Copyright

The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2001

Copyright © Tracy Chevalier 2001

Chapter head motifs © Neil Gower

Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Cover image © Colin Underhill / Alamy Stock Photo

Tracy Chevalier asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007217236

Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007324354

Version: 2019-06-07

Dedication

For Jonathan, again

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

January 1901

Kitty Coleman

Richard Coleman

Maude Coleman

Kitty Coleman

Lavinia Waterhouse

Gertrude Waterhouse

Albert Waterhouse

Simon Field

December 1901

Richard Coleman

March 1903

Lavinia Waterhouse

Maude Coleman

Gertrude Waterhouse

June 1903

Maude Coleman

Jenny Whitby

November 1903

Kitty Coleman

May 1904

Maude Coleman

Kitty Coleman

Lavinia Waterhouse

Edith Coleman

Simon Field

January 1905

Jenny Whitby

October 1905

Gertrude Waterhouse

February 1906

Maude Coleman

Kitty Coleman

April 1906

Lavinia Waterhouse

Maude Coleman

Simon Field

Jenny Whitby

Lavinia Waterhouse

Richard Coleman

Kitty Coleman

May 1906

Albert Waterhouse

July 1906

Edith Coleman

Maude Coleman

Simon Field

Jenny Whitby

September 1906

Albert Waterhouse

October 1906

Lavinia Waterhouse

Gertrude Waterhouse

Maude Coleman

Kitty Coleman

Simon Field

Lavinia Waterhouse

November 1906

Jenny Whitby

Edith Coleman

Richard Coleman

February 1907

Gertrude Waterhouse

Jenny Whitby

July 1907

Maude Coleman

February 1908

Kitty Coleman

Dorothy Baker

March 1908

Simon Field

Lavinia Waterhouse

Maude Coleman

Richard Coleman

May 1908

Albert Waterhouse

Kitty Coleman

Richard Coleman

Edith Coleman

June 1908

Lavinia Waterhouse

Gertrude Waterhouse

Maude Coleman

Simon Field

Kitty Coleman

Lavinia Waterhouse

Maude Coleman

Lavinia Waterhouse

Jenny Whitby

Ivy May Waterhouse

Simon Field

Maude Coleman

Kitty Coleman

Simon Field

John Jackson

Richard Coleman

Lavinia Waterhouse

Gertrude Waterhouse

Edith Coleman

Jenny Whitby

Albert Waterhouse

Maude Coleman

Dorothy Baker

Simon Field

May 1910

Lavinia Waterhouse

Maude Coleman

Simon Field

Gertrude Waterhouse

Albert Waterhouse

Richard Coleman

Dorothy Baker

Simon Field

Lavinia Waterhouse

Maude Coleman

Simon Field

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By Tracy Chevalier

About the Publisher

January 1901

KITTY COLEMAN

I woke this morning with a stranger in my bed. The head of blond hair beside me was decidedly not my husband’s. I did not know whether to be shocked or amused.

Well, I thought, here’s a novel way to begin the new century.

Then I remembered the evening before and felt rather sick. I wondered where Richard was in this huge house and how we were meant to swap back. Everyone else here – the man beside me included – was far more experienced in the mechanics of these matters than I. Than we. Much as Richard bluffed last night, he was just as much in the dark as me, though he was more keen. Much more keen. It made me wonder.

I nudged the sleeper with my elbow, gently at first and then harder until at last he woke with a snort.

‘Out you go,’ I said. And he did, without a murmur. Thankfully he didn’t try to kiss me. How I stood that beard last night I’ll never remember – the claret helped, I suppose. My cheeks are red with scratches.

When Richard came in a few minutes later, clutching his clothes in a bundle, I could barely look at him. I was embarrassed, and angry too – angry that I should feel embarrassed and yet not expect him to feel so as well. It was all the more infuriating that he simply kissed me, said, ‘Hello, darling,’ and began to dress. I could smell her perfume on his neck.

Yet I could say nothing. As I myself have so often said, I am open-minded – I pride myself on it. Those words bite now.

I lay watching Richard dress, and found myself thinking of my brother. Harry always used to tease me for thinking too much – though he refused to concede that he was at all responsible for encouraging me. But all those evenings spent reviewing with me what his tutors had taught him in the morning – he said it was to help him remember it – what did that do but teach me to think and speak my mind? Perhaps he regretted it later. I shall never know now. I am only just out of mourning for him, but some days it feels as if I am still clutching that telegram.

Harry would be mortified to see where his teaching has led. Not that one has to be clever for this sort of thing – most of them downstairs are stupid as buckets of coal, my blond beard among them. Not one could I have a proper conversation with. I had to resort to the wine.

Frankly I’m relieved not to be of this set – to paddle in its shallows occasionally is quite enough for me. Richard, I suspect, feels differently, but he has married the wrong wife if he wanted that sort of life. Or perhaps it is I who chose badly – though I would never have thought so once, back when we were mad for each other.

I think Richard has made me do this to show me he is not as conventional as I feared. But it has had the opposite effect on me. He has become everything I had not thought he would when we married. He has become ordinary.

I feel so flat this morning. Daddy and Harry would have laughed at me, but I secretly hoped that the change in the century would bring a change in us all; that England would miraculously slough off her shabby black coat to reveal something glittering and new. It is only eleven hours into the twentieth century, but I know very well that nothing has changed but a number.

Enough. They are to ride today, which is not for me – I shall escape with my coffee to the library. It will undoubtedly be empty.

RICHARD COLEMAN

I thought being with another woman would bring Kitty back, that jealousy would open her bedroom door to me again. Yet two weeks later she has not let me in any more than before.

I do not like to think that I am a desperate man, but I do not understand why my wife is being so difficult. I have provided a decent life for her and yet she is still unhappy, though she cannot – or will not – say why.

It is enough to drive any man to change wives, if only for a night.

MAUDE COLEMAN

When Daddy saw the angel on the grave next to ours he cried, ‘What the devil!’

Mummy just laughed.

I looked and looked until my neck ached. It hung above us, one foot forward, a hand pointing towards heaven. It was wearing a long robe with a square neck, and it had loose hair that flowed onto its wings. It was looking down towards me, but no matter how hard I stared it did not seem to see me.

Mummy and Daddy began to argue. Daddy does not like the angel. I don’t know if Mummy likes it or not – she didn’t say. I think the urn Daddy has had placed on our own grave bothers her more.

I wanted to sit down but didn’t dare. It was very cold, too cold to sit on stone, and besides, the Queen is dead, which I think means no one can sit down, or play, or do anything comfortable.

I heard the bells ringing last night when I was in bed, and when Nanny came in this morning she told me the Queen died yesterday evening. I ate my porridge very slowly, to see if it tasted different from yesterday’s, now that the Queen is gone. But it tasted just the same – too salty. Mrs Baker always makes it that way.

Everyone we saw on our way to the cemetery was dressed in black. I wore a grey wool dress and a white pinafore, which I might have worn anyway but which Nanny said was fine for a girl to wear when someone died. Girls don’t have to wear black. Nanny helped me to dress. She let me wear my black and white plaid coat and matching hat, but she wasn’t sure about my rabbit’s-fur muff, and I had to ask Mummy, who said it didn’t matter what I wore. Mummy wore a blue silk dress and wrap, which did not please Daddy.

While they were arguing about the angel I buried my face in my muff. The fur is very soft. Then I heard a noise, like stone being tapped, and when I raised my head I saw a pair of blue eyes looking at me from over the headstone next to ours. I stared at them, and then the face of a boy appeared from behind the stone. His hair was full of mud, and his cheeks were dirty with it too. He winked at me, then disappeared behind the headstone.

I looked at Mummy and Daddy, who had walked a little way up the path to view the angel from another place. They had not seen the boy. I walked backwards between the graves, my eyes on them. When I was sure they were not looking I ducked behind the stone.

The boy was leaning against it, sitting on his heels.

‘Why do you have mud in your hair?’ I asked.

‘Been down a grave,’ he said.

I looked at him closely. There was mud on him everywhere – on his jacket, on his knees, on his shoes. There were even bits of it in his eyelashes.

‘Can I touch the fur?’ he asked.

‘It’s a muff,’ I said. ‘My muff.’

‘Can I touch it?’

‘No.’ Then I felt bad saying that, so I held out the muff.

The boy spat on his fingers and wiped them on his jacket, then reached out and stroked the fur.

‘What were you doing down a grave?’ I asked.

‘Helping our Pa.’

‘What does your father do?’

‘He digs the graves, of course. I helps him.’

Then we heard a sound, like a kitten mewing. We peeked over the headstone and a girl standing in the path looked straight into my eyes, just as I had with the boy. She was dressed all in black, and was very pretty, with bright brown eyes and long lashes and creamy skin. Her brown hair was long and curly and so much nicer than mine, which hangs flat like laundry and isn’t one colour or another. Grandmother calls mine ditch-water blonde, which may be true but isn’t very kind. Grandmother always speaks her mind.

The girl reminded me of my favourite chocolates, whipped hazelnut creams, and I knew just from looking at her that I wanted her for my best friend. I don’t have a best friend, and have been praying for one. I have often wondered, as I sit in St Anne’s getting colder and colder (why are churches always cold?), if prayers really work, but it seems this time God has answered them.

‘Use your handkerchief, Livy dear, there’s a darling.’ The girl’s mother was coming up the path, holding the hand of a younger girl. A tall man with a ginger beard followed them. The younger girl was not so pretty. Though she looked like the other girl, her chin was not so pointed, her hair not so curly, her lips not so big. Her eyes were hazel rather than brown, and she looked at everything as if nothing surprised her. She spotted the boy and me immediately.

‘Lavinia,’ the older girl said, shrugging her shoulders and tossing her head so that her curls bounced. ‘Mama, I want you and Papa to call me Lavinia, not Livy.’

I decided then and there that I would never call her Livy.

‘Don’t be rude to your mother, Livy,’ the man said. ‘You’re Livy to us and that’s that. Livy is a fine name. When you’re older we’ll call you Lavinia.’

Lavinia frowned at the ground.

‘Now stop all this crying,’ he continued. ‘She was a good queen and she lived a long life, but there’s no need for a girl of five to weep quite so much. Besides, you’ll frighten Ivy May.’ He nodded at the sister.

I looked at Lavinia again. As far as I could see she was not crying at all, though she was twisting a handkerchief around her fingers. I waved at her to come.

Lavinia smiled. When her parents turned their backs she stepped off the path and behind the headstone.

‘I’m five as well,’ I said when she was standing next to us. ‘Though I’ll be six in March.’

‘Is that so?’ Lavinia said. ‘I’ll be six in February.’

‘Why do you call your parents Mama and Papa? I call mine Mummy and Daddy.’

‘Mama and Papa is much more elegant.’ Lavinia stared at the boy, who was kneeling by the headstone. ‘What is your name, please?’

‘Maude,’ I answered before I realised she was speaking to the boy.

‘Simon.’

‘You are a very dirty boy.’

‘Stop,’ I said.

Lavinia looked at me. ‘Stop what?’

‘He’s a gravedigger, that’s why he’s muddy.’

Lavinia took a step backwards.

‘An apprentice gravedigger,’ Simon said. ‘I was a mute for the undertakers first, but our Pa took me on once I could use a spade.’

‘There were three mutes at my grandmother’s funeral,’ Lavinia said. ‘One of them was whipped for laughing.’

‘My mother says there are not so many funerals like that any more,’ I said. ‘She says they are too dear and the money should be spent on the living.’

‘Our family always has mutes at its funerals. I shall have mutes at mine.’

‘Are you dying, then?’ Simon asked.

‘Of course not!’

‘Did you leave your nanny at home as well?’ I asked, thinking we should talk about something else before Lavinia got upset and left.

She flushed. ‘We don’t have a nanny. Mama is perfectly able to look after us herself.’

I didn’t know any children who didn’t have a nanny.

Lavinia was looking at my muff. ‘Do you like my angel, then?’ she asked. ‘My father let me choose it.’

‘My father doesn’t like it,’ I declared, though I knew I shouldn’t repeat what Daddy had said. ‘He called it sentimental nonsense.’

Lavinia frowned. ‘Well, Papa hates your urn. Anyway, what’s wrong with my angel?’

‘I like it,’ the boy said.

‘So do I,’ I lied.

‘I think it’s lovely,’ Lavinia sighed. ‘When I go to heaven I want to be taken up by an angel just like that.’

‘It’s the nicest angel in the cemetery,’ the boy said. ‘And I know ’em all. There’s thirty-one of ’em. D’you want me to show ’em to you?’

‘Thirty-one is a prime number,’ I said. ‘It isn’t divisible by anything except one and itself.’ Daddy had just explained to me about prime numbers, though I hadn’t understood it all.

Simon took a piece of coal from his pocket and began to draw on the back of the headstone. Soon he had drawn a skull and crossbones – round eyesockets, a black triangle for a nose, rows of square teeth, and a shadow scratched on one side of the face.

‘Don’t do that,’ I said. He ignored me. ‘You can’t do that.’

‘I have. Lots. Look at the stones all round us.’

I looked at our family grave. At the very bottom of the plinth that held the urn, a tiny skull and crossbones had been scratched. Daddy would be furious if he knew it were there. I saw then that every stone around us had a skull and crossbones on it. I had never seen them before.

‘I’m going to draw one on every grave in the cemetery,’ he continued.

‘Why do you draw them?’ I asked. ‘Why a skull and crossbones?’

‘Reminds you what’s underneath, don’t it? It’s all bones down there, whatever you may put on the grave.’

‘Naughty boy,’ Lavinia said.

Simon stood up. ‘I’ll draw one for you,’ he said. ‘I’ll draw one on the back of your angel.’

‘Don’t you dare,’ Lavinia said.

Simon immediately dropped the piece of coal.

Lavinia looked around as if she were about to leave.

‘I know a poem,’ Simon said suddenly.

‘What poem? Tennyson?’

‘Dunno whose son. It’s like this:

‘There was a young man at Nunhead

Who awoke in his coffin of lead;

“It is cosy enough,”

He remarked in a huff,

“But I wasn’t aware I was dead.”’

‘Ugh! That’s disgusting!’ Lavinia 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.

KITTY COLEMAN

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.

Of course Maude has taken an instant liking to the girl. When we all took a turn around the cemetery together Lavinia kept dabbing at her eyes with a black-edged handkerchief, weeping as we passed the grave of a little boy dead fifty years. I just hope Maude doesn’t begin copying her. I can’t bear such nonsense. Maude is very sensible but I could see how attracted she was to the girl’s behaviour. They disappeared off together – Lord knows what they got up to. They came back the best of friends.

I think it highly unlikely Gertrude Waterhouse and I would ever be the best of friends. When she said yet again how sad it was about the Queen, I couldn’t help but comment that Lavinia seemed to be enjoying her mourning tremendously.

Gertrude Waterhouse said nothing for a moment, then remarked, ‘That’s a lovely dress. Such an unusual shade of blue.’

Richard snorted. We’d had a fierce argument about my dress. In truth I was now rather embarrassed about my choice – not one adult I’d seen since leaving the house was wearing anything but black. My dress was dark blue, but still I stood out far more than I’d intended.

I decided to be bold. ‘Yes, I didn’t think black quite the thing to wear for Queen Victoria,’ I explained. ‘Things are changing now. It will be different with her son. I’m sure Edward will make a fine king. He’s been waiting long enough.’

‘Too long, if you ask me,’ Mr Waterhouse said. ‘Poor chap, he’s past his prime.’ He looked abashed, as if surprised that he had voiced his opinion.

‘Not with the ladies, apparently,’ I said. I couldn’t resist.

‘Oh!’ Gertrude Waterhouse looked horrified.

‘For God’s sake, Kitty!’ Richard hissed. ‘My wife is always saying things she shouldn’t,’ he said apologetically to Albert Waterhouse, who chuckled uneasily.

‘Never mind, I’m sure she makes up for it in other ways,’ he said.

There was a silence as we all took in this remark. For one dizzy moment I wondered if he could possibly be referring to New Year’s Eve. But of course he would know nothing about that – that is not his set. I myself have tried hard not to think about it. Richard has not mentioned it since, but I feel now that I died a little death that night, and nothing will ever be quite the same, new King or no.

Then the girls returned, all out of breath, providing a welcome distraction. The Waterhouses quickly made their excuses and left, which I think everyone was relieved about except the girls. Lavinia grew tearful, and I feared Maude would too. Afterwards she wouldn’t stop talking about her new friend until at last I promised I would try to arrange for them to meet. I am hoping she will forget eventually, as the Waterhouses are just the kind of family who make me feel worse about myself.

LAVINIA WATERHOUSE

I had an adventure at the cemetery today, with my new friend and a naughty boy. I’ve been to the cemetery many times before, but I’ve never been allowed out of Mama’s sight. Today, though, Mama and Papa met the family that owns the grave next to ours, and while they were talking about the things grown-ups go on about, Maude and I went off with Simon, the boy who works at the cemetery. We ran up the Egyptian Avenue and all around the vaults circling the cedar of Lebanon. It is so delicious there, I almost fainted from excitement.

Then Simon took us on a tour of the angels. He showed us a wonderful child-angel near the Terrace Catacombs. I had never seen it before. It wore a little tunic and had short wings, and its head was turned away from us as if it were angry and had just stamped its foot. It is so lovely I almost wished I had chosen it for our grave. But it was not in the book of angels at the mason’s yard. Anyway I am sure Mama and Papa agree that the one I chose for our grave is the best.

Simon took us to other angels close by and then he said he wanted to show us a grave he and his father had just dug. Well. I didn’t want to see it but Maude said she did and I didn’t want her to think I was afraid. So we went and looked down into it, and although it was frightening, I also got the strangest feeling that I wanted to lie down in that hole. Of course I didn’t do such a thing, not in my lovely dress.

Then as we turned to go a horrid man appeared. He had a very red face and bristles on his cheeks, and he smelled of drink. I couldn’t help but scream, even though I knew right away it was Simon’s father as they have the same blue eyes like pieces of sky. He began shouting terrible things at Simon about where had he been and why were we there, and he used the most awful words. Papa would whip us if Ivy May or I were to use such words. And Papa is not a whipping man. That’s how bad they were.

Then the man chased Simon round and round the grave until Simon jumped right into it! Well. I didn’t wait to see more – Maude and I ran like fury all the way down the hill. Maude wondered if we shouldn’t go back and see if Simon was all right but I refused, saying our parents would be worried about us. But really I didn’t want to see that man again, as he frightened me. The naughty boy can take care of himself. I am sure he spends much of his time down graves.

So Maude is my new friend, and I hers – though I do not see why such a plain girl should have a beautiful muff, and a nanny too, neither of which I have. And a beautiful mother with such a tiny waist and big dark eyes. I could not look at Mama without feeling a little ashamed. It is really so unfair.

GERTRUDE WATERHOUSE

Once we heard the news I lay awake all night, worrying about our clothes. Albert could wear his black work suit, with jet cufflinks and a black band for his hat. Mourning has always been easier for men. And Ivy May is too young for her clothes to be a concern.

But Livy and I were to be dressed properly for our Queen’s passing. For myself I did not mind so much what I wore, but Livy is so very particular, and difficult if she doesn’t get exactly what she wants. I do hate scenes with her – it is like being led in a dance where I know none of the steps and she all of them, so that I feel tripped up and foolish by the end. And yet she is only five years old! Albert says I am too soft with her, but then he bought her the angel she wanted for the grave when he knows how little money we have for that sort of thing, what with our saving to move house. Still, I can’t fault him for it. It is so important that the grave be a proper reflection of the family’s sentiments to our loved ones. Livy knows that very well, and she was right – the grave did need some attention, especially after that monstrous urn went up next to it.

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 feel 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 afterwards 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 favourite 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, feet first.’

The sky’s pretty from eight feet down. It looks the colour 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. Sometimes 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 I’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 grey 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 pickaxe, 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 towards 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 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.

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 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.

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.

So I went in with the girls and told ’em to do what they liked for half an hour, no more. They was wanting to find a little boy they play with, and I said to be careful and not to let him get cheeky. And to keep an eye on the little girl, Ivy May. She’s of the habit of getting left behind, it seems – though I bet she likes it that way. I made ’em all hold hands. So they run off one way, and I t’other.

November 1903

KITTY COLEMAN

Tonight we went with the Waterhouses to a bonfire on the Heath. The girls wanted to, and the men get on well enough (though Richard privately mocks Albert Waterhouse as a buffoon), and it’s left to Gertrude Waterhouse and me to smile and bear each other’s company as best we can. We stood around an enormous bonfire on Parliament Hill, clutching our sausages and baked potatoes, and marvelling that we were gathered on the very hill where Guy Fawkes waited to see Parliament burn. I watched as people moved closer to or farther away from the heat of the flames, trying to find a spot where they were comfortable. But even if our faces were hot, our backs were cold – like the potatoes, charred on the outside, raw inside.

My threshold to heat is much higher than Richard’s or Maude’s – or most people’s, for that matter. I stepped closer and closer until my cheeks flamed. When I looked around, the ring of people was far behind me – I stood alone by the edge of the fire.

Richard wasn’t even looking at the fire, but up at the clear sky. That is just like him – his love is not heat, but the cold distance of the universe. When we were first courting he would take me, with Harry as chaperone, to observation parties to look at the stars. I thought it most romantic then. Tonight, though, when I followed his gaze up to the starry sky all I felt was the blank space between those pinpricks and me, and it was like a heavy blanket waiting to drop on me. It was almost as suffocating as my fear of being buried alive.

I cannot see what he sees in the stars – he and now Maude, for he has begun taking her with him when he goes out to the Heath at night with his telescope. I haven’t said anything, because there is nothing I can truly complain of, and Maude clearly thrives on his attention. But it brings me low, for I can see him fostering in her the same cold rationality that I discovered in him once we were married.

I am being ridiculous, of course. I too was brought up by my father to be logical, and I despise the sentimentality of the age, as embodied to perfection by the Waterhouses. But I’m secretly glad Maude and Lavinia are friends. Irritating and melodramatic as Lavinia is, she is not cold, and she counterbalances the icy hand of astronomy.

I stood by the fire, everyone around me so cheerful, and thought what an odd creature I am – even I know that. Too much space and I’m frightened, too little and I’m frightened. There is indeed no comfortable place for me – I am too near the fire or too far away.

Behind me, Gertrude Waterhouse stood with an arm around each daughter. Maude stood next to Lavinia, and they were all laughing about something – Maude a little shyly, as if she was not sure she should be sharing the laughter with them. I felt a pang for her.

At times it is painful to be with the Waterhouses. Lavinia may be bossy with her mother, but there is clearly an affection between them that I cannot muster with Maude. After a few hours with them I come away resolved to link my arm with Maude’s when we walk, as Gertrude does with Lavinia. And to be with her more – read to her, help her with her sewing, bring her into the garden with me, take her into town.

It has never been like that with her. Maude’s birth was a shock from which I have not recovered. When I came to from the ether and first held her in my arms I felt as if I were nailed to the bed, trapped by her mouth at my breast. Of course I loved her – love her – but my life as I had imagined it ended on that day. It fed a low feeling in me that resurfaces with increasing frequency.

At least I was lucky in my doctor. When he came to see me a few days after the birth I sent the nurse from the room and told him I wanted no more babies. He took pity on me and explained the timing and the signs to look for, and what I might say to my husband to keep him away during those times. It does not work for every woman, but it has for me, and Richard has never guessed – not that he is often in my bed these days. I had to pay the doctor, of course, an ironic fee – ‘to make certain you’ve understood my lesson’ was how he put it – just the once when my body had recovered. I kept my eyes closed and it wasn’t so bad. It did occur to me that he could use it against me, blackmail me for further payments in the flesh, but he never did. For that and his biology lesson I have always been grateful. I even shed a tear when I later heard he had died. An understanding doctor can come in handy at times.

To be fair to Maude, that trapped feeling had emerged well before her birth. I first felt it one morning when Richard and I were just back from our honeymoon and newly installed in our London house. He kissed me goodbye in my new morning room – which I had chosen to be at the front of the house, overlooking the street rather than the garden, so that I could keep an eye on the world outside – and left to catch his train to work. I watched from the window as he walked away, and felt the same jealousy I had suffered when seeing my brother go off to school. When he had gone round the corner, I turned and looked at the still, quiet room, just on the edge of the city that is the centre of the world, and I began to cry. I was twenty years old, and my life had settled into a long, slow course over which I had no control.

I recovered, of course. I knew very well that I was lucky in many things: to have had an education and a liberal father, to have a husband who is handsome and well enough off that we can afford a cook as well as a live-in maid, and who does not discourage me from bettering myself, even if he is unable to give me the larger world I long for. I dried my tears that morning, grateful that at least my mother-in-law had not been there to see me cry. Small mercies – I thank my God for them.

My marriage is no longer what it once was. Now I dread Richard’s announcement about New Year’s Eve. I do not know that he really takes pleasure from the experience itself. Rather he is doing it to punish me. But I do not think I am capable of being what he wants me to be, of becoming once more the lively wife who thinks the world a reasonable place and he a reasonable man.

If I could do that, or even pretend to, we could spend our New Year’s at home. But I can’t do it.

I tried tonight to quell my black feelings and at least not neglect Maude. As we were leaving the bonfire I went up to her, took her hand and slipped it into the crook of my elbow. Maude jumped as if I had bitten her, then looked guilty for having such a response. She held onto me rather awkwardly, but we managed to remain like that for several minutes before she made an excuse and ran to catch up with her friend. To my shame, I was relieved.

May 1904

MAUDE COLEMAN

I know I shouldn’t say this, but Grandmother always manages to ruin our day when she visits, even before she arrives. Until her letter came yesterday we were having such a lovely time, sitting around the table on the patio and reading out bits from the papers to each other. That is my favourite time with Mummy and Daddy. It was a warm spring day, the flowers in Mummy’s garden were just beginning to bloom, and Mummy for once seemed happy.

Daddy was reading little snippets out from the Mail, and Mummy from the local paper all the crimes committed that week – fraud, wife-beating, and petty theft the most common. She loves the crimes page.

‘Listen to this,’ she said. ‘“James Smithson has appeared before the court charged with stealing his neighbour’s cat. In his defence Mr Smithson said the puss had made off with the Sunday joint and he was only reclaiming his property, now inside the cat.”’

We all three laughed, but when Jenny arrived with the letter Mummy stopped smiling.

‘What on earth am I going to do with her for the day?’ she said when she had finished the letter.

Daddy didn’t answer, but frowned and kept reading his paper.

That was when I suggested visiting the columbarium. I was not entirely certain what a columbarium was, but one had opened at the cemetery, and it sounded grand enough for Grandmother.

‘Good idea, Maude,’ Mummy said. ‘If she’ll agree.’

Daddy looked up from the Mail. ‘I would be very surprised if she agreed to see such an unsavoury thing.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Mummy said. ‘I think it’s rather a clever idea. I’m surprised you don’t, given how much you like urns.’

When I heard the word urn, I knew they would argue, so I ran down to the bottom of the garden to tell Lavinia that we might go to the cemetery the next day. Daddy and Mr Waterhouse have put up ladders so that we can climb the fence more easily, after I sprained my wrist once from falling.

I am rather frightened of Grandmother. She looks as if she has swallowed a fishbone and can’t get it out, and she says things that I would be punished for saying. Today when she arrived she looked at me and said, ‘Lord, child, you are plain. No one would guess you were Kitty’s daughter. Or my granddaughter, for that matter.’ She always likes to remind everyone that she was a beauty when she was younger.

We went up to the morning room, and Grandmother said once again that she did not approve of the colours Mummy had done the room in. I rather like them. They remind me of the workman’s café Jenny sometimes takes me to as a treat, where there is a pot of mustard and a bottle of brown sauce on each table. Perhaps Mummy saw them there and decided to use them in her morning room – though it is hard to imagine Mummy in a workman’s café, with all the smoke and grease and the men who have not shaved. Mummy has always said she prefers a man with smooth skin like Daddy’s.

Mummy ignored Grandmother’s remarks. ‘Coffee, please, Jenny,’ she ordered.

‘Not for me,’ Grandmother said. ‘Just a cup of hot water and a slice of lemon.’

I stood behind them by the window so that I could look out through the venetian blinds. It was dusty outside, what with all the activity in the street – horses pulling carts loaded with milk, coal, ice, the baker’s boy going door to door with his basket of bread, boys bringing letters, maids running errands. Jenny always says she is at war with dust and is losing the battle.

I liked looking out. When I turned back to the room, where dust floated in a shaft of sunlight, it seemed very still.

‘Why are you lurking back there?’ Grandmother said. ‘Come out so we can see you. Play us something on the piano.’

I looked at Mummy, horrified. She knew I hated playing.

She was no help. ‘Go on, Maude,’ she said. ‘Play us something from your last lesson.’

I sat down at the piano and wiped my hands on my pinafore. I knew Grandmother would prefer a hymn to Mozart, so I began to play ‘Abide with me’, which I know Mummy hates. After a few bars Grandmother said, ‘Gracious, child, that’s terrible. Can’t you play better than that?’

I stopped and stared down at the keys; my hands were trembling. I hated Grandmother’s visits.

‘Come, now, Mother Coleman, she’s nine years old,’ Mummy at last defended me. ‘She hasn’t been taking lessons for long.’

‘A girl needs to learn these things. How’s her sewing?’

‘Not good,’ Mummy answered frankly. ‘She’s inherited that from me. But she reads very well. She’s reading Sense and Sensibility, aren’t you, Maude?’

I nodded. ‘And Through the Looking-Glass again. Daddy and I have been recreating the chess game from it.’

‘Reading,’ Grandmother said, her fishbone look even stronger. ‘That won’t get a girl anywhere. It’ll just put ideas in her head. Especially rubbish like those Alice books.’

Mummy sat up a little straighter. She read all the time. ‘What’s the matter with a girl having ideas, Mother Coleman?’

‘She won’t be satisfied with her life if she has ideas,’ Grandmother said. ‘Like you. I always said to my son that you wouldn’t be happy. “Marry her if you must,” I said, “but she’ll never be satisfied.” I was right. You always want something more, but all your ideas don’t tell you what.’

Mummy didn’t say anything, but sat with her hands clasped so tightly in her lap I could see the whites of her knuckles.

‘But I know what you need.’

Mummy glanced at me, then shook her head at Grandmother, which meant Grandmother was about to say something I should not hear. ‘You should have more children,’ she said, ignoring Mummy. She always ignores Mummy. ‘The doctor said there’s no physical reason why you can’t. You’d like a brother or sister, wouldn’t you, Maude?’

I looked from Grandmother to Mummy. ‘Yes,’ I said, to punish Mummy for making me play the piano. I felt bad the moment I said it, but it was true, after all. I am often jealous of Lavinia because she has Ivy May, even though Ivy May can be a nuisance when she has to come everywhere with us.

Just then Jenny arrived with a tray, and we were all relieved to see her. When she had served them I managed to slip out after her as she left. Mummy was saying something about the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. ‘It’s sure to be rubbish,’ Grandmother was saying as I shut the door.

‘Rubbish,’ Jenny repeated when we were in the kitchen, her head shaking and her nose wrinkling. She sounded so much like Grandmother that I laughed till my stomach hurt.

I sometimes wonder why Grandmother bothers to visit. She and Mummy disagree on almost everything, and Grandmother is not very polite about it. It is always left to Mummy to smooth things over. ‘The privilege of age,’ Daddy says whenever Mummy complains.

For a moment I felt bad about abandoning Mummy upstairs, but I was still angry that she said my sewing was as bad as my piano. So I stayed in the kitchen and helped Mrs Baker with lunch. We were to have cold cow’s tongue and salad, and lady’s fingers for pudding. Lunches with Grandmother are never very interesting.

When Jenny came down with the coffee tray she said she had overheard Grandmother say she does want to visit the columbarium, ‘even though it is for heathens.’ I didn’t wait for her to finish, but ran to get Lavinia.

KITTY COLEMAN

Frankly I was surprised that Mrs Coleman was so keen on seeing the columbarium. I expect the idea appeals to her sense of tidiness and economy, though she made it clear it would never be appropriate for Christians.

At any rate I was relieved to have something to do with her. I always dread her visits, though it is easier than when I was first married. It has taken these ten years of marriage to learn to handle her – like a horse, except that I have never managed a horse – they are so big and clumsy.

But handle her I have. The portraits, for example. As a wedding present she gave us several dark oil portraits of various Colemans from the last century or so, all with the same dour expression that she wears as well – which is remarkable given that she married into the family rather than inheriting the look.

They are dreary things, but Mrs Coleman insisted they be hung in the hallway where every visitor could see and admire them; and Richard did nothing to dissuade her. It is rare he will cross her. His one rebellious act has been to marry a doctor’s daughter from Lincolnshire, and he will probably spend the rest of his days avoiding other conflicts. So up went the portraits. After six months I found some botanical watercolours exactly the same size, and hung them instead, replacing them with the portraits whenever Mrs Coleman came to call. Luckily she is not the kind of woman to pay surprise visits – she always announces her arrival the day before, giving me plenty of time to switch paintings.

After several years of swapping I grew more confident, and at last felt able to leave up the watercolours. Of course on arrival she noticed them first thing, before she had even unbuttoned her coat. ‘Where are the family portraits?’ she demanded. ‘Why are they not in their places?’

Luckily I was prepared. ‘Oh, Mother Coleman’ (how it grates to call her that – she is no mother to me), ‘I was concerned that the draughts from the door might damage them, and so I had them rehung in Richard’s study, where he can take comfort from his ancestors’ presence.’

Her response was typical. ‘I myself don’t know why you’ve left them there all that time. I should like to have said something, but this is your home, after all, and far be it from me to tell you how to run it.’

Jenny almost dropped Mrs Coleman’s coat on the floor from giggling – she knew all too well the palaver that had gone on over the pictures, for it had been she who’d helped me switch the paintings each time.

I did have one victory over Mrs Coleman early on, and it has seen me through many a grinding afternoon with her when afterwards I have had to lie down with a dose of Beecham’s. Mrs Baker was my triumph. I chose her as our cook because of her name – the frivolity of the reason was irresistible. And I could not help it – I told Mrs Coleman as well.

When she heard she spat out her tea, appalled. ‘Chosen for her name? Don’t be ridiculous! What way is that to run a household?’

To my immense satisfaction, Mrs Baker – a small, self-contained woman who reminds me of a bundle of twigs – has turned out to be a gem, a thrifty, able cook who instinctively understands certain things so that I do not need to spell them out. When I tell her Mrs Coleman is coming for lunch, for example, she serves bouillon rather than mulligatawny, a poached egg rather than an omelette. Yes, she is a gem.

Jenny has been more of a trial, but I like her better than Mrs Baker, who has a way of looking at everyone sideways and so appearing constantly suspicious. Jenny has a big mouth and wide cheeks – a face made for laughing. She is always going about her work with a smirk on her face, as if she is about to burst with some great joke. And she does, too – I can hear her laugh all the way up from the kitchen. I try not to think it but I can’t help wondering if the laughter is ever directed at me. I am sure it is.

Mrs Coleman says she is not to be trusted, of course. I suspect she may be right. There is something restless about Jenny that suggests one day she will crash, and we will all suffer the consequences. But I am determined to keep her on, if only to annoy Mrs Coleman.

And she has been good for Maude – she is a warm girl. (Mrs Baker is cold like pewter.) Since Maude’s nanny left and I am meant to be looking after her, Jenny has become indispensable in keeping an eye on her. She often takes her to the cemetery – a whim of Lavinia’s that Maude has unfortunately adopted and which I did not nip in the bud as I ought to have done. Jenny doesn’t complain much – I suspect she welcomes the chance for a rest. She always leaves for the cemetery in high spirits.

Maude said the Waterhouses would like to come along to see the columbarium too, which was just as well. I suspected that Gertrude Waterhouse is, if not the class of woman Mrs Coleman would have had her son marry (not that I was either), then at least more compatible with her. They could talk about their mutual adoration of the late Queen, if nothing else.

The columbarium is housed in one of the vaults in the Circle of Lebanon, where a sort of channel has been dug round a big Lebanon cedar and lined with a double row of family vaults. To get to it one walks up the Egyptian Avenue, a gloomy row of vaults overhung with rhododendrons, the entrance done in the Egyptian style, with elaborate columns decorated with lotus flowers. The whole thing is rather theatrical – I am sure it was very stylish back in the 1840s, and now it makes me want to laugh. The tree is lovely, at least, its branches crooked and almost horizontally spread, like an umbrella of blue-green needles. With the blue sky behind it like today it can make the heart soar.

Perhaps I should have prepared the girls more for what they were about to see. Maude is quite phlegmatic and robust, and Ivy May, the younger Waterhouse girl with the big hazel eyes, keeps her thoughts to herself. But Lavinia is the kind of girl who will find any excuse to fall into a faint, which she promptly did the moment she peered through the iron grillwork into the columbarium. Not that there is much to see, really – it is a small, high vault lined with cubicles of about one foot by eighteen inches. They are all empty except for two quite high up which have been covered over with stone plaques, and another with an urn sitting in it, with no plaque as of yet. Given that there are urns everywhere on graves here, it is hard to see what Lavinia made such a fuss about.

It was secretly gratifying too, I must confess, for up until that moment Gertrude Waterhouse and Mrs Coleman had been getting on very well. I would never say I was jealous, but it did make me feel rather inadequate. However, when Gertrude had to attend to her prone daughter, waving smelling salts under her nose while Ivy May fanned her with a handkerchief, Mrs Coleman grew more disapproving. ‘What’s wrong with the girl?’ she barked.

‘She’s a bit sensitive, I’m afraid,’ poor Gertrude replied. ‘She’s not meant to see such sights.’

Mrs Coleman humphed. Her humphs are often more damaging than her words.

While we waited for Lavinia to revive, Maude asked me why it was called a columbarium.

‘That’s Latin for dovecote, where birds live.’

‘But birds don’t live there.’

‘No. The little cubbyholes are for urns, as you can see, like what we have on our grave except much smaller.’

‘But why do they keep urns there?’

‘Most people when they die are buried in coffins. But some people choose to be burned. The urns hold their ashes and this is where you can put them.’

‘Burned?’ Maude looked a bit shocked.

‘Cremated is the word, actually,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with it. In a way it’s less frightening than being buried. Much quicker, at least. It’s becoming a little more popular now. Perhaps I’d like to be cremated.’ I threw out the last comment rather flippantly, as I had never really considered it before. But now, staring at the urn in one of the cubbyholes, it began to appeal – though I should not want my ashes placed in an urn. Rather they be scattered somewhere, to help the flowers grow.

‘Rubbish!’ Mrs Coleman interrupted. ‘And it’s entirely inappropriate for a girl of Maude’s age to be told about such things.’ Having said that, however, she couldn’t resist continuing. ‘Besides, it’s un-Christian and illegal. I wonder if it is even legal to build such a thing—’ she waved at the columbarium – ‘if it encourages criminal activity.’

As she was speaking a man came trotting down the steps next to the columbarium that led from the upper to the lower level of the Circle. He stopped abruptly when he heard her. ‘Pardon me, madam,’ he said, bowing to Mrs Coleman. ‘I couldn’t help overhearing your comment. Indeed, cremation is not illegal. It has never been illegal in England – it’s simply been disapproved of by society, and so it has not been carried out. But there have been crematoria for many years – the first was built at Woking in 1885.’

‘Who are you?’ Mrs Coleman demanded. ‘And what business is it of yours what I say?’

‘Pardon me, madam,’ the man repeated, with another bow. ‘I am Mr Jackson, the superintendent of the cemetery. I simply wished to set you straight on the facts of cremation because I wanted to reassure you that there is nothing illegal about the columbarium. The Cremation Act passed two years ago regulates the procedures and practice throughout all of Britain. The cemetery is simply responding to the public’s demand, and reflecting public opinion on the matter.’

‘You are certainly not reflecting my opinion on the matter, young man,’ Mrs Coleman huffed, ‘and I am a grave owner here – have been for almost fifty years.’

I smiled at her idea of a young man – he looked to be forty at least, with grey hairs in his rather bushy moustache. He was quite tall, and wore a dark suit with a bowler hat. If he had not introduced himself I would have thought he was a mourner. I had probably seen him before, but could not remember him.

‘I am not saying that cremation should never be practised,’ Mrs Coleman went on. ‘For non-Christians it can be an option: the Hindu and the Jew, atheists and suicides, those sorts who don’t care about their souls. But I am truly shocked to see such a thing sited on consecrated ground. It should have been placed in the Dissenters’ section, where the ground is not blessed. Here it is an offence to Christianity.’

‘Those whose remains lie in the columbarium were certainly Christian, madam,’ Mr Jackson said.

‘But what about reassembly? How can the body and soul be reunited on the Day of Resurrection if the body has been—’ Mrs Coleman did not complete her sentence, but waved a hand at the cubicles.

‘Burned to a crisp,’ Maude finished for her. I stifled a giggle.

Rather than wilting under her onslaught, Mr Jackson seemed to grow from it. He stood quite calmly, hands clasped behind his back, as if he were discussing a mathematical equation rather than a sticky question of theology. Maude and I, and the Waterhouses – Lavinia having recovered by this time – all stared at him, waiting for him to speak.

‘Surely there is no difference between the decomposed remains of a buried body and the ashes of a burned one,’ he said.

‘There is all the difference!’ Mrs Coleman sputtered. ‘But this is a most distasteful argument, especially in front of our girls here, one of whom has just recovered from a fit.’

Mr Jackson looked around as if he were just seeing the rest of us. ‘My apologies, ladies,’ he bowed (again). ‘I did not mean to offend.’ But then he did not leave the argument, as Mrs Coleman clearly wanted him to. ‘I would simply say that God is capable of all things, and nothing we do with our remains will stop Him if he wishes to reunite our souls with our bodies.’

There was a little silence then, punctuated by a tiny gasp from Gertrude Waterhouse. The implication behind his words – that with her argument Mrs Coleman might be doubting the power of God Himself – was not lost on her. Nor on Mrs Coleman, who, for the first time since I have known her, seemed at a loss for words. It was not a long moment, of course, but it was an immensely satisfying one.

‘Young man,’ Mrs Coleman said finally, ‘if God wanted us to burn our dead he would have said so in the Bible. Come, Maude,’ she said, turning her back on him, ‘it is time we paid a visit to our grave.’

As she led away a reluctant Maude, Mr Jackson glanced at me and I smiled at him. He bowed for the fourth time, muttered something about having a great deal to do, and rushed off, quite red in the face.

Well, I thought. Well.

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