Nancy held back the tears; and her man watched her, approving of the struggle, relieved by it.
Waiting for the day of the trial was awful, if only because of the unimaginable shame. At such times, your mum and dad were meant to rally round, but Nancy’s had drawn the blinds good and proper — they’d never liked her man, never. And Riley had no one. Even Mr Lawton went peculiar. He’d always been one for having a good grumble first thing — about the downturn and closures — but he went quiet, all stern, and turned his big tweedy back on her when he had to speak. Everyone had crossed to the other side of the road. One day she looked up and saw Babycham’s permed head against the frosted glass of the door. They hadn’t spoken for ages.
‘Look, Nancy’ she said, after checking the boss was out, ‘we’ve known each other since we were this high. Fair enough, we’re not as close as we used to be, but I don’t hold no grudges. We all make our own choices, and you’ve made yours. But still I owe it to you to speak plain. Why do you trust him?’
Nancy was knocked sideways. Not just because she’d implied, all brazen, that Riley was in the wrong It was that word, ‘trust’. Nancy had never quite clocked the obvious: her man was for saying he trusted her when, in fact, it was she who was trusting him.
‘Run for it, girl,’ Babycham said. ‘We’ll all rally round, honest. We’ve had a meeting.’
Confused, angry and feeling sort of cold and stripped, right down to her pants, Nancy gasped, ‘Clear off.’ Finding some breath, she added, ‘Riley always said you were full of wind and bubbles.’
When it grew dark Nancy locked up the shop and walked home along the towpath by Limehouse Cut, past barges and boats moored at the banks of the canal. On the way she found a brick for the herb bed. She dropped it on the pile, had a boiled egg and watched a programme on Liberian shipping regulations. After the news she went to bed and, dozing fitfully waited for Riley.
The room was pitch black when he climbed into bed.
‘Nancy?’ He waited, and whispered again. ‘Nancy?’
She didn’t so much as turn a hair. After a moment he reached over and, for minutes on end, he stroked her nose, her lips… each feature on her face, just like Mr Johnson had done with the figurine lamp. Then he shrank back as if he’d done something wrong.
It was often like this. When Riley had done a clearing he didn’t come home until after midnight — she didn’t know where he’d been, or what he’d done, and she didn’t care — but he’d come to bed with these trembling hands. No one had ever touched her so exquisitely (it was a word she’d heard a doctor use to describe intense pain, but when she’d looked it up in a dictionary, she’d thought of these secret moments).
Nancy fell asleep, savouring the aftermath of this mysterious, most secret affection. Beside her Riley started to moan, and downstairs Arnold was running as fast as his little legs would carry him.
6
‘You’ve received another letter from Mrs Glendinning,’ the Prior repeated.
Anselm had just finished his breakfast when he was called to the phone. The envelope was marked ‘PRIVATE and URGENT’, which prompted Sylvester — in a rare burst of competence — to summon the Prior, who’d recognised Elizabeth’s handwriting.
‘But who posted it?’ asked Anselm.
‘Another friend, I suppose,’ said the Prior. ‘Shall I read it out?’
Anselm glanced nervously at his watch. An adult life determined in its first half by court engagements and its second by bells had made Anselm (like many barristers and monks) slightly neurotic about time. ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘Will you fax it through? I’ve got an appointment in Camberwell.’
The community superior led Anselm through baffling corridors that only an architect could have devised, past various photographs of the congregation’s personnel. Anselm noticed the alteration in headdress over the years, from a spectacular construct of starched linen to a simple veil. Entering a walled garden, Sister Barbara pointed towards a path flanked by chestnut trees. At its end, in a wheelchair, sat an elderly woman who wore a woollen hat remarkably similar to a cushion.
Like any sensible interrogator, Anselm had researched his witness in advance. From his initial telephone enquiry, with supplemental details from the superior, Anselm had learned a great deal. Sixty years ago, upon the outset of her religious life, Sister Dorothy had run a London hostel before being installed as matron at a private school in Carlisle. She had been very happy but her life was to typify the precedence of service over personal inclination. Following a short stint as a prison chaplain in Liverpool, she’d been sent to work as a nurse in Afghanistan. Seventeen years later she’d come home to have her wisdom teeth removed. She never went back to her mountain dispensary. Her one souvenir was an Afghan pakol, the hat that became her trademark.
Anselm approached her, his feet crunching the gravel.
As soon as he was within earshot, Sister Dorothy said, ‘I didn’t know she’d died until you called.’ Her voice was clear but slightly laboured. As Anselm sat on a bench, she added, ‘So you’re an old friend?’
‘Yes. We were in chambers together.’
‘Tell me, was she happy?’ She spoke with the aching concern of an old teacher.
‘Very much so.’
‘Successful?’
‘Oh yes.’
The nun smiled and sighed. Threads of shadow thrown by branches swung across her face. ‘Well, well, well,’ she sang quietly. Her skin had the transparent whiteness of old age, with a multitude of deep lines. A dint in the profile of her nose revealed a badly healed fracture, sustained (he’d been told) during a prison visit.
Anselm spoke of Elizabeth’s professional reputation, of her marriage and her son, while Sister Dorothy listened eagerly not wanting to miss a single detail. In due course, and adroitly Anselm observed, ‘And yet, after all those years together, I knew very little about her past.’
He waited, hoping. In fact, he prayed.
‘Did she ever show you the photograph?’ She spoke distantly one hand raised, as if she were pointing to a wall.
Anselm leaned forward, elbows on his knees. ‘I don’t think so.
‘The photograph of the family?’ continued Sister Dorothy surprised that her visitor was unsure of her meaning.
‘No,’ replied Anselm, trying not to sound too interested.
‘Well, well, well,’ sang Sister Dorothy to herself. She studied Anselm, like one about to break a confidence. ‘The photograph tells you everything… It’s all there in black and white… a happy family on a Sunday afternoon some time in the 1940s.’
The part of Anselm’s character that trusted in the dispensations of Providence made an exclamation of gratitude. He waited, though he was impatient to learn the history that Elizabeth had kept to herself.
‘On the right is her father,’ said Sister Dorothy Wrinkles crowded her eyes as she called up the portrait. A tall, thin man with a waxed moustache and shiny black hair. He wore wing collars every day of his adult life. A man fifty years out of his time.’ She threw Anselm a glance. ‘Did she tell you about him?’
‘Not in any detail,’ replied Anselm. In fact, Elizabeth had never mentioned him.
‘He was an unhappy insurance salesman based in Manchester. After he’d sold his quota of premiums he locked himself in the attic trying to invent an electronic smoke detector. Several times he nearly burnt the house down. He never gave up. He thought if he could only pull it off, the industry would name a policy after him.’
‘He didn’t succeed?’
‘No, he did not.’ She paused, looking towards a high wall covered in ivy. ‘But he made a fortune.’
Anselm pictured a man with the shade of Elizabeth’s face.
‘To the left is her mother,’ continued Sister Dorothy like a museum guide. A seamstress from Chorley She’s wearing a polka dot dress with enormous buttons. Hair like Maggie Thatcher. A happy house-proud woman whose only joke was that she’d like to invent a fire extinguisher.’