The Savage Garden Read online

  The Savage Garden

  Mark Mills

  The Savage Garden

  Mark Mills

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's

  imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over

  and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2007 by Mark Mills.

  "Readers Guide" copyright © 2008 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Text design by Meighan Cavanaugh.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

  Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of

  the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The "B" design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The Library of Congress has catalogued the G. P. Putnam's Sons hardcover edition of this book as follows:

  Mills, Mark, date.

  The savage garden / Mark Mills.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 1-4362-1508-0

  1. College teachers—Fiction. 2. College students—Fiction. 3. England—Fiction. 4. Italy—Fiction.

  5. College stories. I. Title.

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks, as ever, go to my inimitable agent and friend Stephanie Cabot for—well—being Stephanie Cabot;

  to my editors Julia Wisdom and

  Rachel Kahan for their enthusiasm, wisdom and guidance; and to my

  wife, Caroline, for her tireless patience and encouragement.

  I am also extremely grateful to Francis and Rachel Hamel-Cooke,

  Anne O'Brien and Jane Hall, as well as Charles and Angela Cottrell- Dormer,

  whose hospitality and generosity of spirit account for much

  more of this book than they are probably aware.

  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"

  August 1958

  LATER, WHEN IT WAS OVER, HE CAST HIS THOUGHTS BACK to that sunstruck 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 fueled 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 seventysome 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 toward 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 whom 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 overzealous 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 toward 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?"

  "Aha!" 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—"

  "—so below."

  Were they really quoting Hermes Trismegistus at each other over this?

  "I think it was Kent," said Adam.

  "Kent?" "The Battle of Britain—Kent and a bit of Sussex, not Hampshire."

  This news was clearly something of a blow to Gloria.

  "Well, maybe some of the planes, I don't know, went astray or something."

  Adam looked doubtful.

  "Damn," said Gloria, "I wanted dogfights in the sky."

  "Then move it to Kent."

  "It has to be Hampshire."

  "Why?"

  He regretted the question almost immediately.

  "Because it's all about a secret submarine base in Portsmouth harbor."

  Was this really where two years of English literature studies had led her, all that Beowulf and Chaucer, and Sir Gawain and the Gr
een Knight: to a secret submarine base in Portsmouth harbor?

  "What?" demanded Gloria warily.

  "I was just thinking," he lied, "that your narrator's a man. Unless she's a woman who happens to play cricket for the village team."

  "So?"

  "It's a challenge, I imagine, writing a male narrator."

  "You don't think I'm up to it?"

  "I didn't say that."

  "Four brothers," she said, holding up three fingers.

  "And it's not as if you're the first chap I've ever stepped out with."

  This was a truth she liked to assert from time to time, dishing out unsavory details to drive home her point, although she was too angry for that right now.

  She tossed the remainder of her wine away, the liquid crescent flopping into the tall grass. She got to her feet a little unsteadily. "I'm going." "Don't," he said, taking her hand. "Stay."

  "You hate it."

  "That's not true."

  "I know what you're thinking."

  "You're wrong. I could be jailed for what I'm thinking."

  It was a crass play, but he knew her vulnerability to that kind of talk. Besides, this was the reason they'd skipped their lectures and come to the meadow, was it not?

  "I'm sorry," he said, capitalizing on her faint smile, "I suppose I'm just jealous."

  "Jealous?"

  "I couldn't do it, I know that. It's great. Really. It hooked me instantly. The drunken vicar's a great touch."

  "You like him?"

  "A lot."

  Gloria allowed herself to be drawn back down onto the blanket, into their sunken den, out of sight of the river towpath, where the stubby willows bristled.

  His fingers charted a lazy yet determined course along the inside of her dove-white thigh, the flesh warm and yielding, like new dough.

  She leaned toward him and kissed him, forcing her tongue between his lips.

  He tasted the cheap white wine and felt himself stir under her touch. His hand moved to her breasts, his thumb brushing over her nipples, the way she liked it.

  Sexual favors in return for blanket praise. Was it really that simple?

  He checked his thoughts, guilty that his mind was straying from the matter in hand.

  He needn't have worried.

  "You know," said Gloria, breaking free and drawing breath, "Hampshire it is. Screw the Battle of Britain."

  The note was waiting for him in his pigeonhole when he returned to college. He recognized the handwriting immediately. It was the same barely legible scrawl that adorned his weekly essays. The note read:

  Dear Mr. Strickland,

  Apologies for making this demand upon your busy schedule, but there is a matter I should like to discuss with you regarding your thesis.

  Shall we say 5 p.m. today in my office at the faculty? (That's the large stone building at the end of Trumpington Street, in case you've forgotten.)

  Warm regards,

  Professor Leonard

  Adam glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes to get across town. The bath would have to wait.

  Professor Crispin Leonard was something of an institution, not just within the faculty but the university as a whole. Although well into his seventies, he was quite unlike his elderly peers, who only emerged from their gloomy college rooms at mealtimes, or so it seemed, shuffling in their threadbare gowns to and from the dining hall, across velvet lawns whose sacred turf it was their privilege to tread. Few knew what these aged characters did (or had ever done) to justify the sinecure of a college fellowship. Authorship of a book, one book, any book, appeared to suffice, even if the value of that work had long since been eclipsed. For whatever reason, they were deemed to have paid their dues, and in return the colleges offered them a comfortable dotage unencumbered by responsibilities.

  Professor Leonard was cut from a far tougher cloth. He lectured and supervised in three subjects, he continued to offer his services as a college tutor, and he remained involved in a number of societies, some of which he had also founded. And all this while still finding time not only to write but to be published. By any standards it was a remarkable workload, and one he appeared to shoulder quite effortlessly.

  How did he manage it? He never hurried and was never late; he just loped about like a well-fed cat, giving off an air of slight distraction, as if his mind was always on higher things.

  He was deep in slumber when Adam entered his office. The first knock didn't rouse him, and when Adam poked his head around the door and saw him slumped in an armchair, a book on his lap, he knocked again, louder this time.

  Professor Leonard stirred, taking his bearings, taking in Adam. "I'm sorry, I must have nodded off." He closed the book and laid it aside. Adam noted that it was one of the professor's own works, on the sculpture of Mantegna.

  "No court in the land would convict you."

  Professor Leonard invited irreverence, he actively encouraged it, but for a moment Adam feared he had overstepped the mark.

  "That might be funnier, Mr. Strickland, if you'd ever bothered to read my book on Mantegna. Which reminds me—how is your serve?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "Well, the last time I saw you, you were cycling down King's Parade in something of a hurry. You were gripping two tennis rackets, and the young lady riding sidesaddle was gripping you." "Oh."

  "Has it improved?"

  "Improved?"

  "Your serve, Mr. Strickland. We would all feel so much happier if you at least had something else to show for your absence."

  "I work hard," bleated Adam, "I work late."

  Professor Leonard reached for some papers stacked on the side table next to his chair. "Since you're here you might as well take this now." He flipped through the pile and pulled out Adam's essay. "I probably marked you lower than I should have done."

  "Oh," said Adam, a little put out.

  "Thinking about it, you might have had more of a point than I credited you with at first."

  "Which point was that?"

  "Don't flatter yourself, Mr. Strickland. To my knowledge—and I read it twice—you only made one point. The others were lifted straight from the books I suggested you read." He raised a long, bony finger. "And some I didn't suggest. . . which, I grant you, displays more initiative than most."

  He handed the essay over.

  "We'll discuss it at greater length another time. Now, your thesis. Have you had any further thoughts?"

  Adam had flirted with a couple of ideas—Islamic iconography in Romanesque architecture, the use of line in early Renaissance drawing—but the professor would recognize them for what they were: lazy speculations on some well-trodden fields of study. No, best to keep quiet.

  "Not really."

  "You still have a year, of course, but it's advisable to start applying yourself now, certainly if you wish to show us something of your true colors. Do you, Mr. Strickland?"

  "Yes," said Adam. "Of course."

  "How's your Italian?"

  "Okay. Rusty."

  "Good, then I might have something for you."

  The professor explained that he had recently been contacted by an old acquaintance of his. Signora Docci, the lady in question, was the owner of a large villa in the hills of Tuscany, just south of Florence. "An impressive, if somewhat pedestrian, example of High Renaissance Tuscan vernacular," was how the professor described the architecture of the building. He saved his praise for the garden, not the formal arrangement of Renaissance terraces abutting the villa, but a later Mannerist addition occupying a sunken grove nearby. Conceived and laid out by a grieving husband to the memory of his dead wife, this plunging patch of woodland was fed by a spring and modeled on Roman gardens of the period, with meandering pathways and rills, statues, inscriptions and neoclassical structures.

  "It's a very unusual place," the professor said. "Extremely arresting."

  "You know it?"

  "I did, some years ago. It has never been altered—that's rare— and I know for a fact that no proper stud
y has ever been conducted of it. Which is where you come in, if you want to, that is. Signora Docci has kindly offered it as a subject for one of my students."

  Mannerist was bad, a little too overblown for Adam's taste, and he'd have to do a lot of reading up. Italy, on the other hand, was good, very good.

  "Maybe a garden isn't quite what you had in mind, but don't dismiss it. . . . Art and Nature coming together to create a whole new entity—a third nature, if you will."

  Adam didn't require any more encouragement. "Yes," he said. "Yes, please."

  EXAMS WERE UPON THEM BEFORE THEY KNEW IT, AND gone just as quickly. They celebrated, got drunk, punted off to Grantchester with picnics, danced at college balls and hurled themselves fully clothed into the river—memories irreparably tarnished for Adam by Gloria's decision to end their relationship on the last night of the term. The situation was nonnegotiable and, true to character, Gloria made no attempt to feign a remorse she clearly didn't feel. She did manage, however, to offer him one scrap of consolation: as he would no longer be coming to stay at her family's pile in Scotland, he would be spared the maddening attentions of the summer midges.

  "Cattle have been known to hurl themselves off cliffs because of the midges." These were her last words to him before he stormed out on her, slamming the door behind him.

  The following day everyone trickled off back to their real lives. For Adam, this was a faceless suburb to the south of London, and a Tudor-style villa with Elizabethan yearnings. Thrown up just after the war, the house only existed because a German air crew had taken one look at the lethal hail of flak over the city and promptly jettisoned their payload before running for home.

  Adam and his brother had once dug a trench at the end of the garden—the first line of defense against invasion by some imagined enemy force—only to find themselves unearthing the remains of the terraced houses that had previously occupied the plot. Harry had taken those fragments of brick and tile and glass, sinking them in plaster of Paris, producing a mosaic in the shape of a house: the first telltale sign of his calling that Adam could recall.