by Ruth Hogan
‘I was asked to give you these for the crows.’
The paper bag was tied with a brown parcel label, upon which the following words were scratched in pencil: ubi aves ibi angeli.
Where there are birds, there are angels.
Chapter 55
ART
Alice
Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Alice felt poisonous; full to the brim with poison. She could taste it, smell it, even feel it seeping round her body just under her skin. She had been to confession, but it hadn’t made her pure. In fact, she felt even more sullied, if that were possible. But then it wasn’t the confession. It was a warm-up; a prelude to the main act for which she would need all her strength and courage. And she wasn’t ready yet.
The chemotherapy unit was wearing its Christmas cheer, but it was a thin disguise and unconvincing; like a grave-digger in a clown’s outfit. Mattie had gone to fetch a beaker of water. When she had finally told him about her cancer, he had begged to come with her. To be there for her. She had managed to pass off her initial surgery as a small, routine operation – nothing for him to worry about. She had only been in hospital for one day as an outpatient. But once her chemotherapy had begun, she had been unable to hide it from him for much longer. Alice shifted uncomfortably. Her wig was hot and scratchy. She detested what she thought of as her ‘hair hat’ and only wore it for Mattie’s sake. She watched the bright red poison dripping into her weary black vein and fought the urge to rip the needle from her arm. How much would be enough? How much did it take to kill a woman who was already so toxic that she had given birth to death over and over again?
‘Here you go, Mum.’
Mattie returned with the water and sat in the hard chair next to her huge, padded armchair. He had brought his iPod with him, but the earphones dangled out of his pocket unused.
‘You always were such a good boy. That’s why you had so many badges in the Cubs,’ she teased.
‘Yeah, like when I nicked the apples from old Jenkins’s orchard, or threw blackberries at your nice clean washing.’
Mattie laughed, but the memory jolted the wiring in Alice’s brain, threatening to make an unsettling connection.
‘You always blamed your imaginary friend,’ she said carefully.
Mattie laughed and pulled a mock scared face. ‘ “Help me! Help me! Help me!” he said, “Before the huntsman shoots me dead!” ’
He sang the words whisperingly, but threw his hands in the air dramatically for each ‘Help me!’
Alice shushed him, trying to smile, but the connection was almost there. Mattie stretched out his long legs and tugged at his beanie.
‘I always thought that the shed at the bottom of our garden was the cottage in the wood from the song. My friend was a little boy who lived in there with the rabbit and the little old man. He seemed real enough to me.’
Alice clutched at his wrist; her face suddenly grey.
‘I think I’m going to be sick.’
Chapter 56
ART
Masha
It’s Christmas Eve and the strawberry tree that is in a tucked-away corner right at the top of the cemetery is covered in red berries that look like clusters of tiny, frosted glass beads. Haizum is at home with Edward, Marcus and Lord Byron helping to make mince pies. I am hosting Christmas lunch, but Edward and Marcus are cooking it. Mum and Dad, Helen, Albert and Julia will also be joining us tomorrow.
And Gideon.
I have come to the cemetery to see my other family, and, in particular, Phoebe. The snow has gone, but there is a hard frost today and so the old part of the cemetery looks very seasonal in a Dickens A Christmas Carol way. For the last few years I have taken to hanging a few small decorations on the strawberry tree for my beloved boy and the others. The delicate glass reindeers and snowflakes look perfectly at home nestled in amongst the scarlet berries. I just hope the thrushes and blackbirds don’t think they’re edible.
In the new part of the cemetery, where the headstones are placed in long, straight lines, there are dozens of holly wreaths and some candles flickering in glass-sided lanterns. Here the dead still have families and friends to remember them, and miss them and bring flowers. But it is not so beautiful and I shan’t be lingering too long here when I give my tours. (I’ve done two stints of litter-picking, and my knowledge of the cemetery and its history is pretty damn extensive now, so in the new year I’ll be having a chat with Brenda the Brusque again, and this time I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer.)
When the cemetery first opened, originality was the latest trend. As more people made money and climbed the social ladder on the broadening back of trade and industry, more people could afford to distinguish themselves from the masses and achieve the covetable status of an individual. This aspiration to stand out from the rabble applied equally in death as in life, and the Victorian inhabitants of the cemetery would have longed for a stonking great monument. They would have dreamed of classical sculptures and columns, towering obelisks, guardian angels and granite crosses. It was not enough for one’s status and achievements to be recognised during life, and a glorious, handcrafted, designer tombstone with matching accessories was considered the perfect way to ensure that one’s worth (in every sense of the word) would be appreciated in perpetuity. It also gave family and friends a pleasant spot to come and grieve and chat to their dear departed.
But we have gone full circle. Now the trend is for uniformity, ruthlessly driven by the financial implications of maintenance. In the newer part of the cemetery, the headstones must have the same dimensions and stand up nice and straight. The jaunty angles of the Field of Inebriation would not be tolerated here. The rows of graves must be easily accessible to the onslaught of the ride-on mowers and their cavalier coachmen. There is just enough sameness to make it dull, and just enough variation to make it look untidy. The headstones conform in principle, but rebel in detail. Some have little lanterns and others have integral vases. The overall impression is rather like a 1970s housing estate; each house built to the same rather uninspiring design, but over the years embellished with a porch, a bay window, a satellite dish, an extension – or, worst of all, stone cladding. In the end, it just looks a bit scruffy. For it to be beautiful the sameness must be absolute. In the American military cemetery at Madingley, just outside Cambridge, every monument is identical. Swathes of simple, pristine, white stone crosses sweep in ribbons across the neatly cut grass. The effect is poignant, pure and absolutely beautiful.
I assume that Phoebe will have joined her mother, but I am wrong. There are no wreaths of ivy and mistletoe on Lily Phyllis Phoebe’s grave. Her angel stands sparkling with frost, and her lilies are the only flowers here. But there are flowers and wreaths on the grave next to hers. The headstone is flecked grey granite, with barley-sugar-twist columns on each side and an engraved starburst at the top of the stone. The inscription reads:
Charles Aubrey Crow
15 October 1934 – 25 June 1979
And underneath, a very recent addition:
Phoebe Jean Violet Porter
16 November 1940 – 23 November 2016
Ubi aves ibi angeli
I wish Phoebe/Sally, Charles and Lily a merry Christmas, and tell Sally that Kitty Muriel has not forgotten her promise to drink champagne at her graveside – we intend to do it together in the new year. I take the bottom path that winds beneath the dark, hushed canopy of some of the oldest conifers in the cemetery. The crows are gathering on the grass as I leave through the gate in the metal railings and cross into the park. It is already growing dark and the last few flecks and slivers of orange and raspberry sunset are melting into the steel blue sky. I can hear church bells calling children to fidget and wriggle their way excitedly through candlelit carol services. I have half a stale fruit cake as well as the usual b
read for the crows, as a Christmas treat, and as I scatter their tea at my feet the individual birds become an undulating, pecking black carpet of feathers, beaks and bright elderberry eyes. They finish the final crumbs, and I scrunch the paper bag into a tight ball and shove it deep inside my pocket. I shrink into the depths of my huge tweed coat, hiding from the cold, and head for home.
I am being followed. I’m certain before my ears confirm the fact at the sound of soft but quickening footfalls on the frosty grass. I know it because the hairs on the back of my neck are prickling, and my heart is scudding inside my coat. I turn around and see a figure wearing a hoodie, jeans and trainers coming towards me. And suddenly I’m furious. It’s Christmas Eve, for fuck’s sake! I’m in the middle of a park, having just been to the cemetery, not a bloody cashpoint. What’s he going to take? My coat? My empty paper bag? My Doctor Who scarf? He stops a few feet in front of me, and before he lays a hand on my knit-one, purl-one masterpiece, my fury explodes in his face.
‘What?’ I yell at him, flinging my hands towards the sky.
I know that my eyes are blazing rage and with my windswept hair, giant coat and flailing arms I probably look like a fearsome banshee, but I’m somewhat taken aback by his response.
‘Sorry. Are you okay?’
He looks a bit nervous and genuinely concerned. I’m feeling a bit embarrassed and a bit ashamed of myself (although if he pulls a knife on me in the next thirty seconds, I shall die feeling completely vindicated).
‘I just wanted to say something to you.’
He’s looking really uncomfortable now, and, not for the first time in my life, I feel like I have woken up halfway through a film, and have no idea what’s going on.
‘You don’t remember me, do you?’
‘No. I’m afraid I don’t.’
I have absolutely no idea who he is. For one completely surreal second, I even imagine that he’s going to tell me that he’s Gabriel; a grown-up ghost come back for Christmas. But then that’s what comes from too much Dickens, and vodka and tonic at lunchtime.
‘We pushed your friend. We were messing about and it got out of hand. You stopped him. You and your dog.’
I wasn’t expecting that. I was expecting to be mugged, murdered or even haunted. But not that.
‘He made her eat the bread, and she was crying . . .’ and so is he now.
He is angrily scrubbing silent tears from his face with the back of his hand. I look at him properly for the first time and even in the dark and beneath the hood I can see how young he is; about the same age Gabriel would have been had he lived.
‘He killed the baby duck. He’s a total fuckhead. We told him not to, but we didn’t make him stop. None of us made him stop, and we should have. I should have made him stop.’
I hand him a tatty tissue retrieved from the depths of my pocket, and he blots the tears angrily from his face. I say nothing because there is nothing for me to say. I can’t tell him it’s all right, because it isn’t. I can’t tell him that he isn’t to blame, because he was there and has to share the responsibility. So I say nothing and wait.
‘I’ve been watching for you, and I’ve seen you loads of times, but I always bottle it. I’ve been watching for your friend too, the old lady with the red shoes, but I don’t want to speak to her in case I scare her. I haven’t seen her for a while now.’
He’s shivering now, but the tears have stopped.
‘I wanted to say I’m sorry, because I am. Really. It was out of order and I keep thinking about it.’
And there it was. His Christmas present to me. Because I actually believe he means it.
‘Will you tell your friend when you see her? Tell her I’m sorry?’
‘Yes, I will.’
We walk through the trees to the main road and cross over.
‘I go this way now,’ he says, pointing in the opposite direction to my way home.
He smiles at me. A shy smile of youthful optimism and relief. I smile back. A smile of gratitude. I want to hug him, just for a moment; to touch him with love, because he has touched me with hope. But I can’t. Instead, I briefly lay my hand on his arm, and he lets me, seemingly without embarrassment. I watch him striding away with his gangling legs, hands in the pockets of his hoodie, jeans hanging perilously off his non-existent hips.
Just before he disappears out of sight, he turns and shouts, ‘Happy Christmas!’
Chapter 57
ART
Alice
Prayer for a Happy Death
O God, Who hast doomed all men to die, but has concealed from all the hour of their death, grant that I may pass my days in the practice of holiness and justice, and that I may deserve to quit this world in the peace of a good conscience, and in the embraces of Thy love through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.
When Alice came to she was lying on the bathroom floor. She had thrown up so violently that she had hit her head on the cistern and knocked herself out. Now she was cold and shivering, with a throbbing bump on her forehead and vomit in her wig. Her first thought was Mattie. Thank God he wasn’t here to see her in this state. He was still at school. She hauled herself onto her hands and knees and groped unsteadily for the edge of the bath. Eventually she managed to stand. Her face in the mirror was grey and haggard, and her skin was slick with the sweaty sheen of her sickness. But it was her eyes that gave her away. Calderas of despair haunted by a darkness far more terrible than her cancer and all its cohorts.
She splashed her face with cold water from the hand basin and rinsed the sick from the straggled ends of nylon hair. It had been the other woman’s face that had brought her to this. She was shocked by how physically alike they were. The other woman was perhaps a little younger, but their colouring and features were almost similar enough for them to pass as sisters. It had taken the omnipotent Google just seconds to locate the woman that Alice was looking for; her name, address and profession. There were several local news items and one national. Of course, Alice knew what she was looking for; dates, times and places. The woman still lived in the nearest town, but it was big enough and far enough away to have kept them separated and safe for all this time. But as well as the facts and figures there had been a photograph. The face on the screen belonged to a real woman, and that face had, in a single moment, destroyed every last pretence that Alice had spent so many years constructing, protecting and eventually believing. It was the face of her judge and jury, and inevitably, ultimately, her executioner.
Alice really wanted to take a shower before Mattie got home, but she felt too unsteady to risk it. Instead, she changed her clothes and dabbed on a little make-up, but it was a thin disguise to hide the woman she really was. Downstairs Alice closed the file she had been compiling on her laptop. Now she had the information, she had to decide what to do with it; decide whether she had any choice but to desecrate the happy home that she had built for herself and, more importantly, for Mattie. When he had been very young, she had kept to the edges of village life – much like their cottage, the last on the road out of the village and set apart from the other houses. Alice had dipped into the community only when necessity had dictated, and then out again as soon as it was possible. She had managed to earn a living in the safety of their own home from various market research and sales jobs that required only a high boredom threshold and a functioning computer. But once Mattie had started school, they were inexorably drawn more closely into the village. Mattie made friends and Alice made acquaintances of their parents. They had helped out at village fêtes and Mattie had joined the Cubs and now the village football team. In recent years, Alice had even joined the local WI and made some tentative friendships.
But now, looking back, she wondered if she had ever done any more than skate across the veneer of a social life for appearances’ sake. She hadn’t even told anyone else about her cancer, preferring instead to drive herself or take taxis to her hospital appointments and chemo sessions. Perhaps some instinct for self-preservation had always held her
back; and now she knew why. It had been her diagnosis that had triggered it. Her true past was a book that she had left unopened and on a high shelf for many years now; so long, in fact, that she had forgotten what was written on its pages. She had, instead, created her own reality, moulding and shaping it to fit her needs. But the shock of her diagnosis and the real possibility of her own death had knocked the book from its shelf and she had been forced to face the truth.
Alice switched off the laptop and went into the kitchen. She rummaged in the freezer amongst the frozen bricks of ready meals before deciding to make a proper dinner from scratch. Mattie deserved so much better than some processed rectangle of gloop purporting to be lasagne. Her cancer treatment was finished now, but the bone-dissolving weariness had yet to leave her. Her prognosis was still very uncertain. She had to make her peace, and not just with God. But most importantly she had to make sure that Mattie would be taken care of, whatever happened, and she still wasn’t exactly sure how the truth was going to help with that. But even if he never forgave her or understood why, so long as he was safe and loved, it was a risk she had to take, and she would have to tell him herself.
And what about the other little boy?
Alice steadied herself on the sink and took a deep breath as her body threatened to convulse once more. Her heart broke when she thought about him. She had to give him a proper resting place at last. Father Peter gave her the advice that she had known he would. She had finally found the strength to make a full confession. She had spared him, and God, nothing. But, of course, God already knew. Father Peter had been so shocked that he had forgotten to allocate the ‘Our Fathers’ and ‘Hail Marys’, but Alice knew that no number would be enough. It would take a great deal more. If she died, she must face God’s judgement; if she lived, then it would be man’s. There could be no happy ending for Alice; she could only try to find one for Mattie.