Chapter 16
16
Three o’clock in the afternoon. I was scrambling through my suitcases, about to be late to meet Theo because I couldn’t find my sneakers. “Wear your trainers,” he’d said on the phone. “There’s a walk I think you’ll like.” He wouldn’t say where, but really, who cared? The moment his name came up on my phone, the moment he said my name like he always did— Anna! like it was amazing, a bit of good news he’d just heard for the first time—I would’ve said yes to anything. And anyway, walking was the best way to get to know Highgate. My new neighborhood.
Mrs. Wilder had warned that the house was “a creaky old thing,” but of course it wasn’t. It was beautiful. Precise. The table legs all rested squarely on the dining room floor. The chairs didn’t wobble. Dresser drawers slid open—silently, without protest—and closed again. Mugs were unchipped, upholstery unstained, carpets unworn. It was, in short, unlike any place I had ever lived. A place where money had been spent freely, without days and weeks of agonizing, doing “the books,” as my mother had called it, to see if some modest purchase or repair might be possible.
I would very much still have to do my own “books” here, but my expenses would be much less than I was used to; I’d found someone to sublet my flat at Andre’s, so I was currently living rent-free. Already I felt lighter. Free of the nagging, hesitating thing that could snatch joy from joyful days like this one, a day I hoped to spend walking hand in hand with Theo, somewhere mysterious.
I gave up on my suitcases and rushed to the next room, where I’d left a few tote bags of overflow. As I was pawing through them, I noticed a door behind the bags. It rolled open eagerly, revealing a closet the size of my bedroom in Kentish Town. I stared in disbelief. Clothes hung along every wall, tightly packed, and below them were rows and rows of shoes. Faye’s shoes.
Mrs. Wilder had warned me of this, too—that Faye had “forgotten a few things” when she left London, but she shopped so much, she never missed them.
Far in the back, I found a plain white pair of tennis shoes and pulled them out. I slipped my feet in and laced them up hurriedly before I could examine the act and feel strange about it. Faye had lent me clothes before. Shoes almost daily. If she were here, she’d be dressing me herself, pushing me out the door, telling me to borrow the beautiful waxed navy raincoat hanging to my right, too, in case it rained wherever Theo was taking me. But I wasn’t going to do that. I picked up my black canvas H it took us a few minutes just to walk up the hill to the entrance. “I thought you might fancy it,” Theo said. “A bit of the history of your new neighborhood.”
He steered me away from the center, the newer, neater headstones. We wound down the hill, along a dim path, deeper into the woods. He held my hand while we walked and told me all about the history—the oldest graves, the biggest tombs, the most well-known residents. Each path we turned down was more secluded, more haunting. If there had once been order here, straight lines, right angles, it was tumbled long ago by tree roots, the upheaval of earth and growth and time. Ivy and moss climbed everything; ferns covered the ground.
“I didn’t know you were such a history buff,” I said.
Theo smiled ruefully. “A man isn’t born into finance, Anna. He’s pushed, kicking and screaming, by his parents.”
“You studied history at Cambridge?”
“Only a bit, as much as my college would let me. I was admitted for economics. You know, here, they want you on one track. Don’t like you to faff about much.”
“I think that’s why so many of my students want to study in the States,” I said. “My father, he didn’t understand me studying English. He would’ve loved a finance daughter, but I hate that stuff.”
Where I grew up, saying you wanted to study books was about the same as saying you wanted to be an artist or a pianist or a poet. It wasn’t a livelihood, not something the world needed from you, or from anyone. Saying so might even sound like you thought you were better than everyone else, the people working their regular, necessary jobs.
But at Smith, you could major in women’s studies, or classics, or film, or a hundred other things that would give my father an aneurysm. I let myself declare English and told Dad I had a concrete plan: to work in publishing, help bring new books into the world.
He’d just laughed. Mom reminded him that lots of English majors teach—good and important work—and he reminded her that teachers made next to nothing, and what was the point of going to the fancy school just to end up right back where I was before?
“Do you think you’ll keep teaching?” Theo asked. “Once you’re done with the master’s program?”
“Probably not,” I said. “It’s not like SAT stuff is a natural transition into classroom subjects here.”
“It’s not?”
I shook my head. “Why would anyone want an American teaching their British kids British literature?”
Theo chuckled. “That’s a fair point. But then, you’re not like other Americans. You’re much more cultured. And so well-spoken, too.”
I laughed. “Thanks, I guess?”
“No, really, it’s in how you carry yourself. You’re very classy. No one would ever guess you came from such modest means. Usually you can tell straight off, with those types.”
I looked up at him, trying to read why he would say something so unkind. But it was clear from his face that he thought he was complimenting me. And I guess he was? Complimenting me and insulting everyone like me?
“So then, if teaching’s out, what’s next?” he said, oblivious.
“I’d hoped to get a job at a publisher, maybe,” I said. “But now that I’m here, it seems like those jobs will be very competitive.”
“Oh!” Theo said, turning to me. “But you’ll have to talk to Tess. I’ll introduce you. She interned at some publisher or other, down Haymarket. Or maybe an agency of some kind? Anyway, she’s very much a book person, like you.”
I doubted she was much like me at all, but it was nice to hear that Theo was happy to introduce me to his friends. I’d been wary of a repeat of the Callum situation, someone who was happy to talk to me until there was a crowd around. I really liked Theo; I didn’t want to be his little working-class secret.
“That’d be great, I’d like to meet her,” I said.
We turned down another path, narrowing into denser woods. “I wasn’t sure you’d call,” I said hesitantly. “I wasn’t sure if we’d see each other again. If it made sense to, here.”
Theo pulled me closer to him as we walked. “It makes sense to me because I like spending time with you,” he said.
Most of that time had been in bed, of course, but we’d been perfectly compatible there. Surprisingly, for how little we knew each other. I didn’t have a lot of free time, but I was happy to give what I had to Theo. To stay as much as I could in the glow of him, the heat lamp of his affection.
I smiled up at him. “How should we spend our time, then?”
“You haven’t seen half of what London has to offer, I’d guess. Why not let me show you around, take you out to all the good spots?”
“You have been a good tour guide today,” I said, leaning into him.
So, Theo wanted to be my well-versed and well-funded host—maybe I should have been insulted, but I only found it charming. I did want to see how London, my home, expanded for people like him. And I wanted this smart, sexy, attentive man to want to show me. “I’d love that. But I’m also happy to just go for a walk,” I said, gesturing at the path. “I don’t need to be constantly wined and dined.”
He grinned. “But Anna, the wining and dining is really my forte.”
“Well, just don’t get your hopes up,” I teased. “You won’t be able to top us dancing with Elton John on Christmas Eve, wherever you take me.”
“Oh, I think we can do even better.”
“Mick Jagger on Valentine’s Day?”
Theo shook his head. “He’s never in town. We could definitely rustle up Ronnie Wood for you, though, if it’s Stones you need. He’s round the Mayfair galleries quite a bit.”
“I guess that’ll do.”
“You’ll have a good time, I promise,” he said, squeezing my hand.
“I’m sure I will,” I said. It was true. I was eager for anything, for everything. Maybe that was what Theo liked about me. It wasn’t hard to imagine; if he spent all his time with too-cool girls like Faye and Lucy, who were essentially allergic to enjoying themselves, my sincere excitement was probably attractive.
“Have you noticed them? All the angels?” Theo asked, pointing at a statue. “Highgate is famous for them.”
“They’re beautiful,” I said. We’d already passed dozens—angels praying, weeping, playing music. Angels sleeping on the tomb as if it were a bed, heads on their folded arms, wings loose and drooping behind them.
Theo shook his head. “It’s all a bit much, to me.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Isn’t the grief of your human family enough?” he said. “Do we really need angels weeping, too?”
I laughed, though I hadn’t meant to. It was sweet. “People need all sorts of strange things, in mourning,” I said. “I guess I don’t begrudge them an angel or two.”
We hadn’t buried Mom. She’d wanted to be cremated, but there was no such thing as an affordable urn, so the funeral home gave us the ashes in a black plastic box, like an oversized film canister. She’d been so small, near the end. Almost nothing at all, thin as a bone under the blanket. The box had been opened only once; I scooped out a jam jar of gray ash the day before I flew to London. I brought that dust to England with me, and it was the farthest my mother had ever traveled. Her first time overseas.
“Where’d you disappear to?” Theo said. He pulled my hand toward him again, to his chest, tucking it inside his open coat.
“Oh, sorry,” I said. “I was just thinking—maybe the angels are a way to make it seem like the whole universe is grieving with you, even the heavens. Like the rest of the world can’t just go on like normal.” Which is, of course, exactly what the rest of the world does.
Theo dropped his voice. “You, ah— You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”
I hesitated, turning to look at a tree with its branches twisted around an old tomb, hugging it close. It would be too hard to explain my mother’s illness to Theo. He’d never lived in a country where people had to ration their insulin, weigh their health against their income.
I didn’t want to tell Theo about it. This thing with him was heady, intoxicating—why weigh that down? I didn’t have to complicate our time together with any ugliness. I didn’t have to let those two worlds meet.
“No,” I said, turning to him with a smile. “I was just thinking about this book, by Joan Didion. Have you read her?”
Theo visibly relaxed. “Can’t say that I have, but the name’s familiar. I’m ashamed to think of the last time I read a book that wasn’t about emerging markets or currency manipulation.”
I winced theatrically. “Keep talking about that, you’ll have to dig me a grave here.”
He laughed, and the sound was a shock, with the quiet forest hanging over us.
We explored each neglected path and overgrown corner in almost complete privacy. When it started to drizzle, Theo led me back around to the main path. Tourists in raincoats were clotted there, blocking our way, gathered around a tomb with an oversized bust on top.
“Karl Marx,” Theo said as we squeezed past the group. “The most famous inhabitant, but not the largest funeral.”
“Whose was that?”
“Tom Sayers, bare-knuckle prizefighter. A real working-class hero—started off as a bricklayer, helped build King’s Cross. Over thirty thousand people turned out for his funeral procession,” he said, gesturing toward Swain’s Lane. “They closed Parliament for it.”
I couldn’t help but smile, watching Theo’s history-nerd side come out. Really, he would’ve made a great teacher, if his parents hadn’t interfered. Kind, curious, generous. Hard to imagine a better guide to London, for me. “Where’s he buried?” I asked. “Did we miss it?”
“He’s buried in the west cemetery, just across the street. It’s open to tours only, unfortunately. I wish you could see it.”
“And are the tour guides on that side just as good-looking?” I teased, steering us down one last shaded path, hoping for a moment of privacy.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “Real ugly buggers.” Then he stopped on the path, pulling me against him. “And don’t forget, this guide also makes you coffee in the morning.”
I tipped my face up to him, the way I’d been longing to since we’d entered the dark cemetery. I needed him to kiss me, to pull my bottom lip into his mouth, to tug it gently with his teeth. It was too much to be near him this long and not have that.
“Oh, is this an overnight tour?” I whispered.
He caught my hair up in one hand, tipping my head back, bending to kiss my neck. The bare sensation—cold rain and warm lips—were at odds, and my whole body glowed with it. His mouth inched slowly up to my jaw, and then to my ear, and I held my breath so I wouldn’t release the little moan in my throat.
“Oh, yes,” he breathed into my ear. “It lasts all night.”