The Discourtesy of Death (Father Anselm Novels) (31 page)

Michael breathed in slowly. There was no panic. No shake to the hand. There were four rounds in the Browning: one up the spout and three ready to go.

Michael flicked up the switch. Then he was off. Counting the cost: one, two, three, four…

The problem was this: the atheist with his foot caught in the hatch – Albert – was shot by Ernest because he, Ernest, couldn’t imagine a worse way to go than drowning. And Albert was in one hell of a flap. What Ernest didn’t know was that Albert (terrified by the gun) would have preferred to drown, but he couldn’t get the words out. What neither of them could have known was that, first, Albert’s foot would have come free an instant later. But, second, irony of ironies, when they’d finally got near a lifeboat, Albert would have met his end anyway, injured horribly by the whip of a snapped cable, dying in agony before the ship could sink and let him drown. Now, if Albert and Ernest could have shared a cocktail afterwards and talked things through amicably, Albert would have said he’d have preferred the bullet after all. And
thank God
he had a stutter. So, in the end, everyone was happy.

Except the author.

According to Professor Bannon, Albert’s preferences were— Suddenly, the lights went out.

There’d been a click from down the corridor but that sound was overtaken by the stamp of feet sweeping forward. Anselm rose in a panic, dropping the book to the floor. Soft light from the fire picked out some objects in the room. A clock ticked against the wall – he hadn’t noticed the mark of time until now, when it was about to be halted, once and for all – and he could hear the thumping dread of his heart.

Oh God, I’m finished, he thought, numbed.

Each second slowed, opening up space for one last-ditch reflection, something charged with high meaning and importance. In the popular imagination, Anselm was meant to see his life pass before his eyes – his infancy, parents, loved ones, a kite in the wind – but something else came to the fore … a man with a flushed, perspiring face. He appeared like an overweight angel to insulate Anselm from the banality of what was about to happen.

It was Bede. He’d come to say, ‘I told you so.’

It was that kind of case after all.

A dark shape appeared at the mouth of the corridor. Anselm tried to call out but his voice jammed. His final deliberation came like a weak sigh: ‘
God … I’m not ready.
’

Anselm had always imagined that death might be like falling under a general anaesthetic: giving in to the sudden, overwhelming pull of darkness … followed by a burst of light and the great answer to the great question: had the fifties jazz revival reached heaven?

There was no such tug from below. No trumpet blast. Just an enormous crash and then it was all over.

26th September

I’m not going to write about the cancer. I’m going to write instead what my mum said about it. And then this diary is finished. Because what Mum said is why I’m all blocked up. I’m hoping that once I’ve got it down, I’ll be able to forget and get on with things like I used to. Everything I’ve written so far was just a way of avoiding the subject. But I’ve sort of arrived here now, and I want to say it.

On the night my mum died we had a party. After everyone had gone my dad was doing the washing up. I sat with my mum. And it was like the old days. It was just me and her and I could tell she was really happy that it was just us two. We talked about school and then she made a speech. She’d been planning it and she was really serious. This is what she said:

There are many people who think I lost a lot when I gave up dancing. And I did. But I got you. And they don’t realise how much I’d rather have been with you than on the stage in London with my name in lights.We’ve had each other, haven’t we?

I said we’d had a great time. That I’d never forget that pushchair with the plastic hood when she got wet and I stayed dry. And then she said:

You know, Tim, there was a time when I thought my life was over, because I couldn’t move and I knew I’d never take you to school again or make your meals or put you to bed. You must have felt it because I wasn’t very happy. Well, I want you to know that I am now. I’m contented. I’m not worried about the cancer, honestly. I’m still your mum and between now and when I go there’s a lot we can talk about. We can help one another understand what it is to live and die. We can travel the journey together. Shall we do that?

And I said, ‘Yes.’ And she started crying and so did I because I didn’t want her to leave me. And then she said:

This cancer will get me, Tim, but I’ve had a good life.
And that’s thanks to you.

I went to bed and I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about what my mum had said. It had upset me. I didn’t like to see her tears.

A monk came to the house when I was wondering if I should go on and say what happened. I’d stopped writing for half an hour and then he rang on the bell and I’ve told him everything. He said he’d sort it all out. He’d speak to everyone.

Anselm’s life had been saved by an anecdote and a song.

Mitch had found himself thinking about the Red Barn Murder of 1827. A young girl had gone off with a charlatan. The stepmother, however, had dreamed that the girl had been murdered, her subconscious going so far as to identify the location of the body. Dreaming about the truth was all very fine – thought Mitch – but he’d have arrested that very exact dreamer. She had some questions to answer. Which had brought Emma Goodwin to mind. The woman whom he believed had written to Larkwood’s Prior, supporting Peter Henderson in public while planning his demise in private, her eyes fixed upon the grandson. Mitch had seen her on the evening news standing outside Hollesley Bay prison earlier that morning. She’d made another appearance before the cameras, seeking privacy and compassion for Peter. The sound of her measured words had worked away at Mitch’s imagination, finally nudging him offstage halfway through a sax solo on ‘After You’ve Gone’.

I’ll speak to her myself, he’d thought, driving over to Emma Goodwin’s. An hysterical interview had followed that sent Mitch straight to the back door of Morning Light, where he’d seen a man reaching into a fuse box. Mitch had rushed through the open door, felling Michael just as he’d lunged into the sitting room. The one bullet that had been fired had gone through the ceiling. When the lights finally came on he saw the man who’d hidden from the cameras: the man he’d longed to meet. He was leaning with his head against the wall, sobbing like a child.

‘I’ll keep the gun, Michael,’ Anselm said at the kitchen table, after sharing a pot of sweet tea in silence.

‘I’m sorry,’ he replied, hopelessly.

‘I’ll make more tea.’

‘I’m so very sorry.’

They spoke in snatches well into the night, until Michael snapped – it happened very easily, like the breaking of a wafer – and he began, without prompting from Anselm, to describe the route he’d taken from Belfast to Polstead: the unforgettable landmarks of his past. The conversation that had never happened with an Army psychologist took place with a monk.

‘I’d never even met this Eugene,’ said Michael, staring to one side. ‘But he knew he was going to die. In those last few minutes before they shot him, he tried to give some meaning to his life. He paid the heaviest price known to a Republican … he became a tout … so that one of the hardliners could be removed. Eugene’s dying would have meant something, the shame on his family would have been given some purpose, if, by his death, he’d managed to do something good.’

The clock ticked softly like a dripping tap.

‘But I
knew
Liam,’ whispered Michael. ‘I knew the boy. He was
my
agent. I was
responsible
for him. He trusted me to do what he couldn’t do because he was just a kid. Born and raised in Belfast. He’d never be in a position to pull a lever and shift the points. But I was. And I was
his
chance to change the world of riots and funerals. And he died, too, because he thought he’d found some meaning in it all, through me…’

Two men had placed their deaths in Michael’s hands, expecting him to make something good out of the horrendous manner of their dying. They’d each known what was coming. They’d each fallen on their knees, heads bagged, believing that, yes, even this will be worthwhile.

‘I failed them,’ said Michael, simply.

Anselm thought it prudent not to argue. But he also sensed a momentum to Michael’s reflection.

‘I’ve felt responsible all my life because they died in the hope that I’d do my part, and I didn’t. When I came back to England I tried not to think about what had happened. Because if I did, I’d have to find something to say to these two ghosts. Explain why their bodies had been dumped with all the others, on the heap of senseless loss and misery. I closed my eyes but they wouldn’t go away … they were there all the time, accusing me.’

The grandfather clock thunked softly, the pendulum swinging right and left as if it didn’t know which way to go.

‘I couldn’t talk to the Army psychologist,’ said Michael, raising his tortured gaze to Anselm. ‘How could he ever understand? He wanted me to go back to the beginning and take him through each step of the crisis and my collapse. He wanted to help me but he couldn’t … no one could…’

‘Except Jenny,’ murmured Anselm.

‘Yes,’ replied Michael, moved and stung at the sound of her name. ‘Only Jenny.’

Anselm made a nod of understanding. ‘She brought you the grace that we all come to long for … once we realise that we’ve lost it for ever.’

Michael gaped at Anselm. ‘Yes, Father, she did. She gave me some hope. Through Jenny, I actually
learned
to
close
my mind … seal off what I couldn’t bear to remember. It wasn’t difficult; all I had to do was look at her.’

Anselm sighed a compassionate ‘Yes’. This man had found a kind of salvation based on distraction: he’d looked away from the bad and kept his eyes on something good. She can’t have known the scale of her importance. But then she was struck down before Michael’s eyes. And then, having been struck down once, she was struck down again. He’d learned that partial salvation can only ever be temporary. He’d lost the one barrier of grace between himself and the memory of those voices urging him to kill for a transcendent cause. Voices that told him sometimes you have to break the rules; sometimes you have to do things you’d never, ever dream of doing. For the sake of something good. They’d spoken with the appalling authority of the damned.

‘Michael,’ began Anselm, tentatively, laying his hands on the table. He was reaching over to the slumped figure on the other side of the table. ‘I have no comprehension of what you have experienced, endured and lost. But I can’t help wondering … was it ever your duty to give meaning to someone else’s life, to their death, to the suffering in between? Isn’t this the quietest of roads … travelled only by the person who must live, suffer and die? Aren’t we each on our own road?’

And – thought Anselm, sadly – wasn’t Jenny on hers?

Michael turned aside again, hunched and preoccupied, as if he didn’t want to hear what Anselm had said. He began talking almost to himself. ‘I don’t understand what happened … but tonight, as I came into the room, I knew what I was going to do, and why; I’d thought it all out and gone through all the steps, but just as I raised the gun, I…’

His voice dried suddenly. Michael stared ahead, a man desperate to make sense of an experience that had overtaken him. He blinked, almost in time with the soft thump of the clock, the relentless drip of time.

‘Go home, Michael,’ said Anselm. ‘Get some rest. But we’ll have to talk again … about that lonely road and where it sometimes ends. I can’t spare you next time; no one can.’

Anselm and Mitch walked in the dark along a quiet lane that led to the church in Polstead. They could hardly see each other. The previous day’s rain had left cloud behind, obscuring the moon and stars. There were no night lights to guide them. The monk and the musician tracked the other by the sound of their footsteps, by their breathing.

‘Thank you,’ said Anselm. ‘You saved my life.’

‘I did.’

There was relief in his voice.

‘And you were right,’ continued Anselm. ‘Someone
was
planning to kill Peter Henderson.’

‘They were.’

‘It was, after all, that kind of case.’

‘It was.’

Anselm took a more global perspective: ‘We’ve not seen eye to eye from the beginning.’

‘We haven’t.’

‘You saw an assisted suicide, I saw a murder. You even wondered if it mattered.’

‘I still do.’

‘I don’t. Because I look to the law. Whereas you, in certain circumstances, will look the other way.’

‘That’s right.’

‘But we were united on one point, Mitch. We both wanted to protect Timothy. You wanted to preserve his ignorance. I wanted to harness his father’s conscience. These were important questions, about law, choice and the need to know. None of them mattered. We both got it wrong.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Timothy had already lost his future and his past. At least the ones he might have had, and that we would have wanted to protect. He’s going to have to find a new way of looking back and looking forward.’

‘Why?’

Mitch had slowed, dropping away from Anselm’s side. They came to a halt, looking at each other in the darkness. Black trees, bunched and tangled, towered on one side of the lane. On the other, a field lay open, allowing the night to breathe.

‘He was there, Mitch. He listened in secret and he watched them all struggle with illness. He knows exactly how his mother died. He’s known all along.’

The silence made a soft beat like the grandfather clock in the room where Jenny had died.

‘But he was only twelve,’ murmured Mitch, as if age were a natural protection against harm, against the terrible things one might see. The idea was simply too awful.

‘Tell them all to come to Larkwood,’ said Anselm, under his breath. ‘Except Peter. He’s already there. So that’s Michael, Emma, Nigel, Helen and Doctor Ingleby. This afternoon. Two o’clock. It’s time for the Henderson family to talk together as they’ve never talked before.’