Falling Angels. Tracy ChevalierЧитать онлайн книгу.
cried. Simon and I laughed.
‘Our Pa says lots of people’ve been buried alive,’ Simon said. ‘He says he’s heard ’em, scrabbling inside their coffins as he’s tossing dirt on ’em.’
‘Really? Mummy’s afraid of being buried alive,’ I said.
‘I can’t bear to hear this,’ Lavinia cried, covering her ears. ‘I’m going back.’ She went through the graves towards her parents. I wanted to follow her but Simon began talking again.
‘Our Granpa’s buried here in the meadow.’
‘He never was.’
‘He is.’
‘Show me his grave.’
Simon pointed at a row of wooden crosses over the path from us. Paupers’ graves – Mummy had told me about them, explaining that land had been set aside for people who had no money to pay for a proper plot.
‘Which cross is his?’ I asked.
‘He don’t have one. Cross don’t last. We planted a rosebush, there, so we always know where he is. Stole it from one of the gardens down the bottom of the hill.’
I could see a stump of a bush, cut right back for the winter. We live at the bottom of the hill, and we have lots of roses at the front. Perhaps that rosebush was ours.
‘He worked here too,’ Simon said. ‘Same as our Pa and me. Said it’s the nicest cemetery in London. Wouldn’t have wanted to be buried in any of t’others. He had stories to tell about t’others. Piles of bones everywhere. Bodies buried with just a sack of soil over ’em. Phew, the smell!’ Simon waved his hand in front of his nose. ‘And men snatching bodies in the night. Here he were at least safe and sound, with the boundary wall being so high, and the spikes on top.’
‘I have to go now,’ I said. I didn’t want to look scared like Lavinia, but I didn’t like hearing about the smell of bodies.
Simon shrugged. ‘I could show you things.’
‘Maybe another time.’ I ran to catch up with our families, who were walking along together. Lavinia took my hand and squeezed it and I was so pleased I kissed her.
As we walked hand in hand up the hill I could see out of the corner of my eye a figure like a ghost jumping from stone to stone, following us and then running ahead. I wished we had not left him.
I nudged Lavinia. ‘He’s a funny boy, isn’t he?’ I said, nodding at his shadow as he went behind an obelisk.
‘I like him,’ Lavinia said, ‘even if he talks about awful things.’
‘Don’t you wish we could run off the way he does?’
Lavinia smiled at me. ‘Shall we follow him?’
I hadn’t expected her to say that. I glanced at the others – only Lavinia’s sister was looking at us. ‘Let’s,’ I whispered.
She squeezed my hand as we ran off to find him.
I don’t dare tell anyone or I will be accused of treason, but I was terribly excited to hear the Queen is dead. The dullness I have felt since New Year’s vanished, and I had to work very hard to appear appropriately sober. The turning of the century was merely a change in numbers, but now we shall have a true change in leadership, and I can’t help thinking Edward is more truly representative of us than his mother.
For now, though, nothing has changed. We were expected to troop up to the cemetery and make a show of mourning, even though none of the Royal Family is buried there, nor is the Queen to be. Death is there, and that is enough, I suppose.
That blasted cemetery. I have never liked it.
To be fair, it is not the fault of the place itself, which has a lugubrious charm, with its banks of graves stacked on top of one another – granite headstones, Egyptian obelisks, gothic spires, plinths topped with columns, weeping ladies, angels, and of course, urns – winding up the hill to the glorious Lebanon Cedar at the top. I am even willing to overlook some of the more preposterous monuments – ostentatious representations of a family’s status. But the sentiments that the place encourages in mourners are too overblown for my taste. Moreover, it is the Colemans’ cemetery, not my family’s. I miss the little churchyard in Lincolnshire where Mummy and Daddy are buried and where there is now a stone for Harry, even if his body lies somewhere in southern Africa.
The excess of it all – which our own ridiculous urn now contributes to – is too much. How utterly out of scale it is to its surroundings! If only Richard had consulted me first. It was unlike him – for all his faults he is a rational man, and must have seen that the urn was too big. I suspect the hand of his mother in the choosing. Her taste has always been formidable.
It was amusing today to watch him splutter over the angel that has been erected on the grave next to the urn (far too close to it, as it happens – they look as if they may bash each other at any moment). It was all I could do to keep a straight face.
‘How dare they inflict their taste on us,’ he said. ‘The thought of having to look at this sentimental nonsense every time we visit turns my stomach.’
‘It is sentimental, but harmless,’ I replied. ‘At least the marble’s Italian.’
‘I don’t give a hang about the marble! I don’t want that angel next to our grave.’
‘Have you thought that perhaps they’re saying the same about the urn?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with our urn!’
‘And they would say that there’s nothing wrong with their angel.’
‘The angel looks ridiculous next to the urn. It’s far too close, for one thing.’
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘You didn’t leave them room for anything.’
‘Of course I did. Another urn would have looked fine. Perhaps a slightly smaller one.’
I raised my eyebrows the way I do when Maude has said something foolish. ‘Or even the same size,’ Richard conceded. ‘Yes, that could have looked quite impressive, a pair of urns. Instead we have this nonsense.’
And on and on we went. While I don’t think much of the blank-faced angels dotted around the cemetery, they bother me less than the urns, which seem a peculiar thing to put on a grave when one thinks that they were used by the Romans as receptacles for human ashes. A pagan symbol for a Christian society. But then, so is all the Egyptian symbolism one sees here as well. When I pointed this out to Richard he huffed and puffed but had no response other than to say, ‘That urn adds dignity and grace to the Coleman grave.’
I don’t know about that. Utter banality and misplaced symbolism are rather more like it. I had the sense not to say so.
He was still going on about the angel when who should appear but its owners, dressed in full mourning. Albert and Gertrude Waterhouse – no relation to the painter, they admitted. (Just as well – I want to scream when I see his overripe paintings at the Tate. The Lady of Shalott in her boat looks as if she has just taken opium.) We had never met them before, though they have owned their grave for several years. They are rather nondescript – he a ginger-bearded, smiling type, she one of those short women whose waists have been ruined by children so that their dresses never fit properly. Her hair is crinkly rather than curly, and escapes its pins.
Her elder daughter, Lavinia, who looks to be Maude’s age, has lovely hair, glossy brown and curly. She’s a bossy, spoiled little thing – apparently her father bought the angel at her insistence. Richard nearly choked when he heard this. And she was wearing a black dress trimmed with crape – rather vulgar and unnecessary for a child that young.