England's Lane

by Joseph Connolly

  “Stan … you mean you …? Christ! You don’t mean to tell me that you …?”

  “Hang on, hang on—haven’t finished. Then she started saying that Anthony and me, we’d be better off without her. That she was … can’t remember exactly—but that she was no sort of a mother and wife to us. True enough, of course. And then, well—it was then that she told me to kill her. Just like that. Commanded me to, really. She’s done it before. Once, she did. While ago now. Kill me, Stan! That’s what she said. Go on! Go on! Do it! Just do it! Kill me now …! That’s what she said. On and on.”

  “Oh God. Oh God oh God oh God …!”

  “Yes well I wasn’t having any of that, of course. I wasn’t going to be told what to do, was I? Not what I came in here for. But then, you see … well then she started sort of pleading with me, a bit. Really asking me very nicely if I wouldn’t please, you know—do it. Kill her. Which was different. Wasn’t it? Quite different, that was. Said it would be an act of devotion. A final act of devotion. Said it was the last thing we would ever do together. As a couple. That it would sort of make us one again, if you see what I mean. But I was angry, Milly, I make no bones. Oh yes—angry, angry. Because earlier, ooh—she’s said some terrible things, I won’t go into it. And now I felt the anger, see, but it was all muddled up with what she was saying to me about devotion, and all the rest of it … and then I thought she might be right after all. I thought I should maybe, you know? Kill her. I really did think it would be the right thing to do. So I went over to her, then—she was in the chair over there, look …”

  “Stan. Oh Stan …!”

  “And I stood right over her … and then I bent down … I bent down, and I looked her right in the eye—my hands come up … and I slapped her in the face. Really hard. I’m that ashamed. Never done such a thing before in my life. And then I just had to get out of there fast. Just had to. Needed a drink. Needed it badly. Shouldn’t have left him, Anthony. Shouldn’t have done it. Felt bad about that. But I did—I left him. Went to the Washington. I hate that place. Had a drink. Quite a few, as it turned out …”

  “Stan … oh Stan, I’m just so confused …! What exactly are you saying to me …? Do you mean that you didn’t …?”

  “What? Didn’t what?”

  “Well—you know … You didn’t …?”

  “What? Didn’t what?”

  “Oh Jesus Christ, Stan! You didn’t kill her …!”

  “Kill her …? Well of course I didn’t kill her! Good grief! I’m surprised at you, Milly—what on earth do you take me for? I could never do a thing like that.”

  “Well then … oh my God, Stan … well then, how did she …? How come she’s …?”

  “Yes well—fair point. I only came up to see her today around dinner time, you see. Normally I’ll take her up a cup of tea first thing, sort of style, but I was still quite annoyed with her, if you want me to be frank with you Milly—and also … I did have one hell of a headache. Hangover, they call it. Not proud of myself. And that’s when I found her. Just like this. I was standing there talking to her for the best part of ten minutes—felt ever such a fool. Well you do, don’t you? If you’re doing all of that and then you turn round and twig that the person you’re speaking to’s dead. And all these little bottles and packets and things all over the bedside table—see them, Milly? Left it all like it was. Haven’t touched a thing. Thought I shouldn’t.”

  “Oh God yes … I didn’t notice. Dozens of them … where did they all come from?”

  “Allchin’s. Boots, one or two …”

  “No, Stan—I mean, why are there so many?”

  “Oh well—doctors, you know. Bloody doctors. It’s all they do, isn’t it? Dole out pills. Kill or cure. She must have been hoarding them. Saving them all up. Planning it, maybe. And then last night, well … the day had come, in her mind. Once she’d seen I wasn’t going to do what she was asking. One thing I’ve been thinking—maybe she was just wanting me to do that so’s I’d get into trouble for it. I hope that wasn’t what she was thinking. I don’t really believe it, not my Janey—but you never know, do you? With women. I’m sad, she’s gone. Difficult to sort of really think that she’s gone. After all these years. Because I really did love her, you know Milly. Hard to credit, really—but I did, I really did. I loved my Janey … when she was still my Janey, I did. Yes. Oh well. Anyway. Um—she left a note. Do you want to read it?”

  “She left a note …? Oh my God, Stan—well of course I want to read it! I mean, well—you know, if you’re quite sure you want me to. Oh … don’t cry, Stan. Please don’t cry. Poor, poor man. Should we … close her eyes, do you think? Would you like me to, Stan? Close her eyes? She’d be … more at peace. What do you think? Or maybe we should just leave things … But I really must now telephone the, um … well I don’t suppose it’s an ambulance we’re really wanting, is it? Police, I think. I should imagine they’ll send a coroner as well. Ambulance too though, now I think about it, because obviously they’ll have to, um …”

  “Coroner, Milly? Not sure I know what that is …”

  “Well a coroner, he sort of certifies the death, I think. Honestly, Stan—I’ve had quite as little experience in all of this as you have. I had to attend to Eunice, of course, and her husband. Eunice was my sister, you know. Yes. But all that was a very long time ago …”

  “Well I’m not sure we’ll need a coroner, will we? I mean—we know she’s dead. We do know that. Don’t need to certify it. She’s dead. It’s already certain.”

  “Yes well I do think they still have to go through the motions. Here, Stan—here’s a tissue. Are you feeling a little bit better now? Are you all right …? Yes …? Because what they have to do is, um … establish the cause of death, I believe the phrase is.”

  “Pills. It was the pills, wasn’t it? The pills that all the doctors shoved at her to make her better. It’s all just jobs for the boys, isn’t it really? Doctors, coroners … we don’t need these people. Do we? They don’t do any good.”

  “Well I’ve still got to telephone, Stan, whatever you may think. Oh God—that landing again, and the awful dark hall … Oh and you’ll have to explain to them why you didn’t ring immediately. They’ll want to know that.”

  “Well—I was waiting for you, Milly.”

  “Yes I know that, Stan—but maybe you should just say … I don’t know … maybe just say that you were in a state of shock. That’s probably the best. Do you think you can remember that, Stan? State of shock. Yes?”

  “Got you. All right, then. State of shock. Whatever you say, Milly. I knew I could depend on you. But look—don’t you want to read it first? The note?”

  “I really should telephone, Stan … well … I don’t suppose a minute or two can matter now, can it? After all this time. But you’re sure, are you Stan? Because it must be quite … personal to you. You’re really sure you want me to?”

  “Oh yes. You’re part of it all, Milly. I do feel you’re a part of it. Not in any bad way, I don’t mean. And anyway—you’re in it.”

  “In it, Stan …? In what? I don’t understand.”

  “The note. In the note. You’ve got a mention.”

  “I don’t … I don’t believe it …! Let me see it, Stan.”

  “Here you are, Milly. I’ve got it right here. Beautiful handwriting, isn’t it? She always did write a lovely letter. I’ve kept them all, you know. All the letters she wrote to me before we were married. Oh yes. Kept them all. Every man jack of them. Add this one to the bundle now, I suppose. Because there won’t be any more …”

  “Really, Stan …? You’ve still got all her letters? Oh … that’s just so touching. Now—let me look at this … right, then. ‘Dear Stanley, the fact that now you are reading these words proves that I am finally dead. Unless I have significantly misjudged the dosage, which I doubt—though in that case I shall be in a hospital somewhere, and the subject of determined resuscitation, and clearly I do not wish for this. Nor do you. You have been through quit
e enough, more than enough, as it is. You might have thought my behavior of late to be deliberately cruel—so frequently I horrified even myself. But no. I am—was—troubled. Disordered. Now though, we are both of us free of all that. I know that you will take good care of Anthony, just as always you have. Maybe one day—who knows?—your eternal optimism will prove to be not unfounded, and he might yet regain full use of his limbs. Let us hope to God. I am sorry to leave you with the inconvenience of my remains, but I feel sure that Mary will ably deal with all of the necessary undertakings: she appeared, as I said, to be a capable woman. We did love each other though—didn’t we Stan? And now, I honestly do believe, we will again. Goodbye, my husband. Goodbye. Jane.’ Oh … Stan … just look at me … I’m crying now …! Oh Stan, poor Stan, I just can’t imagine how you’re feeling. It’s all just so, so sad. And … Mary … that’s …?”

  “Yes, that’s you. She did that. Ever since you called round to see her that afternoon, she called you Mary. I can’t imagine why. She knew full well that your name is Milly. Can’t explain it. She did have some funny ways.”

  “Have you still got that tissue, Stan …? Oh—what must I look like …! Complete mess. Now listen—I have to see to things. It’s what you both wanted, clearly, so I promise I shan’t let you down. I’m going to dial 999 now—explain the situation. They will have dealt with this sort of thing before, I’m quite certain. You just sit here, Stan. Or would you prefer the living room, maybe …? Can I get you something …? Oh Stan—are you all right …?”

  “Yes yes—I’ll be fine in here. I’ll just stop with my Janey for a bit. Won’t be here much longer, will she? I expect she won’t. I’ll have a bit of a drink and a last little chat with my Janey. I’ll be fine.”

  “I will make sure she’s properly looked after, Stan—so don’t you concern yourself about any of that side of things. Levertons in Haverstock Hill. The funeral directors, yes? I’ve heard they’re very good. We’ll make sure we get nothing but the best for her. All right? Well look—I shan’t be long.”

  “But you’ll be staying though, won’t you Milly? You know—till they come, and everything.”

  “Of course I will, Stan. Wouldn’t think of leaving you. Of course I’ll stay. Of course.”

  “Thank you, Milly. Thank you. You’re so very good to me, and I hardly deserve it. Oh and before you go downstairs—can I just give you this …? Token. Little token present, if you like, for everything you’ve done for me.”

  “Present, Stan …? Oh good heavens—what are you thinking of! I don’t want any presents, do I? I’m just here to help, that’s all.”

  “Well you might as well have it, Milly. You’d be doing me a favor, really. It’s no good to me. Not now. And I’ve lost the receipt. Searched high and low for the blessed thing, but it’s disappeared. Quite a mystery really—because normally I keep them, all of my receipts, in this old Sharp’s toffee tin on the dresser. Not there, though. Looked and looked.”

  “Well Stan … all right … what is it? Oh—John Barnes bag, that’s always a promising start. Let’s have a look then, shall we …? But honestly Stan, you really didn’t have to give me anything, you know. But still it’s terribly kind of you. So … what have we here …? Oh …”

  “Remember it, do you? It’s that negligee thing you tried on for me that time. Yes? Remember that? I went back for it. Thought it might cheer her up a bit, my Janey. But, well—beyond cheering up now, isn’t she? Well past that stage. And I know how much you liked it. How it looked on you, and everything …”

  “It’s … lovely, Stan. How sweet of you to think of me … and you say you’ve lost the receipt though, have you …?”

  “Vanished into thin air—can’t understand it. Had that tin upended twice, all over the kitchen table. Not a dicky bird. Oh and there’s something else, Milly, I’d quite like to ask you. If you’ve got a minute.”

  “Oh Stan—I’ve really got to telephone now, you know … and God, it’s so late …! Have you seen the time, Stan?”

  “Just a minute. Won’t take more than a minute, promise you Milly.”

  “Well … what is it, Stan?”

  “It’s just that … well—under the circumstances and all … I was just wondering if you’d consider, um …”

  “What, Stan? Consider what? I’ve really got to go and do this now …”

  “Well—us getting married. Being my wife, sort of style. Because I haven’t got one any more, you see. You don’t have to answer me straight off.”

  I am holding now this nylon negligee, limply between my fingers. And I am staring into the wide and ingenuous eyes of a man whom I sincerely believe to be deranged.

  “I’m going downstairs now, Stan. All right? To make the telephone call.”

  “All right then. Milly. Like I say—you don’t have to give me your answer now. We can talk about it later on. Chew the fat, sort of style. When everyone’s been and gone. And Janey—when Janey’s out of the bedroom. Be nicer that way. More polite. Don’t be long though, will you? Christ Alive—it’s funny, you know: you haven’t even gone yet, and already I’m missing you. Isn’t that funny? I think that’s funny—don’t you, Milly? So you will come back? When you’ve done all that, you will come straight back to me, won’t you Milly?”

  My inner pain, the flood of it … now, at this moment, it has chosen quite violently to visit me again. I am trying my best not to show it.

  “I will, Stan. When I’ve done all that, that’s what I’ll do: I shall come straight back to you.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  All I’ve Ever Wanted

  That night what just gone by—that night, I am not joking, it were just the last bloody straw, far’s I’m concerned. I mean blimey—there’s a limit, ain’t there? Ay? Got to be a limit. Man can only be expected to take just so much and no more. And I reckon I been doing that, when it come to Mill—taking it. Yeh—I’ve took it square on the chin for just about as long as I can bloody stand it. I weren’t happy before—no I weren’t. But last night, well—that’s just been and gone and done it. I mean it—I bleeding had it, now. What she reckon she up to, Gawd in bloody heaven? Ay? I come home from the pub—whole place in darkness. Funny, I thought—I ain’t that late. Mill, fancied she’d be doing her knitting, or something—listening to the wireless, watching the box. Little bit of dusting, maybe—whatever she get up to. But no—she must’ve got an early night in then, looks like. So I’m tiptoeing about like a bleeding fairy—and I ain’t too much cop at that at the best of times: it’s my boots when I kicks them off, always makes one hell of a clunking noise on the linoleum, there—and then I thinks to myself … nah, ain’t right, this. Something ain’t right. She not here—I can feel it. So I’m thinking I hope the boy ain’t been took poorly—she maybe had to get him up the hospital a bit sharpish. Looking about the place for a scrap of paper … maybe she’s wrote to me what’s going on. But there ain’t nothing about, nothing I can see. So I sticks my head into Pauly’s room, and there he are, look—dead to the world, all lost in dreamland, little lad. His candlewick wossname’s slid off on to the floor, so I sees to all of that.

  Then I sits myself down on the settee, lights up a fag, wonders if I can go another bottle of Bass, and I gets to putting my mind to it. Because it ain’t never happened before. Well of course it ain’t never bloody happened before: you come in of a night time, you expect your missus to bleeding be there, don’t you? Ay? Course you do. Not out gallivanting, not this time of the night. And what time were it …? Yeh—gone eleven. Blimey. Don’t believe it. And she gone off and left Pauly, that’s the bloody amazing part of it. She ain’t never done that. Not never once in the whole of his life. Yeh … but things ain’t normal. See? Between the two of them, like. Because this morning, after I had my tea and a slice, I goes down the shop like I always does—thought I’d have a fag, little chat with Cyril, before I heaves out all of the gubbins on to the pavement—and then I’m thinking oh bugger me, I only gone and left them on the kitc
hen table, ain’t I? My fags. So I goes back up, and that’s when I’m hearing the pair of them talking. Don’t pay it no mind, not at first I don’t—because I knows it, don’t I? Soon as I’m out the way they’s both going Phew Thank Gawd—now we can have ourselves a nice little chinwag like we’s Sir Lancelot or somebody and Lady Whatsername, once the fucking dragon’s out the road. Yeh but it were different, this. They was upset, the two of them. Tell that. And Pauly, he were going to Mill that she don’t love him no more. Well me, I were just behind the door there, and it were all I could do not to give out one hell of a big fat laugh when I’m hearing that lot, I’m telling you. Because if Mill don’t love Pauly, well then my name’s Stirling bloody Moss, that’s all I can say. But see—he weren’t really sort of saying what he’s meaning, like. Only a lad—he don’t got the words. Can’t sort of think it out like what a grown-up do. But what he were getting at—well I knows full well what he were getting at, don’t I? Because me, I been feeling it and all. Mill … she ain’t got her mind on the job no more, is what it is. I mean yeh—she still seeing to all of the doings, I ain’t saying that. Always got the tea on the table, house all nice and tidy, making sure I got a clean hanky … but all the time it like she, I don’t know … like she sort of sleepwalking, or something. Always somewhere else in her mind, like. Yeh. Well so what am I supposed to do then, ay? What am I supposed to think?

  Well I know what I’m thinking. Been trying not to. Been trying to stick two fingers up at it for—blimey, bleeding ages now. First there were that perfume what she got on: weren’t lavender, were it? Ay? No—and it weren’t no Lily of the Valley neither. Then she got a mauve sort of a brooch thing, what I ain’t never seed before. Well: said nothing. Trying not to notice, weren’t I? Yeh but I can’t no more. Not after all of last night. Writing on the wall. Got to be faced, son: got to be faced. Because yeh—I knows I don’t get sort of social with people in the Lane. Keeps myself to myself. Always done that. What’s my business ain’t no one’s else’s—and so far as their business go, well: couldn’t give a bugger. Other people, though—they ain’t like that. So I’m going to be hearing things, ain’t I? Bound to. And then the way what they looks at you. Some of them, it ain’t just looks what they give you—they don’t care what they saying. Like that poxy Mrs. Goodrich, for one. She come in the shop the other day for her Bryant & May long matches what she get for her stove. I says to her how many times in the past: Ever Ready, they doing a nice little igniter, look—battery last a good long time: telling you—saving, in the long run. But nah—she won’t have it: Bryant & May long matches is what she’s wanting, so I flogs them to her: no skin off of my wossname. And then she going in that ladi-da bloody voice she got—all bloody hoity-toity, she is—oh you are looking so terribly terribly well I must say, Mr. Stammer. Blah blah blah. And I says to her, come again, missus? Your cheeks, she says—so healthy-looking: must be all that good red meat Mrs. Stammer’s always cooking for you. Forever seems to be in the butcher’s, doesn’t she? She does seem to love her pound of flesh. Sometimes, Mr. Stammer, she honestly does appear to spend more time with Mr. Barton than she does with you …! Yes—and then she laughs, like. Making it so it’s all a bloody little joke, ho fucking ho. I could’ve hit her with a spade: had one, just handy. Yeh, I says to her—I do like my bit of meat. Oh I’m sure, she says to me—something you have in common with your perfectly delightful wife …! And other stuff I heard and all—don’t want to get into it. It’s only when I found that fag end that I started proper thinking about it. That time she gone and shut my shop, and it weren’t nothing to do with having to get a Beechams Powder down her or splashing water on her face or whatever she said it were. She were in my back room with him, maybe getting up to all sorts … and him smoking one of them posh bloody black fags of his, bold as you bloody like—because I got it off of Stan later on: he only get them in for him, that Barton bastard. Well yeh: who else round here is going to shell out twice what it cost for twenty Senior Service just on account of the bleeding fags is black? I ask you. And she shut my shop—and I don’t never do that. I never done that. And Cyril there … don’t know what he must’ve thought about it all. Yeh—so she lied to me. Barefaced, it were. Now fair enough—I’d lied to her about the dentist, yeh fair enough. But it’s only because I just had to see my Daisy, weren’t it? Been ages. And it’s different, anyway—I’m a bloke, aren’t I? Different for blokes—everybody knows that. Women … they just don’t do that sort of thing. Not proper sort of ladies, they don’t. It’s disgusting, that’s what it is. I can’t hardly think of it … my Mill, doing it. I can’t hardly think of it. It’s disgusting. Oh blimey. All I know is, she never do it with me …