A Book at Bedtime

by Barrie Shore

  ‘Letters, I suppose, that’s what Barber said.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? It’s addressed to you.’

  ‘I know, but…’

  ‘But what if they’re letters from Oscar Wilde?’

  Had he been afraid then of what he would find? And is he still? Should he open the envelope at last? After all, what if Eva was right, what if they really are letters written to Bob by Oscar Wilde? If so, they’ll be worth a fortune by now. He can sack the odious Miss Thingummyjig and her Tender Team, employ Margaret full-time. Or, no, not Margaret, a superior version of Margaret: a quiet woman with a good education and an interest in books; a woman who doesn’t complain or argue the toss; who doesn’t require him to monitor daily quotas of food and drink and record the result in the damnable nutrition chart.

  The decision is taken out of his hands. The ancient ribbon is frayed and loose and as he lifts the envelope and turns it over, the wrapping falls away and reveals, sure enough, a bundle of letters, which he thumbs through with a growing sense of excitement, only to find disappointment again. Letters, yes, but not written by Oscar Wilde, all of them in Bob’s familiar, spidery hand. But whether to read them or not…

  ‘I shouldn’t read them if I were you. It doesn’t do to revisit the past.’

  Yes, Barber was right. Leave the past in the past: burn it, bury it, along with the rest of his life. Yes, these were Bob’s letters, private letters, and whatever reason Brande had had for passing them on, he, Jack, has no right to them. And yet…

  And yet, he prevaricates still, abandons the letters and wanders away into the body of the shop, checking the shelves, straightening a book here and there, going to the door, lifting the blind. The morning’s rain has given way to a thin mist, the afternoon light nearly gone and the street lamp across the way is glimmering into uneasy life, its paltry light dwarfed by the blaze from the gallery window. Dodie’s car is parked outside the shop, and there’s a van across the street from which Mr Double-Barrel and his companion are unloading a large and apparently heavy object shrouded in cloth which they deposit with care onto the pavement. As Mr Double-Barrel straightens up, he catches sight of Jack watching and beckons him with a peremptory gesture. Jack’s delaying tactics, however, don’t stretch to engaging Mr Double-Barrel in conversation, so he returns the gesture with a neighbourly wave, lets the blind drop, goes back to the counter and picks up the letters, settles down into Bob’s old chair in front of the counter and starts to read.

  At last.

  14th May, 1927

  Dear Oliver,

  Such news, my dear, I can’t wait to tell you: I have a boy. No, not what you think. He’s a Saturday boy, come to work in the shop, and his name is Jack. John William Carter, so he informed me in his rather endearing but pompous way. Ten years old, a fatherless child, foisted on me by Timmy Bright, God rot his thoughtless clerical collar.

  Heavens, he’d forgotten how affected Bob could be. What was the word they used now? ‘Camp’, that’s what Margaret would say, pursing her lips, dipping her wrist. And what was it Eva had said? ‘So this friend of yours was a bit of a pansy.’ Well, so he was, and what did it matter? Nobody minded at all these days, only a pity that Bob himself hadn’t lived to see the change.

  Still, so far so good. This first letter is harmless enough. Except for that foisted. Had he really been foisted by Reverend Bright? Timmy! Perhaps he was. Why else would the erudite Bob have taken on an ill-educated local yokel, unless he was bullied or bribed?

  You’ve never seen such a timid boy, frightened of his own little shadow; and yet so on his dignity. I have tremendous trouble not laughing at him, but I simply dare not. He takes umbrage at the slightest thing, especially his father – by which he means not his father on earth but his Father in Heaven. And as for his mother! She’s a story all of her own, a tight little woman, so repellent in her addiction to the Lord one could be forgiven for mistaking her as the Devil’s. The boy fears her most terribly, even more than he fears her vengeful God, and I vow to divorce him from both to save his innocent soul from eternal damnation!

  Not just affected, vindictive as well, wildly exaggerated. And very funny.

  The letters are curious. None of them whole, bits and pieces of letters, cobbled together with staples and sticky tape with dates in the margin in Brande’s ancient green ink. It was evidently a long correspondence although there’s no indication of how often Bob wrote over the years, and no reference to Brande’s replies. He’s greatly struck by the trouble Brande had obviously taken over his task, his kindness in putting the letters together – from a man who had seemed so unpleasant, so vindictive, when they had met so long ago. And he thinks how absurd he is to have been so fearful of reading them. For this isn’t just a miniature history of Jack himself, it’s a tribute to Bob who, after that ‘foisted’, had clearly taken to his role as surrogate father, becoming in time teacher, mentor and friend. He had loved Jack. And how cleverly he had achieved that divorce, weaning Jack from the blind faith in a vengeful God that his mother taught, and feeding him from the wider world of ideas and imagination, with literature, poetry for the soul.

  And so he reads on in the glow of the lamplight and the warmer glow of remembrance of things past that rises up to enfold him, with the image of Bob so real that he can almost see him at the counter beside him in the very act of writing.

  T. Bear, meanwhile, waits with bated breath. The letters thus far have proved disappointing, but all is not lost: there are still letters waiting to be read and in them, he is perfectly sure, lies the clue that will lead at last to the treasure.

  Two more. Whole letters these, with a jolting date on the first.

  3rd September, 1939

  So it’s happened at last. God help us all.

  I didn’t serve last time because of my buggering foot, but my brothers did, both of them killed, Arras, Gallipoli, my mother dead of a broken heart and my sainted father trying his Christian best to hide his hatred, as if their deaths, the war itself, were my doing. As if I didn’t suffer too.

  Well, I shan’t this time. I never thought there would be anyone after Oscar, but there was, there is, and I’ll be damned to hell if I let him go to his bloody death in this pointless, fruitless, buggering war.

  Dear God… can this be Bob?

  He’s not thinking of Oxford any more, not even waiting for his call up, he’s going to volunteer. And I’ve got to stop him, I don’t know how, but I’ll do anything, anything at all.

  No, not Bob, it can’t be. It’s a manufacture of Brande’s for some malign reason all of his own.

  I can’t lose him, I won’t.

  But it isn’t. This is Bob, Bob’s writing…

  He is my sun and moon…

  Scrawling across the page…

  He’s my beloved…

  Blotched with tears…

  My only Jack.

  Good God Bloody Almighty. He must stop, stop reading now. But he can’t. And worse is to come, a thousand times worse.

  19th September, 1939

  So and I’ve done it.

  The medical officer is staying at the George. Easy enough to wangle an introduction. I took him to lunch, best to be had, overseen by a frowning portrait of our beloved monarch, distinctly unamused as I slandered my love until my tongue was numb.

  John William Carter. Such a fine boy, so patriotic, so eager to beat the buggery out of the Boche. And such a sensitive lover, so inventive in bed, so indefatigable, the troops at the front will be panting for him.

  Hell’s bells…

  I had to pay for the captain’s silence, of course. Up in his room. I’d have provided the required service with a glad heart, but that was too easy. It was my foot he was after. Made me take off my boot, my buggering boot, and… I can’t bear to tell you what it was that h
e did, suffice it to say the man is utterly depraved – only one way to get through it: I closed my eyes and imagined Jack. Jack’s body, Jack’s passion, Jack’s great groan of release…

  Hell’s bloody, buggering bells.

  ‘Jack…’

  Jack’s body…

  ‘Evie’s having a little sleep…’

  Jack’s passion…

  ‘It’s time you and I had a proper talk.’

  Jack’s great groan of release…

  ‘Jack?’

  Don’t speak, don’t touch me, just leave me alone…

  ‘Where the devil are you going?’

  Into the darkness, into the night, out into hell. Hell in a window across the street… two men entwined in a blaze of light, naked white, gleaming bright… outsize buttocks and predatory hands, sinuous limbs entwined with passion…

  Mr Double-Barrel looming before him…

  ‘I say, Carter, a word if you please…’

  Dodie louring behind…

  ‘Jack?’

  Both of them shouting…

  ‘Mr Carter?’

  ‘Jack! In God’s name, what’s the matter with you?’

  Love is the matter… love and sex… sex and guilt… guilt and sin…

  His whole damned life is the matter.

  *

  The Church of St Michael and All Angels is familiar and strange. He hasn’t been here for years, not since the last funeral. Not since Will. But he goes by instinct to the same pew where he used to sit with his mother: north aisle, sixth row, halfway back. Sunday after Sunday, week after week, year after year; Mattins and Evensong, the Eucharist taken just once a month – any more often, so his mother pronounced, being an indulgence that verged on addiction.

  ‘There’s some,’ she said, as she scrubbed his face and the back of his neck with carbolic soap, ‘some delusional folk that call themselves Christians, who believe that the Body and Blood are theirs for the taking, no matter what state of sin they be in. Well, let them just wait,’ said she, as she plastered his hair to his head with glycerine and grim satisfaction, ‘they’ll find their error come Judgement Day when their corrupted souls burn in the Fiery Pits of Hell.’

  They went fasting to church on Sacrament Sundays, and how hard he had prayed to be saved from the fiery pits, that his empty stomach be stopped from its grumbling. But oh, the temptatious thoughts that disrupted his prayers, how bacon had sizzled in his nose, how sausages spat and toast had browned, filling him with the corrupting smells of breakfast to come, while the gargoyles looked down with their leery faces, tearing bacon with pointy teeth, licking their lips, grinning with glee.

  He sits now in the Church of St Michael, counting the pillars, like he’d done as a boy to distract himself from hunger. Ten pillars, five on the north aisle, five on the south, carved out of Portland stone, strong as centuries, with a gargoyle carved on a plinth close to the top of each one. All but one. The last to the north, nearest the altar, nearest to God. The one that was empty.

  ‘It was an Angel of the Lord sat on that pillar once on a time,’ so said his mother, telling him bedtime tales. ‘One that grew so mighty and overweening that God became greatly vexated. He struck at the skies with His powerful staff, creating a marvellous storm the like of which had never been seen before nor since. The heavens thundered with His wondrous roar, and the lightning flashed with His vengeful purpose, whereon the angel fell to the floor, shattered into a thousand pieces and was ground to dust.’

  Jack had shrunk with terror under his blanket but he never wanted the stories to stop.

  ‘But what did the Angel do to make God so wroth?’

  ‘A sin not fit to be heard by little boys’ ears.’ His mother slapped his hand to stop it straying to suck his thumb. ‘And the lesson of it is that sin will always be found in the end, and the sinner be judged and punished in the eyes of the Lord.’

  He had lain sleepless at night wondering what happened to the gargoyle after it fell. Had it truly broken into a thousand pieces and was ground to dust? Or was it turned to a goblin that lived in a cellar? Did it hang upside down at the window at night keeping watch on little boy sins, waiting to witness, waiting to punish? Little boys, hot with desire, who touched themselves in the covering dark and shivered with shame.

  The church is filled with shadows and silence. It is lit by a few dim bulbs ensconced in the walls and by the candle in a corner of the chancel that flickers steadily, lighting the feet of the crucified Christ on the rood screen above. Jack looks up at the waxen figure, at the calm face whose eyes are closed in the grateful peace of death, in the sure and certain knowledge of ascension to His Father in heaven. But Jack finds no comfort in Christ’s Passion and promise. There can be no resurrection for him when his heart and soul, his entire being, are consumed with the bitter consumption of hate.

  Every vile word of the letters is imprinted on his mind, making him sick with self-disgust. He feels contaminated by their reading and at the same time, responsible for them, as if it were he who had written their dreadful confessions. And yet his horror is almost detached, as though he’s looking down on some other man’s suffering from high up in the organ loft above the Lady chapel or from the top of the empty pillar where the gargoyle used to be.

  He closes his eyes and groans aloud. ‘Oh, God…’

  His cry of despair rises into the shivering air and seems to hang there accusingly before fading away in a contemptuous echo, and the silence enfolds him again, cold and forbidding.

  ‘Ah, so you’re a believer? I thought your childhood faith was long forgotten.’

  The Great Man is lying on his back in an opposite pew with his eyes closed and his arms folded across his chest like an effigy of himself, a worthy knight carved in eternal, marbled rest on the lid of his tomb.

  ‘I had never had faith, I had fear.’

  ‘So your call to the Almighty was merely rhetorical?’

  ‘Yes. Even that comfort is lost to me now.’

  The Great Man lifts his nose suspiciously, as if he is sniffing for traces of incense or apostasy. He opens his eyes and studies the church’s arching roof, as if he is seeking spiritual enlightenment, his flyaway eyebrows seeming astonished at whatever it is that he finds.

  ‘It’s a handsome edifice, don’t you think? I particularly admire the corbels to the roof, and the reredos is rather fine.’ The Great Man swings himself up to a sitting position and brushes his knees. ‘My maternal grandfather had a hand in its carving, his wife features therein disguised as a nun with a particularly ferocious scowl on her face. I remember her with just such a scowl when she joined us on occasion for Sunday dinner and found the meat not to her taste. She was not an easy woman.’

  The Great Man waits for a sympathetic response from Jack, and on receiving none picks up a hymnal and leafs it through. ‘I prefer my place of worship to be smaller and plainer, such as the village church that I attended as a boy, a simple building, reflective of simple faith. My father played the fiddle there until the band was superseded by a choir, as a result of which the musicians abandoned the church to a man and, in my father’s case, his faith too. He took to the bottle instead and found much comfort therein, despite my mother’s best efforts to wean him.’ The Great Man finds a hymn to his liking and hums a few notes. ‘The choir was led by an incomer to the village, a charming young woman with the bluest eyes I have ever encountered. I quite fell in love with her at the age of eleven and seriously considered offering her my hand in marriage. But she came and went as young women do, and never the wiser of my prepubescent passion.’ The Great Man heaves a yodelling sigh. ‘I wrote a story some years later based on the circumstance. It sold rather well and is still in print, I am told, giving pleasure to millions. I’ll lend you a copy if you’d care to read it.’

  Jack doesn’t answer. He’s leaning forward with his head in his hands in a
n attitude of prayer; and although he is scarcely listening to the Great Man, he is soothed by the drone of his voice.

  ‘“Rejoice! Rejoice!”’ The Great Man breaks into song, a surprisingly resonant tenor. ‘“Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.” Marvellous, quite marvellous, don’t you agree?’ He looks at Jack with an encouraging eyebrow and sighs again at his continued lack of response. He replaces the hymnal and springs to his feet, straightens his jacket, pulls at his cuffs and crosses the aisle to join Jack in his pew.

  ‘Why so troubled, my boy? They’re only letters after all, mistaken letters, I grant you, but written from the heart.’

  ‘Bob had no heart. He was utterly depraved.’

  ‘Oh, come, that’s a trifle harsh. I realise, of course, how embarrassed you were by your interview with Captain Whatnot, but…’

  ‘Embarrassed? Embarrassment is too paltry a word. I was humiliated, reduced to nothing. It was hell.’

  It was worse than hell. He could have suffered the vision his mother had taught, endured her fiery furnaces and bottomless pits, but this was a hell all of its own. It was pure hell.

  Monday, 18th September, 1939

  The Recruiting Office, by terrible irony, was set up in the gymnasium of Castlebridge Elementary, Jack’s old school.

  He stood naked in the middle of the room in a batch of six men, most of them lads he knew from school. Joss Hinxman, whey-faced in the line-up; Ned Styles, brash and determined; all of them treating each other like strangers, catching nobody’s eye. Each man stood in front of an undersized schoolroom chair, as if they were guarding the pathetic piles of their clothes, covering their genitals with timid hands, not even Ned exposing himself to the common view. ‘Bet’n you mine’s bigger’n yours.’ Waiting for the Medical Officer.

  If Captain Daley-Robertson had been an ordinary civilian, he would very likely have passed unnoticed in the general throng, but kitted as he was in his army regimentals he cut an imposing, even threatening, figure that caused six beating hearts to tremble with fear. He was neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin, although he carried a paunch before him of such outstanding proportion that it seemed not to belong to the rest of his body. When he removed his captain’s hat he revealed a head so perfectly round that it seemed to rest directly on his shoulders unsupported by an intervening neck. His features, at first glance, seemed almost cherubic, with a patch of red on each cheek that hinted at vulnerability, but this was an illusion that ended at his eyes, which were set close together on either side of his snubbed nose and had a gimlet stare to them that held no mercy.