The Discourtesy of Death Read online

  ‘Jenny became deathly calm,’ he said. ‘There was no communication between us. Nothing I said or did reached her, until I said I’d … help. Then, for once, she looked at me differently. She looked at me with hope.’

  ‘The conversation, Peter,’ nudged Anselm, firmly. ‘What did she say? What did you say?’

  Peter Henderson had been examining his hands darkly as if they’d held something he shouldn’t have dropped. He raised his eyes to Michael and Emma who, in a dreadful representation of the waking dead, looked up as one.

  * * *

  The conversation had taken place in the middle of the night, three months before the cancer diagnosis.

  It was blustery outside and a kitchen window, left open by accident, was banging against its frame. Peter came downstairs to close it. Jenny was awake. He sat by the bed in the darkness, listening to the whistling in the trees. During a lull – one of those strange moments of absolute silence during a squall – Jenny said:

  ‘Peter, I’m not scared to go.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that.’

  ‘This is my life, Peter. I’ve taken a long look at what it’s worth. I’ve waited for some kind of surprise, something to change how I understand my situation, but nothing has come. How could it? I can’t wait for hope; I have to go find it. Will you help me? Just this once?’

  Peter couldn’t answer. He nodded meaninglessly.

  ‘I’m fine for now,’ said Jenny, ‘but if things get worse, I just want to slip away, quickly and quietly … after a party. Do you understand?’

  Peter nodded again.

  ‘I’d like champagne. I’d like to see Tim and Mum and Dad and Nigel and Helen and Bryan. And then, when everyone’s gone, I want you to help me go.’

  ‘I can’t, Jenny, I can’t,’ murmured Peter.

  ‘I’ll help you to help me. We’ll help one another.’

  ‘No, Jenny, I’m sorry, but I can’t.’ Peter stood up, leaning over the bed in the dark, feeling Jenny’s warm breath. ‘I don’t want you to go, my love, I want you to stay.’

  ‘Your job is to help Timothy understand that I’m not leaving him,’ she whispered, loudly. ‘That I’ve already gone. That I’ve found peace for everyone.’

  Anselm stood up slowly.

  The action drew to a close the remembered night. He walked over to the hearth and threw a log onto the fire. Looking down at the wood and the flames, he asked Peter Henderson to explain what had happened over the next few weeks – how he’d contacted Vincent Cooper who’d overseen the fabrication of the Exit Mask; how he’d given Jenny a sort of freedom of movement, not questioning where she wanted to go or why. How he’d accepted a passive role so as to restore her autonomy. Returning to the table, Anselm said:

  ‘What was the effect of this agreement to cooperate with one another?’

  ‘She changed.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘She became more calm.’

  ‘Did she speak of the mask?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘She never discussed using it with you?’

  ‘No. It was as if … having made it, she forgot about it.’

  ‘And, as between yourselves?’

  A pause followed that quietly spoken question.

  ‘We began to get closer … like never before … in a way that couldn’t have happened before … because we’d made a momentous decision together … and now we were on the other side of it. We were in a new land.’

  ‘Side by side?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How was that possible, given your previous … treatment of her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Yes, Peter, you do. Tell us. It’s important.’

  Peter Henderson looked at his hands again. ‘Because I’d heard her, and she’d heard me, and because of that … we were … present to one another. It took time for us both to realise it, but once we’d sorted out the manner of her dying, we gradually noticed that we’d found one another, found what we both thought we’d lost. I loved her; she loved me. It was as simple as that. She knew it, and I knew it. The paralysis couldn’t change this discovery … nothing could. It was mysterious …’

  Emma Goodwin’s eyes were wide and vacant, as if the shutters had been pulled down. Michael had reached for her hand. Helen was watching Michael as if he might speak. Nigel held his head in his hands, elbows on the table. Doctor Ingleby listened from a strange distance.

  ‘What was the effect of the cancer diagnosis on you?’ asked Anselm, pertinently.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it,’ replied Peter Henderson. ‘I’d come home at last and now she was definitely going … whether she chose to or not. There was nothing either of us could do, except submit to what was happening.’

  ‘And for Jenny?’

  ‘She was frightened. She said things couldn’t be worse.’

  ‘Did Jenny talk about ending her life?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you refer to the mask?’

  ‘Never. I abhorred the thing. It stood between me and Jenny … against what was happening between us.’

  Anselm removed his glasses to clean them. Rubbing one of the lenses on his scapular, he said, ponderously, like a man casting his mind back to a turning in the road, ‘Jenny was frightened, you said. Did she stay that way?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was she depressed?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Would that complete her mental picture … fear and despair?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What would you add?’

  Peter Henderson began kneading a brow as if he wanted to completely rearrange the shape of his face.

  ‘She was composed. Right alongside the fear. As the weeks went by, it was as though the illness had become detached from her, running parallel to who she was. Sometimes … she seemed to look at it from afar … as if it couldn’t harm her. She was at peace.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Michael had spoken. He’d taken his hand back from Emma and was staring over the table in confusion.

  ‘I don’t know, Michael. Honestly, I don’t fully understand what happened. But it was as though the certainty of death had brought some kind of light into her life. You, me – if we’re lucky – we see to the end of the street; Jenny … she saw everything. She saw the whole road. No obstacles ahead, no distractions to the side. She knew where she was going and it removed most of the anxieties that claw at the rest of us. She said she could still enjoy a sherbet lemon.’

  ‘A what?’ whispered Michael in disbelief.

  ‘A sherbet lemon.’

  Anselm had finished cleaning his glasses, but he’d kept them in his hand as if preferring a slightly blurred view of the table and the people around it. He said: ‘Of course, there’s no way of knowing what anyone is really thinking, is there? Illness is a very private thing. As private as choosing death.’

  It wasn’t really a question, so Peter Henderson didn’t reply but as if pushed over the edge his voice dropped a register, cracking hard in his throat. ‘I just wanted to go back to the wine bar where I’d first met her. I just wanted to run things differently. And I was just grateful for what was left, now, between us. Time together became invaluable. I pushed everyone away … it was like we’d met for the first time.’

  No one seemed to be breathing. Anselm’s heart was in his mouth. He settled his glasses on his nose and said, ‘The truth of Jenny’s final year alive is this: she chose to end her life’ – he looked around the table – ‘but she never took the most important step. She never asked anyone to get that mask. On her birthday there was a party. For once everyone was together in one room. You all came and went … except for Vincent Cooper who came back because he’d forgotten his wallet. But Jenny died that night. And this is where the complications—’

  ‘We all know she was killed.’

  Nigel Goodwin spoke to the ground. He spoke for the young woman who’d written him a letter, a cry from the heart.

  ‘So
meone took her life. Someone thought they could—’

  ‘Do you want to know who it was?’ exclaimed Helen at last, looking around the table at the harrowed, watching faces. Throughout the entire meeting she’d angled her head to one side, but now she’d turned on everyone, flushed with authority. ‘Well, I can tell you.’

  Nigel raised bloodshot eyes to his brother, shaking his head, knowing he couldn’t stop Helen once she got going. She was off the leash again. Her features were contorted with a suppressed certainty that had been swallowed for the common good and which she would now spill all over the floor. ‘It was … it was …’

  ‘Timothy.’

  The silence following Emma’s abrupt declaration acted like a vacuum sucking in the horror of those who’d always known and those who couldn’t believe what they’d heard. She’d used her cheery winter voice, the voice that dealt with difficult situations, only this time there was no baked Alaska on the table.

  45

  The truth, at last, was out. The contaminating history of resentment and disappointment had been surpassed, an incredible fact which dramatically reduced the importance of the family’s troubles, for any amount of adult conflict was as nothing compared to the moral and legal crisis which now fell to be resolved: a twelve-year-old boy had murdered his mother, thinking he was doing her a favour.

  ‘I knew and yet I didn’t know,’ muttered Peter Henderson.

  Unable to sleep, he’d come downstairs in the middle of the night and found that Jenny wasn’t breathing. He knew she was dead. And he knew it couldn’t be the cancer, not yet, and he couldn’t think any further; wouldn’t allow himself to think of Timothy, the only other person in the house.

  ‘I called Bryan and when he came, I knew for sure it wasn’t the cancer.’ Peter looked over at his friend’s fallen face. ‘You were shocked, like me; and I know you thought I’d done something to cut short the disease. I couldn’t tell you what I feared. I couldn’t even tell myself.’

  And so he’d prepared Timothy’s breakfast the next morning after the body had been taken away. Frosties. A boiled egg with soldiers. He’d watched his son eat slowly, reading all the signs of numbed responsibility, translating them into sadness, shock and distress. Humanising what had happened. Trying to keep the future vaguely normal.

  ‘Timothy had heard the conversation,’ interposed Emma, taking a packet of Pall Mall from her bag. She was rigid in her chair, commanding, ready to field any questions. ‘He’d heard the same banging window. He’d come downstairs and listened from the corridor to his mother talking to his father. He’d heard her say that she’d like to go if things got worse.’ She shuffled out a cigarette. ‘And they did. She got cancer. He’d heard her say she wanted a party … champagne … and he’d heard Peter say he just couldn’t do it …’

  She broke off to strike the match.

  ‘I told him to help his father,’ mumbled Michael. ‘I told him to do the things he didn’t want to do … I meant the dishes …’

  Emma resumed control, blowing smoke through the corner of her mouth. She was the only one who’d got used to the unthinkable. ‘His father threw a brick at a child. Timothy wondered why. Wouldn’t let the matter drop, no matter what I said. To get away from it all, I took him for a ride on the London Eye. Just as we got to the top, he started whispering in my ear. We’d gone up into the sky on a great big wheel … by the time we’d come down to earth I’d found out my grandson had smothered my daughter. He’d come downstairs with his Spiderman pillow and placed it over her face, counted slowly to twenty and then gone back to bed. Not much you can say to that.’

  He’d only done what his father couldn’t do. He’d known about some wretched mask that no one wanted to use. He’d seen himself as joining a secret team. A team. He’d been the one who’d done the difficult bit. He hadn’t been on his own, not really.

  ‘Not much you can say to that, either.’

  But Emma had had to find something. She’d told Timothy never to mention it again. She’d assured him – ‘Well, what else could I say?’ – that he’d helped his mother when no one else had been willing or able. Told him she did something similar every day to cats and dogs; that we were far kinder to animals than humans. She’d bought him a large waffle covered with Nutella and ice cream.

  ‘I told him it was our secret,’ said Emma. She paused to produce a small ashtray from her handbag and placed it on the edge of the table. ‘We’ve never spoken of it since.’

  It struck Anselm at this point that Emma Goodwin had really drawn the short straw. She’d longed to be a figure of salvation in Jennifer’s life and, that desire denied, she’d found herself the confidante of her killer. She’d had to absorb the shock and work out her next move before the London Eye had reached ground level, where everyone had clambered out to get on with their lives. She’d had barely any time to think. No wonder she’d bought a waffle. But she’d stuck to her guns. She’d opted for secrecy and then devoted herself to living out the implications of the decision. As if following Anselm’s thought, she said:

  ‘And we need never speak of it in the future, if Peter will just pull himself together.’ She spoke as if she were in the officers’ mess, adjudicating over an unfortunate punch-up between an aspiring lieutenant and a brigadier. ‘Timothy was doing just fine until his father threw that brick.’

  ‘Emma, the boy has committed a murder,’ said Nigel, in a drugged whisper.

  ‘Oh wake up, Nigel,’ snapped Emma. ‘She was my daughter. I know what Timothy did. But you have to face facts. We all have to. Jenny would have died anyway within another six months. She went quickly. She was spared the cancer. It’s not an agreeable way to go. I’ve seen it. Animals are no different to us in that regard. Frankly, there’s something to be grateful for and now the boy needs our support and not your condemnation.’

  ‘But, Emma—’

  ‘Nigel, you weren’t there.’ Emma was imperial in her disdain. ‘You were preaching “My yoke is easy, my burden is light” in Chitungwiza. I’m the one who’s had to carry the weight of Timothy’s secret. I’m the one who’s had to work out what to do. I’m the one who’s taken all the responsibility. Now it’s your turn’ – she was speaking to everyone now – ‘you can all drop your mawkish sensibilities and give me some help.’

  You really have hardened yourself, thought Anselm, from deep within himself. He was observing her, not minding that she’d seized control of the meeting. You made a decision to protect Timothy from what he’d done and you’ve never once drifted off course. When Peter began to crack you tried to help him with every fibre in your being – not because you cared for him, but because his collapse threatened to expose Timothy. In hurling that brick, Peter Henderson was accusing his son. He had to be stopped. So you planned to kill him. You used your husband’s love and his troubled past. Even now you can’t see what you’ve done and what is happening … that harm is following upon harm. That your decision was a fatal one.

  ‘What’s to be done?’ asked Helen, frightened and confused.

  ‘We have to do something,’ added Nigel.

  Emma regarded them with monumental scorn. She eyed Peter and then Doctor Ingleby as if challenging them to make an equally trite contribution. But everyone was stunned, like deserters caught by a searchlight. Only Emma was used to the glare. She appraised Anselm harshly, challenge in her eyes.

  ‘I suppose you’d like to beat all the swords into ploughshares?’ she mused, as if the idea was as far-fetched as a light burden. She leaned forward to stub out her cigarette. ‘You’re off with the birds. Burying the hatchet … now you’re talking. It falls short of reconciliation but it works. I’ve been doing it for years.’

  ‘Emma, stop this,’ pleaded Nigel, no longer quite recognising his sister-in-law. ‘We all have to—’

  ‘Shut up and listen,’ she said, smiling bitterly, as if she were back on the London Eye. ‘There’s a decision to be made. There are only two solutions. You all have to make a choice. There are ri
sks each way. It would be best if we can all agree to go in the same direction. Share the danger. Share the responsibility. Agreed?’

  She didn’t need an answer. She shook a box of matches to check if she had any left, her roving eyes querying the level of courage and determination. Nodding more contempt, she knocked out a Pall Mall and lit up.

  ‘The first road is the widest, the easiest to take and it leads directly to hell,’ she said, leaning back, head held high. ‘It means going to the police station and explaining in a hushed voice exactly what happened … what is it, two years ago? It means sitting down with social workers dressed in black jeans and lawyers who want to be paid up front – everything that Peter found so humiliating and exhausting and demeaning – and then going into some courtroom where a bewildered Solomon does his best to weigh up the mess that’s landed on the bench, wishing – I may be wrong, of course – that he hadn’t got out of bed that morning. Because this is no ordinary case. He’s going to sentence the boy for matricide. Compassionately, mind you, and he won’t allow the papers to print any names, given the boy’s tender years, but our Timothy will still come home with a criminal record stamped, “Murderer”. Everyone will know it was him that the papers were talking about. All the pundits will use “Boy G” as a tragic example of something gone wrong in our society or the legal system or God knows what, and “Boy G” will have to sit there listening or reading or watching, taking his medication and hoping his psychologist knows some good tricks on how to deal with exposure. He’ll end up with an entry in Wikipedia as the boy who’d committed an accidental mercy killing. Do you seriously expect Timothy to survive that ordeal?’

  No one answered.

  ‘Because this is the route proposed by …’ – Emma didn’t quite know how to designate Anselm. She was enraged with him: for his interference; for what he represented; for his distance from the trauma in her life and that of her family – ‘… by this stranger who never knew Jenny. This idealist, detached from the messy circumstances of our lives.’

  Anselm gave no visible reaction to Emma’s charge. He was waiting to hear the alternative course of action, watching Emma pull aggressively on her cigarette. She was about to make her bid for burying the hatchet.