This is the shortest story in the collection and was inspired by a paragraph in The Valley, Elizabeth Clarke’s 1969 memoir of Welsh country life.
She describes the care with which the men of the village carry a coffin from a remote farmhouse to the chapel on the day of a funeral.
It’s poignant rather than horrifying but I read her book over a couple of bleak, misty days in an out-of-season coastal town where we’d gone to scatter some ashes.
On the train home, under heavy cloud, her brief account filtered through my subconscious and emerged as a first draft typed in some discomfort on a fold-down railway table.
As with other stories in this collection, its location shifted from the source to the West Country, and I had the landscape of the Mendip Hills in mind in particular.
The characters have names of people from school, from my estate, from war memorials, and from cemeteries.
I collect the names of the dead in a notebook for later use – a macabre habit in its own right. I also share them on BlueSky with the hashtag #CemeteryNames.
Like many of my nightmares (I’m a terrible one for nightmares) it’s about struggling to complete a task, or a journey, as the very ground beneath your feet slows you down, or trips you up.
It’s a very short story, so this is a very short blog post.
Intervals of Darkness will be published on Saturday 7 September. You can pre-order the eBook now.
Precast Reinforced Concrete Heart 