Loving Memory Page #2

These same ones every year.

Mr Spate, the milkman,

always sends one.

Only the vicar comes now.

Funny, though.

I watched him through the curtain

in my bedroom last time.

He opened the door,

called out and walked around the house.

He's different now, not Mr McGill.

'He were only young.

'Came up the dale on his bike.

'I watch every day.

'Every day,

Mr Spate brings milk and groceries.

'I watch for him at nine.

'Sometimes he's a bit late.'

(Engine still running)

(Mr Spate drives off)

'It's a nice field

with woods up behind, you know.

'Used to be a cornfield.

'Eh, Mother really liked it that day,

sitting on the grass in the sun.

'It was a lovely day.

'Brought Mother down specially.

'She died not long after.

'James said

he could tell she was going.

Showed in Father, too.

He was like an old man.

After Mother died,

Father never came out of his room.

James would take food in to him,

but he'd never eat it.

One morning,

James couldn't wake him.

Said he'd passed away in his sleep.

One morning,

a letter came for James.

Told us he had to join the army.

There was a war with the Germans.

Before he left,

he sold all the sheep

and got Ambrose a job

in the lead mine with Eddy Clark.

The man's just over the hill

at Greenhaugh.

But Eddy didn't last very long after.

Heart attack.

He's looked after the mine

on his own since then, you know.

'One night,

just before James came home,

'there was this terrible noise, very low.

'Then there was this bang

and the whole house shook.

'Oh, the sky was all lit up over the hill.'

They took all the fire engines

and the army

up to the mine over Greenhaugh.

Ambrose was terribly worried.

Thought the mine had blown up.

'All these people went up and down

the dale for two days.

'Some of them knocked on the door,

'but Ambrose told me not to open

the door when he wasn't there.

'Lots of them were in army clothes.

'I kept looking for James,

'but he wouldn't have knocked.'

I stuck in all James' photos

very carefully.

Hot summer days then.

Always had a window open.

And curtains billowed over the bed.

Then Ambrose made this box for James.

'Same as the one he's making you.

'Wheeled him on his barrow up the hill.

'Buried him in the wood.

'I asked Ambrose not to take him.

'It would be all right.

'Look after him, I would.'

Never listens to me.

I often sit with James on the hill.

His favourite spot.

You can see right down dale

to Mr Tud's farm.

Ambrose is going to put you

next to James on Sunday.

Silly, though.

You could stay here.

It's nice you being here.

Silly you have to go Sunday.

# Some day when I'm awfully low

# When the world is cold

# I will feel a glow,

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