Falling Angels (26 page)

Then a group of very rough men shouted, "Ahoy there, girls! Fancy a drink?" and came toward us. Well. Maude and I fairly ran our legs off to get out of the park. The men didn't follow, but I refused to go back in--it was far too dangerous. We stood at the Marble Arch entrance and looked out across the grass, shielding our eyes from the early evening sun.

I was looking not just for Ivy May, but for Simon as well. We had not seen him since he left the procession to go and collect the horse (led by Maude's mother in that costume! I am speechless. It was no wonder that the horse kicked her). He had said he might come back to the park after. I kept thinking as I looked that they would be together--that Simon would appear, leading Ivy May by the hand. They would be eating ice-creams and they would have them for Maude and me as well. Ivy May would give me a cheeky look, with a little smile and glittering eyes, and I would pinch her for frightening me so.

"She's not here," Maude said. "We would have seen her by now. Perhaps she's gone home. She may have retraced the route we took, back to Euston, and got on an omnibus. She's not stupid, Ivy May."

I held up the little purse that dangled from my wrist. "She had no money for the bus," I whispered. "I made her give it to me for safe-keeping, so she wouldn't lose it."

"She may have found her way back," Maude repeated. "Perhaps we should walk along the procession route and look for her."

"I'm so very tired. I don't think I could take another step. Let's stay here just a little longer."

Then we did see Simon coming toward us. He looked so small in that great grass expanse, with his hands at his sides, kicking at things that had been left behind--bits of paper, flowers, a lady's glove. He seemed unsurprised to see us, and unsurprised when Maude said, "Ivy May is missing."

"Ivy May's gone," I said. "She's gone." I began to cry.

"She's missing," Maude repeated.

Simon gazed at us. I had never seen him look so grave.

"We think she may have gone along the route we marched," Maude said. "Come with us to look."

"What were she wearing?" Simon asked. "I didn't notice before."

Maude sighed. "A white dress. A white dress like everyone else. And a straw hat with flowers around the brim, like ours."

Simon fell in beside us and we began walking back down Oxford Street. This time we could not walk down the middle of the street, for it was full of horse-drawn cabs and omnibuses and motorcars. We stayed on the pavement, crowded with people walking back from the demonstration. Simon crossed over to search the other pavement, looking in doorways and down alleys as well as scanning the faces around him.

I could not quite believe we were going to have to walk the whole route again--I was so thirsty and footsore that I did not think I could manage it. But then, as we were going along Upper Regent Street, I saw down a mews a pump for watering horses, and went up and put my whole face under the stream of water that gushed out. I didn't care if the water was bad or my hair got wet--I was so thirsty I had to drink.

The bell in the clock tower of St. Pancras Station was striking eight when at last we arrived back at our starting point.

"Mama will be frantic with worry," I said. As tired as I was, I dreaded arriving home to face Mama and Papa.

"It's still so light out," Maude said. "It's the longest day of the year--did you know that? Well, second longest, perhaps, after yesterday."

"Oh, for pity's sake shush, Maude." I could not bear to hear her talk like a teacher in a classroom. Besides which, I had a fearsome headache.

"We'd best go home," Maude said, ignoring me. "Then we can tell your parents and they can contact the police. And I can find out about Mummy."

"Your mother," I began. Suddenly I was so angry I wanted to spit. Maude had sent Mr. Jackson off with her mother rather than have him help us. He would have found Ivy May, I was sure of it. "Your bloody mother got us into this mess."

"Don't blame her!" Maude cried. "It was you who wanted so badly to come on the march!"

"Your mother," I repeated. "You don't know the half of it about her."

"Don't, Livy," Simon warned. "Don't you dare."

Maude looked between us. "I don't want to hear it, whatever it is," she said to me. "Don't you ever say a word of it to me."

"Go home, both of you!" Simon said. I'd never heard him raise his voice before. 'There's an omnibus there." He even pushed us toward it.

"We can't leave Ivy May," I declared, stopping in my tracks. "We can't just jump on a bus and leave her at the mercy of this awful city."

"I'll go back and look for her," Simon said.

For that I could have kissed him, but he was already off at a run, back down along the Euston Road.

Never did I expect to see such a sight.

I didn't know who it could be, ringing the bell on a Sunday evening. I'd just returned from Mum's, didn't even have my cap and apron on yet. I weren't even there normally--I usually came back later, after Jack was asleep, but today he were so tired from running about that after tea he just fell into his bed.

Maybe it were the missus and Miss Maude, had their key pick-pocketed in the crowd. Or a neighbor meaning to borrow a stamp or run out of lamp oil. But when I opened the door, it were the man from the cemetery, carrying the missus in his arms. Not only that--she weren't wearing a proper skirt! Her legs were bare as the day she was born. Her eyes were just open, like she'd been woke up from a nap.

Before I could say a word but stare with my eyes popping, Mr. Jackson had pushed inside, with that suffragette lady Miss Black fluttering behind him. "We must get her to her bed," he said. "Where is her husband?"

"At the Bull and Last," I said. "He always goes there after his cricket." I led the way upstairs to her room. Miss Black was wearing some sort of metal suit what clanked as she went up the stairs. She looked so strange I began to wonder if I were dreaming it all.

Mr. Jackson laid the missus on her bed and said, "Stay with her--I'll get her husband."

"And I'll fetch a doctor," said Miss Black.

There's one on the Highgate Road, just up from the pub," I said. "I can ..."

But they were gone before I could offer to go so Miss Black could stay with her friend. It were like she didn't want to stay.

So it were just me and the missus. She lay there staring at me. I couldn't think what to do. I lit a candle and were just about to close the curtains when she whispered, "Leave them open. And open the window."

She looked so silly in her green outfit, her legs all naked. Mr. Coleman would have a fit if he saw her like that. After I opened the window I sat on the bed and began to take off her little green boots.

"Jenny, I want to ask you something," she said real quiet.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Does anyone know about what happened to me?"

"About what happened to you, ma'am?" I repeated. "You've had a little accident, is all."

The missus's eyes flared and she shook her head. "Jenny, there is no time for this silliness. For once let us be clear with each other--does anyone know what happened to me two years ago?"

I knew what she were talking about the first time, even though I acted like I didn't. I set the boots on the floor. "No one knows but me. And Mrs. Baker--she guessed. Oh, and Simon."

"The cemetery boy? How could he know?"

"It were his mum you went to."

"And that is all--no one else knows?"

I didn't look in her eyes, but tugged at the green cap in her hair. "No." I didn't say nothing about Miss Livy's letter. There seemed no point in agitating her in her state. Simon and Mrs. Baker and me, we could keep our counsel, but there was no guessing what Miss Livy might say one of these days--or said already, like as not. But the missus needn't know that.

"I don't want the men to find out."

"No." I reached round and began to unbutton the back of her tunic.

"Promise me they won't."

"They won't."

"Promise me something else."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Promise me you won't let my mother-in-law get her claws into Maude."

I pulled off the tunic and gasped. Her chest was one big black bruise. "Lord, what happened to you, ma'am?"

"Promise me."

Now I understood why she was talking like that. "Oh, ma'am, you're going to be just fine in a day or two. The doctor will be here soon and he'll sort you out. Miss Black's gone to fetch him. And Mr.--the gentleman's gone to get your husband." The missus tried to say something, but I wouldn't let her--I just ran on and on, saying whatever popped into my head. "He's down the pub just now, but it won't take him a minute to get back. Let's just get this nightgown on before they come, shall we? It's ever so pretty, this one, what with the lace at the cuffs and all. Let's just pop this over your head and pull it down. There. And your hair, that's it. That's better now, ain't it?"

She lay back again, like she were too weak to fight my words. Her breathing were all wet and ragged. I couldn't bear to hear it. "I'll just run and light the lamps," I said. "For the master and doctor. Won't be a second." I ran out before she could say anything.

Mr. Coleman came home as I was lighting the lamps in the front hallway, and then the doctor and Miss Black. They went upstairs, and then it went all quiet up there. I couldn't help it--I had to go and listen outside the door.

The doctor had such a low voice that all I could hear was "internal bleeding."

Then Mr. Coleman laid into Miss Black. "Why in hell didn't you find a doctor the moment the horse kicked her?" he shouted. "You were boasting there would be a huge crowd--surely among two hundred thousand people there was a doctor!"

"You don't understand," Caroline Black said. "It was so crowded it was difficult to move or even speak, much less find a doctor."

"Why didn't you bring her home at once? If you had shown any sense whatsoever she might be all right now, with nothing more than a few bruises."

"Don't you think I didn't beg her to? You clearly don't know your wife well if you think she would have done what I asked her to. She wanted to get to Hyde Park and hear the speeches on such an historic occasion, and nothing I nor anyone else--not even you, sir--said could have dissuaded her."

"Hyperbole!" Mr. Coleman shouted. "Even at a time like this you suffragettes resort to hyperbole. Damn your historic occasion! Did you even look at her chest after it happened? Did you even see the damage? And who on God's green earth told Kitty to lead a horse? She's a disaster around horses!"

"It was her idea. No one forced her. She never told me she didn't like horses."

"And where's Maude?" Mr. Coleman said. "What's happened to my daughter?"

"She's--she's on her way home, I'm sure." Caroline Black was crying now.

I didn't stay to hear more. I went down to the kitchen and put the kettle on. Then I sat at the table and began to cry myself.

Over his shoulder I saw a star fall. It was me.

I never seen a dead body before. That sounds strange coming from a gravedigger. All day long I got dead bodies round me, but they're in boxes, nailed shut tight and covered with dirt. Sometimes I'm standing on a coffin in a grave, and there's only an inch of wood 'tween me and the body. But I ain't seen it. If I spent more time out of the cemetery I'd see dead bodies all the time. Funny, that. Our ma and sisters has seen hundreds, all them women and babies died in birth, or neighbors, died of hunger or the cold.

It's strange seeing someone I know like that. If I didn't know to be looking for her I wouldn't recognize her. It's not that she's cut or crushed or anything like that. It's just that she ain't there. There are the legs, arms, head, all in the right places, lying down the back of a mews behind a stack of bricks. And the face is clean and smooth even, the mouth shut, her eyes a little open like she's looking through her lashes and don't want you to know she's looking. But when I look at the face I just can't see her. She ain't a person no more, but a thing like a sack of spuds.

"Ivy May," I call softly, squatting beside her. I say it even though I know she's dead. Maybe I'm hoping she'll come back if I say her name.

But she don't. She don't open her eyes and look at me with that look she has of knowing everything what's happening and never saying. She don't sit up with her legs straight out in front of her the way she likes to sit. She don't stand solid, looking like you could never knock her down, as hard as you pushed.

The body just lays there. And I have to get it back somehow, from a mews off the Edgware Road to Dartmouth Park.

How am I going to get her all that way without someone seeing me? I wonder. Anyone sees me will think I did it.

Then I look up at the end of the mews and see a man standing there. A tall man. Can't see much of his face 'cept the glint of his specs in the streetlamp and a thin moustache. He's staring at me, and when he sees me looking at him he steps back behind the building.

Could be he thinks I've done it and he's off to tell someone. But I know he's not. It's him what done it. Our pa says men can't leave their crimes alone--they got to come sniffing round again, like worrying a loose tooth or picking a scab.

I run out the mews to look for him, but he's gone. I know he'll come back again, though, and if I don't take her now he will.

I straighten out her dress a bit, and her hair, and I buckle on one of her shoes what'd come off. When I lift her onto my back I see her straw hat's been under her. It's all broken, and the flowers crushed, and too much trouble to pick it up with Ivy May heavy on my back, so I leave it on the ground.

If anyone asks, I'll say she's my sister and fallen asleep. But I stay away from the pubs and keep to the little streets and then the parks, Regents then Primmers Hill then the bottom of the heath, and I don't see many folk. And none ask. That time of night the people out are too drunk to notice, or else up to their own mischief and don't want to draw attention to themselves.