Falling Angels (6 page)

"What's that?" I asked, pointing at the box.

"Lamb's box," Simon said. "You put what you've dug in it, then when the coffin's in the hole you roll it up and open the side--see, it's got a hinge--and let the dirt go straight into the grave. So as you don't make a mess round the grave, see. There's two more over there, already full." He waved at the other boxes, pulled up against the boundary wall. "You just leave a little pile of dirt at the end of the grave for the mourners to drop in."

"Can we look in the grave?"

Simon nodded and we edged up to the hole. It was deeper than I'd expected. Simon's pa was at the bottom with another man. I could only see the tops of their heads--Simon's pa's like steel wool, the other man's completely bald. They were hacking at the sides of the hole with spades. There was hardly room for them to turn around. The bald man looked up at us. He had a long face and a nose like a sausage. He and Simon's pa seemed to be digging partners, with Simon helping.

Simon hauled up another bucket full of clumps of clay. I could see a worm wriggling on top.

"Do you ever find anything while you're digging?" I asked. "Besides worms?"

Simon dumped the clay into the Lamb's box and lowered the bucket back into the grave. "Pieces of china. Some fountain pens. A spinning top. This were school grounds before it were a cemetery. And before that it were the gardens of a big house."

Simon's pa looked up. "Need more shoring down here, boy."

Simon began handing down planks of wood from a pile. I noticed then that wood had been pushed in at regular intervals around the edges of the hole.

"How deep is it?" I asked.

"Twelve feet so far," Simon said. "We're going down to seventeen, ain't we, our Pa?"

I stared down. "That deep?"

"Lots of people to bury over the years. Coffin's eighteen inches, plus a foot 'tween each coffin, makes space for six coffins. That's a family."

I added it in my head--it was like a puzzle my tutor would give me. "Seven coffins."

"No, you leave a bit more than a foot at the top."

"Of course. Six feet under."

"Not really," Simon said. "That's just a saying. We just leave two feet atop the last coffin."

"What on earth are you two going on about?" Lavinia said.

Simon's pa began hammering on a piece of wood with a mallet.

"Are they safe down there?" I asked.

Simon shrugged. "Safe enough. The wood shores up the grave. And it's clay, so it's not likely to cave in. Holds itself up. It's sand you got to watch out for. Sand's easier to dig but it don't hold. Sand's deadly."

"Oh, do stop talking about such tedious things!" Lavinia cried. "We want you to show us some angels."

"Leave him alone, Lavinia," I said. "Can't you see he's working?" While I love Lavinia--she is my best friend, after all--she is rarely interested in what I am. She never wants to look through the telescope Daddy sets up in the garden, for instance, or dig about in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
at the library. I wanted to ask Simon more about the graves and the digging but Lavinia wouldn't let me.

"Maybe later, when this is done," Simon said.

"We only have half an hour," I explained. "Jenny said."

"Who's Jenny?"

"Our maid."

"Where's she now?"

"Up in the village. We left her by the gate."

"She met a man," Ivy May said.

Simon looked at her. "Who's this, then?"

"Ivy May. My little sister," Lavinia said. "But she's wrong. You didn't see any man, did you, Maude?"

I shook my head, but I wasn't sure.

"He had a wheelbarrow and she followed him into the cemetery," Ivy May insisted.

"Did he have red hair?" Simon asked.

Ivy May nodded.

"Oh, him. He'll be knocking her, then."

"What, someone's hitting Jenny?" I cried. "Then we must go and rescue her!"

"Nah, not hitting," Simon said. "It's--" He looked at me and Lavinia and stopped. "Never mind. 'Tis nothing."

Simon's pa laughed from down the hole. "Got yourself all tangled up there, boy! Forgot who you was talking to. Got to be careful what you say if you're going to mix with them girls!"

"Hush, our Pa."

"We'd best go," I said, uneasy now about Jenny. "I'm sure half an hour's gone now. Which is the quickest path back to the main gate?"

Simon pointed at a statue of a horse a little way away. "Take the path by the horse and follow it down."

"Not that way!" Lavinia cried. "That's straight through the Dissenters!"

"So?" Simon said. "They won't bite you. They're dead."

The Dissenters' section is where all the people who are not Church of England are buried--Catholics, mostly, as well as Baptists and Methodists and other sorts. I've heard suicides are buried back there, though I didn't say that to Lavinia. I've only walked through it twice. It wasn't so different from the rest of the cemetery, but I did feel peculiar, as if I were in a foreign country. "Come, Lavinia," I said, not wanting Simon to think we were judging the Dissenters, "it doesn't matter. Besides, wasn't your mother Catholic before she married your father?" I'd found a rosary tucked under a cushion at Lavinia's house recently and their char Elizabeth had told me.

Lavinia flushed. "No! And what would it matter if she were?"

"It doesn't matter--that's just what I'm saying."

"I know," Simon interrupted. "If you want you can go back by the sleeping angel. Have you seen it? It's on the main path, not in the Dissenters."

We shook our heads.

"I'll show you--it's not far. I'm just off for a tick, our Pa," he called down into the hole.

Simon's pa grunted.

"C'mon, quick." Simon ran down the path and we hurried after him. This time even Ivy May ran.

We had never seen the angel he showed us. All the other angels in the cemetery are walking or flying or pointing or at least standing and bowing their heads. This one was lying on its side, wings tucked under it, fast asleep. I didn't know angels needed sleep as humans do.

Lavinia adored it, of course. I preferred to talk more about grave digging, but when I turned to ask Simon something about the Lamb's box, he was gone. He had run back to his grave without saying good-bye.

At last I managed to drag Lavinia away from the angel, but when we got back to the main gate, Jenny wasn't there. I still didn't understand what Simon had meant about her and the man, and was a little worried. Lavinia wasn't bothered, though. "Let's go to the mason's yard next door and look at the angels," she said. "Just for a minute."

I had never been to the yard before. It was full of all sorts of stone, big blocks and slabs, blank headstones, plinths, even a stack of obelisks leaning against one another in a corner. It was very dusty and the ground gritty. Everywhere we could hear the
tink tink tink
of men chipping stone.

Lavinia led the way into the shop. "May we look at the book of angels, please," she said to the man behind the counter. I thought she was very bold. He didn't seem at all surprised, however--he pulled from the shelf behind him a large, dusty book and laid it on the counter.

"This is what we chose our angel from," Lavinia explained. "I love to look in it. It's got hundreds of angels. Aren't they lovely?" She began turning the pages. There were drawings of all sorts of angels--standing, kneeling, looking up, looking down, eyes closed, holding wreaths, trumpets, folds of cloth. There were baby angels and twin angels and cherubim and little angel heads with wings.

"They're--nice," I said. I don't know why, exactly, but I don't much like the cemetery angels. They are very smooth and regular, and their eyes are so blank--even when I stand in their line of sight they never seem to look at me. What is the good of a messenger who doesn't even notice you?

Daddy hates angels because he says they are sentimental. Mummy calls them vapid. I had to look up the word--it means that something is dull or flat or empty. I think she is right. That is certainly what their eyes are like. Mummy says angels get more attention than they deserve. When there is an angel on a grave in the cemetery, everyone looks at it rather than the other monuments around it, but there is really nothing to see.

"Why do you like angels so much?" I asked Lavinia.

She laughed. "Who couldn't like them? They are God's messengers and they bring love. Whenever I look in their gentle faces they make me feel peaceful and secure."

That, I suspect, is an example of what Daddy calls sentimental thinking. "Where is God, exactly?" I asked, thinking about angels flying between us and Him.

Lavinia looked shocked and stopped turning pages. "Why, up there, of course." She pointed at the sky outside. "Don't you listen at Sunday school?"

"But there are stars and planets up there," I said. "I know--I've seen them through Daddy's telescope."

"You watch out, Maude Coleman," Lavinia said, "or you'll commit blasphemy."

"But--"

"Don't!" Lavinia covered her ears. "I can't bear to listen!"

Ivy May giggled.

I gave up. "Let's go back to Jenny."

This time Jenny was waiting for us at the main gate, red and breathless as if she'd just climbed the hill again, but unhurt, I was glad to see.

"Where've you girls been?" she cried. "I've been worried silly!"

We were all just starting down the hill when I asked her if she'd checked on the fabric for Mummy.

"The book!" she shrieked, and ran back into the cemetery to fetch it. I hate to think where she left it.

I were none too pleased to be running errands for the missus, I can tell you. She knows very well how busy I am. Six in the blooming morning till nine at night--later if they've a supper party. One day's holiday a year apart from Christmas and Boxing Day. And she wants me to take back books and pick up fabric--things she can very well do herself. Books I've no time to read myself, even if I wanted to--which I don't.

Still, it were a lovely sunny day, and I'll admit 'twas nice to get out, though I don't much like that hill up to the village. We got to the cemetery and I were going to leave the girls there and nip up to the shops and back. Then I saw him, on his own, pushing a wheelbarrow across the courtyard with a little skip in his step. He looked back at me and smiled, and I thought, Hang on a tick.

So I went in with the girls and told 'em to do what they liked for half an hour, no more. They was wanting to find a little boy they play with, and I said to be careful and not to let him get cheeky. And to keep an eye on the little girl, Ivy May. She's of the habit of getting left behind, it seems--though I bet she likes it that way. I made 'em all hold hands. So they run off one way, and I t'other.

NOVEMBER 1903

Tonight we went with the Waterhouses to a bonfire on the heath. The girls wanted to, and the men get on well enough (though Richard privately mocks Albert Waterhouse as a buffoon), and it's left to Gertrude Waterhouse and me to smile and bear each other's company as best we can. We stood around an enormous bonfire on Parliament Hill, clutching our sausages and roast potatoes, and marveling that we were gathered on the very hill where Guy Fawkes waited to see Parliament burn. I watched as people moved closer to or farther away from the heat of the flames, trying to find a spot where they were comfortable. But even if our faces were hot, our backs were cold--like the potatoes, charred on the outside, raw inside.

My threshold to heat is much higher than Richard's or Maude's--or most people's, for that matter. I stepped closer and closer until my cheeks flamed. When I looked around, the ring of people was far behind me--I stood alone by the edge of the fire.

Richard wasn't even looking at the fire, but up at the clear sky. That is just like him--his love is not heat, but the cold distance of the universe. When we were first courting he would take me, with Harry as chaperon, to observation parties to look at the stars. I thought it most romantic then. Tonight, though, when I followed his gaze up to the starry sky all I felt was the blank space between those pinpricks and me, and it was like a heavy blanket waiting to drop on me. It was almost as suffocating as my fear of being buried alive.

I cannot see what he sees in the stars--he and now Maude, for he has begun taking her with him when he goes out to the heath at night with his telescope. I haven't said anything, because there is nothing I can truly complain of, and Maude clearly thrives on his attention. But it brings me low, for I can see him fostering in her the same cold rationality that I discovered in him once we were married.

I am being ridiculous, of course. I, too, was brought up by my father to be logical, and I despise the sentimentality of the age, as embodied to perfection by the Waterhouses. But I'm secretly glad Maude and Lavinia are friends. Irritating and melodramatic as Lavinia is, she is not cold, and she counterbalances the icy hand of astronomy.