Free NW by Zadie Smith

one animal across the wide road, and then release each other, panting, hands on knees. Advised to “take it easy” for forty-eight hours, Leah feels a lightness in her head. She turns away, lifting her head slowly, and spots it first: an ancient crenellation and spire, just visible through the branches of a towering ash. Another twenty yards and the full improbability of the scene is revealed. A little country church, a medieval country church, stranded on this half acre, in the middle of a roundabout. Out of time, out of place. A force field of serenity surrounds it. A cherry tree at the east window. A low encircling brick wall marks the ancient boundary, no more a defense than a ring of daisies. The family vaults have their doors kicked in. Many brightly tagged gravestones. Leah and Nat and the children pass through the lych-gate and pause under the bell tower. Blue clockface brilliant in the sun. It is eleven thirty in the morning, in another century, another England. Nat uses the baby’s muslin to wipe her forehead of sweat. The children, till now raucous and complaining in the heat, turn quiet. A path threads through the shady graveyard, the Victorian stones marking only the most recent layer of the dead. Natalie maneuvers the buggy over uneven ground.
    –Crazy. Never seen it before. Must have driven by hundreds of times. Lee, you got that thing of water? Probably why Pauline likes it. Cos it’s so old. Because you can be surer of the old ones.
    Leah folds her arms flat across her bust and becomes her mother, assumes her mother’s face: mouth drawn downwards, eyelids fluttering against the world’s specks and their determination to fly into Pauline’s eyes. Natalie, mid-glug, laughs violently, spreading water down her front.
    –I wouldn’t be liking the newer churches, no. I wouldn’t be dying over them. You can be surer of the older ones, so you can.
    –Stop it—I’m going to choke. I lived here my whole life I never knew this place even existed. All those years stuck with Marcia in that Pentecostal tin-can when we could have been here. Keisha, hear me now. I just want the spirit of the Lord to settle upon us all.
    They can ridicule their mothers but they can’t break the somber spell of this place. The children step gingerly between graves, they want to know if there are really and truly dead people underfoot. Leah speeds up, abandoning the path and tramping into high grass, leaving Nat equivocating with her brood upon the difference between the recently dead and the long dead. Leah stretches her arms out either side of herself. Her fingers brush the tops of the taller monuments, a broken stone urn, a crumbling cross. Soon she is behind the church. The alien past crowds round, partially legible on worn stones set at disappointed angles. Child death and lethal confinements. War and disease. Massive tablets covered in ivy, in lichen, in spots of yellow mold and moss.
     
    Emily W___ of this parish was taken from this life in her thirty ____ year of life
    In the year of our Lord eighteen ____ seven
    Leaving behind six children and a husband Albert
    Who joined her soon after in this ______
     
    Marion _____ of this pari__
    Died 17th December 1878 aged 2_ years
    And also of Dora, infant daug__ of the above
    Died 11th December 1878
     
    Take it easy for forty-eight hours.
    In this terrible sun.
    Take it easy, Leah Hanwell of this parish.
    Only daughter of Colin Hanwell, also of this parish.
    Take it easy for the rest of your life.
     
    Leah leans against a stone tall as herself. Here are three figures in haut relief, almost entirely effaced. She fits her fingers into the mossy grooves. A lady in gathered skirts is clutching something to her body, a featureless lump, something she has been given, maybe, and two young boys in frock coats reach out for her on either side. She is no one. Time has eaten away all detail: no name no date no face no knees no feet no explanation of the mysterious gift—
    –Lee, you