The next few weeks were difficult, a whirlwind of angry phone calls, legal advice, and threats. I sought comfort from my family, who gave as much as they could, but have never really been attuned to matters of the heart.
“An incorrigible woman,” my father offered. “If she were a dog, I’d have her put down.”
My mother’s approach was less cut-throat, but equally unhelpful. “A lot of the time it comes down to a woman’s sexual needs,” she said. “Perhaps you’ll be happier with someone less ... particular.”
Little surprise, then, that Richard Chalk became my primary source of support, as good a friend - at least to begin with - as one could hope for. I let him into my life and offered my trust. I served it to him, as vulnerable and atrophied, and in as many pieces, as the veal at Gee’s. When I needed to spill my soul, he was there, always with the right amount of empathy, and always telling me what I needed to hear.
I invited him into my home.
I showed him photographs of Lorna. So help me God.
“Her eyes,” he said. I’m sure there were other comments, but I can only remember those two words: her eyes.
How strange that I should open myself to him so quickly, so readily, given the twenty-five-year gulf in our relationship. A person will experience much in the years between secondary school and middle age, and their character - their state of mind - will adjust, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Even so, I thought I knew Richard. I thought he was my friend.
“We’re really quite alike,” he said to me, as he so often would. Perhaps he believed, if he said it enough, he could make it true. I admit, even I started to believe it.
“Quite,” I said with a smile.
“What a shame we didn’t stay in touch when we finished school,” he said. “All those wasted years.”
“We can make up for it now,” I assured him.
We were sitting outside The Angel in Henley-on-Thames, a beautiful September evening, if a little cool, with the late sun dancing on the river in burned oranges and pinks, and traffic chasing across the stone bridge that arced to our left. I sighed with rare contentment and sipped my ale: Brakspear Oxford Gold, of good body. Richard had ordered the same. And so we sat with our identical drinks, beneath the wing of evening light, cut from the same cloth, you’d think.
“Are you feeling any better?” Richard asked.
“Actually, I am.” I looked at him and nodded. “Thank you.”
“Good ale,” he held up his glass, “and good company. Works every time.”
But it was more than that, lovely as these things were. And it was more than the pink light on the river and the somnolent buzz of traffic on the bridge. I felt I’d turned a corner in the last couple of days. Perhaps many corners. I was resolute, where before I had been wavering. Strong, where I had been ... pithless. Also, I had grown to loathe Lorna, where once I’d known only love.
We’d had furious exchanges on the telephone, mainly because I’d refused to sign the petition for divorce (some small power, and I revelled in it). Her cruelty shocked me. She insisted, over and over, that she regretted ever having laid eyes on me, and how thankful she was that we’d never had children. She wished a car accident on me. A “crippling” one. And cancer - cancer! It was as if she were digging into a depthless sack of curses, and hurling them at me one after the other.
I gauged from this just how deeply she was hurting and how cruel it was not to give her what she sought. Thus, that very afternoon, I acceded - put pen to paper, sealed the petition in one of my personalized toile-lined envelopes, and dropped it in the pillar-box.
Were there tears? Yes ... many, in fact. But they were not all tears of woe. They fell, and I found strength. They splashed on my shirt, and I found relief. So yes, I wept, and for a long time, but even a cocoon has to crack.
Richard called at precisely the moment I thought some company would be nice. He asked if I wanted to join him for drinks by the river - his judgement, as ever, exact.
The Thames’s rippling surface deepened with bronze colour. A boat called Mystery sliced through, creating a V-shaped wake that rolled and broke musically against the banks.
“Such fortuity,” I said, “meeting you, renewing our friendship at a time I needed it most. This has been arguably the most challenging period of my life, and I’m grateful to have had you beside me.”
“Destiny,” Richard said, although for a moment I thought, because of his lisp, he’d said, “death to me”. He raised his glass and I touched it with mine.
Another boat chopped through, too small to have a name, its engine blatting disagreeably. Both Richard and I cast it reproachful glances.
“And you’ll be there for me,” he said, once the boat was out of earshot, “when I need you?”
“Should you need me,” I said. “You’re perfectly grounded, Richard. I’m sure there’s not a problem you can’t handle yourself. But yes ... I’ll be there.”
“Thank you.” He smiled and sipped his beer.
“That’s what friends are for.”
“Indeed.”
I looked at him carefully, his fist curled around the pint glass, the setting sun casting the same bronze shades into his eyes. The right side of his mouth twitched. His sunken cheeks caught the evening shadows. I saw it then, I think, for the first time. A scarring, but beneath the surface, pulsing lightly against his skin from the inside. The man had issues, and they ran deep. Being his friend, I should have asked about them, but I had too much going on in my own life. I wasn’t ready for Richard’s problems. Not even close.
And you’ll be there for me when I need you?
I turned back to the river. Almost red now. It rippled like a flag and chattered endlessly against the banks, and the traffic on the bridge buzzed and threw javelins of light that were like warnings.
~ * ~
He called at the beginning of October. A stormy, miserable night. I hadn’t heard from him in some weeks - he hadn’t returned my calls or emails - so hearing his voice came as some surprise. The timbre of that voice was more surprising still. I was so used to a firm, assured tone, which both reflected his character and compensated for his lisp. What I heard that night was altogether different: a trail of meek sound punctuated by sobs and cracked breathing.
“I need you, Martin,” he said.
The drive from Thame to Marlow should not take longer than thirty minutes, depending on traffic and your chosen route. I took the M40, and being after nine p.m. - closer to ten - on a Thursday night, the traffic was light. Even so, it took me fifty minutes to reach Richard’s house.
The weather was dreadful, with heavy rain lashing my car and ugly gusts blowing me into the next lane. HGVs rumbled by, creating maelstroms that I believed would whip me from the road and carry me away. Dirty water sprayed from beneath their rear tyres, covering my windscreen. I gripped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles throbbed. I wonder now if the elements conspired to keep me away. Given everything that happened that night, I wish they’d succeeded.
Richard’s house was small, detached, and surrounded by trees that thrashed in the wind. There was a single-car garage butted on to its east face - an addition, judging by a vague discrepancy in the brickwork. His Volvo was parked in the driveway, but I didn’t think this unusual; perhaps the garage was used for storage. I parked on the road and hurried through the rain to his front door.
It took him a while to answer. I thought the doorbell broken, and was about to knock when I saw his image through the frosted glass. The lock rattled and he opened the door, using his weight to keep it from slamming wide in the wind.
“Martin ...” He appeared, as ever, kempt, dressed in a clean white shirt and corduroys. Following his telephone call, I’d expected to find him in disarray, but the only evidence that something was wrong was his puffy eyes and, as I noted a little later, a single spot of blood on the toe of his left shoe. He stepped back and the door pushed wider. “Do c
ome in.”
I was not so together, rattled by the drive, my clothes damp and leaves in my hair. I kicked off my shoes and followed Richard through to the living room, an elegant place, where Beethoven fluttered from stereo speakers and a tot of Glenfiddich had already been poured for me. I sat, and Richard placed a towel over my shoulders as I took several quick and warming sips from the glass.
“Thank you for coming.” He sat opposite me on a high-backed Chesterfield, crystal tumbler resting in his palm, his legs crossed. That was when I noticed the drop of blood on his toe.
“Not at all.” I looked at him, searching his swollen eyes. “I came as quickly as I could, but the weather—”
‘“And I, cut off from the world, remain ... Alone with the terrible hurricane’.”
I frowned, then my eye flicked, again, to that glaring drop of blood.
“William Cullen Bryant.” He smiled and sipped his whisky. ‘“The Hurricane’. It describes aloneness and fear in the face of doom.” He followed my gaze, noticed the blood on his shoe, then wet the tip of his thumb and smeared it away. “Doom,” he said again.
I finished my whisky, surprised at how quickly it had gone down, and surprised more at seeing my hand tremble as I set the empty glass upon the table. “I’m not familiar with it,” I said.
“It’s how I feel sometimes ... isolated, scared, surrounded by darkness.” On cue the windows shook, thunder exploding in the wet night. “I just want it to end.”
I recalled sitting with Richard outside The Angel, and seeing something beyond his well-dressed, well-spoken exterior, perhaps the hurricane he was referring to. Maybe he had terminal cancer, only months to live, or some deep-rooted psychological concern that could only be suppressed through medication. Again I reflected how little I knew him, yet here I was in his house, in his life. The first threads of anxiety touched me as more thunder cracked outside. I wanted to leave, risk the storm again, but I had promised to help with his problem, just as he had helped with mine.
“I’m here for you, Richard,” I said. “Whatever you need.”
He took a framed photograph from a side-table close to his chair and handed it to me. “Constance,” he said, then grabbed my empty glass and stepped to the drinks cabinet to pour another shot.
“Not for me, Richard,” I said. “I have to drive home.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “You’ll wait out the storm.”
More anxiety, but I nodded and thanked him, then studied the photograph while the windows trembled and Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 5” floated into its fourth movement. She was plain, Constance, to say the least. Not the beauty I’d envisioned, given she’d been described as a wide-shining light. Her marigold hair and clear eyes were offset by a palsied smile and a web of acne scars on her right cheek. Also, her hands were clasped in such a way as to indicate a disconnect in her motor functions.
Richard returned with my drink, which I exchanged for the photograph. I wanted to say something supportive, but all could manage was, “Let’s hope there’s not a power cut.”
“I have candles,” Richard said. He sat down, crossed his legs, stroked the photograph. “I never told you how she died.”
“No.”
He gazed at Constance’s imperfect face and sighed, and at once I knew the reason for his call: he was still in mourning. Deeply spiritual though her death may have been, there were times when it consumed him.
“1994 was a terrible year,” he said. “The worst of my life, by far, though with a silver lining that blinded me. My sister, to whom I was incredibly close, was killed in a skiing accident. A week later my grief-stricken father threw himself from the top of a multi-storey car park in Wycombe. You can imagine the effect this had on me and my mother. We spiralled into depression, side-by-side, yet so alone. She lost her job. I lost mine. My home, too. One moment everything was intact, and the next it was in pieces. Everything. I went from corporate conventions and health spas to psychiatrists and Prozac.”
I nodded. Not that I could gauge the level of his despair. All I had lost was a wife who didn’t love me, and I felt resentful at the world for that.
Richard snapped his fingers. “That’s how quickly the hurricane hits, and your life is flipped upside down.”
“Yes.” I took a sip of whisky and the thunder boomed again.
“And then I met Constance. The silver lining.” His fingers on the photograph, stroking, as if she could feel. “Long story short: things got better. She was the house I lived in. She gave me security, warmth, and comfort. And when the storms came, she gave me shelter. We got married in ‘96. A fairytale wedding in the Bahamas. Everything was perfect for another year, eighteen months, and then one morning - we were in the conservatory having breakfast - I noticed her hand trembling while she drank her grapefruit juice. Very subtle, but no mistaking it.”
He demonstrated, but I knew what a trembling hand looked like; I had two of my own.
“You don’t assume ...” Richard’s words faded and he shook his head. A single tear leaked from his eye and he smeared it away with his thumb, reminding me of the blood on his shoe. “You don’t assume the worst from something like that. Not immediately. You just get on with your life, and in most cases forget it ever happened.
“But Constance started to exhibit more symptoms, some subtle, others not so. Flashes of irritability and a feverish temper. Distractedness, clumsiness, lots of weeping. I thought it was premature menopause. She told me not to be ridiculous. Anyway, we went to the doctor and ran some tests.”
He put the photograph back in its place and drank his whisky. His eyes were distant, still wet. I plucked a leaf from my hair, but didn’t quite know what to do with it. I twirled the stem between thumb and forefinger. The leaf flickered, gold and red. I sipped my drink and felt the weight of it - the weight of the night - pull at me from inside.
“Do you know anything about Huntington’s disease, Martin?”
“Huntington’s ...” I twirled the leaf. I could see the tiny veins beneath its red skin and thought it looked too healthy a thing to detach and die. “It’s like Parkinson’s disease, isn’t it?”
“There are similarities,” Richard said. “Both are neurological maladies. Both are degenerative. Parkinson’s affects the central nervous system, while Huntington’s - I’m simplifying - deteriorates the areas of the brain responsible for movement, cognition, and personality. It usually begins around middle-age and progresses until there is little or no quality of life.”
“How dreadful,” I said.
“Indeed.” Richard nodded. “Constance was diagnosed in 1998. A tall, strong, intelligent woman - the house I lived in, remember? Hard to believe anything could bring her down. But within five years she was a jerky, slurring shadow of her former self. She fell apart, brick by brick, and once again I felt the storm gathering.”
I could hear the trees outside, twisting in the wind. I gathered the towel closer to me. “Miserable.” Another sip of whisky. “Miserable way to die.”
Richard looked at me. His eyes were clear but they appeared to shake in his skull like the windows in their frames. “Yes, but that’s not what killed her.” He grinned and I counted his teeth. All six hundred of them. “Not exactly.”
“Richard, I ...” The leaf, still between my fingers, caught my eye, softly glowing. “I’m afraid the Glenfiddich is going straight... straight to my head.”
“We were living in this house. Not ideal, but it was the home we bought together after we were married, and we loved it. I had the dining room and a portion of the kitchen converted into a bedroom and bathroom so that Constance had no reason to go upstairs. I rarely left her untended, if I could help it. Sometimes I’d nip to the shops or mow the lawn, never longer than half-an-hour, and she was always fine - would sit where you are now and listen to an audiobook, or watch one of her Doris Day musicals.
“But there was one afternoon when I had to go into the attic to replace some damp in
sulation. It took a little longer than expected - maybe an hour - and when I came down I found her standing at the top of the stairs, not holding on to the banister or wall, just ... standing there, jerking and swaying, looking down the flight at the hallway below. Maybe she had come up to ask me a question, and forgotten what it was, or maybe she had climbed the stairs to prove she still could. So many maybes, Martin, but what I think - what I truly feel - is that she was waiting for me to do exactly what I did.”
The room swayed as I waited for him to continue. I thought it peculiar that I should feel squiffy on only a measure and a half of single malt, but put it down to a combination of the alcohol, the harrowing drive, and so many recent stresses. I rolled my hand, gesturing for Richard to continue. The room dipped and the walls seemed too far away.
Psychomania: Killer Stories Page 48