Death of a Salesperson

by Robert Barnard

  ‘And watching him watching us, eh, Ma?’

  Annie Monkton gurgled a little laugh.

  ‘Well, he was a picture, I’ll give you that. But I still think it was diabolical, that diet sheet. It can’t have been necessary. I’m no doctor, but I do know a grown man’s got to eat enough to keep body and soul together. To see him sitting there with his pea soup, and the rusk he was suppose to have with it, while we were tucking in to the steak pizzaiola with the sauté potatoes and the baked aubergines—well, I said at the time it wasn’t right.’

  ‘I think it was the sweets that got him most, Ma. That Peach Melba you used to make, with the thick whipped cream and the black cherry jam on top. He used to look at that, gaze you might say, like he was transfixed, like he begrudged us every mouthful . . . We haven’t had your Peach Melba lately, have we, Ma?’

  ‘Here, don’t go so fast,’ said Annie, as they sped along the shores of Lake Windermere. ‘We don’t want to get to Keswick too early for lunch.’

  They both had fresh salmon for lunch, with French fries, peas and beans. ‘You pay for Scottish salmon,’ said Herbie, ‘but it does have that touch of class.’ The thought of how much they’d paid for the salmon made them shake their heads reluctantly over the cheese and walnut gâteau. Afterwards they both had a little nap in the car park of the Keswick hotel where they’d eaten, and then Herbie got out his map and they decided where to stay for the night, nibbling at a little bag of savoury sticks. It was a question of whether to go over to Buttermere and then on to the coast and stay at Whitehaven, or whether to take a leisurely trip around Ullswater and overnight at Penrith.

  ‘I’d go for Penrith,’ said Annie. ‘The Borderer at Penrith. I’ve got a fancy to try their venison again. I know it’s extravagant, but we are on holiday.’

  Annie had woken from her nap with her mind greatly refreshed.

  ‘Do you know,’ she said as they started, ‘I don’t think they put as much fruit in fruit and nut chocolate as they used to. Or as much nut, come to that.’

  ‘That’s the way the cookie crumbles,’ said Herbie, not altogether appositely.

  They drove along the north shores of Ullswater, passing as they did so, though without seeing them, several hosts of golden daffodils.

  ‘This is a good road now,’ said Herbie, increasing the speed. ‘A sight better than when we first came up, eh, Ma? Then you really had to dawdle round, because of the potholes.’

  But his mother’s mind was on other things.

  ‘I didn’t really enjoy your father’s gazing at us eating, like he used to after his Attack,’ she said, switching from the fruit and nut to the peppermint fondant. ‘I’m not cruel, you know that, Herbie. In fact, though it was a bit of a laugh at first, after a time I found it really put me off my food. Being watched like that. I just wasn’t enjoying it any more. I remember sitting there eating a slice of one of my homemade pork pies—with all that lovely jelly, just as I like it—and your dad was toying with his omelette and looking at my plate greedily (because, not to speak ill of the dead, he could be greedy, your dad), and I thought: I can’t enjoy this like I should be doing, not with him looking on like he wanted to grab every forkful from me. It was as much as I could do to finish it.’

  ‘Perhaps he should have ate separately, Ma.’

  ‘That would have been like putting him into an insulation ward. No, no, we was a family, and we ate as a family . . . I must say I was glad when they said he could start relaxing the diet.’

  Herbie shifted into lower gear up a hill, and dipped into his bag of salt and vinegar flavoured crisps.

  ‘I think they meant gradually, Ma.’

  ‘Well, of course! That was how we went, wasn’t it? The whole of the first week we hardly changed his old diet at all. I just gave him a bit of stewed apple or a tiny bit of jam roly-poly for afters. I said to him, I said: “Keep well under for the first few days, then you can go over on Sunday, have a bit of a blow-out.”’

  Herbie was quiet for a bit, then he said:

  ‘Well, he enjoyed it, I will say that.’

  ‘Oh, he did. He’d been looking forward to it all week. You could feel the juices running. We talked it all over, you know. There was the lobster pâté, which was his favourite as starters, with the little fingers of buttered toast. Then there was the pork steaks with the mushroom cream sauce that he loved, and the scalloped potatoes and the glazed carrots and the cauliflower in cheese sauce. Then there was the Madeira chocolate cake with the sherry cream topping—the one I got the recipe for out of Woman’s Own. We’d planned it all. It was a lovely meal.’

  ‘A meal fit for a king,’ admitted Herbie.

  ‘And I didn’t make any trouble over cooking it, though none of it was convenience foods. I had to do it all with my own hands, but it was a pleasure to me to do it. I loved cooking it for him.

  ‘And he loved eating it,’ said Herbie. ‘Even the chocolate cake.’

  ‘Well, it was the best I’d ever made. I thought so myself when I ate up the rest the next day. It was perfection. Maybe it was so good that in a way he . . . couldn’t stand it.’

  ‘It wasn’t a bad way to go,’ said Herbie.

  ‘It was a very good way to go. I hope I go like that when my time comes. And it was quick too. We’d hardly got him upstairs into the bed before he was gone. A darned sight better than lingering, that’s what I say.’

  ‘It’s what I’d call a good death.’

  ‘So would I. And I’d have been almost happy about it, if it hadn’t been for that bleeding doctor,’ said Annie, getting almost agitated, and taking out of her handbag a tiny handkerchief, which she dabbed at her eyes.

  ‘Dr Causeley?’ said Herbert, surprised. ‘He never said anything out of turn in the bedroom.’

  ‘No. It was when he came downstairs. I never told you this, son, because I thought it would make you wild. I’d gone downstairs, being upset, to have a bit of a weep by the fire in the dining-room. And he came downstairs and he came in, and he was just starting to say something when—well, you see, the plates with the sweets was still on the table, with his bit of chocolate cake still unfinished, which had gone to my heart when I came in, and he saw that, and he saw the other plates which was piled on the sideboard, and he looked at them—inspected I’d call it, in a thoroughly nasty way that he’d no call to adopt—and he said had he been eating this? and I said yes, and explained we’d been sort of saving up on the calories, so he could have one good blow-out. And he said, “What exactly did he have?” and so I told him. And do you know what he said?’

  ‘No, Ma. What did he say?’

  ‘He said: “That meal killed him as surely as if you’d laced it with strychnine.”’

  Herbie didn’t go wild, but he thought for a bit.

  ‘That wasn’t very nice of him.’

  ‘It was diabolical. You could have knocked me down with a feather! Me just widowed not five minutes since.’

  ‘It was a liberty. These professional people take too much on themselves.’

  ‘They do. Your dad always said that. It was a wicked, cruel thing to say. And you notice he never had any doubt about signing the death certificate . . . That’s why I changed my doctor . . . I never could fancy going back to Dr Causeley after that . . . I know I haven’t got anything to reproach myself with . . .’

  They went quiet for a bit, and Annie Monkton found a sucky sweet in her bag and comforted herself with that. Quite soon they were drawing up in the courtyard of the Borderer. Herbie got out, and made sure they’d got rooms. Luckily the tourist season was only just beginning. He came back smiling.

  ‘Couldn’t be better. Two nice singles. I took a peek at the dinner menu, Ma. You’ll be able to have the venison. I’ve worked up an appetite, so I think I’m going to fancy the mixed grill.’

  As he took the case from the boot and they started towards the main door, Annie’s good humour returned. She nudged Herbie with her fat arm.

  ‘It’s nice being on our ow
n, though, isn’t it, son?’

  A PROCESS OF REHABILITATION

  ‘I don’t know I’m sure,’ said Bessie Hargreaves, shaking her head. It was a white head, but the gentle curls suggested that she was a woman who would never willingly let herself go. ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing.’

  ‘Oh, it’s a very well-established scheme,’ said young Mr Bateson from the Probation Office brightly. He meant to reassure her, but he only filled her with the realization that she was very out of touch with contemporary life. ‘It’s part of the process of rehabilitation. They’re only minor offenders, and they’re put to work of local usefulness instead of sending them to jail. You see, what they learn in jail can often turn them into criminals for life, whereas with this scheme they’re doing something constructive—it’s almost like learning a trade.’

  ‘I suppose that’s true,’ admitted Mrs Hargreaves.

  ‘This lad I was thinking of sending along to help you with the redecoration: he’s just a young football hooligan—’

  ‘I wouldn’t want anyone violent,’ Bessie Hargreaves said quickly.

  ‘Oh, he’s nothing worse than destructive. With all this youth unemployment around, it’s sometimes the only way they can express themselves. It’s their way of getting through to society—you can almost see it as constructive, in a sense. And he’s quite a handy lad. The house could do with a bit of maintenance and a lick of paint,’ he added, looking around in his casually insulting way, ‘as I’m sure you’d agree.’

  ‘I’ve done what I could,’ said Bessie Hargreaves defensively. Then she admitted: ‘It has been let go a bit.’

  ‘It could be made very nice.’

  ‘We’d only been married five years when my husband died, you see. It’s been a struggle to keep it on, even though it’s only a terrace house. I could never afford to have the work done . . .’

  ‘We’d share the cost of the materials,’ said the young man, ‘and of course the labour would be free. It would work out very well for you. Now, what do you say?’

  Bessie Hargreaves sat looking at her hands, shaking her head almost imperceptibly. Finally she said: ‘I suppose it’d be what you might call a good deed.’

  ‘It would. It would indeed.’

  She took a deep breath.

  ‘All right. You can send him along.’

  Bessie Hargreaves quite enjoyed going round to the Do It Yourself centre that was ten minutes away, and choosing paint and a bit of wallpaper for her own bedroom. She kept telling herself it was as long as she could remember since anything had been done to the house. But all the time there was, niggling at the back of her mind, this worry about the young man who was coming. What would he be like? And she told herself that it was the situation that worried her. Something new, something . . . almost, it seemed, threatening. Already she found that in her mind she was calling him ‘the thug’. She would be glad when it was over.

  She was sweeping the kitchen floor on Wednesday morning when he arrived, not more than ten minutes after the appointed time. He was a strong, thickset young man of about twenty, uncouth yet perhaps not ill-intentioned. He walked in his heavy shoes over her newly-swept floor, but then said ‘Sorry’ and took them off in the hall. She swept up the little scraps of mud, then went into the hall, almost shyly.

  ‘Where do we start, then?’ asked the young man.

  ‘I thought in the living-room,’ said Bessie Hargreaves. ‘It’s where I mostly am, and it would be brighter for a coat of paint.’

  ‘Right you are,’ said the boy, and followed her into the room, where she had already laid a covering of newspapers over the floor. He looked around. ‘No problem here, not if we just tidy up the wallpaper and paint over it.’

  ‘I thought that’s what we should do,’ said Bessie, nodding, ‘seeing as you’ve just got the week. You see, I didn’t know about wallpapering, but I did buy a bit of bright, flowery paper for my bedroom. It was such a cheerful pattern . . .’

  ‘I can try,’ said the boy. ‘I helped me mam with a bit of papering, just before she took off. It won’t be professional, but I’ll do the best I can.’

  ‘That will be nice. Would you like a cup of tea—er, I’m not sure I caught your name.’

  ‘Brian. Me mates call me Bri.’

  Mrs Hargreaves didn’t feel quite up to Bri, so she said: ‘Do you take sugar, Brian?’

  While they had their tea they got almost friendly, with Brian coming down off his ladder, where he’d been preparing the ceiling, and sipping his sweet, hot brew over by the fireplace.

  ‘Did your mother leave you, did you say?’ asked Mrs Hargreaves, with a shocked expression on her face.

  ‘That’s right. Took off wi’ a fancy man. Never seen her in me life sin’.’

  ‘What happened to you, then?’

  ‘They put me in an institution. It weren’t that bad. Then me auntie took me on.’

  ‘Do you still live with her?’

  ‘Yeah. We get on all right. She gets a bit pissed off, what wi’ me being around all day, but there’s nowt to be done about that. We don’t fight that much.’

  Mrs Hargreaves was going to say more, perhaps about how grateful he must be to his aunt, but then—was it fancy, or was he really eyeing her lovely silver frame, the one she’d picked up in that junk shop all those years ago for half-a-crown, with that picture of her and Walter at Scarborough in it? No—probably it was her imagination. On the other hand . . . what did he mean when he said he and his aunt didn’t fight that much? The boy—young man, really—drank down his tea and bounded up the ladder again, and as he stood there, so high, so masterfully above her, she could not help noticing how broad his shoulders were, and how thick his arms, and when she felt that impression of youth and power a sharp dagger of fear stabbed her. She wouldn’t have a chance . . .

  Still, they got on all right that day. Brian’s interest in that silver frame seemed perfectly natural when, later on, darting down from his ladder to refill his paint tray with matt white for the ceiling, he said casually:

  ‘That you and your old man?’

  ‘That’s right. When we were young.’ Bessie added sadly: ‘He was never anything else. We only had the five years.’

  The boy seemed almost touched. Anyway he didn’t ask any more questions, but hopped up his ladder and got on with his job. When he had to go out to his little cart of tools and equipment that he’d left by the gate, he always put on and took off his shoes by the back door.

  ‘I can see you like to keep the place tidy,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I do,’ Bessie agreed. ‘I’ve always liked to keep things spick and span, even when I’ve not had much to keep clean. But you can’t expect not to get a bit of dirt in when you’re decorating.’

  The living-room took a good two days’ work, and when it was finished Bessie decided the boy had done a good, if rough, job of work. There were places one shouldn’t look at too closely, but the general effect was greatly improved. It was really bright, almost cheerful.

  The boy himself—well, he didn’t improve on acquaintance. And yet, it wasn’t quite that. It was just that, as he felt more at home in the house, and with her, he got more relaxed, and more . . . more familiar, unbuttoned, more what she took to be his real brash self. Was he just brash—what Bessie called to herself ‘lippy’? Or was there something more? Something almost . . . brutal?

  On the second evening, when Bessie was pottering around cleaning up newspapers from the floor, Brian went over without so much as a by-your-leave and picked up the other snapshot in the room, from the window-ledge where it was kept.

  ‘Saw this when I was painting,’ he said. ‘Is this your son?’

  The face in the photograph was that of a young man, not good-looking but cheerful and sunny-faced, taken in the little scrap of garden in the front, in open-necked shirt and flannels.

  ‘Oh no,’ Bessie said, her face screwed into a troubled expression. ‘We never had no children, Walter and me. We would have had, but we n
ever knew there’d be no time. Walter was killed in a pit accident, you see.’

  ‘Who’s this, then?’

  ‘That was Tom Taylor. He lodged here for a bit. He was an apprentice at Sawley’s—you know, the cotton mill.’

  ‘Looks a jolly chap.’

  ‘Oh, he was. Always cheery.’

  ‘Do you keep in touch?’

  ‘Oh no, no. It wasn’t to be expected.’

  ‘You ought to have. You need some young chap like that to look after you.’

  He’d like to move in, Bessie said to herself. He’d like to move in here with me and live off me. I bet his aunt takes most of his dole money, and he thinks I’d be a softer touch.

  ‘Oh, I can take care of myself, never you mind,’ she said. ‘I’ve had to.’

  Before he embarked on the bedroom he painted all the doors in the house a glossy white. He wanted time to think about the papering, remembering how it should be done. The weather had turned hot, and he just wore a T-shirt and jeans under his overalls. There was nothing personal of Mrs Hargreaves’s in the hall or the landing, so when they had tea or coffee, or when he ate the ‘snap’ that he brought with him for his lunch, he started talking about himself. If he did want Mrs Hargreaves to take him in, he certainly chose the wrong subjects.

  ‘Got in a fight down at t’pub last night,’ he would say. ‘Supped too much black ’n’ tan. So had t’other bugger, come to that. Must’ve bin barmy, me still being on probation. Still, landlord didn’t call the police. He just showed us the door, so there was no harm done.’

  ‘What were you quarrelling about?’ Mrs Hargreaves asked, envisaging a girl, or politics, or some bet or other.

  ‘Can’t rightly remember,’ said Brian, scratching his head and grinning ruefully.

  Her fear suddenly shot into her mind a picture of this boy, this young thug, breaking her as a child breaks a cheap toy—no, as the cook in the café she had once worked in had quartered a chicken, the brittle bones snapping under her capable knife. She nearly panicked, but she controlled herself enough to collect up the cups.