The Gardens of the Dead (40 page)

‘Where
will you go, Nancy when this is all over?’ he asked.

‘I
haven’t a clue.’ Her hands were folded on her bag and her knees were squashed
against the dashboard. ‘What about you?’

‘No
idea,’ said George. He turned to Nancy wanting to thank her for their time
together, for this brief, shining …

George
thwacked a yellow Lamborghini. It was his fault. He hadn’t been looking. The
jolt was so severe that stars twinkled behind his eyes. When he could see
straight, he saw a police officer — the same one as last time — talking to his
radio and summoning George with a gloved hand. Thinking the world had turned
upside down (leaving aside his and Nancy’s efforts in this regard), he drove to
the rubber kerb. Ten minutes later they were taken in a squad car to the
station. George was left in the waiting room and Nancy was taken to an office
with a panel of frosted glass in the door.

Twenty
minutes later George and Nancy had been released. For a long time Nancy did not
speak.

‘George,’
she said evenly ‘when they checked us out for giving money away my name caused
a stir on the computer. ‘She sat down on the low wall of someone’s garden. ‘I
was reported missing two days ago, and yesterday Inspector Cartwright charged
Riley with the murder of his stepfather. Without being asked, he confessed to
the murder of your son and to everything that happened at Quilling Road. He’ll
be going to prison for a long time.’

George
felt as though he were back in the Roller, seeing stars; that the world must
right itself at any moment. He lowered himself onto the wall and took his
friend by the hand.

‘What
will you do, Nancy?’

With
her hat pulled down over her ears, she looked resolved. ‘I’ve two days left in
Brighton,’ she said, as if doing her sums. ‘I’ve got ten thousand pounds in my
pocket. And I’ve got agreeable company for the duration. What else could a girl
want?’

George
studied her face, its softness.

And
when my time’s up and I’m broke,’ she said, gazing at George as if it might be
wrong, as if he might never understand, ‘I’ll go back to Riley.’

Side by
side, they walked into the wind and the sun, heading back towards the band,
with the music growing stronger.

‘Someone
has to love him,’ she said simply.

7

Nick came to Larkwood not
so much because Roddy had urged it upon him, but because it was fitting. He’d
begun a kind of journey with Father Anselm, and now it was over; there were no
more secrets. It was the right time to say goodbye.

‘Because
I’m a monk,’ said Father Anselm, wrapped in a long woollen cloak, ‘I am a
creature of ritual. Symbols help me understand things.’ They were sitting on a
bench of dressed stone — a chunk of the medieval abbey It faced the Lark and a
row of empty plant pots. ‘Your mother and I sat here at the outset of her
endeavour,’ he continued. ‘Perhaps it’s not a bad place to examine where it
ends.’

A week
ago, Nick had felt irritated at his father’s desire to
protect,
the
energy spent on leaving his son
unscathed.
He’d found it patronising. Nick
was a grown man, a doctor. He’d swum with cane toads. But now he knew that
Walter Steadman had been his grandfather, killed by a boy who’d grown to kill
as a man and who, for good measure, was Nick’s half-uncle. Roddy had come round
to explain these niceties because, following Riley’s confession, a trial
became inevitable and Nick would soon find out — if not from him, or his
father, then the national press, who would probably be competing with one
another for the most punchy by-line to describe his mother. It transpired that
Roddy had known of Elizabeth’s short time on the street, but no more. He’d
learned the rest from Father Anselm.

After Roddy
had tumbled into a taxi, Nick finally appreciated his father’s bullish
resistance. Even after Elizabeth’s death, Charles had clung on to a slender
hope: that Father Anselm would fail; that Mrs Dixon would enjoy a long and
private retirement. The matter of Walter Steadman had been the issue upon which
Nick’s parents had been most divided. And Nick wholly endorsed his father’s
reading of the compass: what was the point in bringing it out into the open?
Why had she set up this dreadful, public annihilation of the living? For whose
benefit? Only that of the dead. Nick wanted to be protected, frankly and left
unscathed. He had said all this to Father Anselm on the way to the bench of
dressed stone. Worm out, he slumped down, arms on his thighs. He looked ahead
at the river and the teetering plant pots.

‘Your
mother ran away from a house in which her father had been murdered,’ said
Father Anselm steadily ‘She didn’t admire the man, although he’d made a claim
upon her affection. That must have been difficult for her: to see his
brutality, and his gentleness; to wonder how both could rise from the same
soil; to try and give credit for one while condemning the other. She was, of
course, just a child. And it was as a child that she turned her back on the
gravest offence known to the criminal law. She’d made an unspoken agreement
with her mother to remain silent, as though it were a payment she owed to her
abused sibling. Elizabeth could do this only by wiping out her past — every
memory, every smell, every taste, every sound — and by creating a new history
of imagined sensations. And she succeeded. She launched a career, she married
and she had a child. But then the half-brother she’d protected appeared in this
wonderful universe of her own making.’

The
monk reached down and picked up some twigs. He snapped them, while he thought
himself into this other livid experience.

‘When
Riley instructed your mother to represent him, he did so, in the first place,
to silence George. But there was more to it than that. He wanted to destroy an
achievement that, to him, must have been an unbearable sight. Since their last
meeting, she had changed beyond recognition; while he, the other runaway could
only look upon the same squalid reflection. So it’s worth pausing to consider
what Riley now demanded from your mother. In the first place, he was holding
up, like a mirror, her silence over Walter’s murder. He was saying, “Look well,
look hard: your position as an officer of the court is a sham, it always has
been; and your likeness is just as soiled as mine.” And nowhere could that have
been acutely felt than when Elizabeth was obliged to cross-examine Anji,
staring — as she must have been — at the unhappy face of her past.’

Father
Anselm looked to Nick, inviting him to speak, but his mind had drained of
everything save what he now heard. It was of course a fancy but there was
something in the monk’s manner, his choice of words, that seemed to speak truly
of Elizabeth, a mother who’d wanted to speak to her son.

‘Now,
what did Elizabeth do in that terrible situation?’ Father Anselm reached for
more twigs.
‘She surrendered.
But why? This woman had given her life to
the law, she believed in due process. How could she suffer his
winning,
and
the
defeat
of everything she had valued? That is the most taxing
question. I think I know the answer.

‘Riley
asked for your mother, believing this: She helped me once; she’ll help me
again. That was a huge error of judgement. Elizabeth had changed in more ways
than he could imagine. Her attachment to the law was so great that I think she
would have
seized
the opportunity to expose the facts of her life,
regardless of the personal cost. But she didn’t. What Riley didn’t know, and
this is what saved him, was that Elizabeth now had a son. Nick, I think she
cooperated with Riley for you. To protect you. To leave you unscathed. To keep
intact the world she’d created for you with Charles.’

Nick
didn’t like Father Anselm using the words of his own complaint, but the monk
did so kindly and tentatively as if he were passing them back across the
counter. Nick looked to the river and a strange mist rising on the other side,
stretched thin like a silver table. In a kind of daze, he listened to Father
Anselm’s exposition.

The
price paid by Elizabeth was high, he said reluctantly By continuing the case,
she broke the rules of her profession. By asking him to cross-examine George, she
hoped, nonetheless, to lose the trial. Even that went awry because,
unfortunately the stooge had been lucky. Throughout the following years,
nothing unsettled Elizabeth’s resolve to remain silent — not the letter from
Mrs Bradshaw, not the death of that poor woman’s son. The strong spirit of her
childhood had returned. And being so resolved, she lost her faith in the law
—just as long before she’d lost faith in her family.

‘But
then,’ said Father Anselm, ‘something of capital importance happened. Your mother
learned that her days were counted — a moment which, I am sure, has a stillness
all of its own. And in that quiet she recognised that a great lie had been
allowed to take root, and that unless she acted, it would define her life. The
problem, of course, was that it was too late. Your mother had already made her
choice. She’d done Riley’s bidding. And it is at this stage, I think, that
Elizabeth’s story becomes what my father used to call a corker. She decided to
alter the past by changing how everything would end.’

The
monk was smiling encouragement. He stood up and with a tilt of the head
suggested a walk. They quietly followed the Lark and crossed a small
footbridge. On the other side, they entered a field that was hard underfoot.
Without a path, they tracked a furrow towards the table of mist.

As you
know,’ said Father Anselm, ‘your mother devised two schemes. The first was for
George: to let him take away the good character of the man responsible for the
death of his son. She went to extraordinary lengths to succeed because she
hoped to restore his self-worth. But a great part of her energy, I am sure,
arose from a blinding desire to see Riley convicted of any offence of this
kind, however trivial in the eyes of the courts; to have him proved a pimp.
That outcome was denied her. She failed.

‘The
second scheme was for herself: to bring Riley to court for a murder whose
evidence she had helped to suppress. To succeed, Elizabeth had to convince her
mother to reveal what she knew to the police. She failed again.’

They
had reached the centre of the field and stopped. The mist was just above head
height, rolling within itself.

‘It
might reasonably be said,’ observed Father Anselm wryly ‘that I was the
contingency plan. And I too failed, comprehensively’ He fixed Nick with an enquiring,
kindly gaze.

‘Who
persuaded my grandmother to speak?’ asked Nick. Whether he liked it or not, he
felt himself a part of the narrative; as if it were his proper concern.

‘You
did,’
said Father Anselm, quietly fervent. ‘She didn’t
want you to live a lie — as she had done; as her children had. For no one knew
better than your grandmother the cost of a lie.’

The
monk started walking aimlessly his hands moving with suppressed animation.

‘It was
only when I met Mrs Dixon that I understood the importance of what Elizabeth
had set out to do,’ he said. ‘Once she’d decided to reclaim her past, the only
available means was the legal system that she’d abandoned. So through each of
these schemes, she was hoping to restore justice itself. She saw afresh — I’m
sure of it — that the rule of law
matters,
that our attempts to punish
matter,
that to show mercy however clumsily
matters.’
Father Anselm turned
to Nick, wrapping his cloak around his body A man had been killed — your
grandfather. Brute or not, his life had been taken from him. The irony is that
he was a man ready to die at the drop of a hat. But that’s of no consequence: a
murder is a murder — be it Walter’s or John’s. To bring this truth to light was
your mother’s endeavour. She succeeded — but not through her own efforts.’ He
paused to reflect. ‘Nick, if I can say anything to you that I’m sure I’ll stand
by tomorrow morning, it’s this: isn’t it fitting that you have achieved this on
her behalf … and not some bumbling oaf like me?’

Nick
agreed, reluctantly smiling.

And who
better to help your father understand,’ continued the monk, ‘than the son he
sought to protect?’

The
table of mist had spread across the valley It caught the sunlight, bringing it
within arm’s reach. Walking beneath it, they passed the bench where Elizabeth
had given Father Anselm the key. Slowly they followed the track to the plum
trees and her yellow car.

‘Can I
ask a favour?’ asked Nick.

‘Of
course.’

‘What’s
the secret of the relief of Mafeking?’

‘After “the
Boers were at the gates”,’ said the monk, ‘the story changes all the time. I’m
not sure even Sylvester knows, not any more. He makes it up as he goes along’

When
Nick was in the car and the engine was running, Father Anselm knocked on the
window Diffidently he said, ‘Did you ever look inside the hole where your
mother kept the key?’

Nick
had only ever examined the outer cut pages.

‘Have a
peep when you get home,’ said the monk. ‘It tells you the route your mother
tried to follow’