Grave Truths

by Anne Morgellyn

  ‘To be honest, I don’t care if he did or he didn’t now. It’s not going to bring her back. The point is, Roy is suffering.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s not your peace of mind you’re after?’

  ‘I feel guilty about Roy, yes. I could have done more to help him.’

  ‘I just don’t see the connection. What is he to you? You must have dealt with lots of bereaved relatives.’

  ‘Yes, I have. Even last week, when Gustav died … I was fine with that. I was useful even, helping to configure the arrangements. And, by the way, I’ve got some sponsorship for the fees if I do come back tomorrow. Mr Byrne, this undertaker I know, is taking me on as part of his bereavement service.’

  ‘Really?’ Cassie looked at me quizzically. ‘Well then, I hope you will put in some skills practice before you start. You’ve still not said what this Roy Woods is to you.’

  ‘He comes from the same place,’ I said. ‘He comes from Liverpool.’

  ‘I didn’t know you came from there,’ she said, surprised. ‘You don’t sound it.’

  ‘No, I know. I stopped sounding it,’ I said. ‘I left over twenty years ago. I haven’t been back.’

  ‘Why not? What’s back there?’

  ‘My past,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to go there, Cassie.’

  ‘But you are going there,’ she said. ‘Every time you meet with this Roy Woods.’

  ‘He’s talking of going back.’ I smiled. ‘He wants to visit the house where Lennon lived with his Auntie Mimi.’

  ‘What’s his Auntie Mimi got to do with it?’

  ‘John Lennon’s Auntie Mimi. She brought him up.’

  ‘Do you have any family back there?’

  ‘A brother, yes.’

  ‘Older, younger?’

  ‘Older,’ I said. ‘Look, this isn’t anything to do with him.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I told her. ‘And I don’t want to know either. We don’t get on.’

  ‘Is there something you want to tell me, Louise?’ she asked gently, leaning over the table. I drew back and reached for the wine bottle, pouring us both a last glass.

  ‘Not about my brother, no,’ I said quietly. But we were getting nowhere with Roy Woods. It seemed I was on my own with Roy, banging my head against the wall. I picked up the folder of photographs. The first few showed Cassie, dressed in a long paisley print skirt in the midst of a group of smiling children. Emerald foliage made a dripping frame around them. ‘This place looks lovely,’ I said. ‘Gus would have been in his element here.’ She sat there, sipping her wine, waiting for me to unlock the secrets of my childhood. But I wouldn’t do it. Roy was not my brother, not the real one anyway – nor in any sense whatsoever.

  ‘Were you abused as a child, Louise?’ she asked gently.

  ‘No,’ I almost shouted. ‘Well, not in the way you think anyway. I thought you weren’t supposed to ask questions …?’

  ‘What way then?’

  ‘It was just teasing,’ I said. ‘My brother was sickly, that’s all. He had to put me down to build himself up. He wasn’t very bright.’

  ‘You mean he had learning disabilities?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t handicapped … disabled,’ I corrected. ‘Challenged. I mean, he wasn’t sick like Roy – or like they say Roy is. I don’t think Roy Woods is mad.’

  ‘What was wrong with your brother?’

  ‘He had chronic psoriasis, that’s all …’

  ‘That’s a very serious condition.’

  ‘Don’t I know it? He was always in hospital. My mother used to say it wasn’t fair.’

  ‘What wasn’t?’

  ‘Well, that he was so ill when …’ I picked up another photo. ‘She always said I had my health and strength,’ I said. ‘And it’s true, I’ve always had my health and strength.’

  ‘There’s a smile on your face, Louise, but I don’t think you feel like smiling, do you?’

  I put the photos down. ‘I don’t want to talk about this, Cass. I’ve been there hundreds of times already. I wanted some advice from you about Roy Woods.’

  ‘You feel you have no right to health and strength,’ she said, ‘because your brother didn’t have it. You feel you don’t deserve it, that you must atone for it in some way by helping this Roy, who’s also ill, and also seems to have had a strong attachment to his mother.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘The opposite, in fact. They didn’t like each other.’

  ‘That itself is a kind of attachment,’ she said. ‘Think about it.’

  ‘I don’t want to think about it,’ I said. ‘I’ve thought about it ever since I could think. Why him, why not me?’ I bit my lip. I had already said too much.

  ‘It’s not your fault you don’t have psoriasis, Louise.’

  ‘Of course it’s not.’ I tried to laugh.

  ‘Why are you laughing? You have to address these issues.You’ve got to do some work on yourself if you are going to be a counsellor.’

  ‘My brother got away with murder,’ I said, then sat back, reeling with the possible significance of that. Had Roy Woods got away with murder?

  ‘I know what you’re going to say,’ I said. ‘Roy Woods didn’t get away with murder because he didn’t really murder anyone either. But that doesn’t make them the same.’

  ‘In your mind, Louise, they are the same. You feel responsible for them both. Why him and not me?’

  ‘Edith wasn’t my mother.’

  ‘Is your mother alive?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘She died of cancer.’

  ‘And did you go to the funeral?’

  ‘No,’ I said, looking away from her, ashamed. ‘My brother didn’t want me there. I told you, we don’t get on.’

  ‘What about your father?’

  ‘He died twenty years ago.’

  ‘And that was when you left?’

  ‘Yes, neat, isn’t it?’ I realised I was smiling again, not a real smile, of course, a displacement. I put my hand to my mouth.

  ‘This Roy has triggered something in you,’ she said, a little too pat because I didn’t want to sit here feeding her ego like some kind of textbook counselling exercise. With mounting irritation, I reached again for the photos.

  ‘Who are these children?’ I asked.

  ‘Children from the orphanage. Not all are orphaned though, some are just too much to cope with. We think we have problems here, but there …’ She sighed. ‘You’ve never been to India, have you?’

  ‘I’ve seen some pretty bad conditions right here,’ I said, thinking of some of the homes I had cleared for the City.

  ‘There are so many of them, Louise.’ She took the picture from me. ‘The parents just can’t feed them all sometimes, that’s the only reason they leave them. Gus Schneller did wonders there. The children loved him – they loved his hair, it was so white. His skin was so white. I’ll miss him, you know. I’ll miss him.’

  ‘Why were all the mental hospitals closed down, back here?’ I said. ‘I mean in England?’ But Cassie waved her hand dismissively.

  ‘They had their good points, but the bad ones were legion, I can tell you. I did twenty-five years in psychiatric nursing, Louise. Some things have moved on for the better. For instance, all these patients who shouldn’t have been in at all …’

  ‘Their families left them there, you mean?’

  ‘Some families did – but that was not the same as in India. There, the families can’t eat.’ She looked through the pack of photographs and picked out a snapshot of a grinning child, about six or seven years old, squinting up at the camera. ‘This is Pinki,’ she said. ‘She belongs to the Dalit caste, you know, the Untouchables? She was destined to clean the poo out of the courtyards, like her mother and grandma before her. Pinki has nine sisters and one brother. When she got sick, they couldn’t cope, so they brought her to the orphanage. All she had was diahorrea, and when we’d rehydrated her, and fed her up a bit, she could just as easily have gone home. Gus was sponsorin
g children like her, you know.’

  ‘Did you know he was a drug abuser?’ I said, because I’d heard enough of Saint Gustav.

  Cassie shuffled the photos into a neat pile and looked me in the eye. ‘That can’t be true,’ she said. ‘I lived with the man for weeks together in India. You get to know someone pretty well in those conditions. All I ever saw him take was aspirin for a headache.’

  ‘The pathologist found traces of amphetamine,’ I went on, holding up the bright white light of truth like some Nazi torch bearer. ‘His insurance won’t pay up, leaving his partner, Chas’s sister, in terrible debt. Chas is picking up the tab for the grand funeral. Oh, and it seems his liver was pickled.’

  Cassie looked at her watch. ‘I’d better be off soon, Louise. I’ve got prep to do for your group tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s true, Cass,’ I insisted. ‘Gus wasn’t all he seemed. Just like the rest of us, eh?’ I gave another stupid laugh. She got up.

  ‘What have you got in store for us tomorrow?’

  ‘Oh, the usual registration bits and bobs. Then I thought we’d do some skills practice after the long summer break. Just to warm everybody up.’ Her voice sounded even but I could tell she was het up. I had triggered something off. Touché, I thought meanly. Two can play at that game.

  ‘Do you think I should mention Roy?’

  ‘If you want, as a problem to bring perhaps.’

  ‘Maybe I’d better leave it.’

  Cassie was putting on her coat, wincing slightly since she suffered from arthritis. ‘I know that there are people in your group who knew Gus Schneller,’ she said. ‘I would ask you not to mention what you said to me, about the drug use. It was a lie anyway …’

  ‘It was not,’ I flared. ‘I had it from Chas. Why would he make that up? He’s been stuck with the cost of the funeral …’

  The bell rang. ‘That’ll be my cab,’ Cassie said. ‘Maybe Chas has issues with his sister,’ she said drily, as a parting thought. I closed the door on her in disgust. Maybe it was better to be disenchanted after all, I thought. Disenchanted, not deluded.

  ***

  Chapter 20

  When Cassie had gone, I went into my bedroom and lay down on the bed. I was hoping Chas would come round – he usually dropped in on his way home from work, though I still wasn’t sure where Chas and I were going. I’ll drop you at home, he had said, as we drove back from Devon. Perhaps that meant he had dropped me full stop. It was Roy on the doorstep anyway. I hovered, my hand on the chain, not knowing quite what to say. I wasn’t frightened this time, but I did feel awkward because it was dark now and I knew he had no place to stay.

  ‘It’s getting parky outside,’ he said, peering at me from under his hood, like a mole. Again, I smelt that earthy smell, a living smell of green things and rich mud. Not a bad smell at all. He was not a bad looking man, given the right presentation. But I stepped right back from the thought.

  ‘I could make you a hot cup of tea,’ I said, but without much warmth because the thought behind that was of how I should get rid of him when he had drunk the cup that cheers and begun to unthaw.

  He stepped towards me into the kitchen, but as I was about to close the door on us, shutting us up inside together again, I heard the growl of Chas’s Harley-D. My knight of the road, I thought, flinging open the door as he came down the basement steps: the deus ex machina. I looked from him to Roy, two men with black beards. Roy was clad in green, like the man from Sherwood forest, while Chas was in dark leathers. The Sherriff of Nottingham.

  ‘Chas Androssoff,’ he said to Roy, holding out his right hand, which was still in its biker gauntlet. He didn’t look at me at all.

  ‘Roy Woods,’ I ventured, when Roy said nothing. He looked surprised, like an animal caught in the light, the flight reflex not yet active.

  Chas pulled out a chair and sat down. He placed the brown paper bag, containing what smelled like a tandoori, on the counter by the sink, then desposited a Tesco carrier on the table in front of Roy. A couple of wine bottles clinked inside.

  ‘Roy was just going to having a cup of tea with me,’ I said, quickly taking out the bottles and disposing of the carrier. Roy said nothing, his eyes on me.

  ‘Chas is a a doctor,’ I said, by way of further introduction. ‘He’s very nice though.’

  Chas opened a bottle of wine. ‘Yes, I heard we have a mutual acquaintance.’ He set a glass before Roy. ‘Dr Samuel Veil.’ I shot him a warning look, but he continued. ‘I’ve known Sam Veil for quite some time.’

  ‘He’s no mate of mine,’ Roy muttered. ‘Good bouquet,’ he said, sniffing at the wine Chas poured. ‘I’m getting blackcurrant, berries, no – allspice. My mam used to put that in fruit cakes. Honey, lemons, peaches …’

  ‘Come on,’ Chas said, ‘it’s just Tesco’s Rioja.’

  ‘Very nice too. Makes a change from the cup that cheers.’ Roy drained his glass. I was worried what the alcohol might do to him. Was he still taking the psychotropic medication?

  ‘Sit down and have a drink with us, Louise,’ Chas ordered. ‘I’m a pathologist,’ he told Roy. ‘Not quite as glamorous as a shrink, but we do our best.’

  ‘Ah yes. I thought I had your name somewhere.’ Roy tapped his forehead. ‘I’ve got you now. You cut my mother up.’

  Chas held his eye. ‘It’s a terrible thing to lose a parent.’

  ‘We didn’t get on. Louise knows. Can I have some more of this wine?’

  Chas fetched the other bottle.

  ‘I can’t stand the sight of blood,’ Roy said, looking at me. But he had wiped the blood from the wall – or so he had written.

  ‘The job gets a bit messy, I can’t deny it.’ Chas pulled a face. ‘Louise used to assist me. That’s how we met.’

  ‘What, in the morgue?’

  ‘Not from choice. I was given the job of technician as part of my commuity service,’ I put in quickly. ‘I was on probation for possessing cannabis.’

  ‘What, weed? Not you, Louise.’

  ‘It was a set-up.’

  ‘Course it was,’ Chas leaned forward. ‘Louise blew the whistle on some people in high places. She thought they’d stitched her up. Paranoid or what?’

  ‘Pazhalsta,’ I said, trying a Russian word on Chas, who was fluent in the language.

  ‘Paranoid, yes, that’s what I said,’ he smiled, ignoring my plea.

  ‘Can I use your toilet?’ Roy asked.

  I nodded. ‘Yes, I think you know where it is.’

  ‘When is he going?’ Chas asked bluntly, as Roy shut the door behind him.

  ‘What am I supposed to do? It’s good you came when you did.’

  Chas shrugged. ‘Let him finish his drink, then drop the hint.’

  ‘And if he doesn’t take it?’

  ‘He can’t stay here, Louise, you know that – unless you want him here?’

  ‘No, of course not, how can you think …?’ I scrutinised my glass. Roy came back into the kitchen and peered into the brown paper bag which I had set down on the counter.

  ‘Smells like Indian,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you going to tuck in? Don’t let me stop you.’

  ‘I’m not hungry at present,’ I said. ‘Take some if you like. You don’t mind, do you, Chas?’

  ‘Not at all, go right ahead. I’ll join you if I may, Roy. It’s not good to skip your supper.’ He fumbled in the pocket of his leathers and brought out the little pill box.

  ‘Do you have to?’ I whispered as he swallowed one of the super drugs. I thought of Gustav Schneller, keeling over on speed, before his time.

  Roy had brought the bag over to the table and was opening up the cartons of chicken and rice. ‘Any chance of a spoon?’ he asked me.

  ‘Or two,’ Chas said, getting up and fetching a couple from the drawer. ‘Here, Roy, why don’t you finish that up and then I’ll drop you where you want to go?’

  ‘I’ve nowhere better to be,’ Roy answered, his mouth full. A glutenous sliver hung onto his beard. ‘I wanted a wor
d with Louise, a private word like, talk something over.’

  ‘You can say it in front of Chas,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Roy wiped his mouth. ‘No secrets from each other, is that it? I guess you know about my mam?’ he asked Chas. ‘She’s told you how it was?’

  Chas nodded impassively. ‘I gave the police a copy of my report. I guess you saw it too. So you can rest assured your mother had a massive stroke, went out like a light, as they say – no, let’s not tread on eggshells here,’ he said, to check my intervention. ‘You’d like it straight, Roy, wouldn’t you, you’d like me to be straight with you? Mrs Woods had a clot at the base of her brain. She wouldn’t have been in any pain from it, and she wouldn’t have felt anything much when it ruptured – causing the stroke. Sometimes these things can hang around for years before they rupture, and then something triggers them off.’

  ‘I pushed her,’ Roy said.

  ‘No, you didn’t.’

  ‘I’m telling you, I pushed her.’ He set down the chicken bone he had been gnawing and faced Chas out. ‘You weren’t there.’

  ‘OK, you pushed her,’ Chas conceded. ‘So push Louise now, go on …’

  ‘Hang on …’ I said.

  ‘Big guy like you, you give someone a push, they might go down, but the push itself wouldn’t kill them, unless you made the push into a blow to the head, and it would have to be some blow, even from someone with your weight. Your mother banged her head, I could see that when I examined her, but that was not what killed her. She had a superficial scalp wound, but it wasn’t caused by any blow.’

  ‘If he meant to push her, then that was as good as doing the deed, wasn’t it?’ I said. ‘Is that what you meant, Roy – that you meant to do it? Which is not the same as doing it,’ I finished.

  ‘Don’t split hairs,’ Chas said. ‘The stroke was waiting to happen. Your mother had the aneurysm and it ruptured and then she had the fall. That was the sequence – but you see it wasn’t the fall that killed her. You might have wanted to kill her, fine. I wanted to kill my father sometimes, especially when he made me take French at school, but when he got crushed by a lorry at the age of fifty-nine, with my mother at his side – so badly crushed incidentally, they couldn’t give her an open coffin, which had my sister in bits – I didn’t go around saying I’d killed my parents because I’d wished them dead a hundred times when I was in my teens. We all hate our parents, at least for part of the time. It’s normal. It’s part of growing up. What did that poet say?’ he looked at me. ‘Come on, Louise. They fuck you up, your mum and dad.’