The Discourtesy of Death

by William Brodrick

  In keeping with the ‘poetic’ nature of the request, Doctor Ingleby had made no reply. He’d smoothed his understanding into the skin of her hand. Long years of medical practice had taught him to say only what was necessary. She’d taken consolation in his silence because he’d not gone the route of so many others: explaining that her life had immense value; that depression had shifting shades; that light could come as unexpectedly as a flower in the forest.

  ‘The conversation changed our relationship,’ said Doctor Ingleby. ‘There was a new warmth. Peter had tried to shuffle me into position, which showed how little he understood my approach to death and dying, whereas Jenny – unknown to him – had simply made an honest appeal, respecting that I’m a doctor subject to professional guidelines and the law; and that I, too, had a right to make a choice rather than be ambushed by circumstances. She never raised the matter again.’

  And he watched her slowly change. He saw her reach for Peter’s hand. He saw them talking quietly, like old, worn companions, no longer troubled by shyness, the fear of rejection or the quick misunderstandings that plague every opening romance.

  ‘When the cancer diagnosis came through, she was shaken of course, initially, but Peter is right. Over time there was no profound change in her mood. In the depths, she was astonishingly calm. Unlike me.’

  For Doctor Ingleby had just made his own visit to the oncologist. He’d seen the shadow on the X-rays. He’d thought wistfully about the cigarettes, the cigars and the pipe. He’d loved his pipe. Bought a tremendous hand-carved thing from a shop in Ettal, a pretty Bavarian village where his wife had been born. He’d finally found a way of enjoying tobacco and all along the damned stuff had set out to kill him.

  ‘It was Jenny who helped me,’ he said, laughing. ‘Said the remainder of my life had immense value and that moods change like the weather. Our eyes met and I thought of those flowers around the corner.’

  In fact, Doctor Ingleby’s prognosis was the opposite to that of Jenny. It turned out there was some hope. He felt lucky. He even felt oddly guilty: it just wasn’t fair. Jenny had never touched the weed in her life, not even as a curious adolescent. She’d been hounding her father for years, but he wouldn’t listen. He was still smoking. And now even her mother had started – hating it but persevering anyway with dogged resolution. But it was Jenny who’d got the rogue cells, not them; and not Doctor Ingleby. Jenny who’d already been robbed of so much.

  ‘Life is not fair, Father.’

  Anselm agreed.

  ‘And the wicked prosper,’ he added. There was something in the Psalms about that. ‘I don’t have any answers, save to say that discovering peace of mind has nothing to do with finding out why.’

  Doctor Ingleby raised his glass. He’d liked that one. But he had a sort of troubled rejoinder:

  ‘Perhaps it doesn’t, but do you know, ever since Jenny died, I’ve been asking myself: how did she do it? How did she discover peace of mind in the worst of all circumstances?’

  His soft, moon-shaped eyes were gentle and far seeing. He didn’t expect Anselm to reply because he hadn’t quite finished:

  ‘I appreciate you may not like this, that it might wound your sense of the sacred, but from my point of view – speaking as someone who was there as a friend and doctor – I’d say it’s because she’d organised her own way of dying. She felt in control, even if she wasn’t. It’s what makes the outcome bearable for Peter … and Michael … and all the others. It helps us all accept a little more easily what Timothy has done … it mitigates his responsibility. Doesn’t that make it easier for you?’

  The doctor paused, giving Anselm his chance to contribute, but he didn’t take it. As if to fill the hiatus, the cloud began to break. Sunlight appeared like fire without flame eating away at the edge of torn paper. Patches of blue appeared. The shadows along the walls took a sudden depth. Doctor Ingleby touched the bottle and Anselm made a nod.

  ‘I listened with admiration to how you led Peter through Jenny’s final months,’ said Doctor Ingleby, pursuing his argument, pouring slowly. ‘But the more I listened the more I thought, He’s hiding something. You were at pains to show that Jenny might not have chosen death … even though everything said by Peter demonstrated that the choice had been made – her peace of mind, her resignation to the cancer, her stable mood. For some reason you won’t let the fire go out. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes, you are.’

  ‘Why, Father? Is it the burning bush? Your reverence for life?’ He’d made it sound like a species threatened with extinction at the hands of lawless hunters. There was regret in his voice, and pity. Raising his glass, Anselm stared into the deep red wine.

  ‘Yes … and a reverence for death, and how we get there.’

  48

  It was Anselm’s turn to be honest. Until this moment, he’d not been free to say what he knew. As in his days at the Bar, he couldn’t refer to anything he’d discovered until it was a matter of public knowledge. And even then, he could only go so far. But Peter – and indeed Doctor Ingleby – had now repeated the substance of Jenny’s testimony with one or two critical omissions – elements unknown to everyone (it seemed) save Anselm and, perhaps, Peter. Now was the time for Anselm to speak. To a large extent his secret explained his paralysis.

  ‘I’d been sent to fill the chaplain’s shoes at Ipswich Hospital,’ said Anselm. ‘Just for a week. One of the nurses asked if I’d see a young woman who was paralysed and suffering from terminal cancer. She’d come in for some routine tests and her father had asked if someone wise could persuade her to remain in hospital rather than go home.’

  Doctor Ingleby meshed his fingers, leaning them on the edge of the table. A very light breeze flicked the edges of the cloth.

  ‘I did my best, but I didn’t put my heart into it,’ confessed Anselm. ‘My mother had died of cancer. She’d decided to stay at home, too. It was what the French call a “strong” time – for her and for me. We both learned a great deal in those final weeks … about how to live and how to die … so I understood Jenny’s longing. I rather think my experience did the opposite to what Michael intended … I all but sent her home with a blessing.’

  The mutual understanding opened a sort of door between Jenny and Anselm. No sooner had Anselm finished speaking when she blurted out a request. Would Anselm keep a secret? She had something shocking and surprising to say. The room was dark save for a small bedside lamp, bent low to reduce the glare. There were tulips in a vase. The door was ajar. It was quite silent save for the sporadic chat of a nurse pushing a trolley of medicines along the corridor outside.

  ‘She told me about her relationship with Peter, her early exile from his life, and Timothy, whom she’d lost after the fall … everything … through to the hopeless agreement with Peter, the clumsy mask and her conversation with you.’ Anselm broke off. ‘She admired you enormously. She found you compassionate and wise.’

  Doctor Ingleby received the compliments with a nod of gentle rebuff. His eyes were creased with foreboding.

  ‘This is three days before she died,’ he calculated.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Anselm.

  Anselm had listened to Peter’s testimony, finding it knitted hand in glove with what Jennifer had said to him. Same for her account of Doctor Ingleby’s earlier disclosure about finding flowers in a forest. But there was one vital difference. Jennifer had said something to Anselm that she hadn’t said to anyone else.

  ‘She was more transparent with me, I think, than she was with Peter,’ ventured Anselm. ‘It happens. Sometimes it’s easier to open your heart to a stranger. But what Peter doesn’t know is that his opening out towards her, his coming home, had a very gradual effect on how Jenny viewed her condition and – latterly – the approach of cancer.’

  She wanted to be with him, Anselm explained, as if it couldn’t get any more simple or silly than that. She’d begun to experience a strange kind of romance, even though she couldn’t move; even though her cells were breaking dow
n. A belligerent will to live had begun to rise out of her decision to die. Doctor Ingleby nodded. He’d seen the same thing. But Anselm stalled. His eyes drifted to the ruins opposite. Light played upon the broken walls, picking out dimples in the stone. Most of the dressed masonry had been hauled away. It took a trained eye to know what had once been there; its proportions, the majesty of art through simple lines soaring high into the sky. In a peculiar way, nothing had been lost. He blinked and fell quiet, hearing Jenny’s voice again as she spoke in the half-light.

  ‘A while ago, if you’d asked me if I was ready to die, I’d have said, “Yes”. If it was allowed, I’d have filled in the forms and taken the tablet, if there was one. And I’d have done it because I thought it was better that way. Better for everyone. They’re all waiting for me to go. They’re all frightened to live normally until I’ve gone, as if it was tactless to be happy among the dying. No one can live as they ought and might. I thought I could set them all free. Give each of them a further seven months of ordinary life.’

  ‘What about this will to live, Jenny?’ asked Anselm.

  ‘I was prepared to let it go … after all, look how much time I’ve got left … look at how reduced I am. What would it matter? What’s the value of what I’d be throwing away? What would I be losing?’

  Anselm was meant to say “Nothing” or “Not much” but he simply watched her from his shadow, unnerved by the terrible stillness of her body. The limbs that wouldn’t move. The torso rising and falling with each slow respiration. It was like a strange shell, inhabited but abandoned at one and the same. She was in bed, slightly elevated, her face caught by a fugitive light. A kind of mischief played upon her lips.

  ‘But now?’ prompted Anselm.

  ‘Now?’ she replied. ‘I want my life. I was ready to die before but now I want my life. I know that in one way it’s broken, disappointing, limited, worthless, empty and insignificant … but it’s mine. It’s all I’ve got. I’m still me. And I know it will soon become messy and painful and frightening, but I still want it. I want to live what I’ve got … do you understand? It’s as valuable to me now as it ever was. I’m still … full of something … and it can be exhilarating, despairing, violent and peaceful – every state you can think of – and I just want to keep hold of it … for as long as possible.’

  She was pleading with Anselm as if she required a licence from some credit-rating authority to prove that her final months were worth clinging onto, in themselves for what they were, and not for what they might be worth to anyone else.

  ‘I do understand,’ replied Anselm, crushed and humbled, because he didn’t know. He didn’t know what it was like to be utterly stripped down so that all that remained was something essential and intangible: the brute fact of existence, known through an infinite shading of mood, thought and feeling.

  ‘Why have you changed your mind, Jenny?’ he asked, after a while.

  ‘In part because of Peter; in part because of you.’

  ‘Me?’ Anselm was astounded. He’d just sat there and listened.

  ‘What you said about your mother wanting to stay at home. How you learned together about living and dying.’ She appraised him gratefully. ‘I’m a mother, too. Whatever I’ve lost along the way, I’m still a mother. I’ve forgotten who I was to my son. I’ve not helped him at all … but you made me think that I could still be someone for him. That the little I’ve got could still be shared. I’m desperate to see him.’

  Anselm sipped some wine, noting Doctor Ingleby’s unease.

  Coming away from Polstead to the hospital had been a little like going to a monastery (Jenny had said). It was the first time she’d been away for any length of time. And, short though her stay had been, she’d viewed her life differently, she’d found other certainties. She’d even met a monk and got a fresh perspective on parenting. Before leaving the next morning, she’d handed him a letter. It’s for my uncle, she’d explained. He’s a vicar and I’ve ignored him because I was angry and didn’t have anything to say, but now I do; would you post it please? And – if at all possible – could you smuggle yourself into my family? Are you allowed? I’ll invite you. No one understands one another; there’s a lot of resentment, pretence and disappointment. We need someone to begin pulling us back together. An outsider. You see, my partner’s a sort of soft-spoken Jack Bauer … have you seen 24? Well, there’s this counter-terrorist unit …

  ‘A week later, I called up to check how she was doing,’ said Anselm. ‘A boy answered the phone. It was Timothy. And he told me very simply that unfortunately his mother was dead. I was instantly suspicious.’

  After reflecting for several days, Anselm became convinced that something terrible had happened. Cancer was, of course, the most obvious explanation, but Anselm couldn’t forget Jenny’s drive, her hopes and plans for the next few months. Her conviction. Her desperation to see Timothy. Not knowing any of the family history, and only knowing Peter Henderson’s reputation as a bold thinker, Anselm’s tentative assessment was that Peter Henderson had been luring Jenny into accepting her own voluntary death; that Jenny had come home and told him of her change of heart; and that he’d overruled her somehow … the precise mechanism being covered up by a doctor who’d agreed to conceal an assisted suicide. Precisely why Peter Henderson would want to kill a woman who only had seven months to live had left Anselm bewildered. But that didn’t remove the stark reality that Jenny was dead and the starker question that it raised: had she been murdered?

  There was, of course, nothing Anselm could do. The cause of death had been properly certified by a medical practitioner. He was left – on the face of things – with a completely unfounded misgiving. And it wasn’t until an article appeared in the Sunday Times two years later drawing attention to Anselm as an offbeat investigator that someone wrote to Larkwood’s Prior on Jenny’s behalf.

  ‘As soon as I met Peter Henderson, I knew he hadn’t killed her,’ said Anselm. ‘I realised I’d misread the signs. But at least I knew that she hadn’t died of cancer. I began to think about Michael and Emma, alone or in concert, loving parents driven to an extreme measure by an extreme misunderstanding. I never contemplated for one moment that Jenny’s killer was the boy she’d gone home to help with the little she had left in the bank; the boy who needed a handle onto living and dying; the boy who still doesn’t know that his mother changed her mind.’

  Timothy wasn’t alone. Jenny hadn’t had time to tell Doctor Ingleby. She hadn’t had time to talk to her uncle about surprises. She hadn’t had time to start smuggling Anselm into the family chaos. She hadn’t even begun to share her thoughts with Timothy.

  ‘Like you, I’ve always felt strangely guilty, though I had better cause,’ said Anselm, narrowing his gaze. Much of the cloud had drawn back. Afternoon sunshine had grown strong, removing the dimples from the ruined walls. The stone was bright and hard on the eye. ‘In a way, I sent Jenny to her death. I know it’s irrational. But if she’d stayed in hospital, none of this would have happened. And now I’m poised to demolish the family she asked me to help rebuild. The irony has left me dumbstruck.’

  Doctor Ingleby ate quietly and thoughtfully. When his plate was quite clean, he laid down his knife and fork in the careful manner of a man who’d just completed a complex surgical procedure. He wiped his mouth on a paper serviette and said, ‘I filled in the certificate of death. I did so knowing that what I wrote was false. I knew it wasn’t cancer. I’m at the very centre of this tragedy. I won’t keep that kind of secret on my conscience.’

  Doctor Ingleby reached inside his green overcoat and withdrew an envelope from a pocket. Handing it to Anselm he said, ‘This is my confession. Take it to the police. It’s your right, after all you’ve done for Jenny. It’s also your duty. After that, be at peace. I’m the one who must walk alone down the long wide road, not you.’

  The meal and the conversation were over. The monk and the doctor packed up the hamper, folded down the table and snapped shut the canvas chairs. T
hey didn’t speak again until they’d reached Doctor Ingleby’s Sunbeam Singer Chamois.

  ‘Goodbye, Father,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Give me the rest of today to sort out my affairs, will you? I don’t want the police to come and find my flowerbeds in a mess. There’ll be pictures in the paper and I’d like everything to be in order.’ He sighed, leaning on the car door. ‘I’ve spent over forty years in medical practice … in the surgery … at patients’ houses … at the hospice. And do you know, after all that, what’s best and true of me lies in a garden shed. Odd, isn’t it?’

  49

  On the way to Martlesham Anselm and Mitch were silent. In effect they were delivering the bomb that would blow apart the Henderson and Goodwin families, their myths and best intentions. Anselm had feared the responsibility of this moment and now he was simply a messenger.

  ‘I didn’t expect to see you so soon,’ said Olivia, when Anselm entered her office.

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘You’ve solved your case?’

  ‘No, I’ve come with a letter.’

  ‘Another?’

  ‘This one, I imagine, is the last.’

  Olivia opened the envelope with the nail of her thumb and withdrew Dr Ingleby’s confession. She read it quietly showing no emotion.

  ‘What’s a moonshadow?’ she asked, looking up.

  ‘Cancer.’

  She reached for a black overcoat. ‘I think I’d better ask him a few questions.’

  Doctor Ingleby lived off the Barking Road, south of Needham Market. His house was modern and small. Ribbed mauve tiling with skylights capped walls that framed an abundance of glass. He was evidently a man who liked the light. Huge windows looked onto a large garden of shrubs and flowers enclosed by a high, trimmed hedge. To one side lay a tended vegetable patch, neatly banked and furrowed with sections covered over by sheets of black plastic. Like Anselm, the doctor had prepared for winter. Muffled voices from inside the house drifted over the lawns and gravel driveway … music … something operatic. A window was open. Reaching the front door, Olivia pressed a white buzzer.