Her Fearful Symmetry

by Audrey Niffenegger

  'Highgate Cemetery, in addition to being a Christian burial ground, was a business venture. In order to make it the most desirable address for the eminent Victorian dead, it needed what every posh neighbourhood needs: amenities. In the late 1830s, when Highgate opened, all things Egyptian were quite popular, and so here we have the Egyptian Avenue. The entrance is based on a tomb at Luxor. It was originally coloured, and the Avenue itself was not so dark and gloomy. It was open to the sky, and there were none of these trees that lean over it now ...'

  'The mausoleums in the Avenue can hold eight to ten people. There are shelves inside for the coffins. Note the inverted torches - the keyholes are upside down as well. The holes on the bottom of the doors let the gases escape.'

  'Gases?' asked the quiet man with the binoculars.

  'As the bodies decomposed, they gave off gases. They used to put candles in there with them to burn it off. Must have been rather spooky at night.' They went through the Egyptian Avenue and stood at the other end, the twins hugging themselves for warmth even in the strong sunlight. Robert looked at them and was hit by a memory of Elspeth standing in almost the same spot, her face tilted to catch the sun. Oh, you ... He faltered. Everyone waited for him to continue. Don't look at them. Don't think about her. Robert stared at the ground for a moment and then pulled himself together.

  'We are standing in the Circle of Lebanon. This was the most coveted address in the cemetery. It gets its name from the enormous Cedar of Lebanon tree you see up there above the mausoleums. The tree is approximately three hundred years old now, but even when Highgate Cemetery was founded it would have been impressive. The land was originally part of the estate of the Bishop of London, and when they came to make the Circle they cut down around the tree; it stands on what was originally ground level. Imagine trying to shift all that earth with 1830s equipment. The inner circle was made first, and it proved so popular that the outer circle was begun twenty years later. You can see the changing tastes in architecture, from Egyptian to Gothic.'

  Robert led them through the Circle. This is not getting easier. He glanced at his watch and resolved to skip a few graves.

  'This is the mausoleum of Mabel Veronica Batten and her lover, Radclyffe Hall ... Here we have a columbarium. The name comes from the Latin columba, meaning "dove", and originally meant compartments for doves to live in ... Follow me up these stairs, please ... Right. This is the grave of George Wombwell, a famous menagerist. He got his start by buying two boa constrictors from a sailor ...' Robert skipped over Mrs Henry Wood, the Carter family's faux-Egyptian tomb and Adam Worth and led the visitors around the top of the Circle to admire the view of St Michael's. He then herded them to stand between the Terrace Catacombs and the enormous Beer family tomb. The twins realised that they were looking at the huge mausoleum they could see from their bedroom window. They backed up, trying to see over the Catacombs, but although they could see Martin's flat, their own wasn't visible.

  'Julius Beer was a German Jew who arrived in London with no money and made his fortune on the Stock Exchange ...' Valentina was thinking about the fact that she had never exactly thought about death. The cemetery at home in Lake Forest was tidy and spacious. Jack's parents were buried there in a modest plot with matching pink granite markers. The twins had never met any of their grandparents. We don't know anyone who died. It's hard to imagine not being here, or Julia not here ... She felt a spasm of loneliness, or homesickness - she wasn't sure which. Valentina watched Robert. He was ignoring her; he seemed to be deliberately focusing on the man with the binoculars. He knew Elspeth. He was her lover. He could tell us about her.

  '... Julius Beer was unable to secure a position in Victorian society, because in addition to being a foreigner and Jewish, he had made his money rather than inheriting it. So he erected this rather large mausoleum where no one could possibly miss it. The Beer mausoleum blocks the view if you happen to be promenading on the roof of the Terrace Catacombs, as Victorian ladies liked to do of a Sunday afternoon.' Valentina thought of the green door in their back garden. She imagined herself and Julia wearing crinolines, strolling atop the hundreds of rotting bodies lying in the dark nasty Terrace Catacombs. Those Victorians sure knew how to have fun.

  Robert led them along paths, past the Dissenters' section; he showed them Thomas Sayers' grave, where Lion the stone dog kept patient vigil; skipped Sir Rowland Hill, inventor of the Uniform Penny Post. He passed the Noblin family mausoleum without comment. Fifty yards on, Robert turned to say something to the group and saw that he had lost Julia and Valentina. They were standing in front of the Noblins, arm in arm, conferring. Robert parked the group in front of Thomas Charles Druce and jogged back to the twins.

  'Hello,' he managed.

  They went still, like rabbits looked at too directly. Valentina said, 'You're Robert Fanshaw, aren't you?' Julia thought, What?

  Robert's stomach lurched. 'Yes. That's right.' A look passed between Valentina and Robert that Julia could not interpret. 'We'll talk after the tour, shall we?' he said, and walked with them back to the front of the group. He fumbled through Thomas Charles Druce's exhumation, skipped murder victim Eliza Barrow and also Charles Cruft of dog-show fame. He somewhat regained his form while talking about Elizabeth Jackson and Stephan Geary, then fairly hustled the group down the Cuttings Path. Jessica was waiting for them at the gate with the green box. Robert said to her, 'I'm just going to take the twins back and show them their family grave.' He half-hoped Jessica would refuse him, but she only smiled and waved him along.

  'Don't be long,' Jessica said. 'You know we're short-handed today.' As Robert walked towards Valentina and Julia he saw them framed together before the arch over the Colonnade stairs, two white statues radiant against the gloom. It seemed to him inevitable that he should meet them here.

  'Come on, then,' he said. They followed him, alert and curious. He felt their eyes on him as he led them up the stairs and along the paths. The twins grew uneasy; on the tour Robert Fanshaw had seemed garrulous, eager to please; now he led them through the cemetery without comment. The sounds of the cemetery itself filled the silence: the squish of their boots on the path, the whisper and roar of the wind in the trees. Birds, traffic. Robert's overcoat flapped behind him and Valentina recalled the retreating figure she had seen that day by the canal. She began to be frightened. No one knows we're here. Then she remembered the duchess at the gate and felt reassured. They came to the Noblin mausoleum.

  'So,' Robert said, feeling like an absurd parody of a Highgate tour guide, 'this is your family's grave. It belongs to you, and you can come and visit whenever you like, whenever the cemetery is open. We'll make you a grave owners' pass. There's a key in Elspeth's desk.'

  'A key to what?' Julia asked.

  'This door. You also have a key to the door between our back garden and the cemetery, though we're asked by the cemetery staff not to use it.'

  'Do you go in?'

  'No.' His heart was pounding.

  Valentina said, 'We've been wondering about you. We wondered - why we didn't see you. We thought maybe you were out of town or something--'

  'Martin said you weren't,' interrupted Julia.

  'So we were confused, because Mr Roche said you would help us ...' Valentina looked up at Robert, but he was looking at his feet and it seemed like a long time before he replied.

  'I'm sorry,' he said.

  He was unable to look at the twins, and they pitied him, although neither was at all sure why. Julia was amazed to see this man who had been so voluble, so eager to tell them more than anyone could possibly want to know about the cemetery, now standing inarticulate and frightened. His hair hung over his face; his posture was abject. Valentina thought, He's just very shy - he's afraid of us. Because Valentina was shy herself - because she had spent her life with an extrovert who never tired of mocking her timidity - since she had never met a person who seemed normal and was abruptly revealed to be acutely inhibited; because there was a profound intimacy in observi
ng Robert's fear; because she was emboldened by Julia's presence: Valentina stepped closer to Robert and put her hand on his arm. Robert looked at her over the rims of his glasses.

  'It's okay,' she said. He felt, without being able to express it to himself, that something lost had been restored to him.

  'Thank you,' he replied. He said it quietly but with such intensity that Valentina fell in love with him, though she had no name for the feeling and nothing to compare it to. They might have stood that way for a long while, but Julia said, 'Um, maybe we should go back,' and Robert said, 'Yes, I told Jessica we wouldn't be long.' Valentina felt as though the world had paused. Now it continued; they walked together side by side down the Colonnade Path.

  Julia asked Robert about his thesis, and his answer carried them back to the cemetery's gate. As they passed the office door Jessica popped out; Robert guessed that she had been watching for them. She took the twins' hands in hers and said, 'Elspeth was very dear to us all. We're delighted to finally meet you both. I do hope you'll come and visit often.'

  'We will,' said Julia. She liked the idea of getting behind the scenes, of finding out what went on in the cemetery when the tourists left. Valentina met Jessica's eyes and smiled. Robert was standing slightly behind Jessica, watching them. 'Bye,' Valentina said as she and Julia slipped through the gate. Valentina's face showed Robert something that filled him with apprehension - her face mirrored his own feelings. He understood and he didn't want to know.

  'Goodbye, my dears,' said Jessica. She turned the key in the lock and watched as the twins walked up Swains Lane. Why so worried? she asked herself. They're darling. Robert had disappeared into the office. She found him counting out the change into little plastic bags.

  'Are you all right?' she asked him.

  'I'm fine,' he said, without looking at her. She was about to question him further when the walkie-talkie squawked out Kate's request: more tickets for the Eastern gate. Jessica grabbed a book of tickets and left Robert to his mood. The rest of that Sunday was a blur of guides and visitors, counting receipts and closing; by the time she thought about Robert again they were standing by the Western gates, locking up.

  Phil and some of the younger guides were headed up the hill to have a pint at the Gatehouse. 'D'you want to come along?' Phil asked Robert.

  'No,' Robert said. He wanted a drink, but he didn't want to talk to anyone. He wanted to think about the afternoon, to relive it, to make it come out differently, to arrive at some other conclusion. 'No, I think I'm coming down with something.' He turned and walked off, startling the rest of them with his abrupt departure.

  'What's eating him?' Kate asked Jessica.

  Jessica shook her head. 'With our Robert one never quite knows,' she replied. 'It's probably just Elspeth.' Everyone agreed that yes, it was probably Elspeth. They went up the hill to the Gatehouse and gossiped about Robert for a while, then lost interest and turned to the more urgent pleasures of trading stories about odd things that had happened that day on their tours and trying to outdo each other in their knowledge of obscure cemetery anecdotes. Kate drove Jessica home, and they agreed that something was definitely amiss with Robert and that Elspeth was at the bottom of it. Having settled that, they turned their attention to Monday's funerals.

  Robert went home and gathered a glass, a bottle of whisky and the key to the green door, then let himself into the cemetery. He didn't venture forth but sat down with his back to the wall and poured himself some whisky. He sat there staring absently at the top of Julius Beer's mausoleum and drinking until evening fell. Then he returned unsteadily to his flat and went to bed.

  BREATHE

  DAYS WENT BY and nothing much happened. Julia and Valentina tried to civilise the Kitten, cajoling her with food and little balls of aluminium foil, sitting in the dining room chatting to her while she regarded them sceptically from underneath a chair. Elspeth played with her when the twins were out or asleep, glad to have someone to engage with, even if that someone was an angry white kitten. Gradually the Kitten became less outraged and was allowed into other parts of the flat. She occasionally let herself be petted. To Elspeth's dismay she shredded the spine of a Hogarth Press To the Lighthouse and the back of the sofa. Valentina was delighted with the Kitten's progress and looked forward to what she described to Julia as 'total kitten happiness' in the near future.

  The twins saw nothing of Robert, though they sometimes heard him showering or watching TV. He was hunkered down in his flat, slogging through a chapter about Highgate Cemetery as nature reserve. Every afternoon he went to the cemetery and took notes while Jessica and Molly tried to teach him about the flora and fauna. They chivvied him into going on nature walks and pointed out demure wild flowers that wouldn't bloom for months, taught him their Latin names, tut-tutted over invasive species, reminisced about long-ago cemetery landscaping triumphs and exclaimed over rare spiders. Robert wallowed in his own ignorance and tried to keep up with the two of them as they briskly dragged him into distant recesses of the cemetery. Molly and Jessica beamed at him whenever he managed to ask an intelligent question. It kept his mind off the twins, and he slept better for being thoroughly exhausted.

  Julia visited Martin, but he politely asked her to come back in a few days as he was behind with his work. The moment she left he went back to cleaning the bathroom-floor tiles with straight bleach and a toothbrush. Marijke's birthday was coming up and Martin was worrying over whether he would be able to call her, and how he might send her a present. These problems had absorbed him for days, but he didn't find himself any nearer to solving them. More cleaning might do the trick.

  Elspeth had relented in her haunting of the twins, at least for the time being, and steered clear of them. There was no point in forcing them to acknowledge her existence if they disliked her, and they had made it obvious that they were sceptical (Julia) or hostile (Valentina). Elspeth kept to herself, practised her peculiar pursuits and waited. So Valentina found herself suddenly free. Robert had ceased to shadow the twins, and Valentina no longer had the feeling of being watched on the street; she began to relax and enjoy their outings again.

  The twins very seldom bought anything when they went shopping. They had a flat full of Elspeth's belongings, which they treated as though it were a combination archaeological dig/magic hat; whatever they required seemed already to be somewhere at hand. They made their life out of Elspeth's, as if they were hunter-gatherers living on top of ruined Troy.

  Today they were in Harvey Nichols. The shop girls had them pegged as non-customers, so service was slow, but the twins strutted about in Prada and Stella McCartney all afternoon with perfect contentment. In the dressing room Valentina turned things inside out, meditated on garment construction and fabrics. Julia watched her, happy in Valentina's happiness. A plan (not even a plan; a need, really) had been forming in Valentina's mind for some time, and later when they sat upstairs in the cafe drinking tea she said to Julia, 'I want to go to Central Saint Martins College and take some classes.'

  'Classes? Why?'

  'I want to be a fashion designer.' Valentina tried to smile confidently, as though she were presenting Julia with a delightful gift. 'Alexander McQueen went there.'

  'Um. What am I supposed to do while you're doing that?'

  'I don't know.' Valentina paused. She thought, I don't care. Do whatever you want. She wasn't sure whether she needed Julia's consent to take money out of their account. She would ask Mr Roche. Valentina didn't want to argue about it, so she said, 'You could be my manager?'

  Julia pouted. 'That sounds kind of boring.'

  'Well, don't, then.'

  They sat in silence, staring off in opposite directions. The cafe had high ceilings, numerous small tables full of mums and prams, a safe ordinary clatter of silverware and dishes, laughing female conversation all around them. Valentina felt as though she had finally thrown down the gauntlet; she imagined a heavily fortified glove lying between them among the tea things. I always back down, but not this t
ime. She said, 'We have to work someday. And you promised we'd go back to school when we got here.' Julia glared at her but didn't reply.

  The waiter brought the bill. Julia paid. Valentina said, 'Let's look up the University of the Arts on the Web when we get home. Maybe there's something you would like.'

  Julia shrugged. They walked through the shop without speaking and out onto Knightsbridge. Valentina thought the tube ought to be just to the left, but Julia turned right and began walking very quickly. They passed Hyde Park Corner tube station. Valentina said, 'There's the tube,' but Julia ignored her. They crossed into Mayfair and began to zigzag, making random turns, Julia leading, Valentina trotting after her. Valentina knew they would continue walking until Julia decided to speak to her again; meanwhile they would get thoroughly lost.

  It was rush hour and the streets were crowded. The evening was clear and cold. Valentina saw familiar shops, squares, street names, but she had no internal map of London, no way to organise her surroundings; that was Julia's job, Valentina had not bothered to pay attention. Valentina began to be frightened. She wondered if she should just walk off and find a tube station; they were in central London; there ought to be stations all around. I should leave her and go home. Valentina had never tried that, abandoning Julia in the middle of a fight. She experienced a qualm at the thought of taking the tube by herself - she had never done it without Julia. Then she saw the familiar red, white and blue sign: OXFORD CIRCUS.

  The twins crossed Regent Street and were immediately caught in a crush of people trying to enter the tube station. There were currents within the crowd, and for a few minutes they found themselves walking against the stream. Julia was struck by how calm everyone was, as though they all did this every day at 6.30 p.m.; perhaps they did. Valentina was behind her, and Julia could hear her breathing hard. She reached her hand back and Valentina took it. 'It's okay, Mouse,' she said. They found the current of people moving in the direction they wanted to go. Now they were not pushed and jostled so much.