‘I’m going to draw one on every grave in the cemetery,’ he continued.
‘Why do you draw them?’ I asked. ‘Why a skull and crossbones?’
‘Reminds you what’s underneath, don’t it? It’s all bones down there, whatever you may put on the grave.’
‘Naughty boy,’ Lavinia said.
Simon stood up. ‘I’ll draw one for you,’ he said. ‘I’ll draw one on the back of your angel.’
‘Don’t you dare,’ Lavinia said.
Simon immediately dropped the piece of coal.
Lavinia looked around as if she were about to leave.
‘I know a poem,’ Simon said suddenly.
‘What poem? Tennyson?’
‘Dunno whose son. It’s like this:
‘There was a young man at Nunhead
Who awoke in his coffin of lead;
“It is cosy enough,”
He remarked in a huff,
“But I wasn’t aware I was dead.”’
‘Ugh! That’s disgusting!’ Lavinia cried. Simon and I laughed.
‘Our Pa says lots of people’ve been buried alive,’ Simon said. ‘He says he’s heard ’em, scrabbling inside their coffins as he’s tossing dirt on ’em.’
‘Really? Mummy’s afraid of being buried alive,’ I said.
‘I can’t bear to hear this,’ Lavinia cried, covering her ears. ‘I’m going back.’ She went through the graves towards her parents. I wanted to follow her but Simon began talking again.
‘Our Granpa’s buried here in the meadow.’
‘He never was.’
‘He is.’
‘Show me his grave.’
Simon pointed at a row of wooden crosses over the path from us. Paupers’ graves – Mummy had told me about them, explaining that land had been set aside for people who had no money to pay for a proper plot.
‘Which cross is his?’ I asked.
‘He don’t have one. Cross don’t last. We planted a rosebush, there, so we always know where he is. Stole it from one of the gardens down the bottom of the hill.’
I could see a stump of a bush, cut right back for the winter. We live at the bottom of the hill, and we have lots of roses at the front. Perhaps that rosebush was ours.
‘He worked here too,’ Simon said. ‘Same as our Pa and me. Said it’s the nicest cemetery in London. Wouldn’t have wanted to be buried in any of t’others. He had stories to tell about t’others. Piles of bones everywhere. Bodies buried with just a sack of soil over ’em. Phew, the smell!’ Simon waved his hand in front of his nose. ‘And men snatching bodies in the night. Here he were at least safe and sound, with the boundary wall being so high, and the spikes on top.’
‘I have to go now,’ I said. I didn’t want to look scared like Lavinia, but I didn’t like hearing about the smell of bodies.
Simon shrugged. ‘I could show you things.’
‘Maybe another time.’ I ran to catch up with our families, who were walking along together. Lavinia took my hand and squeezed it and I was so pleased I kissed her.
As we walked hand in hand up the hill I could see out of the corner of my eye a figure like a ghost jumping from stone to stone, following us and then running ahead. I wished we had not left him.
I nudged Lavinia. ‘He’s a funny boy, isn’t he?’ I said, nodding at his shadow as he went behind an obelisk.
‘I like him,’ Lavinia said, ‘even if he talks about awful things.’
‘Don’t you wish we could run off the way he does?’
Lavinia smiled at me. ‘Shall we follow him?’
I hadn’t expected her to say that. I glanced at the others – only Lavinia’s sister was looking at us. ‘Let’s,’ I whispered.
She squeezed my hand as we ran off to find him.
I don’t dare tell anyone or I will be accused of treason, but I was terribly excited to hear the Queen is dead. The dullness I have felt since New Year’s vanished, and I had to work very hard to appear appropriately sober. The turning of the century was merely a change in numbers, but now we shall have a true change in leadership, and I can’t help thinking Edward is more truly representative of us than his mother.
For now, though, nothing has changed. We were expected to troop up to the cemetery and make a show of mourning, even though none of the Royal Family is buried there, nor is the Queen to be. Death is there, and that is enough, I suppose.
That blasted cemetery. I have never liked it.
To be fair, it is not the fault of the place itself, which has a lugubrious charm, with its banks of graves stacked on top of one another – granite headstones, Egyptian obelisks, gothic spires, plinths topped with columns, weeping ladies, angels, and of course, urns – winding up the hill to the glorious Lebanon Cedar at the top. I am even willing to overlook some of the more preposterous monuments – ostentatious representations of a family’s status. But the sentiments that the place encourages in mourners are too overblown for my taste. Moreover, it is the Colemans’ cemetery, not my family’s. I miss the little churchyard in Lincolnshire where Mummy and Daddy are buried and where there is now a stone for Harry, even if his body lies somewhere in southern Africa.
The excess of it all – which our own ridiculous urn now contributes to – is too much. How utterly out of scale it is to its surroundings! If only Richard had consulted me first. It was unlike him – for all his faults he is a rational man, and must have seen that the urn was too big. I suspect the hand of his mother in the choosing. Her taste has always been formidable.
It was amusing today to watch him splutter over the angel that has been erected on the grave next to the urn (far too close to it, as it happens – they look as if they may bash each other at any moment). It was all I could do to keep a straight face.
‘How dare they inflict their taste on us,’ he said. ‘The thought of having to look at this sentimental nonsense every time we visit turns my stomach.’
‘It is sentimental, but harmless,’ I replied. ‘At least the marble’s Italian.’
‘I don’t give a hang about the marble! I don’t want that angel next to our grave.’
‘Have you thought that perhaps they’re saying the same about the urn?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with our urn!’
‘And they would say that there’s nothing wrong with their angel.’
‘The angel looks ridiculous next to the urn. It’s far too close, for one thing.’
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘You didn’t leave them room for anything.’
‘Of course I did. Another urn would have looked fine. Perhaps a slightly smaller one.’
I raised my eyebrows the way I do when Maude has said something foolish. ‘Or even the same size,’ Richard conceded. ‘Yes, that could have looked quite impressive, a pair of urns. Instead we have this nonsense.’