Corpsing

by Toby Litt

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said.

  Dorothy seemed to have something to say, but thought the better of it and retreated to her interview chair.

  I did a final few pantomime coughs – not without enjoying the irony of putting on such a bacon-rind performance for two such monstrously huge Harrods hams.

  Alun joined his wife in front of the mirror.

  When I next looked at them, through cough-misted eyes, Alun and Dorothy were sitting, holding hands and waiting patiently – impregnably back in Sunday-supplement mode. For all their emotional involvement with me, I might have been a first-time interviewer fiddling with the batteries of my Dictaphone.

  ‘How did you enjoy the production?’ asked Dorothy.

  ‘Oh,’ I said – enjoying this scene much more than anything I’d seen on the stage – ‘it was just the usual RSC crap, wasn’t it? I expect the Japanese enjoyed it.’

  Dorothy looked mortified. Alun maintained a stoic deadpan.

  ‘But I thought the central performances…’ Oh, how I love a dramatic pause ‘… towering.’

  They glanced at each other, unable to resist dipping into even such a pathetically small goodie-bag of superlatives as I’d brought with me.

  As in Inferno, I thought.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Dorothy, in a manner that said, I have been much praised before, of course, but I accept with genuine pleasure all genuine praise.

  ‘You should have come on Saturday,’ said Alun.

  Dorothy looked at him, going slightly misty with the memory of Saturday.

  This was getting too much: I was being dragged into some grotesque RSC production called Backstage.

  ‘Tell me, Alun, when I was shot I was sitting at a table that had been booked under your name. Why?’

  Alun sat deadpan still, but one of his hands did a Parkinson’s-type twitch.

  ‘Why don’t we go and have a drink?’ said Dorothy.

  ‘Please tell me,’ I said. ‘As you’ll understand, I’m quite interested in finding out.’

  Still Alun didn’t speak.

  ‘You booked the table,’ I said. ‘I checked at Le Corbusier. You were meant to be sitting where I sat.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alun. ‘Shall we have a drink?’

  He dipped his hand under the dressing table, reached into a cardboard box and came up holding a large bottle of Absolut vodka, blue label.

  ‘I have no idea what you’re trying to suggest,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve already spoken about this to the police. What did you tell them?’

  Dorothy stood up.

  ‘We’ve already told them everything we know.’

  ‘Then tell me,’ I said.

  ‘It’s very difficult for Alun,’ Dorothy said, taking over. ‘I’ve forgiven him, but he had a short affair with Lily. When I found out about it, I told him not to see her any more. He had to cancel at the restaurant. I have no way of knowing but I expect Lily phoned you as a last-minute replacement.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Alun. ‘That’s what we told the police.’

  Dorothy stood to one side, ready to intervene in defence of her husband if I gave her a chance.

  ‘Could I speak to you on your own?’ I asked Alun.

  Dorothy said, ‘Really –’

  ‘I have some private questions – about Lily.’

  ‘Dorothy can stay,’ said Alun. ‘She knows all about it, anyway.’

  I waited.

  ‘Please go,’ I said to Dorothy.

  ‘No,’ she said – the first honest syllable she’d uttered all evening.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘How long had you been seeing Lily?’

  Alun glanced guiltily up at his wife.

  ‘A couple of months.’

  ‘Two months?’ I asked.

  ‘Three-ish.’

  ‘You realize I was still living with her?’

  ‘She told me she was going to finish with you, and – in the event – she did. I’m sorry –’

  ‘You had sex with her.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Right from the beginning?’

  ‘Yes.’ He nodded.

  ‘Unprotected sex?’

  ‘Why does he have to answer that?’ shrieked Dorothy.

  ‘Because,’ I said, calmly, ‘Lily was pregnant when she died.’

  ‘Oh-my-god,’ said Dorothy.

  ‘Christ Jesus,’ said Alun.

  Were they acting? I couldn’t tell.

  I turned to Alun.

  ‘I take it that means it could have been yours.’

  Alun turned pleadingly to Dorothy. ‘I didn’t know – really, I didn’t. Why didn’t the police tell me?’ Then to me: ‘Haven’t they done any tests? Can’t they tell whose it was?’

  ‘Why were you meeting Lily that evening?’

  ‘It was just… just dinner,’ Alun said.

  ‘Who wanted to meet up, you or her?’

  ‘I think she suggested it. I can’t remember.’

  ‘And when did you decide not to go? When did Dorothy make you cancel?’

  ‘Dorothy and I talked about it a couple of nights before. Wednesday. It was the best thing all round – that’s what we decided. We are really very happily married, you know. We have a lovely son.’

  Dorothy said, ‘Alun was being foolish. He knows now.’

  ‘So, how did you cancel? Did you phone? Or did you go and see her at home? Or up in town? I take it you were breaking up at the same time, not just blowing her off over one date.’

  Alun tried to sneak a sideways glance at Dorothy.

  ‘I phoned from home late that evening. Thursday. We’d both been in rehearsal all day. I was in Titus Andronicus. Dorothy was in – what were you in?’

  ‘Three Sisters.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Anyway, it was late when I called – say, eleven-fifteen.’

  ‘Were you with him when he phoned?’

  Dorothy gave me a single nod – tight-mouthed. The very follicles of her hair seemed to pull tighter, about to go ping.

  ‘And you said that you couldn’t ever see her again – that your wife had found out – that you were sorry.’

  ‘I think she understood. It wasn’t spelt out. I told her it was over, for reasons that she –’

  ‘Was she in love with you?’

  Alun was now sitting with his feet apart, his elbows on his knees, his fingers in his hair, talking directly into the carpet, beginning to cry.

  ‘I hope not,’ he said.

  ‘When I saw her on Friday, she seemed perfectly okay,’ I said, remembering even as I spoke the special-occasion frock, the new perfume, the unusual calmness.

  At what point, exactly, had Lily become attracted to this huge sobbing creature?

  ‘Did you sleep with her during the Strindberg tour?’

  ‘Surely that’s enough,’ said Dorothy.

  ‘No,’ said Alun. ‘But the possibility was there. It seemed to hover between us, like –’

  I didn’t need his rehearsal-room similes.

  ‘Last question: did you love her?’

  ‘No, he did not,’ intervened Dorothy once more. ‘He was besotted for a time – even I saw that – but that was all.’

  Alun drew himself up.

  ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I think I probably was.’

  Dorothy flounced over to him and slapped him, hard. Alun seemed to take this as a matter of course.

  ‘What’s the point in lying?’ he said. ‘The girl’s dead.’

  ‘I am not dead,’ sobbed Dorothy, finally in tears. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘How about that drink?’ I suggested.

  They ignored me, slowly beginning to work their way towards touch, apology, reconciliation.

  Not bothering with goodbye, I opened the door and backed the chair out of the room.

  39

  Taxi home.

  Some of what Alun had said might even be true. After I’d told him about the baby, he might have forgotten himself and spoken honestly. But the
whole conversation had been so heavily policed by Dorothy that between them they obviously had something to hide.

  What seemed clear was that Alun had been seeing Lily while I was still living with her, and that – during that time – they had been having sex. I tried to remember whether I’d noticed anything suspicious. It was unlikely I had. By that stage in our relationship I was on a kind of trust autopilot: Lily wouldn’t do that because Lily was Lily, because I lived with Lily and loved Lily, and because Lily lived with me and loved me. (Almost, I was trusting in the fact that I trusted her – and that, because she knew I trusted her, she wouldn’t betray that trust.) I was leaving myself open to being wounded, in the hope that the possibility of my being hurt would be enough to prevent her doing anything to cause me pain. Which is fine when you love someone and feel their hurt as your own. But it was clear that Lily had gone, at some point, beyond that – or ducked beneath it.

  She was capable, in death, of causing me a great deal more distress than when alive. (Everything now was total – a fact would remain a fact, without apology. Unfaithfulness was eternal.) But it was clear that – even before she died – she had crossed over into not really caring about whatever pain she might cause me.

  The one thing Alun had said that I believed totally was that Lily had told him I was on the way out. There was nothing to do with logic in my acceptance of this. It just felt true – it was so painful that I couldn’t believe it untrue.

  And so now I had to accept, with almost total certainty, that Lily died no longer loving me – and although she might have been carrying our child, it could equally well have been that of another man – a man whom she did love – would choose, was choosing, had already chosen over me.

  When she called me to invite me out to dinner, all the self-reliance I’d built up during those six weeks alone was torn through by the slashing spin of false hope – she wants me back, she wants to say she’s sorry, she wants to plead forgiveness.

  Even her phonecall, so clear in its statement of our emotional agenda, hadn’t been able to prevent that damage.

  Once she sees me, I thought, she’ll say what she really means. She just doesn’t want the reconciliation to take place on the phone.

  Now all the falsity of that hope was left untenable. I had proof: I had had the other man in front of me.

  When Anne-Marie called to suggest she come round, I said I wasn’t feeling too well. Tomorrow night, we agreed, would be better.

  That night was the worst since coming out of the coma. All I’d feared was upon me, and there seemed little else left for me to hope for. I felt immensely humiliated – despite the fact that no-one was present to witness my humiliation. How could they be? It was in my version of a private past that the really important events were taking place. The only people who existed in this imaginary realm were Lily and myself.

  When I fell asleep, I dreamt my way back into our flat. Actual scenes replayed themselves, all truth gone – nothing but surface and parody. Other scenes, ones at which I hadn’t been present, appeared, in false flashback: Lily kissing Alun and coming straight home and kissing me; Lily buying two bottles of Alun’s favourite vodka, ready for his next visit to the flat.

  When I woke up, it was into a real present no less disturbed than the invented past. Lily had died no longer loving me.

  It felt as if someone were pulling a heavy cowl of cold sweat up my back and over my head.

  Perhaps I deserved what had happened – deserved it for laughing at Lily as she died.

  Now, in my made-up scenes of her, she was always laughing, with Alun, at me. In the moment of her death, I’d been guilty of something that – in the dark of my bedroom – seemed almost as bad as pulling the trigger. But because of what I’d learnt about Lily’s own guilt, I felt almost glad that I’d laughed. Now, if I could have travelled back to that moment, laugh at her is almost certainly what I would have chosen to have done.

  And then I felt a further guilt overtake me: that, even out of some instinct of impossible retrospective revenge, I was wishing such things. It was disgusting that I should desire further punishment for Lily, dead as she was – deadly as her punishment had been.

  There seemed only one way out of these nightmare convolutions, and that was to forgive equally both Lily and myself. But that was impossible – I still loved her, I still hated myself.

  40

  Saturday.

  In the morning, I went to the gym and worked on my legs. They were probably stronger now than they’d ever been before I got shot. Back then, I’d never taken any exercise. But, despite my new-found fitness, forcing myself out of the wheelchair was a bit like trying to persuade a kid that they’re too old for the pushchair. For some things, like moving around my flat, watching TV, playing computer games, the chair was really cushy. And it had already proven useful at certain moments, emotionally speaking. Alun Grey, in particular, seemed susceptible, in a typically weepy Welsh way, to the Adventures of Wheelchair Boy. And admittedly, the crutches were still useful for going upstairs – where I tended to lose my balance. But overall I was probably fitter than before – though about eight metres of colon were away and gone up the hospital incinerator chimney. I wasn’t awake to say I’d like to keep them, jar them, display them.

  Anne-Marie came round in the late afternoon and I took her straight to bed.

  Afterwards, her face went all serious.

  ‘Conrad, I think we should talk.’

  She sat cross-legged on the floor. I sat back on the sofa.

  ‘Don’t you think, maybe, that this has all happened a bit too fast? With us, I mean. We were both very emotional and –’

  ‘I’m glad it happened.’

  ‘Well, so am I. Really.’

  ‘You’re just what I need.’

  ‘But everything’s so mixed up with Lily and Will and –’

  ‘It feels great to me.’

  ‘And to me, but –’

  ‘What’s really bothering you?’

  ‘I hate to whine.’

  ‘Is it something I can help with?’

  ‘It’s my job. You don’t want to hear this.’

  ‘Really, I do.’

  Anne-Marie wasn’t worried about how quickly we’d got into bed together. She just wanted to know that she didn’t have to be Ms Happy with me all the time. I let her grumble on for an hour or so, then we fucked again.

  Sunday.

  Happy. So happy. Happier than I’d been, since.

  I even half-decided to give up my ludicrous investigation. I was bad at this, very bad. Really, I couldn’t take myself seriously. I just wanted people to tell me the truth. My badge and go home. The only person I’d handled properly was Asif.

  And there my weakness lay. Because even if I didn’t find out about the baby right now, I knew that – inevitably, eventually – I would want to, at some time in the future. And if that future were an ‘our’ future – Anne-Marie’s and mine, for example – then that ignorance, that non-investigation, would begin to cause serious problems.

  It was better as soon as possible to know, or to know that I would never know.

  On Sunday evening, after Anne-Marie had gone home to get ready for the coming week, I thought over what I had discovered so far about Lily and her death.

  It was clear that Alun and Dorothy knew much more than they had said. I would have to put pressure on them.

  One way was obvious: threaten to go to the press with the story of Alun’s affair with Lily. They’d know that would do their Sunday-supplement status no good.

  But then I thought of a more direct and a more infuriating way to go about it.

  I got on the phone, first to the Barbican box office and then to a load of other booking agencies: I would be attending every evening performance of Macbeth for the next fortnight. The production wasn’t exactly a sell-out, so I was able to choose where I wanted to sit almost every evening. I didn’t go for one seat or area – sometimes I was up in the gods, sometimes the front r
ow. I booked under several variations of my name, misspelling it a couple of times.

  This would be fun.

  41

  Monday.

  Vicky arrived on my doorstep just before lunch. She wasn’t in any mood for chit-chat.

  ‘Conrad, I really must insist that you stop pursuing your own investigations. We’ve just had a particularly distressing visit from Alun Grey. He says you went to see him at the theatre and told him Lily was pregnant – by him.’

  ‘Oh, did I?’

  ‘He demanded to know if he was the father.’

  ‘I hope you didn’t tell him.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Well, it’s nice to see you’re playing fair by both the candidates. Or should that be all the candidates? I think there might be others.’

  ‘My main point is quite simple: if you continue to try on your own to find out who wanted Lily dead, you will severely hamper the police’s own investigation. And even if you don’t hamper it completely, you may reduce the possibility of a satisfactory conclusion once the case comes to trial.’

  ‘Do you think I want this person – whoever they are – to go safely to prison, where I can’t get at them? The hitman himself is sitting in some comfy cell –’

  ‘I can assure you, his cell is far from comfy.’

  ‘You’re not trying hard enough. I can do better than you. And I will.’

  ‘Conrad, we can stop you, quite easily. I’m only asking nicely because –’

  ‘That’s your job. Fobbing people like me off with excuses for delay. Well, if you threaten me with restraining orders and stuff like that, I’ll go straight to the papers with the story of Brandy’s baby. Now, I’d like to ask you a very simple question.’

  ‘This discussion is over.’

  We were still on the doorstep.

  ‘Why haven’t I received the inventory I asked for – the one of items taken from Lily’s flat?’

  ‘You haven’t?’ said Vicky, obviously a little stunned.

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘But I asked them to.’

  ‘And the inventory for my flat, as well.’

  ‘Both of them,’ she said. ‘Honestly. I put in a request.’