The Posthumous Adventures of Harry Whitaker

by Bobbie Darbyshire

  The envelopes saw the light all too briefly between pillar box and sack – there was no chance to read the names on them. From the van, the sack was trundled into what sounded like a vast warehouse of busy machinery. It was untied and upended, and the contents cascaded from it in a jumble that buried me. Then packages were chucked one way, letters another, until Pearl’s smart envelopes were grabbed and packed tightly, together with others, edge up, into a tray that inched me nearer and nearer to the flash of a conveyor belt.

  Heavens, the speed and the racket. At first I was petrified, but the next moment I found my bravado. ‘Do your worst,’ I challenged the fearsome machine. ‘I am of nothing made, so how can you harm me?’ Nearer, nearer, nearer – then away I shot, as if in a pinball machine, whipped and whirled through the innards, to be stacked, packed and fired off again.

  What a ride! Hairpin bends, loop the loops, you name it, at lightning speed through the infernal din. No chance to choose between letters, two snatched away from me, faster than thought, then another. It was just the throw of the dice that I ended up, giddy and elated, with the last, packed tightly into a bin for – damn and blast it – BN3, the Hove delivery office. Mrs Butley’s address is BN1. My hopes of seeing home crumbled.

  Thank my stars, though, I wasn’t in an urn or a filing cabinet, and things might yet turn out well. Hove meant Deborah Lawton and her bastard child. It was years since the boy turned twenty-one and I put a stop to my payments. For all they knew I’d forgotten them, but here I was, winging their way with news of a fair-sized bequest, unearned, unexpected, to bring smiles to their faces. In my mind’s eye I saw Deborah as she first appeared to me three decades ago. An ethereal beauty who turned out to be a pestiferous lunatic, yet as I waited in that post-office bin I found myself hoping that time had been kind to her. Was she at the funeral? Was hers one of the raised voices I heard from inside Pearl’s handbag? I should have paid more attention.

  There was a fair bit of waiting in the bin, but the hours didn’t drag. For a while I danced on my leash, reliving all that delirious zipping and spinning, and when I quietened, the mix of hope and anxiety kept me alert. The lights stayed on in the warehouse and there were people about. A few took their coffee break near me, so I heard how someone’s mother had run off with a tree surgeon half her age, how the new series of Upton Manor isn’t a patch on the last one, and endless nonsense about The Reality Channel. Not a word about me. How fast I’m forgotten. I long to be among actors and people who value the arts, who must surely be mourning the passing of a theatrical superstar and debating his legacy.

  As dawn broke the bin was loaded onto another van and driven off for local sorting. Sadly no more machines, just a whistling postie in front of a frame full of pigeonholes. Very soon, here was the letter, clutched in the same postie’s hand as, still whistling, he pushed his red trolley the length of a rundown Hove backstreet. Here was I, bobbing along after it, eager to dive through a letterbox into Deborah Lawton’s fair hand.

  My expectations fell as flat as the letter did in this chaotic hallway. I’m at Deborah’s all right, but I’ve been here two nights and the best part of three days, and she hasn’t bothered to pick her mail off the floor or even to glance at it. Yes, that was her at the funeral, decked out in black at the back. Now, clad in an eccentric variety of draperies and adornments, she squeezes in and out across the heaped doormat with barely a glance at what might have newly arrived on it.

  She has lost her figure with age, but not in the usual way. The slim waist is still there, but the welcoming curves above and below it have vanished. Desiccated, brittle, she offers barely a glimmer of her former sexiness. And dear me, the state of this place. The young beauty I remembered has become one of those pathetic creatures featured on television freak shows, who pack their homes floor-to-ceiling with so much jumble and rubbish they barely have room to move, sit or sleep. Her son – my son, I suppose – has come by a couple of times, making the case for a clear-out before he goes off somewhere. Does she listen? Not a chance. That she is mad, ’tis true; ’tis true ’tis pity; and pity ’tis ’tis true – a foolish figure.

  Almost no light reaches this hallway, which is stacked either side with boxes and heaps of nonsense, on which she continually dumps more bulging carrier bags, while through the letterbox falls a steady stream of free magazines, fast-food menus and charity-collection appeals. I jig in frustration, willing the impossible woman, please, to bend down and sort through her mail. Because the situation is critical. Only a corner of Pearl’s letter now remains visible. At any moment it will vanish beneath the avalanche, and I will go with it. It could take years to resurface; I might as well have been filed.

  Scotty, damn it, where are you? Is there no way we can make this blessed envelope emit come-hither signals? I’m doing my level best here. It’s high time the laws of the universe cut me some slack.

  Richard

  ‘Are you going to let go, Mum?’

  She didn’t reply, just hung on to the plastic sack, not meeting his eyes.

  ‘Enough.’ He let go himself. ‘I give up. Have it your own way.’

  She clutched at the banister to keep her balance. When he reached to steady her, she retreated further up the stairs, huddled over the sack as though it were a kitten he wanted to drown. ‘You see what you’re like,’ she accused him. ‘Pushing me, rushing me, bossing me.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake.’ He slammed into the kitchen and leaned his head on a cupboard door.

  ‘Language,’ she called after him.

  He gritted his teeth so hard his jaw hurt. This place stank. There must be food rotting somewhere. She probably had rats.

  Calm down. He was leaving, remember. There was no point any more in being angry or worried about her. If she wouldn’t cooperate, he was done. On Sunday, he’d pedalled straight here from the café book-signing, full of new energy, and she’d seemed to catch on to his plans, to go with his enthusiasm, to agree she shouldn’t stand in his way. Yes, she’d prevented him from having a life. Yes, she should get her own friends. Yes, her hoarding was out of control, she wasn’t eating properly, she needed to change. She’d thanked him for offering help before he took off round the world, and solemnly promised she wouldn’t relapse into shoplifting. But today when he’d arrived to make a start, nothing doing. He’d seen immediately that she meant to be awkward. She was got up as a bag lady: the unravelling cardigan misbuttoned, the hem of the skirt falling down. Some Pinter play probably, or Beckett. She had on her self-pitying, querulous voice and kept repeating herself.

  Same old, same old, one more phony performance, but things were moving fast: he wasn’t bluffing or fantasising this time. Tiffany was excited about buying the café. Her dad and mum were coming round to the idea. They were busy consulting the bank and the soup woman and whomever, and soon the deal would be done. They were getting the business valued, debt free. Any debt above that would stay with Richard, but it wouldn’t be much and he would be out of here, not a backward glance. Today’s search of the world was for Ws. Warm Springs sounded nice, but probably wasn’t. The pictures of Wagga Wagga were disappointing, but he fancied it just for the name. Almost anywhere but Worthing would be fine to begin with. Winnipeg, Warsaw, wherever. Somewhere to clear his head and see his way forward. Seriously, practically, he could do worse than start off in Wimbledon. ‘Come stay with us,’ Joe offered last night on the phone. ‘The wife adores you. You’re tidy and helpful, unlike myself. And I’m up for being your guide to the pubs of London.’

  His mother sidled into the kitchen, keeping her distance, her grip tight on the plastic sack, her voice full of reproach. ‘I need time to sort things through properly,’ she declaimed, sounding her consonants nicely so the back row could hear. The director in her head would be pleased with her.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’m not arguing. You’ve won. If we’re not going to do this, then I’m leaving this minute. I’ve plenty to get on with.’

  She blocked his
way to the hall. ‘You just grabbed things,’ she pleaded. ‘You didn’t give me a chance.’

  Her crumble into panic drew the familiar pang of sympathy from him. It wasn’t her stuff that she cared about. Don’t leave me was the message she was too frightened to speak aloud. She had never once said it, unless perhaps over his cradle, but it had kept him here as surely as if she’d sobbed it every day of his life.

  He hardened his heart. She wouldn’t get to him, not this time, not ever again. She might be horribly lonely and vulnerable, but she’d no right to make that his problem. Thirty was way past the age when any self-respecting man should cut loose from his mother.

  ‘Didn’t you hear me?’ he said, trying to squeeze past her. ‘You can keep all your stuff. It’s your choice. I asked you about every single thing in that sack, but—’

  ‘No, Richard, you told me about everything in it. You said, “This is broken, this is useless, this is ridiculous.”’

  ‘Stop it,’ he shouted, but she was in full flow, still blocking his exit from the kitchen.

  ‘What you never will grasp,’ she proclaimed to her invisible audience, ‘is that nothing is useless to a props department, that every day, somewhere, there’s a production in need of a dial telephone.’ She pulled one from the sack with a flourish and held it up, right and left, to the cobwebbed ceiling.

  Richard grabbed the receiver and put it to his ear. ‘Hello. What? No, sorry, this isn’t a theatre. My cloud-cuckoo-land mother just thinks that it is.’

  ‘Of course I don’t. I’m not stupid.’

  He banged the receiver down. ‘There won’t be any production. Mum. No one is ever going to come looking for this useless phone.’

  ‘Did I say that they would? My point is—’

  ‘To hell with your point. The real point is that this should be your home, not a props department.’

  ‘Exactly. My home. My collection. People collect things. I collect props.’

  She made him so furious. ‘Instead of eating?’ he shouted. ‘Instead of having friends? Instead of answering the door to people trying to help you? And it’s not only props. Look at it.’ He gestured in exasperation. ‘It’s scripts... programmes...’

  ‘They’re valuable.’

  ‘Bloody well sell them, then!’

  ‘I don’t want to bloody well sell them.’

  ‘Sunday review sections dating back decades. They’re valuable too, I suppose?’ He shoved past her into the hall. ‘And this rubbish that falls through the door. You’ll be stuck in here before long, walled up starving behind a mountain of pizza offers.’

  He was bellowing. It felt good to let rip, to tear another sack from the roll, shake it out, start to fill it. ‘You’re impossible. Just look at the state of this place.’ He squatted behind the front door and began shovelling great handfuls into the sack.

  ‘Richard, you have to listen to me. What you never understand is that tidiness isn’t a matter of right and wrong.’

  ‘Please Mum, not that blather again!’

  ‘It’s not blather. Some people are far too tidy. You see them on television, washing their hands every five minutes, jittery if things aren’t in straight rows. Which is fine for them – live and let live, I say – because that’s how they are, but this is how I am, and—’

  He wasn’t listening. He was ramming circulars and magazines and junk mail into the sack. He was hurling it out on the step. He was marching back down the hall to the staircase to grab his pannier. He was leaving.

  She was crying, or pretending to, but he refused to be touched by it. ‘I would have been inside Harry’s house,’ she sobbed, ‘if it wasn’t for you. I’d have been welcomed like royalty.’

  He turned and looked her straight in the eye. It helped to be angry. ‘I’ll let you know when I leave,’ he said. ‘I’ll pop in before I set off. I’ll ring when I arrive somewhere – so you know where I am. But otherwise, listen carefully, Mum, you’re on your own now, okay.’

  He charged out, banging the front door behind him. He swung the pannier to his shoulder and leapt down the steps to the street.

  ‘Shit.’ He’d caught his foot on the sack of junk mail, and it was spilling its contents across the pavement.

  Ignore it. He would strap the pannier on the bike and speed off into the sunset. Just watch him go. He had one foot on the pedal.

  It was no use. Joe’s wife was right. He was tidy and helpful. Mess made him uncomfortable. The neighbours didn’t deserve all this junk mail in the breeze. It wouldn’t take him a minute. He was picking it up, stuffing it back in. Why the hell did he want to cry too? Dimly he knew that it wasn’t his mother’s chaos that trapped and enraged him; it was his childhood he was forever trying to clear out and slam the door on. It was high time he was happy. He would tie the sack off properly this time.

  What was this? One for him? Richard Lawton Esq, c/o Ms Deborah Lawton. It didn’t look like a circular. He ripped open the envelope.

  The door creaked open above him. His mother’s face was a picture of woe. ‘What have you got there?’ she whimpered, but he was too gobsmacked by what he was reading to answer.

  Dear Mr Lawton

  I am writing to inform you of a bequest made to you by Baron Whittaker of Dorchester. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to take the matter forward. The terms of Lord Whittaker’s Will are as follows.

  “I give to Richard Lawton the sum of £25,000 free of all duty and his receipt shall be a complete discharge to my Executors. The said gift shall be void unless

  (i) witnessed by a warranted representative of Walker Macpherson and Allen Solicitors Limited the said person submits a sample of his DNA.

  (ii) the said sample when analysed and compared by an accredited laboratory with the notarised profile of the DNA of Lord Whittaker that is held for safekeeping by Walker Macpherson and Allen Solicitors Limited shows beyond reasonable doubt that the said person was fathered by Lord Whittaker.

  Any gift to a person who does not survive me by two calendar months shall be void as also shall any gift which using all reasonable endeavours cannot be paid before the second anniversary of my death.”

  I look forward to hearing from you.

  Yours sincerely, Pearl Allen LLB

  ‘What is it?’ his mother repeated.

  Richard shook his head in disgust, thrusting it furiously at her as she came down the steps.

  Harry

  Twenty-five thousand pounds. You’d think the lout would have the grace to be thankful. Instead, out of everyone’s earshot but mine, pedalling as though the Furies are after him, he’s bellowing the whole tedious range of gutter banalities into the wind, telling me where I can stuff my money, and threatening to tear up the letter and chuck it off the end of Worthing Pier. I don’t think he will follow through, but the sentiment is discomforting. He’s unlikely to frame it in gold on his wall. Heaven knows what will become of me. He has shoved it for now into the back pocket of his jeans, where an inch or so remains visible, so I’m towed in his wake like a water-skier.

  We’re speeding west along the promenade below Kingsway. To my left, beyond the storm-massed heaps of pebbles, stretches the English Channel in glorious panorama, the glittering, blue-green field of white-crested waves that in my life I never grew tired of beholding. I marvelled at its beauty daily from my sitting-room window. The water is so luminous today, horizon to horizon, that I’m reminded of the aura that drew me to Pearl Allen, that shone around first the will, then the letters, in the semi-dark of her bag. Is it possible, I’m suddenly wondering, that this spectacular sea is a qualifying host? Might I attach myself to these countless gallons of salt water if I were carried within ten metres of them?

  The notion excites me even as it daunts me. Perhaps it would not be so terrible to be thrown off the pier. I imagine lapping in perpetuity at the beaches of Brighton and Hove, ducking and diving on the rosy horizon. Might I even be free to explore the whole of the world’s oceans?

  Through th
e wind’s bluster I’m hearing the thunderous crash of the breakers, the cold rattle of churning stones, and no, the prospect is chilling. Such a wild and lonely existence it would be, forever roaming the coast or drifting in lightless depths among wrecked ships and downed Spitfires.

  The view of the sea is receding now, obscured by stretches of grass and ugly, view-hogging houses. I may not want to dive into the waves, but I’m heartened to have seen their power and glory. Speed agrees with me, cheers me, whips my brooding thoughts from me and throws them to the wind. Though I can’t feel the rush of salt air, or smell it or taste it, there’s a thrill to be had flying through the world in its infinite variety, watching the tarmac flash beneath the bicycle wheels, the scatter of people, so remarkably alive, driving their cars, pushing their child buggies, chatting in shops and on pavements, tilting their faces to the evening sun. The afterlife has precious few pleasures, but this has to be one of them. Look at me, Scotty. In the face of your unfair, pettifogging rules, thrown from one near-disaster to another, this spirit is doing his best to keep his spirits up.

  Well I never! Think of the devil, here Scotty is, materialising blithely upon the handlebars, craning his neck to watch a herring gull career in flight above the road, then waving to me across the back of our energetic companion, who, buttocks high, head low, pedals on as if no youth in a T-shirt and pinstriped trousers were blocking his view.