The Child Garden

by Catriona McPherson

  “Okay,” I said, “but—”

  “She’s not going anywhere,” Stig said. “And they’ll not get wired into the crime scene till daylight and the rain stops.”

  “I suppose not,” I said, “but that’s not what I wanted to say.” I knew I was blushing this time. “Can we swap sides?” Because in primary seven, in Mrs. Hill’s class, I was on the left and he was on the right, and if I was going to look beside me for Stig Tarrant it seemed that, even all these years later, I should look that way. Maybe it was the whisky, but in that moment it almost seemed like all these years I’d been looking that way, wondering where he’d got to, and now at last things felt right again. Right! Even after what we’d seen.

  Stig moved carefully, keeping Dorothy as still as he could. She stopped purring, but she didn’t jump down.

  “Eden had just opened up in the September,” he said, when he was settled again. “We were the first ones there.”

  “I remember,” I said. “It was in the news. I remember my mum and dad talking about it.”

  “Hippies running wild, trouble waiting to happen?”

  “Like Lord of the Flies,” I said. Only this time, when I explained it, he spoke too.

  “Book,” we both said, and then we both started laughing.

  “It’s not like I know your family that well,” I went on, after a bit, “but I’m surprised you went there.”

  Stig laughed again. I thought about the Tarrants, what I knew of them. Five years in Saudi. That marked them out from most of the people round here, who had to psych themselves up for an hour-long drive to Carlisle. They were certainly different enough when they came back—Big Jacky, Wee Jacky, Angie, and Stig—and from the things my mum said, I took it they’d changed while they were away. Look at her! Dressed like that to nip out to the shops. I remember wondering why someone in nice clothes would make my mother angry. She’s freezing cold and won’t admit it. That was another one. Angie Tarrant had a sunbed and she wore bare legs and short sleeves from early spring till late autumn, again at night at Christmas, showing off her tan. All my dad said was, Good luck to them. I hope it works out. That was when the Tarrants bought a big chunk of land at the old station yard, talking about a leisure complex, a pool and a gym and flats for the sort of people who’d want to live in them.

  “You don’t know the half of it, Glo,” said Stig. “I don’t suppose Wee J would have been packed off to live in the woods if Eden was still going when he left primary, but BJ reckoned it would do for me.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. A lot of kids think they’re not the favourite and hardly any kids think they are. Even my sister moans about my mum and dad favouring me. “The right can do no wrong,” she said when she found out I was getting divorced and Mum hadn’t told her. Truth was my mother didn’t mention the divorce because she was ashamed, was still campaigning to stop it.

  “There’s never been a divorce in this family,” she’d said. “Never. Your grandma gritted her teeth and stuck it out and so can you.” There was no use telling her it wasn’t my decision. All she said was, “Well, whatever it is he wants from you, give it to him. You made vows, Gloria, and you should keep them.” She had looked me all over, as if whatever had disappointed Duggie would be there for her to see. “At least you could take more care of yourself,” she said. “Tart yourself up a bit. He’s a red-blooded male.”

  I could have pointed out to my sister that a doting mother doesn’t say things like that to her favourite child, but my sister agreed with every word of it and she’d only chip in with her tuppenceworth. I’d heard it before: Cut your hair, Gloria. Lose some weight, Gloria. Get new clothes, shoes, nails, teeth.

  “So what happened to Moped?” I asked Stig.

  Five

  “It was May Day,” Stig began. “The Beltane. The girls wanted to get up at dawn.”

  “And wash their faces in the dew,” I said. “I used to do that. My mum used to wake me.”

  “And it sort of snowballed into all of us sleeping out all night in a clearing in the woods.”

  “What clearing?” I said. “The one with the flowers and the birch trees all round?”

  “Yeah, bluebells it was in May and—don’t laugh—fairy rings.”

  “It’s a fungus,” I said. “Nothing to laugh at.”

  “Anyway, we were going to build a bonfire and make our beds out of bracken, the whole bit.”

  “Like the Famous Five.”

  “More than five, more like twelve,” said Stig. He must know who the Famous Five were, but it didn’t sound that way.

  “That was your whole class?”

  “That was the whole school that first year,” said Stig. “That was the plan. Start with the first year then, when we went into second year, start another first year, get new staff and all that, and by the time we were in sixth year, the school would be up and running.”

  “You were guinea pigs.”

  “Miss Naismith said a school should grow organically. She said we were pioneers.”

  “Was she the head mistress?”

  “She was it. The only teacher. She did English, French, and art. And all the other crap like gardening and woodwork. She was winging it for history and geography—taking us to Hadrian’s Wall and calling it both—and they got some guy in from Kirkcudbright to do maths and science. But you could tell she couldn’t give a stuff about them, really. The next teacher was going to do all the boring useful stuff.”

  “You know a lot about the plan,” I said. “Was it one of these student council commune things?”

  “Nah,” said Stig. “Anyway, yeah, so there was me, Van the Man, Moped, Bezzo, Jo-jo, Ned, and Nod—they were the boys.”

  “But wasn’t Bezzo … Hang on, Bezzo Best?” I said, sorting through the names. The Bests had been at our primary school. Good friends with Stig. Friends of the family. “Alan Best?” I said. “Wasn’t he Mitchell Best’s brother? How could they both be in first year at the same time?”

  “The school did some kind of deal,” said Stig. “Cut price kind of thing. And that was nothing. There were three Irving sisters there. All different ages. Okay, one of them, Sun Irving, was special needs so it didn’t really matter, but Cloud and Rain should have been in different classes.”

  “Cloud, Rain, and Sun?” I said. “At least they’re the type for an organic school in the woods.” Then hearing myself, I thought I sounded like my mother. “So that’s ten.”

  “And the Scarlets,” said Stig. “Scarlet McFarlane and Scarlet McInnes. We called them Scarlet McFarlet and Skinny McInnes. God, kids are cruel.”

  “And April Cowan,” I said. “What did you call her?”

  “What did we not?” said Stig. “April Showers. And that turned into Golden Showers, but with any luck she didn’t know what that meant—and I can tell that you don’t either, so don’t ask me. We called her Cowgirl. And Cowface sometimes. And Skinny McInnes called her a different name every month. September, October, November … We thought that was the funniest thing out.”

  “You bullied her,” I said.

  “Everyone ripped the piss out of everyone,” said Stig. “Miss Naismith called it bonding.”

  “Miss Naismith sounds like an idiot,” I said.

  “If there was a bully,” said Stig, “it was Van. Van the Man. But then, after what happened, he probably never said a cross word to anyone ever again. He still lives round here.”

  “After what happened,” I repeated.

  “Yeah.” He drained his whisky glass for the second time and set it down on the edge of the Rayburn top with a clunk, as if it was a gavel and he was calling himself to order. “So we slept outside. Dead excited. And we stayed dead excited until about ten o’clock. By then we’d eaten our midnight feast hours early and we were freezing cold and getting sore from lying on bracken beds, so we thought when Miss Naismith came to c
heck on us, like she said she was going to, we’d ask to go back inside.”

  “Why didn’t you just go?”

  “Couldn’t see a thing. We hadn’t taken torches, planning to look up at the stars. But it was cloudy. Pitch black once the fire burnt down. So we waited.”

  “Pitch black at ten o’clock in May?” I said.

  “Really thick clouds,” said Stig. “We waited. The girls were all huddled in together. Or at least the weathergirls and the Scarlets were. April … I don’t know where April was exactly. I was freezing—feet numb, fingers numb, back killing me—and none of the boys would get zipped into sleeping bags together to stay warm. Nod and Ned McAllister were sort of spooned in, but the rest of us were nearly getting hypothermia.”

  “Nod and Ned?”

  He had to think about it, finding it as hard to dredge up their real names as I would find it suddenly to call him Stephen. “Nathan and either Edwin or Edmund, I think,” he said at last. “Anyway. We fell asleep in the end, at least I did, and slept until it was getting light. Must have been four-ish and the sky had cleared. It was—just for a minute—it was what we had been after when we asked to stay out, you know? I opened my eyes and the sun was shining through the trees, but white and kind of … milky. And there was dewdrops all over my blanket. I could see them, like every one was shining, balanced on the ends of the threads sticking up, see it clear as anything. Dewdrops all over the pine needles too, even on the cones lying on the ground. Everything was sparkling.

  “Then I moved and, just like that, the dew was soaked into the wool and I was shivering. It was … this sounds mad, Glo, I know it does. But it was a perfect moment. It was like pure peace. Have you ever had a moment like that?”

  I couldn’t answer. All I could do was stare at him.

  “Well, anyway, maybe it only seems that way looking back because there hasn’t been a moment of pure peace ever since. I moved, the dew soaked in, I was freezing cold and soaking wet.”

  “Then what? Did you go back to sleep? Or was that when you realised something was wrong?”

  “Oh. No, I didn’t go back to sleep. No, I never slept another wink until Van was shaking me, white as a ghost, saying Moped was missing.

  “We weren’t that worried at first. We thought he must have woken up and gone back to the house. We thought maybe he wasn’t feeling well. We’d all been eating sausages we’d cooked in the fire, black on the outside and raw in the middle. So anyway, we packed up and headed back. And then when we were crossing the bridge by the Tarzan swing—do you know where I mean? Where the river’s cut down really deep and there’s sort of cliffs on either side?”

  “I think so,” I said. “There’s no Tarzan swing now, but a little wooden footbridge with arches at either end?”

  “That’s it. We put those arches up. Naismith loved a bit of woodwork.”

  “So that’s where it was?”

  “Yeah. We were crossing the footbridge and Scarlet—Skinny McInnes—started screaming and pointing and we all looked over the side and there he was. Face-down. You could hardly see his head at all with his hair so black like it was and his legs were sunk down, not floating out behind him. So it was just his anorak—he had this really minging orange anorak—and he was turning round and round and round in the current, must have been turning like that for hours.”

  “And his brother saw him like that?” I said. I remembered Alan Best from primary school. He was the only one in our class who got Mad magazine and he used to lend it out to the other boys for sweets and marbles.

  “Yeah,” said Stig. “He climbed over the side onto the ledge, but Van grabbed him in time.”

  “Van the bully?” I said. “What’s his real name?”

  “Van’s real name? Something like Douglas or Dougall,” said Stig. “Anyway, we ran back to the house and after that, it was chaos. Pure hell. The girls were all hysterical. Bezzo was just sitting in the corner with his arms round his shoulders, rocking. Miss Naismith started out like a zombie and then, when she realised what deep shit she was in, she started screaming at us. And she kept trying to phone people and not getting them or not getting the numbers right, because it was like six o’clock on a Wednesday morning and where would anyone be? I don’t even know who she was calling except that it wasn’t the Bests, because the police did that later—when they finally got in. The gates were padlocked and they couldn’t get through. In the end, one of them had to get out and jog all the way up the drive, then Miss Naismith had to calm down enough to find the keys. Anyway, it was bad.

  “And the scariest thing of all was … We were just kids, right? But none of the adults were … they didn’t … they were all so angry.”

  “They were scared too.”

  He nodded. “I know that now. Naismith must have been terrified. She told so many lies trying to cover her arse. Said she had been out to see that we were all right, asked if we wanted to stay or come in, and that we’d elected to stay out. She said we were all covering for each other, trying to blame her. No one believed her, but she went into orbit with it anyway. Said she’d been out not just once but twice. The first time to ask if we were okay and the second time to persuade us all to come back because she was worried about us and couldn’t sleep.” He laughed and shook his head, remembering. “Twelve of us all saying the same thing and she just stuck with her story.”

  “It does sound traumatic,” I said. “But—” I bit my lip.

  “Yeah,” said Stig. “I know. But. There’s no glitches. So far the story makes sense, right?”

  “Kind of. Sorry.”

  “So here goes. The reason I woke up, when I was covered in dew and it was like diamonds? Something woke me. I heard a car, Glo. A car door slammed and the engine started and it drove away. Roared away. There was someone there that night. Someone who didn’t belong there, and they left like a bat out of hell.”

  I waited. I could tell there was more.

  “But the others said they hadn’t heard it.” He was agitated all of a sudden. He lifted Dorothy under her front legs and dropped her down onto the floor. “All of them, all eleven of them, said they hadn’t heard a thing, and that’s just not possible. There wasn’t a breath of wind, and you know what it’s like up here on a quiet night. You know what a car sounds like.”

  I nodded. The quiet at Rough House had saved my sanity. Except it wasn’t quiet at all: it was swifts and tits and wrens and sparrows and oystercatchers up from the Solway, and geese and ducks, bees and owls, a thrush some lucky summers. It was the wind streaming over the grass and making it whisper, shushing through the trees, moaning where it was caught in the dips and rises. Sometimes I thought I could hear the stars turning on in the evening and the sun sighing like an old lady when it set. Sometimes I thought I could hear the worms in the soil and the flower buds popping open. After the rain, I thought I could hear the roots of the trees pulling the water up their trunks and sending it out to the ends of their twigs. Sometimes up here I thought I could hear the slow grind of the earth turning.

  “No way,” I said. “A car starting at Eden would be like a bomb going off.”

  “Exactly,” said Stig. “So when April started texting me—” He stopped.

  April! We were sitting here in dry clothes in this warm kitchen, sipping whisky and she was there in that hole, cold and getting colder, her spilled blood drying.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “So when she started texting me about needing to straighten things out. I thought, You and me both. I thought, At last.” He took a deep breath. “And then tonight she finally said it. ‘I heard the car.’”

  “She texted it to you?” I said. “Or voicemail? Because one thing that occurred to me was—”

  “Neither,” said Stig. “And this is the thing I really need to tell you.”

  “A good thing or a bad thing?” I said, not even knowing what I meant, just nee
ding to brace myself if there was going to be any more.

  “I don’t know,” said Stig. “I’ll show you what I found and you tell me.”

  Six

  He left by the front door and it banged out of his hand like always with a bad north wind, slammed back against the porch wall and rattled. There was a deep gouge in the plaster there from all the years that door had been flung open. Over a hundred years of north winds and children in high spirits rushing in and out from the garden. Maybe even a young wife taking time to settle and flouncing off in her clogs and apron to fume out there in the open air, where the view could calm her. I liked to think that Rough House saw some life before Miss Drumm and then me.

  He was more careful on the way back in, and he locked it after him.

  “It’s not letting up,” he said, using one of his hands like a window washer to scrape the rain from his forehead. He had a woman’s handbag in his other one.

  “I’ve started coming to see my mum and dad,” he said, sitting down again with the bag in his lap. “Trying to build bridges, you know. Tea at my mum’s every Monday, like a happy family. And Wee J’s there with the wife and kids, so that takes some of the pressure off. What I’m saying is, usually I’d have been here—or ten miles off—when the text came to meet her at Eden.”

  “But?”

  “But what with the weather, I’d decided to skip it. I was sitting in a sushi bar in the West End when it came. So I decided to go back to my flat, get wellies and Gore-Tex.”

  “What happened?” I asked, thinking about his thin dress shirt and suit trousers, his ruined leather shoes.

  “I found this.” He put the bag in my lap. It was one of those squashy ones with too many buckles.

  “I thought at first it was Carol’s—she’s my ex—from how it was tucked under the hall table like someone who lived there would put it down. I nearly didn’t see it except I was guddling around in the hall cupboard for wellies.