The Gardens of the Dead

1

Anselm joined Father Andrew in the cloister. They sat on a low wall beneath one of the arches, looking onto the garth. At the insistence of an MCC benefactor the square had been laid with turf from Lord’s cricket ground — ‘Father, we’ll lay a sand-based, fast-draining outfield’ — but rank disobedience to the maintenance regime had permitted this corner of the English soul to be eaten by moss. The square was now a deep emerald sponge that held on to water.

The Riley business was, they both concluded, a sorry affair. Their involvement left the bitter aftertaste of shared failure: as if they might have done something to prevent the outcome — the dereliction of a dead woman’s hopes. She had set out to alter the appearance and effect of the past. That her entire project should founder on a mistake of law was unfortunate. That the correct legal analysis should have come from her mouth in the first place was a tragedy.

Learning of Elizabeth’s background ought to have surprised Anselm, but it did not (he said, letting his eyes rest on the crisp, frosted lawn). The manner of her living now made sense: a life in compartments, the zeal for prosecuting and, like an arch, her inventiveness. In retrospect, Anselm could see her quietly working out the knots of her history, as when she, who had lost her father, had drawn from him the loss of his mother. They’d discussed its manner and meaning, but she’d applied its lessons elsewhere. From the outset childhood grief had bound them together, though he’d never known it. Perhaps that’s why she turned to him — instinctively — when she saw ‘Riley’ typed on the front of the trial brief, when she read the name of David George Bradshaw on the witness list. She must have seen what Riley was hoping to do: that he might well succeed; that he could do so only if Elizabeth sacrificed the identity she had so carefully constructed. Professionally speaking, in that one trial, unseen by the public and her peers, Elizabeth had committed suicide: she should have withdrawn from the case; she should probably have gone further, and revealed what she knew of her client, ‘this wounded instrument’. There were lots of shoulds, but they were not enough when weighed against her need for self-preservation. Or — to be just — was it yet another murder that could never be laid at Riley’s door? As he had been from the beginning, Anselm was linked to Elizabeth by a kind of grieving that he didn’t fully understand. Her dying words to an answer machine seemed preposterous, now: ‘Leave it to Anselm.’

‘What was I supposed to do,’ asked Anselm, drawing breath, ‘sweep up the pieces? Explain to George the limitations of the law — as if he didn’t know already?’

‘No,’ said the Prior patiently ‘the message related to a project she knew had failed, otherwise she wouldn’t have called the police. They’re words of hope, urging Inspector Cartwright to remain confident, despite appearances.

‘The point remains,’ said Anselm, with mock testiness, ‘what is it that I’m meant to be doing?’

‘It sometimes helps to shift tenses,’ said the Prior, nudging his glasses. ‘What are you meant to have done?’

‘Find George,’ replied Anselm smartly for there he had succeeded, before he’d lost him again. (Before coming home, he’d checked Trespass Place, left messages at homeless shelters in London and written a letter for the kind attention of F Hillsden Esq.)

‘What else?’ asked the Prior routinely He seemed to be slipping away drawn by adjacent thoughts.

‘Visit Mrs Dixon.’

Anselm pondered these twin duties while the Prior fiddled with the paperclip on his glasses. Slowly like water clearing in a stream, Anselm began to understand Elizabeth’s last wish. Answering the Prior’s questions had placed George and Mrs Dixon side by side. And, seen like that, their link grew strong.

Mrs Dixon, with her drawn-out rogue vowels, hailed from the north of England. She’d lost her son. She’d remarried. She was utterly extrinsic to Elizabeth’s scheme of retribution.

George had run from a good northern home, leaving behind a truth that wouldn’t go away But George’s father may well have died by now. The burden of loyalty on the mother would have been lifted. Perhaps she’d built a new life with another man. That woman could be Mrs Dixon … it had to be.

Leave it to Anselm, he thought excitedly gratefully.

Who better to bring George back to that place of first departure, than Anselm, whose question had reached so deep into the Bradshaw history? Elizabeth had prepared the means by which Anselm could reclaim his own regret.

Leave it to Anselm.

Why say this to Inspector Cartwright? Because Elizabeth foresaw that this tireless policewoman would be devastated —because she was a servant of the law that would once again disappoint an honourable man.

Leave it to Anselm.

‘Can I visit Mrs Dixon?’ said Anselm keenly turning to the Prior.

‘Yes.’ He’d taken to examining the garth, as though the benefactor had demanded a written report with several appendices. ‘What were Elizabeth’s stipulations?’ he asked, rising.

‘To call uninvited and to listen rather than speak.’

‘Sound advice,’ replied the Prior. He smiled benignly and then shuffled through the cloister, hands thrust behind his belt.

Anselm went to check for mail in the bursar’s office, expecting to find some fresh tobacco, obtained by stealth at the hands of Louis, who’d had business in the village. On the way Anselm fell to thinking about Nicholas Glendinning. There was no need for him to know what Sister Dorothy had disclosed. It all happened a long time ago. And since then Elizabeth had become someone totally different. The truth need not be told, he thought awkwardly.

Brooding on this conundrum, Anselm reached into his pigeon-hole. There were two items. One was a manila envelope from Louis wrapped in tape. The other was a letter from an unknown hand, postmarked London. He opened it and read:

Dear Father Anselm,

Please bring George home as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely

Emily Bradshaw

He folded up the paper and mumbled a prayer — giving God several options, like a multiple choice — that George would make his way to Mitcham, or that someone would read Larkwood’s address in his notebook, or that Mr Hillsden would strike lucky once more. All the same, Anselm felt uneasy when he should have been edging towards jubilation. It was the image of the Prior staring at the garth, thinking tangential thoughts.

2

Nancy had the day to tidy up the shop because Prosser was coming to barter with Riley at the close of play This room of bumper puzzles would be sold. The sound of cars bashing the hump near the bridge, the sight of the flints by the railway embankment, the clang of the bell over the door: all this would pass. Riley was with the estate agent, arranging the sale of the bungalow. The world she had known was coming to an end. They were going to the seaside.

For most of Nancy’s life Brighton had been the object of her dreams. Even the word shone. It was the place of childhood memories of her mum and dad, of fish and chips wrapped in newspaper, of warnings about Uncle Bertie’s wayward habits. And now it was as though the pier had broken away and drifted out to sea, with her memories giving chase, like dwindling gulls. She covered her face, defeated: so much remained unresolved, undone and unspoken.

The bell rang, and she turned.

‘I’ve come to say goodbye, Nancy.’

Mr Bradshaw’s overcoat was stiff and creased with frost. His beard had thickened since she’d last seen him at the police station. There were no goggles and his eyes were pale and defenceless.

‘Not just yet, please,’ she entreated. ‘Warm yourself, one last time.’

Mr Bradshaw sat in a small sewing chair while Nancy lit the gas fire. As the heat drugged the air, the windows streamed, and George said what he couldn’t have prepared (for, as Nancy well knew, he could do that sort of thing).

‘When I first came here,’ he said, rubbing his hands, ‘it wasn’t to deceive you. I just pretended to be someone else, but I’ve only told you the truth about myself. There’ve been no lies between us.

‘Thank you.’

Mr Bradshaw inched his boots towards the fire and vapour rose off the caps. This is how I shall always think of you, thought Nancy: steaming as if you’d been hung out to dry.

An old man once gave me a golden rule,’ continued Mr Bradshaw “‘Don’t be lukewarm, old friend,” he said. “That’s the only route to mercy or reward.” It’s the reason I came, Nancy I’d walked away from the trial, and this was my last chance to go back, to make up. I might have failed, but something happened that I hadn’t thought possible, and it has made losing worth the candle: I didn’t expect to become your friend.’

‘Thank you,’ said Nancy again, warmly Emotion wouldn’t let her say much more. She glanced back at her life, at its many candles, and the burnt-out stubs. It was like one of those big stands with tiers in a church. Was this really the Golden Rule: to keep on lighting another wick, when the wax always melted? To keep on hoping, no matter what? She mastered herself by making a confession.

‘You left behind a plastic bag full of notebooks,’ announced Nancy ‘I’m afraid I read some of them.’ To show that she’d made good the wrong, she added swiftly ‘I also took the liberty of returning them to your wife.’

At first Mr Bradshaw didn’t reply — he nodded at the first part and then shook his head at the second, which Nancy took as a sort of quits, since one cancelled out the other, like in the ledger at Lawton’s — but then he said, ‘I hope Emily reads them.’

With a slap of each hand on a knee, Mr Bradshaw stood up, and said, ‘Well, I’d better be making tracks.’

‘Where to?’ asked Nancy surprised by the worry in her voice.

‘I don’t know’

‘Have you ever been to Brighton?’ she blurted out.

‘No,’ said Mr Bradshaw, checking his buttons, ‘but I’ve heard of the pier.’

‘There’s two,’ stammered Nancy ‘The West Pier, which is falling into the sea, and the Palace.’ She wanted to share it with him, while it was still good, before it was altered. She raced like a guide in a tourist office, telling Mr Bradshaw what she’d told him many times before. He always listened as if it were new, as if it were fresh. ‘I went there every summer, with my mum and dad and Uncle Bertie. We stopped going after I got married. There was all sorts … magicians, jugglers … the helter-skelter … a clock tower … and right at the end a funfair with a ghost train. We’d walk around eating rock, wasting pennies in the one-armed bandits. But it was the sea I liked most, now grey now blue, stretching away lonely Long ago, I heard that the whole lot was slowly falling to bits … like me’ — she smiled, looking down at her legs, the strong veins behind the tights — ‘but it’s been completely renovated. Nowadays the deckchairs are free.’

‘Magnificent,’ whispered Mr Bradshaw, sitting down again.

Boldly but decisively Nancy said, ‘Would you like a holiday by the seaside?’

Mr Bradshaw’s agreement was far more emphatic than his surprise at the forwardness of the question. Nancy drew some directions that would take him along Limehouse Cut to the agreed meeting place. She wrote down the time he should be there, and she gave him her watch. Throughout he made a show of impatient nodding, as if the mastery of such details was child’s play After Mr Bradshaw had gone, Nancy tenderly thought: The great thing about someone who’s lost their memory is that they’re so used to forgetting answers that they don’t ask too many questions. And that was a help, because Mr Bradshaw hadn’t asked what Mr Riley might think of her invitation; or what Nancy proposed to do with the options that remained open to her; or how she, too, might take the route to mercy or reward. It would have taken Nancy a very long time indeed to explain.

3

Perhaps Nick’s father had dropped a hint along these lines: ‘He hasn’t come to terms with the passing of his mother. He could do with a treat … something to take him out of himself.’ Or maybe it was simple generosity of spirit. Either way the tubby executive at British Telecom — last seen sipping sherry at the funeral — had offered Nick a treat closed to the general public for donkeys’ years: a view from the top of the BT Tower. The executive was called Reginald Smyth.

‘One hundred and eighty-nine metres high,’ he said, reverently, on the thirty-fourth floor. ‘Sways twenty centimetres in a high wind.’

Reginald was a plump and ponderous man with active eyes, and a commiserating manner. He’d lost all his hair save for white curls above each ear. Standing with joined hands, he ushered in fact after fact as if they might soothe the bruised and broken. ‘As you can see, there are no walls, just windows and, of course, the floor rotates, obtaining a full circuit in twenty-two minutes…’

Nick missed the details about tonnage, nylon tyres and speed. He was already gazing at the sprawling majesty of London. Sitting down, he picked out St John’s Wood, hazy under the threat of snow and, with an alarming shudder, the floor began to move.

From this suburban pinnacle Nick looked upon recent events as if he were detached from their happening and significance. It was calming; it was a treat. He listened and watched while the world seemed to go round. Reginald, being a man with a sense of moment, kept a respectful distance.

‘We had a long-drawn-out argument,’ Charles had admitted, clinking more ice into more scotch. After the visit to Doctor Okoye, Elizabeth wanted to tell Nick about Riley and his place in her life.

‘I didn’t know about the heart condition,’ said Charles, handing Nick a glass. ‘Your mother only said that maybe it was time to retire, that the cut and thrust was all getting a bit much for her valves.’

Husband and wife toyed with selling up and fixing the tap in Saint Martin’s Haven. Led by Elizabeth, they talked of all the things they agreed about, until Charles realised she was trying to seduce him. Snapping a thumb and finger, he said, ‘No.’ He was against any disclosure of the past, not because he was ashamed, but because he was frightened: for Nick.

‘There was no need for you to know’ — he hunched his shoulders and squinted — ‘You’d be shocked. You’d been protected. And what did it matter? She’d moved on, wonderfully.’

That notion of protection irritated Nick. It was demeaning. It was a kind of pity that insinuated measurement: it cut love down to size — for Nick, not knowing all, had therefore not loved all. He’d loved only partially His father failed to realise that Nick’s heart was greater than his needs or expectations; that the woman of his dreams was Sonia, the prostitute in Crime and Punishment. But he hadn’t said that out loud.

The revolving deck groaned suddenly on its rails, sending a stab of fear through Nick. He threw his eyes to work, spying the Inns of Court, and further on, the Isle of Dogs, where towers were being raised from the mist at Canary Wharf. Nick’s attention shuddered to the east, to things known but out of sight, to Hornchurch Marshes and the Four Lodges. He thought of the cold wind, the small shaved head, the lingering torchlight; and he heard again the unnerving pity in that voice.

Nick’s parents had never fully resolved the disagreement, though Charles won the first round on points. While Elizabeth urged Nick to find a practice in Primrose Hill, Charles pushed for paid indolence in Australia. (He wanted his son out of the way while Elizabeth went after Riley. If it came to nothing, then Nick would be left unscathed. Should an arrest become imminent, then, perhaps, the matter could be re-examined.)

The word ‘unscathed’ also irritated Nick, because it was the twin of ‘protection’.

The second round began when Elizabeth turned to letter writing, those lures of affection and melancholy while Charles (guessing the stratagem) countered with more temptations of distance and wonder. This last had been a subtle ploy for Charles was drawing on what bound father and son together: the dream of escapades and foreign peril.

‘In the end, she was several moves ahead,’ said Charles affectionately spilling whisky as he poured from the decanter. He was weary, his sleeves rolled up and a tartan tie askew A shirt-tail hung out like a waiter’s cloth. ‘I knew nothing of the key or Father Anselm’s role as her unwitting understudy’ He paused as if ashamed by the complaint in his own voice, the hint of resentment. ‘For your sake, I’d hoped that this business would pass you by; as still it might.’

‘For your sake,’ repeated Nick quietly As still it might?’

‘Let’s get back to normal,’ said Charles, with a sudden note of beseeching. ‘Let’s … let’s go to Skomer.’

Nick laughed, not so much at what Charles had said, as his appearance: the red face, the clothing in disarray and the precariously sinking glass. Charles took the laughter for assent and joined in heartily.

London kept turning and Nick kept watching, high above all that had happened, glad that it was over, perhaps grateful — if he were honest — that he had a protective father. When the twenty-two minutes had elapsed the floor stopped, and Nick was facing St John’s Wood.

‘The lift moves at six metres per second,’ said Mr Smyth, more relaxed, hands in his suit pockets. Nick guessed that he was the sort of executive who liked to don the hard hat and chat with the lads about the tricks of cable installation.

As the narrow compartment plunged down to ground level, Nick ignored some more statistics, marvelling rather at his father’s determination, his refusal to compromise with his wife, the captain of matters practical. This time Charles had taken the lead and called the shots, forcing his mother’s hand. It was the sort of bull-headed drive the bank had wanted and never got.

‘Who’s Mrs Dixon?’ Nick had ventured, before going to bed. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’ Charles had rolled down his sleeves, pulled his tie up and dabbed at the spillage with his shirt-tail. Nick watched him carefully … and he just couldn’t be sure: was this the truth or another species of protection?

The lift doors opened and Nick showered thanks on Mr Smyth. It was, he replied, the least he could do, adding, as if he hadn’t been heard the first time:

‘I must say your mother was a quite remarkable woman.’

4

‘You’re a hard man, Riley’ said Prosser. He puffed on his cigar and nudged the peak of his cloth cap.

A fair one.

‘Twenty-five grand it is, then.’

The figure wasn’t quite accurate, but it was in keeping with the outward show of honesty. Prosser would pay that handsome figure into the Riley bank account first thing next morning. An extra five thousand was due now, in cash — an exchange that would trouble neither the conveyance deed nor the records of the Inland Revenue.

Prosser had a worn leather pouch of Spanish origin. Having tugged it from the inside of his heavy overcoat, he opened it slowly lowering his hands to show how much he’d brought. Then he counted out the bills, licking his fingers, making it painfully clear that he was handing over far less than he’d expected — that he was a harder man than Riley.

‘Wyecliffe will do the paperwork,’ said Riley and he tossed high a bunch of keys.

Catching them, Prosser replied nobly ‘The traditions of your business will continue.’

‘I doubt it.’

Prosser was jubilant. He sucked air through his teeth, breathing in a mix of furniture wax and butane.

‘When you’re ready’ he said, ‘I’ll lock up. I bid you good day ma’am.’ The last affectation came with a bow for Nancy after which he swaggered outside to linger on the pavement. He winked to an imaginary audience, and licked the butt of his cigar.

Cars smashed over the hump in the road. It was nearing the end of the day so everyone was impatient, even Riley As he checked the limp motes against a light bulb, he became scatty —he was looking at the pictures and not the watermarks — because every action was a movement away Every breath was one less among these standing ruins. He was going to walk with Nancy on Brighton Pier. Something rustled at his elbow.

Nancy was holding out a plastic bag as though it were Riley’s turn for the lucky dip. It was empty and she looked severe.

‘Let me carry the money’ she said, pronouncing each word distinctly ‘It’s my shop, remember.’

Riley didn’t have the guts to refuse — Nancy had been acting funny. Not that she’d said or done anything. It was just a sense that she’d already gone from Poplar and left him behind. He wanted to catch her up. Without a word he wrapped the motes in an elastic band and dropped them into the bag.

‘You can trust me, you know,’ said Nancy under her breath.

She was being funny again, though Riley couldn’t put his finger on how. But she made him think of trust: it had held them together, even in the breaking.

Nancy lifted up her skirt and stuffed the money beneath her tights, across her stomach. Then she went into the back room and came back with a grey canvas rucksack. Riley had found it in the cellar of a mountaineer.

‘I want to pick up some bricks by the canal,’ said Nancy adding proudly ‘for my herb bed.’

Riley was aghast. ‘You want to go along the Cut with five grand in your tights?’

‘No one will look.’

‘Nancy have you ever heard of muggers … villains?’

‘It’s never happened before.’

Prosser called out, ‘Oi! I’m freezing out here.’

‘I want to finish the bed,’ said Nancy flatly.

‘All right, fine,’ sighed Riley giving up. He’d follow Nancy to hell, never mind Limehouse Cut.

They walked side by side, Riley shouldering the rucksack. The sky was reddish brown like a bruised fruit. Beneath it, in the near distance, a bonfire kicked sparks into the air. Smoke billowed and a smell of rubber drifted along the towpath beside the Cut. The hush was a trick. Somewhere ahead was a den of foxes. When it grew dark, they’d scream and it was like a feast of murder. Nancy broke step. She’d seen a brick. Examining its edges, she said, ‘It all begins with Quilling Road.’

‘What does?’

‘Our trouble.’

Riley closed his eyes and stumbled slightly He didn’t want to hear of that place. An old voice came out of him, and he listened, ‘How was I to know?’

He hated the weakness and the whining and the cowardice. But they were weapons, and he’d learned how to use them like an automaton.

‘Of course not,’ said Nancy sympathetically She stepped behind Riley to struggle with the toggles on the rucksack. She dropped the brick inside, and left the flap open.

They walked on, coming closer to the fire. Riley wondered, Could it really be that easy? Was the future an open field? He felt a shudder of excitement. With Prosser’s money he’d buy some new shoes. He’d chuck away that camouflage jacket.

Nancy bent down, complaining about her old knees. With more groaning about her limbs, she picked up two bricks, and said, ‘It was terrible when that boy drowned and the police tried to pin it on you.

The comment was like a smack in the teeth. Nancy had never referred to that before. Like Quilling Road, it was another crater in the dark. They walked around them. But now she spoke as if she were in the laundrette with Babycham.

Smarting, Riley said, ‘Cartwright has never let me go.’ He whistled quietly because he’d strayed to the edges of truth, close enough to fall in.

‘I kno-o-ow,’ sang Nancy sharing his indignation, and he could just see her, nudging Babycham’s ribs.

Nancy put the bricks in the rucksack and Riley shrugged the shoulder straps into a more comfortable position. After that drowning, he’d expected the Major to turn up at Poplar — to target him with that old, quiet urging. But he never came. Their last meeting had been at the Old Bailey when he’d said, ‘They can lock you up, but they can’t stop you taking that first step.’ The Major had been brittle and despairing. Where was he now? What would he tell him to say to Nancy?

It was dim now, and the edges of the canal had blended into its banks. The sky had lost its colour and joined the slate on the straggling warehouses. Nancy’s puzzled voice was muffled while she rummaged near a hedge of barbed wire.

‘So that’s why they hauled you in again?’

‘What do you think?’ Riley made it sound like a ‘Yes’. He didn’t know what else to say. They hadn’t spoken of the arrest since the day he’d been released without charge. She’d been off-colour afterwards, and he hadn’t been able to read her. Suddenly she was tugging at the rucksack.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Nancy as though she were anxious for his health.

‘Fine, absolutely fine.’

Carefully she laid three bricks on top of the others.

‘Steady on,’ he rasped. ‘I’m not …’ — Stallone, Mad Max, Bruce: the hamsters’ names ran into one another like a furry pileup but a name popped out, like it was shoved — ‘… Mr Universe.’

Riley leaned forward and increased his speed, as if to get away from that reminder of Arnold. At the fire, a gang of youths brandished flaming branches. They danced and whooped and stared. A car tyre lay smouldering near the bank. It was almost dark mow. The path narrowed and Nancy dropped back, leaving Riley to move on ahead. He looked aside into the dull, smooth water. And then he thought, as if tripped. Why do I keep remembering what the Major said? Why can’t I just forget an old soldier’s hopes, his insane confidence?

‘I wonder what happened to Arnold,’ asked Nancy faintly.

‘God knows.’

There was a long, withering pause. Then Riley heard Nancy’s feet in the grass, as if she were swishing a scythe. His thoughts became bitter, remonstrating: the journey from Paddington to this point by the Cut owed a great deal to John Bradshaw — for that death had marked his soul — but who took the laurel? The Major? No, that honour went to a hamster. Even in conversion, if that is what it was, I’m a contemptible specimen.

‘That’s the lot,’ she said with resignation. One after the other she placed four bricks into the remaining space.

‘Bloody hell, Nancy’ he gasped, ‘what are you trying to do?’ He fastened the clips across his chest, linking the arm straps. After a few steps, he glimpsed the hunched figure of a man by a wall … someone who was watching him. Riley swung around, wanting Nancy’s help. ‘I’m sorry, there’s too many’ he whispered, genuinely sorry, ‘I can’t carry this lot.’

‘Neither can I.’

‘What?’

Riley couldn’t see her face. She walked slowly towards him.

He knew what was going to happen. Nancy pushed him with a finger and he fell backwards. As he left the towpath, he wondered why it was that he felt relief.

5

At school, Anselm had met a Jesuit teacher who considered familiarity with the life and work of John Bunyan to be a valuable adjunct to the onset of adolescence. First, that exemplar, in his youth, had been haunted by demonic dreams; second, he’d suffered a strange sickness that had made him blaspheme atrociously and want to renounce the benefits of redemption. To counter these inclinations, so often manifest in the young, the amused Jesuit would read choice excerpts from Pilgrim’s Progress, the allegory of a burdened man, fleeing a burning city.

This warm memory touched Anselm because he was sitting on a bench near the author’s tomb in Bunhill Fields. At his side sat Mrs Dixon in a long overcoat of russet tweed. She wore sturdy shoes and thick socks. A paisley scarf had been tied around her head with a knot under the chin. She’d brought Anselm to this garden of peace without a word. Thousands of tombs stood crowded among the planes, oaks and limes. The light came to them through the rafters of these winter trees.

‘I had already decided to speak to you about my son,’ said Mrs Dixon finally.

Anselm presumed he would now learn why she hadn’t mentioned George’s name at their first meeting. A jitter of excitement made him impatient. Leave it to Anselm.

‘I told someone recently that Elizabeth’s last words to me were that she wouldn’t be coming any more. That wasn’t true.’ Mrs Dixon examined the backs of her hands. ‘Elizabeth said a lot more: that she’d found Graham; that the time of the lie was over.

For a second or so, Anselm didn’t understand what had been said. His mind lay with George Bradshaw, not Graham Riley When he clicked, it was as though he’d stepped out of a musty matinee into the chilling daylight. ‘Your son?’ he asked foolishly.

Mrs Dixon nodded. Her face became blank, as if all her emotions had been drained into ajar for safe-keeping. Decisively she said, ‘But that was not the lie.’ Mrs Irene Dixon spoke softly and resolutely ‘I wish I’d stayed in Lancashire, but I went south, to start over. All that I knew had changed, because Graham’s father died in the pit, under thirty tons of coal and rock.’

Mother and child came to London, encouraged by an aunt —a seamstress — who had a house with rooms to spare, and a business with more work than she could handle. These were hard times because Mrs Dixon was a widow at barely twenty. But then she met Walter, a big, handsome man with responsibility and a house of his own in Dagenham. He was the manager of a warehouse in Bow; he hired and fired. He ruled the roost. After courting for a year, they were married, and by the end of the second year, there was a child on the way.

This is the beginning, thought Anselm. From this moment onwards, it is all an unfolding. He understood everything, but with such speed that his insight into what would happen became foreshortened, and he lost the detail. He was left with the first simple realisation that Walter Steadman was Elizabeth’s father; that Riley was her half-brother.

The two children grew up under the one roof, but did not enjoy equal favour. Walter didn’t mean it, said Mrs Dixon, but he was hard on Graham, who was not his own, and soft on Elizabeth, who was. The inequality of affection was ever present and Graham simply couldn’t understand why: they were, after all (he thought), the same flesh and blood. As Graham grew older, it became obvious: he was not a Steadman.

‘The boy became the shadow of his father, my first love,’ said Mrs Dixon. ‘And Walter was a jealous man, even of the dead. It was pitiful that a boy so small could pose a threat to a man so big.’ She hesitated, as if she’d come to a defining moment. ‘And then the warehouse closed and Walter lost his job.

‘It might not sound much,’ said Mrs Dixon, after another break, ‘but the big man who’d told everyone else what to do for ten years was unemployed. The only work he could find was selling pies from a barrow on the pavement. He lost his self-esteem. The men he’d sacked mocked him. He drank what he earned, and I had to work twice as much. And when he was in drink, he didn’t control himself any more. The small things loomed large in his head. You could say he was the same; you could say he’d changed.’

Walter hit Graham and Mrs Dixon. But he never touched Elizabeth. He wanted to be someone else with her — the person he could have been — and that longing survived even the sickness that came with beer. Graham, however, became Walter’s target.

‘When things go wrong in your life,’ intoned Mrs Dixon, ‘you look for someone to blame. And you always settle on someone who’s different. Graham was different, in every way and all of them small.’

According to his teacher, Graham was clever. He asked questions that didn’t have easy answers. He shrank from the rougher games, preferring to collect things — all manner of rubbish that he thought interesting, like pebbles and bottle tops. His arms and legs were thin. When he tried to help with the shopping, it was always too heavy. It showed up the sheer difference between him and Walter. And on one fateful, drunken day Walter mocked him, just as those sober men had mocked Walter.

‘No son of mine would collect bottle tops,’ said Walter, swaying.

‘But I am your son,’ snapped Graham defiantly.

‘No you’re not.’

‘What?’

‘You heard.’

‘That was how he found out,’ said Mrs Dixon. ‘He seized hold of me, wanting to know who his father was, his real name, what had happened, why he’d never been told … endless questions … It was as though Walter’s rage — all of it — had infected him. From that day Graham refused to call Walter his father. He dropped Steadman and became Riley. And the rage I’d seen … It simply vanished.’

While Mrs Dixon was speaking, Anselm began to recover a fraction of the insight that had struck him and gone. He remembered the conversation with Elizabeth about the death of his mother, knowing that she’d been harvesting his experience. He said to Mrs Dixon, ‘What happened to Walter?’

‘We were at the top of the stairs,’ she replied, as if she were dictating a statement to the police. Her eyes were to the front, her back straight. ‘There’d been a lot of shouting. He swung out but keeled over on the step and went down, like a tree. I fell back, trying to keep my balance, so I didn’t see; I just heard him tumbling down, and then, after a second or so, a bang. When I looked, there was a large heap on the floor. I called the ambulance and they took him away but he was dead.’

‘I’m sorry,’ muttered Anselm.

‘Don’t be,’ she replied. ‘I was relieved … glad that he was gone.

Staring ahead once more, Mrs Dixon resumed what she’d planned to say: the opening up of a lie. Again, she seemed to be recording a deposition.

A week or two later a policeman knocked on the door. He knew Walter. He knew about his temper and the violence. He told me the doctor had found a long wound on the head. He examined the stairs. He took measurements of a tread, and its edge. I said nothing about the bang that I’d heard after the fall, that Graham had been downstairs, that the poker was missing. In due course, the police concluded it had been an accident. My son, however, had stopped eating. He was sick. One night, I held his hands in mine and asked if he’d seen the poker. He pulled himself free, hid behind a pillow, and said, “I’ve thrown it in the Four Lodges.” The next day he was gone. He was seventeen. I haven’t seen him since. Everyone said it was because he’d lost his dad.’

Bunhill Fields is a wonderful place, thought Anselm, wanting to flee those stairs, that hallway The Pieman must have taken shape among its shadows and blood: a name coined from other people’s contempt, an engrossment of rage and abuse, tame to Riley but towering over those whom he would terrorise. Elizabeth had walked along the same corridors, among the same shadows. Anselm felt her presence. She’d worn a delicate perfume that didn’t seem to fade. She was always very clean, in strictly tailored clothes, with sharply cut hair.

Elizabeth blamed herself for Graham’s running away for Walter’s treatment of him. And Mrs Dixon, against herself, blamed Elizabeth: not with a single word, but with a host of manners. On a cold night Elizabeth made a fire. Looking for the poker, she asked her mother where it might be.

‘Graham threw it away.’

‘Why?’

Mrs Dixon didn’t answer the question directly She let the silence do it for her. A month later Elizabeth disappeared. Everyone said it was because she’d lost her dad and her brother.

Anselm knew what had happened next. Sister Dorothy had come to the house of Mrs Steadman. Her decision to do what Elizabeth wanted had been instantaneous and heartbreaking. Mother and daughter, without saying so, had agreed to hush up a murder. You can’t do that sort of thing under the same roof.

‘I next saw my daughter a year ago,’ said Mrs Dixon, without emotion, enunciating her words. ‘She traced me through my national insurance number, because I had remarried … to a wonderful man, who would have been a wonderful father to anyone’s children.’ Mrs Dixon swallowed hard and carried on with the job in hand.

Elizabeth had learned of her heart condition, and that it was hereditary. Mrs Dixon underwent the tests with a Doctor Okoye, who pronounced her clear. Big, strapping Walter, it seemed, had been a fundamentally weak man. But that was not why Elizabeth had come.

‘She told me that Graham had built a new life,’ said Mrs Dixon, ‘but not a nice one.’

Not for the first time in his life, Anselm marvelled at the word ‘nice’, and the wonderful uses to which it was frequently put.

‘She told me that the only way to save him was to bring him to court to answer for the murder of her father. It wasn’t revenge she wanted, I knew that. She was talking about … what was right. But I refused.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if it was anyone’s fault, it wasn’t Graham’s, or Elizabeth’s, it was mine. I failed to protect him. I thought that if I stick by Walter, then maybe he’ll change back to who he’d been who he was with Elizabeth — that his anger might boil dry; that he might wake up and see Graham as … different, yes, but not a threat. I’m the one who put that poker in Graham’s hand. All I ever said to him was that Walter has tempers.’

The quietness of Bunhill Fields filled the pause. Nothing moved, not even the trees, which were so full of life. For once, it seemed strange.

‘Elizabeth came each week, trying to persuade me. I refused. Then, on the day she died, I received her last call and her last words.’

‘The time of the lie is over,’ Anselm said to himself. To this he added the final message for Inspector Cartwright, uttered seconds before: Leave it to Anselm.

‘Mrs Dixon,’ said Anselm, ‘as I’m sure you know’ — he watched her nodding, because Elizabeth had already told her —’I will have to inform the police. They will interview you. Graham will be tried for murder. You, too, may well be charged, because of your silence. Do you realise this?’

‘Yes,’ she replied, as if she were already in court.

Anselm regarded her with compassion and said, ‘Why did you change your mind?’

‘Because,’ said Mrs Dixon defiantly proudly ‘I have met my grandson, Nicholas. And I do not want his life to rest on a lie —on a false understanding of who he is and where he comes from — as Graham’s did. One day he might learn the truth about his family I do not think he would thank his mother for the story she dreamed up in its place. It is, of course, what she wanted, what she’d asked of me. I didn’t appreciate why until I saw Nicholas … He looks just like Walter.’

Anselm took Mrs Dixon’s arm, and they walked slowly like mother and son, along the lanes of Bunhill Fields. In their shared quiet, he thought of Riley’s early life, and of murder, undetected and forgotten, and what it might do to a man. And he thought of Bunyan, whose youth had been marred by four chief sins: dancing, ringing the bells of the parish church, playing tipcat and reading the history of Sir Bevis of Southampton.

6

For the fourth day in a row, George ordered a full English breakfast (with Cumberland sausage). Nancy opted for the kipper (from Craster), explaining, ‘You only live once,’ which was very true. They sat in a bay window of the Royal Guesthouse, looking at the waves trimmed with foam. Far off, daft gulls dipped and rose like kites. It would be another windy wonderful day.

The entries in George’s notebook would have told him that Nancy had withdrawn thirty-six thousand, four hundred and twenty pounds and fifty-two pence from the Riley bank account; that facing rooms had been booked in Brighton for a week (meals included); that she had bought a two-for-the-price-of-one packet of envelopes from Woolworths. However, he didn’t need to remind himself of their comical project, any more than he needed to be told of Nancy’s horror and guilt over all that Riley had done, or of her remorse for the murder of John. It was, as they say written on her face. She was not to blame, by any stretch of the imagination. And yet, on their first night, over Hereford beef with Yorkshire pudding, Nancy had said, ‘I share the fault, because I share the disgrace’ — a stinging phrase which revealed that Nancy accused herself because she’d known what her husband was like, and she’d turned away.

When breakfast was over they prepared some envelopes, put on their coats and set about the business of the day. They strolled along the esplanade towards the Palace of Fun.

‘How about that one?’ asked Nancy.

George nodded.

Coming towards them was a young girl, pushing a pram against the grain of the wind. Her knuckles were blue. Judging by the noise, the child was not happy.

‘Excuse me,’ said George, ‘we represent a secret society whose object is the benefit of humanity.’

The girl’s eyes flicked from George to Nancy and back to George again. She said, ‘Sorry, I don’t need anything.’

‘I’m afraid the steering committee does not agree,’ said George severely ‘Here’s a thousand pounds.’

Nancy pulled an envelope from her handbag, and held it out. The young mother stared, as if it were a warrant from the bailiff.

‘The only condition is this,’ said George, suddenly kind, ‘under no circumstances are you to spend it wisely. We wish you a very good day’

And with that, the delegates crossed the main road, heading towards the forecourt of Brighton Pier. Near the entrance, a Salvation Army brass band was playing carols. The cornets and trombones glittered in a semi-circle, pointing down slightly Nancy approached them respectfully walking round the arc of bonnets, caps and polished shoes.

‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ … the words rode on the back of the hymn, melancholy and joyful.

George mumbled the rest of the verse, gazing at the turrets of a dome and two flags fluttering against a clean blue sky Suddenly Nancy was at his side. Ceremonially they walked onto the long quay as if it were a nave, as though the world itself were a cathedral of unutterable magnificence.

George’s spirit soared higher and higher with the brazen gulls. There were no clouds, no shadows, just the harsh seaside light. The wind carried the smell of sand and bladderwrack, shells and salt.

‘Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.’ Nancy handed out ten-pound notes as they walked along, as if they were flyers for Unimaginable Warehouse Bargains. People stopped and stared. An old woman in black with bowed legs waddled towards them, head down like a bull, her hair harnessed by a net.

‘Excuse me,’ said George, ‘here’s five hundred pounds for your trouble.’

‘Are you mad?’ she replied, straining to get her neck upright.

‘I was, but am no more.’

She glanced around warily ‘Is this Candid Camera?’

‘Indeed not, madam,’ said George, like a magician. ‘This is real life.’

‘Thank you, but no.’ Her head went down and off she went, burrowing through the wind to the town.

At his side Nancy was laughing. She pulled off her yellow hat with its black spots, and forced a hand through her hair. Breathing deeply she closed her eyes and threw back her head. Her nose was bright red at the end.

‘Let it be known,’ cried George, raising his arms like Charlton Heston, ‘that for one week a kind of justice ruled on Brighton Pier.’

‘Joyful all ye nations rise, join the triumph of the skies’ … the sound was fading. As they walked on distributing their leaflets, George glanced over his shoulder: he could still see the caps, the bonnets and the glitter of instruments.

‘… Glory to the new-born King.’

In the Palace of Fun, Nancy bought tickets for the dodgem cars. The till was wrapped in tinsel and a Christmas tree was chained to a bracket. A girl in the booth wore a Santa hat and she called the management when George gave her two hundred pounds. The police turned up and particulars were taken. When everyone in a suit or uniform was happy — actually not so happy — George and Nancy climbed into a rather small Rolls-Royce. With a crackling of sparks, the music started and they were off.

Driving always made George thoughtful, and present circumstances proved no exception. Nancy had pushed her husband into Limehouse Cut; George had witnessed the fall, and made a note of the details that night on the train (first class). With a glass of champagne in one hand, and a pen in the other, Nancy added an important postscript to explain that Riley’s point of entry had been adjacent to a boat, moored by the canal wall. George, however, was still troubled on his friend’s account: what would she do when all the money was gone?

‘Where will you go, Nancy when this is all over?’ he asked.

‘I haven’t a clue.’ Her hands were folded on her bag and her knees were squashed against the dashboard. ‘What about you?’

‘No idea,’ said George. He turned to Nancy wanting to thank her for their time together, for this brief, shining …

George thwacked a yellow Lamborghini. It was his fault. He hadn’t been looking. The jolt was so severe that stars twinkled behind his eyes. When he could see straight, he saw a police officer — the same one as last time — talking to his radio and summoning George with a gloved hand. Thinking the world had turned upside down (leaving aside his and Nancy’s efforts in this regard), he drove to the rubber kerb. Ten minutes later they were taken in a squad car to the station. George was left in the waiting room and Nancy was taken to an office with a panel of frosted glass in the door.

Twenty minutes later George and Nancy had been released. For a long time Nancy did not speak.

‘George,’ she said evenly ‘when they checked us out for giving money away my name caused a stir on the computer. ‘She sat down on the low wall of someone’s garden. ‘I was reported missing two days ago, and yesterday Inspector Cartwright charged Riley with the murder of his stepfather. Without being asked, he confessed to the murder of your son and to everything that happened at Quilling Road. He’ll be going to prison for a long time.’

George felt as though he were back in the Roller, seeing stars; that the world must right itself at any moment. He lowered himself onto the wall and took his friend by the hand.

‘What will you do, Nancy?’

With her hat pulled down over her ears, she looked resolved. ‘I’ve two days left in Brighton,’ she said, as if doing her sums. ‘I’ve got ten thousand pounds in my pocket. And I’ve got agreeable company for the duration. What else could a girl want?’

George studied her face, its softness.

And when my time’s up and I’m broke,’ she said, gazing at George as if it might be wrong, as if he might never understand, ‘I’ll go back to Riley.’

Side by side, they walked into the wind and the sun, heading back towards the band, with the music growing stronger.

‘Someone has to love him,’ she said simply.

7

Nick came to Larkwood not so much because Roddy had urged it upon him, but because it was fitting. He’d begun a kind of journey with Father Anselm, and now it was over; there were no more secrets. It was the right time to say goodbye.

‘Because I’m a monk,’ said Father Anselm, wrapped in a long woollen cloak, ‘I am a creature of ritual. Symbols help me understand things.’ They were sitting on a bench of dressed stone — a chunk of the medieval abbey It faced the Lark and a row of empty plant pots. ‘Your mother and I sat here at the outset of her endeavour,’ he continued. ‘Perhaps it’s not a bad place to examine where it ends.’

A week ago, Nick had felt irritated at his father’s desire to protect, the energy spent on leaving his son unscathed. He’d found it patronising. Nick was a grown man, a doctor. He’d swum with cane toads. But now he knew that Walter Steadman had been his grandfather, killed by a boy who’d grown to kill as a man and who, for good measure, was Nick’s half-uncle. Roddy had come round to explain these niceties because, following Riley’s confession, a trial became inevitable and Nick would soon find out — if not from him, or his father, then the national press, who would probably be competing with one another for the most punchy by-line to describe his mother. It transpired that Roddy had known of Elizabeth’s short time on the street, but no more. He’d learned the rest from Father Anselm.

After Roddy had tumbled into a taxi, Nick finally appreciated his father’s bullish resistance. Even after Elizabeth’s death, Charles had clung on to a slender hope: that Father Anselm would fail; that Mrs Dixon would enjoy a long and private retirement. The matter of Walter Steadman had been the issue upon which Nick’s parents had been most divided. And Nick wholly endorsed his father’s reading of the compass: what was the point in bringing it out into the open? Why had she set up this dreadful, public annihilation of the living? For whose benefit? Only that of the dead. Nick wanted to be protected, frankly and left unscathed. He had said all this to Father Anselm on the way to the bench of dressed stone. Worm out, he slumped down, arms on his thighs. He looked ahead at the river and the teetering plant pots.

‘Your mother ran away from a house in which her father had been murdered,’ said Father Anselm steadily ‘She didn’t admire the man, although he’d made a claim upon her affection. That must have been difficult for her: to see his brutality, and his gentleness; to wonder how both could rise from the same soil; to try and give credit for one while condemning the other. She was, of course, just a child. And it was as a child that she turned her back on the gravest offence known to the criminal law. She’d made an unspoken agreement with her mother to remain silent, as though it were a payment she owed to her abused sibling. Elizabeth could do this only by wiping out her past — every memory, every smell, every taste, every sound — and by creating a new history of imagined sensations. And she succeeded. She launched a career, she married and she had a child. But then the half-brother she’d protected appeared in this wonderful universe of her own making.’

The monk reached down and picked up some twigs. He snapped them, while he thought himself into this other livid experience.

‘When Riley instructed your mother to represent him, he did so, in the first place, to silence George. But there was more to it than that. He wanted to destroy an achievement that, to him, must have been an unbearable sight. Since their last meeting, she had changed beyond recognition; while he, the other runaway could only look upon the same squalid reflection. So it’s worth pausing to consider what Riley now demanded from your mother. In the first place, he was holding up, like a mirror, her silence over Walter’s murder. He was saying, “Look well, look hard: your position as an officer of the court is a sham, it always has been; and your likeness is just as soiled as mine.” And nowhere could that have been acutely felt than when Elizabeth was obliged to cross-examine Anji, staring — as she must have been — at the unhappy face of her past.’

Father Anselm looked to Nick, inviting him to speak, but his mind had drained of everything save what he now heard. It was of course a fancy but there was something in the monk’s manner, his choice of words, that seemed to speak truly of Elizabeth, a mother who’d wanted to speak to her son.

‘Now, what did Elizabeth do in that terrible situation?’ Father Anselm reached for more twigs. ‘She surrendered. But why? This woman had given her life to the law, she believed in due process. How could she suffer his winning, and the defeat of everything she had valued? That is the most taxing question. I think I know the answer.

‘Riley asked for your mother, believing this: She helped me once; she’ll help me again. That was a huge error of judgement. Elizabeth had changed in more ways than he could imagine. Her attachment to the law was so great that I think she would have seized the opportunity to expose the facts of her life, regardless of the personal cost. But she didn’t. What Riley didn’t know, and this is what saved him, was that Elizabeth now had a son. Nick, I think she cooperated with Riley for you. To protect you. To leave you unscathed. To keep intact the world she’d created for you with Charles.’

Nick didn’t like Father Anselm using the words of his own complaint, but the monk did so kindly and tentatively as if he were passing them back across the counter. Nick looked to the river and a strange mist rising on the other side, stretched thin like a silver table. In a kind of daze, he listened to Father Anselm’s exposition.

The price paid by Elizabeth was high, he said reluctantly By continuing the case, she broke the rules of her profession. By asking him to cross-examine George, she hoped, nonetheless, to lose the trial. Even that went awry because, unfortunately the stooge had been lucky. Throughout the following years, nothing unsettled Elizabeth’s resolve to remain silent — not the letter from Mrs Bradshaw, not the death of that poor woman’s son. The strong spirit of her childhood had returned. And being so resolved, she lost her faith in the law —just as long before she’d lost faith in her family.

‘But then,’ said Father Anselm, ‘something of capital importance happened. Your mother learned that her days were counted — a moment which, I am sure, has a stillness all of its own. And in that quiet she recognised that a great lie had been allowed to take root, and that unless she acted, it would define her life. The problem, of course, was that it was too late. Your mother had already made her choice. She’d done Riley’s bidding. And it is at this stage, I think, that Elizabeth’s story becomes what my father used to call a corker. She decided to alter the past by changing how everything would end.’

The monk was smiling encouragement. He stood up and with a tilt of the head suggested a walk. They quietly followed the Lark and crossed a small footbridge. On the other side, they entered a field that was hard underfoot. Without a path, they tracked a furrow towards the table of mist.

As you know,’ said Father Anselm, ‘your mother devised two schemes. The first was for George: to let him take away the good character of the man responsible for the death of his son. She went to extraordinary lengths to succeed because she hoped to restore his self-worth. But a great part of her energy, I am sure, arose from a blinding desire to see Riley convicted of any offence of this kind, however trivial in the eyes of the courts; to have him proved a pimp. That outcome was denied her. She failed.

‘The second scheme was for herself: to bring Riley to court for a murder whose evidence she had helped to suppress. To succeed, Elizabeth had to convince her mother to reveal what she knew to the police. She failed again.’

They had reached the centre of the field and stopped. The mist was just above head height, rolling within itself.

‘It might reasonably be said,’ observed Father Anselm wryly ‘that I was the contingency plan. And I too failed, comprehensively’ He fixed Nick with an enquiring, kindly gaze.

‘Who persuaded my grandmother to speak?’ asked Nick. Whether he liked it or not, he felt himself a part of the narrative; as if it were his proper concern.

‘You did,’ said Father Anselm, quietly fervent. ‘She didn’t want you to live a lie — as she had done; as her children had. For no one knew better than your grandmother the cost of a lie.’

The monk started walking aimlessly his hands moving with suppressed animation.

‘It was only when I met Mrs Dixon that I understood the importance of what Elizabeth had set out to do,’ he said. ‘Once she’d decided to reclaim her past, the only available means was the legal system that she’d abandoned. So through each of these schemes, she was hoping to restore justice itself. She saw afresh — I’m sure of it — that the rule of law matters, that our attempts to punish matter, that to show mercy however clumsily matters.’ Father Anselm turned to Nick, wrapping his cloak around his body A man had been killed — your grandfather. Brute or not, his life had been taken from him. The irony is that he was a man ready to die at the drop of a hat. But that’s of no consequence: a murder is a murder — be it Walter’s or John’s. To bring this truth to light was your mother’s endeavour. She succeeded — but not through her own efforts.’ He paused to reflect. ‘Nick, if I can say anything to you that I’m sure I’ll stand by tomorrow morning, it’s this: isn’t it fitting that you have achieved this on her behalf … and not some bumbling oaf like me?’

Nick agreed, reluctantly smiling.

And who better to help your father understand,’ continued the monk, ‘than the son he sought to protect?’

The table of mist had spread across the valley It caught the sunlight, bringing it within arm’s reach. Walking beneath it, they passed the bench where Elizabeth had given Father Anselm the key. Slowly they followed the track to the plum trees and her yellow car.

‘Can I ask a favour?’ asked Nick.

‘Of course.’

‘What’s the secret of the relief of Mafeking?’

‘After “the Boers were at the gates”,’ said the monk, ‘the story changes all the time. I’m not sure even Sylvester knows, not any more. He makes it up as he goes along’

When Nick was in the car and the engine was running, Father Anselm knocked on the window Diffidently he said, ‘Did you ever look inside the hole where your mother kept the key?’

Nick had only ever examined the outer cut pages.

‘Have a peep when you get home,’ said the monk. ‘It tells you the route your mother tried to follow’

When Nick got back to St John’s Wood he went to the Green Room and opened The Following of Christ. He hadn’t noticed before, but the incisions had created a window around a quotation:

The humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God, than the deepest searches after science.

Nick closed the book. He didn’t know about God — or science any more — but he was convinced, with gratitude and joy that his mother had known herself intimately that she must have found her heart’s desire.

8

It was completely by chance that Nancy spotted the monk’s entry in the notebook. They were in the Snug Room at the end of a busy day. Having put the remaining five thousand pounds into ten envelopes, she glanced at George, who, true to his routine, was refreshing his memory. Nancy picked out: ‘If you meet this gentleman, please contact …’ It was like one of those tags put on a family pet. Nancy smarted at the condescension, but quickly discovered that she couldn’t come up with a better alternative. When George excused himself to answer a call of nature, Nancy noted the number. And when he came back, she retired to her room, ostensibly worn out by the rigours of the day Apprehensively Nancy rang the monastery and a sort of hell broke loose. The monk on the switchboard lost his marbles, another one said, ‘Hang on,’ and then a fellow called Father Anselm turned up panting. He took Nancy’s number, saying he’d contact Mrs Bradshaw, but rang back in a tizzy saying there was no answer. He said he’d go here, there and everywhere, on a train or in a car, and Nancy being a decisive woman, told him to calm down and stay put. ‘We have our own steam,’ she said. ‘When we’ve completed our business, I shall bring him to your premises.’

Nancy went to bed quite sure that something good was about to happen. At breakfast, she had another kipper, but said nothing of her intimations. Her time, and that of George, was given over to hearty meals, long walks and senseless giving.

On the morning of the seventh day using funds set aside for the purpose, Nancy paid the bill. She rang Inspector Cartwright for a chat, and then, by train and cab, and with George at her side, she went deep into the Suffolk fields.

The monastery was like something from a fairy tale. The roofs were higgledy-piggledy with russet tiles and slate tiles. There were pink walls, stone walls and brick walls. It seemed as if the ancient builders had made it up as they went along. Nancy was overwhelmed by the sight of the place … because it was holy. So she asked the driver to pull over. ‘Let’s say goodbye here, George,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to go any closer.’

They stood awkwardly on the path, and she appraised her friend, with his coat over one arm, and his small blazer all buttoned up. The blue and yellow tie — and she’d told him — was too bold.

‘Thank you,’ she said cheerily ‘for a wonderful week by the seaside.’

He took her hand and kissed it. ‘I shall never forget it.’

Uncle Bertie had always said, don’t hang around saying ta-ta. Get it over and done with. So Nancy urged him on, with a shove. It was a painful sight, looking at his back, and those white cuffs peeping out of the sleeves, for Nancy knew that this would be the last she’d ever see of George Bradshaw.

Nancy asked the man in the taxi to cut the engine, just for a moment. She’d seen a wooden sign for the information of visitors.

Following the arrow took her closer to the monastery, but the temptation was too strong. Behind a broken gate Nancy saw the wildest herb garden she’d ever seen. She was so entranced by the mess, by its abundance, that she didn’t hear the monk’s approach. She only heard his voice.

‘Hello, Nancy’ he said. ‘We’ve met once before, many years ago — in my old calling. I represented your husband.’

Nancy wasn’t quite sure what to say. But you have to be honest with a monk, so she said, ‘Well … no offence, but you didn’t do him any favours.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ he replied, moving beside her. He, too, looked at the tangled herbs. ‘But this time — if he wants — I will.’ He became shy but forceful. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

Glancing at the taxi, and getting itchy feet, Nancy said, ‘When it’s all over’ — her heart began to run, and her face became warm; she’d turned all serious — ‘if I stick by my man … will God turn him away?’

The monk seemed mildly stunned, like Uncle Bertie when he checked the final results against his betting card. He reached for a pair of glasses and, thinking better of it, put them back.

‘Surely I can’t be less constant than God?’ she persisted.

‘No, you can’t,’ he said. He was staring at her, thinking through his own answer.

Nancy was surprised: she hadn’t expected to give a monk some guidance on his own turf. I mean, she thought, it’s all fairly obvious, isn’t it? But then again … Babycham had said, ‘He’s not worth it,’ and her dad had said, ‘There has to be give and take, and he doesn’t give.’ They were both right. But no one seemed to understand. It wasn’t about her gaining or him deserving.

Nancy wished the monk a very merry Christmas and clambered into the taxi.

‘Wormwood Scrubs,’ she said, leaning forward.

The driver frowned his disbelief. ‘The prison … in London?’

‘Yes,’ said Nancy gaily ‘my husband’s a guest on D-wing.’

‘It’ll cost you a bomb … it’s hours away.

‘I’ve got my problems,’ said Nancy with a sigh, ‘but money isn’t one of them.’

They pulled out of the monastery and Nancy’s chauffeur began to chat, just like Cindy at the hairdresser’s. Nancy was a ‘somebody’, of course. She was the wife of a villain. He wanted to know what he’d done, but was too scared to ask outright. But he’d get there, like Cindy long before they got to London.

According to Inspector Cartwright, Riley had already received one visitor: a lieutenant-colonel in the Salvation Army.

9

George didn’t look back after leaving Nancy He followed the path towards Larkwood with a growing sense of loneliness and loss. It was blinding, for he trudged on, losing sight of his surroundings, save for the small stones underfoot. Birds whistled in the trees that were banked tight against the verge.

When George looked up, he saw a woman coming towards him. At first he didn’t recognise her because she was out of place. A monastery was not her normal stamping ground, although, that said, The Sound of Music was her favourite film. He became confused in a terrible way a way that had come with the beating to his head. For there were times, now, when he doubted what he experienced, when he tramped through a world that he didn’t fully understand. Such is the importance of memory, and the things it saves; for, as George well knew, it’s only by remembering the lot that we can hope to grasp the lot. And when you cannot grasp the lot, you become very circumspect indeed. But Emily was there, right in front of him, advancing along the same imaginary line as if they were on the top corridor of the Bonnington. Father Anselm appeared behind her … he ran past him, asking of Nancy and George mumbled something, keeping his eyes on this apparition from his past that was crying.

In the same drunken spirit of doubting — and of terror that someone would shortly explain what was really happening — he said goodbye to a parade of monks as if he were the Pope. The boot of Emily’s car was open … robed figures carried a crate of apples, two bottles of plum brandy and some preserved pears. He was mumbling to himself while someone took his arm by the elbow The passenger door banged shut. He opened the window as if he needed the air to breathe. A small crowd smiled and waved and Emily was at his side unable to get the key into the ignition. Someone did it for her, and she laughed into a handkerchief. A long corridor of oak trees passed slowly as if the car were standing still. The lane opened out onto gentle hills with a scattering of houses, and the place that had given him shelter was gone.

‘Emily’ said George, very sure of himself now, ‘are we going home?’

‘Yes.’

He looked at the hedgerows, thinking of the other man he’d seen in Mitcham. ‘I tried to come back, once.

‘I know,’ said Emily She understood. ‘No one has ever taken your place. Peter was nothing more than a friend. He was to me what Nancy was to you. And God knows, George, we have needed friends, if only to bring us back together.’

Emily explained that the house would look very different, that it was new and clean. The neighbours hadn’t changed but someone round the corner had bought a dog that they let loose at night.

‘Why do you want me back?’ asked George, pulling at the sleeves of his blazer.

‘Because I found you again, in your notebooks,’ she replied, reaching for the gear stick, but not changing gear. ‘I don’t know how I could have ever let you go. Maybe I lost sight of the right and left of things, the front and back, the top and bottom … everything that brought us together. I didn’t only find you, George. I found myself.’

George slept — not the sleep of exhaustion through labour, or the fatigue of strong emotion. A great weariness had taken hold of him, as though a whole life had ended. He woke somewhere in London, unsure again of his senses until the car parked outside the home he’d left so many years ago. It was very dark.

‘Can we start again?’ asked Emily her voice heavy with hope.

‘No, I don’t think so.’

They both looked through the windscreen at the antics of a stray dog. George had strong views on dogs — especially those that barked.

‘Can we carry on from where we left off?’

‘That makes a lot of sense,’ said George. ‘Of course, I can’t remember what’s happened in between.’ He took her hand. ‘It’ll be as though nothing ever happened.’

That, of course, wasn’t true. It was a joke to bridge the distance between honesty and expectation. Emily unlocked the front door and George came home, as he’d gone, without any luggage. What did he have to show for it? Nothing you could put your finger on, he thought merrily except apples, plum brandy and some pears in ajar.

10

A long-forgotten Gilbertine once had the wild notion that Larkwood’s dead should be broken up by aspen roots. The proposal had been enthusiastically endorsed without a mole’s breath being spent on the implied logistics: the need to dig through the roots for each internment. But perseverance with the shovel won out. And so, years later, white wooden crosses lay sprinkled between the slim trunks, as if they’d grown with the dandelions. A railway sleeper had been sunk into a facing bank for the comfort of visitors. Anselm and the Prior sat in the middle, wrapped in their cloaks.

‘When I look at everyone involved in this case,’ said Anselm, ‘Mrs Dixon, Walter Steadman, Elizabeth, George, Nancy me … we’re all, in varying degrees, responsible for what happened; but in varying degrees were not to blame.’

‘You left out Mr Riley’

The omission had not been deliberate, which, thought Anselm, was telling. It showed that Anselm was undecided on something of great importance. Inspector Cartwright had, with a marginal lapse of propriety, shown the text of Riley’s interview to Anselm. There were hardly any questions. He just spoke into the tape machine, sometimes so fast that the transcribing typist couldn’t catch the words. Each page contained multiple ellipses. It was (in their joint experience) a unique mixture of honesty, insight, right thinking and, fundamentally a defining self-regard. At the end, when he’d recounted all he’d done, and how and (most strangely of all) why he said to the officers at the table, ‘Look, I’m crying.’ With a hand he’d touched his face as if it belonged to someone else. Inspector Cartwright said he kept saying it, looking around the room. It was as though he were announcing an achievement.

‘The passages that unsettled me most,’ confided Anselm, ‘were those where he seized the blame. Repeatedly he said he’d made his choices, that no one had twisted his arm, that he was his own man. It read like vanity or a kind of vicious pride; as though he was holding on to what he could of himself, however ghastly it might be. And yet, in one place — almost inaudibly I assume, because the typist had put questions marks on either side — he seems to have said, “I never had a chance.” He strangled his own mitigation before it could see the light of day’ Anselm wrapped his cloak tighter, hugging his knees. ‘Was he free, even though he claimed his actions for his own? Can you be responsible if you’re so injured in the mind? I’m filled with dread at the thought that today’s capacity to choose might already be forfeit to yesterday’s misfortune.’

‘Well, it might be,’ said the Prior simply ‘But it might not. When I first went into the confessional, I believed that all evil, at root, was a wound and never a choice — and I still hold on to that, when I can. But I’ve met charming people who tell me they’ve done unconscionable things, quite freely without the benefit of yesterday’s misfortune. And I believe them. The wounded and the free: they both break windows. But there’s one narrow piece of ground upon which they have an equal footing. It might seem unfair, but forgiveness is available to each — not because they can prove they deserve it, but because they can both say sorry. I used to think it scandalous that each could be reprieved on the same basis, just as easily when the deserts of one so outweighed the other.’

‘What changed your mind?’

The Prior’s eyes twinkled. A little knowledge of myself.’ He stood up and brushed the back of his cloak. As for Mr Riley who knows where he stands? We can’t discern who’s truly free, and who isn’t, or where the difference might lie. We have to muddle along, all of us, remembering, I think, that in the end, the giving of mercy is not our lot.’

Resolutely Father Andrew followed the track away from the aspen trees towards Larkwood. He had a meeting organised by Cyril. Gazing at graves, he’d said, was an excellent means of preparation.

The winter sun was low and clouds were moving over St Leonard’s Field. The air was charged with precipitation, and the light curiously pink.

The court system, thought Anselm, would handle the question of Riley’s intentions and deserts with bracing clarity. He would receive censure, a certain amount of sympathy and a lengthy custodial sentence, which, on reflection, would be merciful to Nancy But despite his many crimes, Anselm felt pity for Graham Riley He could not easily dismiss the image of a boy collecting coloured stones and bottle tops; of such a boy casting a poker into a lake that it might never be seen again. In a sense, he thought, Elizabeth had successfully recreated herself; and so had George. They’d run away and started again. But Riley had failed hopelessly He’d never left Dagenham. The courts could no longer punish him. It would just be window-dressing, however severe. He was, in several disquieting respects, beyond the reach of the law But not Nancy’s …

That ruined instrument, Elizabeth had said of him. She, too, had finally settled on pity.

Anselm looked up, his attention caught by a small, roundish figure hurrying along the track. He wore a brown overcoat with the collar up and a red woolly hat with a bobble on top.

‘Frank Wyecliffe,’ muttered Anselm, astonished.

The solicitor bowed, shook hands, looked around warily and sat on the railway sleeper. He wanted to raise a delicate matter, he said. He’d asked for Anselm and a monk had given him faultless directions to the graveyard, which, given the errand in hand, was a most appropriate location. He sat blinking at the aspen trees.

‘So … is this how you spend your free time these days?’

‘Some, but not all,’ replied Anselm.

‘Very nice.’

Mr Wyecliffe rubbed his hands, blowing into them. His head had almost vanished below the high collar. He said, ‘Our mutual friend Inspector Cartwright is of the opinion that my old client, Mr Riley could not have devised his harebrained scheme without contemporaneous informed assistance. She thinks it came from me. But I don’t give that kind of help — not on legal aid … ‘He glanced over the collar. ‘That’s a joke … all right?’

‘Yes,’ replied Anselm.

‘I could do without another complaint to the Law Society,’ he said, wincing at the cold. ‘Would you explain to the good Inspector that I’m not responsible for the workings of Riley’s mind? That I limit myself to its effects?’

‘Of course.’ Anselm considered the huddled figure with warmth and something like admiration. For thirty years, Frank Wyecliffe had represented Graham Riley’s interests — from conveyancing to homicide; he was that most adroit of guides: a scout in the maze of the law If there were a turning he could take to his client’s advantage, he’d take it, with a bow He was a necessary man, a dedicated man; a good man, though, inevitably such work leaves its mark.

‘Frank …’ Anselm began to smile. At last, he’d worked something out. ‘Did you post letters to me and Inspector Cartwright on Elizabeth’s behalf?’

The hairy head appeared above the collar again. The narrow eyes were asking if this matter was on the record or off. ‘Consider this a species of confession,’ he said, to cover both alternatives.

It transpired that Elizabeth had come to Cheapside not long after she’d visited Larkwood for the last time. Just as Anselm had been entrusted with a key so Mr Wyecliffe had been given two letters. They’d each been asked to act in the event of her death. They’d both of them delayed (in Mr Wyecliffe’s case, because he’d lost them in his office. It was the phone call from Nick that had him on his hands and knees).

Anselm could not suppress a smile. There can be a grim humour among lawyers. And he saw wit in Elizabeth’s allocation of duties:

‘You ought to know,’ he said, ‘that you posted to me the means by which your client now stands charged with murder —for that was how I met Mrs Dixon. And if Elizabeth hadn’t made a mistake about the law, you’d have posted to Inspector Cartwright the evidence to convict him of living off immoral earnings.’

Mr Wyecliffe blinked at the aspens, and said, ‘I wonder what the Law Society would make of that one?’

‘Don’t worry, Frank,’ said Anselm. ‘We’re all in the same boat. She gave everyone a part to play depending on what they’d done: me, George, you, even Inspector Cartwright. We were all meant to get what we deserved. Especially your client.’

Mr Wyecliffe hurried back along the track, a figure so very different to the Prior, and perhaps, in his own way just as important.

The branches trembled and snow began to fall. Instantly the whole valley of the Lark became speckled. The greens of winter began to fade and the woods turned white. There was so much activity and so much silence. Pensively Anselm thought, What will grow in the space I leave behind? Something for the delight of others, or pain? He didn’t know; and, he felt, he ought to. ‘Now is the time to decide,’ he said out loud. On that note of homage to Elizabeth, he rose and sought refuge in the small tool-shed propped against the enclosure wall. As he rattled free the door, a yellow butterfly skipped past him and left the grove. It vanished as quickly as it had appeared.