Night of the Animals(53)

The sexton, a very thin man with white hair and thick white eyebrows, had showed them a jumble of misshapen stones mortared into an inside wall, stones, he said, from the “ode times church” the Normans had built St. Cuthbert’s above. An elaborate oak chancel screen, near the altar, was covered by the faces of men with foliage growing around their heads like halos. Oak and ivy leaves poured from their mouths. Some of the faces cried leaves.

Eventually, he took them into the crypt to examine a book of burial records. The “book,” as he called it, was kept in a modern steel strongbox in a desk that seemed unused and dusty. It took a long time to get the volume out and placed solidly upon the desk. There was a smell of frankincense.

“It’s Alfred Wistan Wenlock, you say?”

“Arr, died 1933,” answered his father.

The sexton began looking through the pages. “Handley . . . Handley . . . Handley,” he said. He settled on one page, and ran his thumb down a long column. He peered close, putting his face nearly against the paper. But he suddenly pulled away, almost jumping back. He scrutinized Cuthbert’s father. He seemed boldly nervous, shaking his head, frowning. He began flapping through the large, grid-covered pages again, but he hardly was looking—it was strictly for manners. Then he stopped.

“There’s a matter,” he said, and Cuthbert to this day remembered him repeating the exact phrase: “A matter.”

“Your relative’s plot cannot be located precisely,” he had said. “The ode lane, see?” He licked his lips and looked down. Cuthbert’s father was still smiling gently, and blinking. “The ode lane,” the sexton said, “the one that runs beside the churchyard—where there’s that stone wall, see? It was dangerous, it was so narrow, see?” The face of Cuthbert’s father was reddening and his smile had gone. “The council had to widen it and we sadly ’ad to move a few of the unmarked graves.”

“Cannot be located!” Cuthbert’s father bellowed. “What?”

The sexton took off his green plaid cap and kneaded it with his fingers. “Uh, we only moved them as we found them, but where we could find them, mind you. I’m afraid a few of the sites—quite a few—there was a mishap with the backhoe and the builders. They . . . they removed some soil they shouldn’t have, see? We just didn’t know where the plots were afterward, not anymore. It’s always the poor who suffers, isn’t it?”

Cuthbert’s mother had said, “We’re not poor.”

The sexton continued: “Of course not. But the graves that got moved, they was the ones under the statue of St. Cuthbert the Wonderworker—the graves of people who didn’t have much money, and abandoned people, and the paupers’ graves and such. Half of them . . . are still under the statue, we suspect, and half of them, see, are under the new road pavement, I’m sad to say. No one ever visited, see?”

The sexton turned his cap over and over in his hands. He set it down and sorrowfully set the book back into the strongbox, and clasped the lock. He looked aggrieved, but not ashamed. There was a flat look on Cuthbert’s father’s face; then he screwed up his eyes and started to weep.

“You bloody bet I’ll complain about this,” his father said, snorting, waving his arms around.

“Hank,” Cuthbert’s mother said.

“I’ll go see the focking Archbishop of Canterbury!” Henry continued. “I will.” The sexton nodded, as if he thought this was a plausible idea.

“And I don’t blame you, sir. I couldn’t,” said the sexton. “I just couldn’t.”

Eventually, without saying a word, the family had trudged outside to the churchyard, and walked over to have a look at the statue. The sexton trailed behind them, standing at a respectful distance. He stepped forward at one point and ushered the four of them toward a neat, plain, pretty corner section of the churchyard—the remainder of the paupers’ graveyard. White and pink campion flowered on the grassy mounds. On a thick pedestal, plated with bright green copper, stood the weathered figure of Cuthbert.

Over the years, acid rain from the Black Country had given the statue its green patina of copper sulfate. The saint was represented in flowing bishop’s vestments and a miter, bending over to lift a hank of marble cloth up from his leg to let a sea otter comfort him. Two short-haired otters (which looked oddly like fox terriers) stretched at Cuthbert’s feet. The otters were of a brown-painted bronze, the same color as the soil, and the same that he had seen near the Wyre Forest on the day Drystan went away. The forelegs of one of the otters were off the ground, clasped angelically, its paws holding a small cross. Cuthbert had nearly frozen himself to death while standing in the North Sea to pray, and God had sent the otters to warm and dry his legs.

Henry Handley gave the statue a tortured look.

At the time, it had seemed quite clear to Cuthbert that both otters and the saint had come straight from heaven. The animal, the human, and the divine were all part of the same. He recalled Granny saying that, long ago, her own father had trained an otter to fish for eels and roach on the Stour and Severn near Kidderminster, and it made many of the townspeople jealous. Cuthbert’s father and mother both claimed it was impossible, but to Cuthbert it did not seem impossible at all.

“Grandad’s watched by a Green Man,” Cuthbert had said. “Just like Drystan.”