Love at Second Sight (12 page)

‘Tours around a graveyard?’ I asked.

The vicar nodded. ‘Highgate Cemetery is famous as are many of the people buried there. Elizabeth Siddal–’

‘Dante Rosetti’s wife? That Elizabeth Siddal?’ I asked. I had a poster of her as Ophelia painted by Millais on my wall as well as one of her as Beatrix painted by Rossetti.

‘Indeed,’ replied the vicar. ‘And Michael Faraday is there too. He invented electricity.’

‘But where would we look for Edwards Watts?’ said Effy. ‘I know the cemetery. It’s vast.’

The vicar smiled. ‘It’s nice to meet youngsters who are so interested in the past. If you can hang on, I can look in the church records to see if his death is recorded and it might
also tell us what part of the cemetery he’s in.’

‘Really?’ said Tash. ‘Brilliant.’

We followed the vicar to a room at the back of the church, Effy filling him in on the rest of the family and Henrietta as we walked.

In the office were rows and rows of old leatherbound books. The vicar heaved down a few then sat at a table and began to leaf through. We sat quietly not wanting to disturb his concentration. He
put the first few books aside and shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It would help if I had a more precise date.’

‘I could ring someone,’ said Tash and pulled out her mobile. ‘I’ll call our friend Dave. He’s got it all written down.’

‘That would narrow the search,’ said the vicar.

Tash went outside to use her phone and the vicar began to tell us about the history of the church, how it had been bombed in the war and parts of it rebuilt and how lucky it was that the records
had been unharmed.

‘Has the altar always been on the left?’ I asked.

The vicar regarded me for a few moments and I felt myself blush. ‘An interesting question,’ he said finally, ‘why do you ask that?’

‘For some reason, I thought it was going to be on the right when we walked in. Don’t know why.’

‘I can tell you exactly why,’ said the vicar. ‘The altar has always been where it is. That is unchanged but the main entrance to the church used to be on the other side,
opposite to the one that we use today. Do you see? Before the original church was bombed, you entered from the other side, then indeed, the altar would have been on the right. If you look carefully
when you go back through, you’ll see that the original entrance was bricked up.’

‘I. . .’ I didn’t know what to say but Effy’s face had lit up.

‘Have you seen the original plans of the church somewhere?’ he asked me.

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘But I must have, mustn’t I? Or maybe I noticed the old door had been bricked up without consciously realising.’

‘Yeah right,’ Effy blurted as Tash came back in and handed the vicar a piece of paper on which she had written down dates that Dave’s uncle had given her.

‘That makes my task much easier,’ said the vicar and he pulled out a large tome from his shelves. After a few minutes flicking through, he stopped at a page and pointed. ‘Here
we are. Edward Watts, buried in the western part of Highgate Cemetery. I thought so.’

‘And what about Henrietta?’ asked Tash. ‘Henrietta Gleeson.’

‘And who was she?’ asked the vicar.

‘Oh, the governess, I believe,’ said Effy. ‘Governess to the Watts boys.’

‘Do you have her dates?’

I shook my head and made myself remember the image of the woman I’d seen in my regression experience. ‘We think she was quite young when she died, maybe in her twenties.’

‘OK, let me see. It may take me some time to find her,’ said the vicar as he went back to his book and starting flicking through a few pages. A short while later, he looked up. And
here she is. How sad. You’re right, she was a young woman when she died. Twentythree in fact. She’ll be in a different part of the cemetery to the rest of the family because she was a
dissenter.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Tash.

‘Only Anglicans could be buried on blessed ground in the main part of the cemetery at that time,’ the vicar explained. ‘Anyone who wasn’t Church of England or was an
unbeliever or committed suicide, was known as a dissenter and they were buried in unconsecrated ground.’

‘Oh my God. Was she a suicide?’ I hated to think that.

The vicar shook his head. ‘No. That would have been recorded. She would most likely have been an unbeliever or from another religion.’

‘Dissenter sounds like an outcast,’ I said. I didn’t like the idea of anyone being shoved out because of their beliefs.

‘That’s how it was back then, my dear,’ said the vicar and he checked his watch. ‘Now I really must go but good luck with your search. You won’t be able to go into
the cemetery now as it closes at five o’clock in the summertime but go along at the weekend. It’s a very interesting place and well worth a look around. Just ask the guide on duty. Most
of them know the graves like the back of their hand.’

We trooped back out into the sunlight and Effy was quick to tell Tash all about me knowing the layout of the old church.

Effy turned to me. ‘Now that’s got to mean something,’ she said with a big grin.

‘Not really. I could have read about the church somewhere, or seen a documentary about the bombing, that’s most likely,’ I said, although I wasn’t as certain about any of
it as I had been.

I hadn’t told Effy or Tash about my imaginary childhood friend called Howard. They’d have taken it as more proof that Betty’s story was true and it did seem remarkable even
though I’d rationalised that there must have been some character on TV that I’d seen as a kid who was called Howard and I’d picked up on it. I kept telling myself that none of it
really meant anything, but the coincidences were stacking up. The imaginary friend called Howard, my experience at Fiona’s (despite the fact I’d convinced myself that it was a dream),
Lily’s reading that matched so closely with Betty’s though I’d even tried to rationalise that with the idea that maybe she and Betty had met at a clairvoyants’ convention
and made up stories together. And now the feeling I’d just had in the church. I knew deep inside that I was running out of arguments against the fact that I might have had past lives. For the
first time since I’d been to see Betty, a part of me was beginning to think that there might, just might, be some truth in what she’d said and the proof of it was unfolding in front of
me, like clues in a treasure hunt. All I had to do was follow them. But the thought of it being real was seriously creeping me out.

On Saturday morning, I was up and dressed early. Although I had a ton of work to do for my AS levels, I had to see this Henrietta thing through. I could work in the afternoon
plus, if nothing else, I would get to see Elizabeth Siddal’s grave.

Effy and Tash were waiting for me at the top of the lane leading to the cemetery. We were all dressed in light clothes jeans and T-shirts, mine all black, Tash in pale pinks and Effy in blue
jeans but an orange and turquoise top. The skies were clear and it felt odd to be setting off on a tour of a graveyard on such a lovely day. We passed Waterlow Park on our left and then we could
see the cemetery beyond. As we got closer, there was a Tudor-style building, with turrets and high wrought iron gates in the middle, leading to a woodland area.

We went to join a small crowd who were waiting for the ten o’clock tour. Some were carrying cameras, others guidebooks.

I glanced across the road where rows of headstones were visible and wondered what the fuss was all about. It looked unremarkable, the same as any cemetery in England, with neat rows of
graves.

‘There are two parts to the cemetery, the eastern and western,’ said Tash. ‘The vicar said the Watts grave is in the western part. I went round with my parents a few years ago.
It’s totally Goth. You’ll love it, Jo.’

‘I am not a Goth,’ I said. Nor did I see why I’d love a tour round a cemetery. It struck me as morbid but I didn’t say anything in case they called me a killjoy
again.

‘I think you should tell the tourists why you’re here,’ said Effy. ‘To gaze upon the grave of your last earthly body. Wuhuhooooo.’

I laughed but it was more through nerves than finding what she’d said funny. Most Saturday mornings I’d do
normal
stuff – catching up on the week, maybe a DIY manicure,
check emails, maybe Facebook, a bit of study but now here I was in a cemetery going to look for the grave of what could be my former dead body. It doesn’t get any weirder, however, there was
no going back now. I felt compelled to carry on and see where it led.

At ten on the dot, a man with sandy hair, in his sixties, dressed in an old grey cardigan and corduroy trousers, opened the wrought iron gates and beckoned the group inside.

‘Those for the western cemetery this way,’ he called. ‘Three pounds each. Those here to see Karl Marx’s grave, you’ll find it opposite in the eastern
cemetery.’

‘A communist plot,’ whispered Effy and Tash giggled.

We dropped our money into a box on the way in and waited with the group in the cobbled courtyard.

Our guide soon motioned for us to follow him and began his talk.

‘The building behind is made up of two chapels, one for the Anglicans, one for dissenters. . .’

I looked back at the chapels and then into the woodland where I could see the tops of headstones amidst profuse greenery and trees.

‘The western cemetery first opened in 1839 as one of the seven new cemeteries,’ the guide continued, ‘known as the Magnificent Seven, around the outside of London. The eastern
side was added in 1854 and can be toured unaccompanied. About one hundred and seventy thousand persons are buried here in fiftyone thousand graves which vary from the minute plot markers for
foundlings and tiny children to the ornate and ostentatious monuments we’ll see further on.’

As our group moved on down one of the paths leading away from the courtyard, I looked around. It was nothing like I had imagined. Nature had been left to go completely wild and the crumbling and
cracked gravestones were overgrown with moss, weeds and ivy. As we progressed, we saw statues of kneeling angels and bowed Madonnas which were all the more poignant because of their decaying
appearance. Despite my nerves, I couldn’t help but find the cemetery eerily enchanting, like walking into the perfect Gothic film set. Tash had been right, I did love it.

We walked up a sloping path through a confusion of trees and shrubs. Ivy seemed to have taken over everywhere; untamed it had grown over headstones, up trees, across the winding paths.

‘In the early days,’ said our guide, ‘there were only a handful of trees and row upon row of neatly maintained graves. There was formality and solemnity . . .’

No longer,
I thought,
but that’s what gives it its charm.

Effy stopped and read the inscription on one grave. ‘
Stop stranger there as you go by, as you are now, so once was I,’ she read. ‘As I am now, so you shall be, so be
prepared to follow me.
’

‘To follow you, I’d be content ... if only I knew which way you went,’ I added. That set Tash off laughing and our guide gave her a filthy look.

We read various other gravestones:
to Martha, beloved wife,
or
Bertram, who fell asleep, Emma, who is now in peace.

‘Makes you think, doesn’t it? We’re all going to die but no one ever talks about it.’

Effy and Tash nodded, serious for a moment.

‘Well, we are in a graveyard,’ said Tash. ‘I wonder where they went. Where
we
go.’

‘If anywhere,’ I said. ‘It would help if, when we got our birth certificates, we got our date of death as well, like a driving licence or credit card, you know, it gives you
the date of issue, date of expiry. Then you could prepare.’

‘I don’t think I’d want to know,’ said Effy. ‘You might go round being miserable all the time. Like I’m do-oomed.’

‘Or maybe you’d make sure you really appreciate each day’ said Tash.

‘Oo get us,’ said Effy, ‘coming over all deep.’

‘Hard not to in a place like this,’ I said.

The guide frowned at us from the front of the group. ‘Shh, over there.’

‘I wish we could break away from the group,’ I said as I looked at the various pathways through the trees.

‘Yeah but I wouldn’t want to get lost in here,’ said Tash. ‘It would be like
The Blair Witch Project
times ten.’

‘Times fifty thousand people or however many are buried in here. What if they all came out of their graves at night?’ asked Effy.

‘We could do the Thriller routine,’ I said. We’d done it for an end of term show in Year Seven. I did a few moves and once again the guide at the front frowned at us.

‘I read in one of Mum’s magazines that they did a survey of the most common last words before dying,’ said Tash.

‘And what were they?’ I asked.

‘Oh shit.’

‘No. Seriously?’ I asked.

Effy nodded and this set us off laughing again. Our tour guide stopped what he was saying. ‘Can the group at the back pay attention and have some more respect for where they are,
please?’

Tash and I straightened our faces immediately, but poor Effy was off on one of her laughing attacks and had to go into a coughing fit.

‘You’re having a coffin fit,’ whispered Tash.

Of course that made Effy worse and her shoulders were shaking helplessly.

‘Be quiet,’ I whispered, ‘or we’ll get thrown out.’

‘The Victorians loved the symbolism of death, for example here you have in the angel’s hand an upturned torch to symbolise life extinguished,’ said the guide as he pointed at a
statue that looked like an angel from a Leonardo Da Vinci painting. The guide then pointed at a broken pillar behind him. ‘And here’s another popular symbol. The pillar is broken, it
symbolises life and strength cut off.’

He led us further into the woods and all the time, Effy, Tash and I scanned the headstones looking for the name Watts.

Our guide suddenly stopped at a grave and when I saw the inscription on the headstone, my interest perked up even more.
Elizabeth Siddal.

‘There’s a mystery surrounding the Siddal grave,’ our guide told us. ‘It’s said that Rossetti was so consumed with sadness when she died that, as an expression of
his grief, he placed a notebook of his poems under her head. Seven years later, his popularity as a poet and artist was diminishing and his agent persuaded him to have the grave opened so that the
book could be retrieved. It is said that when the coffin was opened, late one night, Elizabeth’s red hair had continued to grow and filled the coffin.’