The Poison Garden (2019 Sphere Edition)

by Alex Marwood

  She hesitates. The air is fresh, damp, with a hint of overnight frost. Should I go? she wonders. Should I join the mob? Can I help? Or would I just be another sensation-seeker looking for an anecdote?

  The thought of the children pushes her forward. What if they were on the bridge? What if they hadn’t got safely into Finbrough before they saw it?

  You can see the road before you hit the bridge, from the path. Down below, fifty yards to the London side, a Stobart truck straddles the lane divider, miraculously upright. Three cars wedged beneath its wheels and a dozen more higgledy-piggledy across the road, pointing anywhere but east. And, all along the fifty yards, a red-black smear of something dragged along the tarmac, something that’s broken up as it went. Something that was once alive.

  She walks on. Weaves her way through silent, gawping neighbours. Below, a flashing blue light challenges the morning gloom and a squad car crawls out from beneath the bridge along the hard shoulder. Someone throws up, bent double, into a patch of nettles. A woman sobs. A man puts his arm around the shoulders of a boy in Wellesley Academy uniform and tries to turn him away. They were going to be late, she thinks, nonsensically. They’ve got an excuse now. And still she walks on, cranes to see the little knot of people who have made it to the middle of the footbridge.

  They’re bending over something. Too far away for her to see clearly. Heart sinking, she keeps walking forward. The westbound lanes are chock-a-block, moving forward at a crawl, indicators flashing where the cars in the fast lane are forced to move across to steer around the stricken cab of the lorry.

  Twenty feet away, and one of the knot of people moves aside, stands up, bends to pick up what looks like a book that threatens to blow through the bars onto the carriageway. Around their leg, she gets a view at last of the focus of their attention.

  It’s Ilo. All alone, sitting with his back against the railings. Knees drawn up to his chest, and rocking.

  54 | Sarah

  He can’t stop crying. She’s not sure she has ever seen so many tears. He’s only a little boy, she thinks again, though the little boy’s voice has broken and the sobs that come out of him come in a round, rich tenor. Romy sits beside him, encircles him with her arms, and tears pour down her own face as she does so. Seven hours, it took her to come down from Hounslow on the bus after Sarah’s call to her mobile, the motorway closed from Slough to Newbury and the traffic on the alternative routes moving at a crawl. There’s not been a pile-up this bad since the 1980s, says the radio news, and because of the requirement for forensic investigation and accident enquiry it’s unlikely to get better for forty-eight hours.

  Eden killed six people in her fall, and another three hang by a thread in the Reading ICU. How do you miss the fact that someone’s so close to the edge that they don’t even care whose life they destroy when they die? I will never forgive myself, Sarah thinks. Never.

  This is a part of parenting that nobody warned her about. How could they? She wants to weep alongside him. Wants to howl at the night sky, rub ashes into her hair, scrape her skin red-raw, close the door and pull the curtains and crawl beneath the covers to wait for this to go away, but she is the adult now.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ he sobs. ‘I killed her,’ and it feels as though it’s the millionth time she’s heard the words. So much so that she no longer bothers to protest. If he needs to say it, he needs to say it, she tells herself. It’s part of the process, for him, clearly. Perhaps if he says it often enough, if no one denies it or tells him to shut up, he will eventually accept that the responsibility is Eden’s alone. And Marie Spence’s. Not his.

  Perhaps I will, too.

  The images conjured by his words will haunt her forever. All she can see when she closes her eyes is that poor child, struggling and struggling to hold her back from the blustery edge.

  ‘I killed her,’ he says again, and rocks in his sister’s arms.

  ‘You didn’t,’ she says. ‘Oh, Ilo, you’re the bravest of all of us.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Romy. ‘What you did … you were braver than I ever could have been. You are a warrior. You are a hero. I know, if you could, you would save the world entire.’

  People keep coming up the driveway. Each time she looks out, the bank of cellophane-wrapped flowers leaning against the front of her house has grown. At least the garage will be experiencing a profit bump, she thinks, resentfully. Why do people do that? Why? What makes them think that a family in mourning will mourn better amid the smell of rotting foliage? That our lives will be improved by having to find a way to dispose of it all?

  It’s just getting in on the act, really, she thinks. And then she hates herself for the sort of person she is.

  The Christmas tree is still up. She wants to tear it down, hurl it into the street. There is no place in this house for such vulgar splendour. Never was. Never will be. How did I not know that her good spirits when we hung those baubles were all a lie? That those sunny smiles hid someone so easily tipped over?

  At five, full dark, she hears movement outside the window, the sound of murmuring voices, a strangled sob. Cracks the living room curtains to see the intruders and feels a rush of rage.

  ‘Oh, this is too much!’ she says, and heads for the front door.

  Romy looks up. Ilo has curled up on his side beside her and finally fallen into an exhausted sleep. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Helen Brown.’ Her voice comes out high with strangled fury. ‘Helen bloody Brown. And she’s brought that girl with her. That bloody, bloody girl.’

  ‘Girl?’

  ‘Marie Spence.’

  Romy looks startled. Sits bolt upright in her seat as though she plans to leap to her feet and run.

  Sarah storms through the hall and throws the door open. ‘Get away from here!’ she shouts. ‘Just get away!’

  Marie and Helen both start. Marie is wearing no make-up: the first time she’s seen her without, ever. She seems to have shrunk. With her red-rimmed eyes and her colourless lips, she looks diminished. The urge to march out there and start laying her fists about is almost too strong to overcome. ‘Get away!’ she shouts again. ‘What are you doing here? What are you even … ?’

  ‘Sarah … ’ says Helen.

  ‘Oh, don’t you even start,’ she snarls. ‘Don’t think I don’t blame you too.’

  Helen looks gobsmacked. Well, so you should, she thinks with a jolt of satisfaction. It’s as much your fault as anybody’s, pretending to be their counsellor and betraying their confidence.

  ‘And you!’ She turns on Marie, all contempt. ‘I don’t even know how you have the gall to come here. How do you feel now, killer?’

  Marie shrinks even more. Finds her words, pushes them out in a little-girl voice. ‘I was going to give it back,’ she stutters. ‘It was only a joke.’

  ‘A joke!’

  ‘And the woman came along. We were waiting where you come off the bridge and I was going to give it back, and she took it. She just grabbed it, and—’

  ‘Oh, fuck off,’ she says, and takes a step out of the doorway. Sees them recoil, sees fear on their faces. I must look like a banshee, she thinks, and then she thinks: good. I want them to be afraid. I want them to know what they’ve done. ‘Get away from here!’ She sweeps a hand through the air. ‘Just get away!’

  Their eyes drop and they turn to go. She slams the door. There will be no forgiveness. The world is spoiled.

  Romy must have gone to her room while she was in the hall, and Ilo, alone in the drawing room, has woken up. ‘What was that?’

  ‘Never mind,’ she says. Goes and sits beside him. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘I killed her,’ he says, his voice strained and empty, and she wraps him in her arms.

  Romy stays in her room for half an hour. When she reappears, she has her phone in her hand. Stands over them on the sofa and says ‘Ilo, I’ve been talking to Uri.’

  He straightens up. Sarah feels something change in him. ‘You found him?’

  Romy blinks. St
ares long and hard into his eyes. Then: ‘Yes,’ she says. There’s a hesitancy to her voice. ‘No, he found me.’

  Ilo stares back. She clears her throat, and when she speaks again the assurance has returned. ‘It’s been on the news, apparently. With her name. He called when he heard.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says, and his eyes fill once more with tears.

  ‘Do you want to speak to him?’

  Ilo nods, swallows.

  ‘Who’s Uri?’ Sarah asks.

  Romy’s eyes move over to her face. ‘Eden’s brother.’

  ‘Half-brother,’ says Ilo, automatically.

  ‘He … there were other survivors?’

  ‘They left before it happened,’ says Romy. ‘They got out before it was too late.’

  ‘Oh. “They”?’

  ‘Other people. They left. Before it happened. But they stayed together.’

  Sarah drinks this in. ‘I’m not sure … ’ she says. She’s never heard this name before. Feels herself slip out of her depth again.

  ‘Please, Aunt Sarah,’ says Ilo. ‘He knew her. He knew her then. He knew me.’

  The world seems to be slipping through her fingers, but she thinks she understands.

  He picks up at the first ring. ‘It’s me,’ says Romy. ‘Yes, he’s here. Of course.’

  She holds the phone out. Ilo, small, defenceless, takes it.

  ‘Hello?’ he says. Listens and seems to shrink into himself. His eyes fill once again with tears. ‘Thank you,’ he says. Then, ‘But I don’t understand why she had to die.’

  His voice breaks. He presses the handset to his face and begins to rock. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes, thank you. I understand.’

  He listens some more. Is he getting comfort from this? she wonders. Have I done the right thing? But then she sees his facial muscles begin to relax, and she knows that she has. People who knew them then. Of course that’s what he needs. Romy too, probably. I may have learned to love them, but I didn’t know them then.

  ‘Yes,’ says Ilo. ‘Yes, she was. I know. I just don’t know … Why does it have to hurt so much?’

  Should I go and make a cup of tea? She wonders. Give them some privacy? And suddenly the gloom descends. I am alone again, she thinks. Once again, I am on the outside.

  Ilo looks up at Sarah. ‘He wants to speak to you,’ he says. ‘He wants to know if that would be okay?’

  When she thinks of it later, the voice comes back to her as the most beautiful she’s ever heard. Deep, masculine, strong. But full of kindness, full of understanding. The sort of voice that makes you feel that it has wisdom to impart.

  ‘I wanted to say,’ he says, ‘that I’m so very sorry for your loss.’

  And suddenly she is the one who is crying. ‘And for yours,’ she says.

  He thanks her. ‘She was a beautiful creature.’

  Grief will colour everything beautiful. ‘She was. Oh, she was. I loved her,’ she tells him. ‘I want you to know that she was loved here.’

  ‘She always was,’ he says. ‘She was easy to love. I know you’ve been good to her. I know she was lucky to find you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘It’s going to be … I don’t want to be here any more. This town. This house. Christmas … ’

  ‘I understand,’ he replies. ‘I hear your pain.’

  Before the End

  June 2016

  55 | Somer

  There are not enough tears. There will never be enough tears. She has loved him for twenty years, and that love has been everything to her. The hope that she would one day return to his good graces has kept her here for thirteen years, and now he’s gone and the world is hollow. Without him, the prospect of surviving seems futile.

  She wakes before dawn on the day of the funeral, slips from her bed and watches her daughter. So beautiful in the half-light, golden lashes brushing golden cheeks. Eden still sleeps the way she did as a toddler, body wide open to the world, fist clenched upon the pillow. My beautiful girl, she thinks. You are the best of me, and of your father.

  She goes out into the cool morning. The courtyard all prepared, the pyre awaiting Lucien’s body, the trestles and the flowers. Every inch of it familiar; a whole world that has been the whole of her world. Everyone has put their love into this task; even the Guards, though they’re packing up their belongings in preparation for leaving, have been amazingly helpful. Have thrown themselves into the preparations, bringing up a barrel of cider from the godown, cutting great branches of rhododendron to include in the pyre because, they say, the green leaves will make the smoke smell sweet.

  In the orchard she picks an apple and crunches it slowly, watching the sky behind the eastern hills turn slowly blue, watching high wispy clouds catch fire. So beautiful, this place. Even with him gone, even with a funeral to get through and those Guards still here, still giving us the evil eye. There won’t be anywhere more beautiful, out there. Am I the only one here who’s wondering if they’ve given up their adulthood for nothing?

  And she remembers Lucien the first time she saw him, coming out of the Great House doors to greet them as Vita opened up the minivan, and the tears come again. He was old even then, to her eyes, but he was so beautiful. So radiantly beautiful, and all those people working diligently in the vegetable beds, smiling, smiling, and standing up to greet him as he emerged. This great, beautiful, golden being she’d been longing to meet for months. And he looked at her and then he looked up at Vita, and he smiled and said, ‘You’ve done well’. And she’d glowed inside. He was everything. All the things she’d been missing among the Dead: all the warmth and the beauty and the purpose.

  He had come down the steps and stood over them, and taken Romy by the hand and shaken it, solemnly, and then he’d bent down to look her in the face and said, ‘Welcome. You’re the future now,’ and she knew she had come home, to him.

  I can’t leave our home, she thinks. It’s all I have left of him. And she sinks to her knees in the lush summer grass, and she cries and cries and cries.

  *

  She goes to see Romy. She’s barely awake, drowsy and complaisant with morphine. Vita will have dosed her up when she came in this morning, but still she seems more drowsy than she should, not far off comatose. Shock, she thinks. We must keep an eye on her for shock. And concussion. Maybe the concussion hasn’t gone yet.

  ‘How are you?’ she asks.

  ‘I’m … ’ says Romy, and seems to forget what she was going to say. Her leg has been raised by a hoist from the roof and hangs in the air in a sling. Her foot is black where the bruising from the break has spread, and her face is an ugly mess of swollen lumps. Vita says that she’s better, that the head injury wasn’t catastrophic, that she will recover. But Vita said that about Lucien after his accident, and Somer doesn’t trust anything Vita says any more.

  ‘How are you?’ Romy asks instead.

  ‘My heart is broken,’ she says.

  ‘Mine too,’ replies Romy.

  ‘We’re cremating Father today,’ she says. ‘I wanted to come and tell you.’

  ‘I won’t be able to come,’ says Romy.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘He would understand.’

  Romy nods. Drifts. Looks back at her. ‘There was something,’ she says. ‘Something I needed to tell you. But I don’t remember … ’

  ‘It’s okay, darling. I’m sure it can wait.’

  ‘No, it … ’ She pauses, frowns as though she’s searching her memory. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘It’s important. I know it’s important. I … ’

  ‘Would you like something? For the pain? I don’t suppose you can have more morphine, but we might have other things in the—’

  Romy shakes her head, wildly back and forth like a drunk. ‘I’m pregnant, Somer. I’m going to have a baby.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ It takes a moment to sink in. ‘Does Vita know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And she’s not angry?’

&nbs
p; ‘No, she’s glad.’

  ‘I … ’ She thinks. It seems so unlikely. And then she thinks some more and then she says, ‘Oh,’ and her heart collapses.

  And then she says, ‘Oh, God.’

  And she says, ‘Oh, God, is it His?’

  My daughter’s going to be this baby’s sister, and its aunt. That’s disgusting. It’s disgusting. He didn’t, did he? He’s known her since she was eight months old.

  Her gorge rises.

  She claps a hand over her mouth until it passes. Stares at her daughter and sees that she is smiling. She doesn’t see anything wrong, she thinks. She doesn’t see that there’s anything wrong in this. But Somer sees everything that is wrong. Everything.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ she says. ‘What have I done? What have I done to you?’

  Romy raises her head from her pillow and smiles. ‘Done?’ she says. ‘You gave me the chance to carry the One.’

  She can’t look at her. Just turns on her heel and walks from the room, down the corridor, down the stairs. She feels as though she has gone blind. Finds her way to the outdoors by feel, struggles to breathe. He wasn’t a god. He wasn’t a saviour. He was a … dirty old man. That’s what he was. A dirty old man. He was fifty when he pinned me down and made Eden, and I was so blind I thought it was an honour. But it wasn’t. He would stand on these steps and eye us all, and every now and then he’d pick one out. He didn’t care about the children. He wasn’t doing it to make the One. It was all just one big ugly story so he could have his pick of the passing flesh. A dirty old man, and Vita pimping for him.

  Out in the courtyard, the cider is set up on the trestle and the people are gathering. A last chance to speak of Lucien before he is scattered to the winds. So many tears.

  She burns inside. With humiliation and with shame. I did this. I made those choices. They said I’d go to hell, the Congregation, and guess what? I’m there already. I did this. In the end, it’s me to blame.