‘One night, when he was blind drunk, your dad forced himself upon me against my will,’ she would have said, ‘and, though I struggled against him and pleaded with him to stop, he was stronger than me and when he punched me I realised that further resistance was futile.’
It’s imperative that you believe me when I insist that, though this might well have been Lisa’s truth, it was, nevertheless, a travesty of the truth. It was false in every respect.
The fact of the matter was that, on the night in question — a Friday — I arrived home later than usual after a particularly stressful week (a by-election campaign had just started and the postbag had begun to bulge with mountainous volumes of the usual petty and parochial party political propaganda for me to wade through in the forlorn hope of uncovering a letter written by an author expressing an independent, coherent opinion) laden with a couple of bottles of my favoured Jacob’s Creek Cabernet Sauvignon purchased from Oddbins en route. Whilst it is true that, on the night in question, Lisa chose not to join me in the consumption of these delectable bottles of South Eastern Australian vintage 1998, it is equally true that I only opened one of the two bottles and, having sampled several glasses throughout a hearty two-course meal, I sipped at the remainder of the bottle throughout the rest of the evening as I sat in my worn armchair reading a book that Lisa had lent me, so that, though relaxed, I was not intoxicated.
I mention the book Lisa had lent me because I believe it had a significant part to play in the subsequent events of the evening in question. I remember it well. It left a lasting impression on me. It was called The Image and, since it traversed the blurred boundary between the erotic and the pornographic, I’d fancied that Lisa had lent it to me with the precise intention of arousing me with a view to precipitating some sexual congress later that evening. This was at a time when we were still sexually active. Little did I know then that this was to be our last sexual encounter.
In retrospect it could be argued with some validity that I’d misread Lisa’s intentions in lending me the book — she herself was adamant that this was indeed the case — but then, can everything not be reinterpreted in a different light under the beneficial glare of hindsight? Nevertheless, I still did not force her against her will. Although perhaps slower than usual to respond to my advances, my fumbling fingers had met with no resistance and her thighs had duly parted as wide and as welcoming as ever before.
As for Lisa’s claim that I punched her, this was no more than a deliberately misleading gross exaggeration of a playful slap; a slap, moreover, which she herself was in the habit of urging me to deliver but which my reticence meant that I was only ever able to provide half-heartedly.
In fact, now that I think about it, not only had Lisa urged me to slap her on the night in question, she’d insisted that I verbally abuse her too. It seemed to excite her.
‘Call me a whore,’ she’d whispered, squeezing me. I concurred.
‘Call me a bitch,’ she’d demanded, manipulating me.
‘I’m on heat,’ she’d said, swallowing me.
Distracted from my thoughts by the taxi driver swerving to avoid a pensionable pedestrian who had wandered inadvertently into his path, I felt I understood the motive behind Will’s hatred for me all these years. I could comprehend his insatiable lust for revenge. I could hear Lisa prompting it with her poisonous truth.
‘Later, when your dad discovered that I was pregnant with you, he flew into a rage and demanded that I have an abortion,’ I can hear her tell him.
‘When I refused, he hit me so hard that I had to hide the bruise on my cheek under a thick layer of foundation for a week.’
Yes, that’s what she’d done. That explained everything. She’d force-fed Will her own twisted truth and poisoned him against me.
The taxi screeched to a halt and I sprinted up the steep hill to the flagpole at the top of Queen’s Park.
Finally I felt I was beginning to comprehend a connection between Original Harm and why Will had reacted to it in such an extreme and irrational manner. All these years he’d thought that I’d sought to have him aborted and now here I was, dedicating a book sympathetic towards abortion to him. How he must despise me! How anxious I was to enlighten him about his mother’s lies and to convey to him some sense of the ecstasy of relief that surged through me now I knew he was alive. How anxious I was to explain to him how much he meant to me and that, now that I had him back and had been granted a second chance, this time around I’d never let him go. I had to put him right on what had really happened between Lisa and me. I had to tell him the truth and then maybe we could start to explore ways to resolve the predicament within which we’d ensnared each other.
It was Will, I now realised, who had transformed The Amino from fiction into fact. It was Will who was the kidnapper. I knew I had to reach him before Pardos. Reflecting on my last conversation with her, it seemed clear to me now that she already suspected him.
As I approached the flagpole, I noticed Mark Twain waiting for me on the bench and all my speculations that I had just delineated so diligently started to unravel. Perhaps Will wasn’t the kidnapper, after all? And, if not, did that mean that he was dead? Was Mark Twain the kidnapper? Perhaps he was Will’s messenger?
This latter speculation seemed the most plausible when, without words, Mark Twain rose as I approached and beckoned me to follow him. It was only then that I remembered presenting Will with a copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for his seventh birthday. It had been a favourite book of mine ever since I’d been sent it as a childhood present myself, and I’d duly presented it to Will with an inscription expressing the hope that it bring him as much pleasure as it had brought me.
Twain led me round behind the flagpole and along a muddy path to Hill 60, through mature oak trees to allotments where a sprawl of broken-windowed greenhouses and assorted storm-damaged sheds bordered rows of cultivated vegetables.
‘Are you the messenger?’ I asked him. He nodded and pointed to a ramshackle shack constructed from rusted sheets of corrugated tin located in the far corner then turned to leave.
‘Is this goodbye?’ I asked. Again he nodded. ‘You never did tell me your real name,’ I said. I don’t know why — perhaps, as a consequence of my mounting trepidation, I was seeking to stall my meeting with Will — but I felt compelled to strike up a conversation with him.
‘No, I didn’t,’ he said, turning to leave again, before changing his mind and calling, ‘Guy Fall.’
‘So, why the pseudonym?’
He shrugged. ‘You’ll need to ask “him”.’
‘Who’s “him”?’
He shrugged again. ‘He never told me his name and, having asked once, I learned quickly not to ask again.’
I watched him disappear over the brow of the hill then approached the shack with caution. Swinging open the creaking door, I peered inside. It was dark and stank of stale cabbage, bruised Brussels sprouts, turnips and other rotting vegetables.
‘Will?’ I heard my voice asking in anticipation. There was no reply but I heard a shuffle in the shadows. I cleared my throat and tried again.
‘Will?’ I repeated, louder this time.
There was a muffled cough and then I heard a gruff voice from within the midst of the darkness:
‘William’s dead.’
part six
a tin home
chapter twenty-two
character assassination
‘How d’you know?’ I asked.
‘I’ve read his suicide note,’ said the disembodied voice.
‘Have you seen his body?’
‘No.’
‘Then how d’you know he’s dead?’
The voice coughed and I listened to its laboured breathing.
‘I don’t have to see his body to know he’s dead. I’ve read his suicide note. You know he’s dead too.’
�
��I do?’
‘Yes, you do. You might not want to admit it to yourself; you might try to kid yourself that the fact that his body was never found means that somehow he’s still alive — and, knowing how your mind works, you’ve probably conjured up some fantastical scenario in your head to explain to yourself that William’s the kidnapper — but, deep down, you and I both know that he’s dead.’
The brutal truth of these words slashed open my scars of grief to lay bare the wounds I’d hoped had healed over but which were now revealed to have been festering all this time.
‘Speak for yourself,’ I said in a last ditch attempt at denial. ‘Who are you anyway? And what makes you think you know how my mind works?’
The forced breathing stopped and a figure marched with precision from the shadows into the murky light as if obeying a command. His erect posture, standing to attention with puffed-out chest and chin aloft, expressionless face staring me straight in the eye, as if presenting itself for inspection, suggested a military bearing. He held my gaze for an instant before jerking his head involuntarily. This twitch, which I interpreted as a physical manifestation of some psychological torment, was to recur at irregular intervals throughout the remainder of our conversation. Dishevelled and clothed in threadbare military fatigues, he wore a worn blue beret and a flesh-coloured eye patch. Despite his attempt at striking an imposing presence, there was no disguising the fact that he had been through the wars and was in a poor physical and mental condition. I was reminded of the recent spate of photographs and reports of a brutally executed campaign of ethnic cleansing that had so disturbed me and sensed that the individual before me had been living what I’d been reading.
‘I’m the kidnapper — ’ he declared, letting slip a slight American twang that triggered a desperate search for recognition in my head.
‘ — I thought as much,’ I interrupted.
‘ — And the hostage,’ he finished, catching me off guard.
As soon as he spoke these words, there was a distinct degeneration in his demeanour. It was as if he’d relieved himself of an unbearable burden and forsaken the willed maintenance of a facade of vitality. His forced breathing resumed, he twitched several times in rapid succession and started to shrivel before my eyes, his back becoming bent and bowed, his hands trembling. I watched this metamorphosis impassively as I struggled to comprehend the implications of his revelation.
‘I’m not sure I understand,’ I managed eventually, inviting him to spell it out for me.
He flashed a grotesque grin, with the express purpose, I suspect in retrospect, of revealing to me the bloody gap in his gum from where his missing molar had only recently been uprooted.
‘What don’t you understand?’
‘Anything.’
‘You really don’t know who you are, do you?’ he said.
I certainly didn’t understand this remark — it struck me as platitudinous — but I was about to.
‘Let me enlighten you.’
‘What’s your name?’ I interrupted once more in an attempt to regain some measure of control over the proceedings.
‘Liam,’ he said, coughing, then, noticing my hesitation, he added, ‘There was a time, long ago, when we exchanged confidences on a regular basis. That’s what makes me think I know how your mind works. I can read you like a book.’
Not for the first time since he’d stepped from the shadows did I find myself at a loss for words. I searched in vain for an appropriate response to this revelation. Before me stood my confidant. I had confided in him without reservation from my childhood, throughout my adolescence and on into my adulthood. I believed him when he said he knew how my mind worked. I believe you can tell a lot about someone by reading their writing but I had read plenty of his letters and I hadn’t foreseen this turn of events. Hadn’t he confided in me?
‘Of course I had,’ he said, as if I’d spoken my thoughts aloud, or as if he really had been reading me like a book, ‘but you were always too wrapped up in yourself to notice or care.’
I looked at him and realised that I had no idea how his mind worked or how I should respond to his revelation; that his accusation was probably accurate; that I probably had failed to reciprocate the attention he had afforded the barrage of perpetually self-propagating trivial torments with which I had bombarded him.
If I accepted my guilt in this regard then something told me that I was due to be sentenced. I could detect a menacing hostility emanating from him and, trying to remember the circumstances in which our correspondence had concluded, and which one of us had ended it, determined to proceed with caution.
‘Your wounds are self-inflicted?’ I asked.
‘I lost my eye in combat,’ he said. ‘After some persuasion the surgeon let me keep the lens as a memento, but, yes, I extracted my tooth myself.’
‘I can’t think why you’d do something like that.’
‘You wouldn’t be here if you could,’ he said. ‘I did it to attract your attention.’
‘Seems a bit extreme.’
‘Sometimes extremes are necessary,’ he replied.
‘Well, you wanted my attention and you’ve got it,’ I said. ‘Why d’you want it?’
‘To tell you all about me and you.’
‘What about me and you?’
‘What d’you think happened to me and you?’ he asked. I shrugged, trying again to remember just how our correspondence had concluded.
‘We grew up,’ I offered.
‘Is that it?’ he asked.
I shrugged again.
‘You really don’t know who you are, do you?’ he said again, the remark sounding more menacing and less trite second time around. I sighed, becoming disorientated by the opaque circularity of the conversation.
‘Enlighten me,’ I said, resigning from any further attempt to steer the roundabout course of our discourse.
‘I will,’ he replied. ‘That’s why you’re here, but be warned because, in doing so, I’ll undoubtedly damage irrevocably all the preconceived certainties of the autobiography you’ve been re-running and revising in that tape loop in your head, according to which, your life’s divided into two acts: before and after the tragedies.
‘Before the tragedies, according to your autobiography, your life was progressing largely as planned, following the upward trajectory of a narrative arc, heading straight towards the Holy Grail of happiness, that peaked and plateaued shortly after you became a father. The catalyst of this arc was Lisa, whom, for a while, you loved enough to consider her welfare as a matter of equal importance to your own. At the height of your infatuation with Lisa, it might even be true to say that you went so far as to defer the attainment of a portion of your own happiness in favour of hers — something you’d never contemplated before, or countenanced since. This unprecedented period concluded with the birth of William, with whom Lisa was unable to compete for your hard-won affection.
‘When William arrived on the scene Lisa found herself cast aside — she’d delivered your son and heir and now found herself surplus to your requirements — and you diverted all your care and attention towards him. You found it easier to devote yourself to William than to Lisa because you regarded him as an extension of yourself. William became your raison d’être. You loved him unconditionally because he was your own flesh and blood. You even fancied that he granted you immortality. It was the thought of the death sentence of life with which, you and I both know — believe me I’ve got the mountains of documentation to back me up — you were unable to come to terms. You were and are petrified by the notion of coming to a full stop — a “dead end”, you once called it — and, for a while at least, William allowed you to bask in the illusion of your own immortality; an illusion that was shattered by his tragic suicide.
‘Your arc of triumph plummeted in the aftermath of the tragedy of Lisa and William’s suicides, which signalled the c
ulmination of Act One of your autobiography. According to your revised and self-edited version of events, you had had everything — a woman who loved you and whom you loved and a devoted son on whom you doted — only to lose it all in the space of a single day. Fate had conspired to strip you bare of all hope of happiness and condemn you to endure the remainder of your days wading through a quagmire of everlasting remorse. How could you ever hope to cope with such a dismal prospect?
‘You coped by doing what you always did when confronted by your torments, trivial or otherwise — you wrote about them. They never seemed so insurmountable once they’d been transformed into words on a page where you could control and manipulate them — erase and edit, consider or consign them to a drawer — as you saw fit. So Act Two saw you start to exploit your torments as source material for a book. And you distorted them, perhaps unintentionally at first, but soon you discovered that you enjoyed the distortion and so you set about systematically exaggerating and embroidering the facts into fiction, rewriting your autobiography into an autohagiography in which you cast yourself in the role of martyr, an innocent tortured by the cruel twists of fate — ’
‘ — Enough!’ I interrupted. I couldn’t bear to listen to his character assassination a moment longer. ‘What gives you the right to judge me?’ I demanded, frustrated by the ease with which he, an obviously deranged and quite possibly dangerous (certainly to himself) fantasist, had contrived to seize the moral high ground. ‘What does any of this have to do with you anyway?’
‘I’ve got every right to judge you,’ he replied in a tone which suggested that he’d anticipated just this interruption, ‘because this has everything to do with me. Your autobiography’s a work of fiction, testament not to the tragic truth but to the vividness of your imagination and the pathos of your self-deception. The premises upon which it’s founded — your love for Lisa and William — are false — ’
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