The Savage Garden

For Caroline, Gus and Rosie

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

T.S. Eliot, ‘Little Gidding’, Four Quartets

Later, when it was over, he cast his thoughts back to that sun-struck May day in Cambridge – where it had all begun – and asked himself whether he would have done anything differently, knowing what he now did.

It was not a question easily answered.

He barely recognized himself in the carefree young man cycling along the towpath beside the river, bucking over the ruts, the bottle of wine dancing around in the bike basket.

Try as he might, he couldn’t penetrate the workings of that stranger’s mind, let alone say with any certainty how he would have dealt with the news that murder lay in wait for him, just around the corner.

He was known, primarily, for his marrows.

This made him a figure of considerable suspicion to the ladies of the Horticultural Society, who, until his arrival on the scene, had vied quite happily amongst themselves for the most coveted award in the vegetable class at their annual show. The fact that he was a newcomer to the village no doubt fuelled their resentments; that he lived alone with a ‘housekeeper’ some years younger than himself, a woman whose cast of countenance could only be described as ‘oriental’, permitted them to bury the pain of defeat in malicious gossip.

That first year he carried off the prize, I can recall Mrs Meade and her cronies huddled together at the back of the marquee, like cows before a gathering storm. I can also remember the vicar, somewhat the worse for wear after an enthusiastic sampling of the cider entries, handing down his verdict on the marrow category. With an air of almost lascivious relish, he declared Mr Atherton’s prodigious specimen to be ‘positively tumescent’ (thereby reinforcing my own suspicions about the good reverend).

Mr Atherton, tall, lean, and slightly stooped by his seventy-some years, approached the podium without the aid of his walking stick. He graciously accepted the certificate (and the bottle of elderflower cordial that accompanied it) then returned to his chair. I happened to be seated beside him that warm, blustery afternoon, and while the canvas snapped in the wind and the vicar slurred his way through a heartfelt tribute to all who had submitted Victoria sponges, Mr Atherton inclined his head towards me, a look of quiet mischief in his eyes.

‘Do you think they’ll ever forgive me?’ he muttered under his breath.

I knew exactly who he was talking about.

‘Oh, I doubt it,’ I replied, ‘I doubt it very much.’

These were the first words we had ever exchanged, though it was not the first time I had elicited a smile from him. Earlier that summer, I had caught him observing me with an amused expression from beneath a Panama hat. He had been seated in a deck chair on the boundary of the cricket pitch, and a burly, lower-order batsman from Droxford had just hit me for six three times in quick succession, effectively sealing yet another ignoble defeat for the Hambledon 2nd XI.

Adam turned the sheet over, expecting to read on. The page was blank. ‘That’s it?’ he asked.

‘Evidently,’ said Gloria. ‘What do you think?’

‘It’s good.’

‘Good? “Good ” is like “nice ”. “Good ” is what mothers say about children who don’t misbehave. Boring children! For God’s sake, Adam, this is my novel we’re talking about.’

Probably best not to mention the over-zealous use of commas.

‘Very good. Excellent,’ he said.

Gloria pouted a wary forgiveness, her breasts straining against the material of her cotton print dress as she leaned towards him. ‘It’s just the opening, but it’s intriguing, don’t you think?’

‘Intriguing. Yes. Very mysterious. Who is this Mr Atherton with the prodigious marrows?’

‘Ah-ha!’ she trumpeted. ‘You see? Page one and you’re already asking questions. That’s good.’

He raised an eyebrow at her choice of adjective but she didn’t appear to notice.

‘Who do you think he is? Or, more to the point: What do you think he is?’

She was losing him now. The wine wasn’t helping, unpalatably warm in the afternoon heat, a wasp buzzing forlornly around the neck of the bottle.

‘I really don’t know.’

Gloria swept the wasp aside with the back of her hand and filled her glass, topping up Adam’s as an afterthought.

‘He’s a German spy,’ she announced.

‘A German spy?’

‘That’s right. You see, it’s wartime – 1940, to be precise – and while the Battle of Britain rages in the skies above a small Hampshire village, an altogether different battle is about to unfold on the ground. As above –’