The Poison Garden (2019 Sphere Edition)

by Alex Marwood

  Property. A whole drawer. A collection of folders containing lease agreements for all the church’s long-sold houses. ‘The tenant agrees that this agreement will terminate with one calendar month’s notice on the return of Our Lord Saviour Jesus Christ,’ they begin. Maybe I should frame one of these, she thinks, and put it in the downstairs loo. They’re curios now, souvenirs of a flock that genuinely believed they were maintaining property for the return of the Lord. Nothing more.

  And then she spots the drawer marked Personal, right down at the bottom in the corner, and her attention slides away.

  Here they are. Her family, in paper and cardboard. A dozen folders. House (she puts the deeds away safely, at last). Insurance. Health (they had, it seems, private health insurance, despite the NHS and the protection of God). Car – spare keys, ownership documents, service record. Their old Volvo still sits in the garage, untried, untaxed and unloved. She doubts it would even start without help; she’s never needed to use it as she has a car of her own.

  A folder with plans for their funerals makes her blush with guilt. It would stand to reason that they would leave these things, and she never even looked. They’re stark, and brief. Her father organised her mother’s funeral and spoke there about death and unending hellfire. But it looks as though he did consult her file, for she remembers well the moment when the Congregation started marching on the spot while singing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. She looks at her father’s file. He wanted ‘Amazing Grace’ and an oration from a man who she knows to have been dead for the past four years. Ah, well.

  And then she finds the name files. Barbara. Bruce. Sarah. Alison.

  She checks her own first. It’s old stuff. Exam certificates, a confirmation photo, a birth certificate. School reports, for God’s sake. And a photograph of her wedding to Liam, the bride looking both in love and terrified, and Liam looking – oh, God, why didn’t she see it then? – sly. Nothing after. Sarah’s record-worthy life ended, as far as the Maxwells were concerned, with her wedding to a heathen. She wasn’t thrown into the outer darkness like her sister, but they clearly didn’t think anything would be worth recording afterwards. They didn’t even have this photo out on display, as normal people would. She takes her birth certificate and puts it on top of the cabinet.

  She opens Alison’s. It’s thin. So thin she thinks for a moment that it is empty. But no: there are three things inside. Her birth certificate. Her GCSE certificate. Her first passport, bought for a school trip to Flanders when she was fifteen. The tales of dormitory shenanigans that leaked back to her parents were so scandalous that Sarah was never allowed to go anywhere overnight when it got to be her turn.

  She runs her thumb over Alison’s face, remembers the pudding-basin haircuts, the snaggly teeth because the Maxwells didn’t believe in orthodontics or other types of ‘playing God’. Which is worse, she wonders, being the elder and having to forge your own way blind, or being the younger one, who catches the flak for their predecessor’s mistakes?

  Well, I suppose only one of us is dead.

  And then she feels guilty again, because nobody deserves death just for being foolish.

  And those kids don’t deserve to be left hanging because of the circumstances of their births, Sarah.

  Stop it.

  She bends to slip the file back into the drawer and her eye is caught by something lying on the bottom. The corner of a photograph. She pulls it out. A little shot taken in one of those passport booths in the post office, just the one, cut off the end of one of those strips of four. Alison and her baby. That’s Romy. She recognises the wrinkled skin, the tuft of black hair, the almond eyes. A little bigger than that one time she saw her, when Alison brought her home for a failed thirty-second visit, but undoubtedly her.

  It’s a terrible photo. They both look unwashed and ungroomed and cold and wet.

  She moves the files aside to see if there are any more. There are envelopes. A dozen, two dozen, her sister’s handwriting. They hang open, the letters visible inside.

  She takes one out, unfolds the letter. It’s been torn from a spiral-bound book and written with a pen that’s caught and blotted on the paper. The handwriting is kiddish, with circles over the ‘i’s and multiple underlinings and exclamation marks.

  7 May 1996

  Dear Mother—

  This letter is to wish you a happy birthday!!!. I know the chances are that you won’t read this, but I’m sending it anyway. I do wish you a happy, happy day, whatever you do, and send my love to Father and Sarah as well. I’m so sorry about the window. It was a stupid thing to do! I promise to pay you back and hope you will forgive me one day.

  I’m enclosing a photo of me and Romy, your granddaughter. She was born on November 11th and she’s nearly six months old. We took this in the photo booth in Reading when we went up to register her birth, so it’s quite out of date now. I wish you could see her. She’s so sweet. She rolls over all by herself and drags herself over to her toys, and she’s such a sunny little soul. She smiles at everybody. She’s on purayed food now and she loves carrot and potato and chicken and rice especially. She sends her love to her nana and her grandpa and her Auntie Sarah, and wishes she could meet you all.

  We’re living at Riverside Caravans off the London Road. We’ll have to move on when the summer season begins in June, though, as the rent will go up then. Social Services say they are looking for somewhere for us to go, but it will probably have to be a bed and breakfast as the waiting list is really long. But my neighbur Magda says I can work on her Chai Tea stall at the festivals in the summer, so that might work as she says I can take Romy with me and lots of people do. Anyway, we will be here till the end of May and would love to hear from you. Caravan 23. I don’t have a phone, but you can call reception and leave a message.

  With lots and lots of love,

  Your daughter,

  Alison

  She slips it back into the envelope, looks at the others, some browned and faded and some, God knows, practically brand new, the handwriting maturing but still familiar. She was writing to them. All these years, she was writing to them, and one or other of them was just slinging them out of view into this drawer. Why didn’t they just throw them away? Did they want me to find them one day, now it’s too late to do anything? Subconsciously, at least? Or maybe they just didn’t care. Were keeping them for themselves, as souvenirs of their righteousness, or as some sort of twisted gesture of contempt.

  She reaches back into the drawers and gathers them all up, counts them. Seventeen. So if they came annually, on Barbara’s birthday, she must only have given up shortly before Barbara’s death. As she stands up, the interior of the room, the view of the garden below through the dormer window, suddenly swim, and she has to reach out and grab the cabinet for support. Adrenaline. Cortisol. Some change in her blood pressure, because as she was standing her mood changed from sadness to absolute rage, and that rage has made her giddy.

  She died. My sister died in slow terror on a summer’s day in Wales. I will blame them for this for the rest of my life. Wicked, wicked old people, to do this to their child. To all the children. Their hearts are made of granite and they deserve to burn.

  She takes the letters downstairs to read, because she needs a glass of wine. She knows, now, what she will do, however much she fears it.

  Before the End

  2001–2002

  7 | Romy

  June 2001

  ‘Cyanide.’

  ‘Cyanide?’

  Somer laughs. ‘Not enough to kill you. Just the grass in the middle of the circle. You really wouldn’t bother to try to poison people with fairy-ring champignons. They’d have to eat half a ton to get a proper dose.’

  ‘Ohhh-kay,’ says Romy.

  ‘There are loads of more effective ways,’ says Somer.

  ‘Yew berries,’ says Romy. She studies the pharmacopoeia every day, what she can understand of it. She’s only five, after all, and, though the Plas Golau children are quite ad
vanced in their reading, there are limits. But she wants to be a Healer, like her mother.

  Some poisons are useful, in smaller doses, as medicines. Like digitalis, from foxgloves, for failing hearts. And for its own dark ends? Well, you never know when you might need poison. When the hordes come over the hill, poison might be their only salvation.

  ‘Belladonna.’

  ‘Deadly nightshade.’

  ‘That’s right. Don’t ever eat a berry unless you’re sure what it is,’ says Somer.

  ‘I know,’ says Romy, and rolls her eyes. Grown-ups repeat themselves, constantly.

  ‘The largest organism in the world is a fungus,’ says Somer. ‘In Oregon. It’s two and a half miles across.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes!’

  That’s bigger than the whole of Plas Golau, with its woods and fields and little reservoir, its house, its kitchen gardens, the rough-grazing pasture where the altitude gets higher and the soil gets thinner, its patch of open moorland. Further across than Romy’s entire world. ‘A honey fungus,’ says Somer. ‘We have to root them up the second we see them. They kill trees.’

  Romy stares at the fairy-ring, thinks about the thing growing beneath. Quietly, creeping outwards, root by root by root, taking over the world, killing it off.

  ‘Come on,’ says Somer. ‘Time’s a-wasting.’

  She loves these afternoons with her mother. Knows they won’t last forever – adulthood comes early here. And it will come earlier for Romy, because Somer has been blessed with a second child. And not just any child: Father’s child. Of all the women at Plas Golau, he has chosen to make her the latest mother of his offspring. Romy is proud. So proud. It’s rare to have a brother or a sister, and a brother or sister who could turn out to be the One is so special that sometimes she has to squeeze herself in bed at night to control her excitement.

  It’s nice to escape the summer heat, but Romy’s glad they don’t have to go deep into the woods. They’ve shared so many ghost stories, hunkered down beneath their blankets while storms howled around the dormitory rafters, that she’s nervous of the outer edges of the estate, the band of tangled wildness that’s been left to grow around its walls. Deep below them runs a peat-rich stream, the outlet from the reservoir, tumbling on down the hill over boulders deposited in the Ice Age, its rocks slippery. And the woods are full of bracken, and bracken means adders, everyone knows that.

  ‘So remind me,’ she asks as they clamber on, ‘who is Jesus again?’ She likes to cross-question her mother about the world into which she was born. She likes to tease herself with detail of the lives the Dead lead. Make herself horripilate with fear or howl with laughter. Make herself feel lucky.

  ‘He’s the son of God.’

  Romy frowns. ‘But I thought God didn’t exist?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So how … ?’

  ‘By making it up,’ says Somer. Having left religion behind her, she has left it completely. The only thing that matters to them is survival. When the end comes, they carry the future of the human race. There is nothing more important.

  ‘Mm.’ Romy thinks of her new sibling, conceived not only with the Leader’s blessing but with his seed as well, and shakes her head wonderingly. She doesn’t know who her own father is, of course, but it doesn’t matter, really. How people were on the Outside is not how they are here, and as he didn’t come with them he’ll be lost to them anyway when the End comes.

  ‘So basically,’ she asks, ‘they thought Jesus was the One?’

  Somer pauses and lays a hand on her swollen abdomen. Smiles a smile that gazes into the future, a modern madonna in a flaxen tunic. ‘I suppose,’ she says. ‘Of course, the difference is that the One is real.’

  ‘And our baby could be the One, couldn’t he?’ Romy asks proudly, though of course she knows the answer. The baby is Lucien’s, and only one of Lucien’s children can be the One. Everyone knows that; it’s the Prophecy. But to be related even to a could-be-the-One is madly exciting.

  ‘Could be,’ says Somer, with false modesty. ‘But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’

  Romy spots a clump of saffron chanterelles clustered around the roots of a noble beech tree. Cries out and points.

  ‘Oh, well done,’ says Somer.

  ‘So your mother and father think Jesus is going to come back?’ continues Romy. ‘Like a zombie?’

  ‘Haha. Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘That’s mad,’ says Romy.

  ‘Right?’ says Somer. ‘And they think when he does he’s going to want to live in Finbrough. They built a house for him in the centre of town, and a model village for his most loyal followers. Everyone lives in the little ones and keeps the big one nice for him, with a church built in for convenience. But then they built a motorway – a great big road – right bang smack between the two, which was sort of funny.’

  ‘What’s Finbrough like?’ she asks. She knows she was born there. Wants a picture in her head, for most of her peers in the Pigshed can point to the actual literal spot where their mother pushed them out.

  ‘It’s … not much, really. It’s a small town on the road from London to Wales. People mostly go there to sleep, ’cos there’s not a lot to do. But it’s handy if you want to get to other places, and that’s why they live there, I think.’

  *

  They finish gathering the chanterelles – a tenth left behind, always, so that there will always be more – and move on through the dappled shade. Somer is awkward, her movements clumsy with her big belly hanging off her bony frame. Pregnant women get an extra pint of milk a day from their small dairy herd, but any further level of gorging is frowned on. You still need to stay agile, Father says, still need to stay on your feet, because, when the worst thing of all happens, you will need to be able to run. But with no weight on the back to balance her she often looks as though she’s going to tip right over. She’s pink about the face, though her great thick blanket of shiny golden hair is plaited carelessly to get it off her neck in the summer heat. Their hair is a burden in the summer, for they all wear it long, getting it cut every three years. The Dead buy hair. Imagine. And blonde hair is the most highly prized of all. Romy holds her hand, and for the first time she’s aware that it’s she who’s offering the protection, not Somer, and she feels proud again. Everything will change in three months, she knows that.

  ‘Are you looking forward to it?’ she asks. ‘To meeting him?’

  ‘Or her,’ corrects Somer. ‘Yes. I can’t tell you. It’s so different, this time. It’s amazing, the way everyone is so happy.’

  ‘Not like with me,’ Romy says, sadly.

  Somer looks down and squeezes her hand. ‘We were in the wrong world, baby. I wanted you. I wanted you from the moment I knew you were there. You know that, don’t you?’

  She feels mollified. ‘I just wish,’ she says, ‘that I belonged.’

  Somer looks shocked. Drops to her knees in front of her daughter and squeezes her upper arms. ‘Oh, Romy, but you do. You do. Don’t you know? Vita chose both of us to come here, not just me. You were so wanted that you were chosen. We’re the most important people in the world, Romy. You know that. The Ark will be the survival of the human race. We’ll be the fathers and mothers of the future. It’s just that nobody knows it, apart from us.’

  ‘Everybody is a nobody,’ recites Romy. ‘Everyone is a someone.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘But this … ’ She lays her palm flat on her mother’s swollen abdomen. ‘This could be the One. I’ll never be the One.’

  Somer lumbers back to her feet. ‘No. But that doesn’t mean the things you do won’t matter. You’ll need to look after your brother or sister. When they come. You’ll need to take care of them and watch out for them, because they could save the world entire.’

  ‘How will we know?’ she asks. ‘If it’s them?’

  Somer shakes her head. Lucien will have thirteen children with this baby. But only one will be the One. �
��I don’t know, to be honest. Lucien says that they’ll rise up when the time is right and lead us to safety. I don’t know if it’ll be obvious before that. But we’ve got to trust his word.’

  ‘Lucien is very wise,’ says Romy.

  ‘He is,’ says Somer, with love and longing. ‘He’s the wisest.’ And she puts her hand where Romy’s has lain a few moments ago, and looks strangely melancholic. ‘Anyway,’ she says, and leads them forward.

  ‘So is it true,’ Romy asks, as she helps her mother onto the path that runs along the brook, ‘that the Christians ate Jesus?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That was what Kiran said, in the Pigshed. He said they have a ceremony every Sunday where they eat his flesh and drink his blood.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, that’s—’ Somer stops. ‘Yes, that’s exactly what it is. You’re right. Whatever you do, Romy, you want to steer clear of Christians. They’re a cannibal cult, and if you’re not very careful they’ll eat you alive.’

  ‘So nobody lives in Jesus’s house?’ she asks. She finds it hard to imagine. It seems so … wasteful. Every inch of Plas Golau has a working function. The inhabitants of the Ark sleep six, sometimes even eight, to a dormitory room, and all the other spaces – the old chapel, the eaves and the attics, the cellars, the spaces beneath things and the spaces above – are overflowing with the necessities of survival. The barns and the godowns, the roof spaces and the rows of hooks along the beams … everything has a function. Nothing is wasted.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Somer replies. ‘But it has to be kept perfect for when he moves in. The women go up every day and sweep and clean and polish and make a cold collation so he always has something to eat.’

  Romy catches sight of a big healthy shroom over by a rock and trots over to snatch it up. Somer gasps. ‘No! Romy! Do you want to kill us all?’