The Corpse in the Garden of Perfect Brightness Read online

  At first I had been reluctant to believe. In life one seldom dares credit such wonderful things, because of the habit Fate so often has of pulling the rug out from under our hopes. And yet I could not believe that this was some cruel hoax designed to deceive me. It was simply too elaborate. What astonished me most was the reflection that of all the possible explanations for this startling turn of events, the plain narrative given to me by the Countess was probably the most likely.

  At the same time, I was troubled by my presentiment that I was leading Jenny into danger. So far I had made a pretty poor husband for her: married on the footplate of a steam engine and the whole of our married life – three and a half months now – had been spent in penury and in hiding from forces who were intent on crushing me. Yet when I shared these fears with Jenny she laughed them off and said that she was rather enjoying the adventure of it. Moreover, she added that my account missed one vital item. Namely that we were happy.

  This was true. Until I met Jenny, I had lived the life of a man who spends his days at a cinema where only black and white films are screened, then moves to the picture house down the road and sees for the first time films in Technicolor.

  Mr Jarley at the Weeping Cross railway Lost Property office presides over an emporium that, it is said, contains every article that it is possible for a human being to lose. It had been a simple matter to furnish us with luggage and outfits suitable for a trip to the tropics. Jenny had acquired a suitcase that had once belonged to the superintendent of the sales division of a firm manufacturing ladies’ trouser suits. It contained a number of sales samples and also a book about the Suffragettes entitled Trust in God, She Will Provide.

  I had been provided more modestly with a set of pale linen suits and a well-thumbed copy of Chamberlain’s Guide for Travellers to the East. It included information on how to deal with beggars, how to hire a boy, and advice from a doctor stating that once past Port Said one should eat kidneys for breakfast to counteract the heat. In addition, Mr Jarley gave us a small bottle of a tincture called chloral hydrate. He said it was a most potent soporific that was quite popular with members of the criminal underworld, who knew it colloquially under the title Mickey Finn. But that should not prejudice us against it, since such a potion would prove invaluable on a long arduous journey where sleep might sometimes prove elusive.

  The ship’s horn boomed from the lone funnel that towered above us like a gasometer. The SS Pandora was a splendid ship: 25,516 gross tons, with a length of 640 ft and beam of 85. She was built at Harland and Wolff in Belfast in 1935 to service the transatlantic route to Quebec.

  We were not due to weigh anchor until gone midnight, and the ship was alive with folk wandering around, exploring. Some who had boarded earlier in the day were already straying further afield and reporting a swimming bath deep in the bowels of the ship filled with chlorinated water just like the ones in town.

  ‘I wonder which of my trouser suits would be best for driving a steam engine,’ mused Jenny.

  ‘You still on about that, are you?’

  ‘I thought we could use the time on the voyage for you to teach me.’

  ‘Even if I were disposed to, I couldn’t because there isn’t time.’

  ‘We have almost two weeks until Singapore.’

  ‘Indeed we do, but in order to drive you first have to learn to fire the engine, and that art, I’m afraid, takes a lifetime to master.’

  Jenny peered at me, looking for a clue as to whether I was joking. I wasn’t. It really does take that long.

  ‘I don’t want to fire,’ she said finally.

  ‘Every man who ever drove a steam engine first spent many years on the footplate firing, it’s integral to the process.’

  ‘Very well, then, I shall learn to fire first. That can’t be difficult, you just shovel coal into a hole.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘It’s what everybody thinks,’ she said triumphantly.

  ‘Well, they couldn’t be more wrong if they tried. Driving the engine is not really all that complicated. You could learn that in a week. The real skill, the dark art, is building the fire.’

  ‘So why is the driver the one everyone shakes hands with at the end of the journey?’ She spoke with the air of one trying to catch me out.

  ‘Because he is like the captain of a ship. He has the responsibility. If anything goes wrong it is his fault. He will have taken half a lifetime to work his way up to where he is. Shaking his hand is a form of recognition of these long years of service.’

  ‘I think you are being unfair. I can’t see what is so special about making a fire. You just light some coal and off you go.’

  ‘No, you light some coal and off you jolly well don’t go, at least not for eight hours. How long do you think it takes to boil a kettle that big? The fire will be lit in the firebox the night before, if it is a morning departure.’

  ‘I am determined that you will teach me during our voyage,’ she said, in a voice that suggested the matter was not up for debate.

  On the dockside down below, the railway lines gleamed and tank engines shunted freight alongside our berth. A motor bus pulled up and seconds later a party of children disgorged and were assembled into a small platoon under the command of a lady with stern mien and sharp nose. They marched towards one of the gangways. The tank engine tooted its whistle, the ship’s horn groaned again, and a spirit of exultancy arose in my chest.

  ‘Someone must have a sweet tooth,’ said Jenny.

  I followed her gaze. Across the wharf, through derricks and cranes interlaced like branches in a forest, something glimmered in the sky. A cylinder around five foot high and three wide. It was being hoisted by crane from the dockside into the waiting hold of a cargo ship. It twisted slowly, high above the gang of shouting stevedores below, and as it did some script on the cylinder became discernible. Tate & Lyle Golden Syrup. The biggest tin I had ever seen. The gleam from lights on the deck of the freighter onto which it was being hoisted caught the metal and made it appear brazen, like something stolen from a pagan temple and housed for years in a museum. The outline of the lion could be faintly discerned. I wondered what it was for, and recalled Lady Seymour’s account of the terrible boating accident that caused Curtis to take to his bed for many weeks. Was this the sort of behaviour one would expect from a young man? Or was he even then of a fragile disposition?

  We shared our table at dinner during the voyage with a couple, Mr and Mrs Carmichael, a chap called Charlie Quinn, and a Miss Frobisher, who was travelling alone to visit her brother in Adelaide.

  Charlie Quinn was on board with a small circus travelling to Malaya and was both clown and tiger tamer. A combination, he told us with evident pride, that was unique. Mr and Mrs Carmichael had recently retired after a lifetime as inspectors of Mission schools overseas. They had the air of people who had spent most of their lives travelling.

  As we sat down to dinner on the first night, Mr Carmichael reached over to shake my hand and make his introduction while Mrs Carmichael beamed at us. Mr Quinn, who was seated to my left, offered me his hand. Miss Frobisher was the last to arrive. The meal began with Brown Windsor soup and we made small talk about the way the world appeared to be going to the dogs. This I have noticed is a favourite topic wherever the English gather.

  Mr Carmichael looked at me through half-narrowed eyes, nodded imperceptibly and said, ‘First time out East, is it?’ He continued without waiting for an answer. ‘It can be confusing at first, but you won’t go far wrong with the advice given to me by my grandfather who was a great traveller. East of Suez, he said, there are two types of country. Those where you should hit the taxi driver with your walking stick and those where you shouldn’t.’

  ‘I have a better tip,’ said Mrs Carmichael. ‘Would you like to hear it?’

  ‘Very much,’ I said.

  ‘My tip is designed to keep you out of gaol, especially in countries where the guards spit in your soup. This is what you must do. On
arrival in any foreign land, you must head straight away to the General Post Office and buy an envelope. All post offices sell stationery, but the quality varies greatly, and this is the point. You must lick the flap and seal the envelope. Then wait five minutes.’ She paused to make sure she had our interest, and indeed it appeared that she had.

  ‘There are two types of country in this world, you see; I call them A class and B class. Most of Europe is A class, except the Mediterranean lands. Singapore is A class, and so is Hong Kong. Shanghai is B class. Almost everywhere else in Southeast Asia is B class, except for Tokyo, which I would go so far as to say is double A class in this respect.

  ‘If you are in an A-class country your envelope flap will be still be stuck down five minutes later. If you are in a B-class country it will have come unstuck. You must not think the envelope test is trivial, because everything you need to know about the country can be worked out from it. It tells you, for example, about the state of the public buildings, the state of repair of the roads, the desirability of using publicly provided lavatories. The answer to the latter being absolutely not in B-class countries unless you want to contract cholera.

  ‘It tells you whether the trains run on time, whether the banknotes will be grubby or pristine. It gives you precise insight into the insolence of public officials. It tells you how often you can expect to get food poisoning, how careful you must be in counting your change. And most importantly it tells you an essential piece of information about the police. In class A countries, if you get in trouble and try to bribe them you will go to jail. Whereas in class B countries you will go to jail if you do not bribe them. This simple fact alone is worth a king’s ransom when travelling in those lands where you are advised to boil your drinking water.’ During the course of this little speech, Miss Frobisher arrived and listened intently to it. ‘Bravo!’ she said when it was finished. ‘Bravo! I’m going all the way to Sydney.’

  ‘Definitely class A,’ said Mrs Carmichael.

  ‘Are you hoping to start a new life?’ asked Mr Carmichael.

  ‘Oh no, it’s a return ticket. I’m going to visit my brother. He’s been out there fifteen years and now, when we had finally given up all hope, he seems to have found himself a wife.’

  ‘How lovely,’ exclaimed Mrs Carmichael, as if few things were more dear to her than the welfare of this total stranger.

  ‘Yes!’ agreed Miss Frobisher. ‘It’s funny how these things turn out. We always thought he was forever destined to the disfavour of Fate. He bought a diamond mine there but it never produced much. Except this.’ She opened her handbag and took out a diamond ring. Even to an untutored eye such as mine, it seemed an awfully big diamond. The Carmichaels made suitable expressions of surprise and delight.

  ‘He brought the uncut stone over last year and left it with me, to get it cut and set in London. I won’t be so vulgar as to tell you what it is worth, but when the jeweller told me, I almost fainted.’ She paused and added, ‘It’s … it’s the engagement ring …’ Then she lowered her voice and leaned slightly forward as if public disclosure of the next revelation might scupper the whole thing. ‘He hasn’t asked her yet!’

  Just then our attention was distracted by a troupe of children, the ones we had seen on the dockside, passing in a file two abreast, and led at the front by the lady with the sharp nose. The children, boys and girls of a variety of ages from around four or five to thirteen, looked cowed and lacked the exuberance one normally sees from children. They seemed to lack the excitement that infected even the adults on a big ship.

  ‘Poor swine,’ said Charlie Quinn softly.

  ‘Why so?’ asked Miss Frobisher.

  ‘You probably don’t think life could be much worse than the one they are leaving, but you’d be wrong. Orphans. Mother Britannia sends them out to Australia because it’s cheaper than paying for their upkeep in Britain. Trouble is, once out there they have to work. Manual labour. Sleep outside. Skivvies. Some of them are treated brutally. And there’s worse, too. Things it wouldn’t do to mention in polite company.’

  Miss Frobisher gasped.

  ‘They say to the children, “Hands up all those who would like to ride to school every day on a kangaroo.” All those who put up their hands get sent to Australia.’

  ‘I can assure you, sir,’ said Mr Carmichael, evidently affronted by Mr Quinn’s remark, ‘that no such iniquities will be visited upon these children. As a matter of fact they are very much to be envied.’

  ‘Envied?’ said Mr Quinn. ‘I should be greatly surprised.’

  ‘Then you are easily surprised,’ said Mr Carmichael, his face turning red. ‘I can assure you these children are very lucky.’

  ‘You sound very certain of the fact,’ said Mr Quinn.

  ‘Indeed I am, since I am the superintendent of their fate. They are transiting to Australia under the golden auspices of the Saint Lucy the Remarkable Society, of which I happen to be an officer.’

  ‘I can’t believe they would lie to little orphans,’ said Miss Frobisher in an attempt to defuse the situation, which had grown slightly uncomfortable.

  ‘That’s nothing,’ said Mr Quinn. ‘They tell them their mothers are dead, even though it is not true.’

  ‘That strikes me as a most unlikely thing for a charity to do,’ said Mr Carmichael in exasperation.

  ‘In my experience,’ said the clown, ‘people who run charities often have very little of it in their own hearts.’

  ‘We do not lie to the children,’ insisted Mr Carmichael. ‘Moreover, it seems to me not unreasonable to expect them to work in their new home, for the Lord has so ordained it that bringing a child into the world outside of wedlock is a sin that must be expiated, and if the mother is not in a position to do so, then the duty naturally falls to the child.’

  I thought of my own mother, condemned by the heartless words of Mr Carmichael. It seemed to me he had inadvertently confirmed Mr Quinn’s previous remark. My thoughts travelled back to my own childhood.

  There had been twelve ‘Gosling Class’ special railway detectives created at the Weeping Cross Railway Servants’ Orphanage between 1902 and 1914. All were named after railway stations. Cheadle Heath, Cadbury Holt and I were now the only ones left. I thought of all the ones who had perished. Lightcliffe, shot at dawn in 1917. Luton Hoo, stabbed in the eye with a swordstick in 1921. Tumby Woodside, stole money from a collecting tin attached to a dog, and was thrashed to death in 1921. Temple Combe, died in the electric chair at Sing Sing, 1925. Conway Marsh, crushed by an elephant in Indochina, 1926. Kipling Coates, lost in an opium den in Shanghai, 1927. Mickle Trafford, dragged from his ship by a giant squid, 1928. Hucknall Byron, sent to the Gulag on Kolyma River, 1935. Amber Gate, lost on the Hindenburg, 1937. We had always been discouraged from talking about our mothers. I don’t think we were ever told they were dead, but we were given the impression that they might as well have been.

  Jenny, sensing my disquiet, squeezed my hand. Then she said to Mr Carmichael, ‘I don’t agree with that at all.’

  ‘You don’t agree with what?’ he asked.

  ‘That the children should pay for their mother’s … she did nothing wrong, a woman who gives up her child like that is … well … she must have very strong reasons, otherwise she wouldn’t do it.’

  ‘The Bible is quite clear on the issue.’ He spoke in the icy tone of one unused to being defied, particularly by a woman.

  ‘I don’t believe God punishes poor women who are destitute and … and …’

  ‘Perhaps you should be more prudent in your remarks.’

  ‘Why?’ she said with a challenge in her voice.

  ‘Because He will be listening.’

  ‘How do you know it’s a He?’

  Mrs Carmichael gasped, and one could sense eyebrows being raised around the rest of the table.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Mr Carmichael.

  ‘I read a book that said God was a She.’ It was clear that Jenny had not taken kindly to Mr Carmi
chael’s remarks about unmarried mothers. She really did have a feisty spirit on occasion, and from what I had seen of it, Mr Carmichael would have been well advised to exercise some caution.

  Charlie Quinn laughed.

  ‘What an avant-garde notion,’ said Miss Frobisher, seemingly unsure whether to be delighted or appalled.

  ‘Are you mocking your Maker?’ said Mr Carmichael, who had now turned from red to plum.

  ‘No, I greatly admire Her.’

  Charlie Quinn laughed again.

  Mr Carmichael recited: ‘In the portion of Jezreel shall dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel: And the carcase of Jezebel shall be as dung upon the face of the field in the portion of Jezreel; so that they shall not say, This is Jezebel. You should mark her fate carefully.’

  ‘I can tell you,’ Mr Quinn interrupted, ‘from having seen with my own eyes, that the lives of these children being sent out to Australia would make even Oliver Twist wince.’ He turned to me and, without missing a beat, said, ‘I think I’ve seen you somewhere before. Have you ever been to Kuala Lumpur?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ I said, ‘We’re from—’

  ‘Barmouth,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Where’s that?’ said Mr Quinn.

  ‘In Wales,’ she replied. ‘Jack once drove a steam engine there.’

  ‘How exciting!’ said Mrs Frobisher.

  ‘From Paddington.’

  ‘I once caught that train,’ said Mr Carmichael. ‘Damn thing was late. You know what I did? I walked up to the engine at Reading and gave the driver a guinea to make up the lost time. It worked too. Bloody scoundrel!’

  I laughed, relieved at the opportunity to lighten the atmosphere. ‘I assure you, Mr Carmichael,’ I said, ‘he was nothing of the sort.’

  ‘My bribe worked, didn’t it?’

  ‘It certainly must have appeared that way! In truth, it had no effect whatsoever. You can rest assured that both driver and his fireman would have strained every nerve and sinew to make up the lost time, no goal would have been dearer to their hearts. Your bribe had no more effect than if you had bribed the sun to rise. Of course, drivers and their firemen are poor men. The driver would have accepted your kindness and used it to stand a round for his mates in the pub later.’