A Pleasure and a Calling

by Phil Hogan

  If I were Marrineau, I would pray for her, commend her to a higher power. But I am stronger than Marrineau. For me, there is no higher power. For me, the buck stops here.

  39

  YOU MAY REMEMBER THE small service I performed for the elderly Mrs Wade some time ago. She is still alive and kicking. She still drives her small cherry-red car to church and to the Thursday market and occasional hospital appointments. More and more often now, she takes the train to visit her daughter Rachel in Ely, stays overnight and returns the next day. I am happy to ‘house sit’ during these times. Today I have never needed it more. The day has yet to dawn, with its rosy promise of trouble. I lie with my knees slightly bent on Mrs Wade’s cottage sofa, with its polished wooden arms and ornate, quilted throw, and close my eyes.

  Think of it if you will as decompression, a process of returning from a distressing height or depth, though you might equally think of a gentle, power-giving rejuvenation – envisage an advanced alien being, lowering himself at the end of a hard day into a bath of nurturing chemicals or a pulsing cocoon rich with energy waves. That is me.

  My mind returns to Abigail, not with yearning but regret. An error every bit as prominent as Zoe, but what have I learned? That I lost love, and the sublime feelings that held me in its grip, by allowing myself to be sucked into something less real (or more real, I suppose, conventionally speaking). Marrineau was right when he talked about redrawing his parameters, choosing aloneness – or at least the solitary path – as the one way to serve. I too have all I desire within bounds I have myself established – my chosen space with its proximity to life, its sharp, measured rules and control and low, confining ceiling. I already know what works. Stay there, I tell myself. Just stay.

  I have to smile when newspapers – so predictable in their attempt to explain the behaviour of those transgressing social norms or the workings of the deviant mind – speak of ‘the double life’ led by this furtive criminal or that. In fact the reverse is true. It is normal people who have a ‘double life’. On the outside is your everyday life of going out to work and going on holiday. Then there is the life you wish you had – the life that keeps you awake at night with hope, ambition, plans, frustration, resentment, envy, regret. This is a more seething life of wants, driven by thoughts of possibility and potential. It is the life you can never have. Always changing, it is always out of reach. Would you like more money? Here, have more! An attractive sexual partner? No problem. Higher status? More intelligence? Whiter teeth? You are obsessed with what is just out of reach. It is the itch you cannot scratch. Tortured by the principle that the more you can’t have something the more you desire it, you are never happy.

  There is no twoness about me. My life is seamless. I have all my wants in one basket and the daily wherewithal to pursue and enjoy them. I brook no frustration. (Indeed, what could better define frustration than a locked door? And what simpler remedy than a key?) My parameters may seem narrow but the world within them is bounded only by the imagination itself. I am as complicated and susceptible to error as all humans, but in the ways that matter I am as happy and indifferent as the beast in Abigail’s poem under that dark sky of hers.

  * * *

  My cocoon, rich with energy waves, releases the spore of a distant memory. I think of my father, who died of misadventure – of drowning, like the man in the cemetery, though in deeper water. Was this also what my aunt had protected me from? I had felt nothing, in any case, except a release from a sense of his disappointment. Perhaps, like Mr Stamp, he loved from afar. I refuse to have been shaped by him or her. Whoever I was and still am is all my own work, the result of knowing from an early age that I would have to hollow out a place for myself, the width of myself, and keep myself there. In this I have succeeded. I rarely think of him. My aunt, who never seemed especially happy with my father – as though she had simply inherited him on her sister’s death – always said he was ‘bad with his nerves’. Sleep then, sleep, I urge.

  In sleep I feel my father’s hard middle knuckle between my shoulder blades. He prods and loudly barks at me to answer his questions but my lips are sealed. It is days since I fled from Mrs Damato’s house, that fine uproar filling my ears. Now my father, his mind in a frenzy of suspicion, has found a small perfectly white sock jammed between the water pipes in my room. A souvenir, nothing more, though that explanation would hardly soothe this exploding man. My aunt bundles him from the room before things turn to a raging flurry of smacks. But now she grips my shoulders and makes me look into her own wild eyes. Things are going to change around here, she says.

  Our street has become a place of sadness and whispered voices.

  At night, beneath the dissolving layers of memory, I spy little Angela again for a worrying instant – lost and tearful, grimy and barefoot, stepping from the green of the railed-off park into the sudden shade of the cul-de-sac before her. Here she pauses, her face distorted by distress. The street is narrow, cobbled and mossy, its length darkened by overarching trees that stand like Grimm’s hideous giants with reaching arms and spindly fingers, fungi protruding from their damp recesses. And now she sees me drop from the sooty wall at the foot of the Damatos’ sloping garden, the kind older boy who showed her the coloured matches. Hope is kindled in her eyes. But I take one look at her and flee. Her concerns are no longer mine. Does she follow in slow pursuit? Perhaps she is herself being pursued. With uncertain shoeless gait she begins the gauntlet of this frightening street towards the gauzy sunlight some endless-seeming distance ahead, her wailing ignored by the unfriendly terrace dwellings along here, their backs turned to her, displaying only high, blackened outhouses.

  An ice-cream van sends out a familiar peal of bells, urging her on. Someone will save her. Is that what she thinks? I cannot know how she sees the world. I cannot know how many minutes it takes her to reach the end of the trees – only that the street ends as suddenly as it began, but this time with a road of moderately busy traffic, where little Angela is tossed into the air by a vehicle racing down the hill and struck again by a second racing up.

  Her bunny-rabbit is never found, and is henceforth a mystery.

  40

  I AM OUT OF SURPRISES. There are no twists to come. What follows is a sort of epilogue, though I don’t especially wish to dwell on the fallout surrounding poor Zoe, who died exactly two years ago today (marked by a notice placed by her parents in this week’s Sentinel). There is one thing. In an almost comical turn of events, she came this close to taking DC Roberts with her – he being first on the scene and a man who will heroically take it upon himself to burst into a girl’s flat after banging on the door and front window, which according to neighbours had been curtained for two, three or even four days. He was on his knees almost as soon as he set foot in the place, or so the story went. If the uniformed officer accompanying him had not been so quick off the mark – having seen the danger for what it was (she had been a firefighter in the forces) and managed to drag him out – he would have been a goner himself, according to the paramedics who screeched in only minutes later. True to form, the Sentinel missed that particular nugget, preferring to direct its unerring powers of misinterpretation on lurid revelation – Zoe’s ‘loneliness’, her ‘dependency’ on prescription drugs and alcohol, the discovery of her cat, dead in the hall (I can promise you she had no cat), its claw marks ‘allegedly’ visible on the inside of the front door.

  Towards the end of that morning, DS Monks (he is now an inspector) arrived at the office to bring the grave news about Zoe, offering the footnote about Roberts with a proper lack of drama, as if gas poisoning were all part of the job. He was tight-lipped on everything else. I doubted then that he was entirely convinced by my helpful trail of breadcrumbs from Zoe to Sharp; perhaps it was his superiors who later found it as irresistible as it need be and instructed him to wind things up. Whatever their misgivings about Zoe’s involvement, it was enough to be able to announce that they were not looking for anyone else in connection with Sharp’
s death. It took the national papers – the Sunday tabloids in particular returned in force – to spell out Zoe’s link with Sharp (if not quite with his death), describing her alternately as ‘spurned’ and ‘jealous’ or ‘smitten’ and ‘tragic’, between them pre-empting the coroner’s eventual open verdict on the question of whether Zoe had taken her own life (by the unusual method of asphyxiation by faulty boiler) while suffering from depression following the death of Sharp. This theory was partly predicated on the website history of Zoe’s laptop, which revealed recent research into the dangers of faulty heating appliances. Was it not possible, her father asked DS Monk (Zoe’s father made an admirable inquisitor) – indeed more than likely – that she was worried her faulty boiler was faulty but didn’t get further than looking up symptoms on the internet? Monks conceded that it was at least more than possible. One of Zoe’s book-group girlfriends came forward to confirm that there had been a passionate affair between Zoe and Sharp but that she had broken it off when she found out he had lied about having left his wife. Had Zoe gone back to him in recent times? She could not say. I myself was able to give evidence that Zoe had displayed erratic behaviour that seemed to me consistent with a therapist’s report confirming that Zoe had been receiving treatment for a mild depressive disorder for some years, but the coroner, often to be seen adjusting her glasses, seemed unswayed one way or the other. Mrs Sharp, with negligible consideration for the feelings of the deceased’s parents, gave curt evidence to the effect that Zoe was just the latest in a string of her husband’s infidelities and was probably the woman in a photograph that she had given to the police, who had done nothing with it, though she admitted, on further questioning, that only her husband had been clearly identifiable in the picture. The coroner shared Monks’s reasonable doubt that the prospect of a visit from the police to discuss the binoculars found in the back of Sharp’s car would have been enough to trigger thoughts of suicide, since there could be a more innocent explanation for the binoculars being there (and indeed DC Roberts had turned up an old police caution for Sharp, who some years previously had been caught engaging in a ‘sex act’ in the back of his car). At no point did the court allow itself to consider fear of prosecution or profound feelings of guilt as possible factors in Zoe’s death (since no authority had proved her culpable or blameworthy), though the newspapers had given ample space to evidence suggesting that she may have been present at his death or shortly afterwards. After all, Sharp’s watch and wallet were found in Zoe’s underwear drawers (oddly, his phone was never found – a pity, because who knew what deleted directory and call details might have been retrieved by police computer experts?). A golf club was discovered under her bed, though the police could not say with certainty that it was the murder weapon – and who could blame a girl living alone for keeping a golf club under her bed? Sharp’s leather holdalls were piled neatly, one upon the other, in the box room, but what did that mean? Nothing, conclusively.

  The coroner stuck to the facts, leaving the town to its whispering. And what whispering! Had Sharp simply gone back to his old flame Zoe when his wife kicked him out, and then the next morning pursued some unknown urgent business at the Cooksons’ empty house, where he had met his death at the hands of some unknown assailant? Perhaps he had told Zoe he was going for a run – after all, he had been wearing a tracksuit – but then taken his car! Could Zoe have suspected some sort of double dealing? Had she heard of his affair with Mrs Cookson (I’m afraid this was fast gaining currency as hard fact), followed him and then angrily laid about the scheming bastard on the Cooksons’ patio with a golf club? Or perhaps Mrs Sharp had exchanged further harsh words with her husband that Saturday morning (he might well have returned home to talk some sense into her), followed him to the Cooksons, assumed the worst of Mrs Cookson – perhaps even rightly, and as far as the town was concerned, there seemed no reason not to – and continued their fight from the previous night, though this time perhaps Mrs Sharp had reached for a gardening hoe or similar deadly implement (a golf club seemed an unlikely thing to find in a garden). Some preferred to picture Zoe as the ‘spurned’ and ‘jealous’ woman in an alternative version of the above scenario – following the man who had refused to leave his wife for her and then killing him in a furious spasm of rage as he took his matching luggage out of the car with a view to lying low at this new lover’s house (i.e. Mrs Cookson, who in anticipation of Sharp being thrown out by his wife could have furnished him with a key) while she and her husband were away.

  I could go on. It was quite a puzzle. But the point now was that, the focus having shifted to Zoe’s inquest, the only people who doubted that Sharp had driven himself to the Cooksons and then been killed there were those who still doubted that it was a murder at all. Hadn’t even the police first thought the man was a drifter who had come to grief by falling down drunk over patio stones?

  I went to both funerals (must they always come along in twos?). Zoe’s was loyally attended despite the attempts of police, court and newspapers to stain her character. Sharp’s attracted an inordinate number of young female students, who sat to the rear of the crematorium along with three or four dishevelled grown-ups with unshined shoes whom I assumed to be Sharp’s work colleagues. Abigail was thankfully nowhere to be seen; nor was Sharp’s brother. Mrs Sharp and her sister seemed to have turned up merely to demonstrate a determination to remain tearless.

  Mrs Sharp had asked if I would go, though we had little to say afterwards. The one thing that surprised me (though perhaps it shouldn’t have) was how my antipathy towards Sharp had disappeared as rapidly as my ‘love’ for Abigail. That dawning reality was like waking from a frightening illness of the mind, a sort of madness. It wasn’t difficult to recognize the same illness in Zoe, whose infatuation for me had escalated into a willingness to cross lines. What sort of girl lures a man to dig up a forsythia with the cold plan to rob him of his house key? She said she wanted to help me. But what would have happened when she awoke from her madness?

  * * *

  Last Sunday morning, to mark the second anniversary of their daughter’s death, Zoe’s parents, family and friends gathered for a short memorial service at St Benedict’s chapel and laid flowers. Her younger sister, Emma, spoke of the nature of sisterhood and the human capacity for renewal. She is a teacher, married with a toddler, and is very different from Zoe. I wondered if she lived in town and on what street. I said that we all still missed Zoe terribly, and she said Zoe used to mention me often. Everyone from the agency was there except our new girl – another eastern European whose name is shortened to Tuni from something much longer. She is sweet and irresistible but ferociously competitive, which has made Josh raise his game. The bad news is that Katya is pregnant and may be leaving, notwithstanding the firm’s generous maternity provision. Her new husband, Evan, seems not to like me very much. I find that some men in particular are like dogs. I am a smell they can’t put their finger on, if I might be excused the unsavoury metaphor.

  I can’t say I haven’t had one or two anxious thoughts about Isobel (speaking of people who don’t like me very much), who might well have surfaced to harass the police with the ‘coincidence’ of two young estate agents from the same firm dying in their own flats only seventeen years apart. But she kept her distance. She has responded to my recent enquiries after her health and the progress of young Elizabeth at her expensive new school with an unexplained picture postcard from the Lake District. This may be as cordial as things will be between us.

  I’m sorry if this is beginning to sound like a family newsletter. Perhaps I just want to emphasize my feeling, in common with most people, that progress isn’t necessarily about change but about things turning out as we want them to. To this end I should report that the house on Raistrick Road is now owned by Damato Associates (snapped up for the asking price via Worde & Hulme) and, like its neighbours, has now been converted to student flats. Katya shifted the Cooksons’ place at the edge of town with surprising speed, given its notorious n
ew history. And, almost finally, a lovely Asian family has moved into 4 Boselle Avenue. I haven’t been to visit yet, but it is something to look forward to.

  After the memorial service broke up on Sunday I spent a couple of hours at the Perettis’. They finally settled on a Victorian terrace not unlike Abigail’s place, but bigger and sunnier and featuring a modern annexe for Mrs P that looks down on the park from the other side of the river. From Jason’s ‘studio’ in the loft, with a decent pair of binoculars, you can see straight into Abigail’s old attic (though, as I have said, I have never sought pleasure in that sort of thing). It’s an ideal situation for us all. Mrs P has access from the rear to the living spaces of the main house, while the upstairs belongs to the boys. Today the pair of them were in London for a football match. They are season ticket holders and never miss a home game. Mrs Peretti was downstairs, cooking ahead for the evening meal. I love the way she chatters to herself and to the dog. There is never any danger of her coming up and Pippo – yapping excitedly round the kitchen – is too small to climb the steps. It does not quite deliver the thrill of full immersion (which I have yet to attempt after Abigail), but what more pleasant way to help pass an otherwise sober Sunday? I found a bag of toffee eclairs hidden in Mr Peretti’s desk, and sat down with a file of impenetrable letters from his solicitor, before sifting through a set of dramatic photographs of Jason taking part in some kind of live art exhibition. I still haven’t got to the bottom of what Jason does (his studio is equipped mainly for working out and lying down). But there’s plenty of time. They are good people leading lives as interesting to me as to themselves.