Falling Angels. Tracy Chevalier
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.
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.