I met your folks at a church in St Albans. Moon warned me they'd be quirky.
'Quirky how?' I asked.
'They're theatre people,' he replied. He winked, gave me the church address and his business card and sent me on my way.
I'd loaded the van the day before. Headstone, concrete shoe, sack truck, wheelbarrow, fixing kit. Double-checked for things that are easy to forget. Everything secured. Okay, good to go.
Your Granddad's grave was near the east end of the church. It was marked with a little plaque and I set the wheelbarrow down next to it and began unloading the spades. There was chatter and the squeaking of chairs and the blowing of instruments from inside the church. Then all of a sudden, after a brief silence, the interior erupted with music. A brass band flew into a rendition of Abba's Take a Chance on Me. The bottom of the stained glass window was about a foot higher than eye level so I could hear them clearly but I couldn't see a thing.
I was roughly halfway through digging the hole for the headstone when your Mum and Dad strode over all smiles to the graveside. They were wearing matching blue Doc Martens. The band had just started playing Waterloo. I introduced myself as Tommy, Moon's assistant.
'I'm Lily,' your Mum said. 'And this is Leo - oh, good gracious.' She put her hand on her head and watched her husband zip his mouth shut with his thumb and forefinger.
They were both holding something: Lily a yellow canvas bag and Leo something less visible. He set it down and mimed the unzipping of an extremely long case. He took out its imaginary contents and began playing along to the Abba rehearsal. He was a committed and enthusiastic air trobonist and dancer. The band had no way of knowing they'd acquired a new member. They couldn't see us and we couldn't see them. Your Dad explained to me afterwards that he'd done a mime a day since he was eight years old and he wasn't going to let an opportunity as juicy as being part of a brass band pass him by.
The church warden had stopped by shortly after his performance to check that everything was going smoothly. He was a serious-looking man of about eighty and looked your Dad up and down with a curious eye, perhaps having observed his performance from the footpath that went around the back of the church. His name was Geoffrey - a perfectly reasonable name for a man of his position. While we didn't find out what he did in his working life, the voluntary role of church warden seems to be a magnet for retired Brigadiers. If Geoffrey had designs on wielding some power over this particular headstone installation, it was quickly extinguished by the surreal distraction of a brass ensemble playing a selection of Abba's superhits.
The fix went smoothly. Geoffrey headed back home via a slow lap of the church while your folks went and sat on a bench nearby while I did the rest of the job. They were standing in front of the headstone when I returned from a far corner of a churchyard with some turf to go around the base. The slate was a Cumbrian green slate piece, from the Elterwater quarry. It had these wonderfully rich wavy lines running through it and had been a beautiful piece of slate to carve. The inscription at the bottom read 'Every noble life leaves its fibre interwoven forever in the work of the world.'
'It's a Ruskin quote,' your Dad said. 'I've always liked it. It suits Dad perfectly.'
A few years later, I was waiting at a set of traffic lights in Moreton-in-Marsh and, looking to my right, I noticed that same Ruskin quote carved in stone above a doorway.
When I loaded the van back up, I joined them on the bench and looked at the headstone with the church as its backdrop. The band had recently finished with The Winner Takes It All. Your Mum produced a flask of coffee, three mugs and a box of cranberry flapjacks from her yellow bag. I imagined a similar thing was happening inside the church. The band had packed up their instruments, as your dad had done earlier, and the conductor was providing their own version of elevenses for a job well done, as your mum was doing now. They were so easy to talk to. They clearly adored the theatre, but they were big film fans as well. They spoke about a local production of To Kill a Mockingbird they were looking forward to seeing. Their granddaughter - your niece - was going to be playing Scout and they were all so excited. I told them the old film adaptation of the book starred a very young Robert Duvall. Your Mum clapped her hands together and your dad went still.
''Ha!' Your Mum exclaimed. 'That's his favourite film fact!'
Your Dad turned to me and put his hand on my shoulder. 'Tommy, in all my years of talking to people about film,' he said, 'I've never met anyone who's known that.'
'Apart from Lizzie,' your Mum said.
'Yes, apart from Lizzie."
I thanked them and they thanked me, and asked me to thank Moon as well. I opened the window and waved to them as I drove off and I whistled Abba tunes all the way home.
A lovely story!
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