The Crime Writer

by Jill Dawson

  The steaks are good. Colman’s English mustard and a powerfully vinegary dressing make my cheeks pink and Sam’s neck flush. We giggle over my descriptions of Mrs Ingham and the frilly nightgown, like something Honor Blackman might wear in The Avengers . . . We drain the bottle of whisky and the night burns warm and inviting and the chill horrors of earlier in the day start to thaw out. I will not let her touch me in the kitchen: that dark slit of night between the curtains always unnerves me. I venture upstairs first and put both bedroom lamps on, mine and the one in the cold green and beige guest room, as if to say: Here we are, safely tucked up in two separate rooms, dear world, in case you’re watching.

  ‘Low-flying spy planes?’ Sam jokes, following me up the stairs. You never know.

  Once in my room she falls on me, kissing my neck, my face, my throat. The sherbet feeling again, the desire to melt, to dissolve into a thousand grains. This is what she does to me. Such a naughty practised gesture, the way she pulls down my underpants. She, of course, knows exactly how everything she does feels to me. That is the trick of her and the skill: she’s cocky, she likes to play the femme fatale. No gesture is clumsy, no movement without beauty. ‘Lie down there,’ she says, in a gravelly voice, clogged with desire, lifting off my sweater, unbuttoning my white shirt. She knows I never wear a brassière on the days when she is coming. She knows that my longing for her, which began much, much earlier in the day, will now be soaking me through and my nipples will be up and waiting for her touch, as she squeezes my breasts together to admire them, my body alert, prickling in a way that only she can produce. She cups my pubic bone; her fingers curl beneath, drawing deep. ‘You first,’ she says. Here, and only here, she is utterly the boss. The game is not to move. Trying not to buck, or thrust, or sigh, as the waves of pleasure dissolve me; her skilful fingers in a combination of vibrating taps and then deep, pulling strokes. My spine makes snapping sounds and I’m a fish on a hook, twisting and twitching, then finally throwing myself on the deck with a last great spasm as she plunges fingers inside me, her tongue in my mouth: giving myself up.

  Later, I show her the snails. Another snail has dug a pit in the earth; another pair is mating. ‘Yuk.’ Sam shudders. I try not to be disappointed that she doesn’t share my fascination. Ronnie will, I know. I’ll show Ronnie again in the morning.

  In the night, I’m woken by noises. A car driving up. An engine running, then a door opening and slamming, and thumping, thumping on the front door of Bridge Cottage. Sam is deeply asleep, blonde hair undone and all over her face, one arm flung across me. I shake her awake, try to lift the great heat of her from across me. ‘Go in the other bedroom,’ I whisper. She obeys at once. A glimpse of her white thighs, as she wriggles into a peach-coloured nightgown; the glittering sheet of her hair.

  Gerald. Gerald drunk and possibly angry, although when I open the door to him, leaning there against it as if it’s the most reasonable hour in the world, he appears infinitely controlled.

  ‘We’ve met, haven’t we?’ he says. ‘Edna O’Brien party.’

  ‘It’s two in the morning, Mr—’

  ‘My wife here? The old girl? Just thought I’d join the party, you know.’

  He’s so slight, I notice again. The build of a girl or a teenage boy. He waves a bottle of Scotch at me and – not knowing what else to do – I close the door behind him and he steps over the mat at the threshold and into the front room. I go to the kitchen to fetch glasses. The smell of pipe smoke and tweed and Imperial Leather soap enters the room with him. He’s already taking off his jacket and draping it over the arm of the sofa. My head is heavy, foggy, but I’m sober as a trout.

  Gerald sits on my sofa, legs wide apart, spreading both arms along the back in the way that only men do. He is obviously taking in the unfurnished aspects of the room: the hard floor only partly covered by the Turkish rug and the welcome mat, my desk with its litter of papers and books haloed by the lamp. He picks a green hardback up from the sofa beside him: Karl Menninger, The Human Mind. He turns it over, as if its real title might be concealed elsewhere. He drains the glass I give him and shakes his head, a quick shake, as if to knock it down faster.

  Sam appears at the top of the stairs in her peach silk nightgown but with the brown fisherman’s sweater thrown over the top, smoothing down her hair.

  ‘Good Lord, Gerald, what hour is this? Poor Pat was sleeping, and she has work to do tomorrow, you know, I told you didn’t I? Is there something wrong? Is Minty—’

  ‘Minty’s fine. She’s staying at the Dixons’. No crime to come and see my wife at the weekend, is it?’

  ‘No, of course not. But all is fine here, as you see.’

  ‘I could use some coffee,’ I say, not wanting to be in the room with them, not wanting to see her like this, appeasing, keeping him sweet. I don’t want to despise her. The door between kitchen and living room is always left open. I can hear them perfectly well.

  ‘And as you see, I’m not with any fancy man, if that’s what you expected,’ Sam is saying.

  ‘Ha! Well, what da y’know?’ Gerald seems to be relaxing. When I come back in he is making himself comfortable, leans forward, undoes his brogues and eases his feet out of them. Socks in a disgusting mustard colour caught in a pool of light from my table-lamp. Thin, small feet. I have to look away.

  ‘I left you the address didn’t I? Why would I do that if I was hiding something?’ Sam says.

  ‘Well, that’s what I thought. A double bluff, I thought. She’s left me the address of this friend, and won’t she be surprised if I just turn up there and find out there’s no such Pat at all?’

  ‘Well, now you see there is.’ Sam sighs, accepting the coffee cup I place in her hand.

  ‘Do you all mind if I go back to my bed now? You can sleep on the sofa if you like. There’s a couple of plainly inadequate blankets in that cupboard just under the stairs, but you’re welcome to them,’ I suggest.

  It’s not that I want to leave them alone together. I don’t happen to relish the thought of that pipe-smoking lunk sleeping in my house. But, I keep asking myself, what would I do, if I was just a friend of Sam’s, a publishing friend or an author, someone neutral from an Edna O’Brien party, and her husband turned up? Isn’t this what I’d do – offer him a bed, and pack them both off in the morning with tea and toast and marmalade?

  And so I take my own coffee up the stairs to bed, clunking my head on the low beam across the ceiling on the landing at the top of the stairs, as I always do, and climbing back under now cooled sheets that still have that almond scent of her. Of course I’m prised open, wide awake. There’s no way sleep will come to me, and I’m cocked like a shell, tuning in to hear whatever it is that’s being said. I smoke two cigarettes one after the other, listening, stubbing them out in a saucer on the bedside table, switching off the bedroom lamp, listening again . . .

  But perhaps I did sleep, perhaps I tumbled into a sort of half-dream because now, suddenly, there are raised voices, and something dark skittering across the floor and something trembling all around the house, and furniture tumbling and such a familiar terror in my throat and ears and heart and chest, sweat, sweat everywhere and thumping, something thumping in the bed with me, something huge and wild that I know is my heartbeat, and I think I’m back in my own little bed in Granny’s boarding-house and listening to Mother’s voice, shouting, ‘Did you hear me, did you hear me?’ and then the sound of a stifled scream, and something heavy plummeting to the floor. The same familiar sensations: the salty smell of my own sweat springing out all over my body, the sense of falling, of my bowels peeling away, spiralling down a well into darkness. There’s the Black & Decker drill next to my bed and I reach for it. The drill bit slips out and clatters loudly to the floor. I hold it at the drilling end, feeling the weight of the heavy metal centre with satisfaction, the electric cord and plug dangling beside me, creeping to the landing, crouching low so as not to knock myself out again on the beam and, yes, there she is, in the living ro
om lit by the one little lamp, there they are now on the sofa, with him lying on top of her and she underneath him, her head hanging off the edge, head dangling to one side, in the strangest way, like he’s already killed her; that’s what I think at first, he’s smothered her, God, no, he’s killed her, and so I run downstairs but then I realise that under the thin blanket he’s moving, the snaky bastard is muttering things, he’s unaware that I’m here that I’m standing over them but she’s not, her eyes widen, they meet mine; her mouth opens and she’s crying, and she shakes her head a little, whispers, ‘Don’t’, and she’s trying to twist away from him and he’s like the most disgusting slithering eel under the blanket and he’s saying in a low growl, ‘You’re still my fucking wife,’ and Sam is twisting her head to escape his mouth, I see the little coil of gold chain at her throat, and it’s that, the sight of that heart locket, I gave it to her in Paris . . .

  ‘Get off her,’ I say. I’m standing at the bottom of the stairs. One foot on the rug, the other on cold floor, next to the vile little puddle of his pants and shorts. The Black & Decker is raised and my teeth gritted so hard my jaw is throbbing.

  ‘I said, get off her,’ I repeat.

  I’m close, I’m standing over them, close enough to tug at his arm and try to pull him off. He is drunk, I know that, meltingly, slitheringly drunk, and I don’t know if he knows I’m here. I gather every ounce of strength, every part of me pounding with it, with loathing. In my hand – high up – is the lumbering solid metal drill and it’s heavy, granite-heavy, and irresistible and the cord dangles and the plug grazes the floor as with the best swing I can manage I bring the full force of it down on the back of Gerald’s head. It makes a surprising sound: a sort of crack, like a stone rattling across ice. His head is very close to the floor. I lift my arm and hit again, and this time he slides away from the sofa – like a seal slipping from a boat to the sea – and onto the floor, leaving Sam partially beneath him, her hands covering her face. I can’t see how she can breathe beneath him.

  I wonder for a moment what happened. I hit him again, harder. He groans – he, too, makes a strange sound, puffing, air slammed out of him – and collapses, like a blanket crumpling to the ground when a breeze subsides.

  A spread of blood begins to form beneath him, fanning out in a deep red puddle. His forehead must have hit something. The brick floor beneath the rug. I’m tempted to lift my hand again and again, bring the drill down on his head again and again and again, mashing all the disgusting blood and hair and skull until it’s pulverised – the joy, the joy, the joy of that – but I don’t, I don’t, good Christ, of course I don’t do that.

  I help Sam up. I drag her. It doesn’t feel like a nice thing to be doing; she flops around, she’s like a doll. Then she curls at once into a foetal position and lies on the sofa shaking. I don’t believe she’s crying. I stroke the hair away from her face. ‘Honey, are you OK?’

  She doesn’t nod. She doesn’t seem to be able to hear me, so I fetch brandy from the kitchen and then, lifting her head, try to pour some into her mouth. She splutters, and most of it dribbles out, but her eyes are open now. The shaking steps up a pace. I feel I can almost hear her teeth chattering. I pull her silk nightgown down for her; cover her knees.

  Gerald lies in a great slump, like a skinny tree that’s been felled by one blow. I guess I should get him some brandy too, or a cloth for that head, but let the son of a bitch sleep it off. He’s going to be pretty sore for a week, and he’ll have some trouble explaining the lump on his head, which I can see is forming under his hair beneath the clots of dark red wetness. There is blood on the rug, and on the Black & Decker. I take it to the kitchen and clean it with Fairy Liquid, a scrubbing brush and a rag. I find the black box it came in and fit it neatly back in there, shove it away in the cupboard under the sink.

  Then back to the living room. I hesitate before touching Gerald’s head. His pants, with the belt undone, and his undershorts thrown on top are on the rug beside him and, after first covering his ghastly white buttocks with the blanket, I think better of that solution and – wanting to shield Sam somehow from the further indignity of seeing him like this – I pull up the white undershorts and pants, and do up the belt. He doesn’t make a sound, or respond at all. As I feel underneath him for the buckle (not doing up the flies, I draw the line at that), his warm hairy stomach rests briefly on my hands for a moment and a dry retch heaves in my throat. I want to pull his shirt down and tuck it in but that would involve further touching. I sit on my heels on the floor beside him, wondering. There is a strange smell, ghastly and unfamiliar – something metallic and inhuman only partially masked by the pipe-smoke smell that always hangs about Gerald – and I don’t know where it is coming from.

  I flatten my cheek against his back, listening. There is no rise and fall. His body is warm, but – is he cooling? His cheek is crushed against the floor, eyes shut, the magenta-coloured blood pooling on the hard brick floor under one eye. The feet in the stupid mustard socks look stiff, heels angling upwards, toes jabbing the rug.

  Sam is still curled at a distance from us, but she is watching me. If I pick up his wrist, she will guess. I move away, sip the brandy in her tumbler, lift the bottle in an offer of more. I put my arm around her and feel the trembling in her body vibrating through my own. My mind is racing, racing, racing. So many times I thought of this. The ultimate transgression, just as I said. Wondered, what would it feel like? And now I know. Except that I don’t: I want to go back and replay it. It was quick: I was cheated, I didn’t seem to be present – just a white hot blaze in place of myself. I want to go back; to savour.

  I force myself to look at Gerald and imagine that even the hairs on his head are stiffening, are turning rigid; light as feathers. His temple was here, against the brick floor. If only the blow had been softened by the rug but that’s all on the skew, over to his left.

  ‘We should get him to a doctor,’ I tell Sam, watching her face for signs that she believes me. Another wave of trembling in her.

  ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ she says, in a voice that seems to come from the back of the room.

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  And the room itself seems to shake a little, rattle on its moorings. Now what? The hour is still early, but we can’t sit here all night. My mind starts shuffling possibilities, weighing up. I reach for Sam’s brown sweater and offer it to her. When she makes no sign I move over and put it on her, pulling it over her head, pushing arms through arm-holes as if she were a child. At one point she links her fingers in mine and I think: Not a child, but a monkey. A strange little animal.

  ‘You always had that ability,’ she says.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I think she’s talking about my strength: is she saying I have the ability to kill someone?

  I’m about to protest but she says:

  ‘The worse things get, the calmer you become. It’s – unnatural.’

  And then she’s sobbing, pressing her face to her knees, and letting her whole body succumb to it.

  I watch her, and count up to 360. That’s six minutes. That’s all I can allow. It’s still early, and still dark, and presumably no one knew Gerald came here, no one has yet seen his car out the front. I glance at the clock on the fireplace: 3.10 a.m. That’s fine, there’s time, dawn is still a way off, but – we have to make some decisions.

  ‘We must call someone,’ Sam says. ‘The police. The police. Shall we call the police? Or – a doctor or something. Who do people call at times like this? Oh – poor little Minty!’ and then she’s abandoned herself to crying again, returning her face to her knees.

  ‘Do you think you could help me to lift him?’ I ask.

  ‘Lift him? What – shouldn’t we— Oh, is he really?’ She puts her face in her hands. She can’t look at the shape of Gerald but it looms in the room, like a dark rolled thing that blocks the sides of our vision.

  ‘Sam – I don’t think we can call the police.’

  I wait for thi
s statement to sink in. For her to lift her face from her hands. I want to say: I don’t care to see you crying. Where is your supreme poise? A week ago I had never seen you like this; I had not known you were capable of tears. I happen to prefer it when you are composed.

  ‘What would it look like?’ I say. ‘He was – what he was doing to you. Won’t they ask all about that? And then us, you being here. And then – I mean . . .’

  I feel as if my face is burning as I say this. Scalding the room. Hot skin, then cold skin and then a sick feeling. I’m going to faint and it’s the thought of it again, of what I did. The exhilaration. The pleasure, the release. Now it’s the sickening sight of his skull that keeps making me think of one of my beloved snails, crushed, and the jelly-life seeping from it.

  I gather myself. I’m aware of an accelerated heartbeat, a dry throat, and tension in every muscle, but a delicious slowing of my thoughts. Like the moments when plots form: my fingers on keys flying through something fast, something they do of their own will; but somewhere else, just at the corner of my eye, beside me or close to me, something shaping by itself, with the energy and volition of a livid dream.

  ‘We can’t both fall apart, honey. I need to think. They might say the blow was harder than required. We could call someone. But what – what will we say about the Black & Decker? Pretty grim . . .’

  Her eyes widen. The shock is clear on her face; she does not look like herself.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Sam says. I’m not sure how much is dawning on her. But at least her eyes are dry and, instead of tears, there is some solidifying, like wax cooling: she is returning to her own shape. She’s right about my extreme coldness in a crisis, the adrenalin clarity that fills my head like a cleansing gas. I start tugging at Gerald’s legs.

  ‘It’s a good job he’s a skinny son of a bitch,’ I mutter. ‘Can’t weigh more than a hundred and forty pounds. We could – outside, by the pond? Or, well, they would come to the house, then. And Mrs Ingham might see him. We need to get him away from here. No link to the house. Best of all would be to get him back in his car. I could use some help. Think you could help me lift him, honey?’