Her Fearful Symmetry

by Audrey Niffenegger

  He often sat with Michael Faraday, the famous scientist; Eliza Barrow, who had been a victim of the notorious serial murderer Frederick Seddon; he spent time brooding over the unmarked graves of foundlings. Robert had whiled away a whole night watching as falling snow covered Lion, the stone dog that kept watch over Thomas Sayers, the last of the bare-fisted prizefighters. Sometimes he borrowed a flower from Radclyffe Hall, who always had an abundance of blooms, and relocated it to some remote and friendless tomb.

  Robert loved to watch the seasons revolve in Highgate. The cemetery was never without some green; many of the plants and trees had symbolised eternal life to the Victorians, and so even in winter the haphazard geometry of the graves was softened by evergreens, cypress, holly. At night stone and snow reflected back moonlight, and Robert sometimes felt himself become weightless as he crunched along the paths through a thin coverlet of white. Occasionally he brought a ladder from Vautravers' garden shed and climbed up to the grass in the centre of the Circle of Lebanon. He would lean against the three-hundred-year-old Cedar of Lebanon, or lie on his back and watch the sky through its gnarled branches. There was seldom a visible star; they were all hidden by light pollution from London's electric grid. Robert watched aeroplanes blinking through the Cedar of Lebanon's leaves. At such times he felt a powerful sense of rightness: under his body, beneath the grass, the dead were quiet and peaceful in their little rooms; above him the stars and machines roamed the skies.

  Tonight he stood by the Rossettis and thought about Elizabeth Siddal. He had rewritten the chapter devoted to her numerous times, more for the pleasure of thinking about Lizzie than because he had anything new to say about her. Robert fondled her life's trajectory in his mind: her humble beginnings as a milliner's girl; her discovery by the Pre-Raphaelite painters, who enlisted her as a model; her promotion to adored mistress of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Unexplained illnesses, her long-awaited marriage to Rossetti; a stillborn daughter. Her death by laudanum poisoning. A guilt-ridden Dante Gabriel, slipping a unique manuscript of his poems into his wife's casket. Seven years later, the exhumation of Lizzie at night, by bonfire light, to retrieve the poems. Robert relished all of it. He stood with his eyes closed, imagining the grave in 1869, not so hemmed in by other graves, the men digging, the flickering light of the fire.

  After what seemed to him a long time, Robert followed the obscure path back through the graves and began to wander.

  He was unable to believe in heaven. In his Anglican childhood he had imagined a wide, spacious emptiness, sunlit and cold, filled with invisible souls and dead pets. As Elspeth began dying he'd tried to revive this old belief, digging into his scepticism as though belief were simply an older sediment, accessible through strip-mining layers of sophistication and experience. He reread Spiritualist tracts, accounts of hundred-year-old seances, scientific experiments with mediums. His rationality rebelled. It was history; it was fascinating; it was untrue.

  On these nights in the cemetery Robert stood in front of Elspeth's grave, or sat on its solitary step with his back against the uncomfortable grille-work. It did not bother him when he stood by the Rossetti grave and couldn't feel the presence of Lizzie or Christina, but he found it disturbing to visit Elspeth and find that she was not 'at home' to him. In the early days after her death he'd hovered around the tomb, waiting for a sign of any sort. 'I'll haunt you,' she'd said when they'd told her she was terminal. 'Do that,' he had replied, kissing her gaunt neck. But she was not haunting him, except in memory, where she dwindled and blazed at all the wrong moments.

  Now Robert sat at Elspeth's doorstep and watched as dawn came over the trees. He could hear the birds stirring, singing, rioting and splashing across the street in Waterlow Park. Every now and then a car whooshed past along Swains Lane. When there was enough light for him to read the inscriptions on the graves across from Elspeth, Robert got up and made his way towards the back of the cemetery and the Terrace Catacombs. He could see St Michael's, but Vautravers was invisible beyond the wall. He walked up the steps at the side of the Terrace Catacombs and across the Catacombs roof to the green door. Fatigue clutched him. It was an effort to make it all the way into his flat before sleep overtook him. Outside, the cemetery assumed its daytime aspect; dawn gave way to day, the staff arrived, phones rang, the natural and the human worlds spun on their separate but conjoined axes. Robert was asleep in his clothes, his muddy trainers beside the bed. When he presented himself, noonish, at the cemetery's office, Jessica said, 'My dear boy, don't you look all in. Have some tea. Don't you ever sleep?'

  SUNDAY AFTERNOON

  LONDON WAS BAKING under a cloudless July sky. Robert reclined on a decrepit wicker chaise longue in Jessica Bates' back garden, a gin and tonic sweating in his hand. He was watching Jessica's grandchildren preparing to play croquet. It was Sunday afternoon. He had a vague sense of being in the wrong place; usually he and Jessica would both have been at the cemetery. On a glorious Sunday like this there would be loads of tourists clustered at the gates, wielding cameras and protesting at the rules about proper attire and no water bottles. They would be whingeing about the PS5 charge for the tour and pointlessly insisting on bringing in prams and children under eight. But for some reason today there had been extra guides, and he and Jessica had been sent off with orders from Edward to 'amuse yourselves, we'll be fine here, don't even think about us.' So now Jessica, who was eighty-four and incapable of leisure, was in her kitchen putting together lunch for twelve, and Robert (who had offered to help and been firmly escorted outside) lay idly watching as the children pounded the hoops and stake into the ground.

  The grass was too long for croquet, but no one seemed to mind. 'I wanted to get some sheep to crop the grass, but Jessica overruled me,' said James Bates. Jessica's husband sat tucked into his lawn chair with a thin blanket; it made Robert hotter just to look at him. He was a tall man who had shrunk with age, and his gentle voice trembled a bit. He had large glasses that magnified his eyes, frail bones and a decisive manner. He had been a headmaster and now served as the cemetery's archivist.

  James gazed at his grandchildren fondly. They were bickering over the rules and trying to choose teams. He longed to get out of his chair, to walk across the lawn and play with them. He sighed and looked down at the book of crosswords in his lap. 'This is quite ingenious,' he said, turning the page towards Robert. 'All the clues are mathematical equations, then you translate the answers into letters and fill it in.'

  'Ugh. Is that one of Martin's?'

  'Yes, he gave it to me for Christmas.'

  'Sadistic devil.'

  The children had arranged themselves around the first hoop and began to knock the coloured balls through it. The bigger children waited patiently for the smallest child to make her shot. 'Well played, Nell,' said the tallest boy. James pointed his pen at Robert. 'How are you getting on with Elspeth's estate?'

  A small feud erupted between two cousins over a ball hit out of bounds. Robert's mind returned to Elspeth, who was never far from his thoughts. 'Roche is corresponding with the twins. Elspeth's sister was threatening to contest the will, but I think Roche has convinced her she'd lose. It must be something about America, this urge to litigate.'

  'I still find it curious that Elspeth never mentioned having a twin.' James smiled. 'It's hard to imagine another one like her.'

  'Yes ...' Robert watched the children decorously tapping the balls across the lawn. 'Elspeth said she and Edie weren't very much alike in their personalities. She used to just hate being mistaken for her. Once we were in Marks & Spencer and this woman walked up to Elspeth and started chatting away, and it turned out that she was the mother of some boy Edie had gone out with. Elspeth was quite awful to her. The woman went off in a huff, and Elspeth had this rather puffed-up look about her, like one of those Brazilian frogs that get very large and spit at things that want to eat them.'

  James laughed. 'She was very large for such a small woman.'

  'I used to carry her around. I carrie
d her across Hampstead Heath once - she'd broken a heel.'

  'Such high heels she used to wear.'

  Robert sighed and thought about Elspeth's dressing room, which doubled as an impromptu shoe museum. He had spent part of an afternoon there recently lying on the floor, petting her shoes and wanking off. He flushed. 'I don't know what to do with all her stuff.'

  'Surely you needn't do anything; when the twins come they'll have to sort it out.'

  'But they might throw things away,' said Robert.

  'That's true; they might.' James eased himself into a different position in his chair. His back hurt. He wondered why Elspeth had left all her worldly possessions to these girls, who might come and heave everything she'd loved into a skip. 'Have you ever met them?'

  'No. Actually, Elspeth never met them. She and Edie hadn't spoken to each other since Edie ran off with Elspeth's fiance.' Robert frowned. 'It's a very odd will, really. The twins inherit most of the estate, but not until they're twenty-one, at the end of this year. And they only inherit the flat if their parents never set foot in the place.'

  'That's a bit vengeful, don't you think? How did she expect you to enforce that?'

  'She just threw that in because she couldn't stand the idea of Edie or Jack getting their hands on anything of hers. She knew it wasn't practical.'

  James smiled. 'Such Elspethness. Why leave it to their daughters, then? Why not to you?'

  'She left me the things that mattered to me.' Robert stared across the lawn, not seeing. 'She was rather secretive about the twins. I think she had a sort of soft spot for them because they were twins; she imagined herself as Auntie Elspeth, even though she never even sent them birthday cards. It's the extravagance of the thing that appealed to her, you know. It will completely alter their lives, and scoop them right out of their parents' laps and into Elspeth World. What they will do with it is anyone's guess.'

  'Pity she won't be able to meet them.'

  'Yes.' Robert felt disinclined to discuss the will any further. The croquet game was degenerating into a free-for-all. Some of the younger boys were using their mallets as swords, and the girls were throwing Nell's ball over her head as she leapt between them trying to rescue it. Only the two oldest boys were still doggedly hitting the balls through the hoops. At this moment Jessica happened to walk into the garden, noticed the mayhem, and stood with her arms akimbo, the very image of indignation. 'Ahem,' she said. 'What are you doing?' Jessica had a voice that rose and fell like a swooping kite. The children instantly stopped what they were doing and looked self-conscious, like cats that have fallen off something ungracefully and now sit licking themselves, pretending nothing has happened. Jessica walked carefully to where Robert and James sat. Two of her friends had broken their hips recently, so she had temporarily modified her habit of striding boldly wherever she went. She pulled up a chair and sat down next to James.

  'How's the lunch?' he asked her.

  'Oh, it'll be a while, the chicken's roasting.' Jessica blotted her forehead with her handkerchief. Robert realised that he was not going to be able to eat roast chicken in this heat. He pressed his glass full of almost-melted ice to his cheek. Jessica looked him over. 'You don't look well,' she told him.

  'No sleep,' he replied.

  'Mmm,' Jessica and James said together. They exchanged glances. 'Why's that?' Jessica asked.

  Robert looked away. The children had reverted to their game. Most of them were clustered around the stake in the middle, though Nell was flailing at a ball that was stuck in a clump of irises. She whacked and the irises came flying out of the dirt. He looked at Jessica and James, who were watching him uneasily. 'Do you believe in ghosts?' Robert asked.

  'Certainly not,' said Jessica. 'That's a lot of claptrap.' James smiled and looked down at Martin's crossword puzzle in his lap.

  'Well, right, I know you don't believe in ghosts.' Highgate Cemetery had suffered from the attentions of paranormalists and satanists in the past. Jessica spent a great deal of time discouraging Japanese television programmes and enthusiasts of the supernatural from promoting Highgate as a sort of haunted-cemetery Disneyland. 'I just ... I've been going into Elspeth's flat, and I have this feeling that she's ... there.' Jessica's mouth turned down at the corners as though he'd made an off-colour joke. James looked up, curious. 'What sort of feeling do you mean?' he asked Robert.

  Robert considered. 'It's rather intangible. But, for example, there's something very odd about the temperature in her flat. I'll be sitting at her desk, sorting papers, and I'll suddenly be very cold in one specific part of my body. My hand will be freezing cold and then it will go up my arm. Or the back of my neck ...' Robert paused, staring at his drink. 'Things move, in her flat. Tiny, tiny movements: curtains, pencils. Movement at the edge of my peripheral vision. Things aren't where I put them when I come back. A book fell from the desk onto the floor ...' He looked up and caught James shaking his head slightly at Jessica, who put her hand over her mouth. 'Yeah, okay. Never mind.'

  Jessica said, 'Robert. We're listening.'

  'I'm losing it.'

  'Well, perhaps. But if it makes you feel better ...'

  'It doesn't.'

  'Ah.' The three of them sat quietly.

  James said, 'I saw a ghost once.'

  Robert glanced at Jessica. She had a rather resigned expression, her smile one-sided, her eyes half-closed. Robert said, 'You saw a ghost?'

  'Yes.' James shifted in his chair, and Jessica leaned over and adjusted the pillow that supported his lower back. 'I was quite small, only a lad of six. So let me see, that would have been in 1917. I grew up just outside of Cambridge, and the house my family lived in at that time had once been an inn. It was built around 1750. It was very large and draughty and stood by itself at a crossroads. We didn't use the second floor, all of our bedrooms were on the first floor. Even the maid slept on the first floor.

  'My father was a don at St John's, and we used to have a great many visitors come to stay with us. Ordinarily there were enough rooms to accommodate everyone, but on this occasion there must have been more visitors than usual, because my younger brother, Samuel, was put to sleep in one of the unused bedrooms on the top floor.' James smiled to himself. 'Sam was generally a pretty cool customer, as the Americans say, but he howled all night, until my mother went up and took him to sleep in her room.'

  Robert said, 'I didn't know you had a brother.'

  'Sam died in the war.'

  'Oh.'

  'So, the next night, I was to sleep in the second-floor room--'

  'Wait. Did Sam tell you why he'd cried?'

  James said, 'Sam was only four, and of course I teased him, so he wouldn't say. At least that's what I remember. So, I was put to bed upstairs. I remember lying there with the blanket pulled up to my chin, my mother kissing me goodnight, and there I was in the dark, not knowing what terrible thing might be ready to slink out from the wardrobe and smother me ...'

  Jessica smiled. Robert thought it might be a smile for the morbidly fantastical imaginations of children.

  'So what happened?'

  'I fell asleep. But later that night I woke up. There was moonlight coming in through the window, and the shadows of tree branches fell onto the bed, waving gently in the breeze.'

  'And then you saw the ghost?'

  James laughed. 'Dear chap, the branches were the ghost. There weren't any trees within a hundred yards of that house. They'd all been cut down years before. I saw the ghost of a tree.'

  Robert thought about it. 'That's rather elegant. I was expecting ghouls.'

  'Well, that's just it, you see. I think perhaps if that sort of thing does happen - ghosts - it must be more beautiful, more surprising than all these old tales would have us believe.'

  Robert happened to look at Jessica while James was speaking. She was gazing at her husband with an expression that combined patience, admiration, and something very private that seemed to Robert like the distillation of a lifetime of marriage. He felt a sudden need
to be alone. 'Do you have any ibuprofen?' he asked Jessica. 'I think the sun's given me a headache.'

  'Of course, let me get it for you.'

  'No, no,' he said, getting up. 'I'll just have a lie down before we eat.'

  'There's some Anadin in the cabinet in the ground-floor loo.'

  Jessica and James watched Robert walk stiffly across the terrace and into the house. 'I'm really worried about him,' Jessica said. 'He's lost the plot, a bit.'

  James said, 'She's only been dead eight months. Give him some time.'

  'Ye-es. I don't know. He seems to have stopped - that is, he's doing all the things one does, but there's no heart in him. I don't think he's even working on his thesis. He's just not getting over her.'

  James met his wife's anxious eyes. He smiled. 'How long would it take you to get over me?'

  She held out her bent hand, and he took it in his. She said, 'Dear James. I don't imagine I would ever get over you.'

  'Well, Jessica,' said her husband, 'there's your answer.'

  Inside the house, Robert stood in the dim ground-floor hallway with two tablets in his hand. He swallowed them without water and leaned his forehead against the cool plaster wall. It felt marvellous after the relentless sunlight. He could hear the children calling to each other, croquet abandoned for some other game. Now that he was alone he wanted to go back outside, to distract himself, talk of something else. He would go back in a few minutes. His throat felt constricted; the pills had gone down the wrong way. He realised that he was leaving sweat on the wall, and wiped it with his forearm. Robert shut his eyes and thought of James, a small boy sitting up in bed, staring at the shadows of absent trees. Why not, he thought. Why not?

  THE HISTORY OF HER GHOST

  ELSPETH NOBLIN HAD BEEN dead for almost a year now, and she was still figuring out the rules.

  At first she had simply drifted around her flat. She had little energy and spent a great deal of time staring at her former possessions. She would doze off and reawaken hours, perhaps days later - she couldn't tell, it didn't matter. She was shapeless, and spent whole afternoons rolling around on the floor from one patch of sunlight to another, letting it heat every particle of her as though she were air, so that she rose and fell, warmed and cooled.