sally said she could see Clara, I... I saw her too."
	Buchanan paused and puffed on his pipe. There was a faraway look in his eyes. "There she was." He pointed unsteadily at the window. "She was standing there, just outside that window. And she was sort of beckoning to us very slowly. Yes, beckoning. It was like a dream... That it was Clara, our Clara; there was no doubt in my mind. No doubt at all. It was the same little face, the same long fair hair, and the same sad grey eyes. It was our darling daughter, come back to us.
Only her clothes looked strange and out of place. She wore one of those old-fashioned frocks, like the children that you see in Victorian picture books. And there was something else. Yes, something else. She looked sort of pale and... and, well, almost transparent. You felt you could almost put your hand through her. But I didn't think all these things at the time. It was only afterwards, thinking back."

           Buchanan finished his cup of tea, then sat back in his armchair. After he'd pulled deeply on his pipe, he resumed the story. "For a long time I just stood and stared, hardly daring to believe my eyes. Then she beckoned again, more urgently this time. Of course, it was all quite impossible. But all I could think was that our little girl had come back to us and she needed our help. So, without thinking, I turned and rushed outside."
     He shook his head again. "Anyway, she had disappeared when I got there. But when I looked around, I saw her climbing over the fence at the bottom of the garden. Well, I followed as fast as I could. It seemed to be what she wanted."
       "Well, I followed her across the hard frosty field at the back (it's all been built on now, of course). And when she got almost to St. Andrews church, she turned round and beckoned again. Then she went through the old lych-gate. Well, I wasn't so very far behind her, and I could see her walking to the corner of the churchyard. Then she just sort of vanished. "
      "I followed to see if I could find where she had gone. But there was no trace of her. And it was then, you see, I gave more thought to her strange appearance. I'd never seen a ghost, and I'd never believed in them. Even then I had my doubts, but there was something... something so horribly uncanny about it all. And when I looked in that corner where she'd disappeared, I saw an unmarked grave. Yes, an unmarked grave. It was only small, like that of a child. "
        "Well, I hurried back home, a vague idea stirring in the back of my mind. Could Sally help me to identify exactly where the child had first appeared? You see, although it looked just like Clara, I began to doubt that it was she. The old-fashioned clothes were the first clue. Perhaps, I thought, the ghost of this little girl had appeared to us because of her likeness to our daughter. We were sort of emotionally attuned to picking up Clara's image. "
      "Well, anyway, we worked out more or less where she had stood when we first saw her. Then we lifted up the paving slabs. And underneath one we found an inscription. Yes, it was the gravestone of a little girl. It said 'born 4th August 1837, died 23rd December 1847' - exactly the same dates as our Clara, only in the last century. And according to the parish records, she had died of scarlet fever, just like our daughter, and been buried in the corner of the churchyard."         "And was her name Clara as well?" asked Lysette.
      "No, not Clara. Sally planted the herb which bore her name in the place where the headstone had lain undiscovered for all those years."

      We eventually bought the house from Tom Buchanan, who went to live with his sister in Devon. When our eldest daughter was born, we called her Clara. Tom was invited to the christening, and you never saw a prouder godparent. We always remember Tom's story. And we have never covered up that square on the patio where the rosemary grows.