William Brodrick - The Gardens of the Dead

What was Riley doing? The question was unspoken but it bound them together. Inspector Cartwright sipped her hot chocolate and Anselm nibbled his cold toast.

Riley glared at Prosser, at his felt hat, at the cigar jammed beneath a handle-bar moustache. They’d both set up their stalls in Beckton Park. The air was sharp and a frost had made the grass ribbed and hard. The ‘dealer’, as he called himself, had ambled over to Riley’s patch and was nosing through his goods. He stood with his hands behind his back, picking up this and that with a nod of approval.

‘Keep away from Nancy’ said Riley.

‘Whatever do you mean?’ Smoke came slowly from Prosser’s nostrils.

‘You heard me.’

Prosser stepped away but then hesitated. ‘Look, Riley were both men of business, so I’ll be honest. I’m interested in the shop, not your good lady. You’ve a prime location there. No offence, but I’d say the building requires the sort of investment you can’t afford.’

‘Push off.’

‘I’d give you a good price.’ He walked backwards, winking.

‘I’ll never sell.’

Riley held himself tight, arms wrapped across his chest. A chill had reached his bones and he squirmed, thinking of Wyecliffe’s questions. They’d burrowed into his head and eaten away at what was left of his peace of mind. He’d wanted the solicitor to weave his magic, to do something startling with the law that would protect him. But he couldn’t pull it off, not this time. Instead, he’d made it worse – deliberately – with that remark about the dead being on to Riley’s trail. For the first time, there was no Wyecliffe twitching by his side: he was on his own. Riley hugged himself more securely feeling more exposed than ever. Someone was after him. They were watching and waiting and they would come. A familiar racket began deep in the tissues of the brain: he heard bangs on the wall and screams on an upstairs landing. Riley covered his ears with gloved hands and stood to shake off the sound. Violence swirled inside, making his eyes glaze and dry out.

Riley blinked. Beckton Park appeared as if it hadn’t been there. Trees, grass and people became solid. Prosser was watching, legs crossed on a commode as if it were a throne, puffing on his cigar. Despite the cold, Riley felt sweat sting the corner of his eyes. When his head grew quiet, he sat down, slightly out of breath.

As if someone had turned on a radio by his ear, Riley heard himself talking to Nancy over his breakfast.

‘It was me,’ he said honestly feeling grubby ‘I oiled the wheel and I must have left the cage open.’

Nancy leaned on the counter almost dazed and unable to speak. Riley couldn’t understand it. She’d had three hamsters. When one died, she bought another. It was a routine. But this time it was different. She’d never been so winded.

Riley turned aside to escape the recollection. At once, his eye snagged on a billboard showing a smiling woman with a bottle of milk. Her lips were red and her teeth were as white as the sky There were lots of children in the background looking at the bottle, as if it would make them happy He swore and looked the other way But he saw a mother tabbing by a pram, and beside her a man, hungover, lean and yellow He closed his eyes to escape… everything. When he opened them he saw a newcomer thirty yards away He was reading the name on Riley’s van.

Major Reynolds had once said, ‘You’ve made lots of choices, and you can make others.’ That one idea had stuck to Riley like pitch. He’d never been able to scrape it off. All he’d wanted was a warm bed for the night, but the Major had given him words that burned. You can make other choices. The idea was horrendous…

The man drew close. He was middle-aged, dressed in a bomber jacket, jeans and a cap. Uncertainty made him fidget with the zip on his jacket. He moved it up and down, and said, ‘Can I buy a number?’

Riley charged his eyes with disgust until they stung. Did he really want to do this any more?

‘Sorry,’ said the man fearfully ‘I’ve made a mistake…’

Riley summoned him back with a flick of the hand and took out a notebook. He flicked through the blank pages until he came to a calling card, picked up from a telephone booth near Trafalgar Square. Slowly he read out the number.

The man seemed to wake up, patting his pockets, trying to be normal. He took out a crumpled envelope and a pencil.

‘I’ll read that again,’ said Riley his attention shifting to Prosser. The dealer had sidled from behind his stall and was watching every movement. He lit a new cigar and studied the glow of red ash.

After jotting down the number, the man said, ‘I understand it’s fifteen quid?’

‘We don’t talk,’ said Riley taking the money ‘It’s the only rule.’

The man walked quickly away between the trestle tables and the moochers, tracked by Riley’s contempt. When he was out of view, Riley went through the motions (his mind returning at intervals to the sight of Nancy winded by the counter). He selected a vase from his table marked for sale at ‘?15’. He wrapped it in newspaper and put it in a crate – for transfer to the shop in Bow Then he opened a pad labelled ‘Van Sales’. He made out a receipt to record a fictional transaction: ‘One Vase. ?30 received in Cash.’ Carefully he detached the original from the blue duplicate beneath. Ordinarily this would go to the customer, but since there wasn’t one, Riley tore it to pieces. He then opened another pad marked Acquisitions’ and wrote out a second receipt – for an imaginary purchase: ‘One vase.?15 paid in Cash.’

When he’d finished, Riley dropped the pads into a cardboard box at his feet. He looked at them, at the bones of his system. Not since his childhood had he felt so strongly the desire to run away: from the voices, the billboards, the sheer filth of his existence. But he’d learned long, long ago, there was a most unusual pleasure that came with the staying.

Prosser ambled along a path puffing smoke. He was pretending to stretch his fat legs, to get some heat into his toes. In fact, he was trying to work out what had taken place before his eyes… just as Riley that morning – feeling queasy – had tried to make sense of Nancy.

‘Don’t use wise words falsely’ quoted Father Andrew.

Anselm had rung Larkwood to forewarn the Prior that a fax would shortly arrive for Cyril’s kind attention – it was an unlikely outcome, admittedly but it was important not to hold a man to his past. In the background he’d heard a bell, and, feeling abruptly homesick, Anselm had opened his heart: he didn’t know what to say to George Bradshaw; he was ailing with a strain of guilt. And that had provoked the familiar quotation from a Desert Father.

Anselm put the receiver down. Thoughtfully mouthing the phrase, he returned to the ward, where a nurse informed him that George was not only awake, but in a chair and anxious to meet him.

Anselm paused at the entrance. From a tinny radio, Bunny Berigan was playing ‘I Can’t Get Started’. The trumpet soared while Anselm examined the bandaged feet and dinted legs. Then Bun gave it voice:

I’ve flown around the world in a plane,

I’ve settled revolutions in Spain,

The North Pole I have charted,

But still I can’t get started with you.

Remembering Emily Bradshaw in Mitcham, Anselm entered the ward.

George had been conducting, but instantly he rose, his wrists quivering on the armrests as they took the strain. ‘Elizabeth said you’d come,’ he exclaimed, hand outstretched. ‘Funny thing is’ – he laughed quietly at the coming joke – ‘I can’t remember why.’

Anselm smiled thinly and he flinched at the old man’s grip. Mumbling how nice it was to see him, he sat on the edge of the bed, still wondering how to approach what had to be said. He couldn’t look at George, any more than Mr Hillsden had been unable to look at Anselm. Something tied them together, though, because they were both held spellbound by Bunny Berigan’s trumpet solo.