‘Maybe he laughed,’ Jo says. ‘He certainly went on orderingboots from John. So did other members of the royal family and, oh, sultans, and a huge number of other famous people.’
‘Not bad, for a poor lad from Cornwall,’ Eric sounds impressed.
‘That’s what I thought,’ Jo says, but what she is really thinking is just how much she likes this Viking from Birmingham, who writes with a fountain pen.
A man who listens to her.
Had James everreallylistened to her?
They are interrupted by a light tapping on the window.
‘Ah, it’s Clare,’ Eric says, getting up. ‘Better be going.’
Clare waves at them both, her caramel toffee curls twisting in the wind. As Jo watches her, she doesn’t know if she is imagining it, but Clare looks slightly uncomfortable. She looks like a woman who is embarrassed to see her.
Jo reflects she may have got away with it with Eric. He may not have guessed how much she likes him. But she’s not so sure she’s fooled Clare. Clare is doing a good impersonation of a woman who suspects she may have stepped on Jo’s toes. She may be happy that it is she, not Jo, that Eric is now leading towards his shop, but she is also clearly discomfited.
More evidence – that Jo could well do without – that Caramel Toffee Clare is a nice woman.
21
Highgate Cemetery
The light is extraordinary. Above her Jo can see where the branches of the trees splinter the late afternoon sunlight, diffracting the rays so that in places the light is firefly bright, in others, diffused and softened, turning the stone angels golden. Everywhere she looks there are tombs and gravestones. And growth. Greenery shrouds the tombs so it appears like the leaves have become part of the carvings. In places it seems the monuments are growing out of the tangle of ivy, and in others like the ropes of intertwined leaves are reaching up and pulling the stones into the earth, reclaiming them. Underfoot, the pathways are mottled terracotta, and old leaves lie scattered among the graves like curling flecks of rust – a reminder that the year is ageing, as is everything around them.
They had met at the entrance to the Western Cemetery – the cemetery being divided into two halves, positioned either side of a steep, narrow lane. Malcolm was back to his sombre self, dressed entirely in grey gabardine. Ruth was wrapped up warmly, her star-spangled scarf coiled around her neck and chin like a jolly python. Malcolm had passed Jo a map of the cemetery, commenting, ‘One for the pinboard.’ She looked up quickly, surprised and touched that he has noticed her growing collection.
Now Malcolm is guiding them along paths that lead upwards through the ancient Western half of the cemetery, pointing out graves of particular interest as he goes: a Regency bare-knuckle boxer who had the largest funeral London had ever seen; a monument topped by an elephant for the man who started the first zoo in England.
Jo gazes at the marble elephant and wonders if Uncle Wilbur ever visited the cemetery. He had never brought her here as a little girl, their favourite outing on a Sunday being to London Zoo. She had thought about revisiting the zoo when she first came to London, but wasn’t sure she would enjoy it without her uncle there, retelling his favourite story of the zoo keeper who ran a sideline opening the reptile house at night for his neighbours from the East End – until two of his visitors were killed by a Black Mamba snake.
Jo hurries to catch up with Malcolm and Ruth, who have just disappeared along the Egyptian Avenue, an ornate curved channel that leads to the catacombs. From here they descend the hill, crossing the road to start exploring the Eastern side of the cemetery. Broad avenues bordered by tombs lead into smaller byways, and then into narrow paths that eventually became impassable in the tangle of growth and gravestones. Jo loses count of the names she has read or tried to read on the headstones.
She is just turning quickly away from a small gravestone for a baby when she spots a red stone monument for an industrialist from Birmingham. Hadn’t Eric the Viking said he brought his father to the cemetery? She tries to dismiss the thought. It is enough that she is constantly looking for Eric every time someone walks past her shop window. She doesn’t want him invading this time with Ruth and Malcolm, which is such a respite from all that troubles her.
She moves further along the path to join Ruth. She hears the Runaway Vicar murmuring words under her breath, and she wonders if she is praying or just passing the time of day with the dead. They are both crouched down studying a grave of a young woman who died in the 1850s, when Jo remembers something she has been meaning to ask her.
‘Ruth, I get that vicars go with cemeteries, but I’ve been wondering, why do vicars go with blood, poo and vomit? Did you work in a particularly tough area?’
Ruth bobs up from where she had been crouching, ‘Oh, you don’t have to live in a rough area to come across those three.’ She studies Jo for a moment, ‘You must have seen it, where you used to live and where you grew up. You can be in the most beautiful spot in the world but there will always be people in trouble.’ She nods towards a bench, ‘Shall we sit here for a bit? I think Malcolm may be a while.’
Jo glances towards the tall figure of Malcolm, who is examining a tomb further up the path. Heis busy making notes in a small book.
As Ruth sits down she proclaims, ‘Dr and Mrs Claybourne.’
‘Who are they?’ Jo asks, looking about her for a tomb.
Ruth shakes her head. ‘Oh, no, not from here. John and Sonja Claybourne were from my last parish. Lovely couple. Lived in the sort of cottage you see on Christmas cards. Their son, Paul, died of … well, they say it was a drug overdose. But in the end, who knows. I believe it might have been exposure or malnutrition. They found his body in their garden on the seventh of January, six years ago.’
‘That’s awful.’
She realizes, without having to be told, that Ruth had stood beside Paul’s parents in that wintry garden.
Jo thinks back to her own childhood. ‘I was aware of some problems growing up, but not that many, if I’m honest. Maybe that was because we were on a farm, and I was young. I think my parents would always help people they knew were struggling, I’m pretty certain of that. But they didn’t talk about it.’
‘Quite right,’ Ruth says, briskly. ‘When your right hand gives, even your left hand shouldn’t know what the right hand is doing.’
‘Who said that?’
