Her Fearful Symmetry

was like a mouthful of fur, a big hairball. She closed her mouth. Julia struggled to draw breath, and then felt the thing become smaller and heavier, leaving space around itself, fitting itself between her tongue and the roof on her mouth. It tasted metallic and moved slightly but constantly, like an excited child trying to hold still. Julia looked around the hall. Valentina and the Kitten had disappeared.

Come on, you two, let’s go. Julia stepped across the threshold onto the landing. Valentina and the Kitten were still in her mouth. Julia raced down the stairs and out the front door of Vautravers; the strange bulk still quivered on her tongue. She ran along the side of the building into the back garden, to the door in the wall, and fumbled with the key. She got the door open, stepped into the cemetery and opened her mouth.

Valentina flew out into the air. She hung suspended for a moment, spread out in the morning breeze like a rainbow created by a garden hose. The Little Kitten of Death was intermingled with her, and as Julia stood watching they seemed to separate and resolve.

Valentina felt the breeze carry her, extend her, divide her from the Kitten. At first she could not see or hear, and then she could. Julia stood with her arms clutched against her chest and a desolate little smile on her face, looking up at Valentina.

“Goodbye, Valentina,” Julia said. Tears ran down her face. “Goodbye, Kitten.”

Goodbye, goodbye, Julia. The Kitten squirmed out of Valentina’s arms, jumped off the roof of the Catacombs and went racing into the cemetery. Valentina turned and followed.

Her senses were flung open like doors and windows. Everything was speaking, singing to her, the grass, trees, stones, insects, rabbits, foxes: all stopped what they were doing to watch the ghost fly past; all cried out to her, as though she had been long away from home and they were the spectators at her victory parade. She flew through gravestones and bushes, revelling in their density and coolness. The Kitten was waiting for her under the Cedar of Lebanon, and Valentina caught up with her. Together they flew above the Egyptian Avenue and streamed down the main path. If there were other ghosts, Valentina did not see them; it was nature that greeted her; the angels on the tombs were simply stones. Valentina could see through things and into things. She saw the deep grave shafts with the coffins stacked in them; she saw the bodies in the coffins, with their postures of yearning and gestures of supplication, bodies long turned to bone and dust. Valentina felt a hunger, a desire to find her own body that was visceral, almost ecstatic. They were flying faster now; things streamed by in a blur of stone and green, and now, at last, here: the little stone shelter that said NOBLIN, the little iron door that was no obstacle to Valentina, the quiet space inside, Elspeth’s coffin, Elspeth’s body, Elspeth’s parents’ and grandparents’ coffins and bodies. She saw her own coffin, and knew before she touched it that it was empty. So it’s true, then. She saw the Little Kitten of Death rub her face eagerly against the white box. Valentina laid her hands on the varnished wood of Elspeth’s coffin, just as Robert had once done. What now? She picked up the Kitten and went outside. She stood on the path, uncertain.

A little girl came walking up the path. She hummed to herself and swung her bonnet by its strings in time to her own footsteps. She wore a lavender dress in a style from the late nineteenth century.

“Hello,” she said to Valentina, politely. “Are you coming?”

“Coming where?” said Valentina.

“They’re mustering the crows,” said the girl. “We’re going flying.”

“Why do you need crows?” Valentina asked. “Can’t you fly on your own?”

“It’s different. Haven’t you done it before?”

“I’m new,” said Valentina.

“Oh.” The girl began walking and Valentina walked with her. “I say-are you an American? Where did you get your cat? No one has a cat here-when I was alive I had a cat named Maisie, but she’s not here…” Valentina followed her to the Dissenters’ section of the cemetery, where many ghosts stood around chatting in small groups. The trees in this section had recently been cut down; it was open to the sky, with stumps jutting between the graves. Ghosts glanced at Valentina, then looked away. She wondered if she should try to introduce herself. The little girl had wandered off. Now she returned, dragging an extraordinarily fat man who was dressed as though he were about to go fox hunting.

“This is my papa,” said the girl.

“Quite welcome, I’m sure,” said the man to Valentina. “Would you care to join us?”

Valentina hesitated; heights made her nervous. But why not? she thought. I’m dead. Nothing can hurt me now. I can do whatever I want. “Yes,” she said. “I’d like that.”

“Splendid,” said the man. He raised his arm and an enormous crow flew down and plopped in front of them, cawing and strutting. Valentina thought, It’s just like hailing a taxi. Soon there were hundreds of crows milling about. Each ghost seemed to shrink until it was a suitable size, then hopped aboard a crow. Valentina imitated them. She clasped one ethereal arm around her crow’s neck and held onto the Kitten with the other, hugging the crow’s body with her knees.

Now the vast throng of crows rose out of Highgate Cemetery in unison, and the ghosts with them, their dark dresses and winding sheets flapping wing-like in the sky. They flew over Waterlow Park, circled around to fly across the Heath, and on and on, until they came to the Thames and began to follow the river eastwards, past the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Bridge, past the Embankment, London Bridge, the Tower, and on, and on. Valentina held tightly to her crow. The Kitten purred in her ear. I’m so happy, she thought with surprise. The sun passed through the ghosts un-dimmed, and the shadows of the crows darkened the river.

After Valentina had vanished from her sight, Julia stood in the open doorway for a little while, listening to the birds. Then she shut the green door. She went back to her flat and made herself another cup of coffee. She sat in the window seat and watched trees swaying in the cemetery, with flashes of white gravestones peeking through the leaves. She listened to the quiet of the house, the hum of the refrigerator, the flick of the numbers on the old clock radio turning over. I am definitely going to get a dog, Julia thought. She spent the afternoon dusting and talked to Theo on the phone after dinner. Julia went to bed contented and alone, and slept without dreaming.

It had been one of those vivid days: the fields around the cottage were radiantly green, and the Sussex sky was so blue it hurt her eyes. Elspeth had gone for a walk with the baby in the early evening. He was a colicky baby, and the walking sometimes soothed him when nothing else could. Now he was breathing quietly, asleep in his little pouch pressed against her breast. Elspeth came to the long drive that led to their tiny home. It was dark now, but the moon was nearly full and she could see her shadow moving before her up the drive. The summer insect songs pressed at her from all sides, a shimmering choir that lay like a blanket of sound over the fields.

For weeks she had been watching Robert carefully. There had been a long bad patch after they’d moved here. Robert could not adjust to the spaciousness, the quiet; he missed the cemetery and would take the train into London on the least pretext to visit it. He seldom spoke to Elspeth; it was as though he had withdrawn into his own invisible London and was living in it without her. His manuscript sat vast and untouched on his desk. Then the baby was born, and Elspeth had found herself in a purely physical world: sleep was an elusive prize, breastfeeding more complicated than she remembered. The baby cried; she cried, but at last Robert seemed to wake up and notice her. He seemed almost surprised by the baby, as though he’d thought she was joking about being pregnant. And to Elspeth’s surprise, the arrival of the baby did what she could not: it brought Robert back to writing his thesis.

For months now he’d worked with perfect concentration in the midst of baby-wrought chaos. She tiptoed around him, afraid to break the charm, but he told her there was no need. He said he found the din oddly helpful. “It’s as though it wants to be finished,” he said, and the printer whirred each night, emitting increasingly pristine pages.

Tonight she felt a pause, suspense: the world was adjusting itself into a new pattern. Something was going to happen; the manuscript was almost finished. Elspeth walked with the baby in the dark between sweet-smelling fields and rejoiced. I’m here. I’m alive. She placed her hands on the baby, felt his soft head against her cool palms. The ever-present regret lapped at her, and she thought of Valentina broken on the bedroom floor. Elspeth had no answer and no defence against this image. It flared in her mind vividly, then faded. She kept walking.

The cottage reminded her of a jack-o’-lantern, its windows blazing orange. All the lights were on. Elspeth walked through the garden and came in the back door, into the kitchen. The insect sounds diminished. The house was very still.

“Robert?” she called, careful to keep her voice low. She went into the front room. No one there. On Robert’s desk was a neat pile of paper. A History of Highgate Cemetery. All the files and notes had been cleared away. There was a look of finality about the scene. Elspeth smiled. “Robert?”

He was not in the house. He did not come back that night. Days went by, and at last she understood that he would not return at all.

Acknowledgements

I COULD NOT have written Her Fearful Symmetry without the extraordinary generosity of Jean Pateman, Chairman of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery. In addition to teaching me about the Cemetery and allowing me to become a guide there, she has been a great friend and an inspiration.

I am very grateful to the staff of Highgate Cemetery: Hilary Deeble-Rogers, Richard Quirk, Simon Moore-Martin, Pawel Ksyta, Aneta Gomulnicka, Victor Herman and Neil Luxton, for help with funeral customs and practices and for answering my many questions with great humour and patience.