Perhaps Anselm’s sensibilities had been over-roused, but he could have sworn that the woman at BJM Securities viewed him with both fascination and terror.
‘You’ve never come before,’ said Mrs Tippins, as if he’d let her down.
‘I’m sorry, was I expected?’
‘No.’
Anselm couldn’t imagine the foundation for reproof ‘Well, I’m here now.’
‘I can see that, but you’re too late.’
Mrs Tippins explained that the son of the deceased had taken possession of a small red valise.
‘That’s fine,’ said Anselm. He was convinced it was nothing of the sort; that this was not what Elizabeth had wanted. ‘I’ll just go back home.’
Mrs Tippins seemed uncomfortable, as if the static of her clothing was giving her tiny shocks. She opened the door for Anselm and then seemed to leap at an opportunity. ‘Do you mind if I ask… but are you allowed out?’
‘Every ten years.
‘Never. How long for?’
‘Ten minutes.’
‘Honestly? You better be making tracks, then.’
‘I’m joking.’
Mrs Tippins narrowed her eyes, reluctant to abandon deep-rooted convictions.
Anselm berated himself all the way back to Larkwood. Nicholas Glendinning had opened the box while Anselm had been hiding in an apple tree. It would have appealed to the author of Genesis: Nicholas now knew what he was not meant to know.
Mothers, sons and secrets, he thought. They were an unhappy combination but often found together. As if nudged, Anselm recalled the death of Zelie, his own mother, and the secret he carried. Oddly enough, the circumstances had captivated Elizabeth when he’d told her shortly after joining chambers. That was almost twenty years ago.
They were sitting in the common room on a Friday night. The wind kept triggering a car alarm that seemed to pause when sworn at from a nearby window.
‘She’d been in hospital for an operation,’ said Anselm. ‘Before she was discharged, my father called us all together. He said that she wouldn’t be getting better and that we weren’t to tell her. I was nine. A few days later she came home. I took her a cup of tea, and she said, “I’ll be up and about before you know it,” and I replied, “No you won’t. You’re going to die.”‘
‘Did you tell the others that you’d broken rank?’
‘No. They would have seen it as a betrayal.’
‘Betrayal?’ Elizabeth repeated, as if she were talking to an invisible third party.
‘Yes, but from that moment my mother and I were free. We could grieve while she was still alive. We could face what was coming in the absence of lies. I hadn’t even realised that obeying my father would have left us trapped.’
‘Trapped,’ echoed Elizabeth again.
She was talking to an imagined presence, but Anselm hardly noticed because turning over the stone had uncovered forgotten emotion. His eyes prickled and he couldn’t speak without his breath staggering. ‘Don’t get me wrong… this is no fairy story about life winning out. Shortly before the end, she said, “I can hear the sounds of a playground.” A kid was kicking a ball against our fence. She was drifting off to sleep. But she let slip a confession. “It’s been a school for death and I’ve hardly learnt anything.”’
Elizabeth had been spellbound.
Anselm parked beneath the plum trees and wiped his eyes, astonished by the power and freshness of remembered grief. The siren faded, along with the protestations from an upstairs window Presently Larkwood’s bells found their strike and birds scattered over the valley.
While the loss of his mother remained painful to Anselm, it had opened his child’s heart to a very adult truth: what you would cling on to will pass away, like grass. Several times Elizabeth had returned to this subject with a sort of fugitive hunger, but only abstractly and when they were alone. They’d spoken of honesty between parents and children, of loving by letting go, of this day’s importance. Half the time, Anselm was lost in the forest of ideas, but it seemed to help Elizabeth. He sensed she wanted a distant companion while she made a very private passage. She’d always been one for conceptual clarity.
Anselm had recovered by the time he reached the cloister. He always saw things clearly after he’d cried. And he was now convinced that it was back then, on a Friday night, that Elizabeth had decided, one day to seek his help – long before the ‘not knowing and the not being able to care’ had become an accusation.