Laying the Ghost (27 page)

But after the industrial greyness of Willesden’s rail yards, Kensal Rise looked reassuringly domestic, similar to her own suburban area. Joel took her hand and they walked along a tree-lined avenue towards … where? He still hadn’t told her. He just ambled along happily, smiling and pleased with himself.

‘Joel, this is mad.
Please
tell me where we’re going. I mean, suppose my mum phones me and asks where I am?’

Joel looked alarmed. ‘You told her you were at Tess’s tonight, didn’t you? I told mine I’d be at Duane Stuart’s. It’s cool.’

‘OK, I was just … I feel lost.’ Mimi also felt sulky. Her feet hurt. She’d got all her weekend homework in her bag along with what she’d planned to wear, and it wasn’t light to carry.

‘We’re going over there.’ He pointed across a broad main road. She couldn’t see what he meant. On the other side of the road there was nothing but a massive brick wall, for as far as she could see. Was it a prison? They crossed at the lights and approached an ornate iron gate
and
a sign that read West London Crematorium. Great, she thought, peering through the gates at a seemingly endless cemetery.

‘The dead centre of Kensal, then,’ she muttered, hesitating by the gates. Was this an ideal picnic spot? She didn’t think so.

‘Come on, it’s great in here. This is Kensal Green cemetery.’ Joel took her hand and she felt as if she was stepping into another universe. ‘It’s historic, famous, it’s got atmosphere. You’ll love it.’

‘Will I?’ Mimi wasn’t so sure but it was his birthday, she had to give it a go. They were walking along a rough pathway, past bizarre mini-temples that looked weirdly modern, like hideous holiday chalets. She’d never seen anything like them in a graveyard – they looked peculiarly incongruous among ancient, leaning gravestones and traditional angel statues.

‘Those are horrible.’ Joel read her mind. ‘But there are brilliant old ones further in, you’ll see.’

‘OK – but … why are we having a picnic in
here
?’ Mimi didn’t want to hang out with the dead. This was wrong, like wishing for bad luck. She’d never even been to a funeral before.

‘Ah … you’ll see. Come on.’

Deeper into the cemetery the graves were densely packed together: new ones, heaped with flowers and fresh earth, were like tiny body-length slivers squeezed in
between
long-forgotten weed-strewn mounds. Three women were sitting on the grass beside a grave, busy with trowels and lupin plants. Mimi thought of slugs and worms, and wished she was home watching
Neighbours
.

They came to a group of weather-worn ancient monuments, ornate church-like buildings draped in ivy, rustling with nesting birds. Gargoyles leered at them from roofs that were only just above head height and windows were bricked up – though whether to stop body-snatchers getting in or souls getting out, Mimi dared not speculate. She just imagined being trapped in one, walled in alive. All around them, marble columns and angels with missing limbs cut into the vivid blue skyline. Some graves had chunks of shattered, collapsed stone revealing deep, dark caverns beneath. Mimi couldn’t look at these, fearing to see bones and coffin splinters and feeling the neglect was almost an obscene disrespect, leaving the occupants so vulnerably near-exposed.

‘It’s all right, they’re long rotted.’ Joel picked up on her unease.

‘Oh thanks, Joel, that’s a comfort.’ Mimi shivered. She stopped in a patch of sunshine by a low white picket fence that enclosed a strangely modern grave. It was an unusually big plot, containing a triptych of plain grey granite, each panel elaborately scrolled with gilt flowers, and with a sepia photo of a young, smiling woman set into the central one.

‘I bet she didn’t look like that when she died,’ Joel said, leaning over the fence. ‘Look at the dates, she was ninety-eight when she went.’

‘It must have cost a bomb. She’s got more space than just about anyone,’ Mimi commented.

‘Yeah and what a waste. I bet they didn’t spend that much on her when she was alive and old.’

‘Oh, they might have. Look at this lot.’ Mimi pointed to a collection of ornaments, little plaster cats, hedgehogs and squirrels lining the edge of the fence. ‘They’ve made a sort of garden for her. In a way, it’s sweet, but it’s also strange, as if they really cared but didn’t know what to do to show it. I bet her house was full of ornaments too. They wanted it to be like home for her.’

‘Yeah, OK, but just don’t ever do that for me, promise?’ Joel laughed nervously, backing away from the grave plot. ‘It gives me the spooks. And anyway, it’s ugly. I mean, look at the old ones.’ He pointed to a pink marble obelisk. ‘Now that’s fabulous; all that skyward stuff, it’s … it’s …
aspirational
. It means something, like the broken columns, they represent life cut short. And then look at this slab tat – is this the best of twenty-first-century grave design? It looks like my mum’s kitchen worktop, up on end. Let’s go.’ He pulled her away from the fence. ‘We’re nearly there.’

Again, Mimi wondered where ‘there’ was. It was getting colder now. No one else was around. Did this place close at night? And if it did, at what time?

‘Here!’ Joel plonked his bag down on top of a table-like slab of pale, mossy marble. ‘
This
is …’

‘Oh, I get it …!’ The truth at last dawned on Mimi. ‘Brunel’s grave!’

‘Brunel, father and son and more.’ Joel pointed to the list of names on the inscription: ‘Come and sit here with me. Fancy a drink?’ He pulled a bottle of champagne out of the bag along with a couple of plastic mugs, using the grave like a table.

Mimi hesitated – it didn’t seem right to sit on someone who was all powder and bones. Joel’s phrase ‘long rotted’ came back to her head. So this was the big treat. A picnic on some dead geezer. Great. She wasn’t sure whether to feel disappointed or strangely flattered that whatever Joel wanted her for on this special day, casual disposal of her virginity wasn’t part of it. That was one thing to be thankful for, she supposed: he didn’t expect to do it with her on this cold marble. Or did he? Maybe that was for later, like dedicating the event as a sort of sacrifice to his hero. It wasn’t a very impressive grave, either: among monuments that were so show-off this was like a simple, grubby, marble box, really, pockmarked from moss, chipped, shabby and plain. It wasn’t even that
big
– just … grave-sized. Surely this great man deserved better?

‘It’s very ordinary, isn’t it?’ Mimi stroked the engraved lettering. ‘I mean, considering what he did, you’d think someone would have organized something much more
like
those swanky monuments that people we’ve never heard of have got. Shouldn’t there be something to show what amazing things he made? A huge carved ship, maybe? Or a tunnel that he could be symbolically buried beneath?’ She felt quite upset on behalf of Isambard and his family. Perhaps this was the absolute best they could afford. She’d look it up again on the Internet, check how Sir Isambard had left the family finances. Joel’s obsession must be catching.

‘I don’t agree – the thing is, surely his designs stand for themselves. Perhaps the man he was, really, was quite a humble sort. Maybe he was a bit like those rock stars who deep down like fly-fishing and cats. Or maybe his family thought that everyone’s equal in death – monuments are just not important?’

‘Well, humble or whatever, it still doesn’t seem right just to sit on it, or to use it for a table.’

‘OK – I know what you mean,’ Joel said, picking up on Mimi’s reluctance. ‘Come round here then.’ He took her hand and led her under a low-branched tree. ‘This is better. And I’ve got this …’ He pulled out from the bag a tartan, plastic-backed rug that Mimi recognized from the summer before when her mum had got one as part of a free offer from the Marks & Spencer’s food store.

‘You’ve come prepared for everything, then,’ she said, accepting a glass of the champagne and sitting beside him, leaning against the tree’s substantial trunk.

Joel slid his arm round her, pulled her against him and kissed her. ‘Pretty much everything, yes,’ he murmured.

Email would have been easier. Letter-writing was definitely becoming a lost art. Nell played about for a long, indecisive while with the order of the sentences she’d come up with, working out how to tell Patrick what she wanted to get across in the most concise way possible. Eventually, she got it into shape.

Patrick – Your letter was vile, hurtful and completely over the top. I know we didn’t end well but five years together was a long time, and I’d have thought enough mutual respect would be left over for at least basic politeness. As for legal action … surely a crazy overreaction? Don’t worry, I won’t intrude on your privacy again. I’m really sorry that I did and that you feel this way. Have a lovely rest-of-your-life. Eleanor
.

He’d be in no doubt from these few short, sharp sentences that his hostility had left her shocked, hurt, and frankly furious. Before she could change her mind, she quickly added her email address after her signature in case she’d guilt-tripped him into apologizing for his previous attitude, stuffed the page into an envelope and took it down to the postbox, delighted to see that she hadn’t missed the last collection.

‘Goodbye, Patrick,’ she muttered, kissing the envelope before she dropped it into the box. It was only on the way back that she realized it was nearly dark. Mimi had said she was going to Tess’s after school, but hadn’t said what time she was coming home or whether she’d be needing food. Why was she so vague? As soon as she got back to the house, Nell phoned Mimi’s mobile, but she’d either got it switched off or it was out of battery. She’d give her another hour, then phone Tess’s house, see if Mimi needed a lift home. Teenagers, they didn’t want anyone nagging and checking on them, but offering a comfortable ride home usually went down well. It was, as ever, a simple matter of timing.

‘My mum will kill me!’ Mimi was close to tears as well as feeling a bit wobbly and drunk. ‘What are we going to do now? Isn’t there
anyone
around?’

‘Wait here, I’ll go and check in the big chapel.’

‘NO! Don’t leave me!’ Mimi grabbed hold of him. ‘I don’t want to be by myself!’

Joel laughed, though nervously. ‘Nothing’s going to hurt you in here, is it?’ he teased.

She didn’t think this was a good moment to try to be funny. ‘Just, like,
don’t
. OK?’ she warned. ‘I’m scared. I’m more scared of my mum than of ghosts, but right now she’s not here and they might be. Got it?’

Mimi peered across the graveyard at the terrifying
silhouettes,
pointy pillars, bits of steeple and the endless angel hands and wings against dirty-dusk sky, which, thanks to the Harrow Road streetlights, would not get really dark tonight. This wasn’t a comfort. It might have been better if it turned to pitch, moonless black, then she wouldn’t have had to see anything at all in this spook-ridden place. The cemetery gates were locked and had been from six p.m. Somehow, giggling and champagne-heady, loved-up and kissing beneath their tree, the two of them had managed to miss closing time. There was no way out. Joel knew the place fairly well – on one side was the high, unscalable wall, on the other a steep and dangerous bank down to the canal. It was vandal-proof from outside, escape-proof from inside.

‘Better phone home, I suppose.’ Joel shrugged. ‘I haven’t got mine – I left it in my room this morning.’

Mimi stared at him. ‘But … mine’s out of power!’ she said. ‘I put it on the charger last night but Andréa had switched the plug off!’

‘Shit. That’s it then. We’re stuck.’ He looked at her and smiled. ‘Looks like we’ll be spending the night in here.’

Mimi glared at him. Why didn’t this bother him? She might be drunk but she wasn’t stupid. He had to be joking. Didn’t he? ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Joel! We
can’t
stay here! There must be …’ Her voice faded away. Ridiculous it might be, but … it looked like he was right.

‘You didn’t plan this, did you?’ she accused him.

‘No!’ He looked hurt and she immediately regretted what she’d said. ‘Why would I do that?’ he asked. ‘I mean, yeah, sure I’d love to spend the whole night with you, Mimi, but not bedded down among the dead, OK?’

‘Yeah. Sorry,’ she conceded. She dropped her bag on the ground, put her arms round him and cuddled up close. She loved the warm strength of his body against hers, even though this possibly wasn’t the best moment to be thinking like this. She could put it down to the alcohol, or to the hormones that cascaded through her teenage bloodstream. She just hoped they’d keep her warm in the coldest time of the night. Could they freeze to death? Would a freebie M&S blanket keep them alive?

‘Come on, we’d better go and find somewhere to be, while there’s still a tiny bit of light,’ Joel said, leading her away from the locked gate. ‘The Anglican chapel has got covered archways, like cloisters. It’s about as good as it’ll get and if it rains we’ll be dry. Unless …’ He looked along one of the main avenues, at the graves in the fast-fading light. ‘One of those big tombs might have a broken window?’

‘No! I couldn’t! And besides, it’d be … wrong, surely?’ He couldn’t mean it, no one could climb into what was really a grave and expect to spend a
whole night
there. Freezing would be a better option. She shuddered, and he stopped and hugged her close to him again. Over his shoulder she eyed the statues and the obelisks. She was,
for
a moment, sure she saw one of the angels turn slightly.

‘It moved,’ she said, pointing. Was it the champagne? Hysteria? Terror? Or … real?

‘What did?’ Joel turned to look, peering into the gloom.

‘The angel. I’m sure she swayed. Maybe she’s drunk like me,’ she said, laughing nervously.

‘Don’t say that. It’s just a trick of the light.’

‘Do you think they all come out at night?’ she asked Joel as they wandered hand in hand towards the Anglican chapel.

‘What, the dead? No. Definitely not.’

‘No, not the dead people.’ Mimi’s voice was tired, slurring slightly. She giggled. ‘I meant the angels, the statues and stuff. Like that big horse one, that we saw earlier, and the stone lions and stuff. Maybe they all come to life. Maybe they party.’ She shivered again. ‘I’m scared, Joel.’ She wasn’t sure what she expected him to say – something big-strong-blokey along the lines of ‘It’ll be OK’ or ‘Hey, don’t worry, I’ll sort it.’ How pathetic was that of her? How girly? The one thing she didn’t want to hear was what he said next, which was, ‘Yeah, me too, Mimi; me too.’