Pale as the Dead

by Fiona Mountain

  ‘Lizzie was fairly easy to trace,’ Margaret said. ‘I was surprised nobody had made the effort before. It took a while, but I got there in the end, though it’s only a rough sketch I admit.’ She smiled at the unintentional pun. ‘And you, Natasha, what makes you so interested in her? This girl, Bethany, is she a client?’

  ‘Kind of. Bethany is obsessed with Lizzie.’ What if the diary was Bethany’s way of copying Lizzie and Rossetti’s story? It would be just like her to do something like that.

  ‘I wondered if knowing more about Lizzie might help me to understand Bethany a little more.’ Bethany might even see Lizzie as a role model.

  The thought had come to her unbidden and she realized that’s what she’d been hoping. What she’d been dreading.

  Twenty

  ‘THE VICTORIANS CELEBRATED death. Their funerals were elaborate affairs, even for commoners. The mourners wore black robes, veils and crepe ribbons and the hearse was drawn by black horses whose heads were decorated with tall black ostrich plumes.’

  The guide paused. Natasha was standing beside him and the single other member of the tour party in the wide paved courtyard of Highgate Cemetery’s oldest, western side. They had reached the imposing entrance from Swain’s Lane, the neo-Gothic mortuary chapels, with battlemented parapets, lancet windows, turrets and stained glass. Beneath an octagonal bell tower was a central archway, with ornate double iron gates, through which the funeral cavalcades would once have swept.

  In the early January dusk they were all too easy to conjure.

  As Natasha had left the Record Office, she’d checked the tube map in her diary, counted the stops to Paddington. With a bit of luck she would make the two-fifteen train. But her eyes had been drawn to the black northern line, winding on upwards, to this other destination, further north. Highgate.

  The guide was a sandy haired man in his mid-forties, named Michael, and the other member of the party was a young man in a long tweed coat, who had introduced himself as Nigel Moore, explaining that he was a newly qualified doctor at the Middlesex Hospital. He wore round spectacles and had the sort of kindly, confident face that you’d be relieved to see if you were ill.

  They were led towards the broad flight of stone steps that climbed to the forested burial ground.

  ‘Cemeteries didn’t exist until the 1820s,’ Michael explained as they walked. ‘But the churchyards were becoming overcrowded. With the population rising, graves were literally overflowing, and there was a real fear that exposed, decaying corpses would spread disease. The cholera epidemic of 1865 was blamed entirely on the rotting bodies infecting the water supply. A case of the dead killing the living. Highgate was not the first cemetery, but it was to be different from the rest, designed by architects and landscape gardeners.’

  Natasha was used to wandering around graveyards, stopping to read the inscriptions. It was often necessary in her work, but she did it out of choice too. She liked the stories the stones told, and the thought-provoking beauty unique to burial grounds. She never minded being alone in them, even as darkness fell.

  But this place was something else. Grand, mysterious, in an almost horrifying way.

  The evergreens had grown enormous, forming a dense woodland whose branches were like the arms of candelabrum, shielding rather than shedding light. Everything was partially obscured by the omnipresent ivy, dark creepers and tangled undergrowth. Statues of guardian angels with outstretched wings, crooked Celtic crosses and gothic spires stood at odd angles, twisted and toppling, unearthed by expanding trunks and roots which made it look as if the occupants of the graves had risen from the dead and were trying to escape.

  Michael was saying how the growing preference for cremation brought financial difficulties to the cemetery, and the burial ground was left to neglect and decay. It was broken into by vandals and high-spirited revellers seeking moonlit fun on Halloween. But there were serious incidents too, vaults were broken into, coffins prized open. Highgate became a centre for occultism, voodoo, witchcraft and vampire hunters.

  Easy to see why.

  ‘The decision was taken to close the place down, move the bodies and rebuild on the land,’ Michael added. ‘But then a band of volunteers came forward to save it and thanks to their work Highgate is now a nature reserve, home to hundreds of insects, rare butterflies and woodland flowers and ferns. That’s why it’s closed to the public except for these tours.’

  As they walked, the doctor, Nigel Moore, had been studiously consulting the guide book, holding it up close to peer at it in the waning light, and he showed interest in the numerous illustrious medical men buried all around.

  ‘Yup, it’s a good place to be ill if you’re dead,’ Michael smiled. ‘Plenty of spiritual doctors to tend to you. Robert Liston, the first to operate on a patient under ether, Henry James who advocated fresh air and Robert Hill who campaigned for the insane not to be treated as freaks.’

  ‘Don’t suppose there’s a Dr John Marshall,’ Natasha asked, suddenly wondering. The young doctor checked the list. But Marshall wasn’t there.

  ‘Is he a relative?’

  Natasha explained that she was a genealogist, researching his family history for a client.

  ‘The Egyptian Avenue,’ Michael announced.

  It resembled an exotic temple, something from the land of pyramids and pharaohs, yet overgrown with ivy and creepers. The entrance to the avenue formed an arch flanked with giant fluted obelisks. It had the desolate splendour of a lost palace.

  Natasha’s heart began to beat a little faster as they passed under it into the long narrow Street of the Dead. Like a tunnel, excavated into the steepest part of the hillside, it was overhung with dark foliage and lined with heavy metal doors, the entrances to a towering terrace of vaults.

  She glanced at the names of those whose remains were interred. A genealogist’s dream. It was like a ghostly gathering of the clans, up to a dozen members of a single family, generations spanning over a hundred years, who would never have met in life.

  ‘It’s a great feature of Highgate,’ Michael said, seeing the direction of her gaze. ‘You get a real sense of family continuity here, all the members and all generations finally united.’

  Wasn’t that supposed to happen in heaven?

  As they doubled back down another converging path, Natasha asked Michael how long he’d worked there. ‘Ten years. I’m one of the few permanent staff, site manager now. I worked in the City before.’

  ‘It’s an unusual change of career.’

  ‘I fancied something a bit different.’ And this is about as different as you could get, Natasha thought. ‘It’s so much better than being cooped up in an office all day. I get to wander round in the fresh air, checking things are in order, making arrangements for funerals.’

  ‘People are still buried here?’ Nigel Moore asked.

  ‘Now and then.’

  They had come to an oval avenue, enclosing a wildflower meadow. Then they turned off the path away from the clearing, and in single-file, clambered through thick undergrowth.

  Michael halted and turned. ‘There she is.’

  Natasha came to stand beside him, her initial reaction one of vague disappointment. She had expected something more ornate. But the grave was small, unobstrusive and unadorned with monuments or statues. She could barely make out Lizzie’s name, weather worn and cracked, engraved on the flat stone atop.

  When you’d been reading or researching a life it was always moving to see the place where the person’s body lay. Natasha thought of Lizzie for a moment, tried to separate the woman from the legend.

  ‘One of the most famous and romantic events in art history happened here,’ Michael said. The three of them stood around the small grave in the gathering darkness, just as people had stood once before.

  She’d read an account of Lizzie Siddal’s exhumation in the guidebook while waiting for the tour to start. There were five of them on that October night in 1869. They too would have been still and silent for a
while. No doubt reluctant to begin the task they had come to perform. The weather might have been similar, dreary, with a fine autumn rain, and it would have been darker then, the only light coming from lanterns and a small bonfire they had lit by the graveside for warmth.

  Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who had ordered the act, was not present.

  Understandably he could not bear to be there. He must have relived and regretted a thousand times his rash impulse of love and grief. Again and again the image must have returned to him, his dead wife, before she came to Highgate, lying in her open coffin at his studio. He had reached out to her, in his hand the small grey-bound book, the only complete copies of his poems. He had laid it between her cheek and her famous golden-red hair, saying he did not need it anymore.

  Six years had elapsed, during which time ambition had created a new need.

  But six years was a long time, and those sent to undertake the task must have wondered what kind of state they would find both the book and her body. It was difficult to imagine their thoughts as the men employed by the funeral company removed the heavy grave slab. It would have taken them some time to dig down to Lizzie’s coffin. Once it had been identified by the brass name plate, the ropes would have been dropped, secured and the coffin raised joltingly. Then would have come the most gruesome task, levering off the lid.

  Someone would have had to reach their hand inside the coffin to take back the book. Their fingers would have brushed against her hair. In the glow of the fire, it was said to have retained its wonderful colour and sheen, to have continued to grow in death. A flaming strand is said to have come away with the book.

  Rossetti had excused his actions by saying that if Lizzie had been able, she herself would have lifted her own coffin lid to return the manuscripts.

  How easy it was in a place such as this to imagine a pale hand rising from the grave, a disturbed spirit flitting between the dark trees. To sense a presence, not malevolent but not peaceful either.

  What must Rossetti have felt when he first laid eyes again on that little grey book, soaked through, worm-eaten and putrid with decay?

  At least he had not seen her face in the flickering firelight. It must have been more unsettling, in some ways, to see her beauty untouched, than to have been confronted with bare bones or decomposing flesh.

  Her corpse’s perfection was a myth surely?

  The date of Lizzie’s death, 11 February 1862. Involuntarily, Natasha curled her fingers around the yellow post-it note inside her pocket on which Margaret had written Bethany’s hotmail address. It might prove useless, but it felt like something. Something tangible that made Bethany seem a fraction closer at last.

  Natasha had been staring at the gravestone and the inscriptions penetrated her thoughts. Some of the dates were very recent. The faded ones were harder to decipher but it was almost not necessary. It was the repetition of a single name that was so striking. Gabriele Rossetti, his father. Frances Lavinia Rossetti, his mother. Christina Rossetti, his sister, William Michael Rossetti, his brother. A twentieth-century Gabrielle, a little girl named after her esteemed ancestor. Another Gabriel Rossetti, who died less than thirty years ago, in 1974. They were all here. All his blood family. And to them he had sent his wife, related to them only through a short-lived marriage, who’d never been close to them in life. But if the recurrence of that single name was so noticeable something else was more so. The absence of the most important member of the cast.

  ‘It’s such a shame Rossetti’s not here, himself,’ Michael said. ‘He should be of course. Everyone who comes here is so surprised to see that he’s missing.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Birchington, in Kent. Apparently he gave strict instructions that he was not to be buried here on any account. It’s understandable I suppose.’

  Understandable because Rossetti was afraid of Lizzie’s spirit? Because he felt guilty for her death, or because he had violated her grave? Because he had been haunted by her during the remainder of his life and feared his soul would have no rest if it lay in proximity to hers? Or because, after what he had done, Highgate had become for him a place of nightmares?

  She noticed something else about the gravestone. Lizzie’s name itself was partially obscured by a little jar of fresh poppies. She gave an intake of breath.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Nigel Moore’s tone was concerned.

  For a moment she couldn’t tear her eyes away to answer him, until she felt his hand touch her arm.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she managed with a smile. ‘Thanks.’

  Michael was looking at her with concern as well.

  She suddenly remembered one of her reasons for coming. She took the picture out of her pocket, handed it to him. ‘Do you remember bringing this girl here?’

  He frowned. ‘You’re the second one that’s asked me about her this week.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A chap came round the other day, showed me a picture like you’ve just done.’

  Adam? ‘What did he look like?’

  Michael shrugged. ‘Youngish. Dark. Bit scruffy. Wearing a baseball cap, jeans.’ Not Adam. He looked back at the picture. ‘What’s so special about her?’

  ‘I wish I knew.’

  ‘Well, like I told the other fellow, I don’t particularly remember her. But that’s not to say she’s never been. Everyone who comes here asks to see Lizzie, but if it’s a large group we can’t let them. Lots of them bring bouquets, as you can see. But most times it’s not necessary. You should see it here in springtime. The whole area’s a carpet of cowslips and primroses.’

  But there were no growing flowers here now, only severed ones.

  Twenty-One

  NATASHA HAD BEEN sitting in front of a blank computer screen for the best part of an hour. She’d tried out a couple of messages and swiftly deleted them. Hi, Bethany. Wondered if you’d had any thoughts following our meeting. Too bland and crawly. Hi, Bethany. I’ve made some investigations, found an identity for your diarist. In the end she just typed: Are you OK? Before she had time to think twice she hit ‘send’.

  No messages came in whilst the modem was hooked up. Still nothing from Sue Mellanby in Cambridge whose mother thought she remembered a little girl called Bethany.

  * * *

  It was already dark when Natasha drove down to Oxford. It was Friday and the streets were busy with students out on the town, laughing and talking, heading for restaurants, wine bars and cinemas. Sometimes, especially in the evening, Natasha missed living in town. As she stood on the pavement of Beaumont Street she wished for a moment that she was part of the gilded student crowd again, with the evening and her life before her, exciting, filled with infinite possibilities. But when she had been in that position part of her had longed to be older and wiser, and more settled. Well, she was older.

  The building was a few yards up from the Playhouse, in the middle of a Regency terrace, flanked by a dentist’s practice on one side and a firm of accountants on the other, both announced by gleaming brass plaques. The canary yellow door she was facing said Bennett and Gibson Architects. She wondered if she’d come to the wrong place.

  The door opened and a girl with streaked blonde hair wearing a navy trouser suit came out, balancing an enormous bundle of envelopes in the crook of her arm. As she turned to close the door behind her she dropped the whole lot, spilling them down the steps and across the pavement. The girl swore. Natasha rushed to help and received a grateful smile as they scrabbled about on the ground together.

  ‘Thanks. I missed the post collection and they’ve all got to go today,’ the girl explained. ‘I’ve still a load more to do. I’m going to be here hours yet.’

  Natasha helped her carry them to the post box over the road and stuff them all in. As they were walking back she asked if there was a photographer’s studio in the building.

  The girl eyed her sceptically. ‘You’re looking for Jake or Alex?’

  ‘Adam actually.’

  ‘Are y
ou a model?’

  ‘Sadly not.’

  ‘In the basement.’

  * * *

  Narrow stone steps led down and through a grille on the ground, and a faint light glimmered from a subterranean window. Natasha spotted the inconspicuous typed nameplate, a strip of white paper behind Perspex marked ‘Studio’ and next to it, ‘PRB’. Please ring bell, or buzzer?

  She pressed the chrome button and the intercom crackled into life. It was quickly cut off, and a metallic, female voice gave a clipped ‘Hello?’

  ‘Natasha Blake. To see Adam Mason.’

  There was a few seconds of static, then, ‘Come in.’

  The lock clicked and she pushed against the heavy door.

  She was momentarily disorientated by blackness and the contrasting dazzle of a single point of light in the centre of the cavernous room. There were giant umbrellas lined with silver, a figure silhouetted, pale face accentuated, red lips. She was dressed in a black hooded velvet cloak, her long blonde hair tumbling around her face.

  Adam was standing in the shadows. He didn’t seem to have noticed Natasha come in.

  ‘It’s night,’ he said softly, the size and emptiness of the place giving his voice a theatrical resonance. ‘I’ve come back from the dead to see you again.’ The click of the shutter. ‘You don’t know whether to be glad or afraid, to run to me or to run away.’ A rapid bombardment, like pistol fire. ‘Then I’m gone. You know you’ll not see me again until you are dead too.’

  There was a petite girl with cropped, spiky, white blonde hair and orange paisley, lycra-clad legs leaning with one Doc Marten pushed up against the wall. Angie presumably. Without so much as a cue from Adam, she stepped into the light, put the hood of the cloak down, adjusted the folds, applied spray to the model’s hair, a dusting of powder to her porcelain cheek, stood back to check her efforts, dabbed on a little more blusher and then walked away.