Read The Gardens of the Dead Online
Authors: William Brodrick
‘It
did,’ said the Prior. ‘She called me on the day of the consultation.’
‘When
was that?’
‘Shortly
after she’d come to Larkwood… when she’d spoken of a homicide.’
Anselm
slowed down to concentrate. Whatever the Prior had gone on to say had almost
certainly pushed Elizabeth into action.
‘I didn’t
mention this before,’ said the Prior, ‘because I felt… self-conscious about
what I said to her. She began to cry because there was so much that she would
change, but it was out of reach.’ Father Andrew tugged at am eyebrow ‘I tried
to comfort her, saying it’s not the beginning that matters, but rather the
undiscovered end, because it completely transforms our understanding of where
we came from, what we’ve done, who we ultimately are… I said it was never too
late, that even last words or a final act could bring about this fantastic
change… that it was like magic. The line seemed to go dead but then I heard
her say “Thank you.” I next saw her on the day she gave you the key.’
‘The
day’ said Anselm, ‘that she prepared for what is now unfolding.’
Gradually
the wide roads narrowed and street lamps vanished. The stars were hidden and
the moon faintly lit the edge of a cloud. Beneath it Larkwood appeared like a
crowd of fireflies. After parking beneath the plum trees they trudged along a
winding path towards the monastery. Anselm could barely see the Prior but he
heard his voice clearly ‘You must go back to London, I’m afraid. You owe it to
Elizabeth and to George, to his wife and to his son. Perhaps it’s owed to Mr
Riley; perhaps, also, to yourself.’
Anselm
didn’t like that final coupling, but he took it as an accident of sentence
construction. ‘When should I go?’
‘Tomorrow
night. There’s no time left for thinking. As you say her plan is already
falling apart.’
Anselm
thought of George in welding goggles, stumbling down an alley ‘How do I find a
man who’s lost to himself?’
‘I’ll
speak to Cyril’s niece.
‘Pardon?’
‘Cyril’s
niece, Debbie. She works with the homeless near Euston.’
Anselm
pictured a large, annoyed oblong with clipped hair and a mouth like a post-box.
‘An inspired idea,’ he said magnanimously.
At the
entrance to Larkwood the Prior fiddled with a huge key wrought from iron
hundreds of years ago. As the door swung open, the Prior took Anselm’s arm, and
they paused on the threshold. ‘Find out who Elizabeth was,’ he said, ‘find the
child who grew up to wear a gown that was too heavy for her shoulders.’
He
seemed to have vanished, so deep was the darkness.
‘Where
shall I start?’ asked Anselm, sharply awake to the presence in front of him.
‘The
fly-leaf of an incomparable book.’
Anselm
recalled the inscription in
The Following of Christ,
written by a nun,
and he smiled at the figure before him as it clanked and fumbled once more with
the lock.
By late afternoon the next
day all the necessary arrangements for Anselm’s trip to London had been made: a
room had been secured with the Augustinians in Hoxton; consecutive meetings had
been organised with Debbie Lynwood and Inspector Cartwright (who, of course,
knew nothing of Elizabeth’s floundering project and the evidence held by
George Bradshaw); after a long and entertaining conversation between Anselm and
the Provincial of the Daughters of Charity, an appointment had been made with
Sister Dorothy — a maverick soul, it transpired, who now endured forced
retirement in Camberwell; and, finally the Prior had produced an envelope
containing sufficient funds for a week, a generous act that had spared Anselm a
reunion with the cellarer.
After
vespers Father Andrew called Anselm out of his stall to the centre of the
choir. Following ancient custom, no one left Larkwood on a journey without the
Prior’s blessing. He had a little book full of well-phrased send-offs. You’d
kneel wondering which one you were going to get.
Anselm
bowed his head but, like a blasphemy he thought of Riley: the bobbing knee,
jangling gold on a bony wrist and thin, fixed lips. The image turned Anselm
cold, and he woke, as if stunned, for the Prior’s concluding words:
‘May
the light guide your steps, your thoughts, your words and your deeds; and may
it bring you safely home, if needs be by a different path.’
18
Night had fallen and
George felt a sudden urge to stay in a spike. As institutions devoted to the
needs of those without shelter, they didn’t compare favourably with the Bonnington,
but they had three things in common: a roof, lots of beds and an effective
heating system. The combination had its attractions when — like now — it was so
wet that the air itself seemed to advance like the Atlantic. The council was
responsible for these night shelters. In some you had to lie awake holding your
shoes against your chest; if you closed your eyes you’d lose your laces. The
first time George had rolled up at a spike in Camden, he’d been given a bed
near a white brick wall with posters dotted here and there to add a splash of
colour. That night he’d met an old man, who’d told him an old story.
The
fellow had matted hair and an overcoat that almost reached his shoes. A scarf
with blue and red stripes trailed down his back. He was examining a picture of
trekkers following a mountain ridge: the sky was blue and the hills were
another kind of blue. In this refuge of chipped bedsteads, of strong odours and
shouting, it was ethereal. Written on the bottom in red letters was ‘Andorra’.
The man muttered, ‘You’d think it wasn’t there.’ He turned around and said, as
if mildly surprised, ‘What brings you here?’
George
said, ‘I’m tired.’
‘Then
you’re in the wrong place.’
‘So
what about you?’
‘I like
the pictures. You’re new to this school, aren’t you?’ He didn’t mean the spike;
he meant the street.
‘Yes.’
George’s eyes watered, but he ground his teeth. He no longer had the right to
cry.
The man
was called Nino. He’d been a traffic warden. After his ‘early retirement’ he
had obtained membership in every library that didn’t require a fixed abode. His
bed was beside George’s. When the lights were out Nino began to whisper.
‘Have
you heard of Pandora?’
‘Yes.
She had a box.’
‘That’s
right. Hesiod says she was the first woman that ever lived. Do you know what she
was made of?
‘No.’
‘Clay
Do you know what was in the box?’
‘Worms?’
‘No.
You’re confusing it with the expression “a can of worms”, which, I grant you,
has considerable bearing upon the matter in hand. Before I go on, let me say at
once that Pandora has been much maligned — I’ve checked every library in north
London. The classical mind, like that of ancient religion, tends to blame women
when it comes to moral catastrophe. I dissociate myself entirely from that
tradition.’
George
wanted to cry again. It was like being a boy once more, having a story told at
night that he couldn’t quite follow His grandfather, David — whose name he
carried and had abandoned — had been a wonderful reader of stories. Listening
to Nino, George could imagine big pictures in a big book: a beautiful princess
with long, golden hair, her fair hands holding a small, golden casket.
Nino
said, ‘Now in that box stirred every imaginable evil. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’
A very
foolish fellow lifted the lid. Are you listening, stranger to the road?’
‘I am.’
George had started to cry. George bit his pillow and his hands gripped the
mattress and his leg. Far off there was shouting. Someone cried in a scuffle.
‘The
evils escaped,’ said Nino softly ‘and they caused great suffering. But do you
know what was at the bottom of the box?’
George
dared not release the pillow from his mouth. But Nino wouldn’t go on until
George had spoken. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he gasped.
Nino’s
whisper grew fainter, making George raise his head.
‘The
last thing to rise from that unimaginable quarter was hope.’
George blinked, resolved
to wait a little longer. There were tears in his eyes.
PART THREE
a boy’s progress
1
‘I’m no fool, Arnold,’
said Nancy Riley to the hamster. ‘It all adds up.’
It was
early morning and she’d just slipped into the kitchen, leaving her man groaning
in his sleep.
Nancy
could see the connections between things. Always had done. When she’d worked
for Harold Lawton on the Isle of Dogs she’d once spotted a petty fraud at the
hands of the wharf manager.
‘When I
showed the boss how it was done,’ murmured Nancy ‘he said I could’ve gone
places.’
That
was a long time ago, but the same sensation of discovery had settled on Nancy
all over again: there was a link between things that didn’t seem to be
connected: the death of that barrister, the photograph that arrived in the post
and the change in her man’s nightmares.
A
couple of weeks back, Nancy had bought a paper. A name on page five caught her
eye. Elizabeth Glendinning QC, a well-known barrister, had been found dead at
the wheel of a car parked in the East End. She had died of heart failure while
trying to call for help. That evening Nancy showed the article to her man.
‘What a
coincidence,’ said Nancy ‘She was just up the road from Mile End Park.’
Riley
nodded, staring at the paper.
‘Did
you see her at the fair?’ asked Nancy.
Riley’s
jaw moved as if his gums were itching.
‘They
found some old spoons on the seat,’ continued Nancy pensively ‘It’s sad if you
ask me.’
During
the night Riley moaned like he was being fried on a low heat. His face was hot
and wet. And then, a couple of days ago, the letter came. Well, it wasn’t a
letter. Riley tore it open and out popped a photograph. The two of them stared
at the crimped black and white square on the table. Nancy noticed a booming
chest and wide braces, a shirt without a collar.
Riley’s
hand slammed onto the smiling face as if it were a wasp.
Nancy
jumped. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked, shaken.
‘No
one.’ His eyes were trained hard on his fingers as if something might crawl
out.
Nancy
didn’t press her man. She’d learned not to. She could read the signs. He was
like hot water in a pan, close to the boil. That night he screamed. In itself,
that was no surprise: Riley had suffered nightmares since the trial. (‘Occupational
hazard,’ said Mr Wyecliffe, as if he had them too.) They were always the same:
he was running for dear life, chased by something like a dog they’d once seen
at the races, and then he was falling… but this time it was slightly
different.
‘What is
it?’ wailed Nancy She’d been listening to his muttering but the cry had come
like a brick through the window. To her astonishment he buried his head into
her neck.
‘I’m
falling’ — Nancy stroked his wet scalp. It was bony like a rock on the beach.
His hand covered hers and they stayed like that, as if they were waiting for an
ambulance; and then Riley added the bit that was new, the change in the dream —
‘I’m just falling down an endless stairwell.’
A
stairwell? Strange things, are dreams.
From
that day on, Riley’s nightmares got worse. To make himself tired, he started
walking in the middle of the night along Limehouse Cut, the canal that ran
through Bow to the Thames. He’d listen to the foxes in the old warehouses. But
that was later. On this night, when he’d calmed down, Riley turned his back on
Nancy and she felt her own stomach fail, for he was always moving away and she’d
never got used to it. And Nancy said to herself, I’m not stupid. This dream,
the photo and the death of that barrister are tied up somehow Mr Lawton hadn’t
believed her, but in the end she’d been proved right, and he’d said, ‘You could’ve
gone places.’
Come to
think of it, that was insulting. The boss had let slip what he thought of
Nancy: how she’d wasted her life. All she’d done was work for him and marry
Graham Riley.
Nancy had gone to the
docks when she’d turned sixteen, along with Rose Clarke and Martina Lynch. They’d
been together since primary school. They remained a threesome, well known to
everyone who worked on Harold Lawton’s quay; and they were seen every Friday
night at the same pub just outside the main gates, the Admiral — a hole, really
but it was ever so old, and there was this side room made from a ship’s cabin.
A big plastic sign said the owners had been serving ‘seadogs since the days of
rigging and sails’. Martina got the nickname Babycham from the landlord because
she drank nothing else. True, Nancy was the dumpy one, but it didn’t seem to
matter when she was jammed between the other two. She dressed nicely and there
were always lads wanting to join their table. Thinking of those days, Nancy
remembered a small detail about the weekend that followed the night before:
more often than not, no one had asked her out. She could admit that now. What
did it matter? It wasn’t through her friends that she’d met her man, anyway.
Riley
used to clock in with all the others at eight in the morning. Back then,
everyone had a card that was stamped in a big machine. It was the same at
lunchtime. The lads all got one hour off, but they had to stamp their cards
again if they’d left the premises, to show they were back on time. It was old-fashioned,
but Mr Lawton liked the contraption. He wasn’t one for changing with the times.
Funny really that his business should have lasted so long on the Isle of Dogs,
while everyone else went under. Anyhow, one day Riley lingered in the office
until they were alone. He’d been taken on a couple of months earlier, after
being made redundant just down the road. So he was new, and different from the
rest — not a Friday-night man, not a drinker. Quiet. Kept himself to himself.
Didn’t need friends — didn’t want them. His hair was always ruffled and his
eyes couldn’t keep still. They were blue-green and confused, as if he’d been
shaken up in the bottle. And he’d noticed Nancy He watched her from the driver’s
cabin of a crane. She knew because he once pulled the wrong lever, and all the
stevedores went off it when he dropped a crate of bananas. So, on this day
Nancy sensed him hanging around, edgy and shy She thought he was about to
invite her to that big dance coming up in White City, but he wasn’t. Instead he
asked her to risk her job.
‘Do my
card for me, will you? I’ve got tenants to see.’
Nancy
had been impressed. Here was a man with a bit of property. Hardly common among
Lawton’s boys. A nest egg, he’d explained. He was getting other people to pay
off the mortgage.
‘I just
need about half an hour,’ said Riley looking over his shoulder.
Nancy
agreed, and he studied her face like he was looking for spots. Then he said, as
if he were handing over something precious, ‘I knew I could trust you.
She
waited for him to ask her out, but he didn’t. A week or so later he suggested
having tea in a hotel. She said yes, thinking he meant some place on Commercial
Road, but he took her to Brighton, which was a double shock, because he paid
for the train as well — first class, if you please. They were married within
six months. Babycham and Rose were the only witnesses. There was no reception,
just a free drink at the town hall and a cheeky kiss from the registrar. Her
man didn’t like that. And he didn’t like her pals. She still saw them at Lawton’s,
but the threesome had been split. So the Friday-night sessions came to an end.
Nancy didn’t altogether mind, because, looking back, she’d never really enjoyed
herself.
They
moved into Riley’s bungalow and set up home. Nancy had always wanted a herb bed
but there was no garden, just flagstones. So she started collecting bricks from
the towpath by Limehouse Cut —just one at a time, if she happened to see one in
the grass. Slowly as married life got underway the pile of bricks grew bigger,
but the bed was never built. She was a few short. And that mirrored their life
together. There were some missing pieces. Within weeks of that free drink at
the town hall, the man who’d taken her to Brighton went into hiding — in his
own home.
But, of
course, he had to come out again. They were under one roof. During the day he
was sharp and brusque, baring his teeth when he felt he was being crossed. His
jaw would creep forward, and his eyes would go wide, staring to one side, as if
he daren’t look at you for fear of what he might do. During the evening, he’d
sneer at the television: at politicians, soaps, the news, bishops. His bottom
lip would warp, and his bitten nails would scratch the rests of his armchair,
catching on the nylon covers. In disgust he’d put on a Walt Disney video,
slamming it into the machine. Them his face would light up. He’d weep with
Bambi
or shake his fist at the queen in
Snow White.
All his feelings
crackled and popped, like the cereal. But when the film was over, he became
pinched, as if it shouldn’t have ended. (Nancy didn’t like the word ‘unstable’,
but she got the impression that her man held himself together, a bit like a
barrel with those iron bands, and that if one or two of the screws came loose,
he’d just explode. So she learned to keep well back. She didn’t tinker with his
ways.) At night he wouldn’t touch her. There was a cold part of the bed, right
in the middle. It was like that channel in the sea opened up by Charlton
Heston, when he was Moses. Both of them were like walls of water, waiting to
collapse from the sheer weight of separation. Only it never happened. Not even
after that policewoman came to Lawton’s and arrested her man at the foot of his
crane. At the time, Nancy watched him being led away waiting for those iron
bands to snap; but they didn’t.
‘It all adds up,’ repeated
Nancy solemnly ‘I’m no fool.’
Suddenly
Arnold froze on his drum. His neck seemed to beat as though his heart was
lodged in his throat.
‘You
think too much,’ said Riley quietly.
Nancy
let out a cry. Right behind her, an arm’s length away was her man. He was
wearing his camouflage parka with the hood up. A high collar almost covered his
mouth. He’d picked it up from an old soldier who’d topped himself.
‘You
scared me,’ laughed Nancy Her pulse found its stride, and she said calmly ‘Don’t
you want some breakfast?’
‘No.’
His voice cracked, and his eyes were famished. ‘I’ve got a clearing.’
‘Where?’
‘Tottenham.’
The
back door slammed as if they’d had a row Standing by the window, Nancy watched
her man as if he were on another planet. A dense mist had risen off the Thames
and dissolved the streets of Poplar. It would swamp the Isle of Dogs from
Canary Wharf to Cubitt Town. Street-lights hung like saucers and Riley slowly
disintegrated. When he’d vanished, Nancy turned to Arnold. His little legs
started moving and the wheel clinked and whirred.
‘How on
earth did he get like that?’ she asked sorrowfully.
2
As arranged, Anselm
arrived at the Vault near Euston Station at seven in the morning. Scaffolds and
hoarding covered tall buildings on either side of the day centre. Sheets of
polythene flapped and winches clinked in the breeze. A queue of figures
shuffled to a gate, evoking the fortitude of travellers bound for the New
World. Anselm passed behind them into a narrow, cobbled lane and found the
back-door buzzer beneath a nameplate.
‘How is
Uncle Cyril?’ asked Debbie Lynwood, opening the door to her office at the end
of a dimly lit corridor.
‘Hot
and bothered,’ said Anselm. ‘I threw away a receipt.’
‘Cantankerous
beast.’
Anselm
had expected genetic determinism (bulk in overalls) but Debbie’s frame was
slight. She wore black trousers and a scarlet roll-neck jumper. A selection of
enamel badges revealed an interest in classic motorcycles.
‘I can’t
promise much,’ she said, hands in her back pockets. ‘Finding someone on the
street is almost impossible. But I know a man who might be able to help — someone
who knows the ropes.’ She moved across the room towards a door that led onto the
Vault itself. In the middle was a round window. On the other side Anselm saw
the blue haze of smoke. Dark figures crossed slowly as if wading through water.
‘When I mentioned what I knew of you,’ said Debbie thoughtfully ‘he was eager
to meet you. Wait here.’
She
opened the door and a low industrious hum spilled into the office. As he
waited, Anselm absorbed his surroundings: a wall of box files, posters
displaying information, an old school desk, a worn blue carpet… and a short,
wiry man holding a staff like a curtain rail with an ornamental knob. He wore a
green cagoule, his trousers were tucked into his socks, and he shouldered a
backpack. His feet, in polished, split brogues, were splayed outwards. A thin,
grizzled beard covered an oblong chin.
‘May I
present Mr Francis Hillsden,’ said Debbie.
The
traveller made a short bow with his head and shook Anselm’s hand. A pleasure,
with respect,’ he said, keeping his eyes averted. They were blue and seemed to
be smarting.
Debbie
invited Anselm to speak as they pulled up chairs in a triangle. Mr Hillsden
perched himself on the edge of his seat, gripping his staff as though it were a
pole to a room below.