A Personal History of Thirst

by John Burdett

  I had left with her, for safe custody, the most vulnerable part of my self. It seemed to me that she had chosen to torture it, like a mad surgeon who in the middle of an operation starts to eat his patient’s liver.

  “Why are you doing this?” I said it aloud, not always when I was alone. I experienced cycles of anguish that sent me spinning out of control, followed by a strange peace that disintegrated when the next onslaught gathered momentum.

  At the same time I kept working, was even capable of inspiration. My intellect seemed liberated from all restraint. It was a piece of computer software that had been switched on and now had to run its furious program to the end, independently of me. My colleague on the other side of the case found me disturbing—whether due to forensic ferocity or because I was on the point of a nervous breakdown, I never knew.

  Alone in my room, I found it impossible to make the different parts of my self work in unison. I loved Daisy. I hated Daisy. I would beg her to come back. I would never speak to her again. It was all my fault. I was blameless. The world was black, the world was white.

  31

  For what happened next I have no excuse or explanation, only a howl.

  There were many letters, some long and explanatory, others short and desperate. Once or twice she tried to strike a humorous note. I replied to none of them.

  Jimmy, it was a terrible thing I did, I know how I must have hurt you. I know this is so hard for you to understand, but now that I’m out of it I love you even more. My mind is clear at last—I’ve been such a stupid self-indulgent bitch. Love is the only thing worth living for, whatever the price. Suddenly I see you for what you are—you’re a true hero, darling, you’ve struggled more than anyone I know. I feel so ashamed. Why do we need to have such ghastly jolts to make us grow up?

  I understand why you won’t talk to me over the phone. These things take time to heal. Perhaps in a week or two, or in a month, you’ll let me come and see you in Sheffield. I would like that. But you know what—maybe it’s too soon for you to see it, but this is really good what has happened, because now I know you’re the only man I can ever really love. Please, please try to find it in your heart to forgive me. I know how busy you are with your case, with Beaufort gone and it all being on your wonderful shoulders, but if only for the memory of our love, please take an hour out of the day to read this letter and think about it.

  Jimmy, how stupid of me, I write a long rambling letter and completely forget to reassure you. For me it is so obvious, you see, but for you up in Sheffield it’s probably not so clear. Darling, I haven’t seen Oliver since the week my mother died. When he phones I hang up. I’ve now written to him explaining everything; I’m enclosing a copy of my letter to him. So you see, it was just a panic reaction by a dumb woman desperate for comfort.

  Dear Oliver,

  This is a difficult letter to write and I feel very stupid having to write it, but it has to be done.

  It was very kind of you to pick me up from the hospital that night and I have to take full responsibility for what happened. I don’t think it’s quite fair for you to say that I seduced you, but I do admit I was in shock and in need of comfort. And as you so shrewdly pointed out over the phone, I was basically getting back at Jimmy. I’m sorry my selfishness has had this effect on you, but you know, Oliver, a couple of nights with someone isn’t a marriage. Whatever you are feeling now will pass in a month. It will have to, because I’m not going to see you again. And let’s be totally frank here, Oliver: I had no idea that you were dreaming of one day starting a new life in the States. Doesn’t your attraction to me have just a little bit of self-interest in it? I have to tell you, forget it. With your record you’ll never get a green card. You probably won’t even get a visa to visit. Think again.

  I wish you a long straight happy life—without me. Daisy.

  Jimmy, I’ve been following the reports of your case in the newspaper. There seems to be something about it every day. I was so proud when I read about the judge saying that your client had not suffered any detriment by losing Beaufort (meaning that you were brilliant, of course). Your client does sound like a character, though. It’s just like a movie, a Rolls-Royce and all that clever skulduggery. You must be so talented to follow all that stuff about holding companies and offshore companies and subsidiaries.

  What you used to say is so true, that it was my father problem that prevented me from taking an interest in your work. It really is so glamorous, isn’t it?

  Slowly, slowly, I’m getting used to the idea of Mom being gone. I hope in time you’ll understand what a blow it was. She had to give me the love of two parents, you see, and losing her was like losing mother, father, grandmother, brother, sister, all at once. Please understand. I know that she was weak and foolish and probably never really grew up, but she saved my soul with her love. Do you know, I’ve even gone a little bit religious. I pray for you—for us—every night, and last Sunday I went to a church. I’m always going to be here for you, Jimmy. Daisy.

  Dear Brick Wall,

  Are you ever going to crack, Brick Wall? My words are graffiti scratched on you with bleeding fingernails, Brick Wall. You think it’s easy, writing these letters, Brick Wall? Well, it isn’t. Every letter makes my fingers bleed. I scratch and scratch until my nails are all broken and the blood runs down my hands and I think that this time I must have left a mark, but I haven’t, have I? Just a lot of messy female blood, which you’ll wipe off by morning. D.

  Okay, schmuck, this is an American letter. Better, this is a New York letter. I’m sick of this chickenshit British courtesy game. I’m telling you, you need me. Want to know why? Because after you cut out your heart so it wouldn’t get in the way of your goddamn upward mobility, I’m all you’ve got to pump your blood around. I’m your subconscious, asshole. I’m the only life you’ve got. Law isn’t life, it’s death. So I hurt you, big deal. I never said I was totally straight. I never concealed from you that I had a fucked-up side. And you love me for it, Jimmy, oh yeah! Like it or not, it’s the wild in me, the sociopath if you want to use that word, that’s kept you going all these years, while your heart’s been on ice. D.

  You bastard—can’t you see what you’re doing? THIS IS EXACTLY THE WAY MY FATHER WOULD HAVE ACTED.

  It’s been three months now. I know from the news that your case will finish soon. You must be preparing for your summing up to the jury. I remember how tense you used to get. I ought to be feeling optimistic because you’ll be coming back to London, but I’m not. During this past month, when I haven’t written so many letters to you, it’s finally begun to sink in that we might not be together again. Oh, James! This is something I never thought would happen, even in my blackest moments. I thought you would punish me and punish me until you had decided that I had suffered enough, but I never really believed it was the end. Even you must realize by now that I’ve suffered, too, whether as much as you or not, who can ever say?

  I didn’t tell you this before, because you might have misunderstood (I can guess how raw that nerve still is), but somehow it doesn’t seem to matter anymore, so I can tell you that two weeks ago I saw Oliver (once—in public). He was lurking around a corner, obviously waiting for me, and begged me to go to a café with him, so I did. He told me he thought that everything good in his life had disintegrated, and I said it was the same for me.

  He asked if I’d seen you, and I said we wrote a lot (I didn’t want to raise his hopes by telling him that you’ve not spoken or written a single word to me since the night my mother died). Then he suddenly blurted out that he loved me. He said he couldn’t love in some anemic bourgeois way, so he just had to tell me that he adored me and that he would die for me. Then he burst into tears. And you know, all the time I was thinking, if only it were you. If only it were you, Jimmy, I wouldn’t even demand that you adore me. If you would just let go and cry, to put yourself in touch with yourself again, I’m sure (see how conceited I am!) that you would find your love for me again in the dept
hs of your heart. D.

  Dear James,

  So your trial has ended and you’re back in London and I’m having to write to your chambers because I don’t know where you’re staying. I ought to be congratulating you on your victory (well done! another crook back on the streets!), but I find for the first time a certain bitterness has crept into my heart. If I don’t find love again I will lose all generosity. I think I’m losing my soul. I really thought that you had no more weapons to hurt me with. But you found one, didn’t you?

  Even as I write, I can hardly believe it, that you would be here in London and still inaccessible to me. Have you found another flat? Are you staying with friends? I waited for three days running outside your chambers, but you didn’t appear and your clerks were embarrassed to talk to me. All they would say was that you preferred to take cases out of town at the moment.

  Can you really just write off all those years like that? You loved me, more deeply than most men ever love; perhaps that’s what hurts so much, but you can’t deny it. Not before God. Not even in front of a mirror. D.

  Dear James,

  I went for a walk on the Heath yesterday, to those places we used to visit together. It was cold and windy, and even though it’s supposed to be summer, there were lots of leaves on the ground and many of the ones on the trees were curling up and turning brown. I stood on a hill and felt that I was no more than a body, an empty body with the wind blowing through it. I don’t think I shall write to you again. D.

  And where were you, James Knight, when she was pouring out her heart? Were you kneeling with your ear to the keyhole, grinning maniacally? Were you?

  In part, yes. A devil with my face was feeding off her suffering. I struggled against him, but he was stronger than I. I could not get out of my head the thought that she had in some way planned it—that her mother’s death had merely provided an excuse. Nor could I forget the vicious slash ending that first letter: “I’m with Oliver. Daisy.”

  I knew perfectly well that what was required was forgiveness. Not the word but the phenomenon. I discovered that one can no more command the power to forgive than a sunny day. I knew myself to be in essence a fragmented man; I had depended upon her to give me wholeness. It was wholeness that was lost forever. And the fragmented man does not forgive. He loathes with a vengeance the one who stole the missing piece.

  32

  On a cold dead day in the dead of winter (or so it seemed to me), Daisy Smith changed her name again. On a cold dead day in the dead of winter, she became Daisy Thirst. Two thieves bore witness to the event.

  It was raining, George Holmes told me. He had arranged for me to be briefed by the Director of Public Prosecutions, a great honor. George came to the conference and took me for a cup of tea afterward to tell me about the wedding.

  “That’s the way these villains are—they worm their way into people’s lives specifically in order to betray and destroy. They can’t help it, they’re carriers of a disease. If I had my way, I’d have both his hands chopped off like they do in Saudi Arabia. It’s all done professionally, by a surgeon. They strap them down, give them a shot of local anesthetic, saw off the hand with a surgical saw, chuck it in the bin for the hospital dogs. I’d love to see the look on Thirst’s face when they did that. Expect you would, too.”

  I started to see a lot of George after that. I became a prosecutor, known for the cold passion I brought to my new role. George Holmes had never had so many successful convictions. I was indirectly responsible for his rapid promotions, and Commander Holmes was not a man to forget a friend. He would have told me a lot about Daisy and Thirst if I had let him. But after the wedding I didn’t want to know any more.

  Like any twentieth-century mutant, I cast about for alternatives. For a short time I pretended to be gay. I went to bars where broken men like me mixed with painted queens, male whores, and aficionados of the low life. An aging regular who befriended me put it neatly: “Just because you’re terrified of love doesn’t mean you’re gay.”

  I liked his shrewdness. While others were diagnosing homosexuality for anybody who sneezed, he maintained that the club was just the size it had always been.

  “So what is a homosexual?”

  “Simple. I have a lifelong obsession with other men’s erections. It can be diverting or exciting or tender; sometimes I even find love. But turning gay can’t heal you. You won’t stop bleeding even if you force yourself to screw one of these poor boys.”

  In a few months I found that was true of many things: Buddhism, alcohol, scuba diving, a package holiday in Crete for singles, yoga, three afternoons with a Catholic priest, some cocaine from a friend in the BBC, a string of sexual contacts from which emotion was excluded by agreement in advance. I tried parachuting, tried to love my career, wondered what it would be like to be a single-parent father and how one would go about it. I found that I could fixate on anything and sustain nothing. I could be frantic that someone didn’t phone, then instantly bored when she did. I loathed television and watched it every night. London disgusted me, and I developed a phobia about leaving it. I woke up every morning at about three, arguing with Daisy. Sleeping alone was unbearable; so was the presence of another in the bed.

  Little by little I began to recognize my disease in others, though I cannot say what it was. Life can fail anytime. The personality that was working so well for you yesterday can disappear overnight. Reach for it in the morning, it’s been eaten away by the latest dystrophy. The man in the mirror has become a cipher, victim of some new ailment unheard of even twenty years ago. It can befall anyone. Parenthood is no prophylactic, nor is money or youth or sex appeal.

  I acknowledged a gnawing hunger. It had been there all the time, and now that there was no chance of assuaging it, I knew the hunger for what it was. I didn’t want Daisy back; I wanted back the person I had been with her.

  33

  When George Holmes came to arrest Daisy that Tuesday morning, the two constables he brought with him knew who I was and called me “sir” more often than was necessary. By way of counterbalance, they were rude to Daisy. I don’t know what story George had told them, something of the banality of a banner headline, no doubt: FEMME FATALE COMPROMISES EMINENT BARRISTER; or LOVESICK BARRISTER SEDUCED INTO HARBORING MURDERESS.

  Daisy didn’t seem to notice their rudeness. Before George had finished (“Mrs. Daisy Thirst née Hawkley and also using the surname Smith, you are hereby charged with the murder of your husband, Oliver Harry Thirst, on the…day of…1986, at the intersection of…Street and…Street, by means of a shot fired from a small-caliber pistol at point-blank range sometime between the hours of one and five A.M.”), Daisy had fainted. Over her prostrate body I hissed at George that he would pay for this with his career. He mumbled something that sounded almost like an apology.

  When she came to, it was clear that Daisy had forgotten why she had fainted. George had to repeat the charge, adding this time that she was not obliged to say anything but that anything she did say would be taken down and might be used in evidence against her.

  Comprehension broke in her eyes. She saw in a blink the shattering of our sixteen-day dream, her entrapment in the sadistic maze of the law, the long tedious months of depression that would inevitably follow, whatever the outcome.

  George wanted to take her to the police station in the car they had brought.

  “I’ll take her,” I told him.

  I drove Daisy to Hampstead police station, which was really within walking distance, and had to let her out while I parked the car.

  “Don’t go inside without me,” I said, and she was waiting, obedient and bewildered, when I returned. Suddenly a half-dozen press photographers appeared from out of nowhere and took pictures. The evening paper that day carried a front-page picture of a bewildered Daisy about to walk into the station. There was a picture of me, too, pinch-faced and furious. The headline, of course, read: GIRLFRIEND OF EMINENT BARRISTER CHARGED WITH MURDER. The story gave plenty of details of Thirs
t’s past and ensured through innuendo that I would never, now, become a Queen’s Counsel.

  Apart from the presence of the press, that day was largely occupied with formalities. George showed none of his usual ferocity when dealing with suspects. He had no objection to bail and did not even attempt to question Daisy without a solicitor present. We went home after her fingerprints had been taken, promising to return with one the next day. I spent the afternoon discussing with my old pal Roland Denson which solicitor out of a short list of six we should use. We spent several minutes arguing about one in particular. Cyril Feinberg was probably the most ruthless criminal solicitor in London. A good part of my career had been spent dismantling the intricate alibis he had coached his clients into learning until they were word-perfect. He gave the impression of hating everything about his profession—the police, the clients, the barristers, the judges, the other solicitors. Roland Denson was convinced that I would never choose him.

  I looked across at Daisy. We were downstairs in my study. She sat in an almost catatonic state, waiting while the men decided her fate. These were men’s rules; daughter, wife, defendant, murderess—male definitions, male traps.

  I made my decision. “It’s Feinberg, Roland. He’s our man.”

  Not for the last time in the case of the Queen v. Daisy Thirst, Roland Denson puckered his brow. He knew very well that I intended him to be junior counsel.

  I nerved myself to phone Feinberg, whose personal secretary was almost as hostile to clients as he was.