This is the Life

by Joseph O'Neill

  ‘I’m off then,’ he said evenly. I looked at him. He had a stoical expression on his face; quite possibly he was not unused to this kind of thing. ‘Good-night sir.’

  ‘Good-night,’ I wished him. He ran down the steps into the downpour and jumped into his car. As he played with his ignition key and started the engine I remembered the key to Donovan’s front door, hidden in the railing. At that moment I felt like throwing the key into the Thames. My evening, my precious Saturday evening, was ruined! (What I now want to know is, why did Donovan call the meeting in the first place? Could it be – I know this speculation is a little harsh – that he never intended to show up at all?) I decided on another, more realistic, course of action. I would cut my losses. I would go inside and dry myself out. I would help myself to a whisky and make some telephone calls. Maybe Susan would still be able to come out.

  I knelt to look for the key. The nerves in my fingertips were not functioning properly in the cold. I blew warm breath into my fist, rubbed my hands together and tried again. This time I sensed my fingernail knocking into something. I withdrew my hand and extracted a light bunch of keys from their hideout.

  SIX

  I made the mistake, when I unlocked Donovan’s front door and stepped through into the house, of shutting the door behind me, with the result that I straightaway stood in utter darkness. I could not see a tiling – not even my hand, raised an inch from my face. Edging forward, I felt my shoes kicking against something: mail; envelopes. Running my fingertips along the wall, my arms outstretched like a somnambulist’s, I groped for a light switch. Then, when the hallway lit up, the first thing I did was neglect to examine the post, which lay in a brown and white pile at the foot of the door. Instead, I headed for the drawing-room door. Donovan could forget about his post; me, I had only one thing in mind: his drinks, where did he keep his drinks?

  Before I go any further, I want to make it clear that I am not a snooper, or a Nosy Parker. I mind my own business and keep out of other people’s affairs. It must be said that this is not a matter of ethics, or of principle, although maybe these things play a part; the simple fact is, other people’s private goings-on do not interest me; what I do not need to know, I do not want to know. For example: I never once read the diary of my brother Charlie, with whom I shared a room in my childhood, although night after night he left it on his desk with its pages open and his innermost thoughts and his darkest secrets before my eyes. Never once was I even tempted to sneak a look. Indeed, if my brother had offered to read out a passage I would have told him to stop, or blocked my ears. As far as I am concerned, people can keep what they do behind doors to themselves. I am not one to spy through the keyhole.

  I think it is clear from what I have said that the last thing anyone could call me is a busybody. I never secretly steam open envelopes to read their contents, or press a glass to the wall to eavesdrop on conversations in adjoining rooms. My life is complicated enough as it is. I am at pains to say this because, contrary to my usual habits, I spent the evening in Donovan’s house reading his private notes, notes he had written for his eyes only, and listening to tape-recordings he had made for his ears only.

  I could not help it. I was looking for something to drink when I came across a pile of sky-blue notebooks, tall rectangular ones of the type preferred by barristers. What had happened was that I had found no liquor downstairs, not a drop. When I opened the door to the drawing-room I received a shock. The furniture was spookily draped in white sheets, to protect it from dust I presume, and phantomish sofas and armchairs hovered in the half-darkness. I quickly pressed the light switch and four or five lamps scattered around the room illuminated simultaneously. It was a little startling, but looking around I spotted a drinks cabinet and took heart. As I walked across my footsteps clopped like hooves on the long floorboards: the rugs had been removed too, it seemed, and stored away somewhere. Anyway, the drinks cabinet proved a dead end. The only liquid I found was a neglected inch of pale sherry in one of the crystal decanters. I did not feel like drinking sherry, I wanted something a little stronger, like a glass of whisky with rocks of ice in it. So I went to the kitchen to have a look there, but again, no whisky, no ice-cubes, no anything for that matter. The multi-storey refrigerator, installed with racks, trays and receptacles for every kind of foodstuff, was bare and greasy: a dried-out half of an onion, a tub of margarine flecked with Marmite. Elsewhere, a stack of delicately interdependent washing-up – spoons, cereal bowls, coffee cups – was poised in the sink. A nasty smell arose from somewhere. No one had been around for weeks, that much was clear.

  I decided to try my luck upstairs. By this time my craving was more than a simple thirst for alcohol, it was a profound, irrational need for some consolation before I went back home, some compensation for my spoiled evening. For some reason I had taken it into my head that the outing had to have some tangible benefit, and that the benefit should take the form of a drink (this was, I hasten to say, not like me at all – normally I can take or leave alcohol as I please). So I continued my search. It was impossible that there was no whisky, or gin, or cognac, anywhere in this huge house. But the first floor seemed dry as well, with dust coating everything, and walking through the abandoned, creaking hallways, I felt I was treading the sidewalk of one of those corny ghost towns you see in Westerns, the ones with tumbleweed rolling down the main street.

  But then I opened the door on a room where the atmosphere was different. If every ghost town has its stubborn old-timer who refuses to leave, who sits tight with his mule in an old shack on the mountainside, certain that the geologists are wrong, that a bonanza waits in the rock, then this room was that shack. It showed clear signs of life. Books were opened and marked with yellow tabs, newspapers lay crinkled on the floor, and a shallow pile of sky-blue notebooks sat up on the desk. Clearly this was Donovan’s study. Periodicals and law reports lined the walls: the Common Market Law Reports, Weekly Law Reports, Recueil de la Jurisprudence de la Cour, Cambridge Law Journal and so forth. Then I spied it. In the corner, alongside an overflowing waste-paper basket, was a bottle of Bushmills. I congratulated myself: I knew it. I knew I’d find something if I kept looking.

  I found a glass in the bathroom and poured myself a double shot. It was nine o’clock, and although the cloudburst seemed over, rain continued to fall, making a racket on a plastic surface somewhere. There was no point in rushing back home, not in that weather. I leaned back in Donovan’s functional chair and drank deeply. That’s better, I thought, as the liquor made a hot path through my insides. That’s more like it.

  It was about then, after the first, satisfying mouthful, that my eyes focused on the notebooks. There were about four or five of them in a stack. My thoughts elsewhere, I took one down and fluttered the pages with my thumb. I was not trying to read anything, I was simply fidgeting with the first thing that came to hand. Whenever I make myself comfortable with a drink, I compulsively reach out to manipulate the nearest object I can get hold of – a newspaper, or the channel controller for the television. That night at Donovan’s was no different. The notebook that I picked up – well, to my mind it was no different to a magazine you instinctively pick up at the barber’s or the dentist’s. How was I to know what it contained?

  Although I was not concentrating, although the pages moved under my thumb in a blur, I did notice that there was something unusual about them. There was an inordinate number of lists, and I thought I saw entire sentences, whole paragraphs even, written down in capital letters. Then there was the question of the handwriting. I knew Donovan’s handwriting, a scribble in biro that only became legible with practice – how many tens of thousands of his words had I read in my time? – I knew his every quirk in that department. The script that I saw in these pages was similar to his but nevertheless different; the words were too legible, the lettering too neat and tidy. The script, in the blue-black ink of a fountain pen, belonged to someone taking care about presentation, someone making a calligraphical effort. That
was not like Donovan; the Donovan I knew was a scrawler.

  All in all, then, the autography on the pages I saw did not strike me as his, nor did their contents appear to square with what one might expect to see in an international lawyer’s notes. There was something different here, something unusual. I decided to take a closer look.

  The first page of the top notebook had a date written at the top right corner: 23 September 1988. (Leafing through the pages, I realized that the entries in the book were chronological – and that the books themselves were piled in calendrical sequence.) And then came the strange part: a row of squares was drawn along the top half of the page; below that row was a row of triangles, and below both of these was a further row of triangles placed on top of squares: they looked like children’s drawings of detached houses, only without the little windows and front door you normally see. Now, in most circumstances diagrams like these would fall into the category of mere doodles; but here the drawings were so systematically and carefully arranged that I received the clear impression that they represented something else – an exercise of some kind.

  Why would Donovan want to practise drawing these kindergarten houses – if that was what they were?

  I turned the page. More diagrams, this time slightly more complex: a series of polygons rolled down the page, each with more sides than the last. At the top was a pentagon, below that a hexagon, and so forth.

  I did not even try to understand that. When it comes to spatial or mathematical IQ tests, to detecting the common feature in a series of numbers or shapes, I always emerge with a dunce’s score. I am lost when faced with this sort of problem, my brain runs on to the rocks. So instead of foundering on these mysteries, I poured myself another drink and turned the page.

  Page three of Donovan’s notebook was dated 24 September 1988. A row of words descended the page:

  A

  aardvark

  aardwolf

  Aaronic

  aasvogel

  abaca

  abba

  I could see straight away that this was an alphabetical list. What was unclear to me was the language – was it English, or maybe Dutch, or was it a mixture of several languages? And again, I was baffled – what on earth was Donovan up to? Why was his handwriting so fastidious, like a schoolchild’s aiming for a gold star? The next page, the fourth, made things even less clear. It was dated 25 September and all it said was See Tape 1.

  Tape? What tape? I searched around me, lifting the scattering of papers and pamphlets. Then, in a drawer of the desk, I found a dictaphone, and next to the dictaphone, in a purpose-made rack, three small cassettes. Quickly I extracted Tape 1 (its number was marked on it in red felt-tip), slotted it into the dictaphone and pushed the play button. Then I pressed the dictaphone against my ear.

  The tape went through some preliminary crackles and I heard the recording mechanism coming on. I was tense with expectation – what was I about to hear? What revelation was at hand? – when a cough sounded in my ear, and then another cough. I did not immediately recognize these noises for what they were (the recording was unclear, there was a certain amount of acoustic distortion) and just as I said to myself, someone’s coughing, a voice started speaking.

  What it said threw me completely. I had to rewind and replay to make sure that what I thought I had heard was right.

  Second time around there was no doubt about it. The voice said, flatly and distinctly, ducatoon, exert, fletch, ocean, tectiform, virtuose.

  I stopped the tape and closed my eyes. I tried to think. Although it was difficult to be certain, that sounded like Donovan. I had used dictaphones before, and knew they had a neutralizing effect on voices. But what made me hesitate was the tonelessness, the dullness of delivery. The words were devoid of any inflexion whatsoever, which was not like Donovan, who spoke with emphasis and vigour. The slow, deliberate voice on tape could have belonged to a teacher of English as a foreign language.

  I opened my eyes and took a deep breath. It was gone half-past nine, time to be making for home. The rain had stopped, too, although I could still hear water guttering somewhere. The sensible thing would be to drive back now. I felt tired, around my eyes especially. There was no way that I could read all of these notebooks, or listen to all of these tapes, now, in a single evening. And yet there was also no way that even I, with my aversion for puzzles, dramas and the private lives of others, could leave matters as they were, up in the air.

  I turned the tape back on. I’ll give it five minutes, I determined, no more. Five minutes, and then I’ll be off.

  The tape scratched, indicating a pause in recording, and then restarted.

  A box of mixed biscuits, a mixed biscuit-box, Donovan said twice. Then he said, Red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry at rapid speed, without hesitation or slip-up.

  Tongue-twisters! He was rattling off tongue-twisters!

  The sixth sheikh’s sixth sheep’s sick, Donovan said clearly. The sixth sheikh’s sixth sheep’s sick. He paused. She sells seashells on the seashore, but the seashells that she sells are not seashells I’m sure.

  Donovan, the voice on the tape, started laughing. He laughed for about three seconds, then abruptly stopped the recording, cutting himself off in mid-cackle. I did not get it. What was so funny? I asked myself. Where was the meaning in any of this?

  How was I to know then that, in all probability, Donovan was not drunk, or out of his mind, but simply happy? That he was laughing from simple joy? Like I have said, when it comes to cryptic clues, to inklings, I am a numbskull at the best of times. I need data, lots of data, and I need a systematic overview – my mind is not designed to take short cuts or frog-leaps. Step by step, that is how I like it, one thing at a time, a and then b followed by c. Of course I should have worked out what was going on in no time at all, I do not dispute that. I should have cracked the problem right away. But that is not my method, and besides, I was exhausted and nervous; I felt ill at ease in that house, doing what I was doing – I felt like a trespasser. It was cold and dark, my clothes were still damp, and the sound of Donovan’s voice echoing in the silence made me jumpy. The dripwater was no help either, tapping and ticking on the window-pane like drumming fingers. I started hearing noises – slamming car doors and scratching sounds like the sounds of door locks turning. What would I say if Donovan came in now?

  Suddenly I became overcome with guilt. What did I think I was I doing, poking and peeping around Donovan’s private belongings? Had I gone mad? Feeling slightly sick, I covered my tracks as best I could, watering the Bushmills in the bottle and putting the tapes back in their rack. All I wanted to do was leave, quickly. When I had finished, I stood still for a moment and made myself think: was there anything else? Had I forgotten anything? No, but I did need to visit the lavatory, badly.

  The lavatory was large and comfortable, with a mahogany seat and an interesting variety of illustrated magazines within easy reach; some embroidered prayers were pinned to the wall. As there are few things more tranquillizing and inducive of meditation than an easeful spell in a soundproof cubicle, I found their presence entirely congruous. I sat down with a sigh of relief and rose five minutes later feeling infinitely better – freer, less oppressed. I helped myself to a generous portion of paper and it was not until I tugged the chain that things began to go wrong: a feeble dribble of water flushed down, barely enough to soak the paper I had used. I pulled up my trousers, fastened my belt and waited for a few moments for the tank to replenish itself. There was no need to panic, a second flush would do the trick. But when I pulled the chain the gushing cataract I was hoping for did not arrive: in its place came an ineffectual trickle which made no impact whatsoever on the brown and white mound in the pool at the bottom of the basin.

  The water: Donovan had switched off the water supply before he left.

  This was a disaster. I had to do something, or Donovan would come home to a pile of faeces, my faeces. I ran down the stairs to the basemen
t in a sweat. A switch, or a tap, there had to be one somewhere. Walking down a steep and rickety wooden staircase, I came into a room like a refinery, full of gurgling boilers, tanks and mechanisms. As there was not the slightest prospect of pinpointing the water tap, I activated the likeliest looking appliances that I could see. Then I ran back up the stairs.

  Nothing. Not the smallest percolation. Oh no, I thought. Oh no. I picked up the toilet brush and tried forcing the material under water, down along the curved swan-neck of the bowl and out of sight. This met with only partial success: parts of the excrement disintegrated and floated back up to freckle the surface. Now the water had an unmistakable brown colour. There was only one thing for it.

  The scoop was in a broom cupboard downstairs. It took me half an hour to pour the lavatory’s soiled contents into a bucket, and then to pour the contents of the bucket out of a window into the garden. The paper I put into a plastic bag which I planned to dump in the first wastebin I saw on the way home. It was a horrible, dirty job, but it was almost wholly effective. Someone had taken the precaution of stocking the lavatory with a whole range of odorizers, and aerosol cans with redolent names waited on a pine shelf: Fragrances of the Forest, Alpine Breeze, Meadow Sweet. I sprayed a fresh aroma into the air and wiped the seat clean. With luck, Donovan would not notice a thing. Then I went back down to the cellar and moved the levers back to their original positions. I washed my hands in a drop of tapwater and in my relief poured myself a final whisky for the road.

  A burning down-in-one later, I made for the front door. The mail, I thought. I had almost forgotten all about it. I bent down on a knee and rummaged around. There was nothing of interest as far as I could see. Recent portions of law reports, letters from the bank, unexciting brown envelopes and junk mail. Nothing from Arabella or her solicitors. Then, straightening up, it occurred to me that I should check the ansaphone. Perhaps the solicitors, or Arabella herself, had left a message for Donovan there. Donovan would want me to satisfy myself on that score, I reasoned.