We Are All Made of Stars

by Rowan Coleman

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  STELLA

  The walk from the café into Euston isn’t long – although it’s taking us a little longer than it has to because Hugh insists on taking the less direct routes, which he claims are shortcuts.

  ‘I’ve lived round here all my life,’ he says, as we walk down house-lined streets, passing tall concrete blocks of flats that are bulging with life and drama, losses and loves, all contained, tonight, at least, behind tiny little squares of light.

  ‘And does that mean you can defy the physics of basically walking in a straight line getting you anywhere quicker?’ I ask.

  He laughs, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets.

  ‘My dad was an engineer. He worked out all the routes everywhere – to the nearest millimetre. I watched him do it. I promise you, we are getting where we are going by the fastest possible route.’

  ‘And where is that, exactly?’ I ask him. ‘I know you said you wanted to show me where you work, but what do you do for a living? Is it something scary like butcher or serial killer?’

  It feels a little surreal, that this complete stranger and I have fallen into this excursion together. Odd, but oddly natural. As if our paths crossing at exactly this moment in our lives is for a reason – perhaps this reason, even if the reason is just to walk and talk and not think about the pieces of our separate lives that are disintegrating around us. I see something in him that he also recognises in me. He is lost. I am lost. And both of us just want to find a way back to somewhere we recognise.

  Hugh leads me past the smell and bustle of Euston Station and into the quiet elegance of Bloomsbury, the crowds on the streets thinning as the evening turns slowly towards midnight.

  So when he had asked me, in the twenty-four-hour café, what I was doing now, I’d said, ‘Nothing.’

  I’d expected an invitation to the pub to catch last orders or something. Something that I’d planned on refusing, although I wanted to know what it would be.

  ‘Would you like to see where I work?’ he’d said.

  ‘Where do you work?’ I’d asked him. ‘I mean, it’s really late …’

  ‘Up the road, sort of. In Bloomsbury. In a museum.’

  ‘The British Museum?’

  ‘No, not there.’ He’d smiled, as if he was used to people making that assumption. ‘The Liston James museum. When I first worked there, it was soon after my dad died. I found it really hard losing him. He was my anchor. I’d spend long, long hours in the museum, in the rooms when it was quiet and empty, and dark, looking at the relics of other people’s lives and thinking. I worked out of lot of my problems there. You’ve got problems, I’ve got problems. We’ll go there and work them out.’

  ‘We’ve only just met,’ I’d said.

  He’d shrugged. ‘Good – fresh perspective.’

  And that’s how we started this walk: two strangers in a city of strangers, looking for a way to be found.

  It is becoming increasingly cold. We walk quickly, and in companionable silence, trusting Hugh’s dad’s route, keeping our heads down, tucking our chins into our coats, to keep the chill from biting at our cheeks.

  Our pace doesn’t slow until we draw up opposite the British Museum – floodlit, stately and magnificent. As I look at it, standing sentinel over the city, I realise what a small life I’ve been living recently. The little dark triangular world I live in: home and Vincent and work – three points that I keep on running away from, one after the other. No wonder I am so tired.

  ‘My museum is not as grand as that one,’ Hugh says, almost apologetically, as we cross the road.

  I follow him down a narrow road I’ve never noticed called Willoughby Street, and towards the end of that, tucked away behind a Japanese restaurant, is one of the secret little spaces that, even in a city like London, you would never stumble across by accident. Hugh leads me through a small alleyway, barely shoulder-width, into a tiny mews made up of five perfect Georgian houses, two either side and one at the end. It’s lit with wrought-iron street lamps, casting dramatic shadows across the cobbles.

  ‘I had no idea this was here.’ I whisper because somehow it feels appropriate, like we have stepped back in time. Every window in every house is shuttered and dark. The sound of the city has drifted away, and even the dark sky seems more dense – as if this is a world of its own.

  ‘No, most people don’t; it is not exactly a tourist attraction. Liston James House is the one at the end, and the others are owned by rich Russians, an actress, a politician, I think. Rarely occupied. It’s a scandal, really. Sometimes I think about crowbarring open the shutters and inviting in all the men and women sleeping in doorways at the end of the road. But I suppose I was brought up too politely to be much of a revolutionary, so every Friday night I buy whoever is there fish and chips and a cuppa, instead.’

  We stop at the unnaturally large, black-painted door at the front of the end house, and Hugh fishes out a selection of keys from his jeans.

  ‘Before we go in, I just want to say – the collection, it’s very unique, and a difficult one for a lot of people to stomach, these days. I think you will be fine with it, but if for any reason you don’t like it, just say and we will go.’

  I do waver; on paper it feels a little bit like I am volunteering to go down into a cellar when there is a maniac on the loose, but there is nothing about this situation that frightens me – no sixth sense or hairs standing up on the back of my neck. In fact, being with Hugh is unexpectedly calming. Like being with a friend or my brother.

  ‘Well, we’re here now,’ I say.

  He unlocks the door and punches a code into an alarm system. As I walk into a grand and vaulted hallway, built around an elegantly sweeping marble staircase, lights come on all around me, glittering against crystal chandeliers. I stand for a moment and let myself understand that this is a real place, and I’m not in a dream. It has all the traditional hallmarks of a grand mews mansion – everything you’d assume when you see one of these houses from the outside: ornate plaster work, high ceilings, a sense of space and symmetry – but it’s like no other room I have ever seen. The walls of the vast room are painted a dense, light-absorbing black and are covered from floor to ceiling in white masks, spaced only an inch or so apart. It’s like suddenly finding yourself on stage in a pocket theatre, with the house lights up. Propelled by curiosity, I walk over to one wall and examine the masks. They’re faces, all kinds of people’s faces: men, women, children, mostly with their eyes closed, expressions dormant, but some lids remain open, white blank globes gazing at nothing.

  I turn to look at Hugh, who is also examining the display on the walls, as if he is trying to remember what it’s like to see it for the first time.

  ‘Is it a welcoming committee?’ I ask, stopping at the face of a chubby toddler, positioned at eye level.

  ‘They’re death masks,’ Hugh tells me. ‘These are casts taken from corpses, all collected by Liston, until his death. He lost his own family, you see: wife, children, six of them, all before him. It devastated him; he felt bereft. He never recovered. His life became an obsession with commemorating those who had died. Those he knew, those he didn’t. When he died, the collection went to a nephew, who carried on the tradition, which he then passed to his son.

  ‘Victorians were desperate to have something of their loved ones to treasure when they were gone. It’s not that they weren’t afraid of death, but more that they weren’t afraid of acknowledging it.’

  I can’t take my eyes off the sleeping baby’s face – the full lips, the softly closed lids. I am familiar with death, and yet somehow this image fills me with emotion that I can’t understand: a pain, deep and tangible, so strong it takes my breath away for a moment. I’m grieving for the loss of an infant who was gone almost 100 years ago and also something more: a loss of something I have never had.

  I turn my face away, closing my eyes, waiting until the unexpected wave of emotion subsides.

  ‘Don’t wor
ry,’ Hugh says gently. ‘It gets a lot of people that way.’

  ‘It’s funny,’ I say. ‘Looking at that mask just made me realise how much I want a baby, Vincent’s baby; how much I’ve always believed that we would have a family together, and be parents. And now … that feels like it’s slipping away from me.’

  He watches me thoughtfully, his face still and calm.

  ‘Maybe knowing what it is that you want, the future that you have been fighting for, is what it will take to make it happen. It’s easy to admit defeat and let go of people you love, or dreams you have, because it’s difficult. Fighting for them is what takes courage. Fighting for them is what matters.’

  ‘But you can’t force a person to stay with you,’ I say. ‘Sometimes you have to accept defeat.’

  I follow Hugh through a drawing room, lined with portraits, past a piano topped with photographs, into another room, which lights up as we walk into it.

  ‘Motion-sensor lighting,’ Hugh tells me. ‘It saves on the bills, but it can be a little alarming if you’re doing some research and suddenly all the lights go off. And, yes, you are right, sometimes you do have to accept defeat; sometimes, but not until you’ve fought with your very last breath. My mum, she gave in too soon. She stopped trying too soon. Stopped trying to get better, to let my dad help, to stay in our family, to be a mother. She waved the white flag on our lives when another battle could have changed everything. She is even getting ready to die without one more fight. And it’s hard to forgive her for that. So I am saying, just make sure you have fought to your dying breath for the man that you love, the children you want, the future you thought was yours.’

  This room is lined with glass cabinets filled with all kinds of jewellery: rings, pendants, watches, earrings.

  ‘It wasn’t just the Victorians that kept memento mori jewellery,’ Hugh tells me, as I stray to his side and peer into one of the cabinets. ‘This collection dates back to the fifteen hundreds, but it was the Victorians who liked to incorporate relics into the design. See this watch?’ Slipping on pair of white cotton gloves, he removes a simple-looking gold pocket watch. ‘The cord that attaches to the fob is made of braided hair that belonged to the owner’s wife. She died during the birth of their first baby. The baby also died.’ He clicks open the watch, and, set under glass on the inside of the case, there is the faintest wisp of soft blonde hair. ‘The baby’s hair.’

  ‘There’s something so moving about it,’ I say. ‘I understand it, that need to hold a memory in your hand. The fear that everything else might fade if you don’t.’

  The next room has no windows at all but a high, vaulted glass ceiling. I’ve lost track of where I am in the house, but I sense this is somewhere in the middle. Every inch of wall space is lined with photographs. As I focus on the images – children sleeping, family groups, young men standing next to a chair – I gasp and cover my mouth.

  Hugh doesn’t need to tell me that I am looking at photographs of the recently deceased, dressed in their Sunday best, posed with their living relatives.

  ‘It horrifies us, and yet to them it was a miracle, a godsend,’ Hugh says. ‘At last there was an affordable way for every person to have a physical memory of someone they loved and lost. It was a marvel, a last chance to keep an image for eternity. These photographs gave an enormous amount of comfort to the masses, who would never be able to own a portrait or a carved marble statue.’

  For some reason, I, who have washed and dressed so many of the dead, find the photographs almost impossible to look at. My eyes skim over them and I walk away, towards the door on the other side of the room, where I hesitate, wondering what is on the other side of it.

  ‘Here.’ Hugh opens the door for me. ‘That’s more or less all of the collection. Well, there are reams of documents, books and the like, but you won’t want to see those. I think after the gallery you probably need a cup of tea.’

  He leads me downstairs, the lights clicking on over our heads as we descend into a basement area, and to a maze of smaller rooms, leading off narrow corridors.

  The kitchen is small, modern – more of an office environment than a traditional room. There’s an industrial-sized tub of Nescafé, a box of tea bags and a bowl of tiny cartons of long-life milks.

  ‘Are you going to go and see her, Grace?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says, taking two white mugs from a cupboard. There’s a sort of urn on the wall that he uses for hot water.

  ‘I have already grieved for her. I missed her, I’ve loved her and hated her. I’ve grown up defined by her not being there. Every choice I’ve made is somehow influenced by her going. Her choosing to leave us. I’ve come to understand suicide, depression, to somehow understand what she did, or what I thought she did, and accept it. But now …’ He turns his face away from me. ‘Now I just don’t know. She died, in my heart. She died, and I remember her, the mum that always laughed and sang, the mum who’d spend Saturday mornings with me, making toast and drawing. I remember her. I don’t know who this woman is that you have in your care. What if she isn’t my mother at all? And even if she is, what good does it do either of us to grieve all over again? And don’t forget, you said you delivered the letter too early. She hasn’t asked to see me again; she doesn’t want that. She just wanted me to know that she lied to me for years. Somehow that seems like the cruellest blow of all.’

  ‘Who knows what she wants or doesn’t want? And anyway, this mess, it’s my fault. I started this. I ran away from what was hurting me, and I hurt you instead, without thinking about it, even though I knew what was in the letter. So don’t blame Grace, blame me, and think about what you want. What will help you?’

  Hugh sips his tea, and for a moment I have a sense of the two of us, in this small, brightly lit room in the basement of this secret, dark house. Alone, all the lights above snuffed out by stillness, surrounded by all the mass of density that is London, pressing in on all sides.

  ‘Darwin ruined a lot for the Victorians,’ Hugh says. ‘They had this belief, this unshakable certainty, that they would go to a better place, after death, if they lived a Christian life. And then his big idea that made God seem irrelevant shocked society to its core. It’s no coincidence that after the theory of evolution came to light, the practice of spiritualism, séances, a yearning for proof of the afterlife also followed.’

  With a small, sad smile, Hugh reaches into his coat pocket and takes out a folded square of tatty yellowed paper, covered in childish writing. He unfolds it and lays it on the worktop.

  I realise at once that this is what was supposed to be Grace’s final letter, her suicide note. No wonder he knew it by heart; it’s next to his heart that he keeps it.

  ‘I so wanted it to be true that she wasn’t gone,’ he says. ‘I kept this, read it and re-read it, looking for clues – anything to prove that she hadn’t meant what she said, that this wasn’t really a final goodbye. I hoped for years. I lived with my father’s grief, and I watched it kill him, and all I had left to remember her by was a garage full of empty vodka bottles. They’re still there, you know. And when I was offered this job through my work as a historian, it seemed fitting, somehow. Almost as if I thought I might find her face amongst the masks in the hallway, or a lock of her hair inside a watch fob. But even if I didn’t, I still had this. Except now it turns out that I’ve been cherishing a false relic. And, honestly, now I have no idea what to do.’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ I tell him. ‘You do; you fight that last battle, the very last one. You fight till your last breath for the people that you love, and your dreams, the future that you want. And you can fight for your past, too, because it’s not too late to know how much it mattered to her, as well as to you. That’s what you do. You fight. We fight. We fight for the people we love.’

  Dear Angelina,

  You have been named after me, not that actress woman.

  I am your great grandmother. You are nine days old; I am ninety-three. I held you today. Funny, angry, red
little thing, you are, with great big black eyes. I thought I could see a little touch of me around your eyes, perhaps in that stubborn little chin.

  This letter is for you to read when you are eighteen years old, and is to accompany a silver locket, given to me by my grandmother, and hers. It’s a tradition. Goodness only knows how the world will have changed in eighteen years’ time, Angelina, but when you have lived as long as I, you learn one thing, which is humans do not change. So here is my best advice to you.

  Do not trust a man with unkempt facial hair.

  Vote. Even if they are all hopelessly inadequate, pick the least terrible one and vote. My mother fought hard to get you that vote.

  Keep your own finances, and let your husband keep his.

  Study hard. A good education is worth a thousand kisses.

  Wear sturdy shoes, except at weddings or parties, and your back will thank you.

  Good manners cost nothing. Bad manners can cost you everything.

  Your mother will remember me; she may very well say I was a terrible old dragon, but she will be joking, because she and I have loved each other as much as any batty old granny and her granddaughter ever have.

  Goodnight, sweet girl,

  Angelina Elizabeth Stoke

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  HUGH

  It seems illogical to come home from the museum, instead of going to her, but I do, because it’s here in this house that it should make sense. I’d wondered why she never haunted me, why I didn’t get a sense of her from time to time, and now I know.

  I stand outside the house, my house, and look at it for a long time, as the rain drifts down in non-committal sheets, hazing around the street lamps. The render is old and cracked; the front yard is neglected and forlorn. I’ve come back to this house every single day since my mother left it. I thought that one day I would probably die in it. But now I’m not so sure. Is it a home? Or is it just some lesser version of the Liston James Museum – a mausoleum to all that I have lost?