Her Fearful Symmetry

JESSICA STOOD in front of the Eastern Cemetery’s gates on a brisk Sunday in early March, watching the visitors assembled before the main gate on the Western side. They were an unpromising lot: an American couple wearing intimidating trainers and impressive cameras; a quiet, middle-aged man with a receding hairline and binoculars; three young Japanese men in baggy denim trousers and baseball caps; a woman with a rather aerodynamic-looking pram; and a stout man with an enormous backpack, who paced back and forth with bouncy energy.

A black van sped along Swains Lane. The gilt, circus-poster-style lettering on its side said only: TEMERITY.

Indeed, thought Jessica. She checked her watch. It was quarter to three. She glanced behind her at Kate, a round, pleasant, American volunteer who was chatting with some grave owners about the renovations to the Eastern Cemetery’s wall. When Jessica returned her gaze to the group at the gate she saw that they had been joined by two girls dressed from head to toe in white. The girls stood by themselves, holding hands. They wore white hooded sweatshirts with fur trim, white miniskirts, leggings and boots. Their white knitted caps were almost the same colour as their hair. The girls had their backs to Jessica, but she knew without seeing their faces that they must be twins. How darling they are. She wondered if they realised how muddy the cemetery paths were, and whether they were younger than sixteen.

Julia and Valentina stood in front of the gates, shifting from foot to foot and shivering. Julia wondered where everyone was; all was quiet inside the gates. She could see a wide courtyard beyond the gatehouse and a colonnade which extended in a half-circle around it. She heard someone using a walkie- talkie, but there were no people in sight. Across the road was the other half of the cemetery, where Karl Marx was buried. It looked more open, more like a regular American cemetery. The guidebook said that the Western Cemetery was more interesting, but could only be visited on the tour. Anyway, it was the Western side that the twins’ windows overlooked.

Jessica crossed Swains Lane, strode through the little crowd and unlocked the massive gates. She was dressed entirely in shades of violet and mauve, and wore a hat that Valentina instantly coveted, a large-brimmed felt affair with a sweeping black feather tucked in the band. Valentina and Julia’s first impression was of royalty, a duchess, perhaps, who had come to the cemetery for the afternoon to cut a ribbon or visit a loved one and had stayed on to help out. This notion was not immediately dispelled when she spoke. “Do come in now, my dears. Has everyone read the notices? Right, please leave all luggage in the office. I’m terribly sorry, but no children under the age of eight are allowed in the Western Cemetery. Photographs may be taken for Personal Use Only. This way, please, kindly perch yourselves in front of the War Memorial on the far side of the courtyard there, we’ll be right with you.” The twins obediently sat on a bench and waited.

Robert walked out of the office with the ticket box, distracted by a crossword clue James had just read to him. He joined Jessica and they crossed the courtyard together. He saw the twins and his stomach clenched. The sensation reminded him of stage fright; then he realised it was guilt.

“Don’t charge them,” he said to Jessica.

“Why ever not?”

“They’re grave owners.”

“Surely n-oh,” she said, looking more carefully. “I see.” They continued walking. “Will you be all right, then? Shall I ask Kate to give the tour?”

“Don’t be silly. I’ve got to meet them eventually.”

The twins watched them arrive. Julia elbowed Valentina. “Isn’t that the guy you met on the tube?” she whispered. Valentina nodded. She watched Robert tearing tickets, Jessica accepting ?5 from each person. The twins were at the end of the row of benches. When she had taken the money from the American couple Jessica closed her money box and winked at them. Julia held out ?10, but Jessica shook her head and smiled. The American woman gave them an annoyed look. Julia squeezed Valentina’s hand.

“Welcome to Highgate Cemetery,” Jessica said. “Robert will be your guide. He is one of our most Learned Guides, an historian of the Victorian Era, and is writing a book about this cemetery. All of our work is done on a voluntary basis, and every year we must raise over three hundred and fifty thousand pounds just to keep the cemetery open.” Jessica flirted with them as she spoke, and exhibited the green box. “As you leave, a volunteer will be stationed at the gate with this green box, and any help you can give will be Much Appreciated.” Robert watched the tourists fidget. Jessica wished them a Pleasant Tour and went back to the office. She felt a flutter of excitement. Why? She stood at the office window and watched Robert gather his group in front of the Colonnade steps. He stood two steps up and spoke to them, looking down, gesturing. From where they stood, the tourists could not see anything but greenery and the steps. Thosegirls look extraordinarily like Elspeth. How amazing life is. I hope he’ll be all right. He looked a bit pale.

Robert tried to clear his mind. He felt as though he were watching himself, as though he had separated into two Roberts, one of whom was calmly giving a tour, the other mute with nerves, trying to think what he might say to the twins. Bloody hell, you’d think you were seventeen. You don’t have to talk to them. They’ll talk to you. Wait.

“At the beginning of the nineteenth century,” Robert began, “London’s graveyards were shockingly overcrowded. Burial in churchyards had been the custom for hundreds of years. People were flocking to the city: there was an industrial revolution going on, and the factories needed workers. There was no space left to bury anyone, yet people died anyway. In 1800, London’s population was approximately one million. By the middle of the century it was well over two million. The churchyards couldn’t keep up with the relentless pace of death.

“The churchyards were also a health hazard. They contaminated the groundwater and caused epidemics of typhoid and cholera. Since there was no space for more graves, corpses had to be disinterred so that the newly dead could be buried. If you’ve read your Dickens, you know what I’m talking about: elbows poking out of the ground, grave robbers stealing the dead to sell them to the medical schools. It was an absolute shambles.

“In 1832, Parliament passed a bill allowing the establishment of private, commercial cemeteries. In the next nine years, seven cemeteries were opened, situated in a ring around what was then the edge of the city. These became known as the Magnificent Seven: Kensal Green, West Norwood, Highgate, Nunhead, Brompton, Abney Park and Tower Hamlets. Highgate was opened in 1839, and it quickly became the most desirable burial ground in London. Let’s go up the steps, and you’ll see why.”

The twins were at the back of the group, so all they saw was other people’s legs as they ascended. When they got to the top, Robert was standing with the group ranged in a circle around him. They saw a dense clamour of large, tilting graves, crowded and encroached on by trees and greenery. Valentina had a powerful feeling of recognition. I’ve been here before!-but not really; maybe I dreamed it? A crow flew close over their heads and swooped across the courtyard, landing on the apex of the chapels’ roof. Valentina wondered what that would be like, to fly brazenly through the cemetery; she wondered what the crow thought about the whole thing. It’s so strange, to put people in the ground and put stones on top of them. She felt a surge of wonder that people should all agree to be put in the ground together.

Robert said, “We’re standing on top of the Colonnade. If you’ll look towards the chapels, there, where you came in: there were two chapels, Anglican and Dissenters’, joined together in one building, quite unique. We are in the Western Cemetery, the original part. There are seventeen acres, and two of those are set aside for Dissenters-that is, Baptists, Presbyterians, Sandemanians, and other Protestant sects. Highgate was so popular that by 1854 they needed to expand, and so the London Cemetery Company bought the twenty acres across Swains Lane to create the Eastern Cemetery. This led to a problem. Once the service had been conducted in the Anglican chapel, how were they to get the coffin over to the Eastern side without taking it off consecrated ground? They couldn’t consecrate Swains Lane, so instead they used typical Victorian ingenuity and dug a tunnel under the road. At the end of the service, the coffin would be lowered by a pneumatic lift down into the tunnel. The pallbearers would meet it and take it across, where it would ascend on the Eastern side in a touching allusion to the Resurrection.”

Julia thought, He looks really pleased with himself, like he invented the whole thing. She felt kind of crabby, cold and damp. She glanced at Valentina, who was staring at the guide with rapt attention. Robert ran his eyes over the group. Most of them had their cameras ready, itching to take photos, to move on. He saw Valentina staring at him and turned to the grave they were standing next to.

“This grave belongs to James William Selby, who was, in his day, a famous coachman. He was fond of driving fast and in all weathers. The whip and horn signify his profession, the inverted horseshoes tell us that his luck has run out. In 1888 Selby accepted a wager to drive from London to Brighton in less than eight hours. He made it in seven hours and fifty minutes, using seven teams of horses. He won a thousand pounds, but died five months later. We speculate that his winnings might have been used to buy him this very handsome memorial. Mind the path, it’s fairly bad today.”

Robert turned and began walking uphill. He could hear the tourists scrambling after him. The main path was rocky, muddy and full of tree roots and holes. He could hear cameras clicking like digital insects as they walked. His stomach was churning. I wonder if I could park them all at Comfort’s Corners and just go and quietly puke in the shrubbery? He soldiered on. He showed them the Gothic-style grave with the empty stone chair, signifying that the occupant was gone, never to return. He led them to the tomb of Sir Loftus Otway, an enormous family mausoleum which had once featured large panels of glass: “You could look down into the tomb and see the coffins. This wasn’t for our voyeuristic pleasure, mind you; many Victorians hated the thought of being buried six feet under, and quite a number of the burials in this cemetery are aboveground…” He told them about the Friends of Highgate Cemetery, how they had saved Highgate. “Before the First World War the staff included twenty-eight gardeners. Everything was tidy, spacious and serene. But all the able-bodied men went to fight, and things were never quite the same. The vegetation began to take over, they ran out of space to make new graves, the money stopped coming in…and in 1975 the western side was padlocked and essentially abandoned to Satanists, nutters, vandals, Johnny Rotten-”

“Who’s he?” one of the young Japanese men wanted to know.

“Lead singer of the Sex Pistols, used to live nearby, in Finchley Park. Right, so you may have noticed that the neighbourhood surrounding this cemetery is a bit posh, and the neighbours got alarmed about the grave-desecrating and the wrong element hanging round. A group of local people got together and bought Highgate Cemetery for fifty quid. Then they went about trying to put it right again. And they invented what they call ‘managed neglect,’ which means just what it sounds like: they didn’t try to make it all tidy and imitate what the Victorians had done. They work things in such a way that you see what time and nature have made of the place, but they don’t let it go so far that it gets dangerous. It’s a museum, in a sense, but it’s also a working Christian burial ground.” Robert glanced at his watch. He needed to get them moving; Jessica had spoken to him only yesterday about Getting the Tour Back in a Timely Manner. “This way.”

He led them at a faster pace to Comfort’s Corners, then began to tell the story of Elizabeth Siddal Rossetti. As always, Robert had to fight the urge to tell the group everything he knew; they would be here for days, gradually collapsing with fatigue and hunger while he went on and on. They mainly