‘Not yet . . .’ he hissed.
‘Donald Templeton,’ the vicar began, ‘was a man loved, and I mean loved, by all who knew him.’
Which did not, thought Henry, include you, chum.
‘Those who followed his career in television, from the role of humble assistant film editor, up through the features department of Granada Television, through to his incredibly successful period as editor of the BBC magazine programme, Holiday ’76, knew him to be resourceful, keen, and deeply aware, not only of the problems of travel – his chosen speciality – but also of such things as cuisine and interior design.’
Henry looked along the row. Billykins’s jaw sagged under her veil. Most of the other mourners were listening to this with the same rapt attention they might have accorded a vaguely accurate account of Donald’s life. It didn’t really matter, their expressions seemed to say, he might as well have been a short-order cook or a deep-sea diver or a male prostitute. He was just another wally like anyone else. In some ways, thought Henry, the man with whom Donald had been confused seemed to have had a better time of it.
‘Later,’ went on the vicar, ‘Donald Templeton showed himself a skilful cross-country skier, on and off piste, a witty raconteur and an enthusiastic do-it-yourselfer. But, when we think of him today, which I can assure you we do, we think of those left behind. Of Norman, of Jean-Paul and of little Beatrice who feels this as deeply as anyone, including the Sussex branch of the family who, because of the railway accident you all know about, cannot be with us here today. Donald Templeton—’
Whoever he may be.
‘Smiles down at us today. His conversion to Islam, his rejection of that faith and the subsequent, troubled period, when the disease had made him all but unrecognizable to any but a few close friends, are things we may wish to pass over today, but—’
Here the vicar raised his eyes to the congregation and a look of panic passed across his face. Perhaps, thought Henry, there was another Donald Templeton. Perhaps . . . But whatever the reason, whether it was that everyone had been so busy reassuring everyone that no one had bothered to talk to the crematorium, whether they had got the time wrong, or whether the vicar had simply had a brainstorm, he now, you could tell, was dimly aware that he had not given an exemplary performance. Whatever the reason may have been, the vicar had no direction in which to go but forward.
‘But,’ he said, his voice challenging his audience to rise and refute him, ‘death, as someone said, is the great leveller. And in my father’s house are many mansions. And if ever a man sleeps well after a day’s work done well that man is, and I pray God give him rest, Donald Templeton!’
Here, overcome by a mixture of shame, embarrassment and some genuine fellow feeling for whoever it was inside the box some yards to his left, the vicar turned to the coffin and said, in a Shakespearian voice, ‘Goodbye, Donald!’
At which point Billykins, perhaps mindful of the more glamorous, civilized life she could have had as the wife of the editor of Holiday ’76, burst into tears and was comforted by Elinor.
Somehow or other, the vicar got off stage, and disappeared behind the altar, perhaps off to hurl himself into the flames that would shortly be consuming Donald. It seemed, thought Henry, the least he could do. As he left, Henry, pushed from behind by Elinor, crept up in the direction of the coffin.
19
Afterwards he blamed the vicar. Everyone blamed the vicar who, fortunately for him, was nowhere to be found. But Henry knew, however much he might blame the vicar, it was really his fault.
In picking up his notes, he glanced over in Donald’s direction. And it was only then that he understood that Donald was actually dead. Up to that moment, Henry had not been quite able to understand the connection between the Chicken à la Thallium he had accidentally served to his old friend and the thing everyone was calling a ‘tragic loss’ or a ‘shocking bereavement’.
At any moment, he had felt, Donald would crop up somewhere in the suburb. He had simply gone missing, somewhere between the Rose and Thorn, the library, the swimming pool or any of the other places where suburban fathers waited for their children. But now he realized with a sense of horror that Donald was actually in the box. That, over there, was Donald. And that woman in the front row, looking up at him severely, was Elinor. It seemed unfair.
The silence in the chapel, broken only by Billykins sobbing, lengthened. Should he, thought Henry, make some mention of the ghastly mistake that had been made? Should he just throw away his speech and talk, as one should, from the heart? Yes, thought Henry, I will. He crumpled the paper in his hands into a ball and fixed the congregation with a stern, preacher’s eye.
‘I didn’t recognize,’ said Henry, ‘the man that has been described here today.’
This, he thought, went down pretty well.
‘I don’t know which Donald Templeton he was talking about,’ went on Henry, ‘but it wasn’t my Donald Templeton. I’m not saying that that Donald Templeton wasn’t a nice bloke. Fair play to him. I’m sorry he’s obviously in the same situation that Donald finds himself. But no way. No way was my Donald Templeton the producer of Holiday ’76. I can’t think how this . . . cock-up has occurred and I’m deeply distressed by it. Distressed but also, in a way, glad. Because it shows us, I think, that death is a universal thing. It happens to us all, even if we are a producer on Holiday ’76, whatever we are, however famous and glorious and so on, death comes for us. We are all going to die. Fairly soon. Today, tomorrow, this afternoon. Pretty soon anyway. Pretty fucking soon!’
He had said ‘fuck’. At a funeral. He had sworn. At a funeral. Oh my Christ! Oh my sweet Jesus! Oh God! And it had been going so well. He had had them. There, in the palm of his hand. He had been direct, forceful, tough, compassionate, blunt, and then he had said the F word. Why had he done this? He seemed to be still talking and Billykins, doubled up with grief, was sobbing even harder. She looked, thought Henry, like someone who has just run the 800 metres rather faster than they had intended.
‘Donald,’ Henry was saying, ‘was a doctor. He was a doctor. Of Medicine. Not of Law, not of English, not, thank God, of Sociology. But of that art of healing which we all know that his widow, Mrs Donald, needs so much as do we all after the scene that we have here witnessed today. Yes—’ He was back on course now. ‘Yes, Donald was a doctor. Not a brilliant doctor. Not a high flyer. Not always, well, right! Often, as we know, to our cost, completely, hopelessly wrong in diagnostic terms. Way off the mark. Quite frequently.’
Billykins gave a juddering sob and started to bang her head against her knees. Elinor was signalling something to him. To stop, perhaps? But Henry couldn’t stop. Thinking about Donald in that box, he knew he had to go on, to try and find, in the middle of all this gibberish that was coming out of his mouth, one coherent sentence that would stand as a tribute to someone he had, yes he had thought, was a bloody nice bloke. A wee bit of a racist—
‘A wee bit of a racist,’ he was saying, out loud, ‘a wee bit of a racist. But who, I may say, when it comes down to it, and it does come down to it, isn’t? Who isn’t, in England, these days, fed up to the back teeth with hearing about Mad Mullahs chopping off people’s hands for blasphemy and—’
Why was he talking about Mullahs? He must get back to the matter in hand. He found he was looking straight at Sam Baker QC (almost) whose arms were folded and whose face bore a look of intense, sceptical concentration, as if he was listening to his opposing advocate.
‘Lawyers,’ said Henry, ‘like doctors, are the kind of people who live in Wimbledon and this is the kind of person Donald Templeton was. Not, as I say, a lawyer—’
Sam Baker QC (almost) shifted elaborately in his seat. ‘But a doctor. And people like Donald, as I say, are used to slurs that are cast at them. They’re not ashamed of being English, of being the people they are, of being the quiet, hard-working middle-class people who make up the backbone of England and indeed of America and—’
He caught sight of Sy
lvie le Perroquet from 109 (Non Merci ce Soir Sylvie). She looked almost frenzied with concentration.
‘Of France. But France, America, England, these aren’t the issue here. What is the issue is something that unites all those three countries, something that they all have in common, something that is as true of New York as it is of Wimbledon. I am talking, of course, about the situation which Donald finds himself in, the . . . er . . . dead situation.’
They had gone quiet again. He could pull it back. He knew he could. He found he was looking straight into the eyes of ‘Neighbourhood Watch’. Inspector Rush normally struck Henry as a dull little man but today his eyes seemed as bright as a squirrel’s.
‘But death, even in suspicious circumstances, is something that creates a bond between us. Because all of us, of course, are united by death. Death, as someone said, is no laughing matter. It’s not a subject for comedy. Except, of course, in the sense that we, all of us here today, English people here today to mourn a loved friend and colleague . . .’
Loved friend and colleague. That was the sort of thing, wasn’t it?
‘Here to mourn his passing but also, of course, yes, also to have, well, to have a laugh. To laugh because as Sophocles said – laughter is our only response, sometimes, to things. We laugh because the grief is too great, too deep, and that laughter can be as profound and meaningful an emotion as the tears that sometimes come with it, although they come, of course, out of amusement and not out of sorrow. I think comedy is as vital and meaningful as tragedy and I think Donald, if he were alive, which he isn’t, would agree, because Donald, like all of us, like all of the English, whether from the north—’
Henry caught sight of Dave Sprott’s grey hair and glasses bobbing up and down like some toy hung in the back window of a saloon car.
‘Or the south, was an Englishman. Yes. He was an English doctor and I think there are people in the world who think such people are not, intrinsically, interesting. They would rather hear about Aborigines or people who have it away with gorillas because they don’t care about the ordinary, decent people. They don’t give a fucking stuff about Donald Templeton.’
He had said fuck again. He had said fuck, twice, at a funeral. He glanced down at his notes and caught sight of the words ‘Death is Nature’s way.’
‘Death,’ said Henry, ‘is Nature’s way!’
Nature’s way of what? The rest of the quotation was obscured by a fold in the paper. He looked along the row of faces in front of him. They were now devoid of any clue that might guide him. If he could think of a way to stop this he would. But like a man at a party who simply cannot leave, he could not think of a reason why he should step back into the congregation. Was this his punishment? thought Henry.
‘I used to drink with Donald,’ he said, ‘in a pub called the Rose and Thorn. Not a bad pub. A place where you could go to get away from the wife, the “old rat” as it were, although of course Billykins . . .’
Billykins! That was her name! Of course!
‘Billykins and he were as devoted a couple as you will find anywhere and Donald loved her with an almost childlike devotion, could not bear to be parted from her, followed her almost everywhere, almost to the extent of hampering her freedom of movement—’
Elinor was looking at him. She seemed to be trying to say something. Stop, presumably. This was all very well. But how did you stop? Once you’d started how did you stop?
‘Look,’ said Henry, making one last, desperate effort to get this speech airborne, ‘look. Donald was my mate. And if Donald was here today, which in a sense he is, although he’s . . . er . . . in that box . . .’
Billykins gave the kind of wail familiar to connoisseurs of Greek tragedy. ‘Ay ay ay ay!’ she said, and then, ‘Aieee-ou!!’ It was, thought Henry, a primal grief that seemed to have no place in Wimbledon. His speech, ragged and confused though it obviously was, was having some effect. Christ, he was in the box and Henry was talking about him, a man talking about a man. It was simple.
‘Look, he’s in the box and here I am talking about him as a man, which I am and Donald was, if you hadn’t noticed. A man. Yes, one of those phallic monsters, one of those patriarchal blokes that feminism – and Donald of course was no feminist – yes, an ordinary English, forty-year-old male. And what did he want? Really. With his outdated attitudes and his, well, frankly, penis, what did he want? With his mortgage and his little horizons and his contempt for all the fucking rubbish that gets talked these days?’
He had said fuck three times. But they were listening to him. They were actually listening to him. They were leaning forward in their seats, mouths open, hanging on his every word. Henry didn’t care any more.
‘He wanted,’ he said, ‘what any man wants anywhere on the globe. A loyal wife, a bit of land to call his, a job that put food on the table, a child that would grow up to love him and that he would raise properly. He didn’t want to go to prison or be involved in a war, although I’m sure if it had come to that he would have been on the right side, although, as I should make clear, you never fucking know what the right side is until a long time after. Right? It isn’t Tehran though, is it? It might be, it might just be that life in Wimbledon has developed to a higher pitch than anywhere else in the globe. What I am trying to say—’
What was he trying to say? Whatever it was he felt they wanted him to say it. To say it and then leave the platform.
‘What I am trying to say is that no human life form, not even Donald Templeton, is completely beneath contempt!’
He realized, as he said this, that it sounded incredibly rude. He did not mean it to be.
‘Look mate,’ said Donald, ‘go on through. Tell it like it is. Go on.’
‘I mean by that,’ said Henry, ‘that I sometimes feel beneath contempt. I’m the sort of ordinary husband and father with not very many views about the world who’s led a very simple quiet life and wanted to do good and brave and dangerous things but just never got the chance. And Donald was like that, I think. He was a romantic, you know? He was a wild fucking romantic. He was a man who dared, who wanted more. And I think that’s why I liked him, because like him I look up at the sky above Wimbledon and I say “Oh my God. Oh my God, you bastard, I love you!” ’
Henry found he was pointing, dramatically at the coffin. They’re with me, he thought, they’re getting my drift at last.
‘That’s me and you in there,’ he said, in a kind of shriek, ‘that’s us. That’s the next day of our lives. Let’s try, shall we, and let that bit that lurked in Donald Templeton out of us. Let’s be wild and ridiculous and free, shall we, in memory of him? Let’s do it for Donald. Let’s go for it. Because he’s dead and we’ll be dead soon and I think we owe him something, ladies and gentlemen. I am speaking the truth of my heart here because underneath this rather boring exterior I care. I’m not quite sure what I care about but I care. And one of the things I care about that isn’t Nicaragua or Poland or anywhere else but right here and part of the country I love and that I am afraid I don’t want to see change too much is people like Donald Templeton. Because Donald Templeton is me! I’m in that box with him, feeling what he’s feeling, going through what he’s fucking going through, man. Thanks, Donald! Thanks for everything.’
Here Henry raised his arm in a kind of quasi-Fascist salute in the direction of the coffin and said, voice husky with emotion, ‘It’s your round, old son!’
Suddenly his eyes were blinded with tears. Convulsed with sobs, he made his way back to his seat where, to his surprise, Elinor, instead of hitting him in the face, put her arms round him. Other people in the chapel were sobbing too. Dave Sprott was leaning forward, his hands over his face, wailing like a child who had walked into his surgery for the first time. Even Sam Baker QC (almost) was white and nervous-looking and his professionally immobile upper lip was dangerously near to quivering.
It was not what Henry had meant to say. Or rather, it was not what he had meant to say at Donald’s funeral. But it was, he
felt, as he rose to his feet and the strains of ‘Now Thank We All Our God’ began to filter through to the chapel, something that needed saying.
20
‘Come and get it!’ murmured Henry under his breath as he carried the bowl of punch into Donald’s house. ‘Finish ’Em! This should help you forget your troubles!’
To give it some more go, he had added some milk and a carton of orange juice as well as a small plastic container of something called Kleeneezee. It was now the colour of strong tea.
No one actually mentioned his speech, but Dave Sprott grasped his hand and said: ‘I know how you feel.’
Billykins just stared at him as if he was a creature from another planet. Only Elinor, when he had put the punch next to the glasses in the hall, barked, sotto voce: ‘How could you do that, Henry?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Henry, ‘I was just very upset.’
‘It was embarrassing,’ went on Elinor.
‘Have a drink!’ said Henry.
‘No,’ said Elinor, ‘I couldn’t.’
‘I’m having one!’ said Henry.
She set her jaw at him. Over in the corner, Billykins, her head still between her knees, was moaning something. Henry caught the words ‘. . . awful . . .’ and ‘. . . end the nightmare . . .’ but whether she was talking about him or the vicar or Donald was unclear.
‘You said you would have a drink!’ said Henry.
‘I won’t!’ hissed Elinor. ‘I couldn’t!’
Then she scuffed her foot on the carpet. An expression appeared on her face that at first Henry could not identify. As she spoke he realized with some surprise, that it was doubt.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said, ‘at least you spoke out.’
‘Yes!’ said Henry.
Why is she saying this? What does she want?
‘Grief,’ said Elinor, ‘is so buried with us, isn’t it?’
‘Yes!’ said Henry.
The Wimbledon Poisoner Page 13
