Falling Angels

Then I took her up to my bedroom so that she could see my dollies.

‘I didn’t forget you,’ I said. ‘I’ve looked for you every time we’ve visited the cemetery, hoping to see you.’

‘So have I,’ she said.

‘But I never did. Only that naughty boy now and then.’

‘Simon. Digging with his father.’

‘Now that I’m here we can go back together, and he can show us all the other angels. It will be lovely.’

‘Yes.’

Then Ivy May tried to spoil it by knocking my dollies’ heads together so hard I thought they might burst. I told her to leave but Maude said she didn’t mind if Ivy May stayed with us as she didn’t have a brother or sister to play with. Well. Ivy May looked pleased as Punch at that – as much as she looks pleased about anything.

Never mind. Then Maude had breakfast with us and we could not stop talking.

It is truly a miracle from heaven that the angels have led us to this house and me to my best friend.

MAUDE COLEMAN

It is funny how things happen. Daddy always says that coincidences are usually nothing of the sort if only one studies them carefully enough. He proved his point today.

I was looking out of my window when I saw a girl standing in hers across the way, brushing her hair. I had never seen her there before; two spinsters used to live in that house but had moved out a few weeks before. Then she tossed her head and shrugged her shoulders, and I realised it was Lavinia. I was so surprised to see her that I simply stood and stared.

I hadn’t seen her for so long – not since the Queen’s death over two years ago. Although I had asked Mummy several times if we could meet, she always made an excuse. She did promise to ask at the cemetery for the Waterhouses’ address, but I don’t think she ever did. After a time I stopped asking because I knew it was her way of saying no. I didn’t know why she didn’t want me to have a best friend, but there was nothing I could do, except to hang about in the cemetery whenever we visited, hoping the Waterhouses would choose to visit then too. But they never did. I had given up on ever having a best friend. And I had not met any other girls who would like to go around the cemetery with me the way Lavinia did.

Now here she was, just across the way. I began to wave, and when at last she saw me she waved too, frantically. It was very gratifying that she was so happy to see me. I signalled to her to meet me in the garden, then ran downstairs to tell my parents about the amazing coincidence.

Mummy and Daddy were already eating breakfast and reading the papers – Daddy the Mail, Mummy the St Pancras Gazette. When I told them who our new neighbours were, Daddy was not amazed at all but explained he’d told the Waterhouses about that house.

Mummy gave him a peculiar look. ‘I didn’t know you were so friendly with them,’ she said.

‘He contacted me at the bank,’ Daddy said, ‘quite some time ago. Said they were thinking of moving to the area and did I know of any property. When that house came up I told him about it.’

‘So now we are to be neighbours in life as well as in death,’ Mummy said. She cracked the shell of her egg very hard with a spoon.

‘Apparently he’s a fine batsman,’ Daddy said. ‘The team could do with one.’

When it became clear that there was no coincidence, that Daddy had led the Waterhouses here, I felt strangely let down. I wanted to believe in Fate, but Daddy has shown once again that there is no such thing.

GERTRUDE WATERHOUSE

I would not dream of criticising Albert’s judgement. He knows best in these matters, and to be sure I am very pleased with our new little house, a storey higher than our Islington house and with a garden full of roses rather than the neighbour’s chickens scrabbling in the dirt.

But my heart did sink when I discovered that not only are we neighbours with the Colemans, but their house backs on to ours. And of course it is yet a storey higher than ours and has the most tremendous garden. When no one was about I stood on a chair and peeked over. There is a willow, and a pond, and a bank of rhododendrons, and a lovely long lawn which I am sure the girls will play croquet on all summer.

Kitty Coleman was working in the garden, planting out primroses. Her dress was of the same buttery colour, and she wore a lovely wide-brimmed hat tied on with a chiffon scarf. Even at her gardening she is so well dressed. She didn’t see me, I am thankful to say, or I should have been so mortified I might have fallen from the chair. As it was I hopped down quickly and jarred my ankle.

I would not confess this to anyone, not even Albert, but it irritates me that she keeps such a fine garden. It is south-facing and very sunny, which makes it easier. And she must have a man to help – at the very least with the lawn, which looks rolled. I shall do my best with our roses, but I do kill plants off so easily. I really am hopeless in the garden. It doesn’t help that ours is north-facing. And we cannot manage any help with it at present. I hope she does not offer to send her man over – I wouldn’t know what to do.

After Maude tumbled over the back fence I felt we should call round, if only to explain the scratches. The front of their house is so elegant – the garden is full of rosebushes, and the steps leading up to the door are tiled in black and white. (The door of our own house opens directly on to the pavement. But I must try not to compare.)

I was hoping just to leave my card, but Kitty Coleman received us very gracefully in her morning room. I blinked at the colours she’d had it done in – mustard yellow with a dark brown trim, which I suppose is fashionable now. She called them ‘golden yellow’ and ‘chocolate brown’, which sound much better than they looked. I prefer our own burgundy. There is nothing to compare with a simple burgundy parlour. Mind you, I don’t have a morning room – perhaps if I did have such a light room as hers on the first floor I might paint it yellow as well.

But I doubt it.

Her taste is very refined – embroidered silk shawls over the sofas, potted ferns, vases of dried flowers, and a baby grand piano. I was rather shocked by the modern coffee set, which has a pattern of tiny black and yellow checks that made me feel dizzy. I myself prefer a simple rose pattern. But chacun à son goût. Oh! I made the mistake of saying so out loud, and she replied in French. I understood not a word of it! It was my own silly fault for trying to show off.

I came away with one secret comfort. No, two. The girls at least are delighted with each other, and Livy could do with a sensible friend. At least Maude will be a steadying influence, unless she too succumbs to Livy’s spell as the rest of us have – all but dear Ivy May, who is impervious to her sister’s excesses. I am always surprised by her. Quiet as she is, she does not let Livy get the upper hand.

And the other comfort: Kitty Coleman’s At Homes are Tuesday afternoons, just as mine are. When we discovered this, she smiled a little and said, ‘Oh dear, that is a pity.’ I will not switch mine, however – some traditions I will not tamper with. And I know she will not switch hers. In this way we shall be able to avoid that social occasion, at least.

I can’t say exactly why I don’t like her. She is perfectly civil and has good manners and is lovely to look at. She has a fine house and a handsome husband and a clever daughter. But I would not be her. A vein of discontent runs through her that disturbs everything around her. And I know it is uncharitable of me to think it, but I do doubt her Christian commitment. She thinks too much and prays too little, I suspect. But they are the only people we know close by, and the girls are already so fond of each other, and so I am afraid we are bound to see a great deal of each other.

When we got home and were sitting in our back parlour, I couldn’t help but look out of the window at their grand house in the distance. It will always be there to remind me of their superior position. I found this so upsetting that I let my teacup crash into its saucer, and the dear thing cracked. I did weep then, and even Ivy May’s arms around my neck (she does not like hugs, as a rule) did little to comfort me.

June 1903

MAUDE COLEMAN

Lavinia and I are desperate to get to the cemetery. Now that we can go together it will be so much more fun than before. But since the Waterhouses have moved to the house at the bottom of the garden, we have not managed to go, what with one thing and another: we went to Auntie Sarah’s in the country at Easter, and then Lavinia was ill, and then Mummy or Mrs Waterhouse had a visit to make or an errand to run. What a bother – we live so close yet cannot get anyone to take us and are not allowed to go there on our own. It is a shame Nanny left to look after her old mother, or she could have taken us.

Yesterday I asked Mummy if she would go with us.

‘I’m too busy,’ she said. She didn’t seem busy to me – she was just reading a book. I did not say so, however. She is meant to be looking after me now that Nanny has gone. But mostly I end up with Jenny and Mrs Baker.

I asked her if Jenny could take Lavinia and me.

‘Jenny has far too much to do to be dragging you up there.’

‘Oh, please, Mummy. Just for a little while.’

‘Don’t use that wheedling tone with me. You’ve learned it from Lavinia and it doesn’t suit you.’

‘Sorry. But perhaps – perhaps Jenny has an errand to run for you up in the Village. Then she could take us.’

‘Haven’t you lessons to prepare for?’

‘Finished them.’

Mummy sighed. ‘It’s just as well you’re going to school in the autumn. Your tutor can’t keep up with you.’

I tried to be helpful. ‘Perhaps you have books that need returning to the library?’

‘I do, in fact. Oh, all right, go and tell Jenny to come here. And she can see if the fabric I’ve ordered has arrived while she’s in the Village.’

Lavinia and I raced up the hill, pulling Jenny with us. She complained the whole way, and was quite puffed at the top, though if she hadn’t used her breath for complaining she might have been all right. All our hurrying didn’t make any difference anyway – Ivy May refused to run, and Jenny made Lavinia go back and get her. At times it can be a trial having Ivy May with us, but Mrs Waterhouse insisted upon it. Once we got to the cemetery, though, Jenny let us do whatever we liked, as long as we kept Ivy May with us. We immediately ran off to find Simon.

It was such a treat to be in the cemetery without anyone to look after us. Whenever I go with Mummy and Daddy or Grandmother I feel I have to be very quiet and solemn, when really what I want to do is just what Lavinia and I did – rush about and explore. As we looked for Simon we played all sorts of games: jumping from grave to grave without touching the ground (which is not difficult, as the graves are so packed in); taking a side each of a path and scoring points for seeing an obelisk, or a woman leaning on an urn, or an animal; playing tag around the Circle of Lebanon. Lavinia does shriek when she’s being chased, and some grown-ups told us to hush and mind our manners. After that we tried to be quiet but we had such fun playing that it was hard.

At last we found Simon, right up the top of the cemetery not far from the north gate. We didn’t see him at first, but his Pa was standing next to a new grave, pulling a bucket of soil up using a rope and pulley on a frame set over the hole. He dumped it into what looked like a big wooden box on wheels, several feet high and heaped with soil.

We crept closer and hid behind a headstone, not wanting Simon’s Pa to see us, for he is dirty and red-faced and whiskery, and we could smell the drink on him even from where we were. Lavinia says he’s just like a character out of Dickens. I suppose all gravediggers are.

We could hear Simon singing in the grave, a song Jenny sometimes sings along with the crowds on the Heath on a Bank Holiday Monday:

‘Now if you want a ’igh old time

Just take the tip from me,

Why ’Ampstead, ’appy ’Ampstead is

The place to ’ave a spree.’

Simon’s Pa wasn’t even looking at us, but somehow he knew we were there, for he called out, ‘Well, little missies, wha’re you wanting?’

Simon stopped singing. His Pa said, ‘Come out from there, all three of youse.’

Lavinia and I looked at each other, but before we could decide what to do, Ivy May had stepped out from behind the headstone, and we had no choice but to follow.

‘Please, sir, we want to see Simon.’ I was surprised that I called him sir.

He seemed surprised too, looking at us as if he couldn’t believe we were there. Then he suddenly shouted into the hole, ‘Boy, you got visitors!’

After a moment Simon’s head popped out of the grave. He stared at us.

‘Well, naughty boy,’ Lavinia said, ‘aren’t you going to say anything?’

‘Can we switch places for a bit, our Pa?’ he said.

‘’Tain’t much room down there for me and Joe,’ Simon’s Pa said. Simon didn’t say anything, and his Pa chuckled. ‘Oh well, then, go on there with your girlies.’

Simon climbed out and his Pa climbed in, grinning at us before disappearing into the grave. Simon pulled the bucket up and dumped it into the wooden box. He was very muddy.

‘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 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 goodbye.

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.

JENNY WHITBY

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.