The Chain Garden

by Jane Jackson

  Below the range, inside one end of the polished brass fender, a huge black kettle waited for space on the stove. Fire irons and a coalscuttle stood at the other end. Hauled up to the ceiling on its rope and pulley, a slatted wood clothes airer was today bare of laundry.

  Though similar in size and content the manse kitchen bore little resemblance to this room. The difference was one of atmosphere. Edwin had noticed it the first day he came and on every visit since. Here he felt drawn in, welcome. But at the place supposed to be his home he felt like an interloper.

  At least he had his study, a place of privacy and quiet in which to read, write, and prepare his sermons, or to talk to villagers who sought comfort or advice. Here, as on most farms, all the paperwork was done at the kitchen table.

  On the mantelshelf above the range the space behind the clock was stuffed with letters. Between numerous ornaments farm bills, receipts and accounts were speared onto metal spikes with round wooden bases.

  Norman returned from the dairy carrying a brown stone flagon. He looked past Edwin who heard a door open behind him.

  ‘Here’s Matthew and Oliver.’

  Rising, Edwin turned to shake the calloused hands of two stocky young men whose suit jackets strained across shoulders bulky from hard physical work. Beneath hair combed flat their sunburned faces were freshly shaved. Both nodded and murmured a greeting.

  Norman removed the flagon’s stopper. As he poured the cloudy liquid into glass tankards Edwin smelled the sharp tang of apples. On his first visit to the farm, Edwin had found the apple juice so tasty and refreshing that he had accepted a second glassful. Being Methodists the Angoves were staunchly teetotal. Condemning wines and spirits as the devil’s brew they claimed what emerged from their apple press was simply apple juice.

  Edwin was uncertain if this was genuine naivety. But weighing his responsibility as a guest to accept with thanks whatever he was offered, against the risk of slurred speech and a pounding headache, he was careful now to accept only one glass. This he sipped slowly over the course of the meal.

  ‘Right,’ Lucy announced. ‘Dinner’s nearly ready, so I’ll take you up and you can drop your bag.’

  The room was furnished with flowered wallpaper, a big brass bed with a feather mattress covered by a blue counterpane, rag rugs on a wooden floor polished with lavender wax that faintly scented the air, and a large oak wardrobe. There was clean water in the tall china jug, a towel next to it, and a small vase of flowers on the bedside table next to the oil lamp.

  ‘Don’t be long now. Look like you could do with a good meal, you do.’

  Recognising concern in her sharp eyes Edwin smiled. ‘The walk has certainly given me an appetite. I’ll be down again in a few minutes.’

  Lucy bustled out, closing the door behind her.

  After rinsing his face and hands and combing his hair Edwin returned, much refreshed, to the kitchen table. He said a short prayer of thanks. Then Norman carved thick tender slices from the roast leg of lamb while Lucy passed round dishes of roast potatoes, peas and carrots, and jugs of gravy and mint sauce.

  While Matthew and Oliver focused on their heaped plates, Norman, a chapel Steward and thus responsible for the fabric of the building, told Edwin of the rot discovered in the windows.

  ‘We can’t leave it another year,’ he said between mouthfuls. ‘The glass will fall out. All they windows should be repainted before the bad weather set in, and the woodwork do need to be done before they can start painting. I got a couple of estimates for the carpentry and the painting. I’ll give them to you before you go.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Edwin was grateful. Norman’s forethought meant all he had to do was pass the estimates on to his circuit superintendent. As soon as financial consent had been given work could begin.

  ‘Sad about Mrs Damerel going like that,’ Lucy remarked. ‘Must have been some awful shock for Grace, dear of her. She’s a lovely girl.’

  Startled to hear Grace’s name mentioned when he was trying so hard to avoid thinking about her, Edwin swallowed convulsively and choked on a piece of potato.

  ‘All right, are you, Reverend?’ Lucy enquired, her forehead puckering in anxiety.

  He nodded. ‘Fine,’ he croaked. ‘Wrong way…’ He patted his chest, his face hot with embarrassment, eyes watering. ‘…apologize.’ Reaching for his tankard he sipped the apple juice.

  ‘You got them muddled, mother,’ Oliver looked up from his plate. ‘‘Tis Zoe got the looks.’

  ‘Looks aren’t everything, my lad,’ Lucy replied. ‘You’d do well to remember that. Zoe might be pretty as a picture, and we all know she got a lovely voice. But she isn’t what you’d call a giving girl. Grace now, she got a heart as big as a rain barrel. I just wish she could find a man to love her like she deserve.’

  No. Edwin’s instant and violent rejection of the very thought of anyone else loving Grace appalled him. He felt shaken and ashamed. His breathing once more under control, his appetite completely gone, he put his knife and fork together, fervently hoping his flushed and sweating face would be attributed to his coughing fit.

  ‘Now, Reverend,’ Lucy beamed. ‘What about some raspberry tart? Fresh out of the garden this morning they were. Here, Norm, pass Mr Philpotts the cream.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Forcing a smile, Edwin accepted the dish and picked up his spoon.

  The next few hours were a blend of clarity and confusion. During the walk to the chapel and the opening hymns, his thoughts strayed continually to Grace.

  With two services to preside over and aware that many in the congregation would attend both, he had planned his sermon to last only twenty minutes. Afterwards he was wryly amused to find his brevity praised by some but scorned by others who didn’t consider a preacher had done a proper job unless they had been harangued for at least an hour. But thundering scolds and dire warnings were not his style. God knew he had more guilt on his soul than any of those present.

  As parents and grandparents headed home to enjoy an hour without youngsters underfoot, Edwin joined the children in the Sunday school. Listening to Miss Butteridge, the sour-faced elderly teacher droning on, he sympathised with the children’s boredom-induced fidgeting.

  When Grace taught at Sunday school her audience was rapt and silent. She had a way of telling bible stories that brought them to vivid life. She also divided the session with short break and, if the weather allowed, sent the children outside. Giving the boys a ball to burn off their excess energy, she chatted to the girls.

  His compliments on her insight and understanding had brought a fiery blush to her face. But she had refused the praise, explaining that anyone with younger brothers knew they could not sit still or attend to anything for longer than twenty minutes.

  Her rapport with children made a mockery of Miss Butteridge’s stern efforts. She would make a wonderful mother. Clenching his fists he struggled for objectivity. He had forfeited any right to happiness. He must think only of Grace’s well being.

  Perhaps she could extend her teaching. Maybe join the staff at the village school? He would suggest it when next they met. It would give him a reason to talk to her: to help her find purpose and a new direction for her life.

  By the time he got back to the farm Norman, Matthew and Oliver were doing the afternoon milking while Lucy laid out a spread of bread and butter, cold meat and pickles, saffron cake, scones with home made strawberry jam and thick clotted cream, and cups of strong tea.

  Edwin walked in the garden rehearsing his next sermon while the men washed in the scullery before going upstairs to change once more into their Sunday best. Then after tea everyone returned to chapel for the evening service.

  Later that night as Edwin prepared for bed he wondered what to do about Miss Butteridge. After Sunday School she had complained to him about the children. He had ventured that adding a little fun might make them more attentive. Retorting that Reverend Peters would never have suggested such a thing she stalked away, her mind as tightly closed as h
er thin mouth.

  He wondered if umbrage might keep her from the evening service. But when he entered from the vestry she had been sitting in her usual place and glared at him, radiating disapproval, from the opening hymn until the final prayer.

  Rinsing his hands he reached for the towel. As he dried himself, picturing the children’s faces, another child’s image filled his mind: a brown-skinned child with huge dark eyes and blue-black hair.

  He sank onto the bed engulfed by sickening guilt as, yet again, the questions hammered relentlessly. Why hadn’t he realised? How could he not have seen? Was there something he could have done? Could he have stopped it? Had others known? But if they had then surely they would have said something? Unless they believed he was aware and had chosen not to see.

  He buried his face in the towel, lashed by crucifying self-reproach.

  Like so many of the mission children, Akhil had been found on the street: a bundle of rags, starving, filthy, and covered in sores. Most children reacted to food and care with a wary greed that gradually evolved into trust. But any attempt to touch Akhil had met with thrashing feet and fists and strange inarticulate grunts. When at last a sobbing but clean Akhil was wrapped in a towel, Edwin and his two helpers were soaked to the skin.

  Lewis had left them to it. Overworked and always busy he preferred to deal with more amenable children who showed gratitude for their good fortune. So the task of trying to make Akhil understand he was safe had fallen to Edwin.

  Under the mission’s regime of wholesome food, regular baths, medical care and days structured around basic schooling and physical exercise, Akhil had gradually revealed an intelligence that in an English ten-year-old would have been praiseworthy. In an abandoned deaf-mute street child it was amazing.

  Despite being debilitated by the heat, humidity and intermittent fever, Edwin’s work with the orphans and other outcasts cared for at the mission gave him a deep sense of fulfilment. He took particular pleasure in Akhil’s remarkable progress.

  But after several months Akhil’s behaviour changed. He became destructive, breaking toys and defacing work into which he had put hours of effort. One day Edwin found him huddled in a shadowed corner of the compound, keening softly while he deliberately and repeatedly cut the soft skin on the inside of his forearm with an ivory handled dagger. Edwin recognised it immediately. Lewis had picked it up for a few rupees in a street market and used it as a letter-opener.

  Applying antiseptic and bandages the harassed doctor had shrugged. ‘What do you expect from such a child?’

  Edwin quietly returned the dagger to Lewis’s office while he was elsewhere, and said nothing. Desperate to help, wondering if the boy’s self-mutilation stemmed from frustration at his inability to communicate, Edwin pushed himself even harder to find time to give Akhil additional instruction. Akhil responded by following him around like a shadow, convincing Edwin he had solved the problem. Such conceit. Such blindness.

  Lewis’s warning about pride brought him up short. It had never occurred to him that his pleasure in Akhil’s progress might be construed as vanity and thus a sin. Though it was a wrench he forced himself to relinquish some of the boy’s lessons to Lewis. Akhil’s development was what mattered – not who guided it. Besides, weakened by another bout of fever, he was finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the additional work Lewis had apologetically delegated to him.

  One evening, after falling asleep over a meal he had little appetite for, he crawled off to bed. Waking with a start several hours later, he lay sweating beneath the mosquito net, and heard a muffled cry.

  In the dormitory the boys were quiet. He realised later they had been too quiet for genuine sleep: realised too late they had known what was happening but were too frightened to tell. He stood in the passage holding his breath as he strained to hear. It came again. From Lewis’s room?

  That was when the nightmare had begun. Only there was no awakening. He would never be free.

  Despite the months that had passed, those horrifying images were still vivid: seared too deep into his memory ever to be forgotten.

  Silent on bare feet he had opened Lewis’s door. He had stood unable to move, his brain refusing to accept what his eyes were seeing.

  Akhil was sprawled face down and naked on a mound of pillows, his eyes huge with fear and pain above the cloth wrapped tightly around the lower half of his tear-streaked face. His bound wrists were stretched above his head and tied to the rail of the bedhead. Kneeling behind the boy, curved over him like some evil bird of prey, Lewis’s white skin was oily with sweat and gleamed in the lamplight.

  Edwin retched, shuddered, and sucked in a gasping breath as terrible realization dawned. Akhil’s destructive behaviour and self-mutilation: Lewis’s accusation of vanity: the additional work designed to keep him busy and out of the way: it all made dreadful sense.

  He recalled the silence in the dormitory. How long had this been going on? How many others? With a roar of rage he dived forward, slamming his fist into the older man’s face with such force that Lewis was thrown off the bed and crashed sideways against a chest of drawers. On top of the chest Edwin saw the dagger. How many times had the child been threatened with it? Or subjected –

  Edwin blanked out a thought too horrific to contemplate and reached for the dagger to cut Akhil free. Lewis kicked at his legs and, stumbling backwards, Edwin fell to the floor.

  Lewis crawled forward, blood trickling from a swelling cut on his temple, and lunged for the dagger.

  Edwin tried to fight him off. ‘How could you?’ he choked. ‘How could you?’

  Flinging himself forward, using his body to hold Edwin down, Lewis’s mouth twisted in a grotesque smile. ‘What can’t speak can’t lie.’

  For a split-second Edwin didn’t believe, couldn’t believe, what he’d heard. As fury roared through him he forgot his calling, forgot his vows and lashed out with feet and fists, driven by loathing, horror, and his own terrible guilt, to punish, to destroy.

  Lewis gave a sudden jerk, a strangled groan, and fell backwards. Dazed, heaving air into starving lungs, Edwin pushed himself up, wiping the sweat from his eyes with a shaking hand. His hand was covered in blood. For a moment he stared at it, not understanding. Then he saw the swathe of bright red spots splattering the wall.

  His gaze swivelled to Lewis slumped between the chest and the wall, hands pressed to his belly where the dagger’s ivory handle protruded amid slowly welling blood.

  ‘Oh dear God.’

  Lewis raised pain-dulled eyes. ‘No doctor.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘No.’ A spasm of agony tightened Lewis’s grey-white features. ‘Better this way.’ The words rustled like dead leaves.

  A muffled whimper from the bed jolted Edwin from his paralysis. Swallowing the nausea that threatened to overwhelm him he grabbed the crumpled nightshirt from the floor and laid it across Lewis’s lower body to hide the terrible wound and the worst of the blood.

  Then on trembling legs he stumbled to the bed. Pulling the gag from Akhil’s mouth, he tried to reassure, to soothe, not recognising his own voice as he fumbled with the knots that tied the boy’s arms to the bedhead. His hands shook, his fingers were weak and clumsy. It would have been quicker to cut the cords. But the only knife – he shut off the thought.

  Akhil was racked by tremors. Shock had turned his face the colour of tallow and his eyes were glazed. Ripping the sheet from the bed Edwin wrapped it around the shivering child and carried him back into the dormitory. As heads rose from pillows he ran his tongue over paper-dry lips. Jesus Christ, how often had they watched this happen? How many others had there been?

  ‘Go back to sleep. You are safe now.’ His voice cracked and his throat closed. He swallowed hard. ‘You are safe. I promise you.’

  Drawing the covers over Akhil’s quivering body, Edwin gripped the boy’s shoulder for a moment. God alone knew if he would still be there in the morning. But right now there was no time to do more.

&nb
sp; Back in Lewis’s room the air was thick with the sickly-sweet smell of blood. Edwin’s gorge rose as he crouched beside the man he had admired and trusted; the man he had considered a friend. He gazed helplessly at Lewis, head and heart pounding with shock, rage and horror at what he’d done.

  Lewis’s head rolled against the wall as he looked at Edwin. Once more his face contorted with pain. ‘Couldn’t stop. No strength, no will.’ His grimace of self-loathing shook Edwin to the core. What was it like to be Lewis? But his brief sympathy was crushed by a sudden stark vision of Akhil’s scarred arms and the gag that had smothered his cries while his eyes screamed silent terror.

  Revolted, Edwin drew back, and saw the pale lips twist in recognition. Stiffening suddenly, Lewis tried to straighten, his gaze fastening on Edwin’s. ‘Remember, it wasn’t your –’ His eyes widened, his mouth opening as if in surprise, then with a long slow rattling exhalation, he slumped back against the wall, his body flaccid, his eyes half-closed and empty.

  As a wrenching sigh caught in Edwin’s throat, jerking him back to the present, he wiped his face with the towel and wished he could as easily wipe away the memories. Remember. As if he could ever forget.

  Folding the towel he laid it beside the flowered china basin. Then swiftly removing the rest of his clothes he pulled on his nightshirt and slid between Lucy Angove’s crisply ironed sheets, inhaling the faint fragrance of lavender that perfumed most Cornish linen chests.

  He closed his eyes desperate for sleep. He didn’t want to think any more. He felt battered, bruised. But it was hopeless. Once started, the nightmare had to run its course. Suddenly he was back in Chowringhee.

  Chapter Fourteen

  On his arrival at the tall, elegant building Edwin had been led up a wide curving staircase to the room where he was to sleep, and told to remain there. Someone would come to him.