The Gardens of the Dead (3 page)

Avoid
it,’ he said firmly.

Elizabeth
had just gone to the Green Room. This was the day following the Primrose Hill
proposal, and, as if on cue, Charles offered Nick the third reason why he should
travel.

‘See
things. Make notes. Be fascinated.’ He was leaning forward, whispering loudly ‘Look
at that streak in your mother’s hair. That’s what work can do to you.’

It had
appeared rapidly over two weeks when Nick was sixteen. In fact, as he subsequently
learned, there was no medical explanation for the change. But Nick looked to
legend if science was found wanting, and something similar had happened to
Thomas More and Marie Antoinette before they were executed. He told his father.

‘Precisely,’
said Charles. ‘There’s no rush. Have you thought of Down Under?’

Nick
hadn’t, but he liked the idea. It stirred his soul, for the phrase conjured up
the ultimate voyage. He’d be able to wear a hat with corks dangling from
strings. He could legitimately have a machete in his belt. A week or so later
Charles phoned an old client in Brisbane who, it transpired, had a nephew with
a surgery in Rockhampton.

‘Where?’
asked Nick.

‘Rocky’
Charles paused as if he were surveying millions of bleating sheep. ‘That’s what
the locals call it.’

‘Oh
dear, no …’ Elizabeth underlined a sentence in a brief She surfaced
momentarily ‘Who?’

‘Not
who,’ said Nick, with the relief that comes before a parting ‘It’s a place.’

‘Where?’

‘The
land of Oz.’

She was
stunned. She’d thought it was all talk. ‘Oz,’ she said, sinking.

Nick took off from
Heathrow in the rain. The plane pushed through the cloud and it was just blue:
a wonderful, clean, endless blue, as if he’d entered a sapphire. He caught a
night coach out of Sydney, taking the front seat, and the headlights opened up
the future. By morning they were cutting through oceans of high green sugar
cane. For lunch he stood barefoot on the blistering tarmac drinking fresh
pineapple juice. He could smell the sea. There wasn’t a sheep in sight.

The
nephew was called Ivan and he laboured under the misapprehension that Nick’s
father had bestowed all manner of financial blessings on his uncle’s business —
which simply wasn’t possible — and so Nick received a sort of reward by proxy
For a modest amount of work, he received immodest remuneration. The world was
indeed a different place when things were upside down.

Nick
did a weekly stint at a school in Yeppoon where there were fat cane toads in
the swimming pool. A sub-aqua club shared the facility once a week. Nick joined
them and duly signed up. He bought the gear. He took a course. And he discovered
yet another world, but bigger and cleaner and deeper and more mysterious than
any place he’d ever known. Out of sight, countless tiny polyps had built the
biggest thing on earth: a reef, a barrier, a coral kingdom.

Then
the letters from his mother had started to arrive, wistful things, not signed
by his father. At first they looked back to his early school days — the time
she’d missed. But then her tone became inquisitive. She wanted to know when he’d
be returning. For some reason he couldn’t write back, so he lunged for the
phone on the evening of his birthday He ‘let slip’ that he’d be staying another
year — something he’d thought of anyway ‘What about Papua New Guinea?’ said his
father. ‘The Bundi do a butterfly dance.’ His mother mumbled that Christmas
was coming ‘The house is huge and empty without that awful music. Your trainers
are still by the door, where you left them. I keep thinking of your feet.’

Then
one day when he was diving off Green Island he understood. He was treading
water. A queue of small brightly coloured fish was lined up before some sort of
plant rising from the coral. It was like a car wash. The leaves, or whatever
they were, opened up and a fish swam in. After a moment the leaves opened
again, the fish left and the next one took his place. And there, at that depth,
watching fish get themselves cleaned up, he realised that his mother wanted to
tell him something; that she couldn’t write about it; and that she hadn’t
mentioned it to her husband. Nick sorted out the flight.

A few
days later his mother was dead in a parked car. She was sitting at the wheel,
eyes closed, with a smile on her face. It was only when a pedestrian knocked on
the window that anyone realised that anything was wrong. A paramedic found her
mobile phone in the footwell. She must have dropped it as she tried to dial for
help. Within reach, on the passenger seat, was a set of antique spoons, marked ‘£30’.

On the
plane to Singapore Nick forced his head against the window. A most awful wave
of emotion racked him. He cried desperately. The woman next to him asked for
his yoghurt, and he couldn’t even face her to say ‘Yes’. His mother was out of
reach. He’d travel now for twenty-two hours and he’d get no nearer. By the time
he reached Manchester the impact of grief had been anaesthetised around a
painful truth: his mother had wanted to tell him something, and he’d left it
too late. In the churchyard during the burial, Nick recalled the childhood
exchange that had often ended a day of revelations. She’d sit on his bed,
stroking his hair:

‘No
secrets?’ she’d whisper. ‘None.’

More
quietly: ‘You can always tell me anything.’

He
would study her in the dark with a child’s careful eyes, absorbing this
insight: his mother received much, but she did not give.

Why did he recognise that
only now? Nick slipped out of the pantry. On entering the hall a discreet cough
made him turn:

‘I’m
sorry, but I just don’t know what to say Dreadful business, if you ask me.’

3

Anselm kept his socks in a
wig tin. It was large and dinted, a thing from his days at the Bar. His name
was painted in gold upon the side. The wig itself rested upon a bust of Plato,
part of the miscellany of oddments that he’d kept on becoming a monk (the
remainder being his books and a jazz record collection, both of which accrued
to the benefit of the community). The tin was still in service. Anselm used it
daily as he’d done in that other life.

After
lunch Anselm joined the community for recreation in the common room. It was a
relatively important moment because he was wearing glasses for the first time
in public. He’d chosen what he thought were modest horn-rimmed frames, but the
view of Bruno was that he looked a cross between a futures trader and an owl.
He’d been told to wear them all the time. Colouring slightly, he put them on
and picked up a newspaper.

No one
noticed, perhaps because the alignment of chairs cut him out of three
conversations. On his right, Wilf timidly observed that as an entertainer Liszt
could reasonably be compared to Richard Clayderman, given his penchant for
transcribing other people’s good tunes; on his left Cyril expanded (loudly) on
the double-entry ledger system; and straight ahead Bernard tried to find a word
that rhymed with ‘murder’.

‘How
about “merger”?’

‘We’re
not a company,’ said someone.

“‘Herder”?’

‘We’re
not a farm,’ observed another.

‘“Murmur”’.

‘Ah,’
said Wilf, crossing over, ‘that is expressly forbidden in The Rule.’

Murmuring.
Grumbling from the heart. It could kill a community Anselm hid behind the
raised paper, his mind on the funeral and his wig tin. Elizabeth, he thought,
would be buried by now. The key lay in an envelope covered by socks. He’d
looked at it every day, until he almost didn’t see it any more. Anselm had
fished it out that morning knowing the funeral was underway A brief note
recorded the address of a security firm where the safety deposit box was
retained. Elizabeth had chosen Sudbury, a town near Larkwood. He’d thumbed the key,
pondering her courtesy Then he’d put it back, firmly closing the lid.

4

‘Dreadful business.’

Nick
turned towards the voice. A short, oval man bulging out of a dreary suit
scooped a fistful of cashews from a bowl and began popping them into his mouth
as though they were sedatives. A grey tangled beard crept up his cheeks to
narrow, moist eyes, suggesting a sociable mole on hind legs.

‘I’m
Frank Wyecliffe, a lowly solicitor.’

‘Very
nice to meet you.

‘I
instructed your mother year in, year out. Family carnage mainly’ He rummaged
for a business card. It was dog-eared.

‘Thank
you.

‘I
never knew she had a weak heart, though. Never.’

‘Neither
did I.’

‘Really?
You’re a doctor, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

The
mole popped some nuts, chomping quickly ‘Well, if I had known, I’d have thought
twice about some of the stuff I sent her.’ He paused. ‘First and foremost she
was a prosecutor, although she defended on some memorable occasions.’ The small
eyes brushed over Nick. ‘I suppose you knew that?’

‘No.’

Ah.’ He
sniffed. ‘It doesn’t seem right somehow If asked, I’d have said your mother
would have died — if you’ll forgive the bluntness of the term — on her feet,
bringing down the wrongdoer.’

‘That
would have been more fitting.’

 ‘The
East End, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Got
family over there?’

‘No.’
Nick shifted uncomfortably ‘Why?’

‘Sorry.
Silly question. That’s why I keep out of court.’

Nick
backed away ‘If you’ll excuse me.’ The little man’s intense manner seemed to
have filled the hall. Nick ran upstairs as if on an errand of practical
importance. At the open door to the Green Room he paused. With one hand on the
jamb he surveyed the familiar chaos.

This
was her study Piles of paper lay scattered on the floor, held down by various
paperweights — curious stones or chunks of wood picked up from the Island of
Skomer. He saw her in outsized wellingtons, a torch in one hand … she cut the
beam and called, ‘Hurry up.’ They’d stood and stared. He could still see the
glow-worms and her eyes, wide with astonishment.

Downstairs
a glass smashed. Nick stepped into the room, treading between heaps of
transcripts and reports. As a child he’d always been picking things off her
desk. Now he wanted to hold the fountain pen that had written those letters. By
her chair, he stepped over a cardboard box and slipped; a hand flew out and he
struck a line of small antique books on the desk — the kind you don’t read, but
look good. He steadied himself and swore. By his foot was a dark glossy
photograph, a shot of a smashed cranium, part of an autopsy report. He knelt
down to gather the books. One lay open, its pages fanned against the floor.
When he picked it up, a key fell out. Engraved upon it was ‘BJM Securities’ and
a telephone number.

For
something like ten minutes Nick sat at her desk, his mind blank. He flicked
through the pages of
The Following of Christ
—a tiny volume by Thomas à
Kempis, printed by Keating and Brown in 1829. Nick had written all over it when
he was five.

She’d
never said anything, as far as he could recall; but she must have noticed, even
if it was years afterwards, because a hole had been cut into the text. He put
the key in his pocket and left the room slowly like a man crossing a field.

Nick
braved out the remaining hour or so, shaking hands and talking of Australian
wildlife. When they’d all gone he tapped open the kitchen door and saw Roderick
Kemble assaulting the cooker while crunching a mint. Good old Roddy in his red
apron. He was swishing onions in a skillet. The cad had prepared for the moment
no one had thought about. Nick leaned on the counter observing his father at
the table: the jacket discarded, the rolled-up sleeves. Thin, silvery hair,
usually combed back, had been ruffled. The red patches on his cheeks — a
harmless liver malfunction — glowed as if he’d been slapped across the face.

He
began to speak, and Nick listened, thumbing the key in his pocket. For some
reason he felt like an intruder.

‘During
the reception I nipped upstairs to the Butterfly Room. After a minute there was
a knock at the door. Someone called Cartwright.’

Roddy
banged the skillet with one hand and threw in something pink with the other. ‘She’s
a police inspector.’ He tipped a bottle and threw in a match. The thing almost
exploded, as in a pantomime when the genie turns up.

‘What
did she want?’ asked Nick casually.

Charles
searched the table, as if for crumbs. ‘She asked whether Elizabeth had been
troubled by anything.’ He was ruffled and red. ‘Just kindness, you know
Surprised that she’s gone the distance too soon.

Roddy
banged the skillet on the cooker, as if it were a gong.

‘Plates,
glasses and the amenities of joy if you please,’ he said solemnly ‘Even now, at
this painful time, we cannot waver.