The Wall
From her bedroom bay window she could gaze out, like a short-haired scabby-knee’d Rapunzel, over the whole distant hazy sprawl of London. The neat little semi sat in a leafy road perched high on the suburban edge of the city basin. At the end of the road, a steep hill dropped down to the terminus from whence the flickering trams reached deep into the sprawling outerskirts of London.
A long low wall ran from the top to the bottom of the hill, defining the midpoint of the mile and a half daily walk to the school she attended until she was eleven. The rough concrete was head high in the early days, but in no time she could run her hand along the top, her fingers exploring the textures and moods of the wall. The kitten-soft mossy patches of spring turned hard and crusty in the heat of summer, when bright beetles scuttled, and she filled matchboxes with ladybirds and woolly caterpillars. Jewelled spider webs gleamed through the dense autumn fogs, and in winter she could write her name in the thick hoar frost, or gather snowballs to throw at the boys from the estates across the road.
The back of the low wall blended into a tall dense elm hedge that separated two worlds. And from over the hedge, the ever-present birdsong from a place where someone special had once gone, someone she had never known, someone never mentioned yet always there.
At the top of the hill the wall began with a wrought iron gate, from behind which she was greeted daily by a tall stone angel who gazed blankly down on her whilst pointing significantly to the skies. She called her Other Auntie Kitty, a bossy aunt whom she loosely resembled. At the foot of the hill the wall ended at a broad ornate Victorian gateway leading to the Other Side, formally opening onto a long avenue of giant trees and shadowy shapes. She always averted her eyes here, and walked a little faster until she reached the row of familiar shops: the colourful spillage of the florist, the ever-whistling greengrocer, the fishmonger with the aluminium tray of live eels outside, the sweets and newspaper shop on the corner,, the sweet-smelling bakery …
Fifty years later, she found her grown-up self on the Other Side, for an appointment with the gatehouse clerk. An ancient wall clock staggered ponderously from tick to tock as the stoical old gent rummaged and sighed along the shelves of dusty old files. Immersed in the stale bouquet of old polish and paper, she joined him and the clock in the suspension of time. At last, he retrieved and prised open a faded folder, his stubby finger idling through the lists of copperplate entries for 1950.
“Here we are” he finally wheezed, “G277.” Then he invited her to stand with him in front of a vast faded map on the wall as he indicated where she should begin her search. He smelled rather like the pet mouse her son had once cherished. “You will need time, madam - it’s all very overgrown now. The number will be on the back of the stone. Hopefully still standing.”
She returned next day with gloves and secateurs, crossing the threshold between the chaos of the living world outside and the contrived order of the vast graveyard within. It was a long walk through dappled sunlight, along avenues of vaults and statues and marbly glorifications. But few of these dignified monuments were surviving the slow silent anarchy of Nature in her rampageous message to the vanities of man. The deeper into the cemetery, the greater the lawlessness, as stones tumbled delinquently out of order, and surrendered to the fracturing embrace of the ivy, and the slow corrosion of bright lichens. Soon, all would become increasingly anonymous and gently forgotten. Squirrels frisked and froze as she passed, robins were her cheerful escorts, a woodpecker tapped a morse code welcome. Then she reached the neglected outback, where the gravestones were almost incidental amongst the wildflowers and eager saplings.
And then there came a vague sense of familiarity. A small overgrown gated enclosure dedicated to the remains of warriors fallen far from home triggered a memory. She was dancing her doll along its ornate chain fence, as her mother bid her wait, as she wandered off distractedly through the ranks of stone. When she returned, her pretty frock was muddied, her face pale and wet. She said it must be time for tea.
And in the here and now, after a lengthy forage, there it was. In the shade of a broad young beech - a small leaning stone, worn and illegible but for a faint declaration of Peace, though the registration on the back was still sharp. G277. After trimming back the brambles, she expressed her thanks as she laid a small bunch of forget-me-nots on the grave of this, a total stranger - the woman whose coffin had been randomly designated (as was the way in those frugal matter-of-fact days) to eternally foster a small imperfect infant.
“Our mother will be here for you tomorrow, little one. She’s going to be up beyond those trees, by the wall, near to Other Auntie Kitty. There’s lots of squirrels there. And a great view over London too.”