Falling Angels. Tracy Chevalier
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stars. The pickaxe 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 towards 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 my 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.
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.
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 recognised 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,’ said she, 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.