Alice's Secret Garden Read online

  She then realised that a pun had been staring her in the face for a while without her fully noticing.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, a little shy smile making her look as pretty as she ever would, which was really quite pretty, ‘we’d have to wait to see what it actually reached at … auk-shun.’

  There was a worrying moment or two, in which Alice seriously contemplated simply walking out, before the panel decided to laugh, but once underway the general chortle acquired enough momentum to last for a good ten seconds.

  ‘It’d be handy having a scientist around. You know, for facts and suchlike.’

  The panel were having a final round-up.

  ‘Mmm, she certainly knew her stuff when it came to auks.’

  ‘And seemed to have a reasonable sense of humour.’

  ‘For a scientist.’

  ‘Not bad-looking either.’

  ‘For a scientist.’

  ‘And of course there’s Old Crawley to think about.’

  ‘Crawley, of course.’

  ‘Ah yes, good Old Crawley.’

  So Alice got the job, despite the fact that none of the panel members ever had a clear idea of who or what Old Crawley might have been.

  Alice approached the body that had agreed to fund her research. She half wanted them to say that no, they really couldn’t defer her award, and who did she think she was anyway, even to ask. But in the event they were horribly decent and agreed that her funding was available for any time over the next year, after which she would have to reapply. It made her think of the tutor who’d first suggested that she stay in research. ‘They always like to have a girlie or two on their books,’ she’d said with minimal bitterness. ‘Makes it look like they have a decent equal opps policy.’

  So Alice told herself that she could do the job for a year, save some money, have some fun, and then carry on with her research. After all, she was only twenty-four. Mauritius wasn’t going anywhere. And just how many species of snail could go extinct in a mere twelve months?

  The plan, had it not been for the intercession of the Dead Boy, might well have worked out. As it was, everything changed when Alice entered her dreamtime.

  Why her? Why then? Why the Dead Boy? The questions drifted through her mind but never pressed her to answer, never forced the issue. If someone had taken her face in their hands with gentle pressure and implored her to say what it was about her, Alice Duclos, that had made her vulnerable to this obsession, then she might have tried to say something about her father, something about the rotten, death-filled, loveless cavity where he had been, that marked his loss. She might have said something about the bitter wilderness, the tedium, the endless ache of her life with Kitty. She might have said those things, or she might only have pulled away, her eyes empty.

  Whatever it was, Alice’s plans dried and shrivelled and blew away, and she stayed at Enderby’s. It certainly wasn’t that she’d fallen in love with her job; it was more that her life came to a kind of a stop when she saw the Dead Boy; everything became frozen, petrified. She didn’t want change; she most emphatically didn’t want Sheffield. What she wanted was to think about her boy, to imagine his life, to invent a life together with him. Working at Enderby’s was a link to the Dead Boy, because that’s where she was when she found him, but it also left her with the time to live in her imaginary world. She wasn’t stretched or tested. Her colleagues presented no real difficulties or challenges, and she found that she could function perfectly well with only a fraction of her consciousness above the surface, in the waking, office world.

  The main problem had been Andrew. At some point during the two months of innocence before things changed, she had gradually become aware that he might like her, although she never fully admitted it to herself. And he was nice. Well, no, not nice, but funny and interesting. They’d even had a sort of a date.

  ‘I hate parks,’ Andrew said one afternoon. Alice had brought him a mug of tea, as it was her turn. They had a little running joke about how terrible her tea was – too milky, and not brewed for long enough. ‘You’ve got to shqueeze the bag,’ he’d say in a comical version of his northern accent, and she’d pretend to get huffy about his ingratitude.

  ‘What’s wrong with parks? I don’t think I could survive in London without them. It’s the only way to escape the clamour and rush.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s the cliché, but it’s just a thing that people say without meaning it, or thinking about it at all. Parks are full of weirdos, and people doing t’ai chi, and old codgers with nowhere to go, and dogs, and pigeons with gammy legs, and people snogging as if nobody can see them. The ground’s always wet, and there’re trees and shrubbery and stuff all over the place. When did anyone ever have a decent conversation in the park? No, parks are for losers. There’s that Larkin poem, you know, about turning over your failures by some bed of lobelias.’

  Alice was laughing.

  ‘Have you ever actually been to a park?’

  ‘Yeah, loads.’

  ‘Which ones?’

  ‘You know, just parks. The regent thing. And that other one, the green one. No, not really. I told you, I don’t like them, I prefer to get drunk sitting down in the corner of a pub, not standing up with a can of Special Brew, and a gang of old men with bandaged heads, and piss stains down the front of their trousers.’

  ‘There’s a beautiful one that I used to go to when I was young. We used to bunk off from PE lessons and sit in the grass and eat ice cream. It saved me, in a way, because I used to live in the country when I was very little, and London was … difficult. I still go there sometimes. I think even you’d like it. It has an aviary, and an enclosure with wallabies, and an old-fashioned bandstand. It’s not really a Special Brew kind of park. More cream tea.’

  Now Andrew was laughing, but his eyes had narrowed. He’d suddenly realised that this was the fabled shot-to-nothing, the freebie, the chance to ask Alice out without actually seeming to ask her out. No declaration of intent was needed, no fear of rejection, no embarrassment at all. This could all be passed off as an innocent trip to the park. A mere matter of friendship. But still, how to ask her. Words. What happened to them when you needed them? And anyway, it wasn’t true that there was nothing to lose. What if she didn’t even want to be friends? Wasn’t that worse than not wanting to go out with him? (On balance, he decided that it wasn’t worse, but only by between six and eleven per cent, depending on other variables.)

  ‘Wallabies,’ he said, after a few moments of computation. ‘You’re winding me up. No? Well, if you say so. I’ve always liked the idea of wallabies. Little kangaroos. Charming fellows. Mmmm. It is, you know, on this plane of existence, isn’t it?’

  Alice already had a reputation for being a little dreamy, which Andrew used occasionally to tease her with, staying, he hoped, on the right side of being an arse.

  ‘Yes, Golders Hill Park. It’s a sort of offshoot of Hampstead Heath. But without the men having sex with each other in the bushes.’

  ‘Why don’t you show me round it? You know, the wallabies and the cream teas?’

  With sublime ease the date was arranged for the next day, Saturday. Andrew’s pleasure at this was dulled after he became aware that the divine and/or profane Ophelia had been listening to the conversation. Although he didn’t have the nerve to look directly at her, he could easily picture the aspect of disdain into which her exquisite features so easily fell. For a moment his mind projected Ophelia’s contemptuous sneer onto Alice’s open and innocent face, where it curled like an obscene wound. The vision made him hate Ophelia, but he would still have given a month’s salary for the chance to pin her down on an unmade bed and …

  ‘I’ll meet you by the flamingos,’ said Alice.

  And it was that lunchtime, Friday 14th April, that she found the Dead Boy.

  Andrew couldn’t put his finger on what had changed, but it was clear that things were different as soon as he saw her. He would have noticed the difference if he hadn’t had meeti
ngs on the Friday afternoon, and he deliberately spent the time in between appointments away from his desk, just in case Alice should change her mind. After all, that’s what girls did, sometimes, didn’t they?

  He’d been watching the flamingos for about ten minutes, thinking what ugly organisms they were, close up, with their birth-defect, upside-downy faces, and trying to work out why they would want to stand on one leg. Something to do with heat conservation? Showing off to lady flamingos? Just because they could? And then Alice appeared, wordlessly. Her eyes wouldn’t meet his, which wasn’t like her at all, and she was dressed in something beyond her usual endearing simplicity in a combination of heavy top and light skirt and idiot-grade, lumpen brown shoes.

  ‘Alice, hello,’ he said. ‘Lucky you got here. The flamingos were starting to get bored with my conversation. And to be honest even I can only take so much small talk about whatchacallit, plankton.’

  There was a profoundly disconcerting pause before Alice said, ‘I’m sorry.’ Andrew couldn’t think what she was apologising for, but it seemed a strange sort of greeting. The park was, as Alice had said, very pretty. There really were wallabies, or one at least, accompanied by what Alice said without looking was a capybara, a big brown thing like a guinea pig on steroids. There was a bandstand with a large sign warning people to stay away. Although it was a chilly April morning, the sun shone in its weak-willed way, and it ought to have been fun.

  But for Alice.

  Andrew became increasingly frantic in his attempts to break through her … her what exactly? Reserve? No, she’d never been reserved, and that wasn’t it now. Veneer? God no. A cloud. For some reason Andrew remembered the derivation of ‘glamour’ which was originally a Scots word for an enveloping, obscuring cloud or mist, conjured up by a spell. So that was it: here in her mad-auntie clothes, Alice had acquired a glamour. Having a word for it didn’t help. His capering produced one brief smile, one moment of flickering recognition in her eyes. They were walking slowly around the aviary when Andrew was confronted by a tastelessly plumed, gangly bird, about a yard high, with a frill of what looked like 1960s eye make-up around its head.

  ‘What’s that one called?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a crane.’

  ‘A crane! Amazing. It doesn’t look strong enough.’

  There was a pause before Alice registered what he’d said.

  ‘Strong enough?’

  ‘You know, to do all that lifting, for buildings and things.’

  She crystallised for a second, before deliquescing back into some unreachable place, behind the cloud, behind the glamorous cloud.

  The last thing Alice said to him as they parted was, ‘I’m sorry.’

  THREE

  The Death of a Boy

  Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lay open to the sky. From up here she could see the whole of the great city stretching away from her on every side: glass pyramids, skyscrapers in gleaming, beaten bronze and bright chromium, towers of intricate wrought iron, ecstatic arcs of light, bridging gulfs and chasms. And lower down, miles below her, acre after acre of teeming tenements rich, like a coral reef, with life, blooming and billowing in the clear currents of air. Lower still, she could just make out the network of placid brown canals, with their longboats, and oared Venetian barges, crusted with gold and sugar icing, laden with aromatic cargoes of spice and opium. Blue airships, borne on plumes of white canvas, sailed serenely above and between the towers, and she could see the children waving from the small windows, giddy and hectic with the thrill of flight. From here there was no noise, none of the roar and throb of the city, just the sighing of the cirrus clouds and the blood murmuring in her ears.

  But this was too high: she couldn’t see what she wanted to see. Up here she was blinded by all the beauty and the splendour. She closed her eyes and thought herself closer to the ground, closer to the heart of things. She felt for the place, gently, timidly, like a tongue feeling for a point of tenderness. She opened her eyes into a layer of cloud. But no, not cloud: thick, choking smog, dirty with flakes of ash and busy particles of soot. She thought herself lower. Noises reached her: a harlot’s curse, the screams of a newborn baby, a hammering of iron upon iron.

  And further down she plunged, hoping to drown the cries of the wretched with the rush of wind in her face. She opened her eyes again. Here was the street she had walked down so many times. She saw the cafés spilling tables out onto pavements, desperate to make the most of the spring sunshine; she saw the mannequins in the windows of French Connection, Hobbs, Gap, all eager for summer, in light dresses and swimwear. Queues formed at the cashpoints, each one headed by a bewildered old lady, randomly pressing buttons.

  She hovered just below the roofs, close enough to feel the noise of the traffic: the buses and taxis and cars; close enough to hear the clip of heels, the jingle of change; close enough to see the faces, blank or anxious, smiling, wincing, cursing, laughing, of people pushing their way to the cafés and shops, all desperate to do what must be done this lunchtime. From here she could see directly into the windows of the rooms above the shops, but they stared blankly back, refusing to give up their secrets.

  She didn’t have to wait long before she saw him, moving like a dream of beauty through the world of things. Instantly, the street and the other people lost their vibrancy, became muted and grey. He was dressed in a long black coat, which swept behind him as if he were walking into a strong breeze. Beneath the coat she could see a white shirt, which flickered, becoming now soft swan’s down and now shimmering chain-mail. The breeze which blew back his coat also caught thick strands of his long hair. But Alice made the wind stop: the image was false, too clearly derived from advertising or shallow girlish fantasies.

  The boy’s slow, long strides took him steadily towards the crossing. The people before him dissolved as he passed, or melted into the pavement: he was the only real, solid thing in this world. And look, there, on this side of the road, Alice coming. So innocent in her dreaming: nothing there to cloud her thoughts or crush her will. She’s thinking about some silliness of Andrew’s (was it the time he’d tampered with the auto-correct function on Clerihew’s word-processor, so that whenever he typed ‘Cedric Clerihew’ at the end of a memo or letter, what came out was ‘Cedric King of the Visigoths, Emperor of all the Byzantines, and Lord of the High Seas Clerihew’? – the watching Alice smiled even now). Or perhaps she’s planning a mollusc hunt on faraway Mauritius. How easy the world had been then, how infinite in wonder and hope and opportunity.

  The innocent Alice paused at the crossing, and the watching Alice looked for her boy.

  When she replayed the incident, as she so often did, she could never quite see clearly enough to understand what had happened, why the car hadn’t stopped, why he hadn’t seen it approach. But there he was now, pellucid in the shade. This time she would learn the truth. And before she, the waiting Alice, had seen him, he had looked at her, paused for a moment, and then stepped out into the road.

  The car must have come from his right. Alice looked, and there she saw it. Metallic blue; something nondescript; a badge she did not recognise. There was a thick crusting of grime around the butterfly pattern of the wipers. And coming too fast. The boy again. He was still looking at her, confident on the crossing. But now he sensed that something was wrong. He was alone. Where were the others? Just as Alice, the waiting Alice, saw him for the first time, registered his presence, his beauty, he turned away from her to the car. The watching Alice peered down through the screen to the driver: a young woman, blonde, smart, untroubled, looking ahead. Looking but not seeing. But seeing now. Seeing him. Her body tensed and she stamped down on the brake. Tyres screeching. The boy absorbed the car, the truth of the car, and turned slowly – so slowly she realised there must be some distortion in her perception – back towards Alice. And he smiled.

  What could that smile have meant? The waiting Alice wondered; the watching Alice wondered; and later the Alice who replayed the visions of
the waiting Alice and the watching Alice wondered. Was it some reckless, adolescent bravado – a determination to show no fear in the eyes of the world? Was it a smile of sadness for the world that he was leaving? Was it a smile of love for Alice, a love engendered in that moment of desire and death? All seemed to carry something of the truth, but none to fully contain it. There was something else. Something darker. Something in the boy that said – but how could it be? – that said yes, yes.

  FOUR

  Odette and Alice

  Odette was worried. This was unusual, because Odette was not a worrier. Not that she was unnaturally cold or heartless (she was, in fact, a reliable source of solid, practical help to those in need), but rather because she looked on worry as hopelessly inefficient, and nobody had ever doubted Odette Bach’s efficiency. The tale is still told in her family of how, at one of the irregular Bach gatherings to celebrate a birth or a death or a marriage or an unexpected recovery from cancer of the colon, the young Odette (accounts vary as to whether she was seven, five, or a wholly unlikely three) had replied to the ‘and what do want to do when you grow up’ question, fired at her by an unwary aunt or uncle, with ‘I’d like to work in the City’, thereby greatly amusing the throng, but dismaying her parents: a social worker and a music teacher, famed in the family for their shabby furnishings and interest in Culture.

  Unlike many of the women who did well in the City, Odette neither ingratiated herself with her male colleagues by excessive drinking and swearing, nor slept and flirted her way to promotion. She simply did everything that was asked of her supremely well. Nor did she work the insane hours that had become accepted as normal in the City. And those who would see her walk from her desk at six-thirty every night would feel not the customary superiority over a ‘lightweight’ who couldn’t hack it, but a cringing knowledge that they were only left still toiling because of their inefficiency.