Meanwhile Gardens (2 page)

What she was going to do when she got there was another matter.

It looked easy on the map. Just turn right out of King’s Cross station and keep going.

Straight. Straight. Straight.

It was 10:40 when Rion passed Madame Tussauds. People, five abreast, queued in a thick line that stretched the full length of the building.

Tanya Bishop had said there was a lifesize waxwork of Tom Cruise inside! Rion hoped it was a larger than lifesize model for the original was a notoriously abridged version, at least to Tanya Bishop who preferred her movie stars on the large size. Whilst Rion admired his compact quality she feared she would tower over Tom Cruise should she ever meet him.

Standing five foot eleven in bare feet made this an inevitability.

Judging from their accents, as much as from the coaches setting them down, Rion noticed that the majority of the people in line for the waxworks were French. She took this as a sign, a good sign, for the man she was going to see today,
the man she hoped would have the answers, was French.

“Rion,” she said her new name to herself – it was Rion now. She had dropped the preceding ‘Ma’ on the train from Bridlington.

Marion had always felt like the wrong name for her. It was somehow displaced, she thought, a name from a bygone age, an age that just didn’t exist anymore – and to Marion’s mind bygones should be bygones.

From now on there would be no ‘Ma’ for Rion.

And thankfully no Pa.

Outside the waxworks the smell of frying onions reminded her of how little she had eaten since leaving Bridlington 5 hours ago. She had had a kit-kat for breakfast. Not the usual four finger kind, but a promotional two finger kind. In dark chocolate. Now she was hungry.

Counting her money Rion found she had £3.27.

Exactly.

Three £1 coins, a twenty pence piece and seven pennies.

Before she approached the burger van Rion caught sight of her reflection in the display windows of the wax museum. She pulled down her sleeves to cover the bruises and adjusted the collar of her thin fleece.

The reasons for her flight would remain concealed.

“Yes, darlin’.”

The words addressed to her were more a statement than a question.

“How much for a cheeseburger?” Rion’s Yorkshire accent seemed somehow out of place on the busy Marylebone Road.

The youth, his hair greased into a kisscurl over his forehead, insolently tapped the board on the side of the fold-down counter.

“£5.50. Fries are £2.20.”

He called chips – fries, and £5.50 for a cheeseburger! Although inwardly staggered at the price Rion realised, with some pleasure, that this was another reminder she was no longer in Bridlington.

Rion plucked up courage and smiled. “Could I have half a portion of ch – ” she corrected herself, “fries – and some onions for £1.25?”

“This isn’t a market darlin’,” he sneered. “If you want a bargain go to Portabella.”

Rion walked away, the youth’s laughter following her.

“Eee oop Yorkshire, you’re champion lass! Aye,” he mimicked to her back. The youth shook his head violently and tutted in disbelief.

The kisscurl remained firmly in place.

Rion was down to £1 by the time she got to the roundabout at the start of Bishop’s Bridge Road. She knew London would be expensive but even so £2.26 seemed steep for an apple, an orange and a small Mars bar. She should have had a pound and a penny but one of the small dirty coins had turned out to be a Canadian cent.

Another sign. Another positive sign. For Canada was the scene of her hero’s greatest triumph.

Looking up Rion saw an enormous billboard for a removals company covering the top half of the building above her. The huge poster showed a tightrope walker tiptoeing across the Earth with the slogan: TAKE A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION AND MOVE WITH US.

‘Take a step in the right direction – ’ Rion mimicked the tightrope walker above and for an instant forgot her troubles. It would all be worth it.

“Please God,” Rion whispered, “give me one more sign just….”

And then she saw it. The fourth and final sign.

In the window of the greasy café below the billboard were the words, ‘
Omelettes our speciality
.’ Now there could be no doubt! Her hero’s favourite meal spelt out in bold letters right before her eyes. Right before her eyes!

“Thank you Lord,” she murmured.

First the
French
tourists, then the
Canadian
cent, followed by
Take a step in the right direction...
and finally
Omelettes.

Ignoring her blisters Rion hurried on. The man she was going to see would have the answers. Now she was sure.

The young girl raced through the passages of the underpass, expecting to be mugged at any second. She had seen CrimeWatch and knew what to expect from grimy London subways but to her relief there was no one around.

Or would she be safer if there were people around?

Was it safer in a crowd?

But then again didn’t people vanish in crowds? There was that story the other week of a girl, not much older than herself, who was kidnapped in broad daylight and later found – well, she flinched, it just didn’t bear thinking about.

Finding herself in the open basin of Little Venice Rion was relieved to see a man on a bench overlooking an island. Posh three storey houses lined the far side of the inland waterway, a series of lowlying non-descript council blocks edged the near. Remembering her last encounter with a Londoner, the greased youth from the hamburger van, Rion took a deep breath and approached.

“Excuse me,” her voice-sounded nasal, her attempt at flattening her accent not entirely successful.

“Excuse me,” she tried again, this time with more success,
sounding, she thought, like someone on the telly. “Could you tell me where – ”

As the man turned round Rion knew she had made a mistake – his eyes were red and weepy, snot encrusted his nostrils, his breath just a mass of fumes. The man picked up a bottle and waved it at her.

“Do I look as if I know where I’m going?” he slurred. “Go on gerrrout of it. Piss off girlie.”

Rion’s asthma and blisters slowed her down on the other side of the canal where she stopped to catch her breath beside a line of longboats. The names of the brightly coloured barges initially soothed her and her inflamed alveoli.

‘
Morrisco
’;
She smiled, no doubt a Latin step danced by sweet old couples.

‘
Longfelloe
’;
Probably refers to the size of the boat, although the spelling struck her as slightly odd.

‘
Home Sweet Home’
;
Home Sweet Home? Was there such a place?

Rion shuddered and carried on her way.

Another twenty minutes of limping found her at the back of an enormous bunker of flats, thirty storeys at least she thought, higher than anything she had seen in her life. The towering concrete block was set in its own park complete with meandering two-tiered pond.

As she approached a man bounded up the steps that joined the park to the canal ten yards in front of her. He was in his mid-twenties she guessed, and quite handsome in his way, although he could lose a few pounds, maybe even a stone. A woman, perhaps his mother, followed.

They looked trustworthy Rion thought. She would ask them how far she had to go. Again she pulled down her
sleeves to hide her bruises and pulled up the collar of her fleece. Rion took a deep breath.

“Excuse me,” Rion smiled nervously. “Could you tell me how far it is to – ” she couldn’t finish the end of her sentence before the man shouted at her, “Hum!”

Rion looked nervously at him, “I beg your – ”

“Hum goddammit!” the man’s eyes bulged alarmingly as he seemed to look through her. Rion’s breath caught in her throat. Who was this madman and why did he want her to hum?

Rion looked to his companion for support but the woman simply yelled, “Hum!” in the same authoritative tone.

Her eyes brimming with tears Rion began on the only tune that came into her head. She falteringly hummed the first few bars of God Save The Queen before she seized her chance and dashed away.

“Hum!”

She heard the man order again but Rion was hobbling away as fast as she could, hoping to God they wouldn’t run after, catch her and – oh my gosh, ghastly images again filled her mind. Rion half ran, half-limped round the bend in the canal and away from the deranged couple.

By now Rion was convinced that everyone in London, absolutely everyone, was either mad or horrible.

Or both.

“Hum!” Ollie shouted again before looking after the young girl. “Hey!” he called to her back but Rion had vanished around the corner with no intention of returning. Ollie shrugged his shoulders and gave one final yell, “Hum!”

This time he was rewarded by a glimpse of Humdinger the III under Carlton Bridge faraway in the distance.

“Auntie Em, he’s over there.”

Within ten minutes Rion had crossed over the canal. She
skirted the funeral merchants on the busy Harrow Road before finding herself in front of some open iron gates painted white. With trembling heart she entered the small building to the right, handed over the last of her money for a map, then walked through the triumphal arch into the calm of her destination.

She had made it.

Kensal Green Cemetery.

I
t was peaceful here. The cemetery had none of the emptiness, none of the gloom, of the stony patch attached to St Kilda’s church in Bridlington. There, the graveyard was filled with stolid headstones of people awash with decency and thrift. Here Rion could see that thrift was neither desired, nor indeed a consideration. For as far as the eye could see there were temples and obelisks, marbled family shrines and miniature chapels for the dead, all laid out along elegant, tree-lined avenues.

Rion saw on her map that her hero’s grave was at the far end of South Avenue, on the other side of the cemetery. Excited now, she set off.

After a few steps the plucky runaway had the peculiar feeling she was being watched. Rion looked up but the only people she could see were a rather incongruously jolly little group beside a grave on what, after a hurried look at the map, she deemed to be North Avenue.

She carried on, her attention taken by a romantic stone canopy nearby. Rion turned off Centre Avenue onto the soft, slightly springy wood chips of a smaller path. Again she felt she was being watched, but again a furtive glance revealed no one.

Within moments she was standing in front of a sculpted comforting angel that guarded the grave beneath the canopy.

“George Augustus Frederick Percy Sydney Smythe. Seventh Viscount Strangford and Second Baron Penshurst,” she read out loud the lettering carved in stone.

“He died before he was forty, you know – ”

Rion jumped, startled by the young man who had appeared suddenly beside her. The young man ignored her look of surprise and continued, “ – of brandy, dissipation and consumption. He was a journalist as well as a Tory politician – who would have thought eh?” he said wrily. “Plus ça change – ” he paused for a moment in reflection. “What do you think dissipation is?”

From her previous encounters with Londoners Rion thought it best to remain silent.

“Whatever it is,” he continued, “it doesn’t sound very now does it?”

Rion turned to look at the young man who appeared oblivious to her silence. He was roughly the same height as her although much, much older – at least twentysix she reckoned. He wore a raggedy sweater over paint spattered jeans. His black hair bounced in thick curls over his forehead.

“I used to know a gardener years ago called Percy,” the young man paused in thought. “You don’t get too many Augustus’s – or should that be Augustii? – now do you? You did then though. Another Augustus, George 111’s sixth son – the Duke of Sussex – is buried here. It’s said his house was full of singing birds and chiming clocks and that during his final illness he survived on a diet of turtle soup and orange sorbet! Imagine that!”

Rion began to imagine if he would ever stop talking.

“Some of these graves go down sixty feet or more and have spaces for generations of the same family.”

Rion overcame her nervousness. “How do they get down there?” she asked curiously

“Ropes and pulleys. There are also catacombs under the main chapel but I don’t know much about them.” Jake gazed over the acres of tombs and monuments. “I could show you around if you’d like.”

“Thanks, it’s ok,” Rion said hurriedly. “I’m just trying to find the grave of – ”

“He was known as a dazzling, handsome rake.”

“Sorry?”

The young man gestured to the elaborate grave, “George Augustus Frederick Percy Sydney Smythe, Seventh Viscount Strangford and – ”

“ – Second Baron Penshurst,” Rion finished for him.

The young man smiled. “It is also said he fought the last duel in England. Nifty huh?”

Nifty? Rion felt herself warming, somewhat against her will, to this talkative young man. Anyone who could use the word ‘nifty’ – and get away with it – might just be ok.

“I’m Jake by the way.”

Rion avoided his eyes and didn’t offer her name.

After a pause he asked, “Would you mind if I accompanied you?”

“Really, it’s ok, I – ”

“Well, as long as we’re both going in the same direction. Shall we?”

He took Rion gently by the elbow and turned her round to face the burial places lining the other side of the small path. After a couple of steps he stopped before a white marble grave locked inside some railings.

“William Makepeace Thackeray,” Jake announced.

Rion looked up, interested. She peered closer. “We were reading Vanity Fair at school.”

“Ah, Vanitas vanitatum – ” Jake said sombrely.

“- all is vanity,” Rion finished the closing sentence of the novel for him intrigued. Who was this gentle-mannered, undeniably attractive, but undeniably strange, man and what was he doing in a cemetery? “I was going to take my GSCE next summer.”

“Was – ?” he enquired.