William Brodrick - The Gardens of the Dead

‘I wonder what Mum was doing with those spoons?’

‘Spoons?’ Charles tapped the egg as if it were the door to the MD’s office.

‘The ones that were found on the passenger seat.’

‘Bought them in a shop, I suppose.

Not on a Sunday, thought Nick. He didn’t want to disturb any of the conclusions his father might have framed about Elizabeth’s behaviour prior to her death. But the spoons seemed innocuous and important at the same time. She had obtained them, in all likelihood, shortly before her death. There was another incidental detail that remained unexplained, which prompted the second question.

‘What was she doing in the East End anyway?’

Charles began dropping the egg on a plate. ‘She said it was work. A site visit.’

Nick had in mind the autopsy photographs on his mother’s desk. They were part of the last case she’d worked on. The victim had been killed in Bristol, not London. Nick had checked the instructions to every case in the Green Room before they’d been collected. None had referred to the East End.

Charles picked at the battered egg with a nail, his face reddening. ‘What are you doing with yourself when you’re out of doors?’ He laughed weakly ‘Going here, heading there. You’re getting like your mother.’

‘Oh, just friends and unfinished business.’

Charles picked up a knife, eyes narrowed. He looked bullish.

‘That’s what she said.’

After breakfast Nick went to the Royal Brompton Hospital in Kensington to deal with the third question: a heart condition that had killed his mother. Its presence and gravity had been unknown to him. ‘She didn’t want to worry you,’ Charles had said the night before the funeral. He’d tweaked his tie. ‘I’d no idea that she might collapse without warning… that the end could come like a bus mounting the pavement.’

There was no point in pressing his father for details. The anatomy of a butterfly he could grasp, but that of a human being left him dazed. Too many pipes. So Nick contacted his mother’s consultant cardiologist. He didn’t mention it to his father.

On the desk before Doctor Simbiat Okoye was a slim bundle of medical records. Pensively she leafed through them. Her hair was tightly braided into thick strands and rolled into a loose bun at the nape of her neck. When she spoke, her eyes studied the listener’s face. ‘Your mother had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.’

Nick let the words settle. This was a hereditary disorder of the heart whereby its muscles become thick and stiff. In turn, this affects blood flow and valve function. There is no cure; and it’s hereditary with a fifty-fifty chance of passing it on to your children.

‘You do not have the condition,’ said Doctor Okoye. Her eyes were dark with a flush of rose around the whites.

‘She had me screened before I went to Australia, without me realising it?’

‘Yes.’

Doctor Okoye explained the history and outcome of his mother’s consultation. Elizabeth had first developed breathlessness and chest pain about ten years ago. She’d put this down to stress at work: she’d recently found herself frightened of court -not the usual nervousness, but a debilitating anxiety that could make her sick. This had been unknown before. Palpitations and light-headedness were placed at the door of the menopause. And then she’d had a blackout about a year ago. A visit to her GP prompted an emergency referral.

‘Surgery wasn’t required,’ said Dr Okoye. ‘I prescribed beta-blockers and anti-arrhythmias. The drug therapy was effective but-’

‘with a small number of patients there’s a risk of sudden death… like being hit by a bus. My mother was one of them.’

‘Yes. Would you like to see my notes?’

‘No thanks.’ He asked the question for which she was waiting ‘How did my mother get it… I mean.., which parent was affected, her father or mother?’

‘There’s no way of knowing now,’ said Doctor Okoye. ‘From what I was told, it may have been her father. I understand he died in an armchair with a glass of milk in his hand.’

‘Yes,’ said Nick. ‘He went out like a light.’

Nick’s grandmother had followed her husband shortly afterwards, from septicaemia. He’d never known them. And there were no other siblings, so there was no one else in the hereditary tree.

Doctor Okoye rose and walked to the window With a gesture she drew him beside her. ‘Look down there, in the courtyard.’

A copper sculpture stood in the centre of a pool. Two adjacent basins channelled a watercourse. Exotic plants with fronds like open scissors stood in tubs positioned along the sides.

‘It represents a hidden aspect of heart rhythm,’ said Doctor Okoye. Apart from muscular contraction, blood movement results from surface waves created by the inflowing stream. It’s as though after an initiating shove, circulation could go on for ever, the required energy coming not from a heart, which will one day tire, but through the configuration of cavities and the momentum of blood. Unfortunately, that’s not what happens. As you can see’ – she pointed towards one end of the sculpture – ‘art and nature require a pump.

Nick looked at the grove, his head against the glass.

‘Your mother and I stood by this window,’ said Doctor Okoye. ‘She had been distressed. But the heart carries a greater mystery than any frailty.’

‘What?’

‘It’s a wonder that it ever worked at all.’

On his way out of the hospital, Nick paused in the courtyard to watch the tumble and splash of water between two scoops of metal. He wasn’t thinking of possible worlds but of the inscrutability of this one: his mother had gone to the East End, obtained a set of spoons, and her heart had stopped.

As far as George was concerned, after he got his head kicked in he woke up in a very nice garden by the Imperial War Museum. In fact, a lot happened in between. Much of it came back of its own accord, and Elizabeth filled in some of the gaps, as best she could. Her voice released other memories and together they’d put a shape to what had happened.

The preliminaries were straightforward.

George didn’t like the docks: the warehouse seemed to wake at night with groans in the bricks: it was resonant with lost activity. More to the point, it wasn’t his patch. His territory was south of the river, round Trespass Place. So, a few days after Elizabeth had asked for the receipt books, George walked to Waterloo after nightfall. He was only a few minutes from the fire escape when it happened.

There was no reason for the attack. George didn’t go down defending an old lady or tackling a thief. He was just sitting on a bench eating popcorn. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a gangly youth in a padded jacket… and then another, with a shaved head. They were laughing and elbowing each other like kids on a school trip. Mischief always ran high when the master wasn’t watching. The one with the jacket asked for some popcorn. George handed it over. The shaved head tipped it over George as if it were a massive salt-cellar. When he stood up they began the kicking, like it was a dance, or a new sport. They panted and grunted and sighed.

And this is where the confusion began in George’s mind: he had no recollection of being admitted to hospital or discharging himself or making his way to the garden of the Imperial War Museum. After what felt like a drunken sleep, George simply opened his eyes and saw the trees.., and clouds like wisps of cream in a light-blue blancmange… and his first thought was how delicious the world was. The smell of cut grass was so strong he could almost taste it. This must be heaven, he thought. Overjoyed, George walked out of the gates to discover what was waiting for him. It was only then, ambling down magnificent, strangely familiar streets, that he discovered his mind wouldn’t work properly Instinctively, he’d ran back to Trespass Place like a wounded animal, where Elizabeth had finally found him.