Fictional Lives

by Hugh Fleetwood

  (They really did have nothing in common, however. He was a quiet retiring man whose considerable passion was entirely directed to his work; she was an acid, rather aggressive woman whose passion, if any, was directed to the dyeing of her hair and the sharpening of her tongue. He liked Mozart; she liked ‘light music’. He hated television; she professed to adore it; especially westerns, and soap operas. He, of course, loved nature; she—going almost as far as Miss Stein—told him, when he pointed out a laburnum in the garden one day, ‘A tree is a tree, Mr Drake,’ and scarcely glanced at the beautiful flowering thing.)

  They would have made an odd couple if they had married; and Walter had difficulty in imagining them lying in bed together, going out together, or going on holiday together. (Though maybe they wouldn’t have gone on holiday together, since Mrs Stein didn’t like leaving London; or even West London.) But for all his difficulty he was convinced that they would have made, nevertheless, a happy couple. Indeed, he told himself, they would have made an ideal couple….

  Their relationship continued then, more or less unchanged, for twelve years; until, that is, Walter’s great gloom settled over him. When it did, two things happened. One was that the author, who hadn’t had any sort of affair, or even sex, for the previous three years, suddenly found his physical attraction to Anna Stein becoming overwhelming—every time he saw her, or just smelled the scent of the soap she used, he wanted not only to embrace her, but to cling to her, to kiss her, and to hold her thin body against his own—and the other was that having despaired of his career, and conceded the field to fools, though he did so want his red-haired housekeeper, he also despaired of his love; and realized that the prospect of individual contentment was barred to him forever.

  He made, therefore, at the instant of deciding to write his autobiography, another decision; which was that for the time it took him to complete the book, he would see as little of Mrs Stein as possible.

  He locked his study door; he left notes for her; and he ignored, when he did see her, the expression on her face; which was either one of irritation for what she considered his preciousness (‘What are you writing, Mr Drake?’ she asked mockingly one day. ‘A masterpiece?’)—or one of deep hurt. (‘It’s a bit late to decide I disturb you,’ she told him, with an attempt at mockery, another day; after she had rattled at his study door for five minutes, and demanded to be let in on the excuse that she had to clean the windows.) He wasn’t certain which that expression was; and he tried not to think about it.

  The day he finished the first draft of his book—three months ago now—he also went to see his solicitor, and made a will leaving all he possessed to Mrs Stein.

  Which would, in some small way, he hoped—as he got to the post-office, and handed over the neatly wrapped manuscript—make up for his having so neglected her in his Life. For his having hardly mentioned her at all—just making the occasional passing reference—and worse, for his having passed over entirely the love he had always felt for her.

  Though, he told himself, as he started to walk, for the last time, back towards his house, she probably wouldn’t mind his dishonesty—his not having made her one of the facts of his life—too much. For even assuming she read the book—which was a large assumption—she would understand why he had made the omission. She had always understood him….

  It was a quarter to five when he reached home; and at five o’clock he was ready for the final deed.

  He had hoped, when he was younger, that before he died he would have time to destroy not only all his personal papers, his manuscripts, and his letters, but everything he owned; so that after his death the only thing that remained of him would be his life—his novels. When he had decided to kill himself, and write the autobiography, he had—by leaving behind both his real, unrecognized life, and that other book, which people would take for his real life—modified his ideas a little. But he had modified them in no other way, and his intention of destroying all the rest of the so-called evidence of his existence was as firm as ever.

  Which had led him to the conclusion that the best way to end his time on earth was to burn down the house, with himself inside it. This did of course mean that Anna Stein would inherit, in the way of real estate, only a large garden and a pile of ashes; but that, he was afraid, was just one of those things. Besides, the land by itself would be worth a fair amount.

  He hoped, when thinking of the precise details of his death, that he would—as he believed was generally the case—be overcome and killed by smoke and fumes, rather than actually burned alive. But even were the worst to happen, he told himself as he went into his study, walked over to the fireplace, and deliberately kicked two large flaming logs on to the hearth-rug—on which he had stacked a number of manuscripts—his agony wouldn’t last very long. No more than a couple of minutes, surely….

  He left his study, walked out into the wood-panelled hallway, up the staircase to the first floor, and into his bedroom. He lay down on his bed.

  He tried, stretched out there, to think of his past; of his parents, of his childhood, of boat rides taken on summer lakes, of walks through the Black Forest. But either because he was too intent on catching the first whiff of smoke from downstairs, or because he had spent the whole day—not to say most of the last nine months—reviewing his past, and had had enough of it, none of the images he sought came to him; and he eventually settled first—as his eyes began to water, and he did at last catch the scent of burning wool, and paper—on a contemplation of the world that he was leaving—the world that had not heeded a voice crying ‘There is a way’, and was controlled by Fools who were victims, and who made others victims, of their fear and egoism—and after that, on a final but longer contemplation of his feelings for Anna Stein. Why had he cared so much for that odd woman? Was it only because he felt that they were each of them, in their different ways, refugees from the reality they had been born into? Or was it because she, so totally different from him in background, temperament, beliefs, was, nevertheless, a kind of physical manifestation of what he felt within? He didn’t know. Possibly both these explanations were valid; or possibly neither. Possibly it was just a matter of his being sexually attracted, for whatever reason, to a thin harsh woman somewhat older than himself; or possibly, even—though this was the least pleasant of all the alternatives—that he hadn’t actually loved or wanted Mrs Stein at all, and had simply used her idealized presence as an excuse for not committing himself to anyone….

  That anything, at this point, could have made him change his mind about what he was doing—or have taken his mind off Anna Stein; whose image, regardless of the explanation of his feelings for her, had the effect on him, as his eyes, throat and nose really began to hurt, of a tranquillizer, or of a gentle calming guide who supported him as he ascended his funeral pyre—never, for a moment, occurred to him. Yet, a very short time later, something did make him change his mind. Though it made him think more than ever of Mrs Stein….

  He was, as he had hoped, on the point of losing consciousness. The house, with all its wood, and carpets, and draughts, had really caught. His room was full of smoke, and was very hot. He was coughing, choking. He heard a great noise of cracking and breaking, and of things exploding; and he realized that something peculiar had taken place; the flames had leapt up the stair well, and the top of the house was burning as fiercely as the ground floor. More fiercely, for the moment, than his own floor. Maybe, he thought, as he felt himself sinking into a thick, foul cloud—a cloud that seemed to be emanating from inside him—and as he gasped for the last remaining traces of oxygen in the room, before the floor collapsed, or his bed caught fire, the ceiling would fall on him…. It was at this moment that he heard the scream. For just a second he thought he was imagining things—or that the noise had come from outside. But then, as he heard it again, he knew that he hadn’t imagined it, that it wasn’t coming from outside—and that it was the scream of Anna Stein.

  He didn’t think; he didn’t have to. Mrs Stein, hi
s beloved Mrs Stein, was in the house. She must have come for some reason, though she had told him yesterday that she wouldn’t be in today, while he was at the post-office. She must have gone up to the little room on the top floor where she did her sewing and ironing—a little room at the back of the house whose light he wouldn’t have seen when he returned. And now she was trapped up there and was, because of him, in danger of being burned to death. Which mustn’t happen; which couldn’t happen. He had wanted to kill himself, not anyone else. And above all not her. He had to save her….

  He didn’t know how he got to the window. Nor how, having somehow found it in the smoke, he had the strength—having tried and failed to open it—to smash it with his bare hands, to knock out the jagged pieces of glass, and to climb onto the window ledge. He knew even less how, as he was about to jump from that window ledge, praying that he didn’t kill himself in the process, and that the big hydrangea bush beneath would break his fall, he remembered, or saw, that there was a drainpipe running down the side of the house, and he managed to grab it and climb, slide down into the garden. All he did know was that he had to get the ladder that was kept in the garden shed, that he had to put it up against the side of the house, and that he had to save Mrs Stein. He had to save her….

  He became aware, as he pulled himself out of the bush, of a number of people standing in the garden, their faces lit by the flames. Some were shouting, some pointing, and one was holding a camera. He became aware of himself shrieking hysterically, though he could hardly form the words, ‘Call the fire brigade,’ and of someone yelling back ‘We have.’ He became aware of his rushing, stumbling, staggering to the shed, of his finding other people there already pulling out the ladder, and of their all dragging it to the back of the house; on the top floor of which, leaning out of a small window, screaming and screaming and screaming—Walter hadn’t known it was possible to scream in such a way—was Anna Stein. And finally he was aware, after his helpers had extended the ladder, leant it against the house, and been pushed violently aside by him, of his being half, or more than half way up that ladder when above him Mrs Stein, her hair literally flaming now—and her dress too—leaning right out of the window, and giving one more terrible scream, seemed to stretch out a hand towards him—and fell. Or maybe she jumped….

  He wasn’t sure, when he awoke in hospital next morning with his hands bandaged, what Mrs Stein had done. Nor did the spectacular photograph, that was in every daily newspaper, and on the front page of most—a photograph that showed a middle-aged man, dressed in a grey suit, standing on a ladder with blood running from his hands, reaching out in vain for a thin blazing body, its face contorted with terror, that was falling past him—make the matter any clearer. All he was sure of—and it made the precise nature of the fall unimportant—was that Anna Stein was dead; and that he had killed her.

  He had killed her. He had killed her. He told himself this again and again as he lay in his hospital bed. He told himself this as he answered a phone-call—he had been about to call himself—from his publishers, and having listened to their condolences, and to their expressions of relief that he at least was all right, told them that they would, in the next day or two, be receiving a manuscript from him; a manuscript that was under no circumstances to be opened or looked at, and was to be returned instantly to him. He told himself this as he spoke to the police, and recounted how he had gone out to the post-office just before five, how he had walked back to his house, built up the fire in his study, and then, feeling weary, had gone to his bed to rest for an hour or so; and how, woken by the smoke, he had heard Mrs Stein screaming, and had realized she had come in while he had been out. And he told himself this as he spoke to the reporters who besieged the hospital, and he repeated and repeated—which was why he agreed to speak to them; it was the very least he could do for the poor woman’s memory—that Anna Stein hadn’t ‘just’ been his housekeeper. She had been far, far more. She had been—and he didn’t care how emotional it sounded—the only woman he had ever loved.

  Perhaps the tragedy happened in a slow week for news. Or perhaps there was something about it that appealed to newspaper proprietors. The reserved English writer and the refugee…. (Ah, and how he learned now the facts of Mrs Stein’s life!) Whatever the reason, within a week the story, and again that photograph, had appeared not only in English papers, but in the papers and magazines of half the world. And within a year Walter realized that those logs he had displaced from his hearth had ignited not only his house, but also the hitherto barely warm embers of his reputation. For his publishers, having at last a name to play with, and able to beat effectively on the drums of publicity, had reprinted a number of his books; and had brought them out—because of that publicity?—to greater attention and acclaim than their author had ever dreamed possible….

  To such attention and acclaim, indeed, that fairly soon Walter Drake had become something of a cult figure; and was well on his way to being considered a modern master. And as he saw his reputation growing, and the beliefs he had always passionately held being given the dues he thought they deserved, he even, very discreetly, started to lend his own scarred hands to the beating of the drums.

  Yet though, by the age of fifty-five, he had attained the position he had aspired to for so long, and though, especially among the young, his ideas had found a fertile ground in which to flourish, he was not, according to his own definition, a happy man.

  Nor, he told himself one day, as, after much deliberation, he built a fire in the study of his new house, and threw onto it the manuscript of his autobiography, was he ever likely to be.

  For he knew that whatever recognition he received, he would never be able to forget Mrs Stein and what he had done to her; and knew further, that though the world now hailed him as a wiseman, he would always, till the day he died, think of himself as a fool.

  The Power of Love?

  SHE KNEW WHY HE’D DONE IT; he was asserting his independence. Still, as she put the phone down, she was hurt. Not only because of the story, but also because of the way he had told it. There had been a note of glee in his voice; as if he had known he was hurting her, and had wanted to hurt her.

  ‘Basically it’s the story of a rich unattractive woman married to a younger man who plans to kill her to inherit her money and marry the woman he has been having an affair with for years.’

  ‘I imagine,’ she had said, ‘that the rich unattractive woman’s name is Fran, that her husband’s name is Gerhard, and the other woman’s name is Lucie.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Fran,’ he had protested, all righteous indignation. ‘Stop being paranoid.’

  Then he had laughed.

  Not for the first time, as she uncurled her little legs from the sofa, got up, and went to find a cigarette, she considered asking him to move; or even evicting him. Of course if she did he would really attack her, really savage her. But at least then she would have the satisfaction of knowing that his attack was that of the abandoned stray; that it was, in a sense, justified. Whereas to be bitten by a creature she had always given shelter to, had fed tid-bits to, and had doted on, would not only bring her no satisfaction, but would make her very wary of ever giving shelter to anyone else. Which would be a terrible state of affairs.

  She needed a pet about the place.

  Two minutes later, however, having lit a cigarette, having put on a record of some music by a young Polish composer she had just discovered, and having told herself she didn’t care that Gerhard, who would be home shortly, would berate her for doing both, she dismissed any such consideration from her mind. For one thing she knew that it was extremely unlikely that David would actually write that story; it wasn’t at all his genre. For another she did understand him, and realized it must be difficult for him to feel dependent on her. And for yet another, she couldn’t throw him out because of all the young men and women she had given shelter to in the past, he was the first who promised to be—who already was—something more than a lame dog. He
was the first, indeed, who promised to be a champion….

  Possibly, though, it was just this sense that she had, almost in spite of herself, picked a winner this time—and therefore couldn’t evict him—that made Fran feel, when Gerhard did come in, and she told him, as casually as she could, the plot of the book that David Chezzel was proposing to write, more hurt than ever. Not only hurt but also, absurdly, frightened. If it was not because of this, it was because after Gerhard, looking both angry and amused, had listened to her, he had told her that she knew he couldn’t stand to be in the house if she’d been smoking, or if she were playing her squeaks and bumps—and had gone out again.

  As he had left he had called, with a laugh, ‘I think David’s story is quite good. Though God knows why you’re helping him to write it.’

  *

  It had been a ridiculous thing to say, Fran told herself as she went to bed at eleven. (Gerhard wasn’t back yet.) Still, she hadn’t been able to help repeating it to herself all evening as she waited for her husband, made dinner for Cyrus, and thought again and again of that story; and couldn’t help repeating it to herself now as she lay alone between the sheets.