The Gardens of the Dead (38 page)

‘Twenty-five
grand it is, then.’

The
figure wasn’t quite accurate, but it was in keeping with the outward show of
honesty. Prosser would pay that handsome figure into the Riley bank account
first thing next morning. An extra five thousand was due now, in cash — an
exchange that would trouble neither the conveyance deed nor the records of the
Inland Revenue.

Prosser
had a worn leather pouch of Spanish origin. Having tugged it from the inside of
his heavy overcoat, he opened it slowly lowering his hands to show how much he’d
brought. Then he counted out the bills, licking his fingers, making it
painfully clear that he was handing over far less than he’d expected — that he
was a harder man than Riley.

‘Wyecliffe
will do the paperwork,’ said Riley and he tossed high a bunch of keys.

Catching
them, Prosser replied nobly ‘The traditions of your business will continue.’

‘I
doubt it.’

Prosser
was jubilant. He sucked air through his teeth, breathing in a mix of furniture
wax and butane.

‘When
you’re ready’ he said, ‘I’ll lock up. I bid you good day ma’am.’ The last
affectation came with a bow for Nancy after which he swaggered outside to
linger on the pavement. He winked to an imaginary audience, and licked the butt
of his cigar.

Cars
smashed over the hump in the road. It was nearing the end of the day so
everyone was impatient, even Riley As he checked the limp motes against a light
bulb, he became scatty —he was looking at the pictures and not the watermarks —
because every action was a movement away Every breath was one less among these
standing ruins. He was going to walk with Nancy on Brighton Pier. Something
rustled at his elbow.

Nancy
was holding out a plastic bag as though it were Riley’s turn for the lucky dip.
It was empty and she looked severe.

‘Let me
carry the money’ she said, pronouncing each word distinctly ‘It’s my shop,
remember.’

Riley
didn’t have the guts to refuse — Nancy had been acting funny. Not that she’d
said or done anything. It was just a sense that she’d already gone from Poplar
and left him behind. He wanted to catch her up. Without a word he wrapped the
motes in an elastic band and dropped them into the bag.

‘You
can trust me, you know,’ said Nancy under her breath.

She was
being funny again, though Riley couldn’t put his finger on how. But she made
him think of trust: it had held them together, even in the breaking.

Nancy
lifted up her skirt and stuffed the money beneath her tights, across her
stomach. Then she went into the back room and came back with a grey canvas
rucksack. Riley had found it in the cellar of a mountaineer.

‘I want
to pick up some bricks by the canal,’ said Nancy adding proudly ‘for my herb
bed.’

Riley
was aghast. ‘You want to go along the Cut with five grand in your tights?’

‘No one
will look.’

‘Nancy
have you ever heard of muggers … villains?’

‘It’s
never happened before.’

Prosser
called out, ‘Oi! I’m freezing out here.’

‘I want
to finish the bed,’ said Nancy flatly.

‘All
right, fine,’ sighed Riley giving up. He’d follow Nancy to hell, never mind
Limehouse Cut.

They walked side by side,
Riley shouldering the rucksack. The sky was reddish brown like a bruised fruit.
Beneath it, in the near distance, a bonfire kicked sparks into the air. Smoke
billowed and a smell of rubber drifted along the towpath beside the Cut. The
hush was a trick. Somewhere ahead was a den of foxes. When it grew dark, they’d
scream and it was like a feast of murder. Nancy broke step. She’d seen a brick.
Examining its edges, she said, ‘It all begins with Quilling Road.’

‘What
does?’

‘Our
trouble.’

Riley
closed his eyes and stumbled slightly He didn’t want to hear of that place. An
old voice came out of him, and he listened, ‘How was I to know?’

He
hated the weakness and the whining and the cowardice. But they were weapons,
and he’d learned how to use them like an automaton.

‘Of
course not,’ said Nancy sympathetically She stepped behind Riley to struggle
with the toggles on the rucksack. She dropped the brick inside, and left the
flap open.

They
walked on, coming closer to the fire. Riley wondered, Could it really be that
easy? Was the future an open field? He felt a shudder of excitement. With
Prosser’s money he’d buy some new shoes. He’d chuck away that camouflage
jacket.

Nancy
bent down, complaining about her old knees. With more groaning about her limbs,
she picked up two bricks, and said, ‘It was terrible when that boy drowned and
the police tried to pin it on you.

The
comment was like a smack in the teeth. Nancy had never referred to that before.
Like Quilling Road, it was another crater in the dark. They walked around them.
But now she spoke as if she were in the laundrette with Babycham.

Smarting,
Riley said, ‘Cartwright has never let me go.’ He whistled quietly because he’d
strayed to the edges of truth, close enough to fall in.

‘I
kno-o-ow,’ sang Nancy sharing his indignation, and he could just see her,
nudging Babycham’s ribs.

Nancy
put the bricks in the rucksack and Riley shrugged the shoulder straps into a
more comfortable position. After that drowning, he’d expected the Major to turn
up at Poplar — to target him with that old, quiet urging. But he never came.
Their last meeting had been at the Old Bailey when he’d said, ‘They can lock
you up, but they can’t stop you taking that first step.’ The Major had been
brittle and despairing. Where was he now? What would he tell him to say to
Nancy?

It was
dim now, and the edges of the canal had blended into its banks. The sky had
lost its colour and joined the slate on the straggling warehouses. Nancy’s
puzzled voice was muffled while she rummaged near a hedge of barbed wire.

‘So
that’s why they hauled you in again?’

‘What
do you think?’ Riley made it sound like a ‘Yes’. He didn’t know what else to
say. They hadn’t spoken of the arrest since the day he’d been released without
charge. She’d been off-colour afterwards, and he hadn’t been able to read her.
Suddenly she was tugging at the rucksack.

‘Are
you all right?’ asked Nancy as though she were anxious for his health.

‘Fine,
absolutely fine.’

Carefully
she laid three bricks on top of the others.

‘Steady
on,’ he rasped. ‘I’m not …’ —
Stallone, Mad Max, Bruce:
the hamsters’
names ran into one another like a furry pileup but a name popped out, like it
was shoved — ‘… Mr Universe.’

Riley
leaned forward and increased his speed, as if to get away from that reminder of
Arnold. At the fire, a gang of youths brandished flaming branches. They danced
and whooped and stared. A car tyre lay smouldering near the bank. It was almost
dark mow. The path narrowed and Nancy dropped back, leaving Riley to move on
ahead. He looked aside into the dull, smooth water. And then he thought, as if
tripped. Why do I keep remembering what the Major said? Why can’t I just forget
an old soldier’s hopes, his insane confidence?

‘I
wonder what happened to Arnold,’ asked Nancy faintly.

‘God
knows.’

There
was a long, withering pause. Then Riley heard Nancy’s feet in the grass, as if
she were swishing a scythe. His thoughts became bitter, remonstrating: the
journey from Paddington to this point by the Cut owed a great deal to John
Bradshaw — for that death had marked his soul — but who took the laurel? The
Major? No, that honour went to a
hamster.
Even in conversion, if that is
what it was, I’m a contemptible specimen.

‘That’s
the lot,’ she said with resignation. One after the other she placed four bricks
into the remaining space.

‘Bloody
hell, Nancy’ he gasped, ‘what are you trying to do?’ He fastened the clips
across his chest, linking the arm straps. After a few steps, he glimpsed the
hunched figure of a man by a wall … someone who was watching him. Riley swung
around, wanting Nancy’s help. ‘I’m sorry, there’s too many’ he whispered,
genuinely sorry, ‘I can’t carry this lot.’

‘Neither
can I.’

‘What?’

Riley
couldn’t see her face. She walked slowly towards him.

He knew
what was going to happen. Nancy pushed him with a finger and he fell backwards.
As he left the towpath, he wondered why it was that he felt relief.

5

At school, Anselm had met
a Jesuit teacher who considered familiarity with the life and work of John
Bunyan to be a valuable adjunct to the onset of adolescence. First, that
exemplar, in his youth, had been haunted by demonic dreams; second, he’d
suffered a strange sickness that had made him blaspheme atrociously and want
to renounce the benefits of redemption. To counter these inclinations, so often
manifest in the young, the amused Jesuit would read choice excerpts from
Pilgrim’s
Progress,
the allegory of a burdened man, fleeing a burning city.

This
warm memory touched Anselm because he was sitting on a bench near the author’s
tomb in Bunhill Fields. At his side sat Mrs Dixon in a long overcoat of russet
tweed. She wore sturdy shoes and thick socks. A paisley scarf had been tied
around her head with a knot under the chin. She’d brought Anselm to this garden
of peace without a word. Thousands of tombs stood crowded among the planes,
oaks and limes. The light came to them through the rafters of these winter
trees.

‘I had
already decided to speak to you about my son,’ said Mrs Dixon finally.

Anselm
presumed he would now learn why she hadn’t mentioned George’s name at their
first meeting. A jitter of excitement made him impatient. Leave it to Anselm.

‘I told
someone recently that Elizabeth’s last words to me were that she wouldn’t be
coming any more. That wasn’t true.’ Mrs Dixon examined the backs of her hands. ‘Elizabeth
said a lot more: that she’d found Graham; that the time of the lie was over.

For a
second or so, Anselm didn’t understand what had been said. His mind lay with
George Bradshaw, not Graham Riley When he clicked, it was as though he’d
stepped out of a musty matinee into the chilling daylight. ‘Your son?’ he asked
foolishly.

Mrs
Dixon nodded. Her face became blank, as if all her emotions had been drained
into ajar for safe-keeping. Decisively she said, ‘But that was not the lie.’
Mrs Irene Dixon spoke softly and resolutely ‘I wish I’d stayed in Lancashire,
but I went south, to start over. All that I knew had changed, because Graham’s
father died in the pit, under thirty tons of coal and rock.’

Mother
and child came to London, encouraged by an aunt —a seamstress — who had a house
with rooms to spare, and a business with more work than she could handle.
These were hard times because Mrs Dixon was a widow at barely twenty. But then
she met Walter, a big, handsome man with responsibility and a house of his own
in Dagenham. He was the manager of a warehouse in Bow; he hired and fired. He
ruled the roost. After courting for a year, they were married, and by the end
of the second year, there was a child on the way.

This is
the beginning, thought Anselm. From this moment onwards, it is all an
unfolding. He understood everything, but with such speed that his insight into
what would happen became foreshortened, and he lost the detail. He was left
with the first simple realisation that Walter Steadman was Elizabeth’s father;
that Riley was her half-brother.

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.