A Death at the Palace

by M. H. Baylis

  ‘What I’m saying is… you should get very drunk.’ Lawrence was back, with another pint for Rex and a Perrier for himself. ‘Crawling-to-the-toilet-to-be-sick drunk. Then tomorrow morning, you crawl back to the office. Say sorry. Take your beating. It’s not going to matter, is it? Nothing could make you feel any worse than you’ve already made yourself feel. That’s the beauty of a hangover. You say sorry, and you go back to work.’

  Rex found himself smiling. He also found himself thinking of Diana. Not just because of the faint family resemblance, but because of the style of the advice. Philosophical, yet also slightly cracked. It was exactly the sort of theory she would come out with. He wished to God he could have been the seventh guest last night. He wanted to belong to that world. Girlfriends and their uncles and their famous baked trout family dinners. Not death threats and mortuaries.

  But then he remembered what he had been doing last night, and his smile faded away. He remembered Susan in the office, as good as calling him insane. How could he go back? Write neat little local interest pieces for a paper that blithely ignored the chasm opening up in their midst? He’d be part of it. Part of what had killed Milda and the life inside her.

  ‘If you don’t want to sit here and get rat-arsed, you could come with me. I’m going to have a look at an old synagogue on Quicksilver Place.’

  Rex knew the road: a gauntlet of small factory units and warehouses between Wood Green and Alexandra Palace. He could not think of a less likely location for a place of worship. He said so, aware that this was just the feeder-line Lawrence Berne had been waiting for. He stretched his legs out, revealing socks with golf clubs on them, and began.

  ‘I found a funny little article, years ago. Written in 1881. It said there was a firm of German hat-makers at Wood Green, and they had their own Temple next door. That’s what they used to call synagogues, you know, so I went looking for it. And then I worked it out. Quicksilver. That’s mercury. Used in hat-making for the curing of beaver pelts.’

  ‘I know. I didn’t know about the synagogue, though.’

  ‘No one does. It’s just this little clutch of industrial units, now. But right at the back, there’s this building that’s more or less bricked up, and there’s a design in the brickwork at the top – a magen dovid. That’s Hebrew. It means star of David.’

  Rex smiled tightly. Lawrence always did this, in his column and in his speech – over-explained. Still, he’d rather hear about an old synagogue than think about the present.

  ‘So can you get inside?’

  ‘Well that’s the weird thing. The first time I went, I got up to this little sort of light-shaft thing. It was dark inside, but I met this caretaker who said I could ring his boss and maybe he’d let me come and see inside. So I rang and rang the number he’d given me, but no one ever answered. So then I just went back on my own a week ago.’ He paused for effect. This, too, was typical of discourse with Lawrence Berne.

  ‘And?’ Rex said, playing his part.

  ‘And it was full of people in overalls. Packing sandwiches. There were great big piles of ham and sausage.’

  ‘In a synagogue?’

  Lawrence shrugged. ‘Ever been to Ayia Sofia? That’s a Church they made into a Mosque. Anyhoo –’ He sipped his water, while Rex wondered if anyone else incorporated the word ‘anyhoo’ into daily conversation. ‘I knocked on the door, but no one answered. And then I went back. And it was completely empty again. So I’m going to give it one last go. Fancy it?’

  ‘What about the featurette? Best coffee on Green Lanes?’

  ‘Hmm? Oh, that’s pretty much done now. Shall we?’ He dangled the keys to his Merc. Rex downed the rest of his beer and stood up. Why not, he thought.

  By the time they’d reached Wood Green, Lawrence – with his funny little quirks of speech and patronising side-lectures on every subject, from the meaning of the word ‘Hale’ to the origins of asphalt – had begun to annoy Rex again. He wasn’t sure how much that had to do with Lawrence, and how much it had to do with the fact that his initial drunkenness was now turning into a banging hangover, and his bladder was full to bursting.

  Now the late autumn sun was beating down with unseasonal strength on Rex’s throbbing head as they walked through a silent gulch of respray workshops and storage units. A dog barked somewhere. Somewhere else, there was the sound of grinding metal. They turned a corner, passed a barred and shuttered cabin entitled ‘GREEK CYPRIOT BAKED GOODS’, and a blank space, where weeds pushed up through the concrete. A train clattered by.

  ‘Moorgate to Welwyn Garden City,’ Lawrence observed unnecessarily. ‘Here we are.’

  They had reached a long, narrow, brick warehouse, clearly older than most of the surrounding buildings – the sort of thing you might have expected to see at the docks. At the top, just under the roof, were a couple of tiny, soot-covered windows, and round the side, by the railway line, a line of glass bricks set into the wall about nine feet off the ground. Rex could not imagine anyone worshipping in such a place but there, high above the glass, was a star of David picked out in lighter-coloured brick.

  With surprising nimbleness for a man in his sixties, Lawrence clambered on to an industrial waste-bin and peered through the glass.

  ‘It’s full again!’ he hissed. He held out a hand to Rex. Rex took it, and hauled himself with difficulty onto the bin.

  The sight that greeted him was an eerie one. Lamps hung on chains from the rafters, casting a harsh light onto the balletic scene below. Pale-faced, solemn workers stood in rows as if in a church, assembling and packing sandwiches at long trestle tables. No sounds could be heard from where Rex and Lawrence peered in at them, nor did it seem as if any of them were speaking. A squat, neckless man in a suede jacket moved amongst them, inspecting, correcting. The workers moved as if they were part of a machine: here an arm applied mayonnaise, there a pair of rubber-sheathed fingers pressed down triangles of bread. One man was stamping bread-sized squares out of a mighty great industrial roll of pressed pink meat.

  ‘Imagine doing that all day long.’

  ‘At least they’re all wearing gloves,’ Lawrence said. ‘Health and Safety will be delighted about that, if nothing else.’

  ‘You reckon this is illegal?’

  ‘Story of the area, isn’t it?’ Lawrence said, with a wry smile. ‘I doubt the German hatters had a subsidised canteen and a crèche.’

  A sudden rustling sound below made them both look down. Two large brown rats slithered over the assorted rubbish and vanished into a vent in the side of the building.

  ‘And they make food in this place…’ Rex whispered.

  ‘At least it’s only those nasty sandwiches they flog in newsagents,’ Lawrence said.

  ‘I eat nasty sandwiches from newsagents all the time,’ Rex replied.

  After a few more minutes of silent spectating, the pair separated. Remembering Lawrence’s advice, Rex went to the nearest pub: a grim pub, named The Hope where there clearly was none, but at least the staff and the customers left him alone.

  He left it just as the schools were chucking out. Befuddled and feeling unwell, he found himself at a bus-stop on Pretoria Road, with three, tiny Somali children clutching reading books. Bigger kids swept up and down the street in shrieking tidal fronts. The bus, when it came, would be full of them, so he decided to walk. But where was he going? What exactly did he want to do? He thought of Diana. She was a long way away, the far end of Tottenham. But he wanted her.

  Even in the 21st century, parts of Tottenham still had the air of some flimsy Saxon settlement, clinging to the edge of the unfriendly marsh. Confident little rows of double-glazed terraces trickled away into light industry, car lots, then nothing. The names in this quarter – Durban Street, Pretoria Road, Johannesburg Place – all dated back to the Boer War, but the area had always been referred to as Little Russia on account of the poor immigrants who’d filled it up at the start of the 20th century. After the Second World War, much of the old housing had been k
nocked down; the little that remained was occupied first by West Indians, then Ugandan Asians, and more recently, people from the Horn of Africa. A rust-coloured Vauxhall Astra and a moped duelled over some issue of road etiquette as they went by, and Rex heard a burst of Slavic swearing from the car window. Perhaps the Russians were coming back?

  He walked on. He had a long way to go. He heard a door slam – a car door, a house – then felt a polite tap on his shoulder and turned round.

  Something hit him between the eyes. He lurched back, colliding with something that might have been a lamp-post, or another person. He felt punches and kicks to his ribs and his legs. A glimpse of a grey hood. Metallic blood and boot-leather. Someone, he was almost certain, said something about Milda, before something bright smashed into his face for a second time, splitting his vision and all his other senses into separate compartments of agony.

  Then came the sound of someone shouting in English. Running footsteps. And hands. Gentle, firm hands lifting him up. He saw his blood dripping from some part of his own head onto a fleece. But the fleece seemed to be red already, and he thought he knew it from somewhere else.

  Chapter Seven

  He sat at the Formica table in the darkening kitchen, his fingers picking distractedly at the corded wicker spiral of a table mat. They hadn’t eaten in here for a long time. There was a cork-board on the wall next to the refrigerator. They pinned bills on it, appointment letters, every claim from the outside world upon their inner one. He saw he had a dental appointment next Tuesday and the thought of it almost made him smile.

  This was another of those side-by-side moments. Where God revealed the power and the mystery of Himself. In this room: the smell of lemon washing-up liquid and flowers from the allotment. Dental check-ups next week. A little fridge magnet in the shape of Anne Hathaway’s cottage. Life continuing. In the next room, just across the hall: life brought to an end. Murder.

  Was it murder? Whatever it was called, he couldn’t do it. She’d asked him, louder and hoarser, until there could have been no mistaking what it was she wanted. And he’d just murmured something about changing the pillow-cases: anything so that he could get out of that airless, sweet-smelling room. He had even gone up to the airing cupboard on the landing and taken a fresh, lilac-coloured pillowcase from the pile. But it was sitting on the kitchen table in front of him now, an hour later. He couldn’t go back in with it.

  The storm still hadn’t come. He drank a glass of water. It was warm and brackish, like the air. His foster mother had always said that tap water was bad on Sundays. What day was it today? Something else he couldn’t remember. He remembered, though, that after he’d killed June’s rabbit, he’d lain in bed, many a night, patiently going over all the details of what it had felt like to take a life by choking the breath out of it. Storing them, studying them, as if they were part of a book. The springy resistance of the neck. The silky feel of skin being rolled against tendons. The tidy juxtaposition of a moment where nothing was as important as another breath, and a subsequent moment where breath was irrelevant. He had shuddered at the memory of that power, felt something akin to a tickle passing down his diaphragm, through his belly to the twitching tip of his penis, and felt his cheeks on fire. Some nights, he’d fall asleep then, and wake in the dark to find a cold, stinking glue inside his pyjamas. He couldn’t remember if that had happened when he killed the girl in the camp. He’d had the feeling. But the cold stuff – he knew what it was now, of course – had that been there, too?

  He rose abruptly, the chair scraping on the linoleum. The lino had a pattern of bricks on it. And everything around him, the corkboard, the humming fridge, the warped door to the utility room, suddenly looked so solid and familiar, so normal that he found it impossible to believe there’d been any other kind of existence before it. How could he have taken any life, he who kept Morrison’s carrier bags in a bundle behind the door? How could there be killing, here, in this house, where pegs were stored in a little cotton sack with a picture of a gypsy girl on it?

  He went back into the front room. She was on her side, facing away from him towards the window, her angular shoulder moving with a rhythm that suggested she was asleep. He thanked God that she was. He folded the pillow case, placed it on the chair and picked up the water-jug to take it out and refill it. He’d tip-toed back to the door when her voice startled him.

  ‘I never asked anything of you.’

  He froze. Watched her turn over, slowly, like a stone rolling from the mouth of a cave.

  ‘I knew you… weren’t right pretty soon after we were wed. And that was just…’ She licked her lips. Her mouth was dry. He moved forward to give her water but realised he didn’t have any. He stayed where he was, transfixed, by the vision of her, now sitting up in the bed, suddenly filled with horrible strength. ‘That was just how it was. I made my choice. Father Daniel made me understand that.’

  ‘Why are you talking about him?’ His voice sounded like water passing down a blocked drain.

  ‘Because he…’ She swallowed painfully, a blue veined hand to her throat.

  ‘Do you need the patch replacing?’

  ‘Shut up!’ she hissed, fiercely, knotting the bed sheet in her fist. ‘I don’t want more medicine. I don’t want to live. I want to die! And you’re the only one I can ask.’

  ‘You can’t ask me,’ he said, limply. ‘I’m your husband.’ Outside, the first drops of rain landed on the laburnum bush.

  ‘We never had a marriage!’

  ‘It’s the drugs,’ he said. ‘The doctor said they might take you like this. It’s the drugs.’

  ‘Pull out the drawer,’ she commanded him. ‘Underneath the bed.’

  He did as he was told, kneeling close to her. He smelt the artificial sweat given off by people who are being kept artificially alive. The drawer was stiff. In there, she’d kept newspaper cuttings – he’d never known why. Royal weddings. Mountbatten being blown up on his boat. A pull-out special on the dredging of the Mary Rose. She’d always had some sort of attraction to history, he realised. There was a tear-shaped locket in there, too, on a fine chain, its silver so dirty it was almost blue.

  ‘Open it,’ she rasped, finally resting back on the pillows. Her face was slack, exhausted. The rain came down a little stronger. For a second, he even wondered if she’d fallen asleep, but then her eyeballs swivelled back round to him. He looked away and squeezed the little tear-drop open. Inside was a picture of a broad-faced, handsome young man with sideburns.

  ‘Father Daniel?’

  ‘I loved him. Do you understand? I fell in love with him, and I stayed in love with him. All this time. So you owe me nothing. There is no reason why you shouldn’t help me to die.’

  He opened his mouth and closed it again, ineffectually.

  ‘What did you expect? You’d obviously had feelings for someone before you met me. And you never wanted me, did you?’

  ‘What do you mean…? Feelings for someone?’ His head span.

  ‘That lock of hair you keep in a tin. I’ve seen you. It was a girl, wasn’t it?’

  He shook his head. But she went on. ‘It’s all right. You wanted someone else. I wanted someone else. It hasn’t been a very good life. I don’t care now. I just don’t want any more pain.’

  ‘I can’t do it.’ The rain grew louder and he had to raise his voice. ‘It’s… wrong.’

  ‘Wrong? Wrong is me lying here like this. What for? What are they keeping me alive for?’

  He couldn’t answer.

  She raised herself again and spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Do one, decent, brave thing in your life. I’m begging you. Do it. All you have to do is hold a pillow over my face. They won’t get you for it. Just do it. It’s just a pillow.’

  He had to suppress an urge to laugh. No one knew how brave he was. Brave enough to take life. Brave enough not to. The rain seemed to drum down in time to her chant. He remembered how the girl in the bed had bucked and bowed, how the springs had creaked, the horse
hair in the pillow crackled, her bare knees knocked against his back. His cock straining against the rough fabric of his orderly’s uniform, and a muscle deep within him shifting and pulsing, like the pulse of the whole world. He swallowed.

  A sharp, angry bang startled them both. His heart knocked painfully against his chest. He thought at first it was thunder. But it was the doorknocker – an ugly, heavy lion’s headed thing that had been there when they bought the house. No one ever used it. No one ever knocked on their door. But the knocking went on, shaking the house. She lay back on the pillows, staring at the ceiling, still uttering her chant but without a voice, the fire in her eyes having ebbed to despair. Suddenly angry, he rushed to the door.

  ‘What do you want?’ he shouted. The girl was there, on the doorstep, soaked through.

  ‘Ai! Such a doorknocker,’ she said, as she wiped her glasses on the hem of her dress. ‘Is it very old?’

  ‘What are you doing? How did you find my house?’

  She frowned. ‘Address was on back of the envelope. You’re angry with me?’

  ‘No. I mean. It’s… it’s not a good time for visitors. I’m sorry.’

  She said nothing, inclined her head a little to the scene behind her, which was a solid wall of thundering downpour, so thick the parked cars seemed to be shadows. She raised her eyebrows. From inside the house, he heard his wife cry out in pain.

  ‘All right, all right.’ He motioned her in. Smelt her wet hair and her wet skin as she shut the front door. ‘Wait.’

  He rushed back in to his wife. But she did not need him. She had died.

  * * *