The Angel of Highgate

37 THE NEW SEXTON

Highgate Cemetery, London, 1869.

Algernon and Constance Hyde-Davies strolled along the paths of Highgate as their children, Nathaniel (aged ten) and Rebecca (aged eight), skipped through the leaf-strewn grass, hide-and-seeking behind the grave markers and stone angels, then springing out and shrieking as they surprised each other.

“Rebecca! Nathaniel!” Constance called out. “Mama wishes you to stay near!”

As they rounded the curving path, they noticed an elderly gentleman pushing a bath chair fitted with tight-shuttered curtains.

“Good lord!” Algernon said. “I believe I know this fellow.”

The pathway was narrow and eventually the two parties converged. Although a decade had passed, Algernon instantly recognized the man, much older and grayer, the once-rigid back now stooped by time.

“Mister Greenley.”

The man stopped upon hearing his name. His eyes flickered over Algernon’s face. Recognition was instant. He seemed a little suspicious of meeting his former superior, but the presence of Constance and the children visibly softened his demeanor.

“Mister Hyde-Davies, sir.”

The two shook hands.

“This is my wife, Constance, and my children, Nathaniel and Rebecca.”

“Say hello, children,” Constance said.

The girl clung to her mother’s skirts, suddenly bashful while Nathaniel bowed smartly from the waist and said, “A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Do you have a monkey in the basket?” Rebecca asked, looking at the enclosed bath chair.

“Rebecca!” Constance snapped. “Where are your manners, young madam?”

The young girl looked hurt. “I am sorry, Mama.”

Greenley unfastened and drew aside the curtain. The children peered into the dark bath chair and even Algernon and Constance craned forward.

Inside they saw a slender girl of around the same age as Nathaniel. She was very beautiful, if extremely pale. A delicate tracery of veins showed faintly at each temple. She had her mother’s long auburn hair but the violet eyes were striking.

“I should like you to meet Hope Aurelia Thraxton, daughter of Lord Geoffrey Thraxton and Aurelia Thraxton,” Greenley said with deep pride in his voice.

“Hello,” said the pale little girl. She smiled as her eager gaze swept over them. For both Constance and Algernon there was something uncanny about the young face.

“She is as beautiful as her mother,” Constance said, her voice tight as a harpsichord string.

At her words, Greenley dropped his eyes and looked at the ground. “Aye, that she is.”

“You and I shall be great friends,” the pale girl said to Rebecca in her floating, ethereal voice. She turned her eyes next to Nathaniel. “But you shall break all our hearts.”

“That’s enough, now, Hope!” Greenley interrupted. “These good people don’t want to hear any of your nonsense.” And with that Greenley quickly recurtained the bath chair. “Begging your pardon,” he muttered, “but we must be cutting along. She is very susceptible to the light.”

Robert Greenley steered his granddaughter’s bath chair around them, in a hurry to leave.

“One moment, sir,” Algernon said.

Mister Greenley stopped and stood still, without turning.

“Geoffrey… Lord Thraxton. Do you know of his whereabouts? Since Constance and I returned from the Galapagos, we have lost touch. He answers no letters. I understand his London home was sold some years ago.”

After a reluctant pause, Greenley admitted, “He sees Hope on the weekends. He is to be found here… somewhere.”

Algernon stiffened at the words. “You mean… you mean he’s here? At Highgate?”

“Never leaves. Haunts the place.”

Still brusque in his manner, Mister Greenley muttered a “Good day” and trundled his granddaughter away.

Algernon and Constance exchanged baffled looks.

“What does that mean?” Constance asked. “How can he live here? In the cemetery?”

Algernon shook his head in bewilderment.

“Why is that little girl so pale, Mama?” Rebecca asked. “Why does she ride in a bath chair? Can she not walk?”

“Shush, do not ask questions,” Constance chided. “Inquisitiveness is impolite in young ladies.”

They continued along the path, passing a gray-haired groundsman with a salt-and-pepper moustache raking leaves, a shabbily dressed fellow with a bowler hat and a stained jacket with the elbows nearly worn through. Algernon was tempted to ask him if he knew of a gentleman who visited the cemetery on a daily basis, but the question seemed ridiculous so he kept mum as they passed.

Around the bend they plunged into the deep gloom of the trees. Up ahead lay the Thraxton tomb. They found the tomb door unlocked and the latch lifted to Algernon’s touch.

“You must be quiet, children,” Constance hissed at her children. “This is a tomb. A place where the dead sleep. Be respectful.” The children dropped their heads, suitably cowed, and Constance nodded for Algernon to enter.

The tomb was surprisingly bright. A great many candles burned here and there. There were two biers. One bore the name Aurelia Greenley. A single white bloom lay upon the tomb — a Night Angel apparently just left there by Robert Greenley. Constance laid a bouquet of posies below it, and caressed the cold lead casket with her slender fingers. “She was so lovely.”

“Yes,” Algernon agreed, but his own words—a bloom that cannot abide the touch of man—ran through his head as soon as he said it.

The bier stood next to another, this one empty, that bore the name Lord Geoffrey Thraxton.

The Hyde-Davies family left the tomb after a short, meditative stay. Neither husband nor wife spoke as they walked arm in arm back along the curving paths toward the cemetery entrance and Swain’s Lane, although Constance did have to scold Nathaniel from time to time, who like any schoolboy, could not resist kicking leaves into the air from the piles raked into heaps alongside the paths.

They had to walk single-file to pass around the wheelbarrow parked in the path, which was laden with shovels, rakes, an adze and an object that immediately caught Algernon’s eye: a walking stick topped with a golden phoenix bursting from the flames.

“I say,” Algernon said, stopping. “I know that walking stick!”

The shabby groundsman was raking leaves a few feet away and Algernon shouted to gain his attention. “I say, you there, sir!” The man was raking with his back to them and showed no indication of having heard. Algernon kicked through the pile of leaves fencing him off from the verge and shouted louder.

“I say, excuse me!”

The groundsman stopped raking, looked around, and shuffled forward a bit, dragging the rake. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “Deaf in one ear. Can I help you?”

“This walking stick. Would you mind telling me where you—”

As the groundsman took a step closer both men recognized each other at the same moment.

The shabby groundsman was none other than Geoffrey, Lord Thraxton.

For several moments, neither spoke. The two old friends simply stood looking at each other. Ten years had passed. Algernon, promoted to head of Kew Gardens and married to a wealthy widow, had risen in the world and his expensive clothes showed it. By contrast, Thraxton’s clothes were stained, dirty and worn through with holes. For a moment, uncertain whether he had been recognized, Algernon thought about retreating, saving his old friend from an encounter that might cause him embarrassment. But it was too late: Thraxton had recognized him and knew, in turn, that he had also been recognized.

Thraxton took several more steps and eagerly reached out his hand. “My dear, dear, old friend.”

Algernon grasped Thraxton’s hand, reveling in the long lost feeling of flesh upon flesh. If both had not been Englishmen, they would likely have hugged. For his part Algernon could make no reply at first, for his throat was clenched tight, his eyes pooled to overflowing. Thraxton’s eyes sparkled, too.

“What happened to you, Geoffrey? Where did you go? We lost all contact after… after…” He could not bring himself to finish the sentence.

“I went nowhere. I remained here.”

“Here?”

“At Highgate?” Constance asked.

“Yes, I am the sexton now. Old Charlie passed on. He’s buried over there, next to his wife.”

“But… but why?” Algernon asked. “Why did you drop out of society?”

“I made two promises to Aurelia as she lay on her sick bed. She made me promise to help those less fortunate, so I sold the London home and used the proceeds to establish a mission for fallen women. The Thraxton family estate, the title and the family fortune has been placed in trust and will pass to Hope upon achieving her majority.”

Algernon spoke with a hitch in his voice. “So now you have nothing?”

But Thraxton smiled and shook his head slightly. “Now I have everything.”

The look in the eyes of Algernon and Constance seemed pitying, as if to say: You have everything except Aurelia.

“No,” Thraxton corrected, in answer to the unspoken question. “My beloved is with me always. I am keeping my second promise, to watch over her as she sleeps.”

“You will be rejoined with her, Geoffrey,” Constance said, gripping his hand solicitously. “We of the spiritualist movement truly believe that.”

“But she has never left my side. We walk these paths together every night and lose ourselves in conversation.”

The look that Algernon threw Constance was freighted with concern. He was hinting to let the matter drop, believing that his friend was delusional. Thraxton caught the brief exchange but said nothing.

“Mummy!” a girlish voice cried. “Nathaniel’s being horrid!”

All three looked up to see the boy throwing handfuls of leaves at the young girl, who was vainly attempting to throw them back, giggling, her long blonde hair already entangled with leaves.

“Nathaniel!” Algernon said sternly. “Desist at once!”

The three turned their attention back to one another, but the moment had passed, as mere speech proved inadequate for emotions so profound. The sun had just slipped behind the cedar of Lebanon, and dark shadows crawled from the trees and bushes and sprawled lazily across the pathways. It was time for them to take their leave.

“Good to see you, old stick,” Algernon said, pumping his old acquaintance’s hand. “We are still friends, are we not?”

“Forever,” Thraxton said, a melancholy smile settling on his face.

Constance kissed his cheek. Algernon wrung his friend’s hand a final time, a hand now calloused with manual labor, and the family departed, leaving Thraxton standing knee deep in the golden splendor of a summer passed.

As per his usual routine, at exactly six-thirty p.m., sexton Thraxton clanged shut the iron gates of Highgate and padlocked them, then circuited the pathways to make sure none of the living had been locked inside with the dead. When he reached the place where he left the wheelbarrow parked, he sank wearily onto a nearby bench and set the Bullseye lantern on the pathway at his feet. He still had a backache’s worth of leaves to rake, but a cemetery has nothing but tomorrows.

It was almost fully dark now; in the sky, rags of gray cloud snagged upon the sickle of a crescent moon before the wind ripped them loose, causing the light to fade and flare… fade and flare. A hawk moth shot past, then returned, whirling around his head in spin-dizzy circles. It alighted on his knee and trembled there a moment, antennae twitching, wings pulsing open and closed, then flitted away into the dark. The beam of his lantern spilled across the path. Atop a nearby tomb an angel perched, its face lifted to heaven, one arm outstretched, a crooked finger beckoning. As Thraxton watched, the angel’s wings slowly unfurled, stretched full, then flapped. The stone angel rose from its pediment, drifted forward a few feet, then pointed a toe down and alighted gently on the pathway, its final wingbeats stirring the dead leaves in their piles. Thraxton stood up as the shadowy figure stepped into the light, illumining the form of a small angel with bright violet eyes and a mane of auburn hair.

“My inamorata.”

“I am forgetting the way back. Each time I must come from further away. Maybe you should let me go.”

“Never.”

“Then maybe it is I who should let you go, Geoffrey.”

“Please, let us not talk of these things. Not tonight.”

“Why not tonight?”

“Because tonight is our anniversary.”

“Anniversary?”

“The anniversary of the day you took my hand and led me through the streets of London. Through a world I barely knew existed.”

“We found the party, remember? The grand house where they were holding a ball?”

“And we danced in the street.”

“We sipped champagne and waltzed in the streets of London.”

“Perhaps we should waltz again.”

“But we have no music.”

“No, we do. Listen.”

Just then, wind stirred the treetops as the world snatched a breath. Somewhere, a wind chime clonged, its soft coppery tones resonating from afar.

Thraxton slipped a hand around the angel’s waist, the stone rendered suddenly soft and warm. They grasped each other’s hands and began to dance, sweeping along pathways ankle deep with crisp autumn leaves. An angel made flesh and a man resurrected. Their eyes locked, a smile on their faces.

In truth, Augustus Skinner had been right: Thraxton was never a particularly good poet, but in his devotion to Aurelia, he was writing a love poem with his entire life.

And though his feet never left the ground, his heart soared.