William Brodrick: The Gardens of the Dead

… not Cartwheel.’ Then, with a shrug, he read the newspaper cutting, glancing at the trial brief, making the connection. Finally he opened the letter, saying, ‘I’ve never seen this before.’ Leaning his head back, he read out loud:

Dear Mrs Glendinning QC and Mr Duffy,

I thought that if I ever began writing to either of you, I might never stop. There’s no beginning or end to what I want to say But then I thought, why don’t I just tell you what happened when the trial was over, when we went home and you went to a restaurant?

We lost our son. My husband fell to pieces. For what it is worth, along the way I lost myself.

Mr Duffy asked, ‘What did David do that George wanted to forget.’ I suppose you thought that was very clever. He had no right to ask that, no right at all. Don’t think that wearing a wig means you had nothing to do with what went wrong. You’re mistaken.

I don’t know what type of conscience you must have that lets you walk out of doors. How can you sleep at night having stood up for a man like Riley?

Yours sincerely,

Mrs Emily Bradshaw

Father Anselm placed everything back in the case.

‘Well?’ asked Nick.

Father Anselm put his glasses back on and said apologetically.

‘I haven’t the faintest idea what your mother wanted me to say ‘Then why did she give you a key?’

‘I assume because I was involved in the case. ‘But why hide it from me and my father?’

‘I don’t know’ Father Anselm tapped the lid of the case, perplexed but silent. Another monk passed through the gate carrying a wicker basket. He waded into the tangle of herbs and began cutting leaves with a pair of scissors.

‘Herbal remedies,’ said Father Anselm weakly ‘I’m not sure they work.’

‘Who was Riley?’

‘He was a docker.’ He snatched at random details as if they were flies. ‘He was a crane operator. A docker. An alleged pimp. Three witnesses said he worked for the Pieman.’

‘Who was he?’

‘Just a name in the papers.’

Nick glanced towards the other monk, who was humming and snipping. A confusion of scents drifted over them. ‘Father, what was so special about this trial?’

‘Nothing.’ He frowned, showing that this was his own question. The monk smuggled each arm into the sleeve of the other until he made a sort of sling across his chest. He looked away towards a wilderness of healing plants. ‘The only memorable aspect of the trial was how it ended.’ He fell silent.

‘What happened?’ prompted Nick.

‘I cross-examined the main witness, a man called Bradshaw He used his second name, George, rather than David, which was his first. In a rather elaborate way I asked him why and the case collapsed.’

‘How?’

‘He just walked out of the court.’

‘Because you asked him about his name?’

Father Anselm nudged his glasses. ‘It looked like he was refusing to answer for his past. David’s past, if you like.’

‘What was it?’

‘I don’t know’

‘Then why did you ask?’

‘I couldn’t think of anything better.’ As though he’d won an unwanted prize, he added, ‘It’s what’s called a good performance.’

Father Anselm’s attention shifted to the quiet work of his brother monk. The herb garden was extraordinarily still. It seemed to give emphasis to speech, as if the land and its many plants were listening.

Nick left the case on the table and followed Father Anselm to a path of mulch between a stream and an ancient abbey wall. At precise intervals slender pillars climbed from the stone, but most had been smashed at head height. By a pile of black railway sleepers, the monk halted. The creosote was sharp like smelling salts. He breathed deeply and exhaled. ‘Something is missing,’ he pronounced.

‘Like what?’

‘Instructions.’

‘If that were the case,’ replied Nick, ‘she’d have given you a letter and not a key’

And that,’ replied the monk, ‘is a rather good point.’ His eyes blinked at a mark on the ground, as if Andre Agassi had walloped something from behind an arch.

Nick felt sorry for this puzzled man with tousled hair and flashing glasses. His life among the ruins appeared to have blunted what was once a sharp mind – how else did you win a case by quizzing a witness on nothing more than his choice of name? That was impressive. But now, he felt sure, he needed a little help. Nick said, ‘Father, it’s a strange story Of all the trials my mother ever conducted, she kept this one. It just so happens that five years later the son of a witness drowns. My mother finds the grieving father, and it seems they both connect the death to the trial, apparently not accepting the coroner’s verdict. Two questions follow: did they suspect foul play? And what did they do next? But I’ve another: why keep the papers of this particular case? What was so special about Mr Riley?’

Father Anselm’s head was angled. Perhaps he looked like that when he listened to sins, or whatever people usually told him. The monk discreetly produced a packet and began to roll a cigarette. He removed a shred of tobacco from his mouth and said, ‘She told me she’d been tidying up her life.’ The match sputtered like a damp flare.

They retraced their steps past the great wall with the shattered columns.

‘Father, when I was diving on the Barrier Reef,’ said Nick, ‘I watched fish getting washed by a plant. It was wonderful. They lined up and took it in turns. Somehow, they just knew what to do. There was no need for any instructions.’ He looked aside at the troubled monk. ‘Maybe my mother thought you were in the same queue, that you’d understand without thinking. Don’t worry if you can’t help in the way she wanted.’

When they reached the table in the herb garden Father Anselm picked up the case; from there they walked to the car park where the yellow Beetle seemed to quiver against the purple canopy of plum trees. Fruit lay splattered on the windscreen.

A mad Gilbertine idea,’ said Father Anselm awkwardly. ‘We forgot that fruit falls when it’s ripe.’ It sounded like a warning. He asked for time to understand the contents of the case and for Nick’s telephone number; and he concluded, ‘Don’t turn over old stones. Let them lie where they were placed.’

Nick drove down the lane of loitering oak trees, away from Larkwood and the smell of aromatic plants. And as he did so, he reflected, painfully, that he’d never been able to share his mother’s deep faith. He leaned more towards his father, who, while adherent, was passive, his true fervour lying in the open fields. When cross, Elizabeth had called him a heretic; in better tempers, she settled for pantheist. Nick had grown up beneath the quirky arch formed where these two types of belief met. He eventually crept away, not quite making sense of the open sky At university he saw the chaplains and the students, half resenting the consequences of his own choice (if that is what it was), for he would have liked to belong. He eventually found a working credo in science – the purity of facts and verification. His mother had quietly grieved. They’d argued – hopelessly, because he didn’t ask her questions, and she didn’t want his answers. He could follow loose talk about God, but not to the point where all that type of thing mattered- at the meshing of life and ideas.

Shortly before Nick had gone down under, she’d said, ‘We should settle on beliefs that are worth the hazards of the race.’

Mildly irritated, because they were watching Ben Hur and it was the exciting bit when the chariots were crashing into each other, Nick said, ‘Would you fight for yours?’

‘I really don’t know.’ She spoke as if the crowds were waiting, but this was St John’s Wood not the Colosseum.