Verbatim

by Andrew Hill

  As Grant closes the front door behind him he leans back against it and listens. There is nothing to hear. Carol had not taken Grant up on his offer and he was now left alone with no human company. It’s heartening to know that Carol didn’t quite fall for Grant’s charm. However, all is not lost for Grant and danger still lurks for Carol; they have arranged to meet on Thursday lunchtime during Grant’s day off which is not so pleasing to know.

  Grant was not one for keeping alcohol in his flat. He would only drink when he was out. He kept a bottle of wine which he would only drink when he had social visitors which wasn’t all that often. He opens the food cabinet in his kitchen for some decaf coffee and there was the same bottle which he had been hoping to open that very evening as a prelude to a satisfying night but any satisfaction for Grant tonight would be only in his dreams. He looks at the bottle, “Your time will come.” He decides against the coffee, it will only keep him awake.

  Grant rarely kept a late night and tomorrow is a working day. Soon after a naked Grant looked down at his double bed and wondered when its size would next be needed. He lay in his bed and began to wonder why Carol seemed so reluctant, “Anyone would think I was the cause of her husband’s death.” Grant’s state of mind indicates that his denial is apparently worsening. Is he really beginning to think or believe that he didn’t kill Rob? It all seems very worrying.

  3

  It is a long time ago; a much younger Grant is wearing a woman’s outfit but doesn’t know why. He puts on a long dark brown wig. With no explanation, he is behind the wheel of a car, a man is crossing the street and Grant is overtaken by a compulsion to kill him. He slams his foot down on the floor and heads straight for the man.

  Grant sits up in his bed, “Thank God it was only that dream again.”

  * * *

  Carol lay awake pondering the future and more particularly a future with Grant. Since discovering he really does drive a van for a living she has warmed to him and looks forward to Thursday lunch.

  Carol soon fell asleep.

  * * *

  When Grant awoke the next morning he was, understandably, out of sorts. It was the third time he’d dreamed of running someone over in a car killing them and it was always exactly the same dream: same car, same road, same victim. It was almost as if he wasn’t dreaming but remembering. He hadn’t slept well and was tired but he went to work as usual and was soon back to his normal self.

  He had a delivery not far from the house Carol lived in when Rob was still alive. It was near there that Grant was almost overcome by a very disquieting feeling; a feeling of familiarity. Certainly he’d been there before, his job takes him all over Oxfordshire never mind just the city itself. But he had never felt so disturbed – while driving along he realises it was along the same road as in his dream. He pulled over and stopped at the first opportunity.

  “Why would I have dreamed this?”

  Yet Grant can’t remember doing it. He knows he’s dreaming about something he actually did yet his state of denial has convinced him he hasn’t done it. For a few minutes Grant was in no fit state to drive. He sat behind the wheel of his van motionless, staring out to the front unaware of most things going on around him. He could hear sounds but what they were just didn’t register. Not even the sound of a passer-by tapping on the nearside window. An extra hard thump did the trick and shook him out of it. Grant looked over and saw a young man of student age signalling to open the door. Grant leans over and obliges. The young man simply wanted directions to a nearby road. Grant gave him them, the young man thanked him and moved on. A few more minutes past and Grant’s mind was back in working order. He carried on with his deliveries with no further episodes.

  Such is Grant’s mental condition, by the time he’d completed his current deliveries and returned to the store, his encounter with the truth was forgotten. The next time he would have this dream he would cast it off is a mere nightmare.

  Carol spent the whole of Wednesday working on her current novel which was now standing at around seventy-thousand words. A phone call from Josh cheered her up. He’s been asked to play the French horn in Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony at the Royal Festival Hall with the London Philharmonia under a world famous conductor. But he isn’t being offered a permanent contract with them they just need an extra horn for this concert. There was other news Josh had for his mother; she will soon become a grandmother. Another family member for Grant to kill and then forget he’s done it.

  Perhaps, but Carol knew nothing of that and now her happiness was blooming. Most of us want a grandchild and Carol was no exception. She had wanted one as much as she had wanted Josh when he came along. How different her life has become from only a few short weeks ago with her abortive attempt to bring what seemed a pointless existence to an end. Would she need a man now that a child of her child is on its way?

  Carol will go as arranged to meet Grant but she knew that it will only be as a friend with no concern as to it growing into anything more.

  Josh has no concert on Saturday and is coming over to Oxford with his partner and will return on Sunday.

  Thursday lunchtime came, Grant looked into the mirror to give himself the once over before taking to the street for the café. He arrived at the appointed time to be greeted only by disappointment, Carol was not there. He consoled himself with the thought that women are always late because a woman hanging around on her own is open to the wrong interpretation. Grant didn’t want to buy lunch and finish before Carol arrives so he went to the counter and ordered the simple cup of tea.

  Before long the café was getting full, it was lunchtime after all. The vacant seat opposite Grant which he had intended for Carol was now occupied by an elderly lady who looked as though she’d stepped out of a previous age when looks meant everything. She must have been well into her eighties.

  Grant finished his tea and looked at his watch. Carol was now twenty minutes late and there was nowhere for her to sit even if she walked in now, which she did. Grant looked up from his watch and saw a beaming grandmother-to-be who apologised for being late.

  “I’ll get some tea,” she said, “Maybe there’ll be some room by then.”

  There was room but it was only one vacant seat at another table close by.

  Carol returned with her tea and there were still no more vacant seats. The old lady spoke, “I will move over to the other table so you two love birds can be together.” She spoke with a thick European accent giving the impression of being a rich baroness from a European country who had fled the Nazis when they were invading. But the Second World War was over so long ago, even if her family had fled in such circumstances she would have been nought but a young child who by now would have spoken English like a native, an upper class native of course.

  She gathered together her things and moved over to the other table. Carol and Grant thanked her as Carol sat down with a gleam in her eye.

  “You seem a lot more cheerful,” said Grant, “I hope it’s because you’re with me.” Carol did not inform Grant of her impending grandmothership thinking it would be better to tell him at another time explaining instead that he just felt better and there was no obvious reason for it, an explanation that seemed to satisfy Grant.

  The ‘baroness’ rose from her seat to leave acknowledging Grant and Carol as she walked past their table.

  Grant and Carol had gone separately to the counter to buy a light lunch and after about an hour they decided to leave and go for a walk around the city. Before leaving, Carol opens her handbag to look for a handkerchief, she rummages through but was unable to find one. She always kept a small packet of paper ones in the bottom of her bag. To find it she took out a couple of items including a photograph of Rob and placed them momentarily on the table. Grant sees the photograph, “Who’s this?” He enquired.

  Carol told him. The photograph was upside down. Would Carol have placed it there in his full view
on purpose? Grant reached over and slid it round so he could see the face more clearly. He turns ashen. While Carol is in the ladies’ room Grant goes to the gents’. He is overcome with fear, he cannot let Carol see him like this; Grant has recognised Rob as the victim in his recurring nightmare. He stands there motionless as the door opens and another customer comes in and attends to his business noticing Grant’s odd behaviour as he leaves giving him a quizzical look. There are no more users for a while and by the next time the door opens Grant has regained his composure and returns to the café to resume his seat and wait for Carol.

  Carol returns, “Shall we go?”

  “Yes let’s.”

  Even Grant’s ability to conceal his true feelings with bluff and charm could not keep Carol from noticing that something was disturbing him.

  “Anything wrong?” She asked innocently.

  “No,” he replied, “everything’s fine.”

  This didn’t entirely convince her but she accepted it.

  “You still keep a photograph of R… your late husband.” He almost reveals that he knows his name but has she ever told him? He couldn’t remember.

  “Yes,” she said and went on to explain that she finds his presence reassuring.

  “You must have loved him a great deal,” remarked Grant who was now fully back to normal.

  “Yes.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Don’t you remember, I told you, Robert.”

  The two ambled along the narrow side street before reaching the main road and weren’t paying any real attention to where they’re going. That, at least, is true of Carol who was, without thinking, following Grant’s lead but it was not so with Grant who knew exactly which direction he was heading; it was his home.

  Grant made no suggestion that they should go to his place, he seems to have learned his lesson from the last time. But he didn’t want to play the tourist and wonder around the attractions of Oxford which both he and Carol had seen many times albeit not as a couple. So he just walked casually along towards his own apartment as they talked. Carol didn’t even consider what their destination might be until Grant made a left turn Carol wasn’t expecting which led her to wonder where they were going. Grant stopped outside a block of flats, Carol thought, “So this is where he lives.” She was right and after a few moments Grant asked her in for a cup of coffee. Feeling a little more positive and a little more secure in the daylight Carol accepted and only a matter of moments later they were in Grant’s hallway.

  The flat took Carol a little by surprise, she was expecting it to be untidy and full of stuff accumulated over a lifetime. Instead the rooms, though not bare, didn’t look fully lived in. There was the minimum of furniture in the lounge; a small two-seater sofa, an armchair, a small dining table with just a two chairs and a television in the corner. No DVD or Blu-ray player could be found but he appears to be on the Internet as there was a router hidden in another corner and a laptop on the table. One or two shelves contained one or two books so it seemed to Carol that he wasn’t much of a reader. “I suppose he spends his evenings in front of the TV,” she thought so why was he in the library if he isn’t much of a reader?”

  “I’m more of a reader,” said Grant, “than you might think, I usually sit and read in the library.” He went on to explain that living alone, he doesn’t want to spend too much time in his flat all by himself; this was something the oft-lonely Carol certainly understood.

  Grant and Carol sat in the sparse living room and chatted, he was on the two-seater with Carol the armchair. There was no indication from Grant that he was trying to persuade Carol to make full use of his double bed. There will be plenty of time for that.

  Carol was curious as to why a man pushing sixty would have so few possessions but asked instead, “Do you own this flat or rent it?”

  “I own it,” he replied, “or more accurately I own a ninety-nine year lease, I haven’t always been a van driver.” He went on to explain, or shall I say invent his past. It was a well rehearsed story and he had learned to deliver it as convincingly as an actor. He gave more details than at their earlier meeting in the café: he had been in business and was quite successful acquiring a lot of money in the process and eventually realised that money wasn’t everything and he felt the strain of always making important and sometimes risky business decisions.

  “So I leave that to others now.”

  * * *

  It turned out to be a much more pleasant afternoon with Grant than she had expected and she was beginning to change her opinion of him as a person. He obviously has some artistic flair and it doesn’t behave ‘blokeish’ like so many men do. He’s intelligent, quite well educated in what the universities like to call the ‘humanities’. He is also, thought Carol, very lonely. Equally it was a pleasant afternoon for Grant. His recurring nightmare was for the time being out of his mind; he was no longer concerned that Carol’s late husband looked like the ‘dream’ victim, putting it down to coincidence. Gone were any feelings of anger towards Carol, gone also was any desire for revenge. More alarmingly, gone was any memory of ever having written Dead Letter Perfect. It is true that when he picked up a copy the next day he experienced a strange feeling of having read it before, occasionally he would subconsciously remember an occurrence in the novel that he had written but then edited out but would not remember doing it, it would only occur to him as a possible event in the story yet coupled with the strange feeling of knowing that it was in the author’s mind. Grant cast off these feelings attaching no importance to them. In Grant’s mind Carol was just a woman he had met and a very sweet one at that. He no longer lied about his past to Carol or to anyone else; he’s real past no longer existed in his consciousness; the only past he has is the one he’s created for himself. So appalling is the reality he has completely obliterated it from his mind, perhaps for the rest of his life.

  Grant must have been seriously disturbed even as a boy but no one had realised it. Most of the time he was in control but it would only take the right sort of incident to set him back. Tragically for Carol, Robert and Josh, that incident was the apparent writing of a novel the same as Carol’s – verbatim. His mental inability to cope with that led first to his inexplicable career decisions, such as becoming a thief, and later inventing a new life after committing a horrendous murder.

  Carol knew nothing of Grant’s real past. More precisely she knew some things at the time but they didn’t seem important and it was all such a long time ago that she’s never made the connection with the result that she now has a male friend and harbouring thoughts of a long-term relationship with him just as he was with her.

  For one reason or another Carol and Grant arranged to meet the following Wednesday evening for another theatre visit. Before then, Carol was to meet her son and his and now pregnant partner.

  * * *

  London to Oxford is not very far and Josh and his partner left Ealing at around ten in the morning and arrived at Carol’s home in Didcot Road shortly before lunchtime.

  Josh felt slightly excluded when his mother and his partner, her name and by the way is Susan, started talking women’s matters especially relating to pregnancy.

  “Have you decided on a name yet?” said Mother.

  “It’s a bit early for that, isn’t it?” said Josh.

  “Your father and I decided on Joshua for you long before you were born.”

  Susan asked if they knew in advance that he was going to be a boy. Carol confirmed that they purposely didn’t want to be told.

  “What would Josh have been called if he’d been a girl?” asked Susan.

  “Florence, after my sister and aunt,” replied Carol.

  Josh intervened with, “I suggested Robert after dad if it’s a boy.”

  Unnoticed by Josh or Susan, Carol wasn’t too happy about that because it would be a constant reminder of Josh’s father but she sa
id nothing about it saying only that it was a good idea.

  For the first time since learning of Susan’s pregnancy, Carol became a little upset because she remembers how she felt when the life she was sharing with the man she loved was tragically cut short, and for which she had never found full closure.

  Josh announced he had three tickets for a concert that night in Oxford and they could all go out for a meal before. Carol expected a symphony concert and was a little disappointed to discover that it was a string quartet. Josh came to their defence, “They’re very good, one of the best in the country. I know it’s not as spectacular as a Tchaikovsky symphony but you’ll enjoy it.” He went on to say that they are playing Borodin’s second string quartet which contains tunes that were later turned into songs for the musical Kismet.

  As his mother and Susan talked, Josh excused himself; he needed to go to his old music room and practice on the horn. A few minutes later the sound of the French horn filled the home of Mrs Wilson once more as she was transported back to his childhood. She and Susan sat back and listened.

  The lovely music from Josh came to an end and was replaced by endless scales and arpeggios. Not that Carol knew what an arpeggio was and after being told by Susan it was a tonic, a third, the dominant and the tonic an octave higher she was still none the wiser, Carol knew little about music and nothing about the history or science of it.

  Carol asked, “Is that horn in ‘F’?”

  Susan confirmed it was. Carol then asked what it meant to say an instrument was in a particular key and could you have a piano in ‘F’?

  Susan explained it all but it was too technical for her partner’s mother.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Susan, “if you don’t understand, you can enjoy the music just as well.”