The Graveyard Book

Bod would introduce Scarlett to some of his other friends. That she could not see them did not seem to matter. She had already been told firmly by her parents that Bod was imaginary and that there was nothing at all wrong with that—her mother had, for a few days, even insisted on laying an extra place at the dinner table for Bod—so it came as no surprise to her that Bod also had imaginary friends. He would pass on their comments to her.

“Bartleby says that thou dost have a face like unto a squishèd plum,” he would tell her.

“So does he. And why does he talk so funny? Doesn’t he mean squashed tomato?”

“I don’t think that they had tomatoes when he comes from,” said Bod. “And that’s just how they talk then.”

Scarlett was happy. She was a bright, lonely child, whose mother worked for a distant university teaching people she never met face-to-face, grading English papers sent to her over the computer, and sending messages of advice or encouragement back. Her father taught particle physics, but there were, Scarlett told Bod, too many people who wanted to teach particle physics and not enough people who wanted to learn it, so Scarlett’s family had to keep moving to different university towns, and in each town her father would hope for a permanent teaching position that never came.

“What’s particle physics?” asked Bod.

Scarlett shrugged. “Well,” she said. “There’s atoms, which is things that is too small to see, that’s what we’re all made of. And there’s things that’s smaller than atoms, and that’s particle physics.”

Bod nodded and decided that Scarlett’s father was probably interested in imaginary things.

Bod and Scarlett wandered the graveyard together every weekday afternoon, tracing names with their fingers, writing them down. Bod would tell Scarlett whatever he knew of the inhabitants of the grave or mausoleum or tomb, and she would tell him stories that she had been read or learned, and sometimes she would tell him about the world outside, about cars and buses and television and aeroplanes (Bod had seen them flying high overhead, had thought them loud silver birds, but had never been curious about them until now). He in his turn would tell her about the days when the people in the graves had been alive—how Sebastian Reeder had been to London Town and had seen the Queen, who had been a fat woman in a fur cap who had glared at everyone and spoke no English. Sebastian Reeder could not remember which queen she had been, but he did not think she had been queen for very long.

“When was this?” Scarlett asked.

“He died in 1583, it says on his tombstone, so before then.”

“Who is the oldest person here. In the whole graveyard?” asked Scarlett.

Bod frowned. “Probably Caius Pompeius. He came here a hundred years after the Romans first got here. He told me about it. He liked the roads.”

“So he’s the oldest?”

“I think so.”

“Can we make a little house in one of those stone houses?”

“You can’t get in. It’s locked. They all are.”

“Can you get in?”

“Of course.”

“Why can’t I?”

“The graveyard,” he explained. “I got the Freedom of the Graveyard. It lets me go places.”

“I want to go in the stone house and make little houses.”

“You can’t.”

“You’re just mean.”

“Not.”

“Meany.”

“Not.”

Scarlett put her hands into the pocket of her anorak and walked down the hill without saying good-bye, convinced that Bod was holding out on her, and at the same time suspecting that she was being unfair, which made her angrier.

That night, over dinner, she asked her mother and father if there was anyone in the country before the Romans came.

“Where did you hear about the Romans?” asked her father.

“Everybody knows,” said Scarlett, with withering scorn. “Was there?”

“There were Celts,” said her mother. “They were here first. They go back before the Romans. They were the people that the Romans conquered.”

On the bench beside the old chapel, Bod was having a similar conversation.

“The oldest?” said Silas. “Honestly, Bod, I don’t know. The oldest in the graveyard that I’ve encountered is Caius Pompeius. But there were people here before the Romans came. Lots of them, going back a long time. How are your letters coming along?”

“Good, I think. When do I learn joined-up letters?”

Silas paused. “I have no doubt,” he said, after a moment’s reflection, “that there are, among the many talented individuals interred here, at least a smattering of teachers. I shall make inquiries.”

Bod was thrilled. He imagined a future in which he could read everything, in which all stories could be opened and discovered.

When Silas had left the graveyard to go about his own affairs, Bod walked to the willow tree beside the old chapel, and called Caius Pompeius.

The old Roman came out of his grave with a yawn. “Ah. Yes. The living boy,” he said. “How are you, living boy?”

Bod said, “I do very well, sir.”