The Gardens of the Dead (24 page)

‘If you
want to fight back, I’ll help you.’

Two of them
stared; the other laughed. They backed away shrouded by rain.

That
should have been the end of it. But a week or so later they’d returned to the
gate, again at God knows what hour, wanting to know what he’d meant. George
stood on one side, they on the other, separated by bars. There was so much that
did not need to be said: about who they were, what they did, even the where,
when and how: everything, really except for the why — those impossibly intimate
histories that would not be reduced to a common badge.

George
said through the bars, ‘What happened at the Open Door?’

‘Getting
away is one thing,’ said the one with the dragon, ignoring the question. ‘But
you said we could fight.’

He
turned the lock and yanked back the gate.

George
made more cocoa for Anji, Lisa and Beverly.

‘I
believe you,’ he said.

About
what?’ asked Anji. She spoke for the others; she was the eldest, a kind of
leader at nineteen.

George
saw the resentment in their eyes and their obstinate vulnerability. ‘I not only
understand,’ he said heavily — for he knew this look; he’d felt the same once —
‘I’ll do something about it.’

Without
invitation they started talking about Riley fighting one another for the right
to give details of his appearance and habits. George listened with glazed eyes.
This man, when a boy had been a kind of brother to him. In the years since, he’d
often wondered if Riley was one of those for whom the helping hand had come too
late, or if he’d turned away No doubt it was this heavy reminiscing that made
George slow on the uptake. When the three girls stared at George, drained and
expectant, he said, ‘I’ll call the police tomorrow.’

‘Police?’
Beverly asked, her mouth open, like that of her dragon.

‘Yes.’

‘Us?’

‘Yes.’

And
then George understood what had brought them back. ‘Hang on,’ he said in
disbelief, ‘you didn’t think I was offering to whack him over the head?’

The
three conspirators threw glances at one another. Unmasked, they appeared
younger still, and more awkward. Lisa stood, putting on her bomber jacket. ‘We
fight back by filling in a complaint form?’

‘No. By
taking Riley to court.’

‘That’s
easily said. We’d pay and it would cost you nothing.’ Anji followed Lisa to the
door while Beverly still slouching, looked George right in the eye. ‘They’d
tear us to pieces.’

If
precision matters, this was the moment when George lost his senses, when two
teenagers stood at the door and a third was about to pull away ‘Yes. But they
can’t do that to me.’

‘What’s
it got to do with you?’

George
wasn’t going to answer that question. ‘If I support what you say’ he persisted,
‘Riley will be convicted. There’s nothing they can throw at me. Nothing.’

‘What
will it cost you, then?’

‘If it
goes wrong, my job.’

‘Why do
it?’

Again,
he sidestepped the question. ‘It can’t go wrong.’

The next day George woke
up profoundly grateful that Beverly had joined her pals at the door. But a week
later — again at three or so in the morning — the buzzer had torn George out of
a deep slumber. It had been a bad night, with a punch-up over queue-jumping He stumbled
angrily to the gate with such a weight upon his eyes that he could barely see.
He heard Anji’s voice:

‘We’ll
risk it, if you will.’

In a
stupor, George leaned his head on the bars. The wisdom of these kids, he
thought. They trust only the person whose outlay matches theirs. The gate swung
open for the last time; and George made more cocoa and toast.

‘If I
do this,’ he said cautiously ‘will you go to the Open Door?’ They all shook on
it while George’s gaze rested upon a tiger’s head that snarled behind Beverly’s
other ear. It hadn’t been there last time.

Funnily
enough, it was the tiger and the dragon who fled on the day of the trial. Anji
and Lisa kept their side of the bargain. And then George was called. If he’d
even sensed what might be waiting for him in the courtroom, he’d have joined
Beverly on the pavement. In the corridor, Jennifer Cartwright grabbed his arm. ‘Where
the hell are you going?’

‘Home.’

‘Where?’

‘Back
home.’

‘Why?’

He didn’t
reply.

‘Two
girls have just had their heads kicked in.’ She was seething. ‘You can’t go
home.’

George
took the bus to Mitcham knowing that Anji, Lisa and Beverly wouldn’t be going
to an open door in Fulham. That was George’s fault. In the long run, she’d been
right, that policewoman.

Much
later George had written in his notebook, ‘Who’d have thought that a question
about my grandfather would have set Riley free?’ And it was only then that
George realised that his downfall hadn’t begun at the night shelter’s gate,
when he was a man, but with a secret, discovered when he was a boy.

And
now, walking by the Thames, George asked himself where lay the praise and
blame? That was a tricky one, because things couldn’t have been any different. Mercy
or reward? Well, that was trickier still.

George followed the
cobbled lane that ran between the warehouses and the hoists. He ducked through
the mesh wiring onto a quilt of broken brick. A bitter wind swung off the
Thames, pulling at his hair and stinging his nose. He stood upon Lawton’s
Wharf, his long walk ended. He’d been homeless without knowing where he was
going, but now he’d arrived — at the place he’d visited more frequently than
any other. He spied a ladder built into the dock wall. He took off the bright
new trainers he’d been given on Old Paradise Street and laid them to one side.
Slowly he lowered himself into the river. His clothes gathered weight, and the
cold clasped his legs and stomach. A painful thought passed across his mind:
for Emily he was already dead.

16

Anselm went to bed with
the accounts and receipts that had been sent to Inspector Cartwright. Even with
his glasses on, he couldn’t make head or tail of a single column (at the Bar,
he’d steered clear of cases that had numbers in them), so he put the documents
on the floor and gave his attention to something more promising: a cornucopia
of intractable problems. A lawyer’s habits made him divide them into two
groups.

First,
why had Elizabeth sent him to see Mrs Dixon without any clue as to what she
might say? What was the point of leaving him powerless, and her powerful — in
the sense that she could refuse to talk, which is precisely what happened? Why
take another risk that could only harm her prospects of success — for just as
George Bradshaw (predictably) had gone missing, so Mrs Dixon (not surprisingly)
had refused to talk about her missing son. The only answer Anselm could muster
was this: at the heart of Elizabeth’s bid to make good the past was a complete
respect for the free choices of the other actors. There would be no cajoling,
no forced outcomes.

The
next group of problems was, for Anselm, the most intriguing. How did this
second mission connect with the first?

What
was the link between the missing boy and the bid to bring Riley back to court?
While listening to Mrs Dixon, Anselm had noted the vowels resistant to life in
the South; the northern intonation in the word ‘cake’ had survived completely
intact. It had shone like a tanner in a heap of decimal currency. Who, then,
was the missing lad? He’d been a good boy a good son. Reviewing the cornucopia
as a whole, Anselm came to a sensible though uncomfortable conclusion: both of
the matters that had been entrusted to him by Elizabeth were now well on the
way to monumental failure.

Success,
however, had come Anselm’s way earlier that evening, albeit from another
direction. He had, of course, begun looking into Elizabeth’s past, while she
had only expected him to move forward on her behalf. And initial results were
interesting.

After
leaving Mrs Dixon, Anselm paid a visit to Trespass Place, hoping that George
Bradshaw had returned to his patch, but it was silent and bare; so,
discouraged, he went back to Hoxton, where he found a bundle of faxed documents
from Gray’s Inn. He leafed through them while his shepherd’s pie revolved in
the microwave. The librarian had organised, in reverse order, various notices
covering legal responsibilities assumed by Elizabeth. It was only when Anselm
reached the final sheet that he appreciated his earlier, decisive mistake. It
was obvious why this particular Glendinning hadn’t gone to Durham University.
Looking down, he read again the list of names. It was a register of those
called to the Bar by the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn on the fifteenth day
of October nineteen hundred and fifty. The librarian had marked the relevant
entry: Elizabeth Steadman.

Glendinning
was, of course, her married name. Anselm had never known her as anything else.
On marrying, most women barristers kept the names under which they began their
careers because they carried their reputations. Elizabeth, however, had dropped
hers and started all over again. Anselm sat down, suddenly excited because
someone else had made the same gaffe as himself, only she didn’t have the
excuse of not knowing any better. His thoughts becoming tangled, he picked up
the telephone and called the Prior.

‘Sister
Dorothy reeled off the history of Mr G, the frustrated inventor, and Mrs G, his
uncomplaining wife.’ Anselm paused. ‘But she got the name wrong. It should have
been Mr and Mrs Steadman.’

‘Teachers
follow the fortunes of their pupils,’ replied Father Andrew confidently ‘Perhaps
she learned of Elizabeth’s marriage and switched the names by accident.’

A monk
can always contradict his prior. But it has a taste all of its own. ‘My first
thought too,’ said Anselm warmly ‘However, she hadn’t had word or sight of
Elizabeth in forty years. She shouldn’t even know the Glendinning surname.’

It was
hardly caviar, but the hiatus was delicious. Anselm said, ‘But why would Sister
Dorothy lie?’

‘Perhaps,
like you, she’d given her word,’ said Father Andrew distantly as though he’d
turned to the fire. ‘And perhaps,’ he added, ‘that was the first of the many
promises that have been sought and obtained.’

17

Riley took the bus home
because the fascists who’d clamped him weren’t answering the phone. He came in
the back way pausing to glance at Nancy’s bricks: she’d been collecting them
all her married life. She rummaged in the grass by Limehouse.

Cut and
brought them home one by one. Exhausted by the bout with Wyecliffe, defeated by
the Council, and cold to his bones, he felt suddenly weak: affection stirred
inside him like a shot of Bertie’s poison.

There
was an irony about Riley and Nancy: prior to the trial, he’d pushed Nancy back,
but she’d kept returning; after the trial, he’d wanted her to linger, but she
kept away So when Riley told her what had happened to his van, she was very
understanding; she said all the right things; but she was far off. She didn’t
even ask what he was doing in Cheapside. Later, Riley lounged in his rocker,
listening to a very different kind of chat. As Nancy cleared away the plates,
she asked Arnold how he was getting on, whether he was tired of his wheel,
whether he got lonely in his cage. Riley’s chair creaked as he moved more
quickly as his envy grew.

After
Nancy had gone to bed, Riley stayed up watching the fire decline. In the
stillness of the night he took out the photograph of Walter from his pocket.
Without looking he dropped it on the fading coals. He heard it snap into flame.
When he glanced into the grate, all that was left was a curl of ash.

Who
posted it?
Until that evening, Riley had confined
his thoughts to the living, but the lawyer had turned to the dead. Who’d he
been referring to? Or had he been having a dig, trying to tell him that he’d
never believed him about John Bradshaw?

Suddenly
Arnold started running in his wheel.

Years after the trial,
Riley was doing a clearance when his mobile started the nerve-racking tune that
he didn’t know how to change. He stabbed a button to make it stop.

‘Will
you help me find the Pieman?’

Riley
was stunned. ‘Who is this?’

‘Someone
who knows you weren’t the only one to blame’

Riley
couldn’t reply He sank onto a thing the relative had called a
fauteuil.

‘If you
tell me,’ said the young voice, ‘I can inform the police. I’ll be like a
cut-off. And when they’ve found their own proof, they can act without bothering
either of us. You’ve nothing to fear.’

In the
corner, a budgie hopped from bar to bar, tinkling a little bell. He’d come with
the job lot. ‘Who is this?’ said Riley again.