by Sam Lock
‘Looks as if someone dropped a bloody paint-pot there,’ he said to a colleague of his with a laugh; not knowing that the stain was one of blood. For the mark of Jason’s death was still quite strong, and it would be several months yet again before the autumn’s rains would diminish it; and later still before the winter’s snows would eradicate it entirely.
EPILOGUE
At the beginning of this book, when Jason purchased his new notebooks, he had obviously acted on impulse, and he had bought two books rather than one, because he had sensed, as he himself put it (for it had been more a feeling than an idea) that whatever thoughts he needed to set down in them would become a writing of some length.
Due to his death, however, this proved not to be the case, and one could say that there his instinct had misguided him and its judgement been incorrect.
If there is any moral in this tale, it could therefore be the rather simple one that no one can foretell what the story of their life will be, or how and when it will end. Being wedded to our ignorance, we are blind creatures in that respect, and such knowledge is kept hidden.
One can fairly assume, however, that except for Arnold, who had died earlier, the other characters in this book continued to live on. For how long, none of them could tell. But certainly all of them, in their different ways, would have been affected by what happened. One can imagine how Joseph, for example, would have missed the good company of his friend, and finding himself alone of an evening in some bar, would have rued the loss of a companion with whom he had shared so many ideas. And one can picture this as having had a sobering effect upon his character, and that the exuberance of his intellect might have been curbed by it, as a result.
As for Jason’s parents, being no longer young, it is likely that they would have been damaged and deeply shaken by the loss of their second son: but with age comes wisdom, and due to the intelligence of their characters, one can think that they would have worked patiently with their grief, and with time come to make peace with it.
Regarding Betty, it is possible that she would have been frightened by the anger she felt at being forced to confront the reality of such an unhappy end; but no doubt her cheerfulness and humour would have quickly come to her aid; or if not that, then she would have found solace in her books.
John and Billy perhaps would have said little about what had happened, except that it was a dreadful thing that Jason had done. But at night, when they were in bed, one can think that they might have recalled, in a reflective manner, the slight but unusual friendship they had shared with Jason for a while – to which Billy might have added as relief, ‘But he was in a mess, John. He couldn’t even boil a bloody egg.’
As for Jason’s wife, Jill, one can guess how badly scarred her mind must have been by the savagery of Jason’s end; and for years afterwards, might have found fault with herself for not having seen in time that Jason was so ill; believing, as people are inclined to do, in their capacity to save others. But because her nature was an honest one, one can think that eventually she would have freed herself from guilt; and that she would have come to understand that what had arisen between her and her husband, and that had driven them apart, was something of too large a kind with which to wrestle, and that what her duty now had to be was to attempt to forge a new life for herself: to remarry, perhaps; to learn to be even more patient with her mother; and to love and care for her children.
As for them – for Tom and Sarah – one can picture how hurt they must have been when they had been told the awful news that their father had taken his life; but fortunately, the shock of it would have been cushioned and rendered less harmful by the fact that they were young; since life for them would swiftly move on, and they would find the diversion of new experiences a rapid antidote for their pain, enabling them to cope with its negativity in a not too self-destructive manner.
For how long the two of them would live, neither of them could tell. Such is the play of chance upon people’s lives, that one, or perhaps both of them, could have been dead within a year. However, it would seem more kind and fair to think the opposite, and to wish them a long and happy life, and to believe that whatever stories theirs were to be, they would prove, if one had to relate them, to be less unorthodox tales than this one.
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Copyright © Samuel Lock 1998
Samuel Lock has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape in 1998
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781473570955