by Jon Teckman
A young policewoman walked towards me, clearing people out of the way so that more emergency vehicles could get through.
‘Can you tell me what’s happened, please, officer?’ I asked, my voice emerging as a thin, reedy squeak.
‘Yes, sir. There’s been what we call in the policing business a car crash,’ she replied. ‘Idiot thought he could beat the red light. We’ve been bloody lucky, mind – a second or two later and he’d have cut that bus clean in half. God knows how many casualties we’d have been looking at then.’
‘So is everyone all right?’ I asked, although I already knew that couldn’t possibly be true.
‘Everyone on the bus is,’ she replied. ‘Thank God. Driver’s got a few cuts and bruises, but nothing to worry about.’
‘The car driver? So he’s going to be OK?’
‘The car driver? Are you kidding me? You try driving into one of these bastards at sixty, mate. He’s jumped his last red light, that’s for sure. No, I meant the bus driver. He’s pretty shaken up, of course, but he’ll be fine in a day or two. Are you in this queue, sir?’ she added, keen to get back to the job in hand. ‘We’re going to have a job clearing this lot.’
I walked slowly back to my car, sat down and rested my head on the steering wheel, taking care not to depress the horn – and wept.
NEAR BRAINTREE, ESSEX
It was raining at Bennett’s funeral, as it always seems to be at funerals. Weddings, too, come to think of it. The service was at a small church in a village near Braintree where Bennett had been born and grown up until he was exiled to boarding school, aged seven. The congregation was small, too – just immediate family, a handful of friends and acquaintances and a few representatives from the firm, led by Bill Davis. Dai Wainwright was also enjoying a day out. Clearly he needed to verify Bennett’s death personally before he could close his HR file with a big black ‘DECEASED’ stamp and make sure that any unpaid bonuses were cancelled. Bennett’s mother was there, of course, looking confused and forlorn, standing with a man I assumed to be Bennett’s brother, who held an umbrella solicitously over her bowed head and hunched shoulders. Sandra was with them, shepherding her three boys, all dressed in matching deep blue suits, which would serve equally well for her cousin’s wedding the following weekend.
We joined the huddle of people filing into the church and found a couple of seats on the end of a row a few pews from the front. Bill and Dai sat down behind us and we exchanged stage-whispered greetings. Bill leaned forward across the back of the uncomfortable bench. ‘West, really glad you’re here. Listen, Bennett’s brother’s asked me if I’d say a few words on behalf of Askett Brown about, you know, what poor Joseph was like as a colleague, but it’s a bit embarrassing given how we parted company and everything. So I’ve told him you’ll do it. Hope that’s OK? I mean, you’ve known Bennett longer than anyone, haven’t you? Dai tells me the two of you joined AB on exactly the same day. I bet you’ve got a few stories of your time as trainees together, haven’t you? Nothing too near the knuckle, though, OK? Time and a place and all that.’
Natasha placed her hand on my thigh and squeezed it sympathetically, but I could see the amusement building in her eyes. ‘Go on, love,’ she whispered, ‘I bet you’ve got some great stories to tell about your old pal Joseph Bennett!’ In truth, the only anecdote I had from our halcyon days as young bucks learning the ropes together was hardly very amusing, even though it did give an accurate impression of the man we had definitely come to bury, not to praise.
It was our first day at Askett Brown. I’d been so keen to make a good impression that I hadn’t even sat down on the Tube to make sure I didn’t crease my new work clothes. I was scared to death as I walked into the office in my trainee accountant’s uniform of blue pinstripe suit, light grey tie and black brogues, proudly carrying the real leather briefcase my parents had bought me to celebrate my first day of work, complete with the solid brass, six-number combination lock and my initials – J. E. G. W – embossed in gold letters below the handle. It was almost entirely empty, of course, except for an over-ripe banana, a new Parker rollerball pen and an old scientific calculator I’d had since my schooldays. But no one else needed to know that.
Bennett was one of the first people I saw – all six foot plus of him, dominating the room as if to the manor born – completely at home even on his first day, dominating every conversation, oozing confidence from every Aramis-infused pore.
When I came back from lunch my briefcase, which I had left under my desk, was now lying on top and I could see as I got closer that the corners, which had been in mint condition when I left it, were now scuffed, as if it had been used as an impromptu cricket bat while I had been gone. Then I saw that something was wrong with the gold monogram. Someone had scratched out the ‘G’ – not just Tippexed it or covered it with a sticky label, but scratched it out, permanently and irreversibly defacing what had been my proudest possession for the five hours since my parents had given it to me that morning.
Of course, I couldn’t prove it was Bennett. Couldn’t prove that he’d been the one to turn Joseph Edward George West into just plain J.E.W. I didn’t have to. When he came back from lunch an hour later and the worse for several pints, he called everyone around to admire his handiwork. Inviting them to decide whether to laugh along with their new, self-appointed leader or condemn him for his hate crime. So they laughed, of course. No point getting on the wrong side of the alpha male on day one, was there?
I’ll never forget the look on my parents’ faces when I told them I’d left the briefcase on the Tube. Mum cried, while Dad just shook his head sadly as if this confirmed everything he’d ever thought about me. But it had still been better to tell a little white lie than to tell them the truth: that the gift they’d saved so hard to buy and had presented to me so proudly that morning was already swimming with the fishes down the Thames.
No, that probably wasn’t the right story for this occasion.
The vicar asked us to stand and the coffin made its sad journey down the central aisle, followed by Bennett’s mother leaning on his brother for support as if her own legs wouldn’t carry her, and then Sandra and the boys, her head held high, their shoulders weighed down by the tragedy that had struck their young lives. I wonder whether there’s a physical limit to the number of emotions one can feel at any one time. That day I felt guilty, anxious, tired, melancholy, frightened and a dozen more – each one burrowing into my consciousness.
Sandra and the boys sat down at the front next to Bennett’s mother and, after a few uninspiring words from the vicar, Nigel Bennett stood to pay his respects to his dead brother. The poor man tried his best but even on this saddest of days, he struggled to evoke any sense of fraternal closeness. There were no intimate family details or special nicknames to suggest youthful fun and good times; no amusing tricks played on each other or their parents. Just one quite chilling story about how his older brother had failed to stand up for him when he’d been bullied at school, preferring instead to stay in with the very boys who were doing the bullying. He spoke like a disengaged television reporter about Bennett’s accomplishments at every sport to which he had ever turned a hand, whilst also being a brilliant scholar and prize-winning church chorister.
He didn’t speak for long. After a few minutes, I heard him say ‘and now we’d like you to join us in singing Joseph’s favourite hymn and, after that, we’ll hear a few words from Joseph’s colleague and close friend, Joe West’.
Natasha couldn’t help snorting at this, but managed to cover it up as a manifestation of grief escaping through her nose. As the sparse congregation slipped self-consciously into ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ – an attempt so lacklustre and Godforsaken that I realised for the first time why the phrase ‘extraordinary rendition’ is often associated with programmes of state-sponsored torture – I tried to focus on what I would say. I had to choose my words carefully. I couldn’t bear to see a hypocrite staring back at me in the shaving mirror ev
ery morning – as well as an adulterer, coward and liar. Our bathroom wasn’t big enough for a party.
As the congregation tried valiantly to bring their song to a heavenly climax, I became aware of a disturbance at the back of the church. The background noise gradually rose from a polite murmur to an intense chatter and then a full-scale hubbub. The hymn petered out singer by singer until just one woman remained, blissfully unaware that hers was the last steadfast voice praising the Lord. Perhaps, I thought, she was deaf. She certainly sang as if she was.
Looking around, I immediately saw the cause of the commotion. A woman was walking down the central aisle of the church as if she was on the catwalk in Milan, wearing the kind of exclusive designer mourning apparel rarely seen outside of a Royal funeral or Goth wedding. Her simple black dress was short and cut tight around her thighs. Sleek black stockings drew the eye down to shiny black patent- leather shoes with three-inch heels. Removing my eyes, with some difficulty, from those legs, I looked up to where the apparition’s face had been obscured by a heavy black veil protruding out of a black pill-box hat. Encased in black from head to toe, she looked like Darth Vader after an expensive makeover. The phrase ‘Luke – I am your mother!’ arrived uninvited inside my head. The vision stopped a few rows behind me and took a seat at the end of the bench. The guy next to her, who I recognised from our Oil and Minerals Division, shuffled along to get even closer, grinning despite himself as if he’d won the Lottery. Two words could be heard now above the clamour, passing around the church like a rumour of war: ‘Olivia Finch!’
I could see Sandra talking animatedly with her erstwhile mother-in-law, presumably explaining to her who this woman was, why she was there and why the hell she shouldn’t be there. Nigel looked shell-shocked. The vicar talked excitedly with the organist, who may have been the only person in the room who didn’t recognise the Hollywood superstar. I suddenly felt a desperate need to go to the toilet, preferably on Alpha Centauri. The only person who retained any semblance of composure was Natasha, who prodded me in the side and whispered, ‘Oh my God! She’s here! Go on, Joe, you’d better say something. And no jokes – OK?’
Panic, trapped, terrified, abject, with an uncomfortably full bladder – I was feeling many things but an urgent need to make jokes wasn’t among them. I stumbled to the front of the church and stood beside Bennett’s coffin, fervently wishing to be somewhere else – anywhere else but here. I felt like Bugs Bunny staring down both barrels of Elmer Fudd’s shotgun. No, not Bugs Bunny – Bugs always got away. I was like that hapless halfwit Daffy Duck, and any second now Elmer was gonna blast every last feather from my scrawny body. Halfway back, the exquisitely dressed lady peered intently at me through the tight gauze of her veil. She cocked her head slightly to one side like an inquisitive spaniel, then lifted the dark mesh to get a better view.
Her first scream filled the church like thunder trapped in a barn. Each of the next three was louder and shriller than the last. After the second, the vicar, demonstrating the reactions of an octogenarian sloth, threw himself to the floor, as if convinced that the wrath of God had finally caught up with him. By the fourth, I imagine, he’d vowed never again to help himself to even a small percentage of the collection plate.
All eyes were now on Olivia, while I stood pinned to the spot like a frog in a science lab, scarcely able to breathe as I was dissected by her screams. Slowly she stood and stepped into the aisle. She advanced towards me, her veil still raised, her face a mask of confusion. Then she stopped and stood rooted to the floor in the middle of the church like a misplaced statue. Starting in a whisper that quickly rose to a statement, she looked straight at me, slowly raising a finger in accusation: ‘Oh my God, it’s him. It’s you, isn’t it? It is you.’
Only her eyes moved, swivelling in her head like Ophelia’s in a drugs project production of Hamlet. I felt the ancient stone walls closing in around me as she inched her way forwards, closing the gap between the two of us with each tiny step. ‘Oh English,’ she said, ‘oh my darling, lovely Englishman, what’s it like? What’s it like on the other side?’
Suddenly remembering how to move my legs, I shimmied behind the coffin, hoping to confuse people about whether Olivia was talking to me or my namesake in the wooden box. She was still moaning to herself as she tottered forward, asking over and over again what was happening on the other side, like someone who had mislaid their TV remote control.
Just when I thought the game was up – just when Olivia was almost close enough to reach out and touch me to test whether I was real or a ghostly apparition – I saw the expression in those mesmerising eyes go blank and every drop of colour drain from her face. And then, confronted by the spirit of her dead lover right there on the stage beside the coffin he was supposed to be occupying, Olivia’s composure, decorum, and finally her legs, gave way and she tumbled in a dead faint to the floor.
Her head made a disconcerting clang as she hit the ground. She lay there for a moment not moving, her eyes open but expressionless. For one brief, horrible moment I thought that she, too, might be dead. That my selfish, vile, casual, unthinking act of adultery was turning into a massacre of the innocents.
A small crowd gathered around Olivia, and a man I didn’t know, claiming some knowledge of first aid, felt the prostrate actress’s wrist for a pulse and, having found one and established that she was still alive, started to loosen her clothing. An old lady stopped him when she felt that Olivia’s clothes were quite loose enough and a posse of sturdy mourners was enlisted to carry her out of the church to the sanctuary of fresh air. The vicar announced in a shaky voice that everyone should proceed immediately to the cemetery for the committal. In the midst of the chaos, Natasha appeared at my side, grabbed my arm and led me out of the church.
‘What was all that about?’ she said as we walked towards the cemetery. ‘What a nutcase! It was as if she could see Bennett up there with you. Utterly bizarre! She is either a bloody good actress or a total psycho. Perhaps she’s both. She looked like she was going to attack you just for being so close to her beloved Bennett. I still can’t believe that someone like her could be so hot for a total wanker like him.’ She paused as she realised that we were now standing at the graveside, next to Nigel Bennett and his weeping mother. ‘No disrespect,’ she added.
After the coffin had been placed in its deep dark hole and a few sad sods of earth had been tossed onto it by Bennett’s family, we made our excuses and left, declining the family’s kind offer of wine and sandwiches at the local Conservative Club. Olivia had been spirited away by her driver who had taken the sensible decision that, for her, the funeral was over. Natasha drove us slowly home through heavy traffic and under leaden skies, chattering incessantly about the events of the day. My head ached and my spirit was weary. I wanted to be a child again – to be able to curl up with my head on my mother’s lap while she made everything all right. Most of all, I wanted this all to be over. For all the lies and deceit to end. For my life to return to the dull, routine ordinariness I had always enjoyed before.
MILL HILL, NORTH LONDON
For a few days after the funeral, things were quiet. Every day I left the house early to avoid Natasha’s questions about what I thought had happened in the church and why I seemed so jumpy. Every day I waited for the phone call telling me that Olivia had recovered from her shock sufficiently to tell Buddy – or her shrink or the press – the whole sorry tale. And every day I’d arrive home late from work, drink a glass or two of wine while sitting silently through whatever Natasha was watching on TV, then lie awake long into each interminable night, wondering what I would do and where I would go after the inevitable shit hit the inevitable fan.
Then we did get some news. One morning, after another night when I’d arrived home from work long after Natasha had gone to bed, she greeted me at breakfast with a big kiss, hardly able to contain herself, dying to tell me the latest developments in what she still referred to as the ‘Bennett Affair’.
‘Did
you hear the terrible news about Olivia Finch?’ she asked, handing me a cup of strong black coffee.
I felt the blood freeze in my veins. My mind filled with images of Olivia lying naked on the bathroom floor of a fancy hotel, her crumpled body surrounded by empty pill bottles, blood leaking from self-inflicted wounds, her eyes wide with grief and shock, tears frozen forever on that sweet, innocent face. ‘No,’ I said, ‘what is it? What’s happened? What’s she done?’
‘Well, what do Hollywood stars usually do when their lives and careers are in ruins?’ Natasha asked.
‘I don’t know. What is it?’ I repeated, the panic rising, strangling any attempt at rational thought. ‘She hasn’t done anything stupid, has she?
‘Pretty stupid, yes,’ Natasha said, then paused, deepening my feelings of impotence and concern, before adding with a certain amount of relish, ‘she’s only gone and joined the bloody Scientologists!’ She brandished one of her glossy magazines in my direction. ‘I read it in here. She’s convinced now it wasn’t Bennett who shagged her that night in New York.’
I had stopped breathing some time ago and was now as desperate for air as I was for Natasha to miss the guilt tattooed across my face. ‘No?’ I managed to ask without inhaling or exhaling.
‘No! According to this, she reckons it was L. Ron Hubbard himself who “embraced” her in the hotel, then miraculously manifested himself at Bennett’s funeral. That was why she had such a fit. When she looked at you and screamed, she actually thought she was looking at old Ronnie. Isn’t that hilarious! Here, look at this. It’s on pages eight to twenty-four but the best bits are from page sixteen onwards.’
I took the magazine from her and did as I was instructed, skimming through pages of froth about Olivia Finch’s extraordinary rise and precipitous fall, all beautifully illustrated with photographs from every stage of her life and career. There she was as a baby, then as a strikingly pretty young girl at a talent contest, and so on through her early film roles, her romances, her engagements and her awards. The narrative ran out at page twenty with the remaining pages filled with more pictures, including some recent, grainy ones of Olivia walking around the walled gardens of some kind of clinic. I flicked through quickly to the end, then handed the magazine back to Natasha. ‘Shame,’ I said in reference to Olivia’s terrible decline. Or perhaps I was talking to myself.