Falling Angels

by Tracy Chevalier

  “You watch out, Maude Coleman,” Lavinia said, “or you’ll commit blasphemy.”

  “But—”

  “Don‘t!” Lavinia covered her ears. “I can’t bear to listen!”

  Ivy May giggled.

  I gave up. “Let’s go back to Jenny.”

  This time Jenny was waiting for us at the main gate, red and breathless as if she’d just climbed the hill again, but unhurt, I was glad to see.

  “Where’ve you girls been?” she cried. “I’ve been worried silly!”

  We were all just starting down the hill when I asked her if she’d checked on the fabric for Mummy.

  “The book!” she shrieked, and ran back into the cemetery to fetch it. I hate to think where she left it.

  Jenny Whitby

  I were none too pleased to be running errands for the missus, I can tell you. She knows very well how busy I am. Six in the blooming morning till nine at night—later if they’ve a supper party. One day’s holiday a year apart from Christmas and Boxing Day. And she wants me to take back books and pick up fabric—things she can very well do herself. Books I’ve no time to read myself, even if I wanted to—which I don’t.

  Still, it were a lovely sunny day, and I’ll admit ‘twas nice to get out, though I don’t much like that hill up to the village. We got to the cemetery and I were going to leave the girls there and nip up to the shops and back. Then I saw him, on his own, pushing a wheelbarrow across the courtyard with a little skip in his step. He looked back at me and smiled, and I thought, Hang on a tick.

  So I went in with the girls and told ‘em to do what they liked for half an hour, no more. They was wanting to find a little boy they play with, and I said to be careful and not to let him get cheeky. And to keep an eye on the little girl, Ivy May. She’s of the habit of getting left behind, it seems—though I bet she likes it that way. I made ’em all hold hands. So they run off one way, and I t‘other.

  NOVEMBER 1903

  Kitty Coleman

  Tonight we went with the Waterhouses to a bonfire on the heath. The girls wanted to, and the men get on well enough (though Richard privately mocks Albert Waterhouse as a buffoon), and it’s left to Gertrude Waterhouse and me to smile and bear each other’s company as best we can. We stood around an enormous bonfire on Parliament Hill, clutching our sausages and roast potatoes, and marveling that we were gathered on the very hill where Guy Fawkes waited to see Parliament burn. I watched as people moved closer to or farther away from the heat of the flames, trying to find a spot where they were comfortable. But even if our faces were hot, our backs were cold—like the potatoes, charred on the outside, raw inside.

  My threshold to heat is much higher than Richard’s or Maude‘s—or most people’s, for that matter. I stepped closer and closer until my cheeks flamed. When I looked around, the ring of people was far behind me—I stood alone by the edge of the fire.

  Richard wasn’t even looking at the fire, but up at the clear sky. That is just like him—his love is not heat, but the cold distance of the universe. When we were first courting he would take me, with Harry as chaperon, to observation parties to look at the stars. I thought it most romantic then. Tonight, though, when I followed his gaze up to the starry sky all I felt was the blank space between those pinpricks and me, and it was like a heavy blanket waiting to drop on me. It was almost as suffocating as my fear of being buried alive.

  I cannot see what he sees in the stars—he and now Maude, for he has begun taking her with him when he goes out to the heath at night with his telescope. I haven’t said anything, because there is nothing I can truly complain of, and Maude clearly thrives on his attention. But it brings me low, for I can see him fostering in her the same cold rationality that I discovered in him once we were married.

  I am being ridiculous, of course. I, too, was brought up by my father to be logical, and I despise the sentimentality of the age, as embodied to perfection by the Waterhouses. But I’m secretly glad Maude and Lavinia are friends. Irritating and melodramatic as Lavinia is, she is not cold, and she counterbalances the icy hand of astronomy.

  I stood by the fire, everyone around me so cheerful, and thought what an odd creature I am—even I know that. Too much space and I’m frightened, too little and I’m frightened. There is indeed no comfortable place for me—I am too near the fire or too far away.

  Behind me, Gertrude Waterhouse stood with an arm around each daughter. Maude stood next to Lavinia, and they were all laughing about something—Maude a little shyly, as if she was not sure she should be sharing the laughter with them. I felt a pang for her.

  At times it is painful to be with the Waterhouses. Lavinia may be bossy with her mother, but there is clearly an affection between them that I cannot muster with Maude. After a few hours with them I come away resolved to link my arm with Maude’s when we walk, as Gertrude does with Lavinia. And to be with her more—read to her, help her with her sewing, bring her into the garden with me, take her into town.

  It has never been like that with her. Maude’s birth was a shock from which I have not recovered. When I came to from the ether and first held her in my arms I felt as if I were nailed to the bed, trapped by her mouth at my breast. Of course I loved her—love her—but my life as I had imagined it ended on that day. It fed a low feeling in me that resurfaces with increasing frequency.

  At least I was lucky in my doctor. When he came to see me a few days after the birth I sent the nurse from the room and told him I wanted no more babies. He took pity on me and explained the timing and the signs to look for, and what I might say to my husband to keep him away during those times. It does not work for every woman, but it has for me, and Richard has never guessed—not that he is often in my bed these days. I had to pay the doctor, of course, an ironic fee—“to make certain you’ve understood my lesson” was how he put it—just the once when my body had recovered. I kept my eyes closed and it wasn’t so bad. It did occur to me that he could use it against me, blackmail me for further payments in the flesh, but he never did. For that and his biology lesson I have always been grateful. I even shed a tear when I later heard he had died. An understanding doctor can come in handy at times.

  To be fair to Maude, that trapped feeling had emerged well before her birth. I first felt it one morning when Richard and I were just back from our honeymoon and newly installed in our London house. He kissed me good-bye in my new morning room—which I had chosen to be at the front of the house, overlooking the street rather than the garden, so that I could keep an eye on the world outside—and left to catch his train to work. I watched from the window as he walked away, and felt the same jealousy I had suffered when seeing my brother go off to school. When he had gone around the corner, I turned and looked at the still, quiet room, just on the edge of the city that is the center of the world, and I began to cry. I was twenty years old, and my life had settled into a long, slow course over which I had no control.

  I recovered, of course. I knew very well that I was lucky in many things: to have had an education and a liberal father, to have a husband who is handsome and well enough off that we can afford a cook as well as a live-in maid, and who does not discourage me from bettering myself, even if he is unable to give me the larger world I long for. I dried my tears that morning, grateful that at least my mother-in-law had not been there to see me cry. Small mercies—I thank my God for them.

  My marriage is no longer what it once was. Now I dread Richard’s announcement about New Year’s. I do not know that he really takes pleasure from the experience itself. Rather he is doing it to punish me. But I do not think I am capable of being what he wants me to be, of becoming once more the lively wife who thinks the world a reasonable place and he a reasonable man.

  If I could do that, or even pretend to, we could spend our New Year’s at home. But I can’t do it.

  I tried tonight to quell my black feelings and at least not neglect Maude. As we were leaving the bonfire I went up to her, took her hand, and slipped it into the
crook of my elbow. Maude jumped as if I had bitten her, then looked guilty for having such a response. She held on to me rather awkwardly, but we managed to remain like that for several minutes before she made an excuse and ran to catch up with her friend. To my shame, I was relieved.

  MAY 1904

  Maude Coleman

  I know I shouldn’t say this, but Grandmother always manages to ruin our day when she visits, even before she arrives. Until her letter came yesterday we were having such a lovely time, sitting around the table on the patio and reading out bits from the papers to each other. That is my favorite time with Mummy and Daddy. It was a warm spring day, the flowers in Mummy’s garden were just beginning to bloom, and Mummy for once seemed happy.

  Daddy was reading little snippets out from the Mail, and Mummy from the local paper all the crimes committed that week—fraud, wife beating, and petty theft the most common. She loves the crimes page.

  “Listen to this,” she said. “ James Smithson has appeared before the court charged with stealing his neighbor’s cat. In his defense Mr. Smithson said the puss had made off with the Sunday joint and he was only reclaiming his property, now inside the cat.‘”

  We all three laughed, but when Jenny arrived with the letter, Mummy stopped smiling.

  “What on earth am I going to do with her for the day?” she said when she had finished the letter.

  Daddy didn’t answer, but frowned and kept reading his paper.

  That was when I suggested visiting the columbarium. I was not entirely certain what a columbarium is, but one has opened at the cemetery, and it sounds grand enough for Grandmother.

  “Good idea, Maude,” Mummy said. “If she’ll agree.”

  Daddy looked up from the Mail. “I would be very surprised if she agreed to see such an unsavory thing.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Mummy said. “I think it’s rather a clever idea. I’m surprised you don‘t, given how much you like urns.”

  When I heard the word urn, I knew they would argue, so I ran down to the bottom of the garden to tell Lavinia that we might go to the cemetery the next day. Daddy and Mr. Waterhouse have put up ladders so that we can climb the fence more easily, after I sprained my wrist once from falling.

  I am rather frightened of Grandmother. She looks as if she has swallowed a fish bone and can’t get it out, and she says things that I would be punished for saying. Today when she arrived she looked at me and said, “Lord, child, you are plain. No one would guess you were Kitty’s daughter. Or my granddaughter, for that matter.” She always likes to remind everyone that she was a beauty when she was younger.

  We went up to the morning room, and Grandmother said once again that she did not approve of the colors Mummy had done the room in. I rather like them. They remind me of the workman’s café Jenny sometimes takes me to as a treat, where there is a pot of mustard and a bottle of brown sauce on each table. Perhaps Mummy saw them there and decided to use them in her morning room—though it is hard to imagine Mummy in a workman’s café, with all the smoke and grease and the men who have not shaved. Mummy has always said she prefers a man with smooth skin like Daddy’s.

  Mummy ignored Grandmother’s remarks. “Coffee, please, Jenny,” she ordered.

  “Not for me,” Grandmother said. “Just a cup of hot water and a slice of lemon.”

  I stood behind them by the window so that I could look out through the venetian blinds. It was dusty outside, what with all the activity in the street—horses pulling carts loaded with milk, coal, ice, the baker’s boy going door to door with his basket of bread, boys bringing letters, maids running errands. Jenny always says she is at war with dust and is losing the battle.

  I liked looking out. When I turned back to the room, where dust floated in a shaft of sunlight, it seemed very still.

  “Why are you lurking back there?” Grandmother said. “Come out so we can see you. Play us something on the piano.”

  I looked at Mummy, horrified. She knew I hated playing.

  She was no help. “Go on, Maude,” she said. “Play us something from your last lesson.”

  I sat down at the piano and wiped my hands on my pinafore. I knew Grandmother would prefer a hymn to Mozart, so I began to play “Abide With Me,” which I know Mummy hates. After a few bars Grandmother said, “Gracious, child, that’s terrible. Can’t you play better than that?”

  I stopped and stared down at the keys; my hands were trembling. I hated Grandmother’s visits.

  “Come, now, Mother Coleman, she’s nine years old,” Mummy at last defended me. “She hasn’t been taking lessons for long.”

  “A girl needs to learn these things. How’s her sewing?”

  “Not good,” Mummy answered frankly. “She’s inherited that from me. But she reads very well. She’s reading Sense and Sensibility, aren’t you, Maude?”

  I nodded. “And Through the Looking-Glass again. Daddy and I have been re-creating the chess game from it.”

  “Reading,” Grandmother said, her fish-bone look even stronger. “That won’t get a girl anywhere. It’ll just put ideas in her head. Especially rubbish like those Alice books.”

  Mummy sat up a little straighter. She read all the time. “What’s the matter with a girl having ideas, Mother Coleman?”

  “She won’t be satisfied with her life if she has ideas,” Grandmother said. “Like you. I always said to my son that you wouldn’t be happy. ‘Marry her if you must,’ I said, ‘but she’ll never be satisfied.’ I was right. You always want something more, but all your ideas don’t tell you what.”

  Mummy didn’t say anything, but sat with her hands clasped so tightly in her lap I could see the whites of her knuckles.

  “But I know what you need.”

  Mummy glanced at me, then shook her head at Grandmother, which meant Grandmother was about to say something I should not hear. “You should have more children,” she said, ignoring Mummy. She always ignores Mummy. “The doctor said there’s no physical reason why you can’t. You’d like a brother or sister, wouldn’t you, Maude?”

  I looked from Grandmother to Mummy. “Yes,” I said, to punish Mummy for making me play the piano. I felt bad the moment I said it, but it was true, after all. I am often jealous of Lavinia because she has Ivy May, even though Ivy May can be a nuisance when she has to come everywhere with us.

  Just then Jenny arrived with a tray, and we were all relieved to see her. When she had served them I managed to slip out after her as she left. Mummy was saying something about the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. “It’s sure to be rubbish,” Grandmother was saying as I shut the door.

  “Rubbish,”Jenny repeated when we were in the kitchen, her head shaking and her nose wrinkling. She sounded so much like Grandmother that I laughed till my stomach hurt.

  I sometimes wonder why Grandmother bothers to visit. She and Mummy disagree on almost everything, and Grandmother is not very polite about it. It is always left to Mummy to smooth things over. “The privilege of age,” Daddy says whenever Mummy complains.

  For a moment I felt bad about abandoning Mummy upstairs, but I was still angry that she said my sewing was as bad as my piano. So I stayed in the kitchen and helped Mrs. Baker with lunch. We were to have cold cow’s tongue and salad, and lady’s fingers for pudding. Lunches with Grandmother are never very interesting.

  When Jenny came down with the coffee tray she said she had overheard Grandmother say she does want to visit the columbarium, “even though it is for heathens.” I didn’t wait for her to finish, but ran to get Lavinia.

  Kitty Coleman

  Frankly I was surprised that Mrs. Coleman was so keen on seeing the columbarium. I expect the idea appeals to her sense of tidiness and economy, though she made it clear it would never be appropriate for Christians.

  At any rate I was relieved to have something to do with her. I always dread her visits, though it is easier than when I was first married. It has taken these ten years of marriage to learn to handle her—like a horse, except
that I have never managed a horse—they are so big and clumsy.

  But handle her I have. The portraits, for example. As a wedding present she gave us several dark oil portraits of various Colemans from the last century or so, all with the same dour expression that she wears as well—which is remarkable given that she married into the family rather than inheriting the look.

  They are dreary things, but Mrs. Coleman insisted they be hung in the hallway where every visitor could see and admire them; and Richard did nothing to dissuade her. It is rare he will cross her. His one rebellious act has been to marry a doctor’s daughter from Lincolnshire, and he will probably spend the rest of his days avoiding other conflict. So up went the portraits. After six months I found some botanical watercolors exactly the same size, and hung them instead, replacing them with the portraits whenever Mrs. Coleman came to call. Luckily she is not the kind of woman to pay surprise visits—she always announces her arrival the day before, giving me plenty of time to switch paintings.

  After several years of swapping I grew more confident, and at last felt able to leave up the watercolors. Of course on arrival she noticed them first thing, before she had even unbuttoned her coat. “Where are the family portraits?” she demanded. “Why are they not in their places?”

  Luckily I was prepared. “Oh, Mother Coleman” (how it grates to call her that—she is no mother to me), “I was concerned that the drafts from the door might damage them, and so I had them rehung in Richard’s study, where he can take comfort from his ancestors’ presence.”

  Her response was typical. “I myself don’t know why you’ve left them there all that time. I should like to have said something, but this is your home, after all, and far be it from me to tell you how to run it.”

  Jenny almost dropped Mrs. Coleman’s coat on the floor from giggling—she knew all too well the palaver that had gone on over the pictures, for it had been she who’d helped me switch the paintings each time.