Death of a Salesperson

by Robert Barnard

  ‘No, it’s not, I’m glad to say. In fact, it’s not much more than half way there.’

  ‘I’ve not even used up the ten,’ said the child.

  ‘I can see that. You’ve got an awful lot left.’

  ‘Yes. Still, I wouldn’t say you were old, yet,’ said the boy.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Albert, and turned over thankfully as the boy left, but not before he had caught sight of the boy’s parents, waving in his direction in a friendly fashion. They were heavy, unattractive people of about his own age, or older. Perhaps the Menace was a late blessing, the result of some virulent fertility drug, and spoilt accordingly.

  When Albert had been by the pool a couple of hours, he got ready to leave. No sense in overdoing the sunshine on the first day of your holiday. You pay for that if you do, Dad always said, and he was right. As he was just preparing to make his move, the ginger-haired head appeared once more close to his.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘My name’s Wimpole. What’s yours?’

  ‘Terry.’

  ‘Ah—short for “Terror”, I suppose.’

  ‘No, it isn’t, silly. It’s short for Terence. Everybody knows that. And I think Wimpole is a jolly funny name. Do you know what happens to you when you die?’

  The abrupt change in the topic caught Albert on the hop, and he paused a moment before replying.

  ‘That’s something people have been discussing for quite a long time.’

  ‘No, it’s not, stupid. You lie there still, and you don’t breathe, and you don’t even twitch, and you don’t have dreams, because you’re dead.’

  ‘I see. Yes, I did know that.’

  ‘Then they put you in a box, and either they put you in the ground and throw earth all over you, or they cre-mate you. That means they burn you up, like Guy Fawkes night.’

  ‘I must be getting along,’ said Albert, and indeed he did begin to feel a burning sensation on his shoulders.

  ‘You know, you don’t necessarily die at three score years and ten.’

  ‘That’s a comfort.’

  ‘My Gran was seventy-four, and that’s more, isn’t it? My friend Wayne Catherick said she was past it.’

  ‘Well, it’s nice to think I might stagger on a bit longer than seventy,’ said Albert, who had gathered together his things and now began to make his way out.

  ‘Terry’s taken quite a fancy to you,’ said Little Terror’s parents as he walked past them. Albert smiled politely.

  The next morning Albert ventured on the beach. He walked half a mile towards the fortress, then laid out his towel and settled down. At first the breeze worried him a little, because he knew people often sunburned badly in a breeze, but by half past ten it had died down, and things had become quite idyllic.

  ‘There’s Wimpole!’ came the well-known voice. Against his wiser instincts Albert looked up. Terry was standing over him, and pointing, as if he were some unusual sea creature.

  ‘We won’t intrude,’ said Terry’s parents, settling themselves down two or three yards away, and beginning to remove clothes from their remarkably ill-proportioned bodies. Terry, however, intruded.

  While his parents just lay there tanning those fleshy bodies of theirs (Albert prided himself on keeping in good trim), Terry confined himself to questions like ‘What’s that?’ and to giving information about his friend Wayne Catherick. When his parents went down to dabble their toes in the freezing Atlantic, Terry’s conversation reverted to the topics of yesterday.

  ‘When you’re cre-mated,’ he said, ‘they shoot your body into a great big oven. Then when you’re all burnt up, they put the ashes into a bottle, and you can put flowers in front of it if you want to.’

  ‘I think I’ll be buried.’

  ‘Or they can scatter the ashes somewhere. Like over Southend, or into the sea, or over Scotland. Do you know what Wayne says, Wimpole?’

  ‘No. What does Wayne say?’

  ‘He says my gran’s ashes ought to have been scattered over Tesco’s supermarket, because she ate so much.’

  ‘That’s a very nasty thing for Wayne to say.’

  ‘No, it’s not. It’s true, Wimpole. She was eating us out of house and home. Wayne says she took the food from out of our mouths. She just sat up there in her bedroom, eating. Sometimes I had to go up and get her tray, and she hadn’t finished, and it was disgusting. She used to spray me with bits. I could have had chocolate cream sponge every day if she hadn’t taken the food from out of my mouth.’

  ‘I don’t think chocolate cream sponge every day would have been very good for you.’

  ‘Yes, it would. And I had to keep quiet, every morning and every night because she was asleep. It wasn’t fair.’

  ‘You have made a hit,’ said Terry’s mother, coming back. ‘It’s nice for you, seeing as you’re on your own, isn’t it?’

  The next day Albert waited in his room until he saw them trailing down to the beach. Then he made his way to the pool, and gratefully sank down on a lilo. Though his sunbathing had been in shorter doses than he had intended, the red was beginning to turn to a respectable brown. Half an hour later Terry was sitting beside him, telling him about Wayne.

  ‘It was awfully breezy on the beach,’ Terry’s dad called out, in a friendly way. ‘You were wise to come here.’

  ‘Wayne’s dad has a sports shop,’ said Terry. ‘I got my costume there. Wayne’s got an Auntie Margaret and two grannies. His grannies aren’t dead!’ he ended emphatically, as if he had scored a definite point there.

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Albert. ‘Grannies are always nice to little boys, aren’t they?’

  ‘Ha!’ said Little Terror, latching back on to his grievance with the tenacity of a politician. ‘Mine wasn’t, Wimpole. I had to be as quiet as quiet, all the time. And her up there stuffing food into her mouth and dribbling, and spitting out crumbs. I don’t call that nice. It was disgusting. I was glad when she died and they put her in the oven.’

  ‘I’m sure that your Mummy and Daddy would be very upset if they heard you say that.’

  ‘That’s why I don’t say it when they’re there,’ said Terry, simply. ‘I expect they quite wanted her to live.’

  The next day Albert went to the beach at Estoril, then caught the bus to Sintra in the afternoon. When he got back to the hotel the dinner-hour was almost over, and Terry and his parents were tucking into enormous slices of caramel cake.

  ‘We missed you today,’ said Terry’s mum, reproachfully, as he passed their table.

  When Terry’s parents got up to go, they came over and introduced themselves properly. They were the Mumfords, they said. And they had something to ask Albert.

  ‘One doesn’t like putting on people, but Terry’s so fond of you, and it is a bit difficult shopping with him tagging along, and we wondered if you could keep an eye on him one afternoon so we could go into Lisbon. After all, it’s not much fun for a child, watching his parents trying on shoes, is it?’

  Albert thought the request an outrageous one. All his instincts cried out against agreeing. Why should he ruin a day of his holidays looking after someone else’s repellent (and tedious) child? All his natural instincts told him to say no. All his middle-class instincts told him he had to say yes. He said yes.

  ‘Let me see—I have places I’m planning to go to, and some friends I have to see—’ he improvised, untruthfully.

  ‘Oh—friends in Portugal,’ said Mrs Mumford, in a tone of voice which seemed to be expressing either scepticism or disapproval.

  ‘Shall we say Monday?’

  Monday was five days away, and the Mumfords would obviously have preferred some earlier day, but their middle-class instincts forced them not to quibble, but to accept and to thank him gratefully.

  The next day was a day of rest for Albert: the Mumfords went on one of the tours—to Nazaré and Fatima. When he went past their table at dinner-time, Mrs Mumford enthused to him about the shrine of Fatima.

  ‘It w
as a real religious experience,’ she said. ‘I expect Terry will want to tell you about it.’

  Albert repressed a shudder, out of consideration for any Portuguese waiter who might be listening. He merely smiled and went on to his table.

  The next day he took the train to Queluz, and the day after he spent exploring the little back streets of Lisbon, then in the afternoon walking up the broad avenue to the park. But all the time Monday was approaching inexorably, and short of going down with beri-beri, Albert could see no way of avoiding his stewardship of the repulsive and necrophilic Terry.

  On Monday morning (it turned out, without explanation, to be a whole day’s shopping Terry’s parents were planning), after the Mumfords had trailed off towards the train for Lisbon, Albert took Terry into Carcavelos and filled him unimaginably full of ice-cream. He hoped it would make him ill or sleepy, but it did neither. When Albert suggested a very light lunch, Terry demanded roast pork at one of the town’s little restaurants. Portions were substantial, and he ate with gusto. All this eating at least kept him quiet. Far from responding to suggestions that he have an afternoon’s nap, Terry demanded to be taken to the hotel swimming pool. Terry’s parents had impressed upon Albert most forcefully that Terry was not allowed to use the diving-board, but while Albert was still fussing around removing his own clothes, he saw that Terry was already up there, and preparing to throw himself into the water.

  ‘This is a suicide dive!’ yelled the child. ‘I want to be cremated!’

  ‘You’ve got to be drowned first,’ muttered Albert. Ten seconds later he was in the pool, fishing out the sobbing, gasping boy. Respect for the susceptibilities of parents prevented Albert giving him a good smacking, but he was able to pummel him pretty satisfyingly on the pretext of getting water out of his lungs. He commanded him to lie still for at least ten minutes.

  ‘Would I be in heaven now, if I had drowned, Wimpole?’ Terry asked, after five.

  Albert did not think it wise to go into alternative destinations for his soul. His parents might be namby-pamby as theologians.

  ‘I believe there is some period of waiting.’

  ‘Like on the platform, before the train comes in?’ asked Terry. ‘I bet once I started I’d have gone fast. Like a space-shot. Whoosh! You wouldn’t have been able to see me, I’d have gone so fast.’

  ‘I expect you’re right,’ said Albert, reading his P.D. James.

  ‘I bet Grandma didn’t go fast like that. I can’t see it. She was enormous. Wayne’s mum called her un-wiel—’

  ‘Unwieldy.’

  ‘That’s right. It means enormous. Colossal. Like a great, fat pig.’

  ‘You know your mother wouldn’t like hearing you say that.’

  ‘She isn’t here,’ said Terry dismissively. ‘Anyway, you can’t expect to go to heaven like a space-shot if you eat enough for three elephants. And if you’re bad-tempered and make everyone’s life a misery.’

  Terry lay quiet for a bit, watching other children in the pool, children with whom he habitually refused to play. Then, out of the corner of his eye, Albert was aware that he was being watched, slyly, out of the corner of Terry’s eye.

  ‘My grandma died of an overdose,’ Terry said.

  ‘An overdose of you?’ asked Albert, though he knew it was useless to venture humour on this horrible child.

  ‘No, stupid. An overdose of medicine. She had it in a glass by the side of her bed, so she could take it while Mummy was out at work. Mummy does half days at the librerry. And Gran’s medicine was left in the glass by her bed. So she didn’t have to get up and go to any trouble to get it. Fat old pig!’

  ‘Terry—if I hear any more words like that about your gran I’m going to take you and lock you in your room. In fact, I don’t wish to hear any more about your gran at all.’

  ‘All right,’ said Terry equably. ‘Only it’s funny the medicine was in the cupboard, and she’d have to get up and get it to give herself an overdose, isn’t it? ’Cos it was left by her bed like that every day.’

  ‘I expect she felt bad, and thought she needed more,’ suggested Albert.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Terry.

  Then he took himself off once more to the pool, and began showing off in front of the smaller children. Before very long he was on the diving-board again, and Albert was in the pool rescuing him. It was during the third time this happened that the Mumfords arrived back at the hotel.

  ‘I do hope he hasn’t been any trouble,’ said Mrs Mumford. ‘Now say thank you to Mr Wimpole, Terry.’

  For the remainder of the holiday the sun shone with a terrible brightness. Albert grew inventive about where he spent his days. He took the bus and ferry out to Sesimbra, he found little beaches on the Estoril coast where fishermen still mended their nets and tourists were never seen. He took the train up to Coimbra, and only rejected Oporto because he calculated that he would only have two hours to spend there before he would have to travel back. He had none of the spicy or sad romantic adventures he had hoped for—what lonely, middle-aged person does on holiday, unless he pays for them?—but he arrived back at the hotel for dinner tired and not dissatisfied with his days.

  ‘My, you have got a lot of friends in Portugal,’ said the Mumfords who were now spending all their days by the pool. ‘We’ve made good friends with Manuel, the waiter there,’ explained Dad Mumford. ‘He’s introduced us to this lovely restaurant run by his uncle. They’re wonderful to Terry there, and they really do us proud at lunch-time.’

  So the Mumfords had found they could do without him.

  Eventually it was time to go home. On the bus to the airport Albert hung back, and selected a seat well away from Terry. At the airport there was a slight delay, while the plane was refuelled and cleaned, and restocked with plastic food. In any case, Albert knew that there he would not be able to escape the Mumfords entirely.

  ‘Do you think you could just keep an eye on Terry for one minute while we go to the Duty Free Shop?’ his mum asked. There was something in the tone of voice as she asked it, as if she knew he had considered their earlier request an encroachment, and she regretted having to ask again so obviously selfish a person.

  ‘Of course,’ said Albert.

  ‘I’ll tell you how she died,’ said Terry, as their heavy footsteps faded away across the marble halls.

  ‘I don’t wish to know.’

  ‘Yes, you do. She was lying up there, and Wayne and I were playing in my bedroom—quietly. How can you play quietly? And we were pretty fed up. And she called out, and called, and called. And when we went in, she said she’d got stuck on one side, and couldn’t get over, and her leg had gone to sleep. She hadn’t had her afternoon medicine yet. And while Wayne pretended to push her, I got the bottle from the cupboard, and I emptied some of it into her glass, and then I put it back in the cupboard. Then I went and pushed with Wayne, and finally we got her over. She said she was ever so grateful. She said, “Now I can go off.” We laughed and laughed when we got back to my room. She went off all right!’

  ‘I’m not believing any of this, Terry.’

  ‘Believe it or not, I don’t care,’ said Terry. ‘It’s true. That’s how the old pig died.’

  ‘It’s an awful swindle in there,’ said the Mumfords, coming back from the Duty Free Shop. ‘Hardly any cheaper than in England. I shouldn’t bother to go.’

  ‘I’ll just take a look,’ said Albert, escaping.

  Albert did not enjoy his flight home at all, though he bought no less than three of the little bottles of white wine they sell with the meal. He was examining the story and re-examining it with the brain of one who was accustomed to weighing up stories likely and unlikely (for Albert worked in a tax office). On the face of it, it was incredible—that a small boy (or was it two small boys?) should kill someone in this simple, almost foolproof way. Yet there had been in the last few years murder cases—now and again, yet often enough—involving children horribly young. And in England too, not in America, where people like Albe
rt imagined such things might be common occurrences.

  Albert shook his head over the stewed fish that turned out to be braised chicken. How was he to tell? And if he said nothing, how terrible might be the consequences that might ensue! If adult murderers are inclined to kill a second time, how much more likely must a child be—one who has got away with it, and rejoices in his cleverness. Even the boy’s own parents would not be safe, in the unlikely event of their ever crossing his will. What sort of figure would Albert make if he went to the police then with his story. Reluctantly, for he foresaw little but embarrassment and ridicule, Albert decided he would have to go to them and tell his tale. In his own mind he could not tell whether Little Terror’s story was true or not. It would have to be left to trained minds to come to a conclusion.

  At Gatwick Albert was first out of the plane, through Passport Control and Customs in no time, and out to his car, which was miraculously unscathed by the attentions of vandals or thieves. As he drove off towards Hull and home, Albert suddenly realized, with a little moue of distaste, that his holiday had had its little spice of adventure after all.

  • • •

  ‘Well!’ said Terry’s dad, when the police had finally left. ‘We know who we have to thank for that!’

  ‘There wasn’t much point in keeping it secret, was there? He was the only one Terry talked to at all. And he seemed such a nice man!’

  ‘I’m going to write him a stiff letter,’ fumed Terry’s dad. ‘I know he works in the tax office in Hull. Interfering, trouble-making little twerp!’

  ‘It could have been serious, you know. I hope you make him realize that. It could have been very embarrassing. If we hadn’t been able to give him the names and addresses of both Terry’s grannies . . . Oh, good Lord! What are they going to say?’

  ‘The police are going to be very tactful. The Inspector told me so at the door. I think they’ll probably just make inquiries of neighbours. Or pretend to be council workers, and get them talking. Just so’s they make sure they are who we say they are.’

  ‘My mother will find out,’ said Mrs Mumford, with conviction and foreboding. ‘She’s got a nose! . . . And how am I going to explain it to her? I’ll never forgive that Wimpole!’