The Child Garden

by Catriona McPherson

  “She laid that outfit by,” Lynne had said one day, full of scorn, when a young man brought in a child, chittering and blue-lipped in a matching sundress and sandals during a sudden cold snap. “That’s the hand of woman,” she said, and the phrase had stuck.

  But Lynne wasn’t up for games today, wasn’t to be distracted.

  “What are you up to, Gloria?” she said. “Who was John Jameson?”

  I didn’t answer. Where would I start? John Jameson was a boy called Jo-jo who had gone to school in the woods with twelve others, and like every one of them I’d found so far, except Stig and Duggie, he was dead now. He had died in 2005, in France, falling off a bridge into a ravine at a place called Herault. And his cause of death, amended after toxicology and a full investigation, was accidental drowning.

  I brought up Google and typed in Herault. It was a town in the Languedoc, a region with good beaches and popular with tourists. But the main claim to fame of Herault itself was Le Pont du Diable. The Devil’s Bridge.

  “Glo?” said Lynne. “Is everything okay?”

  “Almost nothing,” I said. “Listen, you didn’t finish telling me about the murder.”

  “What?” said Lynne. Wondering what I was up to had driven gossip out of her brain. “Oh! Yes, I did. There’s nothing more to tell really.”

  “He loomed up out of her past, you said? So … he was her ex?”

  “My mum didn’t think so. She’s got a pretty good memory for all that sort of thing. And she didn’t think so.” Lynne was trying not to look at the computer as she spoke; if she tried any harder, in fact, she might snap a tendon in her neck.

  “Do you want me to check?”

  “My mum asked that and I said, ‘no way because Gloria’s a real stickler’, and you never do that, do you? Look up old boyfriends and whatnot. You never do.”

  “How did your mum find out about the business loan?”

  “From her friend Maureen that works at Enterprise Scotland.”

  I closed Google and opened up our own system again. “Here’s the deal,” I said. “I do this for you and you just forget that you saw me looking up a record before?”

  “No idea what you’re on about, Gloria,” said Lynne. “What record? Before when?” She winked at me, and I turned and rested my fingers on the keyboard.

  “April Cowan,” said Lynne. “And Tarrant. No idea about the first name.”

  “Let’s try Stephen,” I said. “It was Stephen Tarrant who was the same age as me and I think his brother was younger, so if she was forty it’s probably him. If it’s either.”

  I entered the search and waited, aware that my mouth had turned dry and my palms were prickling with sweat.

  “No matches.” I let my breath go in a rush that clouded the monitor, it was still that cold in here.

  “Huh,” said Lynne. “Course she might have been April somebody else when she married him. Check on Tarrant alone.”

  But under TARRANT, STEPHEN, dob 1972, CASTLE DOUGLAS there was only a marriage to Carol née Watson, and a divorce from the same two years previously.

  “So it’s not a domestic,” said Lynne, finally getting her éclair out from the ledge below the desk. “Unless they were just shacked up. But if he was married until two years ago and she’s been on her new life kick since then—training and all that—it’s hard to see how they know each other. I wonder what the connection is then.”

  “It might have been the other brother,” I said. “Maybe he likes older women.”

  Lynne wiggled her eyebrows at me. “Like your Duggie,” she said. “His new bit must be fifty.”

  “Never,” I said. Then I tried for a very casual tone. “Maybe April and Stephen were at school together. Not primary. And I’m sure April Cowan didn’t go through CD High School with me or I’d remember her, but it was what you said about the Tarrants’ school in the woods. Maybe they knew each other from there.”

  Lynne was dabbing up crumbs with a wetted finger. She licked it, wiped it on her jeans, and took her phone from her body-warmer pocket.

  “Mum?” she said, after a pause. “Are you busy? Gloria’s just had a brainwave. That April Cowan that the Tarrant lad bumped off ? Do you think she was at the school they had up there in the hills for a bit?” She listened, nodding distractedly for a while, and then she sat up straight with her eyes wide. “Thanks,” she said. “Look, I’ve got to go.” She snapped the phone shut, then turned those wide staring eyes on me.

  “What?” I said.

  “She can’t think of a Cowan,” said Lynne. “But one of the Tarrant kids was definitely there and the wee Best kid too—he was the one that died. An accident in the woods when they were camping, Mum said. And some hippies from the Borgue called River and Leaf. But then she said—get this—your Duggie was there too. Said quite a lot about that, actually. The Morrisons had a storage warehouse at the station yards, and Mum reckons Duggie’s dad swapped it for school fees.”

  “I never knew Duggie was at Eden,” I said.

  I didn’t see the mistake I had made. But Lynne spotted it.

  “That’s right,” she said, looking at me archly. “That’s what it was called. Eden. My mum just reminded me.”

  We regarded each other for a long moment.

  “Well, no wonder your eyes were out on stops,” I said.

  “Oh, that wasn’t the big surprise,” said Lynne. “The big surprise was the other name my mum remembered.” She turned and looked very definitely at the computer. It had gone on stand-by and her face was reflected in it. “Jameson,” she said. “John Jameson from Moniaive. Gloria, what’s going on here? What do you know?”

  Twenty-Two

  Moniaive is one of those places you only get in Galloway. It’s seventy miles from Glasgow—only twenty miles from a town with a Marks and Spencer, an ice rink, and a cinema—and yet it’s as isolated as any clutch of highland crofts. It’s partly the bad roads, and they’re partly the fault of the poor land. And the approach from the west, from Dalry, is the worst of all. But I’d have walked there barefoot that day, once I had Lynne’s blessing.

  “I can’t tell you what’s going on,” I said. “But on my life, on Nicky’s life, you can trust me.”

  “Of course I can,” Lynne said. “You’re the honestest person I’ve ever met. I just want to help you.”

  “You can’t tell your mum.”

  “I don’t tell my mum anything,” she assured me. “I didn’t tell my mum I was pregnant until after the scan. I didn’t tell her when Malcolm got done for speeding. But she found out anyway because she knows all the cops.”

  “But if I promise you that, once it’s all over, I’ll tell you every last detail and your mum’ll be begging you to dish it, will you help me now?”

  “What have I just finished saying?”

  “Okay,” I said. “I need to try to track down the hippie girls and then there’s two more. I want to use the FER, like I did for Jo-jo Jameson.”

  “Jo-jo?” she said, her eyes growing wide again. “Glo, did you know him?”

  “I can’t explain,” I said. “I’ve never met him, as far as I know.”

  Lynne spent a minute taking it all in and then, with a sniff, she took over. “Moniaive. You could be there in half an hour. Nobody here’ll know that you’re not off to do a wedding somewhere. We’ve nothing booked and it would do the buggers good to be shown you’re not a drop-in service anyway. Meantime, I’ll look up the records. If you give me the names.”

  So I wrote down the Scarlets and the weather girls, warned her to hide them if anyone came in, anyone at all, and set off into the hills to Jo-jo Jameson’s one-time home. I tried not to think of the Barrwherry trip. At least today I already knew there would be no good news waiting for me. Jo-jo died when he was thirty-three; there’s no way to make that a happy ending.

  The Jameson house was more wh
at I expected from a family who stumped up for boarding school. A solid, whitewashed block of good Galloway stone, red sandstone round the windows, and red tiles on the roof. It was bare-looking, like everywhere this late in the year, but orderly and bare, not ravaged and bare like Rough House. Looking at the pruned apple trees sitting in circles of dark earth in the front lawn with all the dead leaves swept away, and the bare stems of the climbing roses that sprawled over the front of the house, tied into proper tensioned wires with proper tree-ties in figures of eight, all of a sudden I could see why my place bothered Stig. It wasn’t just cabin fever; it really was a pity to let a house just sink into the hillside while I came and went, did my job, and sat with Nicky. When all of this was over, I told myself, I would go round with a clipboard, try to work out what needed to be done. Everything from the slipped slates that made damp patches on the upstairs ceilings to the dandelions and daisies where the grass should be.

  Here at the Jamesons’, the grass was like velvet, flat and smooth, with edges as crisp as a starched cuff. The windows were glittering too, clean right into the corners, and even though they were the same wood-framed Victorian as mine, they weren’t thick with a dozen layers of paint slapped one on top of the other, and the panes weren’t loose from slipping where the putty had dried up and dropped away.

  In fact, everything about this place intimidated me. The people who lived here wouldn’t invite a Bible thumper in or share malicious gossip. I was out of my depth and I knew it. I’m as good as anyone else, I remember my mother saying when the Duchess of Gloucester came to open the new primary school. I don’t see why I should wait to be spoken to, or curtsey either. She’s no better than me. But she was. I knew that as soon as I saw her, kindly and beautiful and sort of shining with light from the golden hair and the silk coat—I had never seen someone wearing a coat made of yellow silk before; silk in Castle Douglas was something that only blouses were made of, teamed with a good plain skirt of tweed or serge. Coats were dark and plain so you could wear them all winter long and they’d not get dirty on the buses. So I looked at the duchess, with her golden hair, golden coat, and shining smile, and thought she was better than my mother; she was lovely. And later, when I learned to sew, I made myself a yellow coat just the same, bias-cut and contrast-lined, shaped like a tulip and closed with hidden hooks and my mother scoffed all the time I was sewing and laughed out loud at me when it was finished and I tried it on.

  Somehow the memory of the duchess in her golden coat gave me the courage to pull the iron handle and ring the bell.

  “Coming!” a voice called, and a minute later the big heavy outside door was swept open and a woman stood there, a look of polite enquiry on her face. She had one hand in the collar of a black Labrador who looked about as old as Walter Scott and she was so short, a neat little elf of a person, that she hardly had to stoop at all to reach it.

  “Mrs. Jameson?” I said. She looked about fifty, but I’m not good with ages and she had that thick creamy skin that lasts well, so she could have been his mother at a pinch.

  “Sally Jameson,” she said. “Doctor.”

  “I’m … an old friend of Jo-jo’s,” I said. “I wonder if I could have a word.”

  “Jo-jo?” she said. “Johnny-oh? Is my mother expecting you?”

  I did a swift recalculation. Dr. Jameson was his sister, then, not a well-preserved child-bride.

  “She’s not,” I said. “I stopped by on the off-chance.”

  “It’s not great timing, actually,” Dr. Jameson said. “She only just finished her chemo the day before yesterday and it’s hit her hard this time. That’s why I’m staying. If you left it another week she’d be much more up for visitors. And she does love to talk about Johnny-oh.”

  “I see,” I said. “Well, I certainly don’t want to barge in. I’ll … ” I gestured behind myself at my car, half-offering to take myself off.

  “Where do you know him from?” said Dr. Jameson. “You weren’t at the funeral, were you?”

  “No,” I said. “No. I didn’t make it to his funeral.”

  “My God!” she said. She let go of the dog’s collar and it bounded away from her and set off across the lawn, sniffing and marking the apple trees. Dr. Jameson took a step towards me and peered up into my face. “You’re not Fronia, are you?”

  “Fronia?” I said. “No. My name’s—Who’s Fronia?”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Where do you know Johnny from?”

  “School.”

  “Oh! What a pity. That would have been marvellous.”

  “If I was Fronia?” I said. “Who is she?”

  The little woman looked past me at the dog, then sighed out a great big puff of air that bloomed in the cold that was creeping in as the sun moved behind the hill. “He needs a walk,” she said. “Adder! Come here, you daft dog. Come and get your lead on.” She put her head back inside the house and shouted. “Linda? Are you there? I’m going to walk Adder. Be back in ten. Tell Mummy if she wakes, will you?”

  Then she unhooked a raincoat that was hanging up behind the door and put a leather dog’s lead round her neck like a scarf. “I won’t need bags,” she said. “We’re only going up the lane and I can kick it into the undergrowth. So long as you don’t tell on me.”

  Adder knew exactly what it meant that his mistress was wearing a coat and walking down the path, and he shot off through the gate like a greyhound.

  “How old is he?” I asked.

  She laughed. “Yes, his looks have gone, but he’s fit as a fiddle,” she said. “My mother jokes about it. She doesn’t look a day over sixty, but it’s her lungs now. It was her breasts last time. I’ve been checked, and so has Linda and we’re both gee-ing ourselves up to get all four whacked off if need be. It’s not a popular plan with the menfolk, mind you.”

  She reminded me of Miss Drumm, that brusque way of talking, stripped of any sentiment, and I’d had enough practice with Miss Drumm to know better than to offer sympathy.

  “Mine’s fifteen, arthritic, with a heart that sounds like a dishwasher,” I said, mimicking her. “His breath would make you weep too, but he’s a good sort.”

  She smiled and accepted me—or, the me I had invented to match her.

  “Fronia was Johnny’s wife,” she said. We were falling into a good rhythm, tramping along at the side of the lane. “Well, his bride, I suppose you’d say. He died on his honeymoon.”

  “Eeh,” I said. Then I thought about it for a minute. “But you thought I was her … Does that mean you weren’t at the wedding?”

  “None of us were. It wasn’t a wedding as such. They sent postcards from Dover before they got on the ferry. ‘Am married. See you in two weeks. F sends love.’ And that was the last we heard from him. The next time we saw him was when they shipped him back. He’s up there now.” She pointed east. “In the churchyard. My father never recovered from it, and he’s up there too now. Poor Johnny-oh.”

  “Poor all of you,” I said.

  “Oh, it was a mess,” she agreed. “My father steamed in—he spoke wonderful French—and more or less plucked Johnny away before the poor girl had time to decide which way was up. He hadn’t taken to her at all when Johnny brought her here to meet the family. Thought she was too ‘worldly,’ whatever that means. Johnny was hardly a curly-haired boy.”

  “What did you think of her?” I said.

  “Wasn’t here,” she said, shortly. “I was on call at Ninewells and couldn’t get away, and Linda was living in Colorado of all places with the loathsome Chris. She’s dumped him now, at any rate. I do always wonder whether, if Linda and I had been around, the visit might have gone better and Johnny might have capitulated in the matter of a big family wedding, and then who knows.”

  “He wouldn’t have been in Herault that day,” I said.

  “Exactly,” she said. Then she looked up at me sharply. “You know how he died then.�
�

  “Another friend told me.”

  “Such a stupid way to go,” she said. “Not even skiing or hunting or anything you would expect to have dangers. Just walking over a stupid bridge that people walk over all day every day.”

  “How did he come to fall off ?” I said.

  “God knows. Larking about, I expect. Johnny broke more bones in a year than Linda and I broke our entire childhoods. That was what made me want to be a doctor, sitting in Casualty with him, watching him get patched up.” She walked a few steps in silence. “I think it was the sheer senselessness of it that made my father so angry. He blamed Fronia completely. Got it into his head that she was a gold-digger and set out to get the marriage annulled.”

  “Good grief,” I said. “That’s a bit … ”

  “Mean?” said Dr. Jameson. “Nasty? Bitter? We all said all those things to him, believe me. Of course, he didn’t manage it, but he did succeed in driving her away.”

  “Absolutely away?” I said. “All these years?”

  “I’ve got a theory about that,” she said. “I reckon she was pregnant. Maybe that’s why they got married so quickly. And my father put her back up so badly over moving the body and the funeral and everything that she vowed to keep the baby from us.”

  “I hope not,” I said. “Or maybe I hope so. I mean, maybe one day the doorbell will ring and it’ll be your niece or nephew.”

  “Well, I hope he or she gets a bloody move on, for Mummy’s sake,” said Dr. Jameson. “God, it’s freezing. Let’s turn back, eh? Adder? Come on, dozy dog. Come get a Boneo!”