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Retreat
(Published in Aesthetica, October 2004)
Most mornings I stop at the inscription on a black-marble grave: 'Mary Copling, Died 7 March 1866, aged 80 years.'
I love the quiet in the churchyard of St John's, Hackney. Squirrels tunnel through the fallen leaves, of beech, London plane and horse chestnut.
Mary's husband, James Copling, who died in 1856, lies beside her. They shake to dust like salt from a salt-cellar, clasped together in their shiny block of history.
My mind is adrift on change.
This Monday morning I dawdle. The world begins at the other side of the graveyard. I listen to the buses.
My eyes sweep across the square of grass, felled of the gravestones that are now stacked in neat rows against the high wall of the bus garage. I look at the church, the largest parish church in London, built in 1790. Its small-bricked structure and rendered, squat white tower, are solid.
Mums and Dads with kids pass me on the narrow York stone path. No one smiles.
I turn right and stay in the graveyard. There is a tomb on the corner with a brass plaque added at a later date: 'Rear Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort, hydrographer for the Royal Navy, 1829-1855'. The Portland stone casket on lion's feet is finely crafted.
I know many names on these tombs and graves. I often rub my hands over their lettering, close my eyes and feel a closeness. These people have histories and biographies:'The relict of Edward Sheffield of The Grove in this parish, died 1859, aged 81' (His wife died in 1849. She was taken ill on a journey to Colchester where Edward's brother was a magistrate). I have often imagined visiting Edward at The Grove as he grew old and frail. We sit in the dark drawing-room, the thick brown velvet curtains drawn back by Jane, the young maid.
But I hear noises from now: men shouting; people babbling into mobile phones; jack hammers from a building-site.
'Susannah Taverner, died 1884, 59-years-old.' Her life was modest: she was a governess.
The marble column of John James Ronaldson is assertive. He had a large property, Halse Hall, in Jamaica. Was his wealth from sugar, rum and slaves?
I walk round the square. I stand by Mary Copling. Next to Mary is a small Mummy-shaped coffin, popular with Victorians during that period when Egyptian culture was high fashion. I kneel down and from the end of the coffin I take out the two large bricks I had loosened last month. For a moment the graveyard footpath is free of pedestrians.
On my belly, I slide in to the coffin. I had previously managed to tie garden twine round the two large bricks, and left a length of twine dangling at the side so that I could pull the bricks into position behind me.
I raise my stomach. With my hands, which are wedged under me, I pull the twine and manoeuvre the bricks. I am sealed from the world. At the other end of the coffin I uncover two small holes, which I had gouged out with a chisel last month. I watch the people stumble through the graveyard.
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