Verbatim

by Andrew Hill

  Autumn brings out the melancholy in all of us, it marks the end of the lifecycle leaving nothing but the winter bleakness to come, in the spring the cycle starts again. Sometimes you feel as though you’re approaching the final winter and there will be no more springs, no more summers.

  Her eyes land on a photograph of Rob, sitting as always on the mantelpiece. It was eighteen years to the day; the awful day with drizzly weather not unlike now when a policewoman, Janice Long, knocked on her front door with the news of his death perhaps this accounts for her melancholy mood. It may have had some effect but Carol was lonely, sitting in a large house on her own all day making money but to what end? “I have enough money.” There was close to total silence in the house this damp afternoon, not even the ticking of a clock indicating the passage of time could break it; the only non-electric clock in the house had stopped.

  Yet time was not standing still. The world was progressing in its own way. Other people were getting on with life, even those of her own age and more were able to keep on the go and enjoy life or seemed to. Carol had not been out of the house that day, it was almost five o’clock; Carol had not been out of the house the previous day either or the day before that.

  The gentle sound of a woman crying interrupted the silence. A sound which grew louder and louder, long after the rain ceased and birdsong was in the air but those joyful sounds could not penetrate the walls of this sad house.

  No thoughts were passing through Carol’s mind as she lay in the armchair. It took almost two hours before she lifted herself up and wandered with almost no purpose into the kitchen. But there was an aim; to make a cup of tea. She did not want one, it was just something to do which took little mental effort and no great surge of keenness. It was almost a habit. Her eyes land on the cabinet door behind which is the tea, as she reached up she looked at the shelf above. On that shelf you cannot see food or any artefacts associated with a kitchen. This shelf contained medicines of one sort or another, mainly patent stuff you buy from the local chemist, cold cures, sore throat treatments, ointments for various ailments and last of all right at the back out of sight unless you move other items – painkillers.

  Carol carefully moves some cold treatment to one side revealing a box of paracetamol at the rear, she reached further into the cabinet and took it. She did this although she was not suffering from a headache. She opened another door and selects a mug which she fills with water. Now fully armed, Carol made her way slowly back to the armchair she had vacated only a few moments earlier.

  With the pillbox now open Carol counted twenty-five pills and placed them in her lap. The sound of her mobile phone interrupts the silence with its cheerful ring tone in complete contrast to the sadness and melancholy throughout the house. It continued to ring, the only person aware of it declined to answer and cared little who it was ringing her. The caller gives up and the house falls silent again.

  Carol just sat in her chair motionless as if her mind had just given up making decisions, which Carol found needed as big an effort as climbing the stairs or mowing the lawn. She could no more make the decision to take the pills than not to take them. Her tears began to flow. Words rang out at the very top of her voice, “For God’s sake, what’s the point of it all?” She leapt out of her chair spilling the pills over the carpet, stormed out of the room into the hall and out through the front door. Tears were streaming down her face and she walked and walked. I don’t know where, nor does she. The spires, the houses, the shops, university buildings made no impression on her as she continued to walk until the sun had long fallen lower than the horizon and the moon and stars were shining.

  An exhausted and emotionally drained Carol realised that she had no money with her and was on the other side of Oxford with a long walk home. Perhaps the tears and the walking did her good. Perhaps things will seem different in the morning, don’t they always?

  By two o’clock in the morning Carol hadn’t slept but had made a momentous decision to abandon her current novel and never put ink on paper again.

  * * *

  No more than a few days had passed, Carol was sitting at one end of a park bench with the warm autumnal sun on her face: an altogether more peaceful Carol. This brief moment is characterised by what Carol was not doing; she was not reading a novel, she was not writing notes in the little book she always used to carry with her. Instead it was the autumn leaves and what remains of the flowers that bloomed not so long ago that drew her attention. Occasionally her eye would catch a passer-by: woman with a child, a teenager racing his bike along a public footpath with no care as to the danger caused. But one passer-by didn’t pass by, he sat casually at the other end of the bench. He paid no attention to Carol whose melancholy had reduced to a mere touch but still she was not writing. Birdsong, a dog barking at a distance and the breeze rustling the leaves were all the sounds she could hear.

  For a few moments Carol and the man sat engaged in the same activity: he too admired the flowers and allowed the autumn sun to bathe his face. A fellow spirit perhaps who also appreciated birdsong. Perhaps he has the same melancholy feelings that have dogged Carol of late. He turns and looks over to the fifty-nine-year-old woman sitting along the bench. He looked at her closely for a few moments before speaking, “It’s a pleasant afternoon,” but Carol’s wondering mind was elsewhere and didn’t catch on that she was being spoken to. The man smiled to himself before repeating his observations. At the second attempt Carol’s attention was drawn.

  “Oh, yes it is,” she looked at him; a pleasant looking man dressed casually but smartly, well spoken accent, difficult to judge his age but he may be a year or two older than Carol, sporting a neatly trimmed beard extending no further than his chin, he wore a neat looking flat cap, he could almost be a country gentleman. The cap was perhaps to keep his head warm for no hair could be seen protruding from the back or the sides.

  “I come here sometimes on my day off, depending on the weather,” he said. Carol just looked at him and said nothing. “Do you come here – no, I won’t say that.”

  “Say what?”

  “Something crass – do you come here often?”

  “As it happens, I don’t.”

  Neither spoke. Could this be one of the shortest relationships in history?

  “What do you do that gives you Thursdays off?”

  “I’m a delivery driver.”

  “Oh.”

  He went on to explain that he works on Saturdays and has Thursdays off instead. Carol feigned interest. The man asked her what she did.

  “I don’t have a regular job,” she responded with apparent reluctance.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  There was more silence, the man spoke again.

  “I think I felt a spot of rain,” on this he stood, “I’d better be on my way, cheerio”

  Carol likewise replied. The man walked away watched by Carol who betrays no hint of recognition.

  It was one week later precisely, meaning once again that it was the man’s day off, not that Carol had given any thought to it as she sipped a cup of tea while reading a novel of another’s writing, it matters not who. She was sitting in her favourite café taking a break from window shopping. Our author was now reading again; if an author loses the will to read surely they will lose the will to write. I wonder if the pile of written pages of her latest novel has grown in the last week? She takes her eyes off the book to give them a brief rest and take another sip of tea before focusing them back on the novel. If Carol had looked up for a moment she would have seen the friendly man she had met a week ago on a park bench walking past the window. He glanced in. Had he been following her? No, not today but he knew she frequented the place and took a small diversion on the off chance which, so it seems, has paid off. There was Carol. The man went in ignoring her and, proceeding straight to the counter, ordered a cup of tea. He took his place at a nearby table and
positioned himself to be able to see Carol clearly from it and if Carol was to look up she could just as clearly see him.

  Carol seemed engrossed in her novel and the man was wondering if he needed to approach her. Carol looked up once more to rest her eyes, she moved her glasses and saw Grant but his blurred outline didn’t register with her and down she looked once more to continue reading.

  He rose and went over to her table, he stood there for a moment. Carol became aware that someone was there but carried on reading. Grant sat. Carol looked, the man broke the ice,

  “Hello again.”

  Carol looked at him at first as if to say, ‘who are you?’ But then recognized him from the park bench.

  “I haven’t got the wrong person I hope. I only came in for a cup of tea and then I saw you, thought I’d come over and say hello.” In truth Carol was not unhappy with this, he is rather attractive and for a delivery driver seems quite intelligent and well spoken. Bit of an insult to delivery drivers don’t you think?

  The man gave a brief resume of his life, some of it was true, especially about his childhood and time at university but most of it was a lie with many things omitted such as how he’d murdered the husband of the woman he was now sitting opposite. For someone in Grant’s position combining truth with lies is very common, he does it so much that sometimes he even begins to believe the lies himself. It is psychologically interesting that someone can know that something is false yet can convince themselves it’s true and vice versa. Psychologists call it ‘denial’ you want something to be true so much that for you it is.

  “I saw you in the library the other evening.” This comment took Carol by complete surprise especially as she knew she hadn’t been there in the evening for several weeks but all was to become very clear.

  “I don’t mean in person. I was in the crime section and I saw a copy of a book called Dead Letter Perfect written by somebody called Verity Green. I don’t know why I looked at it but on the inside cover was a picture of you. It took me by surprise.

  “So my secret is now out.”

  “Is it?” Was the unexpected response from Grant. “Is your ‘true’ secret really out?”

  “’True secret?’ You make it sound as though my secret is a sinister one.”

  “I didn’t mean to. You’ve written a whole series of novels, the so-called ‘Genevieve Mysteries’ but how many people living in your street know who you are?”

  “I’d be surprised if there are very many who don’t know, although I don’t usually volunteer the information any more than I did to you.”

  “So the ‘Genevieve Mysteries’ have a ‘mystery’ author. My name is Gordon Grant. What’s yours?”

  “You know my name.”

  “Ah yes, but it might be a pseudonym.”

  Carol went on to give Grant her real name both her married one and her maiden name.

  “Mrs Wilson?” remarks Grant, “I didn’t realise you were married.”

  “Clearly you didn’t look at the third finger of my left hand,” at which moment she shows it to him. “My husband died about… it was a long time ago.”

  “Oh I’m sorry. You never remarried?” She shook her head.

  “If it was a long time ago he must have died quite young.”

  “He was, it was a hit and run accident.”

  “How awful, was the driver caught? What happened to him?” Asked Grant very sympathetically. Carol explained the whole sorry tale.

  “So you still don’t know who she was? Aren’t the police looking for her? How can anyone sleep nights after doing a thing like that?”

  Something didn’t quite ring true with Grant’s tone of voice, it was as if he already knew and it didn’t go unnoticed by Carol. All this was a great relief to Grant who could never have been certain but if nothing else he now knows he’s in the clear over the murder of Rob.

  They spoke more and Carol began to open up in a way she rarely did to strangers. Grant could have a very pleasing personality when he wanted to and his job was made easier by Carol finding him rather sexy.

  “Do you know something?” enquired Carol.

  “What’s that?”

  “It could just be the novelist in me but I don’t think you’ve been entirely honest with me.”

  Grant was now a worried man and wondered how he could have given himself away. Hesitatingly he managed to speak, “maybe I exaggerated, don’t you sometimes?”

  “You’re very well spoken and too well educated just to be a van driver.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I think you know more about me than you’re letting on.”

  This is worrying for Grant but the van driver hides it well.

  “I promise, cross my heart and hope to die, all I know about you is what you’ve told me across this table.”

  “Are you sure you’re not a journalist trying to find a juicy story?”

  This question relieves Grant of a great tension, “Is there a juicy story to find?”

  “Not really.”

  Now it’s Grant’s turn. “That didn’t sound overly convincing. I’m sure there must be something hidden away from the world.”

  “Such as?”

  “A child you’ve kept secret, or you’ve done time in prison.”

  “Why should I have done time?”

  “Drugs, or fraud maybe.”

  “It’s harder to keep something like that quiet once you get to be a little well known. There’s always someone who knows and who’ll blast it all over the social media.”

  “Maybe you’re not Verity Green after all. Maybe someone else wrote all those books who wants to remain anonymous, and you’re just the front.”

  “You’ve been watching too many Woody Allen films.”

  “Perhaps you stole the first Genevieve mystery from the real Verity Green and then murdered her.”

  Maybe he has seen too many Woody Allen films but you see his point, he still believes that Carol stole his work. But what is Grant’s game? I can’t believe that he’s going to try to obtain the financial rewards he genuinely believes he is entitled to by marrying into it, can you? I must confess it’s not a bad idea.

  Grant stood, “It’s been really nice chatting to you. My friends won’t believe me when I tell them I met the one and only Verity Green.”

  “They’ll probably say ‘who’s she?’,” was Carol’s response.

  Grant smiled and added, “You’re too modest.” He turned and left the café with Carol watching him all the way. At the door Grant turned and smiled at Carol who smiled back.

  Whether Carol deliberately didn’t give Grant a hint of her address or pass him one of her cards is a matter for conjecture though Grant knew her address anyway, but not officially so to speak. Carol, on the other hand, had no idea of his address although she knows where he works.

  Will the two meet again? Grant, I’m sure, will arrange that and was doing so in his mind before even leaving the café.

  Carol was about to depart herself when she thought it advisable to check her texts, so from her handbag, which had been given to her by Rob on her last birthday before his tragic accident, came her smart phone. There was nothing that required her immediate attention. In truth there rarely was. Most of her inbox was junk. Two teenage girls were sitting nearby.

  “Is school out or are they playing truant?” She glanced at her watch. It was later than she thought and school was out. They were both looking down at their screens, using social media which is something Carol used judiciously and with some reluctance. Once you start it’s hard to stop but it comes in useful sometimes for professional purposes.

  The two girls laughed and joked as they exchanged photos with their friends. Why are the young so unconcerned about this? Once a photograph is out there on the net it stays there for life, there’s no putting the toothpaste back in the
tube. When in their thirties or forties they might regret all of this.

  “I was young,” they’ll be saying to a TV interviewer, “all teenagers did that sort of thing then.” And so they did.

  Carol decided it was time to go. On leaving, she walked in the opposite direction. This was not purposely to avoid Grant it’s just where her car was parked.

  Soon Carol was at home in what seemed a large house which still has painful memories having moved into it so shortly after Rob’s death. Perhaps she should move again placing an emotional buffer between now and the past. Perhaps she should move away from Oxford altogether.

  Carol was more positive than she had been for weeks. Up in her writing room we can see that the pile of completed paper has increased. Her eyes catch a photograph of Rob, she stops and looks at it and ponders, “How long do you keep photographs of dead people when all they do is make you sad and melancholy?”

  That’s a good question, Carol, and I don’t know the answer.

  Carol picked up the frame, opened the back and removed the photograph of Robert she had snapped on a sunny afternoon in a London park, what seems now many years ago. She placed the photograph loosely in an album containing a photographic history of herself and would one day belong to Josh.

  The album stops telling its story some ten or so years previous. Why does it stop? To Carol the answer is clear, the recent photographs are all digital and sitting on a computer and one day whatever disk they’re on will become corrupted and the pictures will be lost forever. What a transient world we now live in, Carol was about to replace the picture with one of Josh and thought, no, and placed the empty frame in a drawer.

  2

  Carol sat at her writing desk, the pile of A4 sheets containing her latest novel was for the first time in five weeks getting a little bigger. She likes to write 1000 words a day divided into two sessions. First she will write seven hundred and fifty to eight hundred words followed a couple of hours later by rewrites and expands it to a thousand or thereabouts but never less. Often she will write something superfluous just to turn nine hundred and ninety-five words into a thousand. Why bother you may ask? Every now and then these unnecessary words give rise to useful ideas later in the process and if they don’t they can always be edited out.