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Chapter One

Kitty Coleman

I woke this morning with a stranger in my bed. The head of blond
hair beside me was decidedly not my husband's. I did not know
whether to be shocked or amused.
Well, I thought, here's a novel way to begin the new century.

Then I remembered the evening before and felt rather sick. I
wondered where Richard was in this huge house and how we were meant
to swap back. Everyone else here—the man beside me
included—was far more experienced in the mechanics of these
matters than I. Than we. Much as Richard bluffed last night, he was
just as much in the dark as me, though he was more keen. Much more
keen. It made me wonder.

I nudged the sleeper with my elbow, gently at first and then harder
until at last he woke with a snort.

"Out you go," I said. And he did, without a murmur. Thankfully he
didn't try to kiss me. How I stood that beard last night I'll never
remember—the claret helped, I suppose. My cheeks are red with
scratches.

When Richard came in a few minutes later, clutching his clothes in
a bundle, I could barely look at him. I was embarrassed, and angry
too—angry that I should feel embarrassed and yet not expect
him to feel so as well. It was all the more infuriating that he
simply kissed me, said, "Hello, darling," and began to dress, I
could smell her perfume on his neck.

Yet I could say nothing. As I myself have so often said, I am open
minded—I pride myself on it. Those words bitenow.

I lay watching Richard dress, and found myself thinking of my
brother. Harry always used to tease me for thinking too
much—though he refused to concede that he was at all
responsible for encouraging me. But all those evenings spent
reviewing with me what his tutors had taught him in the
morning—he said it was to help him remember it—what did
that do but teach me to think and speak my mind? Perhaps he
regretted it later. I shall never know now. I am only just out of
mourning for him, but some days it feels as if I am still clutching
that telegram.

Harry would be mortified to see where his teaching has led. Not
that one has to be clever for this sort of thing—most of them
downstairs are stupid as buckets of coal, my blond beard among
them. Not one could I have a proper conversation with—I had
to resort to the wine.

Frankly I'm relieved not to be of this set—to paddle in its
shallows occasionally is quite enough for me. Richard I suspect
feels differently, but he has married the wrong wife if he wanted
that sort of life. Or perhaps it is I who chose badly—though
I would never have thought so once, back when we were mad for each
other.

I think Richard has made me do this to show me he is not as
conventional as I feared. But it has had the opposite effect on me.
He has become everything I had not thought he would be when we
married. He has become ordinary.

I feel so flat this morning. Daddy and Harry would have laughed at
me, but I secretly hoped that the change in the century would bring
a change in us all; that England would miraculously slough off her
shabby black coat to reveal something glittering and new. It is
only eleven hours into the twentieth century, yet I know very well
that nothing has changed but a number.

Enough. They are to ride today, which is not for me—I shall
escape with my coffee to the library. It will undoubtedly be
empty.

Richard Coleman

I thought being with another woman would bring Kitty back, that
jealousy would open her bedroom door to me again. Yet two weeks
later she has not let me in any more than before.

I do not like to think that I am a desperate man, but I do not
understand why my wife is being so difficult. I have provided a
decent life for her and yet she is still unhappy, though she
cannot—or will not—say why.

It is enough to drive any man to change wives, if only for a
night.

Maude Coleman

When Daddy saw the angel on the grave next to ours he cried, "What
the devil?"

Mummy just laughed.

I looked and looked until my neck ached. It hung above us, one foot
forward, a hand pointing toward heaven. It was wearing a long robe
with a square neck, and it had loose hair that flowed onto its
wings. It was looking down toward me, but no matter how hard I
stared it did not seem to see me.

Mummy and Daddy began to argue. Daddy does not like the angel. I
don't know if Mummy likes it or not—she didn't say. I think
the urn Daddy has had put on our own grave bothers her more.

I wanted to sit down but didn't dare. It was very cold, too cold to
sit on stone, and besides, the Queen is dead, which I think means
no one can sit down, or play, or do anything comfortable.

I heard the bells ringing last night when I was in bed, and when
Nanny came in this morning she told me the Queen died yesterday
evening. I ate my porridge very slowly, to see if it tasted
different from yesterday's, now that the Queen is gone. But it
tasted just the same—too salty. Mrs. Baker always makes it
that way.

Everyone we saw on our way to the cemetery was dressed in black. I
wore a gray wool dress and a white pinafore, which I might have
worn anyway but which Nanny said was fine for a girl to wear when
someone died. Girls don't have to wear black. Nanny helped me to
dress. She let me wear my black-and-white plaid coat and matching
hat, but she wasn't sure about my rabbit's-fur muff, and I had to
ask Mummy, who said it didn't matter what I wore. Mummy wore a blue
silk dress and wrap, which did not please Daddy.

While they were arguing about the angel I buried my face in my
muff. The fur is very soft. Then I heard a noise, like stone being
tapped, and when I raised my head I saw a pair of blue eyes looking
at me from over the headstone next to ours. I stared at them, and
then the face of a boy appeared from behind the stone. His hair was
full of mud, and his cheeks were dirty with it too. He winked at
me, then disappeared behind the headstone.

I looked at Mummy and Daddy, who had walked a little way up the
path to view the angel from another place. They had not seen the
boy. I walked backward between the graves, my eyes on them. When I
was sure they were not looking I ducked behind the stone.

The boy was leaning against it, sitting on his heels.

"Why do you have mud in your hair?" I asked.

"Been down a grave," he said.

I looked at him closely. There was mud on him everywhere—on
his jacket, on his knees, on his shoes. There were even bits of it
in his eyelashes.

"Can I touch the fur?" he asked.

"It's a muff," I said. "My muff."

"Can I touch it?"

"No." Then I felt bad saying that, so I held out the muff.

The boy spit on his fingers and wiped them on his jacket, then
reached out and stroked the fur.

"What were you doing down a grave?" I asked.

"Helping our pa."

"What does your father do?"

"He digs the graves, of course. I helps him."

Then we heard a sound, like a kitten mewing. We peeked over the
headstone and a girl standing in the path looked straight into my
eyes, just as I had with the boy. She was dressed all in black, and
was very pretty, with bright brown eyes and long lashes and creamy
skin. Her brown hair was long and curly and so much nicer than
mine, which hangs flat like laundry and isn't one color or another.
Grandmother calls mine ditch-water blond, which may be true but
isn't very kind. Grandmother always speaks her
mind.

     The girl reminded me of my favorite
chocolates, whipped hazelnut creams, and I knew just from looking
at her that I wanted her for my best friend. I don't have a best
friend, and have been praying for one. I have often wondered, as I
sit in St. Anne's getting colder and colder (why are churches
always cold?), if prayers really work, but it seems this time God
has answered them.

"Use your handkerchief, Livy dear, there's a darling." The girl's
mother was coming up the path, holding the hand of a younger girl.
A tall man with a ginger beard followed them. The younger girl was
not so pretty. Though she looked like the other girl, her chin was
not so pointed, her hair not so curly, her lips not so big. Her
eyes were hazel rather than brown, and she looked at everything as
if nothing surprised her. She spotted the boy and me
immediately.

"Lavinia," the older girl said, shrugging her shoulders and tossing
her head so that her curls bounced. "Mama, I want you and Papa to
call me Lavinia, not Livy."

I decided then and there that I would never call her Livy.

"Don't be rude to your mother, Livy," the man said. "You're Livy to
us and that's that. Livy is a fine name. When you're older we'll
call you Lavinia."

Lavinia frowned at the ground.

"Now stop all this crying," he continued. "She was a good queen and
she lived a long life, but there's no need for a girl of five to
weep quite so much. Besides, you'll frighten Ivy May." He nodded at
the sister.

I looked at Lavinia again. As far as I could see she was not crying
at all, though she was twisting a handkerchief around her fingers.
I waved at her to come.

Lavinia smiled. When her parents turned their backs she stepped off
the path and behind the headstone.

"I'm five as well," I said when she was standing next to us.
"Though I'll be six in March."

"Is that so?" Lavinia said. "I'll be six in February."

"Why do you call your parents Mama and Papa? I call mine Mummy and
Daddy."

"Mama and Papa is much more elegant." Lavinia stared at the boy,
who was kneeling by the headstone. "What is your name,
please?"

"Maude," I answered before I realized she was speaking to the
boy.

"Simon."

"You are a very dirty boy."

"Stop," I said.

Lavinia looked at me. "Stop what?"

"He's a gravedigger, that's why he's muddy."

Lavinia took a step backward.

"An apprentice gravedigger," Simon said. "I was a mute for the
undertakers first, but our pa took me on once I could use a
spade."

"There were three mutes at my grandmother's funeral," Lavinia said.
"One of them was whipped for laughing."

"My mother says there are not so many funerals like that anymore,"
I said. "She says they are too dear and the money should be spent
on the living."

"Our family always has mutes at its funerals. I shall have mutes at
mine."

"Are you dying, then?" Simon asked.

"Of course not!"

"Did you leave your nanny at home as well?" I asked, thinking we
should talk about something else before Lavinia got upset and
left.

She flushed. "We don't have a nanny. Mama is perfectly able to look
after us herself."

I didn't know any children who didn't have a nanny.

Lavinia was looking at my muff. "Do you like my angel, then?" she
asked. "My father let me choose it."

"My father doesn't like it," I declared, though I knew I shouldn't
repeat what Daddy had said. "He called it sentimental
nonsense."

Lavinia frowned. "Well, Papa hates your urn. Anyway, what's wrong
with my angel?"

"I like it," the boy said.

"So do I," I lied.

"I think it's lovely." Lavinia sighed. "When I go to heaven I want
to be taken up by an angel just like that."

"It's the nicest angel in the cemetery," the boy said. "And I know
'em all. There's thirty-one of 'em. D'you want me to show 'em to
you?"

"Thirty-one is a prime number," I said. "It isn't divisible by
anything except one and itself." Daddy had just explained to me
about prime numbers, though I hadn't understood it all.

Simon took a piece of coal from his pocket and began to draw on the
back of the headstone. Soon he had drawn a skull and
crossbones—round eye-sockets, a black triangle for a nose,
rows of square teeth, and a shadow scratched on one side of the
face.

"Don't do that," I said. He ignored me. "You can't do that."

"I have. Lots. Look at the stones all round us."

I looked at our family grave. At the very bottom of the plinth that
held the urn, a tiny skull and crossbones had been scratched. Daddy
would be furious if he knew it was there. I saw then that every
stone around us had a skull and crossbones on it. I had never seen
them before.

"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:

"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 toward 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.

Kitty Coleman

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 but think 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."

And on and on we went. While I don't think much of the blank-faced
angels dotted around the cemetery, they bother me less than the
urns, which seem a peculiar thing to put on a grave when one thinks
that they were used by the Romans as receptacles for human ashes. A
pagan symbol for a Christian society. But then, so is all the
Egyptian symbolism one sees here as well. When I pointed this out
to Richard he huffed and puffed but had no response other than to
say, "That urn adds dignity and grace to the Coleman grave."

I don't know about that. Utter banality and misplaced symbolism are
rather more like it. I had the sense not to say so.

He was still going on about the angel when who should appear but
its owners, dressed in full mourning. Albert and Gertrude
Waterhouse—no relation to the painter, they admitted. (Just
as well—I want to scream when I see his overripe paintings at
the Tate. The Lady of Shalott in her boat looks as if she has just
taken opium.) We had never met them before, though they have owned
their grave for several years. They are rather nondescript—he
a ginger-bearded, smiling type, she one of those short women whose
waists have been ruined by children so that their dresses never fit
properly. Her hair is crinkly rather than curly, and escapes its
pins.

Her elder daughter, Lavinia, who looks to be Maude's age, has
lovely hair, glossy brown and curly. She's a bossy, spoiled little
thing—apparently her father bought the angel at her
insistence. Richard nearly choked where he heard this. And she was
wearing a black dress trimmed with crape—rather vulgar and
unnecessary for a child that young.

Of course Maude has taken an instant liking to the girl. When we
all took a turn around the cemetery together Lavinia kept dabbing
at her eyes with a black-edged handkerchief, weeping as we passed
the grave of a little boy dead fifty years, I just hope Maude
doesn't begin copying her. I can't bear such nonsense. Maude is
very sensible but I could see how attracted she was to the girl's
behavior. They disappeared off together—Lord knows what they
got up to. They came back the best of friends.

I think it highly unlikely Gertrude Waterhouse and I would ever be
the best of friends. When she said yet again how sad it was about
the Queen, I couldn't help but comment that Lavinia seemed to be
enjoying her mourning tremendously.

Gertrude Waterhouse said nothing for a moment, then remarked,
"That's a lovely dress. Such an unusual shade of blue."

Richard snorted. We'd had a fierce argument about my dress. In
truth I was now rather embarrassed about my choice—not one
adult I'd seen since leaving the house was wearing anything but
black. My dress was dark blue, but still I stood out far more than
I'd intended.

Excerpted from FALLING ANGELS © Copyright 2003 by Tracy
Chevallier. Reprinted with permission by Plume, an imprint of
Penguin Putnam. All rights reserved.

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