Falling Angels Read online

  I rose very early this morning and managed to find a bit of crape I had saved after my aunt’s mourning. I had hidden it away because I was meant to have burned it and knew Livy would be horrified to see it in the house. There was not enough of it to trim both our dresses, so I did hers, with a bit left over for my hat. By the time I had finished sewing, Livy was up, and she was so delighted with the effect of the crape that she didn’t ask where I’d got it from.

  What with the little sleep and the waking early I was so tired by the time we reached the cemetery that I almost cried to see the blue silk Kitty Coleman was wearing. It was an affront to the eyes, like a peacock spreading its feathers at a funeral. It made me feel quite shabby and I was embarrassed even to stand next to her, as doing so begged comparisons and reminded me that my figure is not what it once was.

  The one comfort I could take—and it is a shameful one that I shall ask God’s forgiveness for—was that her daughter, Maude, is so plain. I felt proud to see Livy look so well next to drab little Maude.

  I was of course as civil as I could be, but it was clear that Kitty Coleman was bored with me. And then she made cutting remarks about Livy, and said disrespectful things—not exactly about the Queen, but I couldn’t help feeling that Victoria had in some way been slighted. And she made my poor Albert so tongue-tied he said something completely out of character. I could not bring myself even to ask him afterward what he meant.

  Never mind—she and I shall not have to see each other again. In all the years we have owned adjacent graves at the cemetery, this is the first time we’ve met. With luck it won’t happen again, though I shall always worry that we will. I shan’t enjoy the cemetery so much now, I’m afraid.

  Albert Waterhouse

  Damned good-looking woman. I don’t know what I was thinking, saying what I said, though. Shall make it up to Trudy tomorrow by getting her some of her favorite violet sweeties.

  I was glad to meet Richard Coleman, though, urn and all. (What’s done is done, I say to Trudy. It’s up and there’s no use complaining now.) He’s got a rather good position at a bank. They live down the bottom of the hill, and from what he says it could be just the place for us if we do decide to move from Islington. There’s a good local cricket team he could introduce me to as well. Useful chap.

  I don’t envy him his wife, pretty as she is. More of a handful than I’d like. Livy is trouble enough.

  Simon Field

  I stay down the grave awhile after the girls have gone. There don’t seem no reason to come out. Our pa don’t bother to come after me, or stand at the top of the hole and shout. He knows where he can get me when he wants. “This cemetery has a high wall round it,” he always says. “You can climb out but in the end you always come back through the front gate, feetfirst.”

  The sky’s pretty from eight feet down. It looks the color of that girl’s fur. Her muff, she called it. The fur was so soft. I wanted to put my face in it the way I saw her do.

  I lie back on the ground and watch the sky. Sometime a bird flies across, high above me. Bits of dirt from the sides of the hole crumble and fall on my face. I don’t worry about the hole collapsing. For the deeper graves we use grave boards to shore up the sides, but we don’t bother with little ones like this. This one’s in clay, good and damp so it holds up. It’s happened before, the hole caving in, but mostly in sand, or when the clay’s dried out. Men have got killed down graves. Our pa always tells me to put a hand over my face and stick my other hand up if I’m down a grave and it falls in. Then I’ll have an air hole through the dirt and they can see by my fingers where I am.

  Someone comes then and looks into the grave. He’s black against the light, so I can’t see who it is. But I know it’s not our pa—he don’t smell of the bottle.

  “What are you doing down there, Simon?” the man says.

  Then I know who it is. I jump to my feet and brush the dirt off my back and bum and legs.

  “Just resting, sir.”

  “You’re not paid to rest.”

  “I’m not paid nothing, sir,” I say before I can stop myself.

  “Oh? I should think you earn plenty from all you learn here. You’re learning a trade.”

  “Learning don’t feed me, sir.”

  “Enough of your insolence, Simon. You are but a servant of the London Cemetery Company. There are plenty more waiting outside the gate who would gladly take your place. Don’t you forget that. Now, have you finished that grave?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then cover it over and go and find your father. He should be putting away the tools. God knows he needs the help. I don’t know why I keep him on.”

  I know why. Our pa knows this place better’n anybody. He can take apart any grave, remember who’s buried how far down, and whether it’s sand or clay. He learned it all from our granpa. And he’s fast digging when he wants to be. His arms are hard as rocks. He’s best when he’s had a bit of the bottle but not too much. Then he and Joe dig and laugh and I haul up and dump the bucket. But once he’s had too much it’s Joe and me does all the digging and dumping.

  I look round for the long tree branch with the stumps on it what I use to climb out the little graves. Our pa must’ve taken it out.

  “Mr. Jackson,” I call, but he’s gone already. I shout again but he don’t come back. Our pa will think l’ve got out and covered the grave—he won’t come back either.

  I try to dig toeholds into the sides of the hole so I can climb out, but there’s no spade, only my hands, and the ground’s too hard. ‘Sides, it’s firm now but I don’t know for sure it’ll last. I don’t want it to cave in on me.

  It’s cold in the hole now I’m stuck in it. I squat on my heels and wrap my arms round my legs. Every now and again I call out. There’s four other graves being dug today and a couple of monuments going up, but none of them near me. Still, maybe a visitor will hear me, or one of them girls’ll come back. Sometimes I hear voices and I call out, “Help! Help!” But no one comes. People stay away from graves just dug. They think something’s going to pop out the hole and grab ‘em.

  The sky over me is going dark gray and I hear the bell ringing to tell visitors the cemetery’s shutting. There’s a boy goes round every day ringing it. I yell till my throat hurts but the bell drowns me out.

  After a time the bell stops and after that it’s dark. I jump up and down to get warm and then I crouch down again and hug my knees.

  In the dark the hole starts to smell stronger of clay and wet things. There’s an underground branch of the Fleet River runs through the cemetery. Feels close by.

  The sky goes clear of clouds and I start to see little pricks of stars, more and more appearing till the patch of sky above me is full, like someone’s sprinkled flour on the sky and is about to roll out dough on it.

  I watch them stars all night. There’s nothing else to do in the grave. I see things in ‘em—a horse, a pickax, a spoon. Sometimes I look away and back again and they’ve moved a little. After a while the horse disappears off the edge of the sky, then the spoon. Once I see a star streak ’cross the sky. I wonder where it goes when it does that.

  I think about them girls, the one with the muff and the one with the pretty face. They’re tucked up in their beds, all toasty warm. I wish I was like them.

  It’s not so bad as long as I don’t move. When I move it hurts like someone’s hitting me with a plank of wood. After a time I can’t move at all. My blood must be frozen.

  The hardest part is toward the end of the night, when it might be getting light but it don’t yet. Our pa says that’s when most people die ‘cause they can’t wait any longer for the day to start. I watch the stars. The pickax disappears and I cry a little bit and then I must fall asleep because when I look up again the stars are gone and it’s light and the tears have frozen on my cheeks.

  It gets lighter and lighter but no one comes. My mouth is stuck together, I’m so thirsty.

  Then I hear the hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy,�
�� which our pa likes to whistle when he’s working. It’s funny ‘cause he’s not been inside a church in years. The whistling gets closer and closer and I try to call out but it hurts too much to make a noise.

  I hear him walking round the hole, laying down boards and then the green carpets what look like grass, to make the ground round the grave look nice and neat. Then he lays the flat ropes across the hole that’ll go under the coffin for lowering it, and then the two wooden bearers they lay the coffin on, one each end of the hole. He don’t look down and see me. He’s dug so many holes he don’t need to look in ‘em.

  I try to open my mouth but can’t. Then I hear the horses snorting and their halters creaking and the wheels crunching on the path and I know I have to get out or I never will. I straighten my legs, screaming from the pain ‘cept there’s no sound ’cause I still can’t open my mouth. I manage to stagger to my feet and then I get my mouth working and call out, “Pa! Pa!” I sound like one of them crows up in the trees. At first nothing happens. I call again and our pa leans over the hole and squints at me.

  “Jesus, boy! Wha’re you doing there?”

  “Get me out, our Pa! Get me out!”

  Our pa lays himself down the edge of the hole and holds out his arms. “Hurry, boy! Take my hands.” But I can’t reach him. Our pa looks toward the sound of the horses and shakes his head. “No time, boy. No time.” He jumps up and goes away and I yell again.

  Our pa comes back with Mr. Jackson, who stares down at me with a terrible look on his face. He don’t say nothing, but goes away while our pa just stands there looking after him. Then Mr. Jackson is back again and throws down the rope we use to measure how deep we’ve dug. There’s a knot in it every foot. I grab a knot and hold on and he and our pa pull me up out the hole so I land on the green carpet that’s like grass. I jump up, though I hurt all over, and there I am, standing in front of the undertakers in their top hats and the boy mutes in their tiny black coats and the horses nodding so the black feathers strapped to their heads move. Behind the carriage holding the coffin are the mourners in black, all staring at me. I want to laugh at the looks they give me, but I see Mr. Jackson’s awful face and I run away.

  Later, after our pa’s got rum down me and sat me by the fire with a blanket, he knocks me round the ears. “Don’t ever do that again, boy,” he says—like I planned to stay down the hole all night. “I’ll lose me job and then where’ll we be?” Then Mr. Jackson comes and whips me to make sure I’ve learned my lesson. I don’t care, though, I hardly feel the whip. Nothing can ever hurt so bad as the cold down that grave.

  DECEMBER 1901

  Richard Coleman

  I told Kitty we’ve been invited for New Year’s by the same people as last year. She was quiet, looking at me with those dark brown eyes that seduced me years ago but now simply judge me. If she hadn’t looked at me like that I might not have added what I did.

  “I’ve already told them we’ve accepted,” I said, although I hadn’t yet. “With pleasure.”

  We shall go on accepting their invitations every year until Kitty becomes my wife again.

  MARCH 1903

  Lavinia Waterhouse

  It was nothing short of a miracle. My best friend at the bottom of our garden! Can anything be more perfect than that?

  I was feeling decidedly melancholy this morning as I brushed my hair, looking out of the window into our new garden. Although it is a sweet little patch, and Ivy May and I have a lovely bedroom looking out onto it, I couldn’t help feeling a pang for our old house. It was smaller, and on a busy street, and not on the doorstep of a place as lovely as Hampstead Heath. But it was where I was born, and full of memories of my childhood. I wanted to take the bit of wallpaper in the hallway where Papa marked how tall Ivy May and I had grown every year, but he said I mustn’t because it would damage the wall. I did cry as we left.

  Then out of the corner of my eye I saw a fluttering, and when I looked over at the house backing onto ours, there was a girl hanging out of a window and waving! Well. I squinted and after a moment recognized her—it was Maude, the girl from the cemetery. I knew we had moved close to the cemetery but did not know she was here as well. I picked up my handkerchief and waved until my arm ached. Even Ivy May, who never pays attention unless I pinch her (and not even then sometimes), got up from her bed to see what the fuss was about.

  Maude called out something to me, but she was too far away and I couldn’t hear. Then she pointed down at the fence separating our gardens and held up ten fingers. We are such kindred spirits that I understood immediately she meant we should meet there in ten minutes. I blew her a kiss and ducked inside to get dressed as quick as I could.

  “Mama! Mama!” I shouted all the way down the stairs. Mama came running from the kitchen, thinking I was ill or had hurt myself. But when I told her about Maude she seemed not the least interested. She has not wanted me to see the Colemans, though she would never say why. Perhaps she has forgot them by now, but I have never forgot Maude, even after all this time. I knew we were destined to be together.

  I ran outside and to the garden fence, which was too high to see over. I called to Maude and she answered, and after a moment her face appeared at the top of the fence.

  “Oh! How did you get up there?” I cried.

  “I’m standing on the birdbath,” she said, wobbling a bit. Then she managed to pull herself up, and before I knew it she’d tumbled over the fence and onto the ground! The poor dear was rather scratched by the rosebushes on the way down. I threw my arms around her and kissed her and brought her to Mama, who I am happy to say was very sweet to her and painted her scratches with iodine.

  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 realized 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 signaled 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 neighbors 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 neighbors 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 criticizing Albert’s judgment. He knows best in these matters, and to be sure I am very pleased with our new little house, a story higher than our Islington house and with a garden full of roses rather than the neighbor’s chickens scrabbling in the dirt.

  But my heart did sink when I discovered that not only are we neighbors with the Colemans, but their house backs onto ours. And of course it is yet a story 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.