The Gardens of the Dead (19 page)

It
turned out the tenants had all been in arrears. Eventually Riley had shown them
the door. That’s why they’d set him up, he said.

Mr Wyecliffe
nodded slowly stubbing the crumbs on his knee. Licking his fingers, he said, ‘But
what of Bradshaw? He’s your real problem.’

‘I’ve
thrown his girls onto the street. Now he’s trying to make me pay.’

‘That’s
a guess.’

‘Why
else would he lie?’

‘Bradshaw
is of good character.’

‘So am
I.’

‘Indeed.’
After a moment, as if he’d just finished reading the instructions that had come
with a gadget from Japan, Mr Wyecliffe said, ‘Okey-dokey Bradshaw is the pimp.’

Nancy
had hated the sound of that p-word. It had been used in her own living room,
leaving a heavy stain on the air that she couldn’t wipe away It was still
there, even though Riley had been acquitted, even though all those terrible
people had been lying. Something ghastly had entered her home. It was like
waking to a burglary. The tidying up made no difference.

Thoughtfully
Mr Wyecliffe said, ‘The claptrap about the Pieman allows them to say very
little about you, makes the story shorter, easier for three of them to learn by
heart’ — he looked at his empty plate, his features tangled up in his beard — ‘but
counsel will not advance a guess at trial.’

Riley
leaned back, genuinely calm now — Nancy could tell. ‘Who said anything about
guesses?’

Mr Wyecliffe
put his papers in his tatty briefcase and said, ‘I ought to observe that no one
can save you from the truth or a lie that hangs together. It is a sad fact of
life, but the two are often interchangeable.’

‘Just get
me Glendinning.’

Nancy
held back the tears; and her man watched her, approving of the struggle,
relieved by it.

Waiting
for the day of the trial was awful, if only because of the unimaginable shame.
At such times, your mum and dad were meant to rally round, but Nancy’s had
drawn the blinds good and proper — they’d never liked her man, never. And Riley
had no one. Even Mr Lawton went peculiar. He’d always been one for having a
good grumble first thing — about the downturn and closures — but he went quiet,
all stern, and turned his big tweedy back on her when he had to speak. Everyone
had crossed to the other side of the road. One day she looked up and saw
Babycham’s permed head against the frosted glass of the door. They hadn’t
spoken for ages.

‘Look,
Nancy’ she said, after checking the boss was out, ‘we’ve known each other since
we were this high. Fair enough, we’re not as close as we used to be, but I don’t
hold no grudges. We all make our own choices, and you’ve made yours. But still
I owe it to you to speak plain. Why do you trust him?’

Nancy
was knocked sideways. Not just because she’d implied, all brazen, that Riley
was in the wrong It was that word, ‘trust’. Nancy had never quite clocked the
obvious: her man was for saying he trusted her when, in fact, it was she who
was trusting him.

‘Run
for it, girl,’ Babycham said. ‘We’ll all rally round, honest. We’ve had a
meeting.’

Confused,
angry and feeling sort of cold and stripped, right down to her pants, Nancy
gasped, ‘Clear off.’ Finding some breath, she added, ‘Riley always said you
were full of wind and bubbles.’

When it grew dark Nancy
locked up the shop and walked home along the towpath by Limehouse Cut, past
barges and boats moored at the banks of the canal. On the way she found a brick
for the herb bed. She dropped it on the pile, had a boiled egg and watched a
programme on Liberian shipping regulations. After the news she went to bed and,
dozing fitfully waited for Riley.

The
room was pitch black when he climbed into bed.

‘Nancy?’
He waited, and whispered again. ‘Nancy?’

She
didn’t so much as turn a hair. After a moment he reached over and, for minutes
on end, he stroked her nose, her lips… each feature on her face, just like Mr
Johnson had done with the figurine lamp. Then he shrank back as if he’d done
something wrong.

It was
often like this. When Riley had done a clearing he didn’t come home until after
midnight — she didn’t know where he’d been, or what he’d done, and she didn’t
care — but he’d come to bed with these trembling hands. No one had ever touched
her so exquisitely (it was a word she’d heard a doctor use to describe intense
pain, but when she’d looked it up in a dictionary, she’d thought of these
secret moments).

Nancy
fell asleep, savouring the aftermath of this mysterious, most secret affection.
Beside her Riley started to moan, and downstairs Arnold was running as fast as
his little legs would carry him.

6

‘You’ve received another
letter from Mrs Glendinning,’ the Prior repeated.

Anselm
had just finished his breakfast when he was called to the phone. The envelope
was marked ‘PRIVATE and URGENT’, which prompted Sylvester — in a rare burst of
competence — to summon the Prior, who’d recognised Elizabeth’s handwriting.

‘But
who
posted
it?’ asked Anselm.

‘Another
friend, I suppose,’ said the Prior. ‘Shall I read it out?’

Anselm
glanced nervously at his watch. An adult life determined in its first half by
court engagements and its second by bells had made Anselm (like many barristers
and monks) slightly neurotic about time. ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘Will you fax it
through? I’ve got an appointment in Camberwell.’

The community superior led
Anselm through baffling corridors that only an architect could have devised,
past various photographs of the congregation’s personnel. Anselm noticed the
alteration in headdress over the years, from a spectacular construct of
starched linen to a simple veil. Entering a walled garden, Sister Barbara
pointed towards a path flanked by chestnut trees. At its end, in a wheelchair,
sat an elderly woman who wore a woollen hat remarkably similar to a cushion.

Like
any sensible interrogator, Anselm had researched his witness in advance. From
his initial telephone enquiry, with supplemental details from the superior,
Anselm had learned a great deal. Sixty years ago, upon the outset of her
religious life, Sister Dorothy had run a London hostel before being installed
as matron at a private school in Carlisle. She had been very happy but her life
was to typify the precedence of service over personal inclination. Following a
short stint as a prison chaplain in Liverpool, she’d been sent to work as a
nurse in Afghanistan. Seventeen years later she’d come home to have her wisdom
teeth removed. She never went back to her mountain dispensary. Her one
souvenir was an Afghan pakol, the hat that became her trademark.

Anselm
approached her, his feet crunching the gravel.

As soon
as he was within earshot, Sister Dorothy said, ‘I didn’t know she’d died until
you called.’ Her voice was clear but slightly laboured. As Anselm sat on a
bench, she added, ‘So you’re an old friend?’

‘Yes.
We were in chambers together.’

‘Tell
me, was she happy?’ She spoke with the aching concern of an old teacher.

‘Very
much so.’

‘Successful?’

‘Oh
yes.’

The nun
smiled and sighed. Threads of shadow thrown by branches swung across her face. ‘Well,
well, well,’ she sang quietly. Her skin had the transparent whiteness of old
age, with a multitude of deep lines. A dint in the profile of her nose revealed
a badly healed fracture, sustained (he’d been told) during a prison visit.

Anselm
spoke of Elizabeth’s professional reputation, of her marriage and her son,
while Sister Dorothy listened eagerly not wanting to miss a single detail. In
due course, and adroitly Anselm observed, ‘And yet, after all those years
together, I knew very little about her past.’

He
waited, hoping. In fact, he prayed.

‘Did
she ever show you the photograph?’ She spoke distantly one hand raised, as if
she were pointing to a wall.

Anselm
leaned forward, elbows on his knees. ‘I don’t think so.

‘The
photograph of the family?’ continued Sister Dorothy surprised that her visitor
was unsure of her meaning.

‘No,’
replied Anselm, trying not to sound too interested.

‘Well,
well, well,’ sang Sister Dorothy to herself. She studied Anselm, like one about
to break a confidence. ‘The photograph tells you everything… It’s all there
in black and white… a happy family on a Sunday afternoon some time in the
1940s.’

The
part of Anselm’s character that trusted in the dispensations of Providence
made an exclamation of gratitude. He waited, though he was impatient to learn
the history that Elizabeth had kept to herself.

‘On the
right is her father,’ said Sister Dorothy Wrinkles crowded her eyes as she
called up the portrait. A tall, thin man with a waxed moustache and shiny black
hair. He wore wing collars every day of his adult life. A man fifty years out
of his time.’ She threw Anselm a glance. ‘Did she tell you about him?’

‘Not in
any detail,’ replied Anselm. In fact, Elizabeth had never mentioned him.

‘He was
an unhappy insurance salesman based in Manchester. After he’d sold his quota of
premiums he locked himself in the attic trying to invent an electronic smoke
detector. Several times he nearly burnt the house down. He never gave up. He
thought if he could only pull it off, the industry would name a policy after
him.’

‘He
didn’t succeed?’

‘No, he
did not.’ She paused, looking towards a high wall covered in ivy. ‘But he made
a fortune.’

Anselm
pictured a man with the shade of Elizabeth’s face.

‘To the
left is her mother,’ continued Sister Dorothy like a museum guide. A seamstress
from Chorley She’s wearing a polka dot dress with enormous buttons. Hair like
Maggie Thatcher. A happy house-proud woman whose only joke was that she’d like
to invent a fire extinguisher.’

And
Elizabeth?’ asked Anselm.

‘She is
in the middle. A late and only child. A beaming girl of ten in ribbons and
bows. It was an age, she once said, that seemed perfect in every way She was
young enough to appreciate that she was a child, and old enough to consciously
enjoy it.’ Sister Dorothy swung Anselm a glance. ‘That is the photograph of
the Glendinning family.’

‘How
did the inventor make his fortune?’ asked Anselm roguishly.

‘By
dying,’ she replied.

Elizabeth was born when
her mother was nearly fifty, explained Sister Dorothy Her father was already in
his early sixties. It was a late match, and a contented one. They had found
companionship after having long accepted that loneliness would take the
greater portion of their days. Elizabeth’s coming was a boon and, like many
booms, unforeseen. But the unforeseen was to lay its heaviest hand upon the
child. The year after the portrait was taken, her father came down from the
attic grumbling about a trip switch. He turned on a wireless, sipped a glass of
milk, closed his eyes and promptly died — as if he’d blown the fuse box. The
doctor said he’d reached a fine old age. The fellow might not have had a policy
named after him, but he did take one out on his life: his nearest and dearest
were amply provided for. A year later Elizabeth’s mother died from septicaemia
arising from a trivial leg injury Her father, however, had taken out another,
even larger, policy and Elizabeth, at fourteen, found herself without either
parent but the beneficiary of a very healthy trusted income.

‘People
are odd, aren’t they?’ observed Sister Dorothy shaking her head. ‘Elizabeth’s
father had filled in all these forms, but he hadn’t made out a will. She had no
legal guardian. And there were no relatives chomping at the bit. So the court
had to get involved. In the end, it was a judge who sent Elizabeth in our
direction.’

The
congregation ran a boarding school in Carlisle. (Where, deduced Anselm, you
were matron.) So Elizabeth became a pupil, but not without a period of considerable
adjustment. The first years after the death of her parents were marked by
rebelliousness and grief. She started coming to the dispensary when there was
little if anything wrong with her. Headaches. Stomach aches. Splinters. But
Elizabeth began talking to this young nun whose veil kept crashing into
cabinets and doors —Sister Dorothy would never get used to the contraption.

‘But
she did very well, in the end,’ she said proudly ‘When she went to university,
I gave her
The Following of Christ.’

In a
curious way Anselm felt stumped. He couldn’t tell her —as he’d intended — that
Elizabeth had cut a hole in its pages. At a stroke, everything to do with the
trial had been closed down. He did not feel capable of revealing that the book,
her gift, had been permanently damaged. A question left his mouth before he
could admire its excellence. ‘When did you last see her?’

‘Forty
years ago.’ Sister Dorothy spoke vaguely as if she were drifting towards sleep.
She’d closed her eyes. Anselm watched for several minutes. Then he tiptoed away
altogether sure that the nun in the brown pakol had had enough.