by Nev Fountain
‘Before I begin, Mr Spicer specified that you should all be given light refreshment.’ He waved in some waitresses who glided among them, holding trays of sandwiches and glasses of wine. Mervyn took a sandwich as it passed. It seemed to be herring or something equally smelly.
As they ate, Tim slotted the DVD into his machine, chatting as he did so. ‘We were worried that some of you might be unavailable, but thankfully all twelve of you managed to attend, thank you all so very much.’
Twelve people. Twelve disciples. The joke wasn’t lost on Mervyn.
And guess what? They’d all been given bread and wine beforehand. This was Marcus’s body and blood, given to them all. Loaves and fishes too. The man couldn’t stop tweaking the nose of Christianity, even in death.
Joanna was counting. ‘There’s actually thirteen people here.’
Tim was distracted. He was fiddling with the remote control. ‘Why isn’t this thing playing? Yes, well. There were twelve invited to this reading, but I thought in the circumstances I should expand our little circle by one.’
Mervyn looked around him, wondering who the extra guest was. What an odd thing to say.
Tim pressed a button, and the picture sprang into life.
‘Hello, playmates.’
There was Marcus, returned to life, two weeks after his death.
‘Sorry about this bit of melodrama,’ he said, not looking sorry in the slightest, ‘but I thought I would do it this way so there would be no mistake that this will is mine, and there’s been no tampering and no funny business.’ He held up a newspaper and waved it. ‘This is what people do when they’re being kidnapped, don’t they? As you can see, this newspaper is from September the fifth.’
September the fifth. One month ago.
‘Anyway, it seems rather fitting in the circumstances. Okay, straight down to business. Let’s do one disciple at a time. My very own doubting Thomas, Mervyn Stone. Because you helped me at the start of my career, and did a few tweaks on my Vixens from the Void episode “The Burning Time…”’
Cheeky bastard. Even in death, he’s a cheeky bloody bastard.
‘…I’m leaving you all future royalties to that episode. They will probably buy you a bag of peanuts, but they’re yours now, fair and square. I leave the sums of £20,000 apiece to Siobhan Perry and Carlene Brown, my personal assistants. There you go girls, buy yourselves something nice.’
The girls grinned humourlessly; one flipped him the bird. They looked like they were used to being patronised.
‘To Andrew Jamieson, I leave my cut-glass crystal decanters, and what’s left of my Grey Goose vodka. I gave the drink up, and now I’ve given it up permanently, I will leave temptation his way.’
Andrew raised his glass and toasted the television.
‘To Professor Alec Leman, I leave the flask of whisky in my desk at the Institute, and all my books. Perhaps both the books and the whisky will get devoured now.’
The man in the bow-tie smiled gently to himself.
‘And I leave the house, and all bits and pieces therein, the country cottage in Wales, the cars, and blah blah blah, etcetera, etcetera—basically, everything which is supposedly covered by that extortionate home contents insurance policy—all that stuff, and of course the sole rights to all my novels in perpetuity to my wife…’
He paused, savouring the moment. ‘Samantha Carbury.’
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Tim switched the DVD off.
There was silence. Then there was a gentle cascade of muttered comments, one or two at first, then heavy and persistent, like raindrops on a window.
Comments like ‘What?’, ‘Did I hear that right?’, ‘He didn’t really say that…’ Cheryl sat there, saying nothing.
Joanna stood in the corner, her face welded into a furious expression.
‘There must be some mistake,’ Mervyn said to Tim.
‘Too bloody right,’ said Joanna.
‘There’s no mistake,’ said Tim, quailing under Joanna’s hot temper. ‘I’m sorry to break distressing news in such a dramatic fashion, but that was the way Mr Spicer specified…’
Joanna marched up to Samantha and stood there, so close their noses were almost touching. ‘What the hell is this? What’s he going on about. You were not married to that man.’
Samantha’s eyes roamed around the room, looking for any kind of escape. ‘Um…Well… I was…sort of…’
‘What do you mean, sort of? Either you were or you weren’t.’
‘Joanna, please, you have to get out of my aura. I can’t concentrate if you’re standing in my head space.’
With a huge effort, Joanna took several steps back, folded her arms and glared at Samantha. ‘Okay Sam. I’m out of your head space. What’s this about “sort of” getting married to Marcus?’
‘Weeell, we did kind of…sort of…get married. A bit,’ said Samantha, using a voice a six-year old would engage when admitting to smashing a vase. ‘It was on location, when we did “The Burning Time”. Back in the 80s. It was such a confused point in my life…’
Every point has been a confused point in your life, thought Mervyn, ungraciously. Up to and including now.
‘Marcus and I were having such a lovely time together we decided to get married and not to tell anyone, just as a bit of fun…’
Joanna crammed her hands on to her head. ‘A bit of fun?’
Samantha scrunched up her face as she tried to think. ‘To be honest, I forgot all about it. No, I tell a lie, I did remember a few years later, it all came back to me during a hypnotherapy session in Coventry. I asked Marcus about it, and he told me he’d fixed it.’
‘He fixed it. He fixed it?’ barked Cheryl’s brother. All of a sudden, Barry was standing there in the doorway. He must have got bored and followed them up, heard the argument and wondered what was happening. He looked ready to thump someone. Samantha recoiled, anxiously gripping the back of her chair.
‘Yes, he said he’d got us a divorce, or something.’ She faltered. ‘I guess he didn’t…’
‘And you didn’t realise you were still married?’ Barry swung round to her, hands bunched into fists. ‘You stupid hippy!’
‘Mervyn!’ Samantha wailed, looking at him imploringly.
Mervyn found Samantha irritating. He found her sudden ownership of him annoying. She’d fastened onto him like an emotional leech. She’d initiated sex and broken the golden rule of television by demanding emotional commitment as a result. He felt no loyalty to this silly woman.
Nevertheless, he could not, in all conscience, allow a defenceless woman to get threatened by a large angry man, no matter what the provocation. He stepped in between them.
‘I think it’s best if we all calm down here. This isn’t going to solve anything.’
‘I think it’s going to solve lots of things.’
‘No it won’t.’
Joanna appeared at their side.
‘Well you would side with her, wouldn’t you Mervyn?’
‘I’m not siding with anyone.’
‘Did you know about this all along? You were on location with them.’
‘Of course not.’
‘Of course you knew. It all makes sense now—that’s why you’ve been canoodling with her this last week. Cosying up to the multi-million pound heiress.’
Mervyn’s face grew hot. ‘I’ve not been “cosying up” to anyone. And I didn’t know!’
Joanna’s mind was working at full speed, racing through the implications and making calculations. Mervyn guessed where Joanna was going to go next.
He was right.
Joanna made directly for Cheryl, falling to her knees and gripping the arms of Cheryl’s wheelchair. ‘Did you know about this?’
‘Get off her!’ said Cheryl’s brother.
‘Cheryl, what’s going on?’ pleaded Joanna.
Cheryl looked at Joanna wearily, but said nothing.
‘Tell me you were married to Marcus. Tell me this is a joke.’
They all sat down again. Mervyn thought the ‘situation’ very ironic. He’d already witnessed Marcus’s death in a tiny room where a group of disparate people were all dragged together to watch a tiny television screen. Now he was witnessing Marcus’s will in a tiny room full of people watching a tiny television screen. He wondered whether Channel 4 could be persuaded to televise the funeral.
The DVD was switched on again, and Marcus appeared once more. He wasn’t even disguising the fact he was enjoying this.
‘If you’ve quite finished shouting and arguing, mateys? Let me explain. Yes, it’s true. Samantha and I got married while we were on location for “The Burning Time”. We were young, in love, having a whale of a time, and we didn’t give a stuff. And to be quite honest, we split up so quickly after, and it was such a spur of the moment thing, I never thought it that great a deal. I just felt like forgetting about it, so I never bothered with all the argy-bargy of getting a divorce.’
Typical Marcus, thought Mervyn.
‘And before you start shouting, I was not a bigamist. Did any of you think for one moment while you were attending mine and Cheryl’s wedding, why one of the most famous atheists in the country would want a huge church do, with hymns and prayers and flowers and an all-singing, all-dancing vicar? It was all nonsense. A sham. Cheryl and I wanted to make a statement. At that time, as some of you will definitely remember, if you wanted to get married in anything but a squalid little bare room, you were forced to ask permission from the Almighty. That was it. That was your choice. Get married in a toilet, or pretend to pay homage to a non-existent god. And even if you did believe in that rubbish, if you happened to be divorced, you still couldn’t get married in a church—you weren’t allowed to, according to a bunch of discredited boy-buggering old men.’ Marcus leaned back in his chair, and laced his fingers together. ‘So we wanted to show those Bible-thumping bastards. I found an old church that was in the middle of nowhere. It was closed down, condemned. I spruced it up, gave it a lick of paint, made it look functional again, just for the service. I printed up invites and you all came, just like it was a proper do. And as for the vicar…’
The man—the actor on the page from Spotlight in Mervyn’s pocket—came forward and stood in front of them all. He took a swift bow and grinned.
‘Meet Duncan Somerville, jobbing actor, cabaret singer, balloon sculptor, man of many voices and about as qualified to officiate at marriage ceremonies as my aunt’s dog.’
Duncan gave another swift bow and retired to the back of the room.
‘And no one checked, no one asked, and Cheryl called herself Mrs Spicer for the next 20 years. So there you have it. I had one marriage in public, which was a lie; one in secret, which was true. Ironic. But those are the weird contortions that religion forces you to make. Cheryl’s gone, we’ve got no kids, and so I’m making this gesture in remembrance of that fun time Samantha and I had in Dorking.’
Samantha gave a weak smile.
‘Anyway, this is Marcus Spicer saying goodbye. I don’t know where I’m going, but if it’s heaven then—hey! Will I be the one with the red face! At least if there is a heaven, I might have the good fortune to be re-united with my darling “little Mary”. My darling Cheryl. That might make being wrong all these years worthwhile.’
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
There was a lot of anger, most of it directed at Tim the solicitor. Cheryl’s brother grabbed him by the edge of his expensive lapels.
‘What the fuck is this? You planned it with that bastard? When did you and that bastard decide to stitch up my sister?’
Tim was forced back into the room until the television was pushed into the small of his back. ‘I’m sorry Mr…Limb, isn’t it? Those were Mr Spicer’s wishes. I have to carry them out. I’m sorry. I can’t speak for Mr Spicer…’
‘I thought that’s what you were doing.’
‘What I mean to say is, I can’t interpret Mr Spicer’s intentions when he made his last will, but I imagine he expected Mrs…er…Mrs…Miss…Cheryl, not to be, er, here, when he departed, due to er… Miss Limb’s illness. Naturally, it’s wonderful that she is still alive, but Mr Spicer wasn’t to know she would outlive him.’
Barry bellowed in Tim’s face. ‘If you don’t sort this out, you’re not going to outlive me—and that’s a promise, sunshine.’
‘I can’t do anything. His wishes, as you saw, were explicit. Perhaps as a wife she could contest the will, but as a common law partner she has much less “clout” in the eyes of the law, I’m afraid.’
‘This isn’t over. We’ll contest this. She gave that bastard the best years of her life.’
‘Leave it, Barry,’ snapped Joanna.
A security guard entered the room. Barry had enough sense to know that he wasn’t going to get anything done today. Not with threats. His hands dropped from Tim’s lapels.
‘Cher?’ His voice was small. A little brother asking for guidance from his big sis.
‘Take me home, Barry. We’ll probably need to pack.’
‘I don’t understand this,’ wailed Samantha. ‘Are you sure you’ve played the right tape? I don’t understand. The marriage didn’t mean anything. I’m not a Christian either. It was just a bit of a lark. It’s not as if it meant that much…’
Joanna slapped her, hard and full in the face. Samantha squealed, collapsed on the floor and held her face in her hands.
‘Don’t say another word,’ said Joanna coldly. ‘Just don’t.’ Then Barry wheeled Cheryl out, and Joanna followed on his heels. None of them said anything.
Mervyn moved to help Samantha, but Professor Leman beat him to it. Quite a sprightly old buffer, he thought.
‘Are you all right, my dear?’ said the professor.
Samantha nodded dumbly. ‘Oh dear. Dear oh dear,’ she sniffed. ‘That didn’t go very well, did it?’
‘No, Samantha. It didn’t go very well,’ said Mervyn. He sat down by her and held her hand.
Tim was hanging around the doorway, unwilling to leave the room occupied. Mervyn looked over at him. ‘You said there were only meant to be twelve here, but you invited another…’
‘Yes. There were originally twelve people invited to the reading of the will. The one not invited was Mrs Spicer—I mean, Miss Limb.’
‘Because she was meant to be dead by now.’
Tim flinched when Mervyn said ‘dead’. Odd that a man who dealt in wills would have such a problem with the word. ‘I imagine so. I wasn’t privy to Mr Spicer’s thoughts, but from what he said he didn’t believe she would outlive him.’ Tim flourished a weak smile. ‘I felt Miss Limb had a right to be here for the reading, and Mr Limb insisted on joining her for moral support.’ Tim collected his box folder and his DVD and walked past him with an apologetic smile. ‘This is always a traumatic time for friends and family,’ he said.
‘Especially when the deceased’s playing mind games with friends and family,’ said Mervyn sourly.
‘You can stay in here for a few more minutes, if you need to compose yourselves.’
Tim finally vanished. Now there were only the three of them left—Mervyn, Samantha and Professor Leman, who was sitting there with his arms folded over his chest. Oddly, the old man was chuckling to himself.
‘Dear old Marcus, quite the Jesus complex…’
‘Oh. You noticed,’ said Mervyn.
‘I knew Marcus well. I was well aware of it underpinning his life and work. And in death he’s finally getting his wish, isn’t he?’ He waved his hand in the direction of the television. ‘Dying and rising again… Allowing his twelve disciples to fall into feuding after his departure. I wonder if Cheryl will contest the will. I bet he’s filed it in triplicate. Would that count as “denying him three times”? Oh, it’s all beautifully orchestrated, don’t you think?’ The old man was practically hugging himself in joy.
‘Can I ha
ve a hankie?’ sniffed Samantha.
Leman remembered his manners, and sprang to his feet. ‘Of course, my dear.’
He gave her an elaborate spotted hankie. Mervyn watched, fascinated, as Samantha dabbed her eyes. Then she stood up, perched on the arm of a chair, and flipped open a powder compact, looking at her face in the mirror secreted within. She tried to submerge the red mark beneath layers of foundation, but only served to make her face look even more crazed and artificial than usual.
‘Oh dear, that doesn’t look good at all…’ She looked up at Mervyn, bewildered eyes full of tears. ‘I don’t know what’s happening,’ she sobbed. ‘I always knew that most people didn’t actually like me, but no one actually hated me either…’
‘My dear…’ said Leman, patting her shoulder. ‘This was all Marcus’s doing. No one is blaming you for this.’
‘Joanna is,’ she said, in a tiny voice. She touched her cheek with a trembling hand.
Mervyn looked down at her. Now he was angry.
‘Right, that’s it.’ He fished out his mobile phone.
‘What?’
‘You’re getting an apology from Joanna.’ He checked his contacts. ‘I’ve still got her number, thank God.’
‘Oh Mervyn, don’t. It’s really not worth the bother…’
But Mervyn was already dialling. He listened for a very long time. ‘Just the answering service. Don’t worry Samantha, we’ll find them. I’m sure someone knows where they’ve got to.’
‘I do, sir,’ said the Professor.
Mervyn’s head snapped to the Professor. ‘You know?’
‘Yes, sir. They’re going to the same place I’m going. To the Spicer Institute in Albermarle Street. It’s our quarterly lecture on humanism. We’ve managed to grab Christopher Hitchens while he’s in the country.’ The professor straightened his bow-tie and picked up his waxed jacket from the back of the chair. ‘Would you care to join me? I’m sure it’s going to be fascinating.’
You said it, thought Mervyn.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
