by David Nobbs
The funeral service, the wake, they spelt, in the modern word, closure. James knew that he had not yet quite achieved closure himself. He felt the need, alone there in his own back garden, to speak to his dead wife, perhaps for the last time. He didn’t welcome this need. His recent past was a murky place, not pleasant to visit.
He fought against the need. He forced himself to think about the future, and felt again an unexpected sense of optimism, of hope, of – yes, and he couldn’t believe that he could feel this today – of excitement.
What was his future? He would stay at Globpack until he had finished the task that he had been set. When that was over, whether successful or not, he would either leave Globpack or take a sabbatical and visit Max in Canada for a long stay. No, he couldn’t do that if Charlotte came to live with him. Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte. He would do his utmost to save her life, whether or not she came, whether or not she stayed with Chuck. He would try to find, for Philip, the good woman that he deserved. Helen? That would be neat. No, no, she wasn’t his type at all.
Helen. Regrets? Of course. He would miss her. But no, not the ultimate regret. He had done the right thing.
And Grace Farsley, why did he think of her? She was just an old friend of Deborah’s to whom he had spoken twice, among many others. He had liked her. It was now that the strange adjective came to him. Every feature was pleasant. Her personality had seemed attractive, her mind had seemed clear, she had appeared to have humour, he felt that there was warmth and kindness in her soul. There was nothing extraordinary about any one aspect of her, but she was … well, there was that extraordinary word … complete.
Would his less than passionate memory of her fade in the coming days? Were his two conversations with her any more than the first indication that one day perhaps he would emerge from the shadows of recent events and be able to begin a relationship with another woman? He might never see her again. He knew that. He might meet her again, fall in love, and marry her. It wasn’t important, not tonight, not yet.
Should he be thinking these things on the night of Deborah’s funeral? Well, they were not that unseemly. They really were very gentle speculations. Too gentle to keep him away from his dear departed Deborah.
He found that he was on his feet, without having given his legs any instructions to rise. He found that he was walking right to the back of the garden, under the trees, where the earth almost never dried out, but it was dry now.
He stood on the dry earth, among the nettles and the foxgloves, and called out to his dead wife.
‘Oh, Deborah, Deborah, my darling. I’m—’
He heard a cough. His blood ran cold. There was somebody else in the garden with him. He heard footsteps, rustling the dry plants. He heard a foot strike a stone.
‘Sorry. I had to interrupt.’
He froze. Mike. It was Mike. Come to kill him, because he knew. Come to plunge a knife into his stomach, because killers always used the same method again, didn’t they?
He could just see Mike reach into a pocket … and bring out … what? A gun? A knife? A shaft of moonlight reflected off something gold. James waited for the shot, or the plunge of the blade, wondered how much it would hurt, felt the involuntary clenching of his stomach, the fierce beating of his heart. But he knew, in that moment, and knew with blinding clarity that what he was frightened of wasn’t death, but the anticipated pain, the moment when the instrument of death broke his skin, ripped through his veins, plunged into his heart. He wasn’t at all frightened of ceasing to exist. He just felt sad.
They say that as you drown your whole life passes before you. As James waited to be killed it was his future that surged through his mind. He wouldn’t be able to give Charlotte a home. Other men perhaps less committed would have to try to save Bridgend and Kilmarnock. He would never have the joy of witnessing Stanley’s hangover tomorrow. Grace Farsley would never receive a reply to her letter, if indeed she wrote one. He would never open his front door and see, for the first time, the girl whom Max was going to marry.
This must be the worst thing about death. You miss the end of so many stories.
But no gunshot came. No knife was thrust into his midriff.
‘I’ve brought your pen back.’
The words made no sense whatsoever to James.
‘What?’
‘You left it. I meant to bring it. I forgot. I went back for it. Sorry.’
The words were on a different scale. They were incomprehensibly trivial.
‘Pen?’
‘Your Mont Blanc. Your posh pen. You signed your autograph with it in my book. You forgot it. You were pissed.’
‘Oh, God. Well, thank you for giving me the scare of my life.’
‘I didn’t mean to scare you.’
‘Oh, no.’ James began to raise his voice. ‘You come up on me in the dark in my back garden. You flash what I think is a knife at me, and you say you don’t mean to scare me shitless. Have you forgotten that I know you’re a killer?’
‘I am not a killer, James. I am not a fucking killer.’
A blackbird shouted its alarm at their raised voices and flew off.
‘Well, what the fuck are you, then?’ shouted James.
‘I’m …’ Suddenly Mike lowered his voice, became almost calm. ‘I’m a man who killed.’
‘It’s a fine distinction.’
‘Not to me, it isn’t. I have to live with it. It is not at all a fine distinction.’ Mike’s voice rose steadily to a shriek. ‘I cannot believe that you thought that I was going to kill you. Fucking hell, James. I’m your friend. Oh, you thought, “He’s killed once, he’s through the barrier, the second time will be easier, the third time easier still, nobody in London will be safe from the maniac.”’
‘Don’t you bloody well shout at me, Mike. This is my garden. You’re in my sodding garden. I was scared, very scared, and I don’t give a toss about your fine fucking distinction, you’ve killed a man. You came up to me in the dark, silently …’
‘I heard you in the garden, and as I walked up I realised you were going to talk to Deborah. I didn’t want to overhear anything so personal. I coughed to stop you. Fucking hell, James, I must be the most sensitive and considerate serial killer of all time.’
It was as if all James’s anger just drained away into the earth.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’
What had happened to his hopes of a new dawn in which he never needed to say ‘sorry’?
‘Can we sit down?’ asked Mike.
‘Of course.’
‘Can we talk about this quietly, calmly, without raised voices?’
‘Absolutely.’
They sat on the cast-iron garden bench. It was already wet with dew, but neither of them noticed.
Mike told him how he had been deeply shocked to realise that James knew that he had killed Ed. He’d gone off, and gone for a drink at the pub at the end of the road. He’d decided to come back to talk to James, late in the evening, when everyone else might have gone or be in bed. He needed to know whether James intended to go to the police. Then, realising that if he stayed in the pub all evening he’d get hopelessly drunk, he’d decided to go home and get the pen.
‘Well, thanks for that.’
‘It’s ridiculous, but I thought if I did something nice like bringing your pen back, it might influence you.’
‘“I couldn’t tell you he’d killed a man, officer. He’d just made me a very nice sandwich.”’
James began to shake. He felt extremely cold, even on this warm, humid evening. He knew that this was the after effect of shock. He clenched his whole body in an effort to hide the shaking, but Mike could feel it.
‘You’re shaking. Oh, God, I really did scare you.’
‘It’s all right.’
And it was. And the funny thing was, beneath the huge relief there was just a tiny little voice of regret, a sense – ridiculous but real – that he had been cheated of his part in a great drama.
‘So … um … I have to ask you this, James. What do you intend to do?’
‘Oh, God, Mike. I don’t know. I … can you tell me anything about why you killed Ed?’
‘Yes. He laughed at me.’
‘What?’
‘I went to Roger’s party. He was there. He seemed … contrite. I invited him back for a drink. A peace offering. We got rather drunk. I saw he wasn’t contrite at all. He was pleased he’d ruined my life. He laughed at me, James. I lost my temper and stabbed him.’
James didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.
‘I was drunk, of course. We both were. I was horrified I’d done it. I decided to conceal it. I didn’t want him ruining my life twice.’
‘I don’t blame you.’
‘Do you mean that?’
‘I don’t know. It was just a remark. Just what one says. Oh God. Oh God, Mike. I have to say … I really do have to say … I’m not saying anything really, but … I don’t see what good it would do anybody if I reported you now. If I say “he deserved” it, it sounds as if I’m adopting the rules of the Wild West.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t thank me. I haven’t actually said I won’t, you know.’
‘There’d be no evidence. They’d find it very hard to convict.’
An urban fox knocked the lid off a dustbin not far away, slicing through the night’s silence, and in the distance, a siren spoke faintly of some other crisis in someone else’s life.
Mike and James were silent for quite a while.
‘What actually happened?’ James asked at last. ‘How on earth did you get rid of the body?’
‘You aren’t trying to trick me, are you?’
‘No.’
‘No. Sorry. Oh well.’
James realised that Mike was also yearning for the cleansing power of confession.
‘It was easy. A chap I know’s gone abroad for two years. I’m looking after his car, starting it every week, running the engine for a few minutes to charge the battery. He’s not the sort of person to check the mileage. I wrapped the body in an old sheet and then in cardboard. It might not have stood up to close inspection, but you’d have been proud of me. I lowered the back seats of the car, and just managed to lift one end of the body into the boot, and then I slid it in. I was sweating buckets, but nobody saw me. His car has been thoroughly cleaned, as has my flat. There were no witnesses at any stage. The sheet and the cardboard went into landfill, and the knife is in a different watery grave, nowhere near the Fens or Acton. And I wore gloves throughout. It’s funny. I always thought that one day I’d find something I was good at, and I have. Murdering. Not a gift I can ever use again.’
There was another silence between them, a silence which Mike might have broken by asking James for a promise, an assurance, and in which James might have given such an assurance. But neither did, and when James spoke it was to make a very different point.
‘Mike?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you.’
‘What?’
‘Yes, I was scared. Of what I thought was the knife. But not of dying. On the day Deborah was cremated, you’ve brought home to me that I’m not afraid of dying. Thank you.’
‘Well … what can I say?’
‘Nothing.’
It was true. There was nothing more to be said.
They walked slowly round to the front of the house, and there they shook hands, solemnly. Neither had the faintest idea if they would be able to continue to be friends.
Mike walked away, suddenly brisk.
Then James called out.
‘Mike?’
Mike stopped.
‘Thanks for bringing my pen back.’
James wandered very slowly back into the garden. It struck him as extraordinary that he didn’t find it at all extraordinary that he should be contemplating something as extraordinary as not reporting a murderer who had confessed.
Had the moment for speaking to Deborah passed? Had Mike’s interruption proved fatal to his intentions? No. The need was irresistible.
He walked back to the same spot, as if that was the only point in the garden from which she would be able to hear.
‘Oh, Deborah, Deborah, my darling,’ he repeated. ‘I’m certain you aren’t there. I’m certain that there is now no life in you in any shape or form. I’m certain that you are not in heaven. I’m certain that, even though I’m looking up into the sky, there is no heaven. I’m certain that this is a futile gesture, but then you always said that I was rather good at futile gestures. I’m standing at the end of the garden, among the nettles, in that bit we kept wild for the birds and the butterflies. It’s a lovely night, the weather has been wonderful since you died. I probably look mad, I probably am mad, but I just had to speak to you. I just had to let you know that it was you I loved all along. It was. It was. I just didn’t know it, fool that I was, fool that I am. Oh, and Charlotte came to your funeral. I so wish you could know that. She’s going to come and live with me. I think. No, I’m almost certain. Oh, darling, I would love your help in dealing with her. It won’t be easy. Oh, Deborah, we will miss you. I don’t know why you didn’t let on that you knew about … her. There’s no need for you to know her name now. Maybe you thought it would blow over. Maybe you were happy to keep just a part of me. Maybe, like the French, you understood that a man could need two women. I’ll never know now, and it doesn’t matter. Well, that’s about it. I … I didn’t ever want to have to say this again, and I’m saying it now for the last time, I hope. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Deborah.’
Now the tears streamed. He wandered slowly back to the bench, looked for his whisky glass, couldn’t find it. It didn’t matter now. He didn’t need props now. Those days were over.
He looked up into the – not the heavens … heavens, no – into the sky. He was alone, alone with only the whole solar system, the vast galaxies, the unimaginable distances, the inconceivable immensity of it, and here mankind was on one piddling little planet, and he was of no significance on this planet, he wasn’t even important in so-called Great Britain, he was just a speck in the vast sprawling city of London, he didn’t even stand out in Islington, he didn’t stand out in his street in Islington, damn it, until last Wednesday he hadn’t even been the best person living in his house.
And now he believed – he wasn’t arrogant enough to say that he knew – that there was no life after death. His time on this earth would be, in cosmic terms, laughably short. He also believed, therefore, that he was not serving some overall purpose outside his own life. He realised that the excitement that had surprised him a few minutes ago was not something that would be recognised as exciting by a lot of people in this world of ours. It was an excitement that would involve no death, no blood, not a pathologist in sight. It was an excitement that involved only himself and the most important part of his body. And it was not – and oh goodness how it was not, and oh goodness how until now it might well have been and almost certainly had been – his penis. It was his brain. Perhaps people ignored their brains because they were invisible. Perhaps if every time a man had a thought his brain grew large and erect, men would respect their brains more.
He felt excited, challenged, by his belief that his life was not serving God’s purpose. It meant either that life was without purpose or that we must find our own purpose in it. He felt, with a surge of optimism, that without belief in a received purpose in life, he had the strength to make his own life purposeful, that indeed those who did not believe in God were in a stronger position to make their lives meaningful and responsible, because there was no divine being onto whom they could thrust the responsibility.
He sat on his cast-iron bench in the lovely garden that Deborah had built. He looked up into the vast universe, and could see nothing, not a star, because in the glow of lights o
ver London it’s not easy to see the vastness of space. But he knew that it was all there, in its immensity, and that Deborah’s lovingly created garden had no more significance than a pinhead. But you can store all the words of War and Peace on a pinhead, and he felt encouraged by his knowledge of his insignificance, he felt freed by his puniness, stimulated by his unimportance, intoxicated by the brevity of his life. There was no reason for anyone to be pompous or self-important, to boast of success, to seek high office by low means. In the tininess of our lives compared to the infinite nature of space, in the brevity of our lives in the context of eternity, there lay freedom, release, and a need, oh, such a need if one really believed in this, to make the most of one’s little life, and to try to bring something into the little lives of other people. It was worthwhile, however little, because those lives were so little. Goodness, that sounded preachy, but in view of the amount of preaching done to us in the name of God, why should a humanist be ashamed of one small sentence of good intent?
And the good intent that he so miraculously felt, this to him was the final and the biggest happening on this day of happenings. He could hardly wait, time sped by so fast, to begin the rest of his life, and he knew that there was nothing in this wish that was disrespectful to Deborah and her untimely death. He would remember her, and honour her in his thoughts, every day for the remainder of his little life.
A clock, somewhere over towards Stoke Newington, struck twelve. An owl, somewhere near Highbury, struck two in reply, or that was how it seemed to James. He had read of birds bonding unsuitably. Could an owl bond with a clock? Could it believe that it was getting a message of love every fifteen minutes?
He smiled, and he thought, even as he smiled, that it was odd, and perhaps a little miraculous, that he could still smile at the end of such a day as this.
He walked towards his sleeping, snoring house, and he realised that he felt – and this was strange too – as calm as he had ever felt in his life.