The Gardens of the Dead

by William Brodrick

  With permission, Anselm rolled himself a cigarette. Licking the paper, he said, ‘And what of the girl whose tragedy was too painful to bear?’

  Sister Dorothy nodded knowingly She recognised the unlimited scope of the question, Father Anselm’s plea to be told everything.

  ‘I met her shortly after I came to Camberwell.’ She paused while Anselm’s match flared. ‘In those days this place was a hostel for girls, an open door with no questions asked. But it was one step removed from the street, and I wanted to reach the kids who would never look in our direction, who might not know we were here. I wanted to change the world with … acts of mercy’ —she sang the phrase with a raised fist — ‘so we tried something different. I’d jump in a taxi — driven by Mr Entwistle, a friend of the community — and he’d drop me off at Euston, so I could keep my eye out when the trains pulled in … You see, there were lots of kids coming down to London from up north, to the pavements of gold, to a better life … and we hoped to get them off the street as fast as possible.’ She dropped her little fist and sipped her milk. ‘So, Mr Entwistle would come back after half am hour and take me to King’s Cross, and then Liverpool Street, and so it would go on, to all the mainline stations. I’d mooch around, plucking up the courage to approach anyone I thought might have nowhere to go. I confess in those days, we had our eye out mostly for girls. And yet … Elizabeth’s story begins with a boy I met at Paddington.’ She glanced sideways and said confidentially ‘Would you roll me one?’

  ‘Of course.’ While Anselm made the cigarette, Sister Dorothy finished her milk. Then she lit up with the panache of Lauren Bacall.

  ‘I saw this boy in a man’s trousers stealing fruit from a barrow,’ said Sister Dorothy sternly ‘I called to him, and, strangely I suppose, he came. We got talking and he explained that he’d just left a burnt-out bank round the corner, a squat run by a lad, a hard lad. When Mr Entwistle turned up, I took the fruit thief to an hotelier I knew who kept a bed free, and then I went back to Paddington, to a lane that ran by the tracks.’ With determination, but control, she slowly blew out the smoke. ‘I stood beneath a street lamp watching these garden statues at intervals along the pavement. That’s what I thought at the time. They were like ornaments that could no longer spout water in the grounds of … a terrible place. One by one, they drifted down the road, but none of the cars that came ever stopped. So I remained there, too scared to step forward and too angry to move back. A lifetime later, Mr Entwistle took me home. I went to the police. They told me that so long as I frightened off the business, the kids wouldn’t work, and without any evidence, there was nothing they could do. It was a terrible irony All the same, I put myself beneath that light every evening, from eight until ten, and that was how I met her.’

  Sister Dorothy reached for the ashtray on the coffee table and placed it between them, on the arm of Anselm’s chair. ‘That’s how I met Elizabeth’, she repeated. At night, a fifteen-year-old with white legs, long black hair and no socks … bare feet in black, boardroom shoes. She was the only one who came anywhere near me — about as far away as that chair. Close enough to deter any business, and far enough to catch my voice. Every night I came to that lamp, and every night she hovered within talking distance. That’s how I learned her name. She taught me to smoke. Can you picture it, the two of us, by the kerb, sharing a cigarette? We talked of the weather —anything, except why she was there and where she’d come from. When Mr Entwistle arrived, I’d open the door, and she’d just look at me and shake her head. And then, one night, she came.’

  Anselm felt his mind crowding with images of Elizabeth, none of them remotely similar to the description he’d just heard. He saw himself as a pupil in chambers, sharing a box of Jaffa Cakes with the best silk in her field. She’d picked him out, in a way and started their conversations …

  ‘She was standing closer to me than usual,’ said Sister Dorothy leaning towards Anselm. At her feet was a small red suitcase, like you’d take on a weekend break. And over her shoulder I saw someone edging along the pavement. He was neither boy nor man, a wiry thing with his hands in his pockets. At that moment the taxi pulled up … Elizabeth turned around, as if she’d known all along that this creeping thing was there. “I’ve paid you in full,” she said, very deliberately “and now I owe you nothing.” I opened the door, and she picked up her little suitcase and climbed in. That hollow, haunted thing on the pavement was Riley When I came back the next night, the street was empty and the squat had been abandoned.’

  Anselm rolled fresh cigarettes for them both, fumbling with the paper. He could hardly keep up with Sister Dorothy’s rolling narrative. She’d gathered speed, speaking towards the empty chairs in the common room. Elizabeth had stayed at the hostel for months. Refused to go home. Wouldn’t eat. Wouldn’t talk. Finally she was prepared to let Sister Dorothy act as a messenger. But she was very clear that if steps were taken to send her home, she’d disappear once and for all.

  ‘So I knocked on the door,’ said Sister Dorothy slowing as if she’d just tramped across London. ‘I told Mrs Steadman that her daughter had run away but was safe’ — she glanced at Anselm, her eyes narrowed and moist — ‘I did this kind of work for years, and I always had to manage hysteria and anguish … the lot … But this time, and neither before nor since, I met with instant and complete resignation.’

  She motioned for a light, because the cigarette had gone out. Anselm struck a match. ‘What of Mr Steadman?’ he asked, after a short silence.

  Accidental death,’ she replied, through a breath of smoke. ‘Mrs Steadman wouldn’t speak of it, but the coroner’s certificate was required when the authorities were convened to plan Elizabeth’s future — that’s how I found out. In all the years to come, Elizabeth never referred to him. Not once.’

  With court approval, it was agreed that Elizabeth would attend the Carlisle school, and Sister Dorothy would act as a go-between to Mrs Steadman. The court order was kept in an office upstairs because, technically speaking, Camberwell became Elizabeth’s home address.

  ‘After she went to Durham, I never saw her again,’ said Sister Dorothy ‘but I received a postcard when she decided to become a barrister.’ With the cigarette between her teeth, she wheeled herself across the room to a sideboard. She returned with a breviary on her lap. Wincing at the smoke, she leafed through the pages until she found her bookmark.

  The picture showed Gray’s Inn Chapel on a summer’s day beneath whose tower Anselm had waited for Nicholas. Written on the other side were these brief words:

  Tuesday week I shall be called to the Bar. Thanks to you alone, I am happy The girl we found in ribbons shall spend her days on the heels of the wrongdoer.

  With my love,

  Elizabeth

  ‘That same day I gave Roddy a cold call,’ said Sister Dorothy taking back the card. ‘I hoped he’d remember me from my veil.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  They both smiled, quiet for a moment at the recollection of Mr Roderick Kemble QC, who’d wheedled his way into Elizabeth’s aspirations, and fulfilled them.

  Darkness had fallen completely outside. The rush of traffic on Coldharbour Lane sounded like the tide, sure but fitful. When George had accused Riley thought Anselm, Riley had turned to Elizabeth. The three of them met in court. The symmetry was appalling. And I stood among them, unseeing.

  Sister Dorothy stubbed out her cigarette and said regretfully ‘I’ll tell you now about the boy who sent me towards that street light.’ (Anselm had wondered about him. A sympathetic hotelier had given him a bed for the night.) ‘He was named after his grandfather — a revered man in the household.’

  ‘To use the language of the day’ said Sister Dorothy wearily ‘the lad discovered that his namesake had interfered with a neighbour’s child. It was the word he used when he told his mother, who didn’t believe him … and when he told his father, who couldn’t … so the lad went to the police. The victim denied it, so the lad was ostra
cised. Then, one morning, Granddad took a train to Scarborough and walked into the sea, leaving his medals on the beach.

  ‘That’s why he left home,’ mumbled the old nun, ‘why he had to.’ She was heavy with remorse, not wanting Anselm to see the place into which he’d stumbled (the place where, unknown to her, Anselm had found the lawyer’s grail: a win against the odds). ‘He wouldn’t tell anyone who he was,’ she admitted, quietly ‘It’s Elizabeth’s tale all over again. Start afresh, I said. Use your other name. I’ve often wondered what became of young George.’

  19

  Charles Glendinning’s interest in Lepidoptera did not extend to catching examples for display. They belonged out of reach. And because they rarely kept still, occasions of extended observation were rare, always unforeseen and thereby on each count, prized. Perhaps, then, it was out of respect that Charles had acquired several antique collections: long, shallow boxes lined with green baize, fronted with glass. The specimens were laid out in neat rows, each with a label bearing a name in brown copperplate. These cabinets lined the walls of Charles’s study. It had always been known as the Butterfly Room.

  After parking the VW in the back lane, Nick moved through a dark and silent house to find his father. His lungs were tight, as if they were too small for the job. With a shaking finger he pushed open the door to the study Charles was leaning over a display cabinet, hands behind his back, his face artificially bright from phosphorous illumination.

  Nick let the door clip shut. He wanted to be a child again, to sit on someone’s knee, and to be told it was just a dream; to be ushered back into a world without demons. The leather armchair was cold to the touch.

  ‘That tench was nauseating,’ said Charles, without shifting his gaze. ‘The wine, on the other hand, was divine.’

  ‘Dad,’ said Nick, ‘I’ve just met Graham Riley’

  Charles placed an arm on either side of the cabinet under review His knuckles turned white. The examining gaze, however, remained intact. He is a man preparing himself, thought Nick, wanting him to be strong and bigger than his own revelations.

  ‘That,’ said Charles faintly ‘was a remarkably foolish thing to do.’

  Yes, it was, thought Nick. And now I know what I do not want to know. It did not belong in the garden of their shared memories. Every year they’d gone to their cliff-top cottage at Saint Martin’s Haven, facing the Jack Sound and the island of Skomer. As a boy he’d follow his father in the dark of summer nights, shining his torch on the island’s protectors, a militia of toads. They’d sat on the paths, fat-necked and smiling. Once, his mother had come. They’d gone looking for these lazy squaddies but had halted, awestruck before a patch of heathland lit by glow-worms.

  ‘He said Mum was no better than him …’ Nick was pleading for the innocence of Skomer, the Barrier Reef, Christmas Day … all of it. He wanted the lot restored. He wanted his father to tell him something that would put things back into position.

  Charles had closed his eyes. He was like a man praying, horribly fervent and yet strong. Nick had always seen the duffer — the gentleman with raised eyebrows in the provincial museums of half-term holidays — but never this. This was a different kind of strength, and it was not the kind he was looking for or wanted.

  ‘Did I ever tell you how I met your mother?’ asked Charles ingenuously.

  ‘Of course,’ said Nick, wanting to scream. Charles’s employer had retained Elizabeth to bring a claim for money paid under a mistake of fact — that is to say Charles had authorised payment of a cheque to an individual notwithstanding the countermand of the person who had drawn it. Elizabeth won on a technicality. The same day Charles rang her chambers, he sent her flowers … he did all the things that he’d thought he was constitutionally incapable of doing. Such was the transforming power of forgetting yourself, and being unable to forget someone else. Such was the received wisdom.

  ‘Well, let me tell you another version,’ said Charles. He motioned to his son with his hand — warmly like he’d done upon the heath on Skomer.

  Nick came to the display cabinet and looked down at the specimens, lined up and labelled. His father’s arm was suddenly heavy on his shoulder.

  ‘See this one, top right?’ With his free hand Charles pointed through the glass to a butterfly with large, dark reddish-purple wings trimmed with a buttery gold. Reserved but ardent, he said, ‘This lady came to be known as White Petticoat and Grand Surprise. The labels suggest that she’s naughty … a shameless gal, a trickster. She’s had lots of names. They tell you something, but they never quite capture her.’ He glanced at Nick, as he used to do in those fusty museums. ‘She’s not a city girl. She likes the woods … willow, birch and elm.’

  ‘Where’s she from?’ Nick scarcely heard himself, because he thought his father had gone raving mad.

  ‘Another land, far away … she’s a rare vagrant.’ He looked more closely drawing Nick down with him. ‘She has another label: the Mourning Cloak. But when she was first sighted in Cool Arbour Lane’ — his voice dropped, as if he’d come to the secret — ‘she was called the Camberwell Beauty.’

  Charles was holding his son tightly across the shoulder, but all the time he looked down into the cabinet of phosphorescent light. His grip was almost fierce. There was no escape.

  ‘Your mother was a Grand Surprise,’ said Charles, confidingly ‘She moved warily as if she’d been netted once … and was forever mindful of where she’d been. When I first saw her at court, I had to follow her. There was something about her eyes, the movement of her arms. So I tracked her progress. Nothing could keep me away neither nettles nor thorns, and I went through the lot, barelegged without a net, never wanting to trap her, only hoping to be near by That’s how it was when we got married. I had to keep my distance, all scratched and swollen.’ His grip on his son eased, but only slightly ‘But when I least expected it — many years later — she came to me … I could barely breathe; I could only look at her broken wings with wonder, with astonishment, that she could still fly and that she had deigned to rest on me.’ His blue eyes began to move, checking labels. ‘Nothing Riley told you could come between me and the love I have for your mother.’

  Gently Charles pulled Nick round, placing a hand on each of his son’s shoulders. ‘The mother you knew has vanished, I know, and I grieve for you. But if you just wait’ — he was distressed, but strong in this newly discovered way — ‘the labels — those tabs that hang on what we’ve done, that can never sum up who we are —they’ll all fade and find their place. And then someone infinitely more wonderful will appear.’

  Charles strode across the room to a drinks cabinet and poured two glasses of scotch. ‘Will you drink to that?’ he asked.

  20

  At any one time,’ said George distractedly ‘there were roughly ten of us living in that squat.’

  He picked up a jigsaw piece and angled it towards a small lamp. The map of the known world was almost complete.

  ‘News of a place to stay travels on the street,’ said George, ‘and that is how I met Elizabeth. I first saw her huddled by a fire in the manager’s office. On her lap was a small red suitcase with a gold lock. We became friends, though I never heard her story, and I never told her mine. Riley was kind … helped her settle in … he watched her. At that stage, he seemed no different to anyone else. But then a change occurred.’ George knitted his fingers on the table. ‘I don’t know whether Riley started it, or whether he moved naturally with the downward drift, but talk moved from cold and hunger to quick money Either way Riley became a leader … feverish … and, in a way ambitious … and that’s when I left. For reasons I will never understand, Elizabeth refused to come with me.’

  Anselm sat very still, arms folded on the edge of the table facing George. The room was dark, save for the pool of light thrown between them.

  ‘After Sister Dorothy found me a place for the night,’ George continued, ‘I came back to Paddington. What I saw, I’ve never forgotten. There she was, beneat
h a street-light, completely still. Ahead, and to the left, in shadow, stood the squat. On the right, behind a wall topped with broken glass, ran the railway line. Against the sky I could see a footbridge leading from the station. The street was empty. And then I saw some movement on the bridge … two people … one larger than the other. They paused midway and I knew it was Riley looking over towards Sister Dorothy Even back then, he was bony and stooped, strangely angular. He was leading someone by the hand. They came down the steps and onto the road. Again he stopped, facing Sister Dorothy … with Riley holding a hand, and carrying a bag. Slowly with side-steps, he moved into the squat, tugging the arm of another runaway.

  George returned to his jigsaw, tapping edges that wouldn’t stay down. He wasn’t concentrating, because some pieces became detached and he left them misaligned. Remotely he said, ‘It was … awful … you see, Riley went to the station because Sister Dorothy had come to the street. It’s as though he’d taken her place on the platform, and, coming back to the squat, he’d let her see the consequences of her choice.’ George found Anselm’s troubled gaze and said, ‘That night I vowed that if I ever got the chance to name Riley for what he was, to bring him down, then I’d seize the day’