King of the World

by Celia Fremlin

  Meanwhile Norah, re-united with her reading-glasses, was peering anxiously at the script before her, bringing it first close up to her face, and then an arm’s length away.

  “It’s terribly small – the writing,” she complained. I know Christopher does write a very cramped hand … but not as small as this. I’ve always been able to read it before.”

  She moved, so that the standard lamp shone straight down on the document, and peered even closer.

  “It’s … I don’t know … It’s somehow … I can only read bits of it. ‘Dear Mum,’ he starts. But he doesn’t call me ‘Mum’, not unless … That is, normally he calls me Norah. He says he ‘Hopes I won’t be worried’ – I don’t know why he should say that, because I never let him know that I worry, Never.”

  She went on reading: “We’ll be pitching our tent in a grassy meadow near the farm buildings … Wonderful views towards the hills …”

  Norah glanced up, bewildered. “Christopher doesn’t say things like this. He doesn’t look at views, he never has. He lives inside himself, not among views. And he’d never say “grassy meadow”, The most he’d ever say would be “field”.

  She studied the document yet more closely:

  “And the writing! It’s small and cramped all right, but it’s not his. I’m certain it isn’t …”

  Had Mervyn been listening outside the door? Or had he come in by chance just in time to hear his wife’s suspicions? Or had he, indeed, not taken in any of it? His manner, polite and imperturbable, revealed nothing.

  “Well, my dear, are you satisfied?” he enquired, walking across to his wife and holding out his hand for the paper. “Or does the fact that your son is actually enjoying himself, without you in attendance, throw you into one of your maternal panics? I must say you’re looking rather pale – I wonder if there is anything more I can do to reassure you? If Christopher’s own assurances that he’s happy and well and enjoying his holiday aren’t enough …”

  Bridget was clenching her teeth in a turmoil of indecision. Indecision wasn’t her thing, any more than panic was, but at this juncture it seemed unavoidable. Would she be making matters worse, or better, if she were to reveal to the assembled company that Christopher was right now outside in the road, nowhere near any holiday camp site?

  Better for whom? Certainly not for Mervyn. Whatever his motives were for inventing all this rigmarole about the camping trip (and Bridget was only just beginning to speculate on what these motives might be), he certainly wasn’t going to be pleased at having his carefully-constructed fiction punctured by the intervention of an uninvited visitor.

  Better for Norah, then? Norah had already expressed her grave doubts about the authenticity of the letter. Would it be some satisfaction to her to have her suspicions proved to be well-founded?

  Satisfaction of a sort, yes. Everyone likes to be proved right (or so Bridget always supposed), but sometimes there was a heavy price to be paid.

  “She was always right, and now she’s dead right” – the famous tombstone inscription floated briefly through her consciousness, and increased her uncertainty.

  What would Norah gain by having her husband humiliated in front of her friends? He would feel betrayed – furious – and would inevitably take it out on her. And with good reason, too, if he had in fact heard her voicing her suspicions just as he came into the room.

  No, the risks involved in telling the truth were too great. Those involved in keeping silent were unknown, and hence less weighty.

  None of these thoughts, she trusted, were showing in her face, but all the same they seemed to fill the room. She became suddenly aware of all the other unexpressed thoughts which at this very moment were claiming a share of the enclosed space between these four walls. Mervyn’s thoughts, Norah’s, even Diana’s. The air was thick with thoughts, like some atmospheric pollutant, so concentrated that you could scarcely breathe.

  “I think perhaps we should be going,” she said politely; and relief swept across the room like a great wind, before it subsided into the normal little conventional remarks incidental to the departure of guests.

  Mervyn, courteous and correct to the end, came to see them off at the front door, and for a moment Bridget was filled with trepidation lest he should notice his son lurking under the lamp, and should react by – well who knew how he might react?

  But, mercifully, it didn’t happen: Christopher was gone. By the time they’d reached the garden gate, and she could peer round the privet hedge, Bridget was sure of this. But her initial feeling of relief was sharply interrupted by Mervyn’s voice, close behind them.

  “Wait!” he called “Wait a moment. One of you has dropped something.” and as they turned, enquiringly, they saw him straightening up from a flower-bed, and coming towards them, holding out a plastic supermarket carrier-bag.

  For a moment, all three stared, bewildered. It was Bridget who took the bag – it was surprisingly heavy – and reached inside it. Her fingers encountered metal – a cold, irregular surface. Reaching further in, she pulled the thing out.

  It was a hand-gun.

  They all stared, bewildered; and on Mervyn’s face was a look of actual terror. Was he facing, at last, a long-suppressed awareness of his son’s derangement, and its awful unpredictable dangers? Frantically, he seemed to be seeking some alternative and less agonising explanation. While, characteristically, keeping his dignity as he did so.

  “Good God!” he exclaimed, “Oh, I do apologise, of course it can’t be yours! Oh dear, some yobbo, I suppose, planning a break-in and suddenly thinking better of it. Realised he’d been spotted, and reckoned he’d better not be caught with the weapon on him. I’ll have to hand it in to the police, I suppose. Oh dear, I am sorry! What a parting shock for you!” and after a brief repetition of the conventional remarks appropriate to departing guests, he went indoors, presumably to ring the police about the gun and the attempted break-in.

  The three drove home almost in silence, each preoccupied with her own speculations. It was Diana who spoke, just once, towards the end of the journey:

  “It’s not going to be as easy as I thought,” she lamented. “That father’s going to be difficult.”

  You can say that again, thought Bridget, but silently.

  Chapter 18

  Just as they opened the front door of the flat, the telephone stopped ringing. They stood for a moment looking at each other, in anxious surmise.

  “The gun, of course,” hazarded Bridget, echoing the thoughts of them all. “I felt sure the police would be getting onto us straight away. They’ll want to confirm Mervyn’s story about having found it lying in a flower-bed like that. Wrapped in a plastic bag. I mean, it’s not a very likely story, is it? On the face of it.”

  No, it wasn’t. And the fact that it had actually happened, that they had all three of them seen it happen, didn’t, somehow, make it seem any more plausible.

  “You mean they’re going to suspect one of us? Of having planted it there, or something?” Diana looked from one to the other of her companions. “But that’s ridiculous!”

  “Of course it is. I’m sure they don’t suspect anything of the sort. No – what I’m afraid of – I don’t want to upset you, Norah – but I’m afraid the gun must be something to do with Christopher. It must be … It’s too much of a coincidence.”

  Having gone so far in voicing her suspicions, there seemed nothing for it but to relate in full her encounter with Christopher this evening – which she had so far refrained from doing for fear of upsetting Norah.

  But Norah would have to be upset. Probably was already. Sooner or later, she would have to face the facts. It is well-known that facts are easier to face than speculations, and the reason is obvious: facts, of their very nature, are limited to what is possible, whereas anxieties know no such limitations.

  “And you see,” she finished, “Christopher’s delusions about having me in his power and forcing me to commit a murder might have inspired some muddled notion of
laying a weapon in my path and ‘forcing’ me to pick it up. He imagines, you see …”

  “But how could he get hold of a gun?” protested Diana. “It’d be difficult, you know, even for a nor – well, for an ordinary average sort of boy, and for someone like Christopher …”

  “It’s nothing to do with him, it can’t be!” broke in Norah. Christopher wouldn’t hurt a fly!”

  He would, though. He had. He did. Spiders, anyway. Her voice faltered. Then, recovering herself, she continued: “And anyway it’s impossible. Boys get hold of guns through friends, and Christopher hasn’t any friends. Besides – Oh, Bridget, you’re not going to say all this to the police, are you?”

  “About Christopher and the gun?” She paused for a moment. “No-o, I shouldn’t think so. I don’t think it will be necessary. I mean, it’s only my guess that the mad things he said to me about murder might be relevant. The police aren’t interested in guesses. They’ll only be asking us for facts. Like what time was it, and which bit of the garden did we see Dr Payne picking it up from. That sort of thing. That’s all we need tell them. It’s all we can tell them. We don’t actually know anything …”

  “So you won’t say anything at all about Christopher, then?” Norah insisted. “I mean, they’re sure to ring again. I don’t know what I’m going to say, either. I’m Mervyn’s wife, I live there, they’ll expect me to know a lot more than they’ll expect you to –”

  “I don’t see why …” Bridget was beginning; but at that moment the phone went again.

  For just a second, they all looked at each other, and no one moved. It was Bridget who first overcame the communal reluctance to face the expected inquisition. She moved briskly across the room, with a clear plan ready of what she was going to say.

  And so her first sensation was one of amazement that an unknown official in the police station at Medfield should be addressing her as “darling”. Only momentarily, of course; in less than a second she had recognised her father’s voice; and had recognised, also, the tinge of reproach in it. Why hadn’t she rung home as she had promised, to explain the nature of the emergency that had necessitated her sudden departure yesterday?

  “Your mother’s been agonising about you all day,” he reproached her. “She’s been imagining all sorts of ghastly traumas. She didn’t like to ring because – and besides, you’d said you were going to ring us … Ah, here she is … It’s all right, Connie, I’ve got her! She seems all right. Here, you talk to her.”

  And so here it was again. The old, familiar situation: Bridget’s mother longing to hear what her daughter was doing, and Bridget racking her brains to think how not to tell her.

  The truth was, of course, that when mothers long to hear what their grown-up daughters are doing, what they really long to hear is that everything is all right: that the daughter isn’t unhappy about anything, isn’t at risk of losing her job or of having her heart broken.

  And of course, at a distance of a hundred miles or so, it is quite easy, with the aid of a very few, very white lies, to assure one’s mother that this is in fact the case. Bridget had done this before, and would do so again as necessary. The only trouble with the method was that it was so boring, for both parties.

  If only Bridget had felt able to tell her mother what had really happened yesterday, what a fascinating conversation they could have had. Ironically, it would have been just the kind of exciting gossip that her mother loved best – so long as the heroine of the drama was anyone else in the whole world other than her own daughter.

  It was a difficult story to make boring, but she managed it. Her mother had to be protected from the truth because of the intensity of her concern. Of her love, actually, to give the thing its proper name. It is love that creates the barriers between parents and grown-up children. Indifference, or even hate, might be less inhibiting.

  As soon as she realised that it wasn’t the police that Bridget was talking to, it also occurred to Norah that it couldn’t have been. Because how would the police have found out their telephone number – or their address – Norah having kept her whereabouts so carefully secret? Or, she now wondered uneasily, might Diana have inadvertently revealed it during that first interview with Christopher? “If you have any questions, you can get hold of me here,” she might have said, handing him her card automatically. And then Christopher could have handed it to his father – or simply left it lying around. Might Christopher and his father have actually discussed the television project? With what result? Were they, in fact, talking to one another at all?

  She must think, think. Murmuring something about having an early night, she retired to her room. She closed the door, drew the curtains, and lay down full length on the bed, closing her eyes. She didn’t even have the light on – what was the point when her eyes were shut? She could think better that way; felt she could, anyway.

  In considering the implications of Mervyn’s forging of that letter – and she was almost one hundred percent certain that it was a forgery – it was necessary first to ask herself how she had expected him to behave, once he was left alone with total responsibility for his schizophrenic son. Deliberately, and after careful consideration, she had landed him in this situation. Her idea had been that once he was on his own, face to face with the boy’s bizarre and frightening behaviour, he would be forced to recognise that something was wrong. He would be forced to swallow his professional pride and let it be known that he, a top-ranking psychotherapist, a specialist in mental illness, had a son who was mentally ill. The humiliation of it was something he had been warding off for years, as Norah knew to her cost. He had been warding off not only the humiliation of the facts becoming known to his colleagues and patients, but, perhaps even more, the humiliation of knowing them fully himself. His near-crazy attempts to interpret his son’s behaviour as being within the range of normality had been no mere pretence: it had been genuine, a last-ditch effort to make himself see the behaviour as normal.

  Norah understood all this; she had understood it, all too well, for a long time. To understand all may be to forgive all, she mused; but that was not the same as being able to put up with it. For months and years, Norah had put up with being the accursed and derided messenger, the buffer between Mervyn and his son’s worsening insanity. All the time she was there, in the house, it was possible for her husband to claim that it was her anxieties, her neurotic behaviour, that forced their son to put up psychological defences against her, taking the form sometimes, of bizarre behaviour. And, of course, Dr Mervyn Payne’s high professional qualifications made it hard for anyone – let alone his wife – to query any of his psychological pronouncements. Especially when, at some level, he believed them himself; he had forced himself, trained himself over the long months to believe them. To have believed otherwise would have been intolerable.

  Norah understood all this. Of course she did. She just couldn’t put up with it; it was as simple as that.

  Right, then. So what had she expected would happen if she succeeded in forcing her husband to confront something that was intolerable to him? Really, actually intolerable? What did people do when the intolerable became the inescapable?

  On and off, over the years, Norah had occasionally wondered if, just possibly, her husband might be right, and that her own neurotic and irrational attitudes were at the root of the problem. This thought had briefly re-surfaced in her mind yesterday, when she had found Christopher apparently so well and so rational after her ten-day absence. The possibility that his problems had been, after all, her own doing had filled her both with dismay and with wild hope. If the fault actually was in herself, then it was within her power to do something about it, if only by removing herself from his life.

  But subsequent events had put paid to all this. Christopher wasn’t better. He had merely succeeded (as is not uncommon with schizophrenics) in putting on a good show for outsiders. But now, today, he was as bad as ever. Worse, as the encounter with Bridget amply proved. Norah had listened, with mounting
apprehension, to Bridget’s account. ‘I can make you commit murder,” he’d said to her; and Norah had felt herself growing numb with fear. Not about Bridget – that was obviously nonsense, but about her son’s revelling in thoughts of murder. This was a new symptom, and it had a sinister quality that had never been in evidence before. With thoughts of murder churning in his brain, and with his powers of reasoning so deranged, what might he not do next? And where did that gun come into it? A gun, in a plastic bag, shoved carelessly into a clump of foliage – this, surely, could not be the work of a sane person? In spite of her assertion that the gun could have nothing to do with Christopher, she had not really believed her own words. That it should appear so soon after the murder threat seemed beyond the bounds of coincidence.

  Had Mervyn, too, suspected that the gun must be something to do with his crazy son? Had Christopher been talking to his father in the same sort of way as he’d been talking to Bridget? If Mervyn did indeed suspect that his son’s illness was now escalating to a stage when he might become violent, then this would be some sort of explanation of the forged letter. It might – might it not? – be a father’s clumsy and desperate attempt to provide his son with an alibi for whatever deed of violence might be pending.

  In the midst of their dark and terrifying family situation, it was a little bit touching, was it not, that Mervyn should be trying so frantically to provide his son with an alibi for an as yet uncommitted crime. It seemed that, in his proud and desperate way, Mervyn loved his son.

  Was it the real son that he loved, the sick, mad one? Or was it still the imaginary one, the long-vanished little boy, so brilliant at maths and music?

  Chapter 19

  By Monday morning; life at the flat was rapidly going back to normal. It occurred to Bridget that they had probably been over-reacting to the situation. The discovery of a hand-gun in a flower-bed in a suburban garden had certainly struck them as a remarkable event, and somewhat sinister; but perhaps the police wouldn’t see it like that at all. This sort of thing was probably all in a day’s work to them; maybe dozens of guns turned up in odd places every week and were merely added to an existing list of similar findings, only to re-surface if some crime of violence in the neighbourhood made one or other of these abandoned guns seem relevant.