Her grandchild Wolf grows impatient and yanks on Rose’s apron and Wolf asks again: What are the three most important things in life? Grandmother Rose shakes her head slowly, noticing her hands are cold and numb in the dirty potato water. One raindrop spits onto the kitchen window, followed by five more, spit spit spit says the old rain, spit spit. The washing will get wet unless Rose is quick, the sky is a dark violet colour.
Hey, Wolf tries, one more time, what are the three most important things in life? The potatoes are peeled and bald in a bowl of salt water. Rose wipes her hands and darts out of the kitchen door to gather the washing from the line. The rain falls sudden, in sloops, rainwater runs and slurps from the gutter; the clean sheets are soaked through.
Wolf stands by the door for a time, watching the rain batter the laundry, old Rose standing in the old roses growing in the garden. Wolf takes it all in: the apple tree, the long green grass, the purplish sky. Mrs Rose Willeford all white-haired. The white bedsheets, her mouth full of clothes pegs, her apron pocket bulging with more wooden clothes pegs. Wet apples, wet grass and the wet old lady. Wolf leaves the empty jam jar on the step to fill with raindrops.
Old Man Willeford: The Tiger
You think you know someone. I mean, know someone, like your mother, like your daughter, like your own wife. You think you know someone like the back of your hand, and then slap, they go and die and leave you and you are left with all their things and you have to ask yourself: Who was she? You look at their things and you have to wonder.
The funeral was nice and quiet. Everybody said the funeral was special, it was a special day for a special lady. Everyone on their best behaviour. No drama, I mean, nice and respectful. After the service we came back to the house. Not too much to drink. There was too much food though, cousins came bearing glass dishes of brown stew and rice and coleslaw, enough coleslaw to . . . something or other, enough coleslaw to feed an army, I don’t know, I am losing my train of thought.
Where was I? I am trying to think about this: you think you know someone, like really know someone, like your own wife, you think you know your own wife. Rose and I, we got married young, we married when she was seventeen and I was nineteen. That’s a long time to live with someone. I’m not saying our marriage was perfect. We stayed together, richer or poorer, in sickness and health, and all that but . . . You think you know someone, that’s all I’m saying. You think you know someone, and then they just die and leave you. They go and they ain’t coming back. And you’re left with things and clothes and bits and pieces, their bills and bank statements, pieces of paper, boxes of letters and birthday cards, pictures of the Royal Wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, and a white china rabbit, and that is when you find out, it is then when they are gone that the person is different to what you always thought . . . is all I’m thinking . . . You think you know them, but maybe you never knew them at all.
Maybe we never know each other really. You marry a girl and she’s a sweet, sweet girl, a good, good girl. I mean her father was the village preacher back home. She went home back to Jamaica and doted on her family, had nothing but a kind heart and a good word for everyone. But then what do you know, she’s a tiger. Wild tiger. Hungry. Beautiful. Why she never said? In sixty years of marriage not once, not one clue. I married a tiger. Me? I was married to a tiger all these years.
And next thing I know I am sitting there with my head in my hands, looking at photographs of this tiger and thinking, Wow, I never saw her like that. This person I was married to was a tiger all along. And then, oh boy, then you really know what’s what. There you are, a grown man, a foolish old man, crying alone. All the tears skidding down your face and crashing into your white beard. You weep alone all day. All morning and all afternoon. All alone. Drink something. All alone. It is dark when you stop sobbing. You stupid man, you say, you a fool. You were married to a tiger. And all you saw was a reflection of yourself. You stupid, stupid man.
You stare into an old photograph. It is 1962, Hong Kong. Your wife. Look at her. Look at her. Look at her. Rose. She was a wild cat, she was a tiger. A real tiger. All I saw was a wife. A cook. A cleaner. A mother. She was trying to show you she was a tiger all along . . . Look!
Look at those eyes, that face, and look at those claws. I feel you now, Rose.
I feel it now alright.
Your sharp claws.
I feel them now.
Mrs Death: The Death Card
Only she that is invisible can do the work of Death. And there is no person more silenced than the woman, talked over, walked over and ignored than the woman, the poor woman, the poor old woman, the poor old black woman, your servant bent over a mop, cleaning the floor of a hospital.
Did you see me today? Did you walk past?
Today I bleach and sanitise toilets. I wash floors and mop up your waste and spillages, I am cleaning up your shit and your vomit. I like hospitals and surgeries, the conversations I overhear in hospital canteens and waiting rooms. Places where people come and go. I sit and watch you come and go, you say, goodbye and hello, come and go, goodbye and hello. It’s as though you are not connected to each other. Goodbye, you say, be brave, you say, clinging on to that one last squeeze of the hand. You give a funny little wave as they wheel you into the operating theatre. You don’t have to touch to touch, to see to feel each other. You were designed to be in contact without contact, to communicate without phones, to call each other to each other’s minds. Humans still have so much to learn. But in times of difficulty, when you are in pain and trauma, accidents and emergencies, you draw breath together, you connect, you’re most tuned in and alive and alert. When you’re sitting in a hospital waiting room, you’re aware of clocks and space and time, separation and reunion, your chance and your fate. Humans were built to care for each other, to share, and to nurture, just like the nurturing survival instincts of the mother polar bear, the emperor penguin or the matriarch elephant. The history and the biology of humanity, your inheritance of medicine and science, it is phenomenal.
Laura and Michael sit holding hands in the hospital waiting room. Laura bites the fingernails of the other hand. They have been pensive, waiting for over three hours and still no news. Nothing but waiting. There is nothing longer than waiting when you know you are waiting for some waiting to stop.
Do you want another tea? Michael asks and Laura shakes her head no and sighs heavily.
He bows his head in his hand. His eyes are red, his face pale from shock. Laura pats his shoulder and tells him again that it was just an accident. Don’t worry, she keeps saying, kids bounce, kids are much more sturdy than they look. Why is she making him feel better? Honestly? She is furious with him, underneath, but now is not the time to berate him for his drinking. And Michael cannot process it, he cannot hear Laura’s words of comfort. All he hears in his head is the smashing of glass and impact. His mind plays it over and over, the tinny song of an ice cream van, the sun in his eyes and reaching for his shades. Then the bang, the collision, the dull thud on the bonnet. His shattered windscreen, the glass and the blood and the horror and the screams. It was all his fault. Idiot. His eyes start to blur again, filling with hot wet tears. He could have killed Julia. What if he has, what if he has killed her? Was he driving too fast? Will she be OK? Oh dear God, let her be OK . . . I’m so sorry, he says again, I am so sorry, Laura, what have I done? I am so sorry. Michael gets up and begins pacing again. Laura is staring at the floor and chewing on the skin on the side of her thumb.
I am here. I am watching. I am in the busy hospital waiting room. Mrs Death is listening and mopping the floor. I know the child has a broken arm, a nasty cut to the head and some bruises. But she will live, she will be OK, her name is Julia and she will have a scar for life. I am not here for Julia today. This will be one of those ‘nearly died’ stories because she will live.
And I know one day when Julia grows up she will point at the scar and yell, Tequila!
She demands this shot in a beach bar in
Thailand. I deserve a free shot, she is saying, I nearly died, I nearly died when I was nine. The barman is giving free shots for near-death stories, it is a drinking game, and the barman smiles and pours the shot of tequila and Julia will knock it back and tell her tale. I really nearly died when I was knocked over chasing an ice cream van, look at my scar! She will lift her fringe and point, Look. My own dad ran me over! My father was drunk, he shouldn’t have been driving, stupid idiot, the car hit me and I flew through the air, hit the bonnet and went right over the roof, I could’ve died, but I only broke my arm! SHOT! she’ll call out and they’ll do shots and share near-death experiences under the full moon. The warm sand beneath their toes, damp bikinis and t-shirts, one German and one Italian and two Aussies and an English girl doing shots, and it will be the best of best times, they will be friends forever they say and it is the funniest drinking game in the best beach bar in Phuket.
Several years on from this holiday, Julia is found naked and dead in a hotel room in Saigon. She rents a room in Ho Chi Minh City and trades as a fortune teller in the nearby streets. Police are called to the hotel in the city’s backpacker district. The staff break into her room and find her body in the initial stages of decomposition. Some have rumoured that she gave a powerful Thai gangster an incorrect and unfavourable tarot card reading. Her Death card is the Tower card.
Mrs Death is here, I am here, but not for Julia, not today. Julia sleeps like a fairytale princess and she will wake up soon enough. It is so tempting to tell Laura and Michael not to worry, but that is not how this works. Nor how I work. I could tell Laura and Michael to dissuade their daughter Julia from being drawn to the dark, not to go to Thailand, not to get involved with Thai gangsters or underestimate the power of tarot. Instead I tell them to breathe together. They breathe and pull closer, Laura and Michael, they’ve been going through a rough patch, this is an opportunity for them to see each other differently, to remember what’s important. They will be OK.
I leave them.
I squeeze the mop in the bucket and wheel it all down the echoing hospital hallway. It is time to pay a visit to Old Man Willeford in intensive care. My dear Wolf, your grandfather Old Man Willeford just had his second heart attack . . .
Mrs Death won’t miss death, not this time.
Wolf: Now You Are Gone
The funeral of Old Man Willeford
I can write about you
I have so much to say
none of it is nice
your hard hands
your whisky breath
dead now all dead
it is not much colder today
than when you were alive
your name will never be mentioned
without a sad shaking of the head
that is what you leave me with
a sad shaking of the head
today I must attend your funeral
I walk around a supermarket
looking for items to fill this feeling
I struggle to choose flowers
plump white roses too lush
lilies too sweet
iris too bruise-purple
I buy sherry
I swig sherry in the car park
I know I’m not normal
but normal people
drink sherry
at funerals.
Mrs Death: Raven
The funeral of Old Man Willeford
What if I told you
Your funeral will be at half past three
On a cold Monday in winter
Frank Sinatra warbles
Through scratchy speakers
I arrive early and wait outside
Ravens gather in a bony tree above
As your hearse pulls in
Looking away, looking up
I count ten, then a dozen or more
Black bird shapes in black branches
Crude paper cut
Shadow puppets
Against the lead sky
Making such a fuss
Swooping, anxious, late
Screaming kraa kraa kraa
Flocking unkindness
I count fifteen and then
Twenty and then more
A conspiracy of ravens
In the tree above you
What if I told you all this
As the pallbearers
Open the door of the hearse
The light changes and sours
And you will be there and there you are
In a coffin the size of a feeling
they haven’t organised yet
He is in that box
I whisper
There you are
A wreath of red, white and blue
Queen and country and the RAF
Your coffin the weight of everything unsaid
Your dirty secrets and filthy lies
And just as I think that
Two ravens fight and
Descend like Spitfires engaged in battle
They tumble and tear through the sky
Snapping a whole tree branch
Black wing and skirmish
Crashing war planes and
Broken feathers and
A chorus of caw caw
A scream from the unkindness above
Beaks jab, a ferocious fight on the lawn
The birds like two brawling blood-drunk fools
It’s a knife fight in a Hong Kong alleyway
It’s a slap for your wife
It’s your daughter flying through a pane of glass
It’s being too afraid to be alone in a room with you
It’s the belt buckle end of a whipping
The birds peck at black shiny eyes
The unkindness cheering in the tree above as
One raven pins the other down
By the wing, by the throat
What if I told you about this moment
The violence of ravens
The broken tree, the miserable sky
Your funeral, your coffin
And all it stands for
Because of the way it has always been
The dark it always was with you
Always this feeling
The black beak and sharp claw
A screech of unkindness
White noise cruelty
This bleak bitter Monday in winter
The lifeless black trees
The wounded raven
The horrible truth
They watch them lift and carry you
And follow your coffin in
And watch you burn
Once and for all.
Mrs Death Watches TV
Wolf at home in the small attic room above the Forest Tavern pub, present day
Mrs Death sits with me. We drink red wine and flick through TV channels. The cacophony of phony canned laughter, colour and noise and singing and dancing and shouting competitions, celebrity shine, reality show time of a Saturday night family entertainment.
She pauses on a sixties crooner, he is singing the song everyone knows and afterwards everyone claps. The young TV host coos and preens and calls him a national treasure. The raucous live studio audience all cheer and applaud and online #nationaltreasure is trending.
The old crooner is orange and oily he says thank you and blows a kiss and waves to the camera. He takes a bow. Fake tan, fake charm, beaming his fake white teeth with a confident grin.
For tonight his sexism, his racism and elitism is all brushed over, his penchant for child pornography and his connections with Members of Parliament, lords and oligarchs and filthy tycoons are not mentioned. It is neatly swept aside and disguised by his Christian God-talk, his public charity work, his knighthood and his multimillions in the bank. Nothing can touch him.
Or so he thinks. Mrs Death chuckles and raises her glass to the screen, I’ll see you soon enough. Mrs Death downs her wine in one, takes a long draw on her cigar.
She says, His name is on my list, and when he meets me it ain’t gon
na be pretty.
Mrs Death: The German Hitchhiker
County Antrim, Northern Ireland, April 1988
Except she wasn’t a hitchhiker. She didn’t take risks and get into cars with strangers. She was a German backpacker from Munich, exploring the UK and Ireland on an inter-rail ticket. She was aged eighteen and travelling alone. She was blonde and good-looking. She was staying in youth hostels. She did not have any accommodation booked for Ireland, and she was running low on money; we know this from her last diary entry.
What else do we know? We know she boarded a ferry from Scotland to Ireland that would have landed in Larne as it was getting late. She was alone and visiting Ireland as a tourist during the Troubles. Northern Ireland was a dangerous place then. And this unsolved case stands out because this is such an unusual, brutal case.
This is one of Northern Ireland’s highest-profile unsolved murders, with one of the largest DNA screenings ever undertaken, comprising more than 2,000 samples. Police went door-to-door taking swabs and collecting DNA of hundreds of men, which was unprecedented for the 1980s when DNA screening was new.
She was seen boarding the Stranraer to Larne ferry. However, no witnesses saw her disembark. Did she break her rule and get in a car and catch a lift from a stranger she met on the ferry? Perhaps.
Her body was found two weeks later on April 20th on the floor of Ballypatrick forest. She had been beaten and sexually assaulted, she’d suffered head injuries, her face was bruised and she had a broken neck.
Isn’t it so strange that the murderer or murderers did not bury her? People say they did not try to hide nor conceal her body. They didn’t weigh her down and drown her in the nearby lake or throw her off the jagged rocks into the Irish Sea crashing below. People say they left her face-down in the middle of the forest path. Her bags and backpack, her belongings all strewn around her. Why did they leave her on the forest floor exposed like that? Did they have a farmhouse or basement somewhere to keep her prisoner for two weeks? Was she held captive before her body was dumped in the forest?
Mrs Death Misses Death Page 12
