‘Don’t decide what to keep. It all counts. Sometimes it is the worst things that turn out to have delivered what is best.’ He’d been solemn again. ‘It only appears when you write it down.’
Filling up these notebooks had a dramatic effect on George. It made him a compassionate observer — not just of himself, but of everyone he’d known. But the scribbling had also made him uneasy about the spoken word, because he’d gone through hell choosing the right ones to keep on paper. Ultimately, the precision had brought him close up to his more recent failures, but without the distortion of self-pity. And then, clear-eyed and calm, he’d scrambled into a skip.
He’d seen two black discs among the wood and bricks: a pair of welding goggles. Instinctively he put them on and pretended to be blind. On the face of it he’d gone mad. But it made sense to George. There were things in his life he could not look upon, and he didn’t want anyone else to either. The street might be the place of stories, but his was going to remain untold. Once the goggles were in place, hardly anyone spoke to him any more. It was as though he wasn’t there. They called him Blind George.
So at first George wrote down his life in order to understand it; but the time came when he did so to keep it together. Long after Elizabeth had found him, and when their project to trap Riley was well underway George got his head kicked in. His memory was sent flying over Waterloo Station like a cloud of pigeons. The details, with Elizabeth’s help, were set down towards the end of book thirty-six. That was after he’d woken to discover that a kind of lake had entered his mind: on the far shore everything was clear, up to the week he’d fallen under those swinging feet; but on this side, where he played out his life, events were like globules of oil. If he didn’t confine them on paper, they could separate, drift off and come back when they felt like it — heavily familiar but incomprehensible. He could hold on to faces, geography and snippets of talk, but he’d found himself in a world where everyone else knew all the missing pieces. People would speak, expecting him to understand. And sometimes he did, but often it was a lottery in which he could make no choices. But it was the keeping of the notebooks that saved him and held everything together. Every page helped to bridge the lake. He just carried on plotting the course of each completed day.
Elizabeth had written a great deal in books thirty-six to thirty-eight. She’d recorded everything they’d said and done after his mind went loose. He’d watched her while drinking hot chocolate or whisky. She’d always been careful. She’d treated words like coins. And in her last entry she’d told him to wait.
After Elizabeth had gone to Mile End Park in the morning, George had sat in his sleeping bag beneath the fire escape at Trespass Place. He’d waited until nightfall, counting the hours, his eyes on the arch at the end of the courtyard. But she hadn’t come. Then, like a bubble popping at the surface of his mind, he’d heard something she’d said more than once: ‘George, if anything should happen to me, don’t worry. A monk will come.
A what?’ he’d said, the first time.
‘An old friend. He’s forever puzzled, but he gets there in the end.’
George had read his notebook again. She’d written ‘Wait … not ‘Wait for me.’
The next morning, George looked to the arch, hoping to see a different shape, perhaps someone fat with a white rope around his waist. He watched and waited, through the day and through the night. But when another morning broke, George rose and hurried through the streets. He crossed the river and crept like a thief into Gray’s Inn Square.
George stood outside Elizabeth’s chambers reading the list of gold names on a long black panel. Men and women slipped past him, flushed and serious. He became paralysed by the grandeur of it all. Then through the glass of a door he saw a round man with an orange waistcoat. The eyebrows rode high above piercing, kind eyes. He stepped outside.
‘I’m Roddy Kemble, who are you?’
George panicked. ‘Bradshaw, sir.’
Mr Kemble thought for a moment. He didn’t move, but he looked like a man rooting through a cardboard box, lifting this, lifting that. Abruptly he said, ‘May I ask your first name?’
‘George.’
The man’s arms fell by his side. He seemed to have found what he expected and didn’t want. Quietly, he said, ‘Elizabeth is dead.’
George adjusted his goggles. His mouth went dry and he nodded appreciatively.
‘In any other circumstances,’ said Mr Kemble, ‘I’d offer you a cigarette. But I’ve given up. Would you like a Polo?’
George nodded again.
Mr Kemble peeled back the silver paper. ‘Her heart gave out.’
For a while they stood awkwardly crunching mints, then Mr Kemble said, ‘Have you seen Elizabeth since the trial?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Frequently?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Mr Kemble looked like a man whose house had just been burgled. He put a heavy hand on his shoulder and said, ‘It’s time to forget everything, George. Move on, if you can.
‘I stopped going anywhere a long time ago, sir.’
George backed away clumsily Mr Kemble raised an arm, as if he were giving a blessing or launching a ship. If it weren’t for the orange waistcoat, George would have thought he looked sad.
George stumbled up High Holborn and then found his way to Oxford Street, bumping into people and things, until he reached the roundabout and Marble Arch — where he’d last seen Nino, months back, in the summer. They’d sat on a bench and his guide had told him a strange story about right and wrong. George went to the same bench, looking hungrily at the monument, wanting his friend to emerge from beneath one of the portals, his blue and red scarf trailing in the wind. Sleep crept upon him. He woke and saw the arch, the flag and the ant crawling across the sky, and he reached for book thirty-eight.
George left the traffic island and began the long walk to Trespass Place. He thought of Elizabeth, whisky in hand. She’d foreseen her dying and had prepared for it. George had to wait because a monk would come. Another of her phrases floated by; it filled him with hope: ‘No matter what happens, Riley can’t escape.
George made haste, and he beckoned Nino’s story about right and wrong, but it wouldn’t come. All he could recall was the end, because Nino had spoken it with such force. His gaze had been wide as if he were waiting for eye-drops. ‘Don’t be lukewarm, old friend. That’s the only way to mercy or reward.’
When he’d told Elizabeth, she’d scribbled it down on the back of an envelope.
Beneath the fire escape George picked up a sharp stone. On the wall he scratched a few neat lines, one for each of the days he’d been waiting. By extension it was another lesson from Nino: to diligently keep an account of anything that might easily slip away.
8
Perhaps Anselm’s sensibilities had been over-roused, but he could have sworn that the woman at BJM Securities viewed him with both fascination and terror.
‘You’ve never come before,’ said Mrs Tippins, as if he’d let her down.
‘I’m sorry, was I expected?’
‘No.’
Anselm couldn’t imagine the foundation for reproof ‘Well, I’m here now.’
‘I can see that, but you’re too late.’
Mrs Tippins explained that the son of the deceased had taken possession of a small red valise.
‘That’s fine,’ said Anselm. He was convinced it was nothing of the sort; that this was not what Elizabeth had wanted. ‘I’ll just go back home.’
Mrs Tippins seemed uncomfortable, as if the static of her clothing was giving her tiny shocks. She opened the door for Anselm and then seemed to leap at an opportunity. ‘Do you mind if I ask … but are you allowed out?’
‘Every ten years.
‘Never. How long for?’
‘Ten minutes.’
‘Honestly? You better be making tracks, then.’
‘I’m joking.’
Mrs Tippins narrowed her eyes, reluctant to abandon deep-root
ed convictions.
Anselm berated himself all the way back to Larkwood. Nicholas Glendinning had opened the box while Anselm had been hiding in an apple tree. It would have appealed to the author of Genesis: Nicholas now knew what he was not meant to know.
Mothers, sons and secrets, he thought. They were an unhappy combination but often found together. As if nudged, Anselm recalled the death of Zélie, his own mother, and the secret he carried. Oddly enough, the circumstances had captivated Elizabeth when he’d told her shortly after joining chambers. That was almost twenty years ago.
They were sitting in the common room on a Friday night. The wind kept triggering a car alarm that seemed to pause when sworn at from a nearby window.
‘She’d been in hospital for an operation,’ said Anselm. ‘Before she was discharged, my father called us all together. He said that she wouldn’t be getting better and that we weren’t to tell her. I was nine. A few days later she came home. I took her a cup of tea, and she said, “I’ll be up and about before you know it,” and I replied, “No you won’t. You’re going to die.”‘
‘Did you tell the others that you’d broken rank?’
‘No. They would have seen it as a betrayal.’
‘Betrayal?’ Elizabeth repeated, as if she were talking to an invisible third party.
‘Yes, but from that moment my mother and I were free. We could grieve while she was still alive. We could face what was coming in the absence of lies. I hadn’t even realised that obeying my father would have left us trapped.’
‘Trapped,’ echoed Elizabeth again.
She was talking to an imagined presence, but Anselm hardly noticed because turning over the stone had uncovered forgotten emotion. His eyes prickled and he couldn’t speak without his breath staggering. ‘Don’t get me wrong … this is no fairy story about life winning out. Shortly before the end, she said, “I can hear the sounds of a playground.” A kid was kicking a ball against our fence. She was drifting off to sleep. But she let slip a confession. “It’s been a school for death and I’ve hardly learnt anything.”’
Elizabeth had been spellbound.
Anselm parked beneath the plum trees and wiped his eyes, astonished by the power and freshness of remembered grief. The siren faded, along with the protestations from an upstairs window Presently Larkwood’s bells found their strike and birds scattered over the valley.
While the loss of his mother remained painful to Anselm, it had opened his child’s heart to a very adult truth: what you would cling on to will pass away, like grass. Several times Elizabeth had returned to this subject with a sort of fugitive hunger, but only abstractly and when they were alone. They’d spoken of honesty between parents and children, of loving by letting go, of this day’s importance. Half the time, Anselm was lost in the forest of ideas, but it seemed to help Elizabeth. He sensed she wanted a distant companion while she made a very private passage. She’d always been one for conceptual clarity.
Anselm had recovered by the time he reached the cloister. He always saw things clearly after he’d cried. And he was now convinced that it was back then, on a Friday night, that Elizabeth had decided, one day to seek his help — long before the ‘not knowing and the not being able to care’ had become an accusation.
9
Elizabeth had found George before he got his head kicked in. He still didn’t know how she’d traced him, though he had his suspicions. The only person who knew about Trespass Place was Nino. And everyone near the Embankment knew Nino. So George had pictured Elizabeth beneath the bridges, tapping arms, lifting blankets, seeking the whereabouts of a man named Bradshaw She must have been sent Nino’s way; and she must have told him a great deal to make him reveal where George had gone to ground.
A pinprick of light had jigged in the distance, exposing the cobbles like scabs in the asphalt. It grew larger, making her outline darker than the darkness. She lowered the torch and he saw gold buckles on expensive shoes. The beam was cut and she said, ‘You walked out of court, George.’
He replied to the shadow ‘Yes, and I let Riley go.
‘We both did.’
Elizabeth sat down on the cardboard beside him. They looked out on the courtyard, the drainpipes and the bins. She produced a flask of whisky and two silver beakers. It started to rain. The drops pattered on the fire escape landing. They didn’t speak; they just sipped the warming malt.
She came frequently after that, always in the evening. They fell to talking of old times. George told her what he’d done before the trial: baggage boy at the Bonnington, then one of a team in a night shelter for the homeless, and finally becoming its manager. He’d lost that job for gross misconduct after Riley was acquitted. Elizabeth’s story couldn’t have been more different: boarding school, Durham University and Gray’s Inn. After the trial she was made a deputy High Court judge. Her life had gone up, his had gone down. She too had married; they’d both had a son. Hers was called Nicholas; he was planning a trip to Australia.
‘What for?’
‘To get away from me.’ She laughed. ‘He’s grown too quickly’ Distantly she added, ‘He’s the very image of my father.’
Elizabeth never urged George to find a hostel; she never asked about the home he’d left behind, and the wife who couldn’t face him any more. She seemed to understand that sometimes there was no going back; or at least, not until one’s connections with the past had been changed. They just sat side by side beneath the fire escape sometimes chatting, sometimes silent. Then she’d go home.
One night she turned up with her work. It brought the ambience of the Old Bailey into this, his hideaway While she read, marking the page and swearing, he was sure she was ahead of him, waiting. Tension made him fidget. She asked him to keep still. Suddenly he blurted out, ‘It couldn’t have been any different.’
‘I know.’ She carried on reading.
‘Not after I was asked about my grandfather … the dropping of my first name.
‘I know’
‘I never saw that coming.’
‘No one did.’ She put her files and coloured pens in a bag and pulled out the whisky and the beakers. After they’d drunk several shots, she spoke of John’s fall on Lawton’s Wharf. The subject had hung in the air while she’d spoken of her own son. George opened out a newspaper cutting of the inquest and gave it to Elizabeth.
‘How did Riley do it?’
George couldn’t answer because — in truth — it was his fault. He’d sent his son to his death with an aside uttered during Countdown. He saw the smiling presenters; and he saw his boy fearful, stooping through a hole in the wire. He was only seventeen.
‘I suppose there’s no evidence.’
‘None.’
She turned, drawing the fall of hair behind an ear. A diamond sparkled on the lobe. ‘I’m implicated in what happened, George.’
‘No you’re not.’
‘I let Riley escape far more than you did.’ It didn’t sound condescending, just private and adamant.
‘You can keep the cutting.’ It was all he could do to reach her. She had almost left the planet.
When Elizabeth next came to Trespass Place she said her back couldn’t take it any more. She was very specific. The problem was degenerative changes at L5 and L6. ‘There’s a café round the corner.
They found a table in Marco’s by the window Then Elizabeth went to the counter without having asked him what he wanted. When she came back, he paled. She’d bought hot chocolate and toast. She’d done it on purpose. She’d remembered.
Three girls had given evidence against Riley It had taken guts, because they’d been terrified of the Pieman. But George had persuaded them to come forward. It had taken three attempts. And he’d done it over toast and cocoa. They’d said so in their witness statements.
‘Eat up,’ she said gravely.
George looked at the plate and mug in horror.
‘Go on,’ she repeated. ‘Take a sip.’
When he started eating, she said, ‘
Have you ever wondered how evil can be undone?’
He nodded.
‘Me too.’
And that was it. George waited for the follow-up, but they just sat and ate toast and drank hot chocolate.
Elizabeth came back about two weeks later. She stood beneath the arch into Trespass Place and waved. George got up and followed her to Marco’s. By the same window they ate more toast and drank more hot chocolate.
Elizabeth said, ‘Do you remember Mrs Riley?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nancy is her name. She listened to the prosecution opening and then left the court, rather like you.’
George remembered the hat — yellow with black spots —pulled down as if it were a steel helmet.
Elizabeth explained that Riley’s solicitor, Mr Wyecliffe, was a highly intelligent man. She had asked him to interview Nancy with a view to obtaining a witness statement upon Riley’s good character. The difficulty was that no one knew what Nancy might say under cross-examination. Ultimately it was agreed that Nancy would not go into the witness box: she would only reveal Riley’s anger towards women.
George said, ‘She’s crackers.’
‘She trusts him, that’s all,’ said Elizabeth reprovingly ‘Maybe she sees a trace of something, a remnant of what’s been lost.’
Neither of them spoke for a while.
‘When I first saw you under that fire escape,’ mused Elizabeth innocently ‘I didn’t recognise you.
‘I’ve been sleeping rough for years. It changes you.’
‘Even in daylight you looked different,’ she continued. ‘Something’s gone, something you can’t catch and put in your notebook. Riley wouldn’t recognise you either, if you bumped into him.’
The Gardens of the Dead Page 4