The Gardens of the Dead (20 page)

It was
only when Anselm was trotting down the stairs to the Underground that he felt
the entire interview had been incongruous — but he couldn’t reduce the insight
to any particulars.

When he
got back to Hoxton he found two sheets of paper outside his bedroom door. The
first was the fax from Larkwood. The second was a message asking him to call
Inspector Cartwright.

Anselm
read the letter from Elizabeth by the light of a window.

Dear Anselm,

I would be very
grateful if you would visit the following lady:

Mrs Irene Dixon

Flat 269

Percival Court

Shoreditch

Mrs Dixon may not know that I am dead, so please explain, if needs
be. Thereafter, listen rather than speak. I suggest you arrive unannounced.

Farewell, Anselm. You have helped me more than you can know.

Warm regards,

Elizabeth

Anselm
let his hand drop. This was the final letter, he was sure. He thought of
Elizabeth the rich orphan who hadn’t quite gone, who wouldn’t let go, even in
death. Subdued, he rang Inspector Cartwright.

‘You
won’t believe this,’ she said, ‘but I’ve received a letter from Mrs
Glendinning.’

They
arranged to meet in half an hour. Feeling more and more like an ass in a
bridle, Anselm set off on this next unforeseen errand. Perhaps it was the act
of retracing his steps to the Underground that brought home another veiled
truth: the old biddy in the woolly hat had taken him to the cleaners — but he
didn’t know how, and he couldn’t guess why.

7

At breakfast, Nancy said
that Prosser had been sniffing around again.

Riley
looked up, put his tea down and went bonkers. He grabbed a plate and sent it to
the wall, like a frisbee. The pieces went everywhere. Arnold tore from his
wheel and Nancy ducked as if it were an air raid (as a teenager she’d hidden in
the Underground while London got trashed by the Nazis).

‘I’m
sick of him,’ shouted Riley His mouth curled like a boxer’s, and he huffed and
puffed, pacing the ring in his head. ‘He’s always watching me, chewing that
cigar.’

Riley
looked for something else to throw, but Nancy had cleared the table.

‘I’ll
speak to Wyecliffe,’ vowed Riley.

‘When?’
said Nancy dropping a cup. ‘What for?’

‘I’ll
go tonight,’ he seethed. ‘And he’ll bang a writ on Prosser’s nose.

That
sounds very legal, thought Nancy not quite knowing what it meant.

Buoyed
up and punchy Riley set off for work, his boots crunching on the crockery.

When
Nancy duly opened her shop that morning she went straight to the filing
cabinet. She untied Mr Johnson’s plastic bag and pulled out the first volume
that came to hand. She sat by the fire, aiming to read, to drive out the memory
of that lawyer in his stuffy twilit room. But he was too strong. Nancy let the
book drop on her lap. She could almost feel his breath and smell the nuts.

A few weeks after the ‘preliminary
conference’ at the bungalow, Mr Wyecliffe sent Nancy a letter ‘requiring your
kind attendance’.

She
thought solicitors weren’t meant to have beards and yet his was like an old
toilet brush. She hadn’t liked him. Not because he’d been hungry when he should
have lost his appetite, and not even because of the grilling he’d dished out
(he’d leaned across his desk, tugging at his hairy chin, not taking no for an
answer, digging around in her private life: it was like he was after something,
but wouldn’t say what). No, she didn’t like him because she’d said too much.
Part of her had gone missing. The room had been dark, the windows jammed, and
he’d just bitten his way through her life, as if it were another sandwich. And
another thing: his eyes were too close together.

Mr Wyecliffe
had said, for openers, ‘What you now tell me is completely confidential.’

‘Then
how does it go in my statement?’

That
knocked him one. He wasn’t used to women with minds of their own. But he
explained himself. He was the professional. He needed to know everything. ‘Just
imagine I’m doing a jigsaw out of sight. You’ll wonder why I pick up this bit
or the other. Don’t think about the broader picture: leave that to me.’ Nancy
supposed that that was why lawyers earned so much money —they could see things
the rest of us couldn’t. And then Mr Wyecliffe got started in the middle of
nowhere, and wouldn’t let go. ‘I suppose your husband goes out with the lads
every now and then?’

‘Never.
He stays at home. ‘All the time?’

‘Well,
apart from work and that –’

‘Every
evening?’

‘Yes,
unless he’s doing overtime.’

‘Do you
ever get unexpected phone calls from a strange man?’

‘Of
course not.’ She folded her arms tight across her chest. ‘Why would I?’

‘Wanting
to speak to your husband?’

‘No.’

‘Does
Mr Riley make calls to anyone you don’t know?’

‘We’re
husband and wife.’ Nancy had been getting more unsettled than cross, because
the questions were like digs in the side, but she was proud to throw that one
back. They were man and wife. Till death us do part. For better or for worse.

‘Is
that no?’

‘Yes.’

Mr Wyecliffe
nodded like her Uncle Bertie would after he’d checked the odds at Ladbrokes. ‘Just
as I expected.’ He chewed a pencil, smiling at Nancy his eyes too deep in his
head. Not a word had been written down.

‘So
your husband does lots of overtime?’ ‘He works for his living, yes.’

‘Indeed.
This overtime. Is it always on the same days?’

‘Not
now, what with the downturn on the docks.’

‘Of
course. But it’s frequent?’

‘We
find out as and when. Mr Lawton’s been very lucky so yes, there’s always a lot
to be done. The boss has to keep ahead of the game. And my husband’s always
there, ready to help. He’s one of his best workers. Never missed a shift.’

‘I don’t
doubt it. Any cash in hand?’

Nancy
felt the coming of a blush. ‘No.’

Mr Wyecliffe
swivelled the pencil, biting into the wood. He said, ‘Do you collect the rents
with him?’

‘Why
should I?’

‘Ever
met the tenants?’

‘No.’

Once
again, the solicitor looked like Uncle Bertie with the
Racing Post.
‘Very
sensible,’ he said. ‘Let ‘em rest in peace.

‘Exactly.’

Nancy
wanted a breather, but Mr Wyecliffe seemed to have her trapped. He said, ‘How
often does your husband visit the property?’

‘Well,
I don’t know, once or twice a week, if anything needs doing. He does all the
maintenance himself. Keeps the costs down.’

‘Very
sensible. Just let me try some names.

Nancy
thought she’d suffocate if he went on like this.

‘David?’

‘No.’

‘George?’

‘No.’

‘Bradshaw?’

‘No.’

Mr Wyecliffe
looked at the pencil as though he was a film star with a cigar, and Nancy saw
that the lead had snapped. He started chewing the dry end. ‘Is Mr Riley in debt
to anyone?’

‘Absolutely
not.’

‘Then
why the overtime?’

‘We’d
like a house to match yours.’

A noble
objective that would, however, bring considerable disappointment.’

Suddenly
the little man got up and opened the door. He returned and put a plump little
hand on her shoulder, ‘Sorry, but the ventilation system is somewhat primitive.’
He looked at her in a funny way as if he were hungry again. ‘One more name, of
a sort.’ Nancy closed her eyes. Quietly he asked, ‘Have you ever heard of the
Pieman?’

Nancy
gripped the sides of her head as though it might fall in two. ‘Never.’

‘Is Mr
Riley frightened?’

Frightened?
What a thing to have asked. Her man was scared of no one. A flash of heat
spread across her chest, face and scalp — that was the menopause, telling her
she’d never have a baby that it was too late. So the doctor had said. Strange
even to her own hearing, she replied, ‘Yes.’

‘What
of?’

Nancy
didn’t want to say It sounded daft. If she’d been asked was her man angry, she’d
have said, ‘Oh yes,’ and that would have been that. But this question had
stirred a new kind of thinking deep inside, somewhere other than her head — it
wasn’t really thinking; she didn’t know what it was, but it happened in her
lungs, and lower down, in the stomach. ‘Well,’ she said, feeling weak, sheets
of fresh sweat unfolding, ‘he was scared by the hunter in
Bambi
even though
you never see him.’

Mr Wyecliffe
nodded like the doctor, showing no surprise.

Nancy
continued, blinded by salt and mortification, ‘And he doesn’t like the new
queen in
Snow White.’

Mr Wyecliffe
kept nodding, his eyes closed. Then he asked, ‘What does he think of the little
princess?’

And
that was where Nancy went too far — without understanding why except in her
guts. She replied, ‘He hates her.’ She’d never liked the h-word. It was hard
and sharp and somehow dark.

The
sweating had stopped and a chill had struck her. Nancy sat with her arms folded
tight, feeling like she was in the altogether on the ice-rink at Hammersmith.
These humiliating flushes could go on for years, apparently So the doctor said.
Nancy reached for a hankie.

‘I don’t
think we’ll be calling you as a witness.’ Mr Wyecliffe put his pencil down. And
Nancy knew — because she wasn’t daft — that he’d never intended to call her in
the first place.

The cars struck the bump
and swept past Nancy’s door. Blinking uncertainly like she’d just landed, Nancy
handled the book on her lap. It fell open naturally in the middle. A spill of
coffee or tea had made the ink run and the paper was ribbed and sticky.

… and her hair
was pulled back ever so tight. Like all female staff at the Bonnington, she had
to wear a black dress with a white frilly pinafore. It made her look like a
servant in
The Forsyte Saga.
I watched her walk down the corridor
pushing a trolley of sheets. That was the first time I saw Emily. And I said to
myself, ‘I shall marry this woman before the year is out.’ I eventually found
the manager’s office. Sister Dorothy said he would be rude and she was right,
but she’d also said keep your eye on his smile, which I did. He said, ‘Young
man, all you have to do is carry bags, don’t speak unless you’re spoken to, and
don’t loiter for a tip. This is London not New York.’ I was what an American
businessman once called ‘the bell hop’ — presumably because I came running
when I heard a ding from the reception desk.

Unfortunately Emily had no interest in me.

Nancy
was forcefully present to herself now Eagerly she turned the page but it was
stuck to the next few with something like jam.

and there he was
lifted high in the air by a nurse. I said, ‘Oh my God, I’m sorry,’ because I
thought I’d gone into the wrong theatre. But then I saw Emily on the bed. And
then I realised that the baby in the air, on his way to the scales, was my son.
I’d missed his birth by seconds. I don’t remember a sound, not a cry.

Nancy
slowly closed the book here, at the point that most interested her. This had to
be the son who would one day be lost, the boy who’d run along the pier at
Southport. Out of respect to Mr Johnson, she would read no further, because in
all their many conversations, he’d never told her what had happened.

I’m a
dreadful woman, thought Nancy Mr Johnson had his own tragedy and yet she
escaped from hers into his, as if his story wasn’t real.

8

George rose, picked up his
remaining plastic bag and left Trespass Place. As he passed beneath the arch at
the entrance he knew he’d never come back. The waiting was over.

Many
people think that the homeless live on the whim of the moment. One minute they
are there, in a doorway — as they have been for months — the next, they’re
gone. In fact, these movements are decisions. Moving on is a kind of obedience
—just like leaving home in the first place.

When
George found Trespass Place all those years ago, Nino had said that life on the
street is like walking round the world. ‘It’s a turning away; but it can become
a turning back.’ George had instantly understood the first part, for his
arrival beneath Blackfriars Bridge had been an attempt to flee a single
conversation.