'This is just great. ' Henry was passionate about gardens, read about them, viewed them and dreamed of creating something different from his own dull lawn.
'All our own work,' Tim said. 'Everything begged or recycled, you know. We got the bricks from a demolished wall, backbreaking it was; we've raised most of the plants, and we built the pond from scratch. We're extremely grateful for what other people throw away.'
'But what about that Henry pointed with trembling finger at the obtrusive Wendy house with its hideously artificial pink and blue. Tim's dusting and cleaning operations were complete; he was looking at his work with satisfaction. The plastic was conspicuously dirt free and had none of the sadness of summer items left out in the cold. It looked prepared for imminent occupation.
'Oh, I get it,' he said, relieved as the dog approached and sniffed at the door of the house. 'It's Senta's kennel, right?'
'Good Lord, no. She's only allowed inside by special permission.' The two men were looking at each other, as if deliberating on a proper explanation that would not offend him. Peter took charge, with Tim's tacit agreement.
'Well, I hope you don't mind, but we do know that you had a little chat with Maggie this morning.
About knowing Francesca, and everything, so we may as well tell you. This is Harry's little house.
He used to play in it, you see, when Fran left him with us, and we keep it nice for him, for whenever he wants it. He lives in this garden, you see. Not all the time, just sometimes when it's sunny.'
Tim nodded confirmation of this unquestionable fact. Peter was pointing through the open shutters of the Wendy house. 'He has his little sleeping bag, which he was ever so fond of, and his little shawl, which he used to chew, and his teddy, which he used to abuse dreadfully. Always throwing it away and then yelling to get it back. Love-hate, you might say. Of course, we take the bedding indoors at night. He'd be frightened outside in the dark.'
'The kid's been dead for more than a year,' Henry said, brutally. 'Drowned, buried, cremated. Dead.'
'Yee-ees,' Tim said, considering this. 'Yee-es, you could put it like that.'
'So his ghost comes back to play? Slips down a damn moonbeam?'
'We knew you'd understand. Henry,' Tim beamed.
'You seem such an understanding man. We had such a terrible time after he was killed. We really weren't allowed to grieve, you see. There were plenty of people thought Francesca was completely bonkers to give him to us three or four afternoons a week, but he loved it here. We know how to nurse people, especially little people, and we adored him.'
'You see. Henry,' Peter continued the narrative,’ there are so many people who still think that being queer means paedophile. As well as rampant, always at it, like rabbits. Instead of being an old married couple like us who would guard a child from harm like a pair of anxious grannies. When Harry disappeared, I tell you, the police were round here like a shot.
They would have dug up the garden if he hadn't been found so soon and Francesca confessed. I suppose we should be grateful to her for that.'
'And for plenty of other things,' Tim murmured.
'Such as letting us get to know him in the first place. He was a sweet, sweet child.'
In the day's emotional turmoil, and in his grief the night before, Henry had not had time to contemplate the identity of the dead child and did not want to dwell on it. All that had mattered was the impact of his awful demise. He got the picture: this 'murder' had messed up plenty of lives, not least that of the murderess; fallout still coming down.
No one so far had spoken of the child with love. Tim was weeping openly, and Peter was patting his shoulder. 'Oh, come inside, dears, we all need some tea,' he said. 'And besides, in case Henry here starts seeing spirits, we'd better show him what Harry looked like. In case he gets the wrong idea.'
Henry wanted no such thing; the conversation horrified him, but he could not see how to evade it. It was he, after all, who had invited himself into the garden, he who had failed to keep his distance, and now he was trapped. A comfortable trap in the warm kitchen, with the world outside clouding over and his elbows resting on a scrubbed table and a tame dog dozing at his feet.
Tea poured from a huge, brown pot which looked too heavy to lift but yielded sweet scented Earl Grey, flavoured with a slice of lemon in the cup. It cut through the clog of the day's snack diet, refreshed him, even as the warmth of the Rayburn fortified him for this exercise in politeness. Peter was coming into the room carrying the TV.
'We've got a video, although I like photos better.
See what I mean? He was an angel.'
'Was there ever a suggestion of any other culprit for the killing?' Henry asked desperately.
'Well, no. Someone had been fishing on the pier earlier on. Left his stuff and didn't come back.
And lots of people resented Francesca. And we do have bad people here. Oh, look!'
Henry saw the head of Francesca, face completely obscured by falling hair as she knelt behind the child and supported him with her hands beneath his armpits, fingers waving at the camera. She was keeping him upright; he seemed in the act of lurching forward. And then he ran, right arm flexed like a piston, right wrist bent. The angle of the arm increased as he moved.
He ran like a slow drunk preserving the arm for the next drink, a look of painful determination on his face, mucus round his nose and a bruise on his forehead.
'That's him at two, when we met,' Henry said fondly. 'He was even more beautiful later. When he learned to fall over properly.'
Henry made himself swallow the tea which threatened to close his throat, pity at war with something like revulsion. The child whose face he examined was ugly. It could have been an old, old man. The face was pinched and wizened and the smile was twisted.
Desperately unappealing, at best. Something to smother beneath blankets and hurry through streets.
A child physically cursed, begging to be shunned.
Ugly as sin. He struggled for an appropriate response.
An image of Tanya's perfection floated across his mind, along with the remembered feeling of holding her close in his arms. The child in the picture looked ready to bite and consumed with rage.
'Poor little mite,' said Tim, his voice tremulous. 'And looking at him. Henry, you have to agree, it's very important to find out who killed him. Otherwise, he'll just keep on coming back to his own little house.
Don't worry, though, he won't haunt you. Why should he? He only haunts us because we don't want to let him go.'
'His mother killed him.'
'Well, sadly and officially, yes. But he thinks there's a question mark, he's told us so.
Unfortunately, he was never very articulate, speech difficulties, you see, so he doesn't seem able to advance an explanation.
But he's perfectly right to express reservations. After all, he must have known his mother better than anyone else.'
Henry put his hands over his ears to blot out the words. He wanted to thump the table and rattle the teacups. He took his hands away from his ears and laid them flat on the table in front of him, willing them to behave. Tim patted his wrist, consolingly.
'Which is why it's so nice you're here. Henry.
We've been expecting you for ages. Someone has to find out, and it can't be us, so it has to be you. Isn't that right, Peter?'
They were beaming at him, as if he were a prodigal son returned and all was forgiven and the fatted calf was in the oven.
Henry shook his head and left them. Walked up all the stairs to his room. The fire they had lit mid- afternoon , without knowing when he would return, glowed softly. The shirts he had flung into a corner had been washed and pressed. He continued his inventory, repacked the suitcase, left it open on the floor. He wished his battery of vitamins included a tranquillizer.
Opened his laptop, wrote himself a note.
GET OUT OF HERE, HENRY.
NOBODY NEEDS YOU.
YOU HAVE NOTHING TO OFFER AT ALL.
&nbs
p; Easier today. Easier to breathe and easier to write. I like these little pills.
I could no more tell my friend in the kitchen that I was brought up in a castle than I could fly over the moon. She would think I was taking the piss, although if I explained that my father was merely the caretaker, and I the caretaker's daughter, she would find it less offensive. Initially, she disliked the way I speak. I can't amend my accent and although I have the family talent for mimicry, which children love, I can't sustain it. She has forgotten about the voice, now, which is just as well, because it's easy to make an enemy here and she's bigger than I, as well as more socially powerful. I think I'm forgiven the voice and the habit of sentences because I like her, I really do and she doesn't know quite what to do about that.
I DID grow up in a castle, although it was only the small part in the middle, and when I was a child it didn't feel unique. There was certainly no sneaking in or out of it or possessing my own key. Nor was the space we occupied either huge or luxurious, simply sufficient for the standards of an ex-military man who put efficiency far ahead of comfort, and a wife who found she had married a late-blooming eccentric and gave up making decisions.
We would re-enact the Normandy landings and she would knit. She couldn't sit and knit as well as look at the view, because the windows were too high, so she would stand. The keep was utilitarian and meant for soldiers. It was a terrific place for parties and family gatherings (I can't remember when Uncle Joe was excluded), a complete playground, but for a houseproud wife, it was no wonder she preferred her bungalow.
Privileged? Of course it was, if I had thought about it at the time. I loved those battlements; I loved hoisting the flag and I loved standing level with the sea. We didn't repel invaders; we invited them in, especially Maggie, but we locked the doors once they had gone. We ruled the world, my father said, and he was absolutely right. He didn't mean the English ruled the world; he meant we, ourselves. The psychiatrist who saw me in the early stages asked if that gave me a certain attitude to life. (He was very keen on the isolation of environment and class.)
I'm becoming wordy. I must stop.
It made me thrifty, capable, good at cooking, washing, sewing and careless about appearances, because we did everything and owned nothing. We were caretakers for the next generation. I told him there were times it made me want to live in a treehouse inside someone else's garden.
I inherited an outrageous sense of duty, but I did not tell the psychiatrist that: nor did I tell him that, above all, it made me extraordinarily humble. As well as arrogant and talented in manipulation.
With a craving for status in the wider community, couldn't stand the failures of ordinary life and parenthood. A tendency to take over and give orders. Raised around cannons and the veneration of war; therefore capable of violence and aggression.
I'm glad I remembered that part. He found it entirely convincing.
FMC.
CHAPTER SIX.
In the late afternoon, just as it began to rain, Angela Hulme drove to see Uncle Joe. He lived in a senior citizens' home, appropriately situated next to the golf course where he had spent as much of his life as possible. When giving her the task of visiting this stranger, Francesca had assured Angela that she would know exactly which one he was. The idlest survivor of three brothers, the only one left of that generation and their wives. A reprobate, and after all those years golfing and drinking gin, the one with the face like red sandpaper.
Angela had promised Francesca and although she now owned Francesca's car, it was a promise she often resented, because it was another obligation. My father's surviving brother is the only thing I have left of my father; please do this, Angela. It was Francesca who should have been the lawyer, the way she could persuade without it sounding quite like an order, although perhaps being a teacher had the same effect.
The suggestion was that she should take Tanya with her, but Angela reneged on that part.
They had tried it; Tanya liked Uncle Joe but she talked too much, exhausted him. It was Francesca's opinion that it was good for the very young to have contact with the very old, but Tanya did not belong with these relics, although they loved to see a child. Angela did not agree with the need to mingle with the older generation: they had a general tendency to carp and criticize although this hardly applied to Uncle Joe.
He was all sweetness and light, another reason for leaving Tanya behind with Neil, because Angela secretly enjoyed seeing him privately. There was a dearth of adult company in her life, there was nothing he did not understand and he was completely uncensorious.
She drove in the Ramsgate direction, past another town and into the flat hinterland. The road took her through the vast Fergusons plant. She could have a job here; everyone else did. The area of the operation was vast, spreading over the fields like a rash, and even on a Sunday the carpark was full of bright, new motors. It must take thousands of sick people to make and distribute drugs; so much everyone knew.
Maggie had told her in the castle that Henry Evans, the tourist, was going to work there; no wonder she hadn't liked him, even before he started making eyes at her beautiful child. What kind of idiot thought Tanya could be bribed with chocolate? An idiot like that. She might just tell Uncle Joe all about it.
Maybe Henry Evans knew of a drug which could make her daughter forget everything unpleasant that had ever happened to her, and remember only the good things, such as being born at all. Make her completely dissociate herself from the child whose drug-sodden parents had burned the inside of her thighs with a cigarette, left her with a rash on her face from lying in vomit.
They should find a cure for that, these fucking scientists, instead of finding drugs to make men worse than they already were.
She passed the featureless buildings and began to relax a little. She did not, in all honesty, have any doubts about leaving Tanya with Neil. Although he was an unpredictable man with the sexual ability of a slug, he was a good enough part-time father to a beautiful girl child who needed unbiased attention with the minimum of attachment. At least Neil suspended his irritation and was alert enough to notice danger.
Although Angela thought that Tanya could have done without the swearing and the ghost stories, that was fine too, because she didn't believe a word of them, which made for a good combination, really, what with her trusting Neil, and yet all the time thinking he was a bit silly. That way, he undermined nothing, which probably suited them all.
She pulled up on the Ramsgate cliff, a desolate place in winter, fit for nothing but sheep and this house, which was as grand as a sea bitten house in need of maintenance could be: frayed at the edges and cancerous round the windows at this time of year, the white paint a shade grey and flaky and the whole thing less than ancestral. The new golf clubhouse stood a few acres distant over rolling greens saturated with rain. This house, which she approached from the carpark at a running crouch through the rain, had once been the golfers' bar. No wonder Uncle Joe loved it. Reaching the entrance, sheltered from the wet in the age it took anyone to answer, she remembered her resentment, standing here with her arms crossed, obeying orders a year ago.
What business had she, coming to see Francesca's uncle on another rainy day, only to get that bovine nurse from an agency who said. Mister Who? I'm sorry, I don't know the names. Oh yes there he was, the one sitting over there, with the red face and the fine white hair. The one in his favourite armchair, reading a paper, just as Francesca described. The accuracy of the description and the awkwardness of the introduction started off the little game they still played now.
'Are you Uncle Joe?' she greeted him, shedding her coat.
'Who wants him?' he replied, just like the first time.
He sat alone in the close warmth of the foyer, looking out through the double-glazed doors whenever the paper dropped into his lap. She liked the fact that he simply presented his papery cheek for a peck from her lips. She gave him Maggie's snowdrops this time, aware that he might have preferred sherry or chocolate,
but that was what she had and he always protested about the gifts.
'My dear, you shouldn't have ... But how lovely to see you. Pretty as a picture. I do like the new hair.'
Uncle Joe always observed things, looked at her with such keen approval it made her preen a little. She found herself wearing a skirt for Uncle Joe, putting on earrings or a bracelet to see if he would notice, and he never failed. 'I love that, where did you get it?' It was part of a regular if not invariable Sunday ritual, this slight dressing up for him, the way other people might do for church.
If she missed a week, he never reproached her, something else she appreciated.
He said he quite understood what life was like with children. Overall, it was one of those social tasks she did not relish, but all the same enjoyed.
Because he wanted to listen. He preferred that to talking, relishing stories from the outside world, delivered for his mild commentary, especially if the anecdotes featured Tanya. Francesca was never mentioned after the first time, when Angela had explained how she had come as a replacement because Fran was otherwise engaged. He had accepted the substitution with alacrity as well as grace - 'How lucky I am to have you instead ...' - and if he had read about his homicidal niece in the local newspaper, he did not say, but then Uncle Joe despised the local paper and only went for quality broadsheets.
When she ventured to explain what had happened, he had merely shaken his head sadly, as if nothing in the world surprised him any more. 'How awful for you,' was his primary comment, 'but never mind. Very sad, but probably all for the best'; and while Angela knew this laconic response was hardly appropriate, she secretly and guiltily agreed.
In numerous ways, life without Francesca's assiduous and generous assistance was harder, but infinitely easier in other respects. At least she was no longer there, with her tireless energy, swallowing Tanya's affection and attention, influencing her the way she did, and in a while, perhaps Tanya would stop talking about her. Forget about her, as she was managing to forget so much else.
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