Firefight

EPILOGUE

Snow had fallen.

Father Jack Butler had a tradition. Every Christmas Eve he would walk around the cemetery of the Hereford churchyard, spending a few seconds at each of the many graves. He was not a young man and each year it took him a little longer to pay his silent respects to the dead. Today it chilled him just to look at the thick snow, but it was a tradition and a worthwhile one at that, he thought. He braced himself against the cold and started his annual round, shuffling through the white powder with creaky joints.

They were like old friends, some of these tombstones. Constant. Ever-present. They grew increasingly elderly with him, each year a little more marked and decrepit. But he drew a kind of comfort from the knowledge that these blocks of stone, these memorials to life — each of them holding their own secrets and stories — would outlive any of the visitors that came here for moments of quietness and reflection.

He found it more difficult to be so philosophical around the newer graves, however. This was a sadder part of the churchyard and seemed even more so today, covered with the silent blanket of snow. His eyes were caught by the fresh mounds covering the graves of the two men he had buried in the past week. Soldiers, both of them — it would be a good six months before their stone memorials were erected. Addressing their families had been difficult. No one had been informed of the circumstances of their death and Father Jack Butler had been the incumbent of a Hereford church for long enough to know what that meant. He nodded respectfully at the two mounds of earth before turning back towards the church.

His route through the snow took him past that bit of the churchyard that always saddened him most. A single grave, but home to two bodies: a mother and daughter. They had been buried here for a couple of years now and each time he passed this stone he felt his very faith being questioned. He remembered their deaths; he remembered the horror of it. From time to time, after the funeral, he had seen, from a distance, a man at their graveside. The priest had watched him, watched how he stood, immobile and hunched, for such long periods of time. Such terribly long periods of time. Now and then he had considered approaching and talking to him. But when you have been a priest for as long as he had, you developed a kind of sixth sense, an intuition that tells you whether words of Christian comfort are likely to be of help to certain people.

Father Jack Butler's intuition had told him he would be of no help at all to that man.

As he passed the grave, he noticed something. Propped up against the tombstone, covered with a delicate dusting of snow, was a flower. A single flower. For some reason it caught the priest's heart and he walked a few steps nearer. He bent down to take a closer look and picked the flower up with his pale, shaking hands.

Tied to the rose with a piece of gold ribbon was a card. It was damp from the snow and he held it lightly, not wanting to damage the paper. In the corner of the card was a small, florid illustration, but it was not this that caught his eye. It was the writing in the middle. The blue ink was slightly smudged, but he could still tell that the handwriting was firm yet spidery — not like his own flowing copperplate. It crossed the priest's mind that it was written by someone not used to holding a pen.

A single word. A simple word.

Goodbye.

Father Jack Butler blinked and he wondered what on earth it could mean. What story could possibly lie behind this plain, poignant message?

For a long while he stared at the card, but finally the cold got to him and he realised his hand was shaking more than usual. He gently replaced the flower, stood up and nodded respectfully at the tombstone that always reminded him of the violence there was in the world. Then he turned and slowly trudged back towards the church.

It was Christmas. A time for peace. There was a family service that afternoon, and he had much to do.