Keep Me Alive

by Natasha Cooper

  More buildings could be seen in the distance with trees behind them, and in the foreground a flowery meadow sloped gently towards a narrow river. Below that, in the centre of the frame, a scrolled gilt cartouche announced the unpretentious name of the place: Manor Farm. Trish had never heard of the painter, and assumed he had been an amateur, probably working at the beginning of the twentieth century.

  ‘Those are thought to be the original apple trees,’ Susannah said, sniffing. ‘Even though they have to be the reason we got our name, I didn’t mind when Will sold them and the land. But it was different when the house went. I don’t think I’ll ever get over that. It was … well, home really. In a way that this never will be. Or anywhere else.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Susannah produced a watery smile. ‘It’s much worse for him because he feels so guilty. All the time. I can see it in everything he does. That’s why I was chuffed when I thought he was in love, even though it drove me mad when he ran the car dry of petrol and put bleach in the dishwasher instead of Rinseaid. I thought something was going right for him at last. Now this!’

  ‘Mum, Mum. What are we having?’

  Susannah stared at Trish for a moment, then scrubbed her eyes on the bottom of her apron, braced herself and turned to say brightly, ‘Spaghetti, darling.’

  ‘I’d better leave you to it,’ Trish said, watching four small children clambering up on to the oak chairs. They looked so much the same age that she couldn’t believe they all belonged to Susannah. Rosy with health and noisy with excitement, all four had the kind of confidence that comes only from a settled existence with contented parents, the kind of experience Kim Bowlby would never have.

  ‘You will tell me as soon as you hear anything, won’t you?’ Susannah said, jerking Trish back into the present.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, trying to forget Kim.

  ‘And could you explain it all to Rupert on the way out? I can’t with all this lot earwigging.’

  Susannah’s husband walked Trish to the door and didn’t comment until he’d heard everything she was prepared to say.

  ‘Stupid- bugger,’ he said casually. ‘I hope he was the victim this time. Susannah can’t take much more. It seems to have been going on ever since the old man died and Will inherited the farm. One damn thing after another. But thanks for warning us about this one.’

  ‘Before I go,’ Trish said, ‘could you tell me something?’

  ‘If I can, of course. What d’you want to know?’

  ‘How much of a friend to Will was Jamie Maxden?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A journalist. Will talks about him as a great friend. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘Never heard of him.’ He twisted his head to call down to the passage to the kitchen, ‘Sannah? You ever hear of a friend of Will’s called Jamie Maxden?’

  Trish heard her tell the children to eat tidily, then saw her emerging from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron.

  ‘Of course. I haven’t heard anything about Jamie for years,’ she said, looking a little self-conscious. ‘But he was OK, you know. A good bloke. At one time they were great mates.’

  ‘How did they meet?’ Trish asked.

  Susannah frowned up at the ceiling, as though trying to bring back the memory. The children were shrieking with delight behind her. And there were splashing sounds, as though one of them was playing with his food or even throwing it.

  ‘The Young Farmers’ Ball, I think. It was donkeys’ years ago. Has he popped up again?’

  ‘No. He’s dead.’

  ‘Oh, Christ!’ Susannah leaned against the wall. ‘You’re not going to tell me he was in this fight with Will, are you? I don’t believe it. They were really close at one time.’

  Trish was shaking her head before Susannah was halfway through her question. A crash followed by a scream made them all turn towards the kitchen. Susannah looked back at Trish. More screams made her say, ‘Rupe, could you sort it? I’ll tell Trish what she needs to know.’

  ‘OK,’ he said, but he looked puzzled.

  Susannah scooped up a bunch of keys from a wooden bowl on the radiator shelf.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you to your car.’

  Outside, the air felt even warmer than it had indoors, and very dusty. Trish longed for rain to freshen it.

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘There’s a question over that,’ Trish said, itching to know what was behind Susannah’s odd intensity. ‘But the inquest called it suicide. Why?’

  She turned her neat face up to Trish, who saw that her eyes were damp. ‘Because they did have a fight once. But not nearly as bad as this one sounds.’

  ‘Will and Jamie?’

  ‘Yes. It was over me.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Jamie and I had a bit of a fling, years and years ago. It kind of drifted into nothing, but we stayed friends. And when I was first married to Rupe, when things were really tough, I kind of … well, turned to Jamie. You see, Rupe had only just moved to the bank and later on I realized he’d been terrified of failing and being sacked. At the time, all I knew was that he spent about twenty hours a day there. I felt rejected.’

  ‘That must have been hard.’

  ‘It was agony. I can understand it now, but sometimes things bring it back – like the night you phoned and I bit your head off.’

  Trish sympathized, but she had other things on her mind than Susannah’s marital history.

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ Trish said. ‘I didn’t take it personally. What happened with Jamie?’

  ‘I just wanted you to understand. I was very vulnerable because of the way things were with Rupe, and because Dad had just died. And Jamie was lovely.’

  ‘You mean you had an affair?’

  ‘Not really. But we did go to bed once or twice. And Will dropped in one evening, just as Jamie was dressing. Will had keys to the flat Rupe and I lived in then because sometimes he had to be in London overnight, seeing the lawyers about Dad’s estate, and he used to stay. Anyway, he let himself in and saw us, not exactly fully clothed.’

  ‘And Will let fly at Jamie? That doesn’t sound like him.’ They had reached Trish’s car, but she didn’t want to interrupt the flow so kept on walking beside Susannah further up Munster Road.

  ‘He stared at him and said something like: “I’d thought I could trust you. How could you do it?” And Jamie just zipped up his trousers and said: “What’re you talking about?” And Will hit him. Then Jamie hit him back. And for a minute I thought they were going to kill each other.’

  ‘How did you stop it?’

  ‘I screamed. I was terrified. It stopped them. Jamie stood there, staring at Will and said, “You should have trusted me.” Then he took my chin in his hand and kissed me. He tasted of blood, so his lip must have been split, and he said, “Don’t worry about this Suze. It’s nothing.” See you.’

  ‘And did you? See him, I mean.’

  ‘I never saw him again. And now he’s dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Susannah looked as though she’d just surfaced from a dive. She smiled politely. But her eyes were blank. ‘I ought to get back. The children, you know. Will you be able to find your car?’

  ‘Sure. Thank you.’

  Susannah ran back down the road, then paused. Over her shoulder, she called, ‘When you see Will, tell him to phone me if he needs anything. Anything. And get me a phone number so I can talk to him. It’s important.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  When Trish got home at half past seven, the red light was flickering on her answering machine. She pressed Play and heard Petra Knighton’s voice.

  ‘I promised to let you know how things were going. It’s not looking good for Applewood. As I told you, the other man is in a much worse way than he is, which makes the police highly suspicious of Applewood’s story. Until they get the scientific tests back, they won’t have a clue which of the two beat the woman to d
eath. Even then the test results may not be conclusive. He sends his love, by the way.’

  ‘Oh, shit!’ Trish said aloud to relieve her feelings.

  ‘The story he’s told them, for what it’s worth, is that he’d been in bed with the woman all day until she sent him out to buy bread before the shops shut. There’ll presumably be witnesses who saw him in the baker’s. When he came back, he claims she was already being beaten up. He launched himself at the man doing the beating and fought on until he managed to subdue him.

  ‘Meantime, a neighbour had called the police. They’re highly sceptical and think it’s more likely that Applewood went berserk when he came back from the shops to find the other man on his patch and tried to kill them both.’

  I don’t believe it, Trish thought, pressing the button to save the message. Not Will. Not in a million years.

  Now where did that come from? she asked herself, feeling as though the floor had turned to jelly.

  She’d screwed up once before when she’d allowed herself to believe her father had murdered his lover. She couldn’t bear to make the same mistake again.

  It’s still between us now, she thought. That’s why Paddy hardly ever comes here. Maybe he’s right to hate me for what I thought he’d done. What can it be like to know your own daughter believes you capable of killing another human being?

  You had your reasons, she reminded herself.

  There’d been plenty of those, including the violence she’d witnessed as a child. For years, she’d told herself that her father had simply abandoned her and her mother. But, since her mother had admitted that he had hit her, Trish had been allowing the memories to come back bit by bit.

  Pacing around the empty flat as though it were a small cave in which she’d been trapped for weeks, she let the worst bubble up like hot lava through a crack in the earth’s crust.

  She must have been three or four, less than Kim’s age, wearing striped pyjamas and a cherry-red dressing gown. Both her parents had been with her in the kitchen, and she had been furious about something. There wasn’t anything odd about that: she’d always been an angry child. Whatever it was she’d wanted so urgently had driven her to tank on and on until she’d ignited a row between her parents.

  Trish could still see her mother now, sitting on a low stool by the kitchen fireplace, with her head buried in her hands and her shoulders heaving. It was the only time Trish had ever known her cry. Paddy was standing over her, nursing his knuckles.

  For years Trish had buried the memory and later told herself it was shock that had made her refuse to think about it. Only now could she admit that she had triggered the violence that night. More questions nagged at her, keeping her stuck in the past she’d tried so hard to escape.

  Was it always me who drove my father to hit my mother? Was it my fault he left and she had all the responsibility and all the bills and all the angst of my growing up? Is that why I’ve taken on David, to compensate them both? Or to show that I can do it and so prove it wasn’t such a monstrous burden for her?

  Trish had walked tight round the flat twice already and it wasn’t helping. She took herself into the kitchen for the soothing ritual of making tea, but that couldn’t stop the internal interrogation either.

  Is it the old shock of what I saw Paddy do to Meg that makes me so frightened of male violence now? Is that the real reason why life with George works when it never worked with any of my other boyfriends? Was everything I said to Antony just a cover story? George eats his anger with all the food he insists on cooking, instead of shouting at me or leaving as they did. Did I provoke them so that I could prove no man could ever be truly domesticated, so that it couldn’t be my fault Paddy left us? And did I head for family law for the same reason?

  ‘Stop it,’ Trish said aloud. ‘You’ll drive yourself mad.’

  She thought of the landlord of the Black Eagle, providing a kind of haven for men who couldn’t adjust to life outside the army, a place where they could go and be, certain no one would try to make them talk about the mess in their heads. That was what she needed now. Work had always provided it for her in the past.

  If you always had too much to do, then you couldn’t think too hard about your wretched feelings. An empty evening like this one was a positive invitation to them to rise up and overwhelm you. Much better to get on and do something useful, like proving that Will Applewood was innocent, and get back a little confidence in your own judgement.

  The best source of information had to be the news editor with enough moral courage to attend Jamie Maxden’s funeral. Trish had no way of finding his home phone number, but it wouldn’t be hard to find his email address.

  Knowing how many emails he was likely to have when he got back to work on Monday morning, she headed hers: ‘Jamie Maxden didn’t kill himself’. In the body of the message, she added that she was looking for back-up information to add to her own and would like to talk. She gave her phone number in chambers, not wanting anyone who had anything to do with the Daily Mercury to know where she lived.

  Will lay on the hospital bed with snuffling, grunting, snoring men all round him, trying to make sense of everything so that he’d be able to convince the hard-eyed old bag Antony Shelley had sent down. He wished it had been Trish who’d come to protect him from the police. She would have understood everything without having to be told. And she could have made the police believe her too. She could make anyone believe her. If only he hadn’t muddled her phone numbers and given the police the one for her chambers!

  Even the police were more sympathetic than the solicitor. After their first ferocious charge up the stairs in Mandy’s house and all the questions they’d shouted at him then, he’d never have believed they could be kind. But once they’d seen the carnage, and the state he was in himself, they’d turned amazingly gentle. They’d got him here into the doctors’ hands, for one thing, and the young one who’d been stationed in the corridor to keep him from running off popped in every so often to make sure he was OK. He also passed on what little news there was of the other bloke.

  No one was worrying about him running off. He’d broken his neck when he caught his head on the open drawer of Mandy’s dressing table. They said he was still alive, but it didn’t sound as though he was in any position to talk, which was lucky.

  Until Will knew exactly what had been going on at the abattoir, and how Mandy was involved, he didn’t want the police trampling about asking the wrong questions and giving any of the gang the chance to destroy the evidence. Let them think no one knew what they were up to for a little longer, at least until he was on his feet again and could get to Trish.

  Bob wasn’t answering his phone. Tim had already left four messages at the flat and five on Bob’s mobile, and he still hadn’t phoned back. Ron wasn’t responding either. They were probably still furious about the damage to the plane. But they had to get over it and come up with the cash they owed him. It belonged to him and he needed it.

  The bank manager had already said he wouldn’t provide any more credit. All Tim’s accounts with suppliers had been frozen. He couldn’t pay for fuel for the machines he needed to clean up the orchard or water the trees that were already shrivelling in the ghastly drought. Thank God, he’d still had enough to pay his casual pickers at the end of the harvest.

  And thank God for his hens still laying their eggs for him, and for the veg in the garden, even if most of it had bolted or dried out. He wasn’t going to starve, and Boney was being truly Napoleonic now, catching most of his own food. There was a bit of the all-purpose dried dog food left in the rat-protected bin in one of the outbuildings, but it wouldn’t last much longer.

  Now that he’d deliberately crashed the plane, he wouldn’t even be able to earn a few pennies taking photographs for the estate agents. He wondered if he were mad to think of pointing out to Bob how much damage he could do to the brothers if he didn’t get his money soon.

  Memories of the threats Bob had made in the pub outside Stubb’s Cr
oss told him he was indeed entirely mad.

  Later that evening, Trish leaned out of the kitchen window in the soft dusk, to look over the rooftops and pigeons towards the cathedral.

  She wished she hadn’t wasted so much time excoriating herself for things she couldn’t change now, even if they had been as bad as she sometimes feared. Except when she let herself think about them, she was a functional human being these days.

  More than functional, she thought, looking back around the flat she had bought and furnished and hung with magnificently bleak paintings, paid for out of resources she had earned without help from anyone else. Whatever she had done to her parents, whatever her motives for the work she had chosen or the man she loved, there was no problem with any of it now. Past failings ought to be nailed down under the carpet and ignored.

  Fears should be put there, too, so that you could get on with your life. The only problem was they sometimes escaped round the edges.

  She played Petra Knighton’s message again. As the solicitor’s voice scraped out into the flat, Trish realized she’d cut it off too soon. The message didn’t end with Petra’s announcement that the man Will had fought was still alive. She listened to the rest.

  ‘His name is Bob Flesker and he works at Smarden Meats. I have, as you can imagine, enjoined my client to suppress all mention of his interest in that company when talking to the police. Whether this man’s occupation is merely an unhappy coincidence or something worse, I will leave to your imagination. Goodbye.’

  ‘Of course it’s not a coincidence,’ Trish shouted at the white-painted brick wall in front of her. ‘And it means Flesker must have been the killer.’