The Gardens of the Dead

by William Brodrick

  The two children grew up under the one roof, but did not enjoy equal favour. Walter didn’t mean it, said Mrs Dixon, but he was hard on Graham, who was not his own, and soft on Elizabeth, who was. The inequality of affection was ever present and Graham simply couldn’t understand why: they were, after all (he thought), the same flesh and blood. As Graham grew older, it became obvious: he was not a Steadman.

  ‘The boy became the shadow of his father, my first love,’ said Mrs Dixon. ‘And Walter was a jealous man, even of the dead. It was pitiful that a boy so small could pose a threat to a man so big.’ She hesitated, as if she’d come to a defining moment. ‘And then the warehouse closed and Walter lost his job.

  ‘It might not sound much,’ said Mrs Dixon, after another break, ‘but the big man who’d told everyone else what to do for ten years was unemployed. The only work he could find was selling pies from a barrow on the pavement. He lost his self-esteem. The men he’d sacked mocked him. He drank what he earned, and I had to work twice as much. And when he was in drink, he didn’t control himself any more. The small things loomed large in his head. You could say he was the same; you could say he’d changed.’

  Walter hit Graham and Mrs Dixon. But he never touched Elizabeth. He wanted to be someone else with her — the person he could have been — and that longing survived even the sickness that came with beer. Graham, however, became Walter’s target.

  ‘When things go wrong in your life,’ intoned Mrs Dixon, ‘you look for someone to blame. And you always settle on someone who’s different. Graham was different, in every way and all of them small.’

  According to his teacher, Graham was clever. He asked questions that didn’t have easy answers. He shrank from the rougher games, preferring to collect things — all manner of rubbish that he thought interesting, like pebbles and bottle tops. His arms and legs were thin. When he tried to help with the shopping, it was always too heavy. It showed up the sheer difference between him and Walter. And on one fateful, drunken day Walter mocked him, just as those sober men had mocked Walter.

  ‘No son of mine would collect bottle tops,’ said Walter, swaying.

  ‘But I am your son,’ snapped Graham defiantly.

  ‘No you’re not.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘That was how he found out,’ said Mrs Dixon. ‘He seized hold of me, wanting to know who his father was, his real name, what had happened, why he’d never been told … endless questions … It was as though Walter’s rage — all of it — had infected him. From that day Graham refused to call Walter his father. He dropped Steadman and became Riley. And the rage I’d seen … It simply vanished.’

  While Mrs Dixon was speaking, Anselm began to recover a fraction of the insight that had struck him and gone. He remembered the conversation with Elizabeth about the death of his mother, knowing that she’d been harvesting his experience. He said to Mrs Dixon, ‘What happened to Walter?’

  ‘We were at the top of the stairs,’ she replied, as if she were dictating a statement to the police. Her eyes were to the front, her back straight. ‘There’d been a lot of shouting. He swung out but keeled over on the step and went down, like a tree. I fell back, trying to keep my balance, so I didn’t see; I just heard him tumbling down, and then, after a second or so, a bang. When I looked, there was a large heap on the floor. I called the ambulance and they took him away but he was dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ muttered Anselm.

  ‘Don’t be,’ she replied. ‘I was relieved … glad that he was gone.

  Staring ahead once more, Mrs Dixon resumed what she’d planned to say: the opening up of a lie. Again, she seemed to be recording a deposition.

  A week or two later a policeman knocked on the door. He knew Walter. He knew about his temper and the violence. He told me the doctor had found a long wound on the head. He examined the stairs. He took measurements of a tread, and its edge. I said nothing about the bang that I’d heard after the fall, that Graham had been downstairs, that the poker was missing. In due course, the police concluded it had been an accident. My son, however, had stopped eating. He was sick. One night, I held his hands in mine and asked if he’d seen the poker. He pulled himself free, hid behind a pillow, and said, “I’ve thrown it in the Four Lodges.” The next day he was gone. He was seventeen. I haven’t seen him since. Everyone said it was because he’d lost his dad.’

  Bunhill Fields is a wonderful place, thought Anselm, wanting to flee those stairs, that hallway The Pieman must have taken shape among its shadows and blood: a name coined from other people’s contempt, an engrossment of rage and abuse, tame to Riley but towering over those whom he would terrorise. Elizabeth had walked along the same corridors, among the same shadows. Anselm felt her presence. She’d worn a delicate perfume that didn’t seem to fade. She was always very clean, in strictly tailored clothes, with sharply cut hair.

  Elizabeth blamed herself for Graham’s running away for Walter’s treatment of him. And Mrs Dixon, against herself, blamed Elizabeth: not with a single word, but with a host of manners. On a cold night Elizabeth made a fire. Looking for the poker, she asked her mother where it might be.

  ‘Graham threw it away.’

  ‘Why?’

  Mrs Dixon didn’t answer the question directly She let the silence do it for her. A month later Elizabeth disappeared. Everyone said it was because she’d lost her dad and her brother.

  Anselm knew what had happened next. Sister Dorothy had come to the house of Mrs Steadman. Her decision to do what Elizabeth wanted had been instantaneous and heartbreaking. Mother and daughter, without saying so, had agreed to hush up a murder. You can’t do that sort of thing under the same roof.

  ‘I next saw my daughter a year ago,’ said Mrs Dixon, without emotion, enunciating her words. ‘She traced me through my national insurance number, because I had remarried … to a wonderful man, who would have been a wonderful father to anyone’s children.’ Mrs Dixon swallowed hard and carried on with the job in hand.

  Elizabeth had learned of her heart condition, and that it was hereditary. Mrs Dixon underwent the tests with a Doctor Okoye, who pronounced her clear. Big, strapping Walter, it seemed, had been a fundamentally weak man. But that was not why Elizabeth had come.

  ‘She told me that Graham had built a new life,’ said Mrs Dixon, ‘but not a nice one.’

  Not for the first time in his life, Anselm marvelled at the word ‘nice’, and the wonderful uses to which it was frequently put.

  ‘She told me that the only way to save him was to bring him to court to answer for the murder of her father. It wasn’t revenge she wanted, I knew that. She was talking about … what was right. But I refused.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if it was anyone’s fault, it wasn’t Graham’s, or Elizabeth’s, it was mine. I failed to protect him. I thought that if I stick by Walter, then maybe he’ll change back to who he’d been who he was with Elizabeth — that his anger might boil dry; that he might wake up and see Graham as … different, yes, but not a threat. I’m the one who put that poker in Graham’s hand. All I ever said to him was that Walter has tempers.’

  The quietness of Bunhill Fields filled the pause. Nothing moved, not even the trees, which were so full of life. For once, it seemed strange.

  ‘Elizabeth came each week, trying to persuade me. I refused. Then, on the day she died, I received her last call and her last words.’

  ‘The time of the lie is over,’ Anselm said to himself. To this he added the final message for Inspector Cartwright, uttered seconds before: Leave it to Anselm.

  ‘Mrs Dixon,’ said Anselm, ‘as I’m sure you know’ — he watched her nodding, because Elizabeth had already told her —’I will have to inform the police. They will interview you. Graham will be tried for murder. You, too, may well be charged, because of your silence. Do you realise this?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, as if she were already in court.

  Anselm regarded her with compass
ion and said, ‘Why did you change your mind?’

  ‘Because,’ said Mrs Dixon defiantly proudly ‘I have met my grandson, Nicholas. And I do not want his life to rest on a lie —on a false understanding of who he is and where he comes from — as Graham’s did. One day he might learn the truth about his family I do not think he would thank his mother for the story she dreamed up in its place. It is, of course, what she wanted, what she’d asked of me. I didn’t appreciate why until I saw Nicholas … He looks just like Walter.’

  Anselm took Mrs Dixon’s arm, and they walked slowly like mother and son, along the lanes of Bunhill Fields. In their shared quiet, he thought of Riley’s early life, and of murder, undetected and forgotten, and what it might do to a man. And he thought of Bunyan, whose youth had been marred by four chief sins: dancing, ringing the bells of the parish church, playing tipcat and reading the history of Sir Bevis of Southampton.

  6

  For the fourth day in a row, George ordered a full English breakfast (with Cumberland sausage). Nancy opted for the kipper (from Craster), explaining, ‘You only live once,’ which was very true. They sat in a bay window of the Royal Guesthouse, looking at the waves trimmed with foam. Far off, daft gulls dipped and rose like kites. It would be another windy wonderful day.

  The entries in George’s notebook would have told him that Nancy had withdrawn thirty-six thousand, four hundred and twenty pounds and fifty-two pence from the Riley bank account; that facing rooms had been booked in Brighton for a week (meals included); that she had bought a two-for-the-price-of-one packet of envelopes from Woolworths. However, he didn’t need to remind himself of their comical project, any more than he needed to be told of Nancy’s horror and guilt over all that Riley had done, or of her remorse for the murder of John. It was, as they say written on her face. She was not to blame, by any stretch of the imagination. And yet, on their first night, over Hereford beef with Yorkshire pudding, Nancy had said, ‘I share the fault, because I share the disgrace’ — a stinging phrase which revealed that Nancy accused herself because she’d known what her husband was like, and she’d turned away.

  When breakfast was over they prepared some envelopes, put on their coats and set about the business of the day. They strolled along the esplanade towards the Palace of Fun.

  ‘How about that one?’ asked Nancy.

  George nodded.

  Coming towards them was a young girl, pushing a pram against the grain of the wind. Her knuckles were blue. Judging by the noise, the child was not happy.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said George, ‘we represent a secret society whose object is the benefit of humanity.’

  The girl’s eyes flicked from George to Nancy and back to George again. She said, ‘Sorry, I don’t need anything.’

  ‘I’m afraid the steering committee does not agree,’ said George severely ‘Here’s a thousand pounds.’

  Nancy pulled an envelope from her handbag, and held it out. The young mother stared, as if it were a warrant from the bailiff.

  ‘The only condition is this,’ said George, suddenly kind, ‘under no circumstances are you to spend it wisely. We wish you a very good day’

  And with that, the delegates crossed the main road, heading towards the forecourt of Brighton Pier. Near the entrance, a Salvation Army brass band was playing carols. The cornets and trombones glittered in a semi-circle, pointing down slightly Nancy approached them respectfully walking round the arc of bonnets, caps and polished shoes.

  ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ … the words rode on the back of the hymn, melancholy and joyful.

  George mumbled the rest of the verse, gazing at the turrets of a dome and two flags fluttering against a clean blue sky Suddenly Nancy was at his side. Ceremonially they walked onto the long quay as if it were a nave, as though the world itself were a cathedral of unutterable magnificence.

  George’s spirit soared higher and higher with the brazen gulls. There were no clouds, no shadows, just the harsh seaside light. The wind carried the smell of sand and bladderwrack, shells and salt.

  ‘Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.’ Nancy handed out ten-pound notes as they walked along, as if they were flyers for Unimaginable Warehouse Bargains. People stopped and stared. An old woman in black with bowed legs waddled towards them, head down like a bull, her hair harnessed by a net.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said George, ‘here’s five hundred pounds for your trouble.’

  ‘Are you mad?’ she replied, straining to get her neck upright.

  ‘I was, but am no more.’

  She glanced around warily ‘Is this Candid Camera?’

  ‘Indeed not, madam,’ said George, like a magician. ‘This is real life.’

  ‘Thank you, but no.’ Her head went down and off she went, burrowing through the wind to the town.

  At his side Nancy was laughing. She pulled off her yellow hat with its black spots, and forced a hand through her hair. Breathing deeply she closed her eyes and threw back her head. Her nose was bright red at the end.

  ‘Let it be known,’ cried George, raising his arms like Charlton Heston, ‘that for one week a kind of justice ruled on Brighton Pier.’

  ‘Joyful all ye nations rise, join the triumph of the skies’ … the sound was fading. As they walked on distributing their leaflets, George glanced over his shoulder: he could still see the caps, the bonnets and the glitter of instruments.

  ‘… Glory to the new-born King.’

  In the Palace of Fun, Nancy bought tickets for the dodgem cars. The till was wrapped in tinsel and a Christmas tree was chained to a bracket. A girl in the booth wore a Santa hat and she called the management when George gave her two hundred pounds. The police turned up and particulars were taken. When everyone in a suit or uniform was happy — actually not so happy — George and Nancy climbed into a rather small Rolls-Royce. With a crackling of sparks, the music started and they were off.

  Driving always made George thoughtful, and present circumstances proved no exception. Nancy had pushed her husband into Limehouse Cut; George had witnessed the fall, and made a note of the details that night on the train (first class). With a glass of champagne in one hand, and a pen in the other, Nancy added an important postscript to explain that Riley’s point of entry had been adjacent to a boat, moored by the canal wall. George, however, was still troubled on his friend’s account: what would she do when all the money was gone?

  ‘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.

&nb
sp; ‘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.