King of the World

by Celia Fremlin

  “Look, Norah, I’m afraid this may be going to upset you, but I must tell you, it’s only fair …” And she went on to relate, in detail, the interview she had had with the police this morning, and the account she had given them of her bizarre encounter with Christopher on Sunday evening.

  “I had to tell them, you see,” she explained. “I don’t think you were watching the news with us last night, but an appeal was issued to the general public to report to the police any unusual circumstance they might have noticed recently in the Medfield area. And it was an unusual circumstance, that encounter I had with Christopher. And so was the finding of the gun in your front garden, I told them about that, too. I had to.

  “I’m sorry, Norah; I know how you must feel. Christopher is your son, and you must hate to have any suspicion thrown on him, but it just can’t be avoided. You have to help the police in a murder case, it’s an absolute duty. And, you know, it may easily turn out to be nothing to do with Christopher at all. It’s more than likely that he was just fantasising about murders when I was with him. Well, he fantasises all the time, doesn’t he? And if that’s all there was to it, then the police will soon find it out and eliminate him from their enquiries. That’s much the most likely thing, when you come to think of it.

  “But, Norah, suppose the very worst happens: suppose it does turn out that the gun your husband found was put there by Christopher? And suppose Christopher did, somehow, in some kind of deluded state, shoot someone as part of his fantasy? Even then, Norah, it won’t mean that anything very terrible will happen to him. They will discover at once that he is mentally unstable, and he won’t be treated as an ordinary criminal. He certainly won’t go to prison, he’ll be sent for psychiatric assessment to be followed by treatment. Residential treatment, in some sort of hospital. And, Norah, wouldn’t that honestly be the very best thing that could happen to him? You’ve told us that for years you’ve been trying to get his father to face the fact that the boy needs expert treatment; and this way, don’t you see, he’ll be getting that expert treatment, whether his father wishes it or not. There will be no way at all that your husband will be able to prevent it; it’ll be out of his hands.

  “Think about it, Norah. Obviously, no one could have wanted it to come about in this tragic way, but all the same it could – it really could – be the very best thing to have happened to Christopher. It could give him a real chance of recovery …”

  Only now did Bridget realise that she had been talking, talking, talking for the best part of half an hour, and that Norah had not, as yet, spoken a single word. She had been watching Bridget’s face rather as one might watch a play on television; a passive spectator, to whom the outcome of the drama was of no significance.

  Bridget paused, waiting for some response, and when none was forthcoming, she continued: “Well, that’s the worst-case scenario, I suppose. The other one – and far the most likely one, really, is that Christopher had nothing to do with the murder. Absolutely nothing. In which case the evidence will clear him. It will show conclusively that he didn’t do it.”

  And now, at long last, Norah seemed to rouse herself.

  “That’s right,” she said. “He didn’t do it. He couldn’t have, you see. Christopher is the one who is dead.”

  Chapter 21

  Once again Norah was lying on her bed, sleepless, dry-eyed, staring at nothing. This time, though, it was not even dark. She had drawn the curtains across against the last of the afternoon sun, but of course sunlight, the light of the whole earth, was not to be kept at bay so easily. Through the heavy folds of brown velour a misty, luminous visibility permeated the room, obscuring everything, yet hiding nothing. Even that uncomfortable picture of a slumped female figure – too impersonal to be called a woman – perched on a lop-sided chair, could still be discerned, squareish, darkish, against the lighter background of the wall.

  To an observer, if there had been one, Norah would have appeared totally relaxed; but actually she was intensely busy trying to feel something. Anything.

  She was in shock, of course, that numbness-inducing shock of bereavement, that stops the tortured emotions from functioning for a merciful few hours, or even days.

  But this numbness of Norah’s was something more than the dead hand of shock. Norah knew it was, and she struggled against it as one struggles to wake from a nightmare. Or would she be waking into a nightmare, and not out of one at all, when her faculties finally returned?

  It was more than twelve hours now since she had learned that Christopher was dead. Had had it confirmed, rather, for even as she’d scanned that stop-press item in the paper, she’d had the curious sensation that she’d known it all along: had known for certain, through all the long years, even during her son’s bright, successful early childhood, that this was exactly how it was going to end.

  It wasn’t true, of course. She hadn’t known anything of the sort, how could she? It just felt like that, now. Perhaps it always does, when something like this happens?

  Shock, again?

  Somehow, she must try to get to grips with herself, to take in what had happened. She would have to think; and she now discovered, with vague surprise, that though emotion of any kind whatsoever had withdrawn to some place far beyond her reach, her brain itself was still working – working, indeed, with unusual clarity.

  It was quite clear now, looking at events dispassionately, that the whole thing had been her fault. Not that she felt any guilt about this – guilt, like all other emotions, had gone beyond her reach for the time being, and therefore could neither trouble her nor distort her judgement. Right now, Norah was able to see, perhaps more clearly than she ever would again, exactly what had happened, and why.

  It had been her decision to run away from home that had begun it all. At the time, it had seemed not only a justifiable, but almost an inevitable decision, the only option open to her. She’d been at the end of her tether, no longer able to cope with Christopher’s ever-worsening delusions. And the thing that had made her difficult task quite impossible had been her husband’s obsessive refusal to accept that anything was wrong with his son. He just couldn’t take it. It was not only his professional pride as a distinguished psychiatrist at stake, but even more damaging, it was his pride in himself. That he, Dr Mervyn Payne, so handsome, so brilliant, so successful, so endowed with every desirable quality for handing on to the future generation, should be the one to have fathered so damaged a child – this was something he couldn’t endure.

  He simply couldn’t face it.

  So, I’ll make him face it, Norah had decided on that fatal day. I’ll leave him to cope with Christopher on his own for a while, then he’ll have to recognise the truth. He’ll have to do something about it.

  And her ruse had worked. It had worked beyond her wildest dreams. Mervyn had recognised the truth. He had done something about it. He had shot the boy dead. Better a dead son than a non-stop burden of humiliation, a daily and hourly source of shame for the rest of his natural life.

  Did he expect to get away with it? Of course he did. The same overweening pride and arrogance that had driven him to the deed would sustain his belief in his own power of evading the consequences. His high professional status, his agile intelligence, his knowledge of legal procedures would all be on his side. The body hadn’t been identified yet – perhaps it never would be. Perhaps misleading documents planted in the pockets would set the police off on a false trail – perhaps to some distant part of the country. In identifying an unknown body, surely the standard procedure would be to match it up with the lists of Missing Persons held on police computers all over the country? Christopher would appear on no such list, for Mervyn had already taken the precaution of concocting that phoney letter to indicate that the boy was away on a camping holiday during the relevant week. Other letters would doubtless be contrived to cover subsequent weeks, until local interest had died down. The fact that Christopher had no friends would assist matters: no one would miss him, or come look
ing for him, or invite him out anywhere. His tragic life, now over, would quickly fade into oblivion. Should the need occasionally arise, his father could shrug off his absence with some plausible story. The boy was eighteen, quite old enough to be off on his own, like so many of his contemporaries, on some overland jaunt to some remote part of the world. Very popular, this sort of thing: who would bother to query it? Or even be in the least degree interested? Who is interested in hearing about what other people’s eighteen-year-olds are doing?

  The boy’s mother, of course, would be interested; but had she not already seen the letter describing the alleged camping holiday? Other similarly forged letters could follow, and references to occasional phone calls from foreign parts. Norah, having providentially left home, could hardly wonder why it was that she was never the one to take these calls.

  Something like that would be Mervyn’s strategy, anyway. And none of it would – or indeed could – have come about if Norah had stayed at her post instead of running away. She could still be there, suffering, agonising, and at her wit’s end; and Christopher could still be alive.

  It was all her doing, all of it; and yet still she felt no guilt. Nor grief. Nor fear. Nor shame. Absolutely nothing.

  *

  When she woke, it was already quite dark. Sitting up and twitching aside one corner of the heavy curtain, she peered down onto the empty street below, quiet under the widely-spaced street lights. Not a pedestrian in sight anywhere, and only the occasional car.

  It must be quite late, the rush-hour well and truly over. Although this was by no means a main road, traffic was fairly continuous for most of the day. Perhaps it was already after midnight? Or maybe it was that other quiet stretch of a London evening, the hour between nine and ten when the working population is back from work, and when the evening revellers have already set off but are not yet due to return.

  At this point in her musings, Norah noticed a car approaching … slowing down. Yes, a yellow car, as far as one could judge in these deceptive lights. Yes, Diana’s car; it drew up outside their door. Diana, slender and elegant in some kind of glittering garment under her dark cloak, was descending from the passenger seat. Diana was good at getting out of cars, she accomplished it not clumsily, effortfully, like most women, but lightly, easily, like a ballet dancer; while from the other door, not in the least like a ballet dancer, Alistair heaved himself, the balding forefront of his cranium gleaming in the cruel greenish light.

  Footsteps. Doors opening and closing … and now the sound of voices from the sitting-room. No, not proper voices, it must be the radio. No, the television. The ten o’clock news.

  News. There would be something about Christopher for sure, though of course they wouldn’t know it was Christopher. The body still hadn’t been identified.

  Or had it? Norah scrambled to her feet, curiosity suddenly overcoming reluctance. A strangely pure kind of reluctance it was, quite unmixed with distress or apprehension. It was as if she was about to hear the next instalment of an intriguing story about someone else, nothing to do with her; and as she slid into the sitting-room and joined the other two in front of the television set, the level of her interest in this new murder mystery was more or less on a par with theirs. She was curious, as they were, to learn whether any progress had been made in identifying the victim.

  But it didn’t really seem to matter. Norah felt no more personally concerned about the subject than her companions.

  Less concerned, probably; after all, she already knew the answer.

  No real progress had been made. The stub of a long-distance coach-ticket found in the dead man’s anorak pocket suggested that his home might be somewhere around Tyneside. Perhaps (it was hypothesised), he might have come south looking for work?

  Briefly, Norah wondered how Mervyn had come by such a ticket-stub? But maybe it wasn’t all that difficult. Maybe you just had to hang about the coach terminal keeping your eye on the litter-bins. Not that the question bothered her much. She found herself becoming genuinely interested in the idle chat and speculation that arose between her companions as soon as the News itself had been switched off.

  “Lucky old Mervyn, that he found that gun and handed it in before all this happened!” remarked Alistair, stretching out his legs to their usual obstructive length across the carpet. “I say, darling, how about a nightcap after our heavy evening?” But Diana, anticipating his wishes, was already diving into the glass-fronted cupboard where the drinks were kept.

  Whisky, of course, was what they were having, and Norah shook her head dumbly when it came to her turn. She didn’t like whisky, and anyway, for some reason her mouth was terribly dry already, without making it worse with alcohol. Besides, she wasn’t really there, they only thought she was because they could see her. Really she was high up somewhere, a fly on the ceiling, listening but not partaking. It was interesting that the two of them took for granted that Mervyn had in fact handed in the gun as he’d said he would. Of course he hadn’t; he had just wanted some witnesses to confirm that he’d intended to do so, just in case the question should ever arise.

  Which it almost certainly wouldn’t have. Now, though, it probably would, as a result of Bridget’s precipitate revelations to the police. But of course Mervyn wouldn’t as yet know anything about this. He would still be feeling pretty secure.

  Norah’s two companions were by now side by side on the sofa, and the speculations were continuing in the cosy, leisurely fashion characteristic of the non-implicated when discussing someone else’s tragedy.

  “And of course,” Diana was musing, “It may easily turn out to be suicide, you know what the young are. Shot through the head at point-blank range … they say that’s the way men usually do it, whereas women usually go for pills. And it’s true, you know. I remember, when we were doing the Samaritans, they were saying that 80% of …”

  “Heartless little monster!” Alistair interposed affectionately, pulling her towards him. “It’s all just goggle-fodder to you, isn’t it? Murder, rape, suicide, you-name-it, to you it’s merely …”

  “Oh, darling, that’s not fair!” cried Diana, pulling away from him, half-laughing, half offended. “You know it means more to me than that! Don’t you remember I came home actually crying after I’d interviewed that poor girl’s mother? That fifteen-year-old, I mean, who died after taking thirty aspirins? Not nearly enough to kill you normally, as she probaby knew, but she was just unlucky. It was a cry for help – suicides so often are. Maybe that’s what it was with this poor chap on the Common – a cry for help. We don’t know.”

  “We do know,” remarked Alistair. “We know perfectly well. A bullet through the brain at point-blank range – it doesn’t sound like a cry for help to me. It sounds like someone who at least meant business.

  “But whose business? Because of course murder, too, can be a cry for help: had you thought of that? Why don’t you set that up as an idea for the goggle-ghouls? Make a change from all these boring old rapes and battered wives and ill-used Carers –” Reaching for the bowl of nuts, he searched among them, avid as a squirrel, for one of the last remaining cashews that still lurked among the salted peanuts.

  “Which reminds me”, he continued, “Are you still expecting to poke your weaselly little nose into that unlucky household in Murder-ville? A bit accident-prone, aren’t they? I mean, you’re always saying that you don’t want anything that happens to your interviewees to be your fault: your Jeremy or whoever would be onto you like a ton of bricks, isn’t that so?”

  “Oh, Alistair, shush!” She gave him a sharp nudge, reminding him that Norah might well be upset by such talk. Reminding him, indeed, that Norah was still there.

  Which she wasn’t, of course; but Diana couldn’t be expected to know that; when there, before her very eyes Norah was sitting, small and hunched and silent in the depths of the big armchair. And at the same time, non-existent though she was, Norah found herself still able to wish that Diana hadn’t so hastily silenced her inconsiderat
e and tactless lover, to wish, indeed, that she had actually answered his question. Was she planning to go ahead with her interviews? It would be the father who answered the door to her now, and if she cross-questioned him too pertinaciously about the whereabouts of his son, would she come out of the interview alive?

  Norah tried to care, one way or the other. She longed to care. If only she could care, then that would give her the strength to warn Diana, which of course she ought to do.

  But by now the two lovers were leaning together on the sofa, teasing, whispering, and for Norah to creep silently from the room was surely the appropriate thing to do.

  Chapter 22

  It must have been in the early hours of the morning when Norah came back into her body and found she had recovered the power to feel. It was almost a physical sensation: it rushed through her veins like a blood-transfusion, like an intravenous drip, and she realised for the first time that her son actually was dead. She had known it, of course, for a good many hours, but now she realised it as well, and the grief that had been quietly waiting for her all this time surged over her, taking her breath away.

  Grief for what? For whom? For the broken, damaged travesty of a person that Christopher had become? Or for the bright, precocious little boy, so full of quaint ideas, so passionate for facts, any sort of facts, about anything? A lovely little boy, so strong and handsome and eager, a constant joy to his parents.

  A little boy long vanished, and the grief at his loss dissipated, bit by bit, over the long dark years that had followed.

  What was left? Staring into the darkness, Norah found herself face to face with the nature of grief itself: not just the strange, ambivalent kind of grief that she herself was experiencing, but any grief, anywhere, for anyone.