The Child Garden (18 page)

I was speechless. I don't think I was even breathing because Miss Drumm said, “Gloria?” in a querulous voice, as if to check that I was still sitting there.

“How old were you when your mother told you this story?”

“It's not a story, and I was old enough to wander the woods,” she said. “I knew from when I was big enough to reach the handle that the hallowed place was where to go if anyone chased me.”

“Why didn't the merrymakers go there?” I said, in spite of myself. I couldn't resist a fairy story when I didn't know the ending.

“Ah,” said Miss Drumm. “Because it wasn't there. It was built with the stone from the bridge. After that night the bridge was put asunder and the stones used to build the hallowed place to honour the child devoured.”

I shuddered. “But then your father built another bridge?”

“Exactly!” said Miss Drumm. “He said it was a wooden bridge and not the least bit dangerous, but then look what happened. Those poor children. That poor boy. If I'd had the sense to demolish the footbridge before those fools opened the school, then there wouldn't have been a tragedy. But it was dilapidated. It wasn't usable.”

“They mended it,” I told her. “As part of their woodwork classes.”

“And how was I to know they'd let thirteen children sleep in the woods? Light a fire and sing and dance, just when I was away from home and the stone was still? Who could have guessed that anyone would be so reckless with children's lives?”

“Thirteen?” I said. And I repeated what she'd told me in that sing-song voice. “Three to the hills and three to the dales, three to the meadows and three to the trees. And one left to run to the castle.”

“Yes,” said Miss Drumm. “Like I told you.”

“Moped and Bezzo,” I whispered, counting on my fingers. “Ned and Nod. Stig and April. Duggie and Jo-jo. Two Scarlets and three Irving girls.”

“Thirteen,” said Miss Drumm. “And one died.”

“But they weren't all there,” I said. “One of them left because
he wasn't feeling well.” I wasn't making any sense, but I couldn't stop
arguing. Anything to keep this crazy nonsense out of my head. I had known this woman for ten years. I knew she was a bit peculiar about the rocking stone, but this made her sound dangerous. Badly unhinged.

“Well, someone must have joined the other twelve then,” she said. I said nothing, thinking about the car. “That teacher was supposed to have gone out and checked on them, isn't that so?”

“But she didn't.”

“Oh, don't I know it,” said Miss Drumm. “She lost her job over it and the school was closed.”

“I think that was for the best,” I said. “It was a very strange setup all round, if you ask me.”

Miss Drumm nodded, her lips pushed out in that way that makes the hairs on her lip bristle. “I always thought so,” she said. “I always did wonder why that man—Tarrant—wanted to open a school. He wasn't the type. Not the type at all. One did wonder. But they were much more innocent days, even thirty years ago. One didn't hear the stories one hears now. Priests and Scoutmasters and the like. Now it would ring the most tremendous alarm bells, obviously.”

“Big Jacky Tarrant?” I said. “But he only put the money up, didn't he? He wasn't involved day to day.”

“Oh, wasn't he?” said Miss Drumm. “He was there more than I could understand, and he never went in the front way. I challenged him more than once when he came roaring along the lane in front of Rough House, frightening the cats and Rabbie, in that ridiculous car of his.”

I remembered it well. I remembered Stig getting into it at the school gate, and once I had seen Angie Tarrant clambering out of it on Castle Douglas High Street, looking like a beetle trying to right itself in her tight skirt and stilettos. She had slammed the door loud enough to make the other shoppers turn around and stare, then stalked off without a backwards glance at her husband. It struck me hard. Even my parents observed the niceties of a peck on the cheek and a wave as they parted, a peck on the cheek again when one
returned. I had only felt sorry for Stig at the time, imagining living in a house where people slammed car doors and didn't say goodbye. Now though, sitting by Miss Drumm, I found myself wondering what a man would have to do, what kind of man he would have to be, to turn his wife so bitter.

“It's a serious accusation, Miss Drumm,” I said, thinking that just a rumour of it could get a man hounded to his death. But who better to start the rumor that wrecked Alan Best's life than someone in the know? Someone who could make the details authentic from experience? A small moan escaped me.

“You sound worn out, Gloria,” said Miss Drumm. “And Lord knows I am. My sleeve is unravelled beyond all knitting.” Her voice was growing slow and slurred now, as she talked herself into rest. “When I was a child I couldn't imagine going gently, you know. And now, I wish it would just hurry up and … ” She took a great breath in and then was silent. I watched her, my heart beginning to bang so hard in my chest I could see my dress moving.

No, no, no
, I told her, willing my thoughts silently into her head.
Nicky first, and then you, and then Walter. And no one just now until this nightmare is over. No one tonight. No.

“Miss Drumm?” I said, too loud and too sharp. She was so still I was sure she was gone.

“Wha—” she said, jerking awake.

“Good night,” I said. I stood and kissed her thin white hair, feeling the warmth of her pink scalp under my lips. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

I was halfway home before I realised I'd forgotten to go back and read to Nicky.

Twenty-Four

“Jesus, Glo,” said Stig
when I got in. I lowered myself into a chair and let my head drop back. “What the hell happened to you? Can we make a deal that, as long as I'm here, you'll let me know if you're going to be late?”

“Sorry,” I said. “Not used to anyone waiting for me.”

“So, what's new?”

I told him: Jo-jo and the Pont du Diable, Duggie in the hallowed place, Duggie in Nicky's room tonight. I told him about Miss Drumm's crazy stories and how the worst part of them was that they rang so true. There was only one thing I didn't tell him. BJ was his father and I couldn't say it. I could ask, though.

“Stig?” I said, still with my eyes shut. Still with my head back, my hand gripping the whisky glass he had handed me. “Do you really want to get to the bottom of this?”

“What?” he said. “Are you kidding? How could I not?”

“No matter what the truth is?” I said. “No matter what we uncover if we lift the rock?”

“Is it Duggie?” he asked me. “Are you scared of what you might find out about him?”

I lifted my head and opened my eyes then, squinting even the light was low. “Me?” I said. “I was thinking about you, actually. Are you protecting someone?”

His eyes flared. “Who the hell would I be protecting?” he said. “I haven't seen any of them since I left high school. Haven't seen most of them since I left Eden that morning. God knows if any of them are left for me to see anyway.”

“Oh God, that's right!” I said, hauling myself to my feet and going over to the telephone. “Lynne was going to try to track down the girls. I need to ring her before it's too late.”

Stig was staring at me. Gaping, really. “Who the hell's Lynne?”

“Admin assistant at work,” I said, too tired to be defensive; too tired to care what he made of it. Which was plenty.

“You told your assistant?” His voice was loud enough that Walter stirred.

“She put it together. She doesn't know about you.”

Lynne's number was ringing, and I held up a finger to quiet him.

“Have you got a bit paper and a pen?” she said. “Okay. Scarlet McFarlane, born 1973, Glasgow. She registered a birth in 1989, a daughter. The address was in Perth. I'll give it to you.”

“1989?” I said.

“Yeah, I know. What are the chances she'll still be there?”

“That too,” I said, “but in 1989, Scarlet McFarlane was sixteen.”

“Should have called her Chastity,” said Lynne. “So that's not very hopeful, and there was nothing at all about the other one—Scarlet McInnes. Not a dickybird. But the Irving girls are a different story. You know how they lived at the Borgue? Well, they're still there. Two of them anyway.” There was a pause. “Cloud died two years ago. Suicide. Rain and Sun registered it.”

“How do you mean?” I said. “Only one person can register a death.”

“Yeah, but it was at Dumfries,” said Lynne, “and the Dumfries office put their names in the sweepstake.”

I sucked in a breath. “That's not right. That's births only. We never have a laugh with a death reg.”

“I know,” said Lynne. “It got disqualified, of course it did. But Terrence at Dumfries put it in. I thought the names seemed familiar when you said them today, and when I found the death reg and Terrence's name as the registrar, I remembered. I looked at the email, Gloria. I can forward it to you.”

“No, there's no need,” I said. “Thanks, Lynne. And now, just forget all about this. Just pretend today didn't happen, right? See you Friday.”

“Who's dead?” said Stig as soon as I'd hung up the phone.

“Cloud Irving killed herself,” I said. “I'm going to go and visit her sisters tomorrow.”

I was almost too scared to go to sleep, tired as I was, in fear of the dreams that might come to haunt me. But as soon as I closed my eyes, I was in heaven. It had been a while since I'd found myself there. It had been years since I'd tried to work out what sent me there and tried to make it happen, with cheese and meditation and drops of his shampoo on a hanky clutched in my hand. Long ago, I decided there was no rhyme or reason. I couldn't court it; I could only enjoy it when I came.

He was wearing a filthy football strip, mud caked all up one side of him where he had slid into a tackle. He stopped in the back lobby—it was the house that Duggie and I had moved into when I was pregnant with him—stopped in the lobby, kicked off his boots, and shucked off his clothes until he stood in just his underpants, shivering.

“Mu-um!” he shouted. I was right there in the kitchen, but for some reason he bellowed at me. “Goan turn the shower on. Goan bring my dressing gown.”

“What did your last slave die of ?” I said. “Put your dad's sweatshirt on. Look, on the coat hook there. It's due for a wash anyway. I'm not washing your dressing gown in this rain. I'll never get it dry.”

But in my dream I did go and turn the shower on, and laid out a fluffy towel and a new catheter tube and feeding tube, and then I closed the door between Nicky's room and Miss Drumm's room so he could shower in peace and went back to the kitchen.

“Has that wee toe rag nicked my sweatshirt?” Stig said, coming in the back door with an armload of herbs, enough herbs to fill a sack, more than anyone could ever use, and the smell of them was overpowering, a choking stench of cheap carpet and underlay and the sweet plastic smell of vinyl flooring.

“What are you making?” I said.

“Alibis,” said Stig, and he poured the herbs onto the kitchen floor and kicked them until they covered the stone slab there. “She'll start to smell soon.”

“Mum,” said Nicky. “Can I ask you something?” He was lying in his high hospital bed through the door from the kitchen where our little dining room should be. But he was propped up on his elbows with his legs bent, his feet flat on the sheet underneath him.

“What is it?” I said. “I'm cooking your tea. I'm busy.”

“Why are shadows wicked?”

“I'm sorry, Nicky.”

“Must we to bed indeed?”

“I'm sorry, Nicky.”

“Why did he go to the Land of Nod?”

I woke up, sweaty and tangled in my bedclothes with William and Dorothy on my legs, and lay there panting. There was a soft knock at the door.

“Glo?” said Stig. “You were shouting.”

“Nightmare,” I said. “But a good one.”

“That's different,” said Stig. “Are you okay?”

I thought about it.
Was
I okay? What was bothering me? It was just an anxiety dream—April in the hole, Stig and the garden, mixed with one of the wonderful dreams where Nicky is awake and full of mischief. And dreaming about the three poems called “North-West Passage” was nothing new. I always did when we were getting around to that bit of the book. So what was troubling me?

“Glo? Tell me you're okay or I'm coming in.” His voice was shaking, and so I answered him.

“I'm fine,” I said. “But there's something … Look, come in if you want. It's too cold to stand out in the passage.”

“It's too cold to live,” said Stig, hurrying in. “If this was my house, I'd be in a sleeping bag down in the kitchen. Beside Walter.”

“Get in at the other end, if you like,” I suggested. “Keep warm while I try to work this out.”

I could see his dim outline in the light from my radio alarm and I saw him hesitate for a second before I felt the tug of him untucking the covers at the foot end and then felt the mattress drop out from under me on that side as his weight was added to it.

“Shift, cat,” he said, and Dorothy Wordsworth rolled away as he tugged the blanket out from under her. She righted herself and curled up again on his lap. I passed a pillow down and heard him settling it behind him. Then he took a huge breath in and let it out again.

“Shoot,” he said.

“It's the book I read to Nicky,” I said. “I told you about it.
A Child's Garden of Verses
?”

“By the guy who wrote Frankenstein, yeah,” said Stig. I didn't correct him.

“There's these three poems, called ‘North-West Passage',” I said. “Like a trilogy. And I always have bad dreams when they're coming round again. They're about a little kid going to bed and … I don't know. I used to think they were sweet, but there's things in them about how he's scared of the dark and the shadows in the passageway and he's scampering to his bedroom through the haunted house. Anyway. I was reading the middle one—‘Shadow March'—the last time Nicky…”

“What?” said Stig, when the silence had gone on too long. “Spoke? The last time he laughed?”

“Oh my God,” I said. “If you only knew.

“It was the last time he did anything. Mr. Wishart the consultant had finally persuaded me about full sedation. It was four years ago. And I was reading to him while they did his drugs, and he groaned. Sort of moaned. Whimpered, I suppose you'd say. I was reading ‘Shadow March,' the bit that goes: ‘All the wicked shadows coming tramp, tramp tramp, and the black night overhead.' And he whimpered. I've never been able to get it out of my head that the very last thing he was aware of before the dark closed in forever was his stupid bloody mother reading a horrible scary poem to him.”

“But he
wasn't
aware,” said Stig, once I had explained it. “Of course he wasn't. I've looked up PKAN, Glo, these last few days, and that groan can't have been Nicky feeling frightened. He was just relaxing. Just his throat unclenching. You know that, really.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Course I do. But every time we're coming round to those poems again, I dream about Nicky asking me, ‘Why are shadows wicked?' and ‘Must we to bed indeed? Well then. Let us arise and go like men. And face with an undaunted tread the long black passage up to bed.'”

“Fucking Nora,” said Stig. “What the hell are you reading that to him for when you could be reading him
The Beano
or … Christ, I don't know. How old is he? Fifteen? Okay, well, something with some tits and ass in it? Or Stephen King?”

“Stephen King has plenty of … that in it, actually,” I said. “Lots of books do. But listen. A question he just asked me tonight in my dream wasn't one of the usual ones.”

“Okay,” said Stig. “I'm listening.”

“The last poem ends up ‘See me lying warm and fast, in the Land of Nod at last.' And tonight in my dream, Nicky asked me, ‘Why did he go to the Land of Nod?' He's never asked me that before. Usually he asks me, ‘Where's the land of Nod, Mum?' Or ‘What's the land of Nod, Mum?' But tonight he said, ‘Why did he go to the Land of Nod?' and I think it's a clue.”

“Nicky is giving you clues in your dream,” said Stig. It wasn't a question. It was more as if he was repeating it to test how mad it sounded. Like me with Miss Drumm.

“I think he was talking about Nod—Nathan—McAllister,” I said. “I think what he was really saying was, why did Nathan kill himself in a car park at Stirling University?”

“He's a chip off the old block then,” Stig said. “Because that's a good question. Why
did
Nod kill himself there? He didn't live there, didn't go to college there. He went to Robert Gordon. And it wasn't an isolated spot or one of those classic suicide spots like Beachy Head or Dartmoor. Why there?”

“Maybe he set off from his house and drove until he'd made up his mind, and that's just where he was when the moment came.”

“Could be,” said Stig. “Still.”

“Yeah,” I said. Our discussion was at its end, it looked like. And here we were in bed together. Sort of. Head to tail, and a cat in between us.

“Right then,” Stig said. “I'll get back along to my room. Unless I go downstairs and get hot water bottles first. Want one?”

I considered it very carefully before I spoke.

“Or you could just stay here. I mean, just to sleep, just for warmth. And comfort. Not for … ”

“Down this end?” said Stig.

“That's a bit weird,” I said. “Isn't it?”

“Up to you,” said Stig. “D'you want my feet or my breath?”

I giggled, almost in spite of myself. He was so crude, but somehow it didn't bother me the way Duggie did.

“Swivel round,” I said. “But seriously, just for warmth. And company.”

It took him a long time to get settled, a lot of punching his pillow and tugging at his clothes before he subsided.

“Night-night,” he said.

“Sleep tight,” I answered.

“Don't let the bed posts bite,” he said, already beginning to sound groggy. I listened to his breathing and found mine lapsing into time with it, then my eyelids were fluttering, and then I was gone. No dreams this time, just sweet oblivion.