The Gardens of the Dead (2 page)

‘Not
especially… Well, they are.., but about things most people wouldn’t care
about.’

‘So you
can pop out on little errands?’

‘It’s
up to the Prior.’

‘What’s
he like?’

Anselm
thought of the various things he could say: that he didn’t talk much, that he
was always one step ahead of you, but he said, ‘He pops your illusions.’

At the
door she kissed him on the cheek and said, ‘I shall miss our little chats.’

It was
a truth neither of them had ever named: on a Friday they’d often been the last
to leave chambers. For fifteen minutes or so, they’d sit, feet on the table in
the coffee room, going over life, prodding its verrucas. But it showed up a
peculiarity in Elizabeth’s personal relations. The different aspects of her
life — the Bar, the family, the Butterfly Society, and so on — were screened
off from each other like beds in a hospital ward. As far as Anselm was aware
they were never brought together round the one table. He had only heard of the
others. It had made their chats significant while keeping him at a distance.

Anselm
went to bed uncomfortably sure that Elizabeth, like all examining barristers,
had wanted to find out something, without letting him know what it was. And
while he’d been talking, Anselm hadn’t been able to dispel the notion that
Elizabeth wanted to speak herself, and that the inclination had ebbed away. For
days afterwards he thought of that silver streak in her hair. She was, he
concluded, very attractive. It was as though he’d never noticed before.

‘I need your help,’ she’d
said, quietly, ten years later.

Again
she’d come unannounced. Anselm brought her to the stone bench by the Lark. The
long flowerbed was bright with planted daffodils and wild poppies. She’d hardly
changed. Though she was in her late fifties, her hair remained jet black with
that dash of silver, less bright now.

‘I once
asked if you’d be free to do errands, do you remember?’

Anselm
nodded.

She
reached into her bag and pulled out a box of Milk Tray ‘You can have the
praline in caramel.’ Bix seemed to be with them, blowing ‘Ostrich Walk’ in the
distance.

Anselm
said nothing. Monastic life had taught him this much at least: to know when to
be quiet.

With a
delicate gesture, Elizabeth placed the fall of hair behind an ear. Her profile
was exquisitely drawn against the pink blur of Larkwood. Looking towards the
river, she began to speak. ‘I’ve been tidying up my life. It isn’t easy But
there’s always something we can do, don’t you think?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘We can’t
be lukewarm. That’s the only way to mercy or reward.’

Absolutely’
He’d use that one on Sunday He waited, silent again. Elizabeth took an envelope
out of her pocket, turned to him and said, ‘Could you do something for me?’

‘Of
course.’

‘It
holds a key and an address.’

Anselm
took the envelope.

‘If I
should die — it does happen — use it.’ She looked around, at the river, the
herb garden, the arches of the old abbey ruin. ‘It opens a safety deposit box.
Inside you’ll find what you need to know.’

She
rose and walked to the bank of the Lark. Anselm followed, keeping slightly
back, puzzled by her solemnity and his new responsibility. They listened to the
chattering water. It was autumn. Aelred had lined up potted plants on the other
bank, as if they might like the view, but most had turned away to face the sun.
Quietly Elizabeth said, ‘You mentioned once that to ignore a voice would have
left you bereft.’ She added, with regret, ‘You listened. I turned away.’

Lamely
Anselm said, ‘It’s never too late.’ It sounded awful.

‘I hope
not.’

‘We can
salvage anything.’ That was worse. He didn’t even know what he meant, but it
was encouraging. He tried a serious kind of joking. ‘Don’t be lukewarm.’

Elizabeth
nodded thoughtfully, her gaze fixed on the Lark.

Lightly,
she said, ‘You can’t always explain things to your children. If need be, will
you help Nicholas understand?’

‘Yes,
of course.

They
walked side by side to the car park among the plum trees. The fruit was soft,
ready to fall. Elizabeth quickly kissed him goodbye and rummaged for her keys
to avoid his attention. Once again Anselm sensed she’d come to say something
but had stepped back. After she’d driven away, he retraced his steps to collect
the unopened box of chocolates.

Anselm stayed by the river
brooding over these two encounters — impulsive actions, linked it appeared,
despite the interval of so many years. Before he could trawl his imagination
for the explanation, Larkwood’s bells began to peal, calling him to vespers.
Nipping through the cloister, he saw a huddle of monks in the South Walk. He
paused and listened to their muted conversation. A policewoman — someone
called Cartwheel — had arrived a few minutes ago and was talking to the Prior.
Sylvester had been putting out leaflets on the table near the door (that was
always his excuse for eavesdropping) and he’d overheard the word ‘murder’. The
considered view of everyone was that Sylvester had, yet again, got it wrong.

2

Nick Glendinning hid in
the pantry.

The
funeral had flown by but the reception seemed without end. Guests were still in
the lounge and corridor, being sympathetic, asking questions about everything
but his mother. A tubby executive high up in British Telecom (a client and
friend of Charles, his father) was the last to tread the worn route:

‘I
understand you’ve been in Australia?’

‘Yes.’

‘Very
nice. Hot?’

‘Tremendously.’

The
tubby executive took a sip of sherry. His eyes couldn’t keep still and, as if
to match, he had white curls above each ear that wouldn’t lie flat. Discomfort
made him shuffle. ‘Did you see any kangaroos?’

‘Lots
of them,’ replied Nick. ‘And koalas — funny fat little things that cuddle you.’

‘Good
Lord. They live in eucalyptus trees, don’t they?’

‘Yes.’

‘Marvellous.’
He looked around, as if for help. ‘It’s unfortunate you didn’t get back in
time, given… what happened.’

‘Yes.
’

‘I must
say your mother was a quite re
maaark
able woman. He’d shaken his shiny
head and Nick made for the pantry.

Where he also shook his
head. He’d been away about a year. He’d planned to travel since he was eleven
but hadn’t actually got on a plane until he was twenty-six. And he was already
back, hiding in the family home in St John’s Wood from people he barely knew.
The endless ceremonial of accepting sympathy required patience and gratitude
and he had neither. He had a headache. It had been non-stop movement across time
zones: the train to Sydney, the flight to Singapore, the long haul to
Manchester, the hop to London — a crazy sequence to get him home as fast as
possible. When he had finally embraced his father two days ago, his body was
still in Queensland. He’d come home to a fantastic absence in the heart of the
familiar. Sitting on a footstool, he wondered how he could ever have been drawn
away.

The
first impulse to travel grew by the fireside with his father who, on cold
evenings, would read out tales of adventure, of expeditions financed by some
committee dedicated to Humanity and Knowledge and Geography This was the world
of men who’d grown beards for the journey who wore khaki and had machetes. The
romance of entering the darkness had filled his boyish soul, and would not be
displaced — even by education, an appreciation of colonial oppression and the
advent of the aeroplane.

Perhaps
it was the spirit of the great philanthropists that pushed Nick towards a
career in medicine. In fact, while an undergraduate at Edinburgh, he had
considered setting up (eventually) a clinic on the banks of the Amazon — a
thought he kept to himself — which itself disclosed that ‘ordinary life’ held
out few attractions for a man whose footing belonged in a canoe. Nick saw his
future with Médecins Sans Frontières or at the side of Mother Theresa, and not
in a high-street surgery.

The
second impulse to travel came from an unexpected quarter: his dealings with
his mother. As he’d grown an indefinable tension had crept between them, evident
not so much through confrontation as a loss of assonance: that pliability, the
willingness of children to rhyme with the lives of their parents.

As a
boy Nick had rarely seen Elizabeth before nine in the evening, but she’d sit on
the edge of his bed and they’d talk way past a sensible hour. They had no
secrets. He would give his verdict on his teachers and she’d pass sentence —
like consigning Mr Openshaw, the headmaster to a week at Butlins with a
clothes peg on his nose. This was a time of alliance against Sensible and
Prudent, and the Grown-Ups. Unusually the separation didn’t begin with a
conflict of ideas — although that was to come — but with
his size.
It
started when he began lumbering round the house and spilling things at the
table because of the glut of adrenalin. As he filled out and rose above her
head, she turned brittle. It was as if becoming a man had not been a foreseeable
consequence of his infancy Nick couldn’t recall when it first came to pass, but
she stopped coming to his room at night, and no comparable ritual took its
place. It was what they both wanted, without saying so; perhaps without even
knowing it. He’d lie in the dark simply aware that she was still in the Green
Room, still between the papers of a brief. During breakfast he could see the
courtroom looming in her face. At the weekends, she was forever tuning into
conversations halfway through, getting the wrong end of the stick. As he moved
towards manhood, her work expanded to meet the space created by his
diminishing childhood. It was part of a symmetry that he didn’t altogether
like. For while he wanted to build his own life elsewhere, he didn’t altogether
appreciate her concurrence. The night before he went to Edinburgh, she cried:
out of loss but with relief, he thought. Most of the friends he made told the
same old story.

Comradeship,
hangovers and exams were the landmarks of his growing independence. And from
that new vantage point he began to see his mother’s awkwardness as an
achievement, a mighty thing, purchased by little acts of selflessness. She’d
managed to let go of her son, knowing that she would drift towards the
waterfall. She, too, was an adventurer, he thought. She’d made the heroic
sacrifice.

Just
when this adult gratitude had shaped his outlook, Nick observed with surprise
that his mother was hovering over the terrain she’d abandoned. At one point, he
thought she’d lost her sanity. Just after Nick had qualified, she slammed the
front door and practically ran into the sitting room. ‘You’ve never had a full
medical,’ she said, as if he’d been reckless since childhood.

‘I’m
fine.’

‘I don’t
care.

They
had argued a great deal recently, so Nick seized the opportunity for accord. ‘All
right … send in the doctor.’

Nick
had thought of blood pressure and tummy pressing from a buxom nurse. But his
mother had other ideas. She wanted every organ screened. They argued some more;
they bargained; and she paid. Nick had X-rays, ultrasound scanning and an ECG.
Kidneys, liver and heart. When the results came back showing him to be without
fault or defect, she burst into tears.

‘What
else did you want?’ asked Nick.

‘Nothing,’
she sobbed, flushed and radiant. ‘I only wanted this.’ And they went to a
restaurant as if she’d won a nasty case.

After
that outburst she began to come at night and sit on the edge of his bed, but it
didn’t quite work. She once asked about his intentions.

‘What
will you do, Nick?’

‘Dish
out prescriptions, hold the odd trembling hand.’

‘Whereabouts?
I imagine London would be an attractive prospect.’

Without
having said anything to his parents, Nick had already approached Médecins Sans
Frontières, and various other agencies, all of which had suggested he obtain
some practical experience. So Nick was thinking of a couple of years in a surgery,
but not one so near to home.

‘How
about approaching Doctor Ferguson in Primrose Hill?’ continued Elizabeth.

Primrose
Hill was on the other side of the road from St John’s Wood. She wanted him back
home. His mother had worked out how to swim upstream, away from the waterfall,
and she was determined to survive. At that moment more than any other, Nick
recognised that he had to put some distance between her need and his identity.

Nick’s
father had observed this progression from medical-test frenzy to night-time
enquiries after employment hopes with the calm attentiveness that he gave to
bookplates and display cabinets. He’d been an unhappy banker for twenty-seven
years until they’d got rid of him, an apparent humiliation that had set him
free to study butterflies and beetles. He was a simple man who considered work
a species of evil.