My first idea were I goes round there and I kills him. Leave Mill right out of it—don’t say nothing to Mill, because I don’t want no upset. Not at home, like. Ain’t right for the boy. After that I’m thinking, I’ll just go and duff him up, warn him off, sort of style. And then I thought but blimey—he’s a fucking giant, that geezer. I’m round his gaff … he got knives, and that. Could get nasty. Yeh and after a bit—and by this time I were well into the Scotch, I don’t mind telling you—I were blaming myself. No I were. Because I said it before, ain’t I? Look at me. Go on. Just look at me. Yeh? And now look at Mill. You see what I mean? Course you bloody do—everybody do. Can’t rightly blame the old mare, can you? It’s someone like that toffee-nosed bastard what she should have been with from the off. Stands to reason. Woman like that. Her education. The way what she talk, and all. Well—she talk like him, don’t she? Yeh. She talk like him. Still and all though, my Mill … if she thinking of jacking me in, giving me the old elbow sort of style, well then she could do a whole lot better for herself than a bleeding butcher. Because let’s not go forgetting it: for all his poncing about, that’s all the bugger is—he’s only a bleeding butcher.
It hurt me, mind—I ain’t saying it don’t hurt me, nor nothing. But I maybe deserve it, you know? All that hurt. On account of I’s common as muck, and she a lady. Sooner or later, it going to come out. Got to. Like chalk and wossname. And then I thought, well look—can’t last forever, can it? Ay? I mean it ain’t like it’s something in a book or out the cinema: ain’t no bloody fairy tale. She’ll get fed up of him, maybe. Yeh, she will. And then it’ll be all right. She’ll be my Mill again and we can forget all about it. So best for now I says nothing. And like I say—I weren’t happy, I weren’t happy about it, course I bloody weren’t … but that’s where we was with it. Yeh but after last night … well, all that’s right out the window: it’s changed now. Everything—it’s all different now. Because when she come in … when at last she come up the stairs, and it weren’t much off of midnight—she got a shiner on her like what you ain’t going to believe … her stocking is all torn and there’s a bit of blood there—and she holding her stomach like it been cut in half. And yeh—when I hear her come in the door, I were well ready to give her all sorts of merry bloody hell. Yeh … but when I seed her like that … I just says to her: you get up to your bed, girl. Getting the doctor round.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Jim. You’ll do nothing of the sort. Waking him at this hour … I’m perfectly all right. I’ll just bathe my eye and … an Elastoplast for the shin, possibly. Right as rain. Is Paul all right? Have you looked in on him?”
“What sort of a bloody man is it, ay? Ay? Does this to a woman …”
“Oh heaven’s sake, Jim! He didn’t do this to me! Of course he didn’t. It was an accident, that’s all. I was careless.”
“An accident, oh yeh I see. So what—you walk into a door, did you?”
“No I didn’t walk into a door, as it happens. I fell down a few stairs, and then I somehow very stupidly managed to hit my head, my face, on the newel post. It’s nothing. I expect it looks far worse than it is.”
“The newel post? You hit your face on the newel post? What’s a bloody newel post …?”
“Thing at the end of the banister, Jim. I’ll just go and clean myself up a little bit now, if that’s quite all right with you. And yes I’m absolutely sure you have questions Jim, many questions, but I should be truly grateful if possibly you could contain them until morning. I really am most dreadfully tired. Is Paul all right? You didn’t answer me. I’ll just quickly go in and see him …”
“He fine. I seed him. And why you got hold of yourself like that …? That weren’t done by no mule post.”
“Newel, Jim. Indigestion. Just a touch. I’m going now.”
“Baloney, that is. I’m getting the doctor. What he paid for.”
“Oh Lord—how many times! I don’t need a doctor. I just took a little tumble, that’s all.”
Yes I did. And I would happily kick myself for having done so, although I do seem to be supporting quite sufficient injury as it is. It was stupid of me, hurrying in the dark, but by that time I felt quite simply desperate to be away from him—finally to be gone from this dreadful house and back out into the cold sweet peace of England’s Lane. Though before all that—while Stan’s most recent and perfectly extraordinary behavior had momentarily thrown me, I freely admit it—still by the time I had carefully negotiated my perilous journey back down the staircase and into the murky hallway, I was reasonably content to attribute it to shock and a temporary confusion. He had, after all, and only hours previously, happened upon the dead and horribly bright-eyed body of his wife: his mind very surely just had to be disturbed. I felt confident that simple common sense would soon be reasserted within his clearly fevered brain.
At what I imagined could probably by now be the foot of the stairs, I sent out exploratory and waggling toes to make certain, and then was feeling my way along the wall before opening the door to what I remembered was the stockroom—then groping about for the switch, and delighted to discover that it worked. And from amid the triangle of still barely ochre illumination that the now ajar door was grudgingly shedding, I bent to the telephone—perched as it was atop a pair of seemingly pristine directories, A–D and E–K, on the small hall table with its feathery bloom of dust—and then, very purposefully, set about my task.
Now it is the police I have to deal with. They answered straight away—which, on reflection, I suppose I cannot wholly have been expecting, for I found myself stuttering, and really quite badly, when all the time I had determined to be forthright. Eventually I managed to stammer my preference for “police” from the proffered options, while adding on quickly that we might easily be requiring also an ambulance, though definitely no fire engine (and yes—even as I said it, I was shuddering from a flush of embarrassment). The switchboard lady’s serene detachment was quite thoroughly admirable, but then I suppose they must be dealing daily, and more especially nightly, with every manner of very terrible events. I then explained as best I could to whomever else I was immediately connected the specific circumstance of this particular death—that here was a suicide, that there existed a note and so on—and then was required to confirm that the person in question was indeed dead, and this I straight away did (and on being further asked how I came to speak with such unswerving certitude, all I could say was, well—no breath, you see: Jane, she’s no longer breathing). Anyway, within an alarmingly short time, the house seemed to be positively infested with this rather intimidating bustle of people who had brought with them the whip of cold from outside—and each of whom, I observed with approval, had very sensibly come equipped with large black torches which threw out a strong white beam—though I am quite sure that here was standard nighttime issue, and that they could not possibly have been aware of Stan’s exceedingly parsimonious attitude when it comes to the replacement of lightbulbs. There was an older man with a neat white clipped mustache who busied himself with Jane—though whether doctor or coroner I did not care to ask—and as two, or actually it’s three, young constables simply and very self-consciously stood about, a detective of some sort was putting to Stan a series of questions, fortunately of the most basic nature, each of which he fielded with surprising and almost masterful ease, though I did think that he might be appearing to be rather too cavalier (and I can’t quite explain that). There were forms and signatures which I helped him to deal with, and then came the information that during the morning at a mutually convenient hour some other people would briefly be calling, and that private arrangements ought meanwhile to be made with a local firm of undertakers. Muttered consolation then was bashfully bestowed upon all bereaved parties, present or absent, and as suddenly as they had arrived, all of them were gone.
“Well, Stan … that didn’t go too badly, did it? On the whole. I’d say. Are you all right …? Oh heavens—the time, Stan …! I ought to have telephoned Jim while
I was down there … Oh bother—I just didn’t think of it …”
“Oh good—so you’ve decided already then, have you Milly? Well I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.”
“Oh dear … what on earth are you talking about now, Stan …?”
“Jim. You were going to tell him that his time is now over. Yes? That he is in the past. That he must now make do with his floozy called Daisy. Did you know, Milly, that Jim has a floozy called Daisy? Oh yes. Big girl. And that from this day forward, you are to follow your heart …!”
“Oh Jesus, Stan …! Jesus …! Oh God oh God oh God. Look. Everything’s been attended to. No more can be done tonight. I’m really very tired and I have to go home now. All right?”
“I perfectly understand, Milly. You’ll want to be picking up all of your things. Well thank you for coming. I’m sorry you can’t stay to have some tea or something. Cold cream. Would you care for it at all …? Great big pot there, look. Shame to let it all go to waste …”
“I’m leaving now, Stan. This minute.”
“Right you are, then. Well what shall I do …? Oh yes—I know. I think I’ll just go and wake up Anthony.”
“What? What …? What is wrong with you, Stan …? I’ve only been thinking what a blessing it is he hasn’t already been woken, with all these people traipsing up and down the stairs. He’s asleep, Stan. He’s got school in the morning. The little mite’s at peace, for heaven’s sake. What on earth do you want to go and wake him up for …?”
“Well—I thought he might like to come in and say hello to his mother.”
I stared at him. I just stared at him wide-eyed, willing either one of us to blink.
“Say hello to his mother …? Jesus Christ—she’s dead, Stan …!”
“Well yes I think I do know that, Milly. Perfectly aware. But it hardly matters, does it? Because even if she wasn’t, it’s not as if she’d have spoken to him or anything. And anyway—I think she looks quite nice, just the way she is now. Don’t you, Milly? I really do think she looks quite nice. It’s her hair, you know. I never noticed it before … not before she pointed it out to me.”
That’s when I turned. That’s when I ran. For the second time that week I hurtled down that blessed black staircase before I even realized I was doing such a thing—and Stan was calling to me, his voice so plaintive: Milly …! Milly …! Come back—you’ve forgotten your negligee, look …! And it was only at the very bottom of the stairs, God curse it, where it was completely and quite bafflingly dark, that in high confusion I was caught up into a welter of disorientation and totally lost my footing and … well: a badly barked shin—not to say a ruined pair of Bear Brand nylons that I’d bought from Marion’s only last Saturday—as well as an extremely painful eye, due to its staggering and audible collision with an acorn finial. The pain in my stomach was really very acute, and the ice that hung in the air outside was forcing me to gasp. Never before have I shut behind me my own front door with such solidly heartfelt relief. I crept upstairs as quietly as my bitterly stinging shin would permit—I could hardly avoid a hobble—and I was desperate to know that all was well with Paul, while not at all hopefully hoping against hope that Jim would have long ago tumbled into his pit of oblivion so that I could in peace simply tend to my wounds as best I might, and then stop forever just thinking. Sleep then, oh yes … oh please God yes—sleep, just sleep …
But no. There was Jim. Of course, of course: there just had to be Jim. Words were exchanged, heated on his part, and all to no purpose. At last I could bear not a second more of it, and I escaped to my bed. Some time later—I have no idea how long—I think I might have been hovering with bliss amid that weird though lulling twilight of very nearly somnolence, when I was jarred of a sudden into total wakefulness by the door of my room being briskly swung open. As I winced away from the light on the landing, cowering under covers, at once all of my pains concertedly returned to me, and I braced myself against whatever new form of anguish there now was to come. Though very much to my surprise, here before me stood Doctor McAuley—round-faced, comfortingly overweight—the waistcoat of his three-piece suit, where the watch chain winked, very apparently under strain—this almost miraculous presence quite instantly and utterly reassuring. I exhaled with what I sensed to be a profound and long-repressed relief, and felt quite heady with joy: I knew absolutely that I was very pleased indeed to see him.
Yes. And all that was last night. He dressed my leg rather better than I had, anointed my swollen eye and laid across it a soft and comforting pad. He probed my stomach with sensitive care: the chill of the stethoscope, it made me flinch, and then it made me giggle. He assumed of course that I knew I was pregnant …? And I suppose … yes, that I did, though I could hardly dare hope it. I implored him, however, to say nothing to Jim—please, Doctor McAuley, please oh please: you must now promise me—not a single word about it. Promise me, Doctor—promise! He smiled, patted my hand, and warmly gave me his complete assurance. He asked in return for no explanation, and nor did he seem even remotely perplexed by all such insistent beseeching. Very possibly—and in common with seemingly just every living soul the length of England’s Lane—he knows, or fancies he does, all of my very most intimate secrets. And since he left me … I simply have lain here, and thought of nothing but my physical state. Nothing else at all, except the state of me now. Then, very early—I had lost the thread of time, but long before usually he opens up the shop—I was aware of him banging about on the landing, Jim, and then of his leaving the house. No doubt he will be stamping up the road, hell bent on confronting what he will soon enough discover to be the gibbering madman that now is Stan, and accusing him of all the most terrible things. I don’t really mind. Don’t mind at all, in fact. And anyway, the news of Jane will serve very well to bring him up short. Maybe Jim will strike him, before explanations are tendered. Maybe Stan will gabble to him in a rush of all his golden visions of the idyllic future that he and I are to share, if only amid the twisting avenues and profusion of kaleidoscopic flowers that bloom irrepressibly within the elliptical contours of his own quite delirious imagination. I don’t really mind. Don’t mind at all, in fact. I don’t at all care what either one of them will be doing, saying, thinking. Nor—but of course—do I care even remotely about the existence or otherwise of the floozy called Daisy. Was I really meant to? How perfectly laughable. Moreover … and for the first time I can remember … nor even do I care about Jonathan Barton. For he is gone, you see—gone from me, has been for a good long while. No longer am I yearning, and nor am I dogged by the clogging of perpetual anxiety—its immutable core has crumbled into atoms, and then nothingness. The cowl that covered me has fallen away, and I wallow in a new-born peace, my pain a tangible comfort. And I glow now with all that I am cherishing within me: a future that annihilates the present, and so very far exceeds simply all that has gone before. And it is everything I have ever wanted.
It is fitting—the symmetry of the thing, its pleasingly plump and nicely rounded wholeness: I am satisfied completely. For how perfectly splendid—finally to hear it from the more than abundant lips of Obi: that now John Somerset, erstwhile colleague and adversary, is finally dead. And that the news of his so very devoutly wished-for demise was brought to me on the eve of this cold, bright and really quite excitingly bracing, exceedingly early morning—while happily I am engaged in packing tightly into yet one more of these coarse and greasy jute sacks of detritus, the final few fragments—the last and rotten dismembered parts of the oafish and ill-fated pig man. That beggarly messenger who so very far overreached himself, as eventually will all such untried, raw and rapacious yahoos. He now, quite thoroughly, has ceased to exist. As too has his sender: the dispatcher is duly dispatched.
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