William Brodrick: The Gardens of the Dead

Elizabeth had written a great deal in books thirty-six to thirty-eight. She’d recorded everything they’d said and done after his mind went loose. He’d watched her while drinking hot chocolate or whisky. She’d always been careful. She’d treated words like coins. And in her last entry she’d told him to wait.

After Elizabeth had gone to Mile End Park in the morning, George had sat in his sleeping bag beneath the fire escape at Trespass Place. He’d waited until nightfall, counting the hours, his eyes on the arch at the end of the courtyard. But she hadn’t come. Then, like a bubble popping at the surface of his mind, he’d heard something she’d said more than once: ‘George, if anything should happen to me, don’t worry. A monk will come.

A what?’ he’d said, the first time.

‘An old friend. He’s forever puzzled, but he gets there in the end.’

George had read his notebook again. She’d written ‘Wait… not ‘Wait for me.’

The next morning, George looked to the arch, hoping to see a different shape, perhaps someone fat with a white rope around his waist. He watched and waited, through the day and through the night. But when another morning broke, George rose and hurried through the streets. He crossed the river and crept like a thief into Gray’s Inn Square.

George stood outside Elizabeth’s chambers reading the list of gold names on a long black panel. Men and women slipped past him, flushed and serious. He became paralysed by the grandeur of it all. Then through the glass of a door he saw a round man with an orange waistcoat. The eyebrows rode high above piercing, kind eyes. He stepped outside.

‘I’m Roddy Kemble, who are you?’

George panicked. ‘Bradshaw, sir.’

Mr Kemble thought for a moment. He didn’t move, but he looked like a man rooting through a cardboard box, lifting this, lifting that. Abruptly he said, ‘May I ask your first name?’

‘George.’

The man’s arms fell by his side. He seemed to have found what he expected and didn’t want. Quietly, he said, ‘Elizabeth is dead.’

George adjusted his goggles. His mouth went dry and he nodded appreciatively.

‘In any other circumstances,’ said Mr Kemble, ‘I’d offer you a cigarette. But I’ve given up. Would you like a Polo?’

George nodded again.

Mr Kemble peeled back the silver paper. ‘Her heart gave out.’

For a while they stood awkwardly crunching mints, then Mr Kemble said, ‘Have you seen Elizabeth since the trial?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Frequently?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Mr Kemble looked like a man whose house had just been burgled. He put a heavy hand on his shoulder and said, ‘It’s time to forget everything, George. Move on, if you can.

‘I stopped going anywhere a long time ago, sir.’

George backed away clumsily Mr Kemble raised an arm, as if he were giving a blessing or launching a ship. If it weren’t for the orange waistcoat, George would have thought he looked sad.

George stumbled up High Holborn and then found his way to Oxford Street, bumping into people and things, until he reached the roundabout and Marble Arch – where he’d last seen Nino, months back, in the summer. They’d sat on a bench and his guide had told him a strange story about right and wrong. George went to the same bench, looking hungrily at the monument, wanting his friend to emerge from beneath one of the portals, his blue and red scarf trailing in the wind. Sleep crept upon him. He woke and saw the arch, the flag and the ant crawling across the sky, and he reached for book thirty-eight.

George left the traffic island and began the long walk to Trespass Place. He thought of Elizabeth, whisky in hand. She’d foreseen her dying and had prepared for it. George had to wait because a monk would come. Another of her phrases floated by; it filled him with hope: ‘No matter what happens, Riley can’t escape.

George made haste, and he beckoned Nino’s story about right and wrong, but it wouldn’t come. All he could recall was the end, because Nino had spoken it with such force. His gaze had been wide as if he were waiting for eye-drops. ‘Don’t be lukewarm, old friend. That’s the only way to mercy or reward.’

When he’d told Elizabeth, she’d scribbled it down on the back of an envelope.

Beneath the fire escape George picked up a sharp stone. On the wall he scratched a few neat lines, one for each of the days he’d been waiting. By extension it was another lesson from Nino: to diligently keep an account of anything that might easily slip away.

Perhaps Anselm’s sensibilities had been over-roused, but he could have sworn that the woman at BJM Securities viewed him with both fascination and terror.

‘You’ve never come before,’ said Mrs Tippins, as if he’d let her down.

‘I’m sorry, was I expected?’

‘No.’

Anselm couldn’t imagine the foundation for reproof ‘Well, I’m here now.’

‘I can see that, but you’re too late.’

Mrs Tippins explained that the son of the deceased had taken possession of a small red valise.

‘That’s fine,’ said Anselm. He was convinced it was nothing of the sort; that this was not what Elizabeth had wanted. ‘I’ll just go back home.’

Mrs Tippins seemed uncomfortable, as if the static of her clothing was giving her tiny shocks. She opened the door for Anselm and then seemed to leap at an opportunity. ‘Do you mind if I ask… but are you allowed out?’

‘Every ten years.

‘Never. How long for?’

‘Ten minutes.’

‘Honestly? You better be making tracks, then.’

‘I’m joking.’

Mrs Tippins narrowed her eyes, reluctant to abandon deep-rooted convictions.

Anselm berated himself all the way back to Larkwood. Nicholas Glendinning had opened the box while Anselm had been hiding in an apple tree. It would have appealed to the author of Genesis: Nicholas now knew what he was not meant to know.

Mothers, sons and secrets, he thought. They were an unhappy combination but often found together. As if nudged, Anselm recalled the death of Zelie, his own mother, and the secret he carried. Oddly enough, the circumstances had captivated Elizabeth when he’d told her shortly after joining chambers. That was almost twenty years ago.

They were sitting in the common room on a Friday night. The wind kept triggering a car alarm that seemed to pause when sworn at from a nearby window.

‘She’d been in hospital for an operation,’ said Anselm. ‘Before she was discharged, my father called us all together. He said that she wouldn’t be getting better and that we weren’t to tell her. I was nine. A few days later she came home. I took her a cup of tea, and she said, “I’ll be up and about before you know it,” and I replied, “No you won’t. You’re going to die.”‘

‘Did you tell the others that you’d broken rank?’

‘No. They would have seen it as a betrayal.’

‘Betrayal?’ Elizabeth repeated, as if she were talking to an invisible third party.

‘Yes, but from that moment my mother and I were free. We could grieve while she was still alive. We could face what was coming in the absence of lies. I hadn’t even realised that obeying my father would have left us trapped.’

‘Trapped,’ echoed Elizabeth again.

She was talking to an imagined presence, but Anselm hardly noticed because turning over the stone had uncovered forgotten emotion. His eyes prickled and he couldn’t speak without his breath staggering. ‘Don’t get me wrong… this is no fairy story about life winning out. Shortly before the end, she said, “I can hear the sounds of a playground.” A kid was kicking a ball against our fence. She was drifting off to sleep. But she let slip a confession. “It’s been a school for death and I’ve hardly learnt anything.”’