‘There’s no decision involved. It’s stipulated in his will. The only issue is when and where.’
‘You’ll regret it. When the shit hits the fan, you’ll be the fan.’
‘Did Mummy say a rude word?’ Jack said, removing his headphones.
‘Big ears. Go back to your DVD.’
A field of solar panels flashed by, their tablets tilted upwards in sun worship. I prefer fields with crops: wheat, barley, even oilseed rape. But the panels had a strange beauty, each with its hieroglyphic markings and all facing the same way, like an OCD version of Stonehenge.
‘There’s one consolation’ Marie said. ‘However bad it will be for Jill to read the poems, it’d be worse if she and Rob had children. Imagine ours discovering you had another life. Their dad becoming this new person: Dad the stranger, Dad the imposter, Dad the cheat. If Rob and Jill had had kids, you’d have to lock the poems away for another fifty or sixty years. At least with Jill it’ll only be twenty or thirty.’
‘I’m not going to lock them away.’
‘You ought to – you’d be doing right by the living instead of indulging the dead.’
After the A14, the rest of the journey was by B-roads. The untrimmed hedges made some of them single-track. Occasional scarecrows hung about the fields, like rustic parodies of the crucifixion. My parents had moved to the village a couple of years before they retired, my dad from teaching, my mum from thirty years as a librarian. We’d lived in Norwich throughout my childhood, but they liked the idea of village life and for a time they’d been happy, till my father got depressed, then ill. He was in his late seventies by then; ‘a good innings’ he said when I visited him after the diagnosis of lung cancer, which he’d insisted on being told, and accepted with surprising calm, despite the injustice (he’d never smoked) and the inevitable outcome – an earlier than expected dismissal from life and my mother left alone at the crease. At first, she’d coped well with widowhood, filling her days with bridge, flower arranging and cups of tea at the day centre, but then she’d fallen and broken her hip, after which her mobility wasn’t the same. To her credit, she never grumbled. There were worse things than needing a stick to get around, and being unable to drive and having carers come in twice a day.
Her house was up a gravel drive. I tooted the horn before I parked, to give her time to get to the door, then rang the bell in case she hadn’t heard. Jack and Noah milled about the front step, pushing each other to be first in line, while Marie held Mabel, who was crying because she’d just woken. ‘See what you can count to before Granny answers,’ I told the boys, and they’d reached fifty-three before we heard the familiar sounds from inside: a voice saying ‘Just a minute’, the rattle of a chain, a key turning in a lock. Then the door swung back to reveal her, stick in hand, ghost-haired, shorter by a foot than I remembered. The boys ran forwards to be hugged – ‘Careful!’ – then scooted past her to the kitchen, where they knew she’d have put out orange juice and biscuits, while we stood greeting her in the hall.
‘How’ve you been, Mum?’
‘All right.’
‘Still taking the pills for your angina?’
‘Don’t fuss.’
‘Carers turning up on time?’
‘Glenys’s car broke down the other day. They had to send a new girl. Very young she was. With piercings.’
‘How’s the bridge?’
‘I haven’t played this week. Aren’t you a sweetie?’
The last was said to Mabel, who Marie had pushed forward for a kiss. She shied away from it, squirming in Marie’s arms and crying with new vigour, which amused rather than upset my mum, whose policy with grandchildren is to spoil them: have another drink, try one of these chocolates, gosh, how clever/kind/polite/grown up/good-looking you are. ‘Naughty’ wasn’t a word in her vocabulary. When they behaved badly, she pretended to ignore it. Yet she’d been the sterner parent when I was a child.
From the kitchen – Mum with her stick, Marie carrying Mabel, me bearing a tray with three coffees – we moved into the living room, where the boys had already unearthed the box Mum kept for their visits. It was full of board games I remembered from childhood, plus stuff she’d picked up since at fetes and car boot sales: jigsaw puzzles, teddy bears, Sylvanian Families, plastic farm animals. It was always the Lego the boys went to first: Noah struggled with the smaller pieces, but Jack was adept. While Mum gossiped about her neighbours, none of whom I knew, Marie sat breastfeeding Mabel, a process she – Marie – seemed embarrassed by, because of the presence of my mother, who hadn’t breastfed me and who’d once expressed surprise when Marie was still breastfeeding Jack at ten months. At eighteen months, Mabel was now well on to solids but not fully weaned. Dummies couldn’t compete; only breasts pacified her. The devil would be given a nipple and morph into an angel. The magic worked even in front of my mother. Once sated, Mabel got down on the floor with her brothers.
I loved my mum, but to be honest these trips bored me silly: the sitting around, the same-as-last-time dialogue, the wildness of the boys as their sugar levels rose and they rushed about, breaking ornaments or spilling drinks on the blue oval Chinese rug. Mum didn’t have the Internet and the village was in a poor reception area, so I couldn’t even pick up emails – NO SERVICE my iPhone said when I slipped out to try (furtively, knowing Marie would think it rude). She coped much better than I did, but looked relieved when it was time to go out for lunch. We’d thought of bringing our own (Mum was no longer capable of making it), but it was good to escape the house for a while: good for us but also for Mum, who liked to visit places while she could, knowing what lay ahead for her unless a sudden illness nipped in first: after the walking stick, the Zimmer frame; after the Zimmer frame, the wheelchair; after the wheelchair, the hoist; after the hoist, bedsores, pneumonia and oblivion.
‘OK, Mum?’ I said, settling her in the front seat, while Marie sat between the boys with Mabel in her arms (four in the back was illegal, but the roads were empty and everyone was strapped in). I drove to The Star & Garter, in the next village, rather than The Bull, in Mum’s, hoping the food might be better. I was able to park right outside – even ground, no slippery patches on the tarmac, and only one step to climb. But the ‘family room’ beyond the bar was gloomy, and the food, when it came, a disappointment: my fish pie was all potato, the boys’ burgers were overcooked (‘Why can’t we go to McDonald’s?’), and the only highchair in the place had a crack across the tray, which Marie thought so unhygienic that she sat Mabel in her lap, a position Mabel enjoyed until she lunged forward and banged her head on the corner of the table. I felt like crying, too. We all did. Except Mum, who said her tuna salad tasted delicious, even though she left half of it uneaten.
She wanted dessert, nevertheless, and so did the boys, and with the time it took for her tiramisu to come and their vanilla ice creams and Marie’s Earl Grey, and visits to the Gents and Ladies, and the bill to pay, and everyone to be crammed in the car, it was four before we got back to Mum’s. I suggested we sat outside, by the pond, and fetched the white plastic chairs and floral cushions from the toolshed. While the boys kicked a football, and Marie and Mum inspected the flowerbeds to see what new plants had been put in by the gardener (a widowed ex-policeman called Harold who charged an implausibly-low-by-London-standards £10 an hour), I walked Mabel on my shoes across the grass, her giggles as we shuffled forward competing with the shouts of her brothers and the murmurs of the two women and (loudest of all) the cawing of the rooks in the trees down the end of Mum’s drive, and yet it felt peaceful, far more so than Wood Green, and for half an hour, before we finally sat in the plastic chairs, and tea, juice and chocolate digestives were served, visiting my mum seemed not just a good thing to do, a duty of care and filial obligation, but a source of happiness, for us as well as her, to the extent that the moment of departure, which I warded off till almost six and tried to soften by reassuring Mum (truthfully) that we’d be back again soon, felt so infinitely sad that there were tear
s in my eyes as we waved goodbye and Marie (her turn at the wheel) manoeuvred us gently away down the drive and on to the darkening lane.
13
It was October before I made it back to Jill’s. My seventh visit. Or was it the eighth? I’d lost track. The house looked the same as it always had, and so did Jill. But my missionary fervour had gone. The job at the paper was my priority now and things had been going well there. The special feature on flash fiction I’d commissioned for the Review (the first idea I’d come up with in months) had had a big online response. I’d also written a couple of book reviews. As for Emma, we exchanged smiles when we passed each other, but there were no more clandestine trips to the pub. I felt myself again. Whatever interest I still had in the archive was business-like, not obsessive. By the end of the day, if I kept going, the plastic crates would be fully itemised. I would give the unpublished poems to Jill and let a decent interval elapse while she absorbed the contents.
She waved me through and upstairs. Low sun was frazzling the room. I pulled the blinds down and retrieved the poems from their hiding place. All were in order, as I left them. Then I opened the last crate, which I’d rushed through once before, but set about double-checking, just in case. Notebooks, folders, cancelled drafts: it was the usual dull fare. No joy – which to me was joy: no more discoveries to complicate my work. I imagined Rob whispering in my ear: ‘Feeling pleased with yourself, are you?’ ‘And why not?’ I replied. ‘I’ve done all you asked.’ ‘Really?’ he came back. ‘The archive’s not been sold, the poems haven’t been published, people will soon forget I ever existed.’ ‘I’m getting there,’ I said. ‘I’d have been quicker if you’d made things easier for me, instead of hiding stuff away.’ ‘I know you like a challenge.’ ‘Up to a point. I can think of better ways to spend my time than sifting through the papers of a corpse.’ Saying ‘corpse’ was a mistake. Any reference to him being dead made him angry. But it had been a while since we talked and the word slipped out. ‘I’d be less of a corpse if you did your work properly,’ he said. ‘It was always all about you, wasn’t it, Matt? You selfish git. I should never have appointed you.’ Now I was the angry one: ‘Me, selfish? You forget there’s a world out there, with other people in it. Living people,’ I said. ‘I’m not here to defend myself,’ he said. ‘You’re not here at all,’ I said. ‘Then why are you talking to me?’ he said. ‘I wish I weren’t,’ I said. ‘I wish you weren’t,’ he said, ‘your conversation skills are pathetic.’
I laughed. We were winding each other up. It was just like old times.
I was kneeling on the floor as we spoke, with a printout from a natural history website in my hand. The printout had a photo of a hoopoe, with a description of its plumage, breeding patterns and habitat. I remembered Rob’s childhood scrapbook, the one I’d looked at on my first visit, and how for a time he’d pasted photos of birds in it, a phase he’d quickly outgrown. As far as I knew, no poem of his referred to a hoopoe. But perhaps he’d planned one and the website printout was part of his research. You old hypocrite, I thought, smiling at the memory of him dismissing the Internet as ‘a passing fad, like fax machines’. For all his fogeyism, he knew his way around the web. Any reviews he did for us came as attachments. And then there were his personal emails, albeit few in number and stiff in tone (he couldn’t bring himself to begin them ‘Hi’) …
I stood up. Christ, I should have thought of it months ago. Yes, Hadingfield must have its internet cafés, like everywhere else. But hadn’t Rob told me that he never left the house all day apart from a walk to buy a paper? And hadn’t Jill confirmed it (albeit with a Labrador and second walk added in)? In which case, he must have used a computer at home. On which there might be stuff I ought to see.
When I steeled myself to ask Jill, she seemed surprised I hadn’t asked before.
‘Didn’t I say? The laptop’s in the spare bedroom. If I bring work home, that’s where I do it from.’
‘You shared a laptop?’
‘No, I have a desktop. Sorry, I should have given you a tour of the house when you first came.’
‘So the laptop is Rob’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘But he kept it in the spare bedroom?’
‘I took it in there after he died, to close his email account. The provider talked me through what I needed to do. They’ve set procedures when someone dies.’
His emails might have been worth preserving, but never mind. Poems were my only concern.
‘I’m curious what he left on the laptop,’ I said.
‘I doubt there’ll be poems. He handwrote them first, then typed them out on his Olivetti. But have a look if you like.’
‘Thanks, that’d be good.’
‘Next time you come. You’re obviously busy with other stuff today.’
‘Today’s fine. I’m pretty much done otherwise.’
‘The laptop won’t be charged up.’
She was stalling again, to no purpose. Self-defeatingly, even, since the longer it took me to finish, the more time I’d have to spend at the house. Perhaps she’d begun to like me coming. But her manner didn’t suggest so. More likely, she wanted to look at the laptop before I did, to check if there was anything private there (diaries, letters, jottings) and then delete it – that’s if she hadn’t deleted it already. I wished I’d known about the laptop earlier. Her antennae were up. The trust we’d built before the summer had evaporated.
I idled away the next hour and refused her lunchtime sandwiches, with the excuse that I felt unwell and was thinking of leaving early. She hovered by the desk while I pretended to be busy. What about the unpublished poems? she asked. Once I’d looked at the laptop, I’d have completed my searches, I said, and she could have them. She turned on her heel and left the room. So be it. If I had to wait till next time, she could wait, too. I wasn’t going to give in.
She reappeared carrying the laptop. It was fully charged, she said: would I like to look at it before I left?
I logged on (no password required). It was a MacBook, an older model than the one I had at home, but otherwise much the same. The big difference was the screen: mine was cluttered with folders; Rob’s had only four: REVIEWS, BUSINESS, LETTERS and KILTER, the last an abbreviation of the title of his last collection, Out of Kilter (he’d come up with the title after spending a fortnight in St Keverne, in Cornwall, in whose parish there’d once been a hamlet called Kilter). As I scanned the folders, any excitement soon wore off. All the stuff was stuff I’d seen before, in his filing cabinet and desk.
I clicked on the wastepaper basket in the bottom corner of the screen, to see what he – or Jill perhaps – had deleted. It was empty. I clicked on Safari and entered Gmail, hoping Rob’s account might come up automatically, as my Gmail account does, but nothing happened – Jill’s attempt to close it had obviously worked. There was nothing in Dropbox or Downloads. A hopeless quest, I decided.
Before handing back the laptop to Jill, I clicked on REVIEWS again and – more from nostalgia than anything else – opened a document called APPEAL: it was the last review he had written for us, and began with a quote from a Kipling poem of that title:
And for the little, little span
The dead are borne in mind,
Seek not to question other than
The books I leave behind.
Rob had used the piece to sound off against literary biography. It was long, two thousand words or so, and we’d cut it, to his annoyance. I read through it again to remind myself what had been there before we did. According to the page count at the bottom of the screen, the document ran to twenty-five pages. That couldn’t be right: we hadn’t cut it that heavily. I scrolled ahead. The review ended on page 4. At the top of page 5 I read UNP3.
Fuck – a large batch of new poems! I started reading through and paused on one called ‘Predatory’, a word that had come up during an argument with Marie. ‘In bed they could be anyone,’ I read, then became conscious of Jill, standing by my shoulder. Even by her ghos
tlike standards, it was quite an achievement to materialise so suddenly.
‘Looks like you’ve found something,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘More love poems?’
‘Not sure yet.’
‘The printer’s in the spare bedroom. If you print them out, I can read them with the others.’
‘Right. Yes.’
If she wasn’t actually standing with her hands on her hips, that’s how it felt.
‘Unless you’re rushing and want to leave it to me to print them.’
‘That’s fine. I’ll do it now.’
She took me along the corridor. The spare bedroom couldn’t have been sparer – an implausibly narrow single bed, a wooden chair, a desk with a phone, computer and printer, and a shelf full of office folders. She showed me how the printer worked and hovered nearby. Then her mobile phone went off. She stepped outside to take the call.
In her absence, I printed out two sets. Knowing how she felt about anything leaving the house, I considered hiding the second set. But these were printouts, not original manuscripts. And I was tired of playing games.
‘All done?’ she said, returning.
‘Yep. This lot’s for you.’
‘How many more poems did you find?’
‘Quite a few.’
‘You don’t seem very excited.’
‘I’ve not read most of them yet. I’ve made copies to take away. The handwritten poems I found before are in a folder on Rob’s desk. I’ve taken photos of them on my iPad. So we’ll both have a complete set to read.’
‘As long as the originals stay here.’
‘I should warn you,’ I said, like a TV news presenter prefacing some violent footage, ‘you might find some of them upsetting.’
‘Why?’
The innocence of the question, her earnest look, the risk that anything I said would make it worse – it was all too much. I bottled it.
The Executor Page 18
