The Crime Writer

by Jill Dawson

  And then she’s telling me, I think she’s telling me, that our love affair is over. That what happened between us can’t just be absorbed – I picture blotting paper, black ink, stains dispersing – that her feelings for me since Gerald’s death have changed for ever; that she doesn’t feel she will recover from her grief, her ‘blackness’; she’s finding her old depression – not felt since the early years after Minty’s birth, the time she started seeing the analyst – has descended again, it’s unbearable and she’s very afraid she’s going under. She refers only to Gerald’s ‘suicide’ and her ‘guilt’ – she doesn’t say what this is about – and waves a hand as I try to interrupt.

  I’m staring at the wine in her glass, its delicate pale green colour. There’s still a fire in the hearth, although it’s low, glowing, and needs more wood. There’s a leather hod next to the fireplace and in an idle way I wonder: Should I put another log on the fire? And then I’m staring at the stem of her wine glass, which will surely break if she rubs it between finger and thumb like that for much longer; and I suppose I hear her but I don’t hear her and when I open my eyes again the world has altered and I’m alone in it.

  All this I did for you. So that we could be together. I was willing to risk everything, anything, for you, and in the end, you are conventional and what you want above all is a life like everyone else’s. This is nothing to do with Gerald. You are a coward and that is all. You are not – worthy.

  Sam is softly crying. More tears, which shame me. I stare at her with a combination of loathing and devotion. She struggles to find a handkerchief in her pocket book and I hand her mine – a big, clean, ironed one – and she sniffs and blows her nose, which could use some powder. Samantha. The woman I want above all others, the only one I have ever wanted like this. As spineless as everyone else. I sip my wine again; and now it tastes only of greyness, of salt. Somewhere a window has been left open and I think I hear rain swishing down a drain or a gutter. A car horn sounds and some drunken voice gives a brief burst of ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’. The brakes of a double-decker bus cut it short with a hiss.

  I pour myself another glass of wine and inch ever so slightly away from Sam along the sofa. Only half consciously, I place a dove-grey velvet cushion between us. I do not want to touch her, or comfort her. I have a temptation to stand up, move away from her and sit nearer the fire, but I don’t. I’m thinking, composing. What to say, what is the one thing that will change her mind?

  Some Christmas cards on the fireplace catch my eye. A couple are not Christmassy at all but clearly say: With Greatest Sympathy. A small tree bedecked with only a couple of silver balls and one hand-made pomander, a shrivelled orange with cloves stuck in it, a cheap red ribbon around it, and dangling from it on a white, snowman-shaped note, in a child’s handwriting, To Mummy, love Minty.

  And a torrent of pity washes through me, staring at it. Minty. Alone, in bed, face buried in her pillow, dry-eyed. Her father gone, and her mother down here crying for herself, disappointing, treacherous, like every other mother in the world. The sound of a train far, far away rattles through my brain with its familiar melancholy wail: here it is again, here it comes – my life, years – to torture me. I think of box-cars, and my longing to jump one, a fantasy I had when I was Minty’s age, how I would just run along the track and fling myself on, let the train carry me far away, a long tunnel in Hell, who cared? To anywhere. I remember the smell of my mother’s hair on the pillow; that one time she suddenly decided to sleep in my bed. Painfully awake, fitful, afraid to disturb her, afraid that even if I twitched my shoulder it would be enough to make her leave. Listening to the vibration of her soft snoring. And in the morning she was gone, the pillow flat, as if she was never there. And what I said to myself then is the same now: This is how it is for me. They are all heartless bitches. That’s just how it is.

  Sam sniffs loudly, dabs at her nose and hands the handkerchief back to me. Swallows. Smooths her dress over her knees. Straightens her shoulders – I have a glimpse of the strength in her slender body, her power – and glances at me over the top of her glass.

  ‘Are you going to sit here brooding all night? It’s too late now to call a taxi. At least we should go to bed . . .’ she says. And, curiously, it’s not Sam I see then but a girl in summer camp, a young woman called Rose – wasn’t she the tennis coach? She was so strong, and muscular, too. More vibrant than Sam. More real.

  Sam stands up, her back to me. She’s wearing a cream dress, discreet, chic. Cream wool, with wool-covered buttons all the way down the front, a neat belt at her neat waist. She will always look chic, I think. She’s like a long-stemmed orchid. And then, angrily: She’s all about style over content.

  Rose, Miss Rose, the tennis coach, wore a pleated white skirt and had a peculiar way of doing her hair up, using a long, thin sock to bind it. That summer we were playing, all the girls were playing, dress-up. I had an idea to change into Miss Rose’s clothes – the white tennis underpants, the pleated skirt, the little blouse with the small embroidered motif, and, of course, it all smelt of her, of sweat and cut grass and tennis-shoe-whitener, and the smell made me tremble and fizz. The other girls were striding round the camp, it was camp counsellors’ day where the high jinks were to dress like this, to swap and be each other; that was the whole idea of the game. And so I found Miss Rose’s sock and wound it round my hair and her little hair clip and put that in too. And then there was that moment: I was in the dorm and she burst in, she must have seen me at the window with my hair fixed up like hers, mimicking her tennis serve in front of my bedroom mirror – swinging her racket twice before hitting the ball.

  ‘Girl. What the hell—?’ Miss Rose said.

  I lowered the racket.

  ‘Oh – we’re all doing it, dressing up as the counsellors,’ I said, in a shaky voice. ‘I’m – I – it was a game, Miss Rose.’

  She was staring at me; I could not meet her eyes.

  ‘Miss, everyone was doing it . . .’ I petered out.

  This was the shared room, the girls’ dorm, and I was afraid another girl would step in, step into the fuzz of the atmosphere that was sudden and sizzling between us.

  She looked at my hair. ‘Take that out,’ she said and grabbed at the sock, snatched at the hair grip, so that it pinged onto the floor. I longed to pick it up but found I could not move.

  ‘Miss, the other girls—’

  Miss Rose stepped closer to me then bent quickly to pocket her hair grip. It was strange that we had to call the counsellors ‘Miss’. The girl was probably eighteen, a calm girl, icily deliberate in every last stride and comment.

  ‘You . . .’ she said, ‘. . . need to understand something.’

  And then she said more, words too cruel, too plain, words I would never be able to unhear.

  No. Not me. She doesn’t feel that way about me. And throughout this confrontation with Miss Rose I’d been miserably removing each item until I was wearing only the underpants and a long white tank. Shame now stuffing the room with a choking, poisonous gas. Miss Rose looked wordlessly at the white underpants, as if deliberating whether to ask me to take those off too. Then she turned on her heel and stalked out.

  Oh, that phoney, that little round-heels, that bitch . . .

  Mother, Rose, Sam, all of them. The smell of the chalky whitener on her tennis shoes. The whisk of air as she stalked past me, scooping my humiliation up in one hand and tossing it, like pebbles, behind her imperious ass. What are you so fucking afraid of?

  ‘I meant to tell you,’ I say to Sam now. ‘I went to bed with someone else. The young journalist, remember her? Ginny Smythson-Balby. Gorgeous little thing, she is.’

  An expression crosses Sam’s face that gives me a deep, ugly pleasure and I glance down into my glass to hide it.

  ‘Oh. Well. I suppose I deserved that,’ she says softly, hesitating, then making a step towards me, holding out her hand, her eyes glittering. Then: ‘Come to bed, Patsy. Can’t we stop warring and just be
good to each other?’

  Girl, you’re heavenly . . .

  A fragment of a song I loved, once. And it – and the gesture, the hand outstretched – makes something leap in me, flick its tail. My heart still on the hook. But.

  Every part of me aches with the sadness of knowing that this is not a reconciliation, that she means it; that cool, decisive Sam will never go back on her word. ‘Come to bed’ does not mean to reconcile but only to sleep. And an impulse to push her and hurt her keeps surging in me just as it did with Miss Rose all those years ago.

  Watching her, the room oscillating slightly, I imagine my hands around her throat, just tightening there, exactly where the shiny black obsidian pendant hangs, my fingertips pressing a little, digging it into her throat – how much pressure would it take? Not much, perhaps, because she is so, so delicate, these days, and that elegant Modigliani neck is like the stalk of a tulip, ready to snap. But it would end things, put an end to it, and I have to do that.

  ‘Or . . . well, shall I open another bottle?’ Sam asks. She’s swaying, feeling her drinks but halfway to the door to fetch it. I nod.

  ‘I happen to think,’ I say, finding my voice at last. ‘We could get past these troubles.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, darling,’ Sam says, in a rush, agonised. ‘I’m sorry, but this is how it has to be.’

  I fall silent. You lack courage, I want to say. You’re like all the others. And this: I never saw you cry in all the time together and just lately you’re all tears, like a weeping saint. A line from Karl Menninger’s The Human Mind – how I loved that book! – floats to me out of context but vivid and jarring: The adjuration to be normal seems shockingly repellent to me. My face, I’m sure, is a little red, with the wine and the fire, but otherwise betrays nothing.

  She fetches a bottle of Frascati this time from the kitchen, and solemnly pours us both a fresh glass. Icy cold slips down my throat.

  And then later, much later – matter of fact, dawn is bleeding under the curtain in a trickle of red – I tiptoe from the guestroom to Sam’s bedroom, opening the door creakily, leaning over her and shaking her.

  ‘Sam . . . you awake?’

  ‘Hmm?’ she says, sitting up, blonde hair mussed, skin shiny.

  ‘I feel . . . logy,’ I say, and lie beside her on top of the sheet. She’s always strict about this. Minty mustn’t see us. I was meant to have left earlier, and now we’ll have to explain my staying over, which is bad enough.

  ‘Logy? I don’t know what you mean, you feel ill?’ Sam asks, her cool hand on my forehead. The scent of her, almonds, frangipani, is sickening.

  ‘Something’s wrong. I’m wrong. I’m sick.’

  It’s my hands. My hands feel wrong, like they don’t belong to me. And my tongue, too, is sticking to the roof of my mouth. ‘I’m logy, I’m logy . . .’ My words come out fat and stupid.

  Sam springs up. She brings me a big glass of water, from the bathroom, holds her hands over mine to raise it to my mouth. In her eyes is something new.

  ‘Oh, Pats,’ is all she says.

  I refuse the water, spilling some on the bed as I pluck at her but she wriggles free. She’s in her nightgown, now reaches for the robe hanging on a hook on the back of her bedroom door and runs out to the hall where the telephone is. I follow her. I feel like a big lumbering Frankenstein, my hands fatter and fatter and stranger and stranger.

  ‘My head! My guts! I feel terrible. Don’t leave me Sam,’ I say. A last beseeching effort. ‘Don’t let Mother take me away!’

  ‘Sssh sssh, you’ll wake Minty – you’re shouting, Pats! It’s early, let’s not wake her!’

  I think the room is shaking or someone is shaking me – is Sam shaking me? – or is it just me, a trembling and a heat that surges through me? I’m sick, I’m sick. I’m not shouting, she’s gone crazy.

  ‘Sam, not water – fix me a proper drink.’

  ‘Oh, my goodness, is it, is it – should you stop drinking? You’re shaking . . .’

  ‘No, no, don’t be – dumb. I could use a drink. That’s what the problem is. Bring me – have you got Scotch? I could use a whisky, Sam, or bourbon, I could—’

  I hear her on the telephone, and she’s saying: ‘Yes, I’m terribly sorry it’s so early, Dr Deacon . . .’

  And then I stagger from her bedroom to the landing and the pale lilac walls are rushing towards me and the grey carpet comes roaring and charging – a huge grey horse shaking its mane – hurtling into my face.

  January. She’d always loathed the month she was born in. It was a month of ugliness, desiccating like the roses around the cottage door. Nothingness, whiteness, days slipping; nothing solid. January made her think of sand trickling away, of flipping an egg over and over, shaking the year to its end, its horrible new beginning.

  She woke in her own bed at Bridge Cottage, and saw a film of snow outside on the window ledge. Where were her snails? Beside her on the bedside table was a bowl of cold pea and ham soup – a lurid green – and a glass of water. She looked for Scotch. She leaned out of the bed, the silky counterpane sliding to the floor, to root for her bottle of J&B – there should be one just under the bed – but her hand touched only fluff and dust and wooden floorboards; she couldn’t find it. She went to open the curtains and was a little surprised to see that January had also brought a soft lace-work of snow to the windowpane; snow sat on her car and the oak tree outside in daubs of white, like ice-cream dollops.

  There was a noise downstairs, a small grating sound – a drawer being opened. She jumped, and felt her heartbeat quicken. Involuntarily she glanced around her bedroom for the flicker of the mouse, for it, the Thing, but saw neither. Burglars? Someone was downstairs, in the house. Her mouth was a little dry as she glanced around for a weapon. Where was the knife she used to groom the plants? Snoopers? Smythson-Balby again? She looked for the plum-coloured bathrobe to cover herself, and wished she had the Black & Decker.

  As she stepped out on the landing, ducking to avoid the low beam – at least she’d remembered that – she saw Ronnie coming from the kitchen, carrying a tray with a glass of orange juice and a plate with two of the Limmits cookies she’d bought months ago. Ronnie. She stared at the tray: No doubt he thinks they’re real cookies, then wondered why such a mundane thought popped into her head then. Ronnie’s hair was longer and fairer than ever; it grazed his shoulders. His knees creaked as he started on the bottom stair, and then he looked up at her and beamed. She imagined him hanging up his duffel coat and yards of knitted scarf on the downstairs peg.

  ‘Feeling better?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t appreciate people moving my snails,’ she said, as her heartbeat returned to normal and she advanced wincingly – the light was shockingly white here – down the stairs.

  Ronnie took the tray into the kitchen to show her the snails through the kitchen window. They were out in the garden, near the shed, all the bowls and tanks under an ugly iron canopy, buckling under its weight of snow.

  ‘They were filling up the house, my dear. The smell was atrocious. Your mother insisted. I built it myself. And they do so prefer the outdoor life.’

  Mother. Mother was here at Bridge Cottage. Had she – had Pat locked up her novel? Yes, she had. And, yes, she remembered Mother’s visit – Mother in Suffolk, as bizarre and exotic a species as a big white leopard – but she’d rather she didn’t.

  The alcoholic blackouts – this wasn’t her first – meant that things were piecemeal and came back in shreds. What she remembered most was a dream she’d had, a terribly sad dream, in which little snails crawled towards her across her bedroom floor over the body of a girl she recognised as Veronica, the pin-up Veronica, the girl who had been strangled in New York. She simply stared at Veronica and the snails with the deepest of sadness.

  ‘I could use a cigarette,’ she said now, to Ronnie.

  Together they searched Bridge Cottage for cigarettes, finding a half-empty packet eventually in an old jacket pocket, the leather gilet hanging
in her study, which she hadn’t worn since the funeral. At the first drag, the first deep hit of nicotine, she felt a surge of gratitude and affection towards Ronnie. It must have been him who had brought her the soup upstairs.

  The room smelt powerfully of turps and old coffee; there were several dirty cups and ashtrays on the desk in the corner. They were surrounded by her sketches, several charcoal snails, various cats about to strike, dead rats and dead birds, a pencil-and-paper drawing of the kitchen at Bridge Cottage, cosy with its sprigged curtains and posies in vases on the kitchen table, its hanging knives. Ronnie, she knew, found it easier to admire her sketching than her novels and he picked one up now – a line drawing of Sam, sleeping – and told her how fine it was.

  ‘Sam took me to her doctor?’ She remembered that. She remembered most of it, actually, the ride home in a taxi, paid for by Sam, but thought it wise to pretend she didn’t. She remembered the return to fetch her car, too, and Mother’s visit: the sudden image of a wire coat-hanger, brandished at her, narrowly missing her eye with its round hook. But there were gaps, and she had the strange, unvoiced sensation that she’d perhaps been ill for longer than she realised. She didn’t want to ask Ronnie, to find out, so she fell silent, and nodded her permission for him to look through her sketchbook, and smoked.

  ‘I did it, you know,’ Pat murmured, at last. And the relief of confession was just as sweet as she’d long imagined. Huge and sweeping and unique. Like an orgasm. Long, colossal, drawn-out and salty. ‘I killed someone. I killed Gerald.’

  ‘Hush, darling, of course you didn’t,’ Ronnie replied infuriatingly. She was shocked to discover she’d said it to Ronnie, out loud. ‘Why don’t I heat the soup for you?’ he persisted, moving as if to get up to go next door to her bedroom and fetch the tray.

  ‘No.’ She tugged at his arm. ‘I did. I mean it. I murdered him. And—’