The Gardens of the Dead

by William Brodrick

  George looked up quickly.

  ‘He’s still a criminal, as he always was,’ she said, collecting toast crumbs with a manicured finger. ‘Nancy is the way to proving it. Maybe we can all make amends. How does that sound to you?’

  When Elizabeth had gone, George went back to Trespass Place and wrote it all down in book thirty-five. There’d be one more volume before he got his head kicked in.

  George sat beneath the fire escape, his goggles in his hair, reading his account of that meeting It was the beginning of a calculated scheme — although Elizabeth’s plans were already formed. They just required his cooperation. From the moment he’d written down her invitation it was as though every ill that had come to pass since the trial might all be transformed by a greater conclusion. Elizabeth had said, ‘If we get the ending right, we’ll change everything, right back to the beginning. It’s almost magic. A monk told me.’

  The monk who hadn’t turned up, thought George, looking towards the arch at the end of the courtyard. He hadn’t slept for days now. Giddily he counted the scratches on the wall. Then he hauled himself upright, positioned his goggles and tramped into the sunshine. His shoes were split and the laces frayed. They fell off as he walked. On Old Paradise Street, he slumped forward onto the pavement, one leg in the gutter. He heard the tread of feet: frantic high heels, the measured clip of some army type, the squelch of trainers. Some slowed, some stopped, some spoke; but the river of feet moved on, drawn towards a sea of pressing obligations.

  Among the flowing George heard the steps of someone familiar, a dawdling coming close … a pat-patting of small red sandals. He was dreaming. The ankles came into view: white skin upon fine bones; blue veins summoned by a wind that lifted off the waves. The boy’s copper hair danced. George lifted a hand off the pavement, reaching out, and said, ‘Oh, John.’

  The waking dream unfolded. It was like watching a family video.

  George took his son by the hand on Southport Pier. It was a blustery day with gulls thrown around as though attached to the railings by string. Occasionally they dropped like stones, but landed lightly on discarded crusts of bread. George found a bench, and John clambered beside him, banging one of his knees.

  ‘What’s for lunch, Dad?’

  George pulled a tin from the plastic bag prepared by Emily ‘Salmon.’

  ‘That’s a treat, Dad.’

  ‘You’re right there, son.

  They sat side by side, watched by the passers-by George kicked his shoes off and wiggled his toes. John pedalled the air.

  The cold sun tilted towards the west. George checked his watch: it was time to get back to the hotel. Emily was waiting. ‘Come on, lad,’ he said despondently He didn’t want these moments of happiness to end.

  John refused to budge.

  ‘We have to go.

  John leaned away arms entwining round part of the bench.

  George pulled him free and roughed his hair. The boy stomped ahead, along the silver timbers. His voice flew on the wind, ‘I like Southport, Dad.’

  ‘We’ll come again, son.

  Blind George rolled over onto his back and said, ‘But we didn’t, did we?’

  A passer-by knelt down and placed his hand under George’s head. It was a young man. His hair was gelled and spiked like a sea urchin. He wore a T-shirt with WINGS written on it. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  ‘You’ve no shoes.’

  ‘I must have left them at Southport.’

  The young man sat down and took off his trainers. ‘Put these on.

  George couldn’t speak or protest. He just watched this prickly helper struggle to fit the shoes onto his feet. They were white with bright red stripes. Seconds later the figure walked briskly away as if he were embarrassed. Written across the back of his T-shirt were the words: WORLD TOUR.

  I wonder where he’s off to now, thought George. He jogged back to Trespass Place — with sporty things like that on each hoof, he’d have looked stupid walking.

  10

  Nick drove to Larkwood Priory in his mother’s lemon-yellow VW Beetle. Her red valise lay on the passenger seat. By late afternoon, after several wrong turns, he came upon a line of oak trees straggling towards a set of colossal gates. They were jammed open. Above an incline topped by rhododendrons he saw a spire and patchwork tiles.

  The reception desk was unoccupied, although a phone was off the hook. A tinny voice came out of it yelling, ‘Hello?’ Nick peeked down a corridor but jumped when a hand touched his shoulder.

  ‘Were you ever in the scouts?’

  The monk was ageless and aged, dressed in a black habit and a white scapular. A length of frayed plastic twine was tied with a bow round a thin waist. His cranium, while angular, seemed soft as sponge, with a haze of shaved white fluff.

  ‘I was a Sixer,’ said Nick proudly.

  ‘When I was a lad,’ said the monk, hooking his thumbs onto the belt, ‘Baden-Powell told me a secret about the relief of Mafeking.’

  ‘Really?’

  The telephone shouted, ‘Hello?’

  The monk looked at the receiver as if it were an unusual fruit and put it back on the console. ‘The Boers were at the gates, armed to the teeth.’

  A gentle cough robbed Nick of the disclosure. ‘Thank you, Sylvester.’

  Father Anselm led Nick outdoors. The monk seemed much younger than the barrister he remembered. As with Baden-Powell’s confidant, a life of denial appeared to have disarranged the normal ageing process. He was probably in his forties. They’d met a few times in the corridors of his mother’s chambers. A slight hesitation in his gait made him look shy and boyish, as if he were on his way to the podium to pick up the diligence prize after all the clever children had returned to their seats. Short, ruffled hair and round glasses magnified a look of permanent surprise. His black habit was frayed; the white scapular flapped like a long serviette.

  ‘My mother kept a secret,’ said Nick. They faced each other across a table in a herb garden. He placed his mother’s case between them. ‘She wanted to reveal it to me. When I turned to listen it was too late.’

  The monk took off his glasses like some patients remove their trousers. He seemed strangely vulnerable.

  ‘By chance,’ said Nick, ‘I found a key hidden in this book.’

  He passed over The Following of Christ. ‘I’m afraid the scrawl is mine. Biro practice when I was five or so.’

  Father Anselm opened the cover and looked intently at the open space. Apparently deep in thought, he closed the book and opened it again, looking at where the key had been kept. Then he turned to the front and read out the dedication:

  ‘To Elizabeth, from Sister Dorothy DC hoping that this small and great book will always be a friend to her.’

  ‘Do you know her?’ asked Nick. His mother’s faith had not been a shared field. It was more of a parallel continent with strict border controls, imposed by both sides.

  The monk shook his head.

  ‘I think that whatever my mother wanted to say is tied up with this case. So I opened it, and I’m none the wiser.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ replied Father Anselm. One arm rested on the table, reaching towards his guest. ‘When your mother gave me the other key she asked me to help you understand what she wasn’t able to explain.’

  Nick felt a surge of relief He waited for the account that would make sense of the secrecy and the planning. But the monk just kept smiling benignly Then Nick realised that he was waiting for the case. Surprised, Nick said, ‘Don’t you know what’s in here?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘She just gave you a key?’

  ‘Precisely’ said Father Anselm, quietly sagacious. Nick had cultivated a similar manner to assure the terminally ill. He pushed, the case across the table. Father Anselm placed the contents in an orderly line and then frowned. ‘Riley’ he muttered with distaste. Then he started with the ring binder. Without his glasses, he seemed to be wincing. Slowly he t
urned the pages. At one point he said, ‘Cartwright … not Cartwheel.’ Then, with a shrug, he read the newspaper cutting, glancing at the trial brief, making the connection. Finally he opened the letter, saying, ‘I’ve never seen this before.’ Leaning his head back, he read out loud:

  Dear Mrs Glendinning QC and Mr Duffy,

  I thought that if I ever began writing to either of you, I might never stop. There’s no beginning or end to what I want to say But then I thought, why don’t I just tell you what happened when the trial was over, when we went home and you went to a restaurant?

  We lost our son. My husband fell to pieces. For what it is worth, along the way I lost myself.

  Mr Duffy asked, ‘What did David do that George wanted to forget.’ I suppose you thought that was very clever. He had no right to ask that, no right at all. Don’t think that wearing a wig means you had nothing to do with what went wrong. You’re mistaken.

  I don’t know what type of conscience you must have that lets you walk out of doors. How can you sleep at night having stood up for a man like Riley?

  Yours sincerely,

  Mrs Emily Bradshaw

  Father Anselm placed everything back in the case.

  ‘Well?’ asked Nick.

  Father Anselm put his glasses back on and said apologetically.

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what your mother wanted me to say ‘Then why did she give you a key?’

  ‘I assume because I was involved in the case. ‘But why hide it from me and my father?’

  ‘I don’t know’ Father Anselm tapped the lid of the case, perplexed but silent. Another monk passed through the gate carrying a wicker basket. He waded into the tangle of herbs and began cutting leaves with a pair of scissors.

  ‘Herbal remedies,’ said Father Anselm weakly ‘I’m not sure they work.’

  ‘Who was Riley?’

  ‘He was a docker.’ He snatched at random details as if they were flies. ‘He was a crane operator. A docker. An alleged pimp. Three witnesses said he worked for the Pieman.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘Just a name in the papers.’

  Nick glanced towards the other monk, who was humming and snipping. A confusion of scents drifted over them. ‘Father, what was so special about this trial?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He frowned, showing that this was his own question. The monk smuggled each arm into the sleeve of the other until he made a sort of sling across his chest. He looked away towards a wilderness of healing plants. ‘The only memorable aspect of the trial was how it ended.’ He fell silent.

  ‘What happened?’ prompted Nick.

  ‘I cross-examined the main witness, a man called Bradshaw He used his second name, George, rather than David, which was his first. In a rather elaborate way I asked him why and the case collapsed.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He just walked out of the court.’

  ‘Because you asked him about his name?’

  Father Anselm nudged his glasses. ‘It looked like he was refusing to answer for his past. David’s past, if you like.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘I don’t know’

  ‘Then why did you ask?’

  ‘I couldn’t think of anything better.’ As though he’d won an unwanted prize, he added, ‘It’s what’s called a good performance.’

  Father Anselm’s attention shifted to the quiet work of his brother monk. The herb garden was extraordinarily still. It seemed to give emphasis to speech, as if the land and its many plants were listening.

  Nick left the case on the table and followed Father Anselm to a path of mulch between a stream and an ancient abbey wall. At precise intervals slender pillars climbed from the stone, but most had been smashed at head height. By a pile of black railway sleepers, the monk halted. The creosote was sharp like smelling salts. He breathed deeply and exhaled. ‘Something is missing,’ he pronounced.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Instructions.’

  ‘If that were the case,’ replied Nick, ‘she’d have given you a letter and not a key’

  And that,’ replied the monk, ‘is a rather good point.’ His eyes blinked at a mark on the ground, as if Andre Agassi had walloped something from behind an arch.

  Nick felt sorry for this puzzled man with tousled hair and flashing glasses. His life among the ruins appeared to have blunted what was once a sharp mind — how else did you win a case by quizzing a witness on nothing more than his choice of name? That was impressive. But now, he felt sure, he needed a little help. Nick said, ‘Father, it’s a strange story Of all the trials my mother ever conducted, she kept this one. It just so happens that five years later the son of a witness drowns. My mother finds the grieving father, and it seems they both connect the death to the trial, apparently not accepting the coroner’s verdict. Two questions follow: did they suspect foul play? And what did they do next? But I’ve another: why keep the papers of this particular case? What was so special about Mr Riley?’

  Father Anselm’s head was angled. Perhaps he looked like that when he listened to sins, or whatever people usually told him. The monk discreetly produced a packet and began to roll a cigarette. He removed a shred of tobacco from his mouth and said, ‘She told me she’d been tidying up her life.’ The match sputtered like a damp flare.

  They retraced their steps past the great wall with the shattered columns.

  ‘Father, when I was diving on the Barrier Reef,’ said Nick, ‘I watched fish getting washed by a plant. It was wonderful. They lined up and took it in turns. Somehow, they just knew what to do. There was no need for any instructions.’ He looked aside at the troubled monk. ‘Maybe my mother thought you were in the same queue, that you’d understand without thinking. Don’t worry if you can’t help in the way she wanted.’

  When they reached the table in the herb garden Father Anselm picked up the case; from there they walked to the car park where the yellow Beetle seemed to quiver against the purple canopy of plum trees. Fruit lay splattered on the windscreen.

  A mad Gilbertine idea,’ said Father Anselm awkwardly. ‘We forgot that fruit falls when it’s ripe.’ It sounded like a warning. He asked for time to understand the contents of the case and for Nick’s telephone number; and he concluded, ‘Don’t turn over old stones. Let them lie where they were placed.’

  Nick drove down the lane of loitering oak trees, away from Larkwood and the smell of aromatic plants. And as he did so, he reflected, painfully, that he’d never been able to share his mother’s deep faith. He leaned more towards his father, who, while adherent, was passive, his true fervour lying in the open fields. When cross, Elizabeth had called him a heretic; in better tempers, she settled for pantheist. Nick had grown up beneath the quirky arch formed where these two types of belief met. He eventually crept away, not quite making sense of the open sky At university he saw the chaplains and the students, half resenting the consequences of his own choice (if that is what it was), for he would have liked to belong. He eventually found a working credo in science — the purity of facts and verification. His mother had quietly grieved. They’d argued — hopelessly, because he didn’t ask her questions, and she didn’t want his answers. He could follow loose talk about God, but not to the point where all that type of thing mattered— at the meshing of life and ideas.

  Shortly before Nick had gone down under, she’d said, ‘We should settle on beliefs that are worth the hazards of the race.’

  Mildly irritated, because they were watching Ben Hur and it was the exciting bit when the chariots were crashing into each other, Nick said, ‘Would you fight for yours?’

  ‘I really don’t know.’ She spoke as if the crowds were waiting, but this was St John’s Wood not the Colosseum.

  Thinking now of his mother on the edge of the sofa, eyes glued to the screen and worried, Nick decided to ignore the parting advice of a monk. He pulled into a lay-by and fished out Mr Wyecliffe’s business card. It was stained with oil from the cashew nuts. He dialled the number on h
is mobile. The solicitor’s surprise was forced and his charm predatory, as if he smelled business. An appointment was made for the next day and Nick resumed the journey home, wondering about the relief of Mafeking.

  11

  It was odd, but George could remember in his sleep. Sometimes his dreams were like the old films shown at Christmas. He watched with recognition. So when George was slipping away, he would try to switch on what was lost to him while awake. Most of the time it worked. But when he snapped upright it was with the horrible fear that he’d made it all up.

  With the sharp stone, George scratched another day of waiting upon the wall. It was early evening. Sheets of polythene wrapping flapped in the corner. He turned on his pocket radio and Sandie Shaw sang ‘Puppet on a String’. He became drowsy, drugged by the waiting and the cold. Elizabeth’s voice rose in his memory. They’d often sat in Marco’s listening to the radio echo from the kitchen. Songs like that were always being dug out. Quite deliberately, George held himself at the line between sleep and wakefulness.

  Elizabeth bought more cocoa and toast. ‘You really have changed. I barely recognised you.’

  ‘You keep saying that.’

  ‘I’m sorry.

  Elizabeth picked up a triangle of toast with dainty fingers.

  After the trial Riley sold Quilling Road.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Yes. And he left the Isle of Dogs. In fact, he was sacked. With the money from the sale he set up a house clearance business.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Stop asking if he did something, when I just said that he did.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  Elizabeth licked her thumb and forefinger. ‘He set up two companies. One of them is a shop run by his wife, Nancy, whom you saw at court. I don’t suppose you met?’

  ‘No,’ said George. ‘It wasn’t that type of party.’