The Anderson Question

by Bel Mooney

  There were only five of them there to see David Anderson disappear into flames. Paul and Conrad, Jack and Margaret Ainslie, and Daphne Ryan rode in the black car from Freeman’s, and sat in a row in the odd, Godless parody of a chapel at Newtonstowe crematorium. It reminded Paul of the Coroner’s Court, with its new, light-brown wood panelling, and dark brown mock leather bench seats, so that for a second the two places merged in his imagination, and now too a judgement would be given, the last judgement, the sentence of death.

  Paul sat stiffly, his whole body aching with the effort of being in charge here. He knew that the others were astonished, and saw admiration for the first time in the eyes of Winterstoke people, but it did not even come near the sharp pain at the centre. Sam Freeman had. Almost unrecognisable in his black suit, and looking uncannily like his father, who had the same sandy curling hair, and pale, good-humoured face, Sam Freeman had given no sign that he remembered their conversation, but behaved instead with fitting gravity. Then, as Paul climbed out of the car after the vast black snuffling mass that was Daphne, Paul saw him wink. For a fraction of a second the eyelid drooped, that was all. But there was such understanding in that tiny movement, such flippancy and acceptance, that Paul felt pierced suddenly, and had to stop himself from falling on the only person there who was near him in age, and howling his bottled-up misery.

  Conrad sat with his hands loosely folded in his lap, and felt the tension in the boy next to him. He looked up at the cream ceiling, with its two ornate drop lights of brass and white glass, spiky and modern, like curious birds, and found himself smiling at the thought of David’s probable reaction to this place. Yet it was appropriate somehow, and David would have seen the irony. There they were in a row: Daphne in her black suit, too hot for the day so that beads of perspiration stood out on her forehead and caked the makeup around her nose; Jack looking uncomfortable in an old dark blue suit, with a pristine white shirt and black tie, and Margaret in a pale grey cotton dress, as quiet and drab as her expression; Paul in jeans and a tweed jacket Conrad knew was David’s; and himself in the black suit of mourning he had worn for Alice’s funeral in Winterstoke, when he had watched her casket being lowered into the grave under the cedar tree, which he had never visited from that day to this. What would David have thought if he had witnessed this scene? Conrad pushed aside the flicker of a question (that perhaps he could see it, and how could they know?) in order to enjoy the mental picture of David’s amusement.

  ‘Do you think I’ve done the right thing?’ Paul had asked, telling him about the visit to Tunneford years ago, and the bizarre place to which he had returned. He had reached out to pat the arm of the boy who intrigued him, and Who seemed to arrive at his house every day now, looking at Conrad as if in expectation. ‘I think you’ve done the right thing,’ Conrad had replied, ‘but did you go to see the rector, at all? Did you talk to him about it?’

  Paul had flushed. ‘No chance! Why should I? Now that Mum’s behaving in this way, and she’s turned her back on all that, why should I go and ask him anything? It wasn’t as if Dad was always on his knees. I think he only went to church because, you know, it was expected.’

  ‘Has she said why she’s turned her back on it?’ asked Conrad.

  ‘Obvious, isn’t it? Suicide’s as much a sin now as it ever was. All your psychology, all your modern ideas about death, and about mental illness too, and it all goes out the window. It was Enid Ryan who first said to me that Mum’s hurt by what Dad did, and I can see that now. I’m pretty hurt myself; I mean, it doesn’t say much about us, does it? But Mum – she’s ashamed as well. She won’t go out because she thinks everybody’s watching her and pointing their fingers. Which they probably are, knowing this place.’

  Conrad shook his head. ‘No, Paul, not now. People feel sorry for her. People want to have her back.’

  ‘Oh yeah, as if nothing had happened?’

  ‘Well, not exactly… I should say, have her back because of what’s happened. People aren’t quite so cruel as you think they are, Paul. Once the first drama is over, and once they’ve aired their opinions – don’t forget not much happens here! – they want to accept the wounded and the maimed back amongst themselves, even if it is only as an unconscious insurance for the future.’

  Paul screwed up his face in a puzzled frown, a gesture Conrad recalled from his childhood. ‘How do you mean, Conrad?’

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s hard to explain. I don’t go out very much anymore, but I do know the people round here quite well, I think. And maybe what I’m saying is that they will find it easier to love Eleanor now. There’ll be a new doctor, and they’ll go to him with all their aches and pains, and gradually they’ll forget that David let them down, as they see it. But they won’t see Eleanor, in the way they used to see her. They’ll always want to protect her against … against, er, more aggression, you could say.’

  He could see that Paul did not understand, and found it hard at the time to say more. It was enough that the boy chose to mooch around his chilly and dilapidated house, and even grinned once or twice, telling Conrad about the theatre, and strange flamboyant people who came again and again, and the famous television actor who arrived in a gold lamé bomber jacket, only to find that his boyfriend had not arrived, so that he threw a tantrum in the foyer and demanded to return his tickets. It meant little to Conrad, who thought wistfully of his desk sometimes, and the uncompleted work, but he was touched by Paul’s presence, and wanted to find words to answer all the questions in that furrowed brow.

  He was frowning now, Conrad saw, glancing sideways. The door opened; without a sound the long box slid away, and he saw Daphne, from the other side, reach out a damp hand to take Paul’s, only to find those arms folded tightly, unmoving. More words were spoken, far away it seemed, and then the five of them rose awkwardly, raggedly, to walk out into the sunlight. Dying garlands of flowers lay on the paving stones outside, the words on their little cards blurred now, and indecipherable. Margaret clutched jack’s arm, and bowed her head towards him, not quite leaning, supported in the end by her own strength. Seeing them, Daphne felt dizzy with envy, and looked around her wildly, reaching out to take Conrad’s elbow in an elaborate pretence of helping the old man down the steps. Somebody’s flesh to hold, anybody’s … she did not feel him wince, nor notice that he tried to shake his head, wanting no touch. ‘I’m perfectly all right, my dear,’ he murmured, starting to draw his arm away. Yet he stopped; Sensing her need, he turned his instinctive rejection into gallantry with a skill no one saw: ‘Allow me, Daphne,’ his bent arm held out, as if to lead her in to a grand dinner.

  Paul stood apart. He stared out beyond them, to where the two black cars waited, with two dark figures propped against them. He was appalled by his need, and sweated in the determination not to run down the path and talk to Sam Freeman. If only they knew, he thought with shame, glancing at the two couples who walked ahead of him along the gravel drive. My father has disappeared forever, flesh to ashes.

  … and at the moment it was happening I took myself away. A night at the theatre, and that actor forgetting his fury, suggesting they have a drink afterwards, looking at Paul keenly, knowing. Paul remembered, closing his eyes now in the sunlight, as he had closed them inside as the box disappeared and the little doors closed behind it, but not with grief as Conrad had assumed, and not with the need for Daphne’s moist comfort. The man had recognised him, and Paul had longed for it to happen, to end the confusion. They had drunk champagne and gone back to his flat, and Philip undressed Paul, going down on his knees; laughing, much later, at the notion that he had performed what he called the ‘initiation’. Back in his own flat in the blue-grey hours, Paul had carefully washed, his flesh still tingling and a strange salty taste in his mouth; then he lay on his bed weeping quietly with a mixture of shame and relief.

  ‘Are you all right, Paul?’

  He looked at her vacantly, then with irritation as he realised that Daphne was still trying to paw him, as he ex
pressed it to himself. He shrank away. ‘Oh God, Daphne, I wish you’d stop fussing over me’ he said tightly, breaking into a lolloping run and overtaking the others. When he reached the car the younger Freeman grinned, incongruous in his drab black. He threw away his half-smoked cigarette. ‘All over, then?’ he asked.

  ‘All over,’ Paul said, noticing the way the sun glinted on the red in his hair.

  ‘It’ll be better now,’ said Sam.

  ‘I know.’

  Daphne walked slowly up to them, her eyes hurt and pleading like those of an animal on the way to market. She knew she was excluded, though she did not understand what barriers shut her out.

  Two things now preoccupied the people of Winterstoke, unwilling as they were to let the Anderson business fade from conversation. The first was a certainty, the second a question. Jean Orton called at Sheila Simmonds’ house one afternoon, and the two women agreed: the village concert must now be the best the village had ever put on, and yet would Mrs Anderson leave that house to come and see it? Suddenly, her presence in the village became more important than ever; they wanted her to ‘get back to normal’ because only then could they take their cue and do the same.

  ‘She hasn’t set foot outside her door since she were told, Sheila,’ Jean Orton said, sipping her weak coffee with a finger held delicately out at an angle.

  ‘Well, you can’t blame her, really, can you Jean? I don’t know as I’d like to show my face. Terrible for her, terrible. Imagine if your Pete went and did that? Imagine how you’d feel.’

  Pete Orton was a large, red-faced man who ran the sales department in the same company which employed Brian Simmonds as supervisor in the workshop which checked the new tractors for faults as they arrived. The two men rarely spoke. Jean Orton thought with affection of her comfortable husband, glad that the other woman could not intercept her feeling – that it would be no loss if Brian Simmonds were to swallow a bottle of sleeping pills, and that anything would be better than going on like that, with no hope of respite.

  ‘I don’t know what I’d do with myself, Sheila. I don’t think I’d want to go on.’

  Sheila Simmonds dropped her eyes, embarrassed by the sudden infusion of real feeling in Jean’s voice, because, after all, it was best to keep such thoughts to yourself. She did. Since she had heard the truth about the doctor she had avoided any mention of him, although she would lie awake at night, listening to Brian’s shuddering snores, and still try to picture that mild, strong face. His manners were what she chiefly recalled; such a polite man always, and to every-body; a gentleman. He always remembered her birthday, and once gave her flowers, the first flowers she had ever had, although she would have preferred more colour in the bunch he had so carefully chosen for its whites and creams. ‘It’s to say thanks for all the hard work and late hours, Sheila,’ he had joked. Thank you; he was always saying thank you to her, but then what did he do? He thanked her by abandoning her to all those people and Sheila knew she would never forgive him, never.

  She nodded gravely at Jean Orton, envying the woman’s statuesque good looks. ‘Anyway, Jean, it’ll be a good concert, everybody’s determined. We need something to put us back on our feet, don’t we? But what will she do? She ought to show her face, didn’t she?’

  The sun pours in through the open window, bringing with it a smell of grass and leaves, which only serves in part to mask the smell of dust in the small room. Eleanor breathes it. She is kneeling on the carpet in what was David’s study, with books in little stacks around her. Two cardboard boxes full of books stand by the open door. There is sunlight on the landing too. The house is silent. Paul has gone somewhere without telling her his destination, nor does she ask it anymore.

  As she takes each volume from the shelf behind her Eleanor treats it to a ritual inspection, flicking first through the pages, her eyes travelling swiftly up and down the margins; then grasping it with both hands and shaking it roughly so that the pages flutter like dying butterflies and the spine creaks at the cruel treatment. If a slip of paper falls from the pages, or if she sees a note or an underlining, she places the book on the desk top; if not it joins the others in a stack of similar size. Now and then she rises, and piles the stacks in a cardboard box, moving this with difficulty to the door. Two, three, four … the boxes crowd the room; so Eleanor drags the fifth outside. The bare shelves, and the smell of dust, remind her of moving house, and before that, of the end of term at school, years ago: empty notice-boards, bare walls, vacant shelves, the exciting sense of getting older and moving on.

  She sighs and puts up an automatic hand to smooth her hair, exploring to be sure that each strand is tucked into the pins. She shudders at the recollection of the feel of it around her face, as if she had been possessed by an alien spirit, something loose and slovenly.

  ‘You look so much more like your old self, Eleanor,’ Daphne had said, accepting her offer of coffee with a look of bewildered gratitude, like someone who expects a thorn and is offered instead a rose. They had sat in the kitchen, and so lulled was Daphne by the sight of Eleanor in a neat spring dress and chignon, that she made a mistake. After quiet and tender questions about Eleanor’s health, she said, ‘It wasn’t as bad as I expected, Eleanor. I wish you could have come.’ ‘Where?’ Eleanor’s tone was sharp, but her eyes suddenly vacant. Daphne wriggled in her chair. ‘You know, dear, with Conrad and the Ainslies and me; with Paul … you know. It might have done you good …’ Her voice faded, as Eleanor’s gaze hardened. ‘Daphne, I think I’d better say this once and for all. I had absolutely no desire to go to David’s funeral or cremation or whatever it was, and I see no reason why I should have gone. Might have done me good indeed! What you’re saying is that it would have done all of you good.’

  ‘I only meant …’

  ‘Oh, Daphne, I know what you meant! Can’t you see it’s no good? It’s all over. All gone! We’ve all got to accept it.’

  ‘But what are you going to do, Eleanor?’ Daphne had asked unhappily.

  ‘It’s too early to say,’ was the calm reply. ‘Maybe I’ll sell the house; I don’t really want to stay here now. But first I’ve got some things to sort out. Don’t worry, Daphne,’ she had added in such a gentle voice that Daphne had looked up in surprise, ‘I won’t do anything without telling you.’

  Daphne had gone soon after that, looking uneasy, Eleanor noticed. She did not feel inclined to reassure her further, seeing no need. Why should these people all look to her to make their lives more easy; why should Paul, especially, fix on her those looks of supplication mixed with rage that the desired response did not come? It angered Eleanor that she should bear the burden of David’s decision, becoming the focus of their disillusionment. ‘They think they are disappointed in me for the unreasonable way I’m behaving,’ she thought as she washed up the cups and saucers, removing the last trace of Daphne’s greasy pink lipstick, ‘but in fact it is David who has let them down, and forever too, if they could only admit it. I know what’s going on: each of them is trying to rationalise his death, and having me here – “hard” as Paul called me – makes it much easier for them.’ She remembered that Paul told her how Daphne had now decided that David must have been seriously ill; ‘She says he must have known something,’ he had said. Eleanor smiled grimly. So it began: the explaining away, the needing to find reasons to make it all so much easier. Ill, indeed; with no evidence Daphne was latching on to this consolation, and making herself privy to a myth, in the belief that it was merely a secret. It was pathetic, Eleanor had thought, all her irritation suddenly draining.