Audrey Niffenegger - Her Fearful Symmetry

“Who’s he?” one of the young Japanese men wanted to know.

“Lead singer of the Sex Pistols, used to live nearby, in Finchley Park. Right, so you may have noticed that the neighbourhood surrounding this cemetery is a bit posh, and the neighbours got alarmed about the grave-desecrating and the wrong element hanging round. A group of local people got together and bought Highgate Cemetery for fifty quid. Then they went about trying to put it right again. And they invented what they call ‘managed neglect,’ which means just what it sounds like: they didn’t try to make it all tidy and imitate what the Victorians had done. They work things in such a way that you see what time and nature have made of the place, but they don’t let it go so far that it gets dangerous. It’s a museum, in a sense, but it’s also a working Christian burial ground.” Robert glanced at his watch. He needed to get them moving; Jessica had spoken to him only yesterday about Getting the Tour Back in a Timely Manner. “This way.”

He led them at a faster pace to Comfort’s Corners, then began to tell the story of Elizabeth Siddal Rossetti. As always, Robert had to fight the urge to tell the group everything he knew; they would be here for days, gradually collapsing with fatigue and hunger while he went on and on. They mainly want to see the place. Don’t bore them with too much detail. He walked them to one of his favourites, a ledger-style tomb with a bas-relief of a weeper, a woman sitting up at night with the coffin. “Before modern medical technology, people had a difficult time determining when someone was really dead. You might think that death would be pretty blatant, but there were a number of famous cases in which a dead body sat up and went on living, and many Victorians got the jim-jams just thinking about the possibility of being buried alive.

“Being a practical people, they attempted to find solutions to the problem. The Victorians invented a system of bells with strings attached that went through the ground and into the coffin, so if you woke up underground you could pull on your bell till someone came to dig you up. There’s no record of anyone being saved by one of these devices. People made all sorts of odd stipulations in their wills, such as asking to be decapitated as insurance against an undesired revival.”

“What about vampires?”

“What about vampires?”

“I heard there was a vampire here in the cemetery.”

“No. There were a bunch of attention-seeking idiots who claimed to have seen a vampire. Though some people do say that Bram Stoker was inspired to write Dracula by an exhumation here at Highgate.”

Valentina and Julia hung back at the edge of the group. They were having decidedly different experiences. Julia wanted to leave the group and go exploring. She detested lectures and professors and Robert was making her itch. You’re just bloviating. Get on with it. Valentina was not following Robert’s commentary very closely because she was occupied with an idea that had been nudging at her since Jessica had introduced him: You’re Elspeth’s Robert Fanshaw. That’s how you knew us. She was disquieted by the thought that he must have seen them before without them knowing. I should tell Julia. Valentina glanced at Julia. No, better wait. She’s in a mood.

Robert turned and led them further uphill, stopping at the entrance to the Egyptian Avenue. Robert waited for the American couple to catch up; they tended to fall behind as they tried to photograph everything. You’ll never make it, folks, there’s 52,000 graves in here. One of the Japanese men said, “Wow.” He drew it out so that it sounded like whoooohow. Robert loved the drama of the Egyptian Avenue; it looked like a stage set for Aïda.

“Highgate Cemetery, in addition to being a Christian burial ground, was a business venture. In order to make it the most desirable address for the eminent Victorian dead, it needed what every posh neighbourhood needs: amenities. In the late 1830s, when High-gate opened, all things Egyptian were quite popular, and so here we have the Egyptian Avenue. The entrance is based on a tomb at Luxor. It was originally coloured, and the Avenue itself was not so dark and gloomy. It was open to the sky, and there were none of these trees that lean over it now…

“The mausoleums in the Avenue can hold eight to ten people. There are shelves inside for the coffins. Note the inverted torches; the keyholes are upside down as well. The holes on the bottom of the doors let the gases escape.”

“Gases?” asked the quiet man with the binoculars.

“As the bodies decomposed, they gave off gases. They used to put candles in there with them to burn it off. Must have been rather spooky at night.” They went through the Egyptian Avenue and stood at the other end, the twins hugging themselves for warmth even in the strong sunlight. Robert looked at them and was hit by a memory of Elspeth standing in almost the same spot, her face tilted to catch the sun. Oh, you… He faltered. Everyone waited for him to continue. Don’t look at them. Don’t think about her. Robert stared at the ground for a moment and then pulled himself together.

“We are standing in the Circle of Lebanon. This was the most coveted address in the cemetery. It gets its name from the enormous Cedar of Lebanon tree you see up there above the mausoleums. The tree is approximately three hundred years old now, but even when Highgate Cemetery was founded it would have been impressive. The land was originally part of the estate of the Bishop of London, and when they came to make the Circle they cut down around the tree; it stands on what was originally ground level. Imagine trying to shift all that earth with 1830s equipment. The inner circle was made first, and it proved so popular that the outer circle was begun twenty years later. You can see the changing tastes in architecture, from Egyptian to Gothic.”

Robert led them through the Circle. This is not getting easier. He glanced at his watch and resolved to skip a few graves.

“This is the mausoleum of Mabel Veronica Batten and her lover, Radclyffe Hall…Here we have a columbarium. The name comes from the Latin columba, meaning ‘dove,’ and originally meant compartments for doves to live in…Follow me up these stairs, please…Right. This is the grave of George Wombwell, a famous menagerist. He got his start by buying two boa constrictors from a sailor…” Robert skipped over Mrs. Henry Wood, the Carter family’s faux-Egyptian tomb and Adam Worth and led the visitors around the top of the Circle to admire the view of St. Michael’s. He then herded them to stand between the Terrace Catacombs and the enormous Beer family tomb. The twins realised that they were looking at the huge mausoleum they could see from their bedroom window. They backed up, trying to see over the Catacombs, but although they could see Martin’s flat, their own wasn’t visible.

“Julius Beer was a German Jew who arrived in London with no money and made his fortune on the Stock Exchange…” Valentina was thinking about the fact that she had never exactly thought about death. The cemetery at home in Lake Forest was tidy and spacious. Jack’s parents were buried there in a modest plot with matching pink granite markers. The twins had never met any of their grandparents. We don’t know anyone who died. It’s hard to imagine not being here, or Julia not here… She felt a spasm of loneliness, or homesickness, she wasn’t sure which. Valentina watched Robert. He was ignoring her; he seemed to be deliberately focusing on the man with the binoculars. He knew Elspeth. He was her lover. He could tell us about her.