and compassionately – made the Pieman into a figure from Anji’s tormented mind; she’d explained him away she’d made him a dream…
The phone was answered.
It had to be the wine, but Nick shrank from the voice, for it was otherworldly in its harshness. He pictured his father before a half-eaten tench… It was safe downstairs… and there was another half bottle of Macon Lugny waiting… but he wanted to know the answer to his question.
‘Who was the Pieman?’
Nick had to ask because he felt, obscurely that his mother had known all along, even as she’d taken Anji by the hand; that he had found the secret spring of Elizabeth’s disgrace.
Twenty minutes later Nick was at the wheel, over the limit, and driving east towards Hornchurch Marshes. He’d expected a reluctant conversation, not a demand for a meeting.
14
The Prior frequently reminded the community in chapter that, as the Rule made clear, there are times when good words are to be left unsaid out of esteem for silence.
With this counsel in mind, Anselm guided George to the Vault, saying very little. Before withdrawing, Debbie Lynwood led them to a simply furnished bedroom away from the bustle of the day centre. On a sideboard was a selection of games and puzzles in battered boxes. George studied the lids meditatively ‘Riley knew I was there,’ he said. ‘He was speaking to me.’
Anselm nodded at the rounded back of this lean, honourable man in his honourable blazer and tie. Adam’s sin, said Genesis, was that he wanted to be like God, to direct the great arrangement of things into which he had been wonderfully born; to know why good was good, and why evil was evil; maybe to make a few discreet changes. There are occasions, thought Anselm, when I would like to be God: long enough to understand this man’s fall, and to do something about it.
George chose a jigsaw – a medieval map of the known world. Anselm left George and took a bus to Camberwell. Once more he was directed to the garden and the corridor of chestnut trees. Sister Dorothy was in the same place, at the far end. Tartan blankets kept her warm; the brown pakol had been pulled down to protect her ears. She glanced at Anselm as he sat down beside her on a stone bench, and said, ‘She was a very clever girl, but naughty. Didn’t take to the rules at first. She spent her first months in detention every Sunday afternoon. I used to visit her with parcels from the tuck shop.’
‘I take it you mean Elizabeth Steadman, and not Elizabeth Glendinning,’ said Anselm.
‘What a very silly mistake,’ she replied, closing her eyes. The fracture in her nose caught the low, slanting light, and it appeared dark and grotesque.
‘I was completely fooled,’ said Anselm.
Sister Dorothy might have admitted defeat, but she was shrewd enough to wait and see just how much territory had been lost. Anselm smuggled an arm into each wide sleeve, taking hold of his elbows. It was cold. Three ravens watched him from the branches of an oak beyond the convent wall.
‘I imagine that it was in the evening,’ said Anselm, ‘and that it had grown dark outside. Elizabeth was alone in the Green Room at St John’s Wood. She opened The Following of Christ – a book that went back, perhaps, to her last meeting with you -and she cut a hole in the pages deep enough to hold a key Much later she came to Larkwood with a duplicate and asked me to use it if, by chance, she were to die. Her last words to me were, “You can’t always explain things to your children. If need be, will you help Nicholas understand?” At first, I thought she meant help him come to terms with grief. Then I thought she wanted me to explain that you couldn’t be a lawyer without a sort of innocent compromise. But now I fear she meant something very different -’
Sister Dorothy made a low groan of surrender. ‘Mr Kemble said you might come.’
The ravens hopped onto higher branches, and then flew off in different directions.
‘You know Roddy?’ Anselm had the sort of sensation that might occur if you turned a corner in a familiar street, only to find you were in a different country.
‘Oh yes, we’re old friends,’ said Sister Dorothy ‘I met him during a prison visit. My veil charmed him. In those days it was like a marquee. He wanted to know how it was fixed, whether it was comfortable. I rather thought he was jealous.’
‘He’s never mentioned you.’
‘I should hope not.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that is what we agreed.’
Anselm tried to stop his intuition racing ahead of his questions. ‘Sister, did you introduce Elizabeth to Mr Kemble?’
‘Not quite.’ Sister Dorothy seemed proud of her own machinations. ‘I told Roddy all about Elizabeth when she began her studies for the Bar. He wangled several accidental meetings and eventually urged her to apply to his chambers. Elizabeth never found out.’
Anselm’s inkling was like a rush of blood. He said, ‘You didn’t meet Elizabeth in Carlisle, did you? You met here in Camberwell… This is the hostel where you were based… before the architects put in those corridors…’
Sister Dorothy gazed high above the convent wall, as if she could see ridges, peaks and snow ‘Wheel me inside, please, and tell me about the key’ she said.
As happens in November, darkness had come like a thief, and quickly.
15
When Riley got to Hornchurch Marshes the light was dwindling. Gingerly he trotted down a sloping path that led to the Four Lodges. Years back, a cooling tower had been demolished and all that remained were these rectangular pools. The Council had put some fish in and left them to it.
On the site of the old tower, Riley scoured the grass. Whimpering and swearing, he kicked free some rocks and a blackened two-by-four with rusted nails protruding like a row of buttons. Then he sat on the remnants of a wall, hugging himself, his eyes fixed on the path. He was up a height, feeling nauseous, watching his actions run ahead of him, like they’d done with John Bradshaw At his feet were the weapons, and a torch.
This was only the third time Riley had been here. The last was after the trial, and before that he’d been a boy.
Very early one morning the man Riley wouldn’t call Dad had put the remaining kitten in a sack. The other eight had found good homes. ‘Put your coat on, Graham,’ he said. There was a smell of aftershave – something brash and fiery.
Without speaking, they walked through Dagenham’s empty streets towards the pale light over Hornchurch Marshes. Presently the flats of the Thames opened out like a damp blanket and there, in the middle, were four panes of water, framed and criss-crossed by slippery bricks.
They walked to the edge and Walter’s arm began to swing. His chest blew up and his mouth went firm. Sick at the idea of unwanted life, Riley grabbed the big man’s sleeve, but a backhand sent him flying He was on his hands and knees for the splash, with blood on his lip. The bag turned in the water and sank. Riley watched, transfixed. He’d expected a scream – not from the bag, but from above and all around. But there was no sound… none at all. After the ripples had run off, the surface carried nothing but colour snatched from the brightening sky.
That evening, they came back to the Four Lodges. Midges clung like hats around the fishermen. They sat on boxes and stools, maggots on their bottom lip. That’s how it was done: you warmed it in the mouth. When it hit the cold water the thing wriggled on its hook, attracting the perch and the carp. Walter kept his supply in a Tom Long tobacco tin.
‘Go on, Graham,’ he said distantly.
