He looked up to the misty night sky. There were no stars, just this ghostly breath off the Thames.
They were sitting at the kitchen table. Nancy had fished out Uncle Bertie’s poison and filled identical tumblers.
‘To Arnold,’ she said.
They clinked glasses and downed their drinks in one.
Nancy coughed, and Riley’s lips ignited. To the blotches of purple light, he said, ‘I’ve had enough.’
Nancy nodded and put the bottle back in the cupboard.
Because the poison was illegal, she always hid it, even though no one would ever come looking. That was Nancy all over. He said, ‘I’ve got a Christmas Fair coming up.’
‘Where?’
‘Wanstead.’ Riley conjured up those fields of snow spreading out before him as far as the eye could see — beyond the Weald and on to the South Downs. ‘I’ll do this last one.’ He could do it; he could take a first step, as long as Nancy knew nothing of what lay behind.
‘What do you mean?’ Nancy stood with hands on her hips. Her face still blotched from the tears.
‘I’m going to pack it in.’
‘What, the business?’
‘Yes.’ He could walk away and keep going. Every step would be new He need never turn around. Riley’s eyes glazed before a sort of darkness. He didn’t understand his own thoughts. This was the Major’s country.
‘You’ve had too much of Uncle Bertie’s poison,’ said Nancy She smiled, and was, to Riley very pretty. ‘Your sort never give up.
7
Anselm slept fitfully waking at intervals to be tormented by George’s calm, and his own folly The old man’s repetition word for word of their earlier conversation had been a device of mercy but in the giving George had revealed the activity of his memory: he’d known that Anselm had been to Mitcham; and he’d understood that Emily wouldn’t take him back.
When morning came Anselm acted without hesitation: whatever Doctor Johnson thought of London, Anselm was tired of it. His life lay elsewhere, as now would George’s. He rang Larkwood to say he was coming home, and he asked Wilf — the guestmaster — to prepare a room for a weary pilgrim. At the hospital, George warmed to the proposal immediately volunteering that he’d never been to a monastery, and that The Sound of Music was his wife’s favourite film. On the train he kept breaking into ‘Doe, a deer’ while Anselm studied the badge on his blazer: Legis Plenitudo Caritas. It was a warning and a promise: the law would be fulfilled, but only by love. What would Elizabeth have made of that?
By early afternoon George had been installed in a room overlooking the valley of the Lark. The stream sliced through ribbed fields, drawing down the winter sun. On the far side, oaks and chestnuts crowded on the slopes. Anselm leaned on the sill, beside George, longing to get among the blue shadows, to kick the acorns and conkers.
‘I knew a strange man called Nino,’ said George, searching the treetops. ‘He told me that at the bottom of every box is hope. No matter what terrible things jump out, he said, we have to wait.’
The old man hung his hands on the lapels of his blazer and talked to the valley about this Nino, a guide who told stories that George had rarely understood first time around. It was a patchy reminiscence, of sayings uttered near Marble Arch or King’s Cross, on a bench or by a bin. His memory hadn’t held on to the parts that would have made the whole easy to understand. But as he spoke, Anselm thought of Clem, his old novice master, long dead, who’d taught through mysterious tales of the Desert Fathers. And slowly like warming up, Anselm felt close to George, as he’d been close to Clem, and yet — as with Clem — he remained so very far away For with every word, it became clear:
George understood Nino’s stories without being able to explain them. George had come to that point of stillness and detachment that Anselm was hoping to reach through monastic routine. This mendicant beside him was already home: he’d reached the same strange uplands stalked by two strange masters.
‘Here’s a small present with many pages,’ said Anselm, taking his leave. It was a notebook with Larkwood’s address and phone number inside.
He moved briskly down the corridor, intent on grabbing the Prior just before compline, when authority was both tired and indulgent, to beg that George might live out the remainder of his days at Larkwood. For the moment, another task required his attention.
Anselm went to the calefactory, a side room off the cloister with a huge fireplace, some armchairs and a telephone. In the Middle Ages, it had warmed up rude and ready monks; now it was one of the monastery’s many hideaways, a place in which to thaw and think. It was empty. Anselm sat by the inglenook and made what amounted to a preliminary call. .
The Provincial of the Daughters of Charity remembered him from his earlier enquiry about Sister Dorothy and the account of a hidden key Anselm wanted access to any records that touched on the background of Elizabeth. They were held in the congregation’s archives, he assumed, at Carlisle. Fearing a refusal if he approached the school directly he wondered if the Provincial might sanction his appeal for help.
‘Why exactly do you want to know?’ she said. ‘I don’t see how your question is linked to your objective.’
‘Because I think it’s only a matter of time before her son wonders why his mother cut a. hole into that particular book, which will bring him to Dorothy’ replied Anselm. ‘And as this business reaches its end, I fear everything will unravel. I want to get back to the first dropped stitch — if there is one — so that I might help him.’
The Provincial told Anselm to wait one hour and them he was to ring the school and ask for Sister Pauline.
When Anselm duly dialled the Carlisle number the phone was picked up instantly. And just as promptly they set to work. There was only one sheet of paper in the file, said Sister Pauline. ‘I’d rather not release a copy Father, but I can read it out. Is that all right?’
‘Yes.’
Laboriously she described the format of the page and the brief details recorded on it. Anselm listened, eyes closed, picturing the document in his head. When she’d finished, Anselm decided to repeat back the particulars that mattered for confirmation.
‘So, am I right, Elizabeth Steadman was born in London, not Manchester?’
‘Correct.’
‘No parental details are recorded?’
‘None.’
‘Her home address is given simply as Camberwell?’
‘Yes.’
Anselm wondered why such an important matter had been left so vague.
‘Because we know exactly what it means,’ said Sister Pauline. ‘Camberwell refers to our hostel. It means she was based there before being given a place at the school.’
‘Hostel?’ asked Anselm, thinking of the convent where he’d met Sister Dorothy.
Sister Pauline explained that the Camberwell hostel had been their biggest London project, offering accommodation and help to anyone and everyone, so long as they were female. The building had been converted years ago to provide affordable housing, a part of the ground floor being retained for the community. Anselm had already been there.
He could imagine Elizabeth’s journey north, far from the big city; but something was missing ‘If she came to Carlisle through the hostel, without parental involvement, then there should be a court order … a legal document that defines her status and yours. Are you sure there’s nothing else in the file?’
‘Absolutely.’
And that, he inferred, means it’s either been destroyed, or it never existed.
Anselm thanked Sister Pauline and put the phone down. His thoughts fell neatly into place: if no court order had been made, then Elizabeth’s presence at the school would have been with parental consent — that of Mr and Mrs Steadman. So why had no address been recorded? And why had Elizabeth been linked to the hostel? The only person who knew was Sister Dorothy and she, Anselm decided, would receive another friendly visit —only this time they’d get beyond the figures in a photograph.