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mausoleum, mostly grey elderly men, certainly nobody like Terry Skate.
    ‘No, it’s my first visit, the first of many , I hope. My friend and I have taken over this florist’s, you see – of course we have lots of regular orders for floral displays, not to mention weddings and funerals, you name it, we do it – but we’ve never done a mausoleum before.’
    ‘What exactly are you going to do?’
    ‘Oh, just tidy it up – it’s more a job for a garden centre, really – supply new plants and bulbs for the outside, daffs at Easter and that kind of thing. Being a church person myself I got the job, my friend being agnostic.’
    ‘I see. Then you are….’ Tom had been going to say ‘one of us’ until he realised the possible ambiguity of the phrase. Besides, it was most unlikely that Terry Skate’s churchgoing would have anything in common with the simple village service which was all that Tom’s parishioners would tolerate.
    ‘Goodness, yes! Choirboy, server, M.C. even – you name it…. You’d have to be a believer, wouldn’t you, to do a mausoleum?’
    Tom saw that this must be so and proceeded to give a brief history of the mausoleum – how it had been put up in 1810 to commemorate a de Tankerville killed in the Peninsular War, and how later members of the family had been buried there and monuments erected to them.
    ‘Could we have a peep inside?’ Terry asked enthusiastically. ‘I’m just longing to see.’
    They went out of the church, unlocked the gate of the mausoleum and folded back the grille leading to the interior. A heavy red velvet curtain had to be drawn aside to reveal the box-like tombs and monuments. Although it was a warm day outside, the icy white of the marble and the cold blind faces of the classical sculptures struck very chill, and Tom shivered. He did not often go into the mausoleum and was unable to match Terry’s enthusiastic comments, disliking the whole concept and finding the marble representations pretentious and unsympathetic.
    Terry agreed that it was cold inside. ‘You’d think you could put a storage heater or even a paraffin stove in here,’ he suggested.
    ‘Oh, I don’t think that would be suitable,’ said Tom. ‘Anyway, nobody really goes inside now – nobody spends much time here,’ he added, aware that he was saying something slightly comic. ‘There’s nobody left of the family to take any interest.’ This was sad, of course, though more from the historical than the human point of view. There were documents lost for ever to the local historian. If only he could have been here in the thirties when the de Tankervilles left the manor!
    ‘Has the family died out?’ Terry asked.
    Tom explained its history, the last surviving male killed in the Great War with no dependants, the sisters selling the house not long after that, the present owner a man who took no interest in the village…. The chill of the mausoleum was beginning to get into his bones. Should he ask Terry Skate back to the rectory for a cup of coffee?
    They went outside and into the little garden surrounding the edifice where there were some gravestones with spaces for vases of flowers or pot plants.
    ‘I suppose it was done at Whit and somebody’s taken away the dead flowers.’
    ‘Yes, one of the flower ladies usually does that.’
    ‘Which is more than she did in the church, if I may make so bold,’ said Terry with a laugh.
    ‘Yes, something does seem to have been neglected there,’ Tom agreed. ‘And of course mid-week is a bad time for flowers.’
    ‘Dead flowers left in the water make such a stink.’
    ‘Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds,’ Tom suggested.
    ‘These weren’t lilies – larkspurs, I should think. I might get some pelargoniums for the graves here,’ Terry went on. ‘A splash of colour – that’s what’s needed.’
    ‘I’m sure that will be admirable,’ Tom said.
    ‘I’ve got some plants in the van. Meanwhile, is there a café or teashop in