An Empty Death (5 page)
Authors: Laura Wilson
Avoiding the general chatter, Jenny spent the morning helping people fill out forms claiming for damage to property, furniture and belongings. Halfway through one of a dozen unvaried and wearying exchanges - ‘You can get a grant to replace your teeth, Mrs Clayton’ - ‘I don’t want sharity’ - ‘Pardon?’ - ‘Scharity’ - ‘It’s not charity, they’ll take it off your War Damage claim’ - ‘I don’t know, sheems like scharity to me’ - Jenny looked up to see her sister Doris standing behind the shabby, sunken-mouthed form of Ivy Clayton, looking excited and indicating, by jerks of head and thumb, that she should accompany her outside immediately. Although she would never have admitted it, Doris was Jenny’s favourite sister, much closer in both looks - though Doris was taller and darker - and temperament than she and their eldest sister Lilian.
‘Will you excuse me for a moment, Mrs Clayton? There’s something I need to see to. Shan’t be long.’ Jenny stood up carefully, adjusting her skirt; the lack of elastic meant that this particular pair of knickers was in constant danger of falling down. Leaving the woman muttering shushily to herself, Jenny followed Doris into what had formerly been the playground. ‘Before I forget,’ Doris whispered, ‘I got some toilet paper. Four rolls each. Mr Bolster let me have it. And he’s kept back some soap for you.’
‘How did you manage that?’
‘My natural charm,’ said Doris, striking a haughty, chin-up pose and flicking out one wrist like a mannequin. ‘Drop in later, and I’ll give them to you. That’s not the reason I’m here, though - it’s that Mrs Ingram from last night. I couldn’t sleep for thinking about the poor woman, all alone like that and with no-one to look after her, so I went to the hospital this morning to see how she was doing. They said she could go, and did I know where her husband was or if she had any relatives near? So I said why hadn’t they asked her, and they said she still wasn’t up to talking but they couldn’t keep her because she didn’t have any injuries and they need the bed because they’ve had so many come in with the new bombs.’
‘Where’s her husband?’
‘Called up, remember? Anyway, there didn’t seem to be anyone she knew - well, she’s not been here long - and I thought it was a bit much to turn the poor woman onto the street in that condition, so I said she could come and stop with us.’
‘There’s beds here.’
‘I know, but they said she needs someone looking after her. She’s in a bad way.’
‘Where is she?’ Jenny looked round the yard.
‘Still at the hospital. I came down here to get some clothes from the WVS so I can take her home.’
‘Course, she only had the nightgown, didn’t she? You are good.’
‘Well . . .’ Doris shrugged. ‘Hope someone’d do the same for me if I needed it. I’d better get on - there’s her new ID card and ration book to sort out as well, and I don’t see her being able to do it . . .’
Jenny left Doris sorting through heaps of rancid garments in the clothing exchange and returned to the problem of Ivy Clayton’s missing teeth. In due course Ivy was replaced by a man with a dangerous air of hilarity about him, as if he had been celebrating his birthday on his own, who kept laughing and waving his arms. ‘I’ve lost everything,’ he announced. ‘House, ration books, identity card, kiddies’ birth certificates . . . I can’t even find my wife. That’s why I’m here. Have you seen her?’
What with the bomb-happy man, and several others who needed immediate assistance, Jenny was kept continuously occupied for almost four hours, and had no time to think about Mrs Ingram, or whether she was pregnant, or anything much else.
On her way to Doris’s, she wondered whether to bring up the subject of last night’s ‘mistake’ with her sister. Doris was always pretty sensible about these things . . . All the same, she had a feeling that, if she voiced her fears about pregnancy, it would somehow make it more likely. While this did not make any sort of logical sense, it had far too much of the nebulous, paranoia-inducing power of superstition for her seriously to consider acting against it.
Five
T
he man, Sam Todd, took the scalpel - filched from the mortuary - from his jacket pocket. Too elated to sleep, he tested its sharpness with his thumb before laying it down on the lace-edged runner that lay across the little table in his dreary room. Next to it was a bundle of newspaper the size and shape of a large cabbage, which he unwrapped carefully, revealing the shiny, yellowy-grey convolutions of a human brain, saved from incineration at the hospital.
he man, Sam Todd, took the scalpel - filched from the mortuary - from his jacket pocket. Too elated to sleep, he tested its sharpness with his thumb before laying it down on the lace-edged runner that lay across the little table in his dreary room. Next to it was a bundle of newspaper the size and shape of a large cabbage, which he unwrapped carefully, revealing the shiny, yellowy-grey convolutions of a human brain, saved from incineration at the hospital.
He flattened out the newsprint around the brain to protect the runner. Strange, he thought, that this was now merely a piece of obsolete machinery that had once been operated by a conscious force. It was of no more significance than, say, a spent light bulb, and yet it had been the seat of control; the place where decisions were made and challenges were undertaken. It had contained likes and dislikes, and all the things that made its former owner - one Bernard Henry Porteus, auxiliary fireman, killed by falling masonry - what he was. This is what determines us, he thought. It’s what dies when we die. He’d no time for God, or souls, or anything like that - those were just inventions to keep credulous fools happy.
He’d smuggled the brain back to his room to study it at leisure. He pulled his copy of Cunningham’s dissection manual - stolen from Foyles Bookshop - from his battered knapsack, and found the relevant page. At various times he’d brought back livers, kidneys, hearts and wombs to dissect in this room, but this was his first brain. He prodded it with a fingertip, gingerly, as if he expected it to react. ‘Hello there, Mr Porteus,’ he murmured. ‘Let’s find out what made you tick.’ He picked up the scalpel and jabbed the brain with the sharp tip. ‘Didn’t you like that, old chap?’ he asked. ‘You know, you really shouldn’t complain. Just think’ - he chuckled - ‘you’re helping to advance the cause of science in a way you could never have imagined.’
After a couple of hours’ studying, slicing, and making notes, he dumped what was left of the brain in the basin, then sat back and took stock of his surroundings. The room was where he’d been living since he began his life as Sam Todd, mortuary attendant, back in April (the real Sam Todd, a two-year-old who’d succumbed to Spanish influenza in 1918, was lying in a Gravesend church-yard). It didn’t contain much that was his. Most of the few things he owned - the second-hand suitcase with the labels from foreign travels, the expensive cigarette case, and a large quantity of varied stationery - were mere props. For the rest, there was a high, narrow, single bed, scuffed brown lino on the floor, a battered table and chair, and a rickety washstand with a jug and basin of cheap white china. It was not home, merely a place he inhabited, the latest in a long line of many such that he’d inhabited since he had ‘died’, aged seventeen, in 1932, while on holiday at Camber Sands. He’d left his clothes in a heap on the beach and disappeared as completely as if his body really had slipped beneath the cold grey waves of the straits of Dover. So far, that had been his finest hour: sneaking out of the boarding house at night, depositing on the sand the clothes his mother had last seen him wearing, together with his watch, pocket-knife and wallet, and then donning the new things he’d carefully hoarded and walking away in the night, towards freedom, sloughing off his old self like an unwanted skin.
It had taken years since then to achieve his goal, but now he was in sight of it. His pulse raced and he felt warm all over and aroused with the excitement - the need - of it. The mortuary attendant, like all the personas before him, was merely a stepping stone to something better. After the first week in the job he’d taken all his clothing coupons and purchased the uniform of a doctor: black jacket and striped trousers. Wearing these beneath a white coat, and carrying a stethoscope, he’d walked about the Middlesex Hospital after his shift was over, trying out his potential new self. As he’d moved through the building, keeping a brisk but steady pace, looking calm and resolute, he’d enjoyed the deference of the nurses and the respectful looks of the matrons. In the Gents’, he had admired his wonderful new self in the mirror.
He’d only dared appear dressed as a doctor once. It wasn’t likely that he’d be recognised but, with so much at stake, he didn’t want to risk it a second time. Now, he went across to the small square of mirror that hung on a nail above the washstand. Its surface made him think of a river in an industrial town, and gave his sandy hair and moustache and his nondescript features a brown, rather blurred look.
‘Who are you?’ he asked himself, then stepped back to light a cigarette. There were only six in the packet to last the next two days, but he’d earned it. Squinting through the smoke, he saw, once more, the image of himself as a doctor, an educated man with dignity and authority, worthy of the esteem and regard of his peers. A man who would make his mark and be remembered. He felt a surge of power, like an electrical force, go through his body as he shouted a reply to his own question. ‘I am anyone I want to be! Anyone at all!’
He stood for several minutes, watching himself smoke, and then, when the cigarette was finished, he bent over the basin and, very deliberately, stubbed the fag out right in the middle of what remained of Bernard Henry Porteus’s brain.
Six
R
ight from the start, Todd had loved the atmosphere of the hospital: the quiet efficiency, the routine, the firmness of purpose. The stone corridors, swing doors and neat rows of patients tucked beneath their bedclothes were all part of a beautifully ordered world. Even the names of the departments - Radiography, Physiotherapy, Infant Welfare - seemed like poetry. By the beginning of May - after a month working in the mortuary and, satisfied, finally, with the progress of his studies - he had decided to make the next move towards the creation of his ultimate self. This involved the mother of James Dacre, a boy from his first school who, almost five years ago in the early days of the blackout, had been fatally hit by a car a month after graduating in medicine. When Todd had heard about it, he’d realised the importance of the information, and filed it away for use when he was ready. So, one evening in the first week of May, he set to work in his room, drafting a letter on the back of an old envelope.
ight from the start, Todd had loved the atmosphere of the hospital: the quiet efficiency, the routine, the firmness of purpose. The stone corridors, swing doors and neat rows of patients tucked beneath their bedclothes were all part of a beautifully ordered world. Even the names of the departments - Radiography, Physiotherapy, Infant Welfare - seemed like poetry. By the beginning of May - after a month working in the mortuary and, satisfied, finally, with the progress of his studies - he had decided to make the next move towards the creation of his ultimate self. This involved the mother of James Dacre, a boy from his first school who, almost five years ago in the early days of the blackout, had been fatally hit by a car a month after graduating in medicine. When Todd had heard about it, he’d realised the importance of the information, and filed it away for use when he was ready. So, one evening in the first week of May, he set to work in his room, drafting a letter on the back of an old envelope.
Dear Mrs Dacre,I don’t know if you remember me, but I was a school friend of your late son, James. I have many happy memories of him, and I was so sorry to hear, recently, of his death several years ago.I am afraid that we had rather lost touch, which is why this letter has been so long in coming to you. As I have said, it was only recently that I learnt of the tragedy. It is a terrible shame that such a promising young man should be taken so young . . .
Thus far, nothing but truth - or almost truth . . . But now he had to think . . . Nothing too exaggerated about James Dacre’s potential. From what he could remember, Dacre was a stolid, unremarkable type who would probably have made a competent physician, but nothing more. So . . . another sentence about him being a nice chap, a tasteful reference to the Almighty, and a suggestion that, as he was passing that way the following week, he might drop in for a visit. Mrs Dacre, he knew, had long been a widow, and James had been her only child. If she were lonely, she’d appreciate the company. Even if she were not, Todd thought, she’d probably welcome an opportunity to talk about her son. He put the final touches to his letter and then, from the supply of paper he kept in the battered desk, he selected a sheet of fine, heavy bond, and spent a few moments testing his fountain pens until he found one that felt right for the job. He copied the words out neatly with his address at the top, then paused. It was too risky to sign his real name - she’d probably have read about his ‘death’ in the local paper. Although he had met James Dacre’s mother briefly a couple of times - tea after prep-school sports - and had a vague memory of a well-fleshed woman in a flowered summer dress, he did not think she would remember what he looked like. After all, one small boy is much like another . . .
He was as sure as he could be that she’d never met his own mother who, used - as she herself put it - to better society, would have thought it a comedown to be friends with someone like Mrs Dacre. The Dacres may have had more money than his family, but in his mother’s eyes they were vulgar and middle-class, and he was sure that her loneliness would not have overcome her prejudice.
What should he call himself? Nothing too unusual - or too common - as both might prove memorable. Something easily confused, he thought. A surname that was also a Christian name, perhaps? He pondered, tapping the end of his pen against his teeth: Oliver? Thomas? Norman? He jotted down the names: Oliver, Thomas, Norman. Thomas Norman? No, Norman Thomas. Entirely unmemorable. He’d use that.
He found a matching envelope and wrote the address - copied from the post office directory - then he tucked the letter behind the clock on the mantelpiece. Lighting a cigarette, he sat down to rest for a moment before starting work on his next project: an identity card in the name of James Dacre. That was the main thing; a ration book could wait. His landlady kept his - or rather, Todd’s - and there was no reason why she should not continue to do so for the time being. As for clothing, he had everything he needed at present. The identity card would be a simple matter. He’d seen to this when, at the start of the war, he’d managed - this time as ‘John Watson’ - to secure a job as a lowly clerk in the National Registration Office. Over the course of several months, he had purloined a stack of blank identity cards, which had come in very handy, and he knew how to fill them in to look authentic. He tamped out his cigarette, reached under his bed for the trunk where he stored his most important stationery and papers, and undid the brown paper parcel where he kept the blank cards. Choosing a thick-nibbed pen, he filled the cartridge and was about to start writing when he remembered that he didn’t know if James Dacre had a middle name. He couldn’t afford to make stupid mistakes - completing the card would have to wait until he had seen Mrs Dacre.
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