A Personal History of Thirst

by John Burdett

  Daisy was instantly at home. She offered to help with lunch, but Hogg said that someone was preparing it.

  “A maid?”

  “Not quite.”

  As for Hogg, I looked more carefully this time. He was older than I had thought (lines around the eyes and mouth I hadn’t noticed in the pub, more gray than I had registered, a greater canniness behind the need to apologize and agree).

  I thought him somehow dangerous, as chameleons can be, but a common denominator linked Daisy and him: an expensive education half rejected, an uncanny instinct for role playing.

  It was not often that I had the chance to see her in a social context. I stood aside, feeling a mixture of pride and envy as she chatted excitedly.

  “What a charming house!”

  “Yes, he’s quite comfortable, old Percy.” By the way he said it, we understood that “old Percy” was not in the clerical avant-garde.

  He excused himself to go to the kitchen. Daisy poked her tongue out at me. Hogg reappeared.

  “Daisy, James, I want you to meet my secret guest.”

  My first thought was that this could not be the person he resembled, for no more logical reason than that he was wearing an apron and carrying a tray piled with sandwiches.

  “James Knight of course you already know,” Hogg was saying. “Ollie, meet Daisy Smith.”

  Daisy’s fascination was palpable, as was her need for him to like her, but he nodded woodenly at both of us and proceeded to place the tray on a table.

  “I’ll just get the tea.” He spoke directly to Hogg, in a voice crushed to a whisper.

  “Oh yes, Ollie, that would be terrific if you would.”

  As he disappeared again into the kitchen, Hogg broke into a triumphant grin, like a very young boy who has played a trick for adults to applaud.

  “I thought that if I didn’t tell you you couldn’t be compromised. This way if you get in trouble with your judges, you can blame it all on wicked old James Hogg.”

  I was stunned into silence. I felt an elemental rage, as if it were my own spirit that had been broken. And at the same time a deep shame, because like it or not, I served the same system as Hogg. I felt a kind of paralysis of the personality, as if the two sides of my mind held each other in an unbreakable wrestling hold. Daisy looked embarrassed.

  “Yes, that’s right, isn’t it, Jimmy? This way you’re not compromised?”

  I opened my mouth, shut it, finally muttered, “No, not at all.”

  “Splendid,” Hogg said. “Then I’ve achieved my purpose. I’ve brought Ollie and his friend together. But he’s not your only friend anymore, is he, Ollie?”

  “No,” Thirst said. He crossed the room again with the tea, then left. Hogg beamed. He motioned us to sit down at the table—mahogany, with heavy legs.

  “I’m sorry it’s only sandwiches. Mrs. Alan from the village will come to cook us dinner tonight.”

  “Isn’t Oliver having lunch?” Daisy said.

  “He ate earlier.”

  “You got him out, then?” I said.

  “Mm. Didn’t I tell you in my letter? Your winning the appeal did the trick. I’d been campaigning for his release for months, but they don’t take much notice of me, I’m afraid. ‘That James Hogg would let them all out if he had his way’ is, I suspect, what they say to each other. You see, I know this sounds dreadfully silly to a man of your calling, but when I get to know these great hairy brutes, I find them quite docile and lovable.”

  “Well, there’s nothing like a shot of Librium to take the zap out of a man.”

  Daisy, who had suspended her social conscience now that we were in company, scowled at me.

  “Oh, you don’t want to believe all those stories you read about,” Hogg said. “I admit it does go on, forcing the prisoners to take tranquilizers—the ‘liquid nightstick,’ one of the tabloids calls it—but not much in the Scrubs. In those high-security places like Dartmoor and at bins like Broadmoor, of course, but the Scrubs is a quiet place; no one really dangerous goes there.”

  “Nevertheless, aren’t you taking a risk bringing him here? Isn’t he still on parole?”

  Hogg clapped his hands. “Ah, now you’ve seen Hogg’s devilish cunning! This is the real reason why I was so keen to have this vicarage for a month. The terms of his parole permit him to stay here so long as I am also resident, or in that dreadful hostel in Islington.”

  “The one run by the Prisoner’s Friends Society?”

  “Mm! That shower!”

  “And he’d rather be here?”

  His features went flat. Daisy glared at me.

  “Well, who wouldn’t?”

  “Quite,” Daisy said.

  I looked at them in silence. When we stopped talking, the tick of the inevitable grandfather clock cut the time up in manageable Victorian segments. Chimes on the quarter hour told you how much closer you were to the end of another eventless day.

  “He was consulted, of course?”

  “Ollie!” Hogg called out. Daisy was angry. Thirst appeared at the kitchen door, still wearing the apron.

  “Where would you rather be, here or in that dreadful hostel in Islington?”

  Thirst looked at me. “The reverend has been very kind to me.”

  “That doesn’t answer the question. Ollie, where would you rather be?”

  “Here,” he said, and disappeared.

  “There!” Hogg said. I looked at Daisy, who looked away.

  Hogg offered the sandwiches around. Apparently he had taught Thirst to cut them up into quarters, so that each one was no more than a mouthful. I took a couple and ate them, but I wasn’t hungry.

  “Why don’t you let me show you over the church? Ollie will take your bags up to your room. I’ve assumed you’ll have a double room?”

  “If that’s not against the rules,” Daisy said.

  “Oh no, so long as you don’t tell old Percy. He’s rather old-fashioned. And perhaps,” he said, fussing over a sandwich, “just perhaps it’s not a good idea to let the members of the parole board know. I’m sure James will understand, a matter of credibility. You’re not married after all.”

  He looked at me for agreement.

  “What curious anachronisms we both are,” I said. “I have to pretend that I don’t socialize with criminals, and you have to pretend that you don’t socialize with fornicators.”

  Hogg winced. I think the word “fornicators” distressed him.

  We went out of the house by way of the kitchen. Thirst had disappeared. There was a green waterproof raincoat, of the type sold in the hunting and fishing shops in Piccadilly, hanging on the back door, a pair of green Wellingtons, and a Harris tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, which Hogg put on. There were signs (a spare lead, a large wicker basket with blanket, teeth marks on furniture) of an absent dog. Outside, there was a soft country dampness. The earth squidged underfoot.

  “Shit,” Daisy said, then clapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry, Reverend.”

  I thought he must find it hard to believe that this was the same American feminist militant he had met in the pub that night (she was using mostly her English accent at the vicarage), but they seemed to understand each other perfectly. He stiffened and said, “Blast—it’s a problem, I know. Oliver must have taken him for a walk. Perhaps a stick or something?”

  “Oh, I’ll be okay. It’s just that it was right outside the door.”

  “Where is he? Or she,” I asked.

  All three of us looked around.

  “He, an Alsatian named Cranmer, is the reason Percy let me have the place. Old Percy wouldn’t move an inch unless he was sure Cranmer was properly taken care of. Funny thing is, I’m hopeless with dogs; don’t know why Percy trusts me with him. I’m sure he’d never do that when Percy’s here. I think Cranmer hates my guts, actually.”

  Daisy nodded vigorously. “I know what you mean. Alsatians scare the sh—the life out of me. There was one at our beach house in Martha’s Vineyard when I was a kid….�
� She told us all about it as we walked up the hill to the church. Her obvious determination to make it an enjoyable weekend for Hogg and me made me regret my provocative remarks. Why should I care about what went on between Hogg and Thirst? But what was it about Thirst that made me protective?

  The fresh country air seemed to be clearing my head. I decided on a benevolent posture and put an arm around Daisy’s waist.

  She pressed my hand and smiled gratefully. “Look, there they are!”

  We were standing on top of the hill near one side of the church. It was clear now that the grounds were encircled by a horseshoe-shaped wall, the open part of the horseshoe being the drive up to the church entrance, with a narrow separate drive to the vicarage that squatted below us. From the vicarage, a footpath led to a woodshed, from which another path led to a door in the wall. On the other side of the wall, a stretch of wasteland led to some mudflats that merged in dull liquefaction with the Thames Estuary in the distance. I had expected “old Percy” to have an old dog, but the Alsatian racing along the mudflats with Thirst had the boundless energy of one recently emerged from puppyhood. It ran ahead of him, then gamboled while he caught up, only to race off again.

  “Cranmer’s taking Oliver for a run,” Daisy said.

  “Yes,” Hogg said. “They seem to get on famously, those two.”

  The dog allowed Thirst to catch up with him. Thirst grabbed it by the tail, then dived away as it turned to bite. They tumbled together over the wasteland, Thirst’s forearm—protected by an overcoat—in the dog’s mouth. At one moment Thirst lay across the writhing dog. We could hear its growls on top of the hill.

  “Oh my God!” Daisy looked at Hogg.

  With furious energy the dog wriggled up from under Thirst and clamped its jaws onto the edge of his coat, pulling back. Thirst dived with his arms around its neck, and they were tumbling again, over and over.

  “I hope he doesn’t break Cranmer’s back doing that,” Daisy said. “Isn’t he afraid that Cranmer will lose his temper and bite his hand?”

  “Oh my God, yes,” I said. Daisy poked her tongue out at me.

  “When I first saw that, I thought of calling for help, but they always manage to come out of these fights best of friends. Ollie really does have a way with that animal.”

  Thirst was on his feet again, running. The dog scrambled up and raced after him, barking. Thirst found a stick and threw it in a long arc toward the mudflats. The dog started after it, then changed its mind and darted back to Thirst, who knelt down to pat it, exhausted.

  “You’re no cunt, Crans—are you?” His breathless voice carried up to us, small but clear. “No one’s going to shove their prick up your arse, are they?”

  The animal barked, wagging its tail.

  “Well,” Hogg said, “shall we press on?”

  We admired the empty church from inside and out. Hogg was proud of a window which had survived Henry VIII, and of the original Saxon tower, one of the oldest in England. After half an hour even Daisy ran out of intelligent questions. Her eyes wandered back to the wasteland outside the church wall.

  “Look, Oliver’s coming back.”

  Thirst trudged toward the door in the wall, the dog by his side.

  “Suppose you’re starving now? You want grub, don’t you?” Cranmer wagged his tail. “Wish I was a dog. In the old days they used to cut off an animal’s balls—d’you know that? Now they do it to men instead, cut them off with a hacksaw and put them in a mincer, Crans, that’s what the bastards do. No anesthetic, Crans. Now don’t go and drop one near the house again. No stale turds for us, Crans—okay?”

  Hogg was looking over the drive, his neck craning away from the mudflats.

  “Here come the Merril-Prices.”

  A navy-blue Range Rover was turning into the drive, its large tires crunching on the gravel. Hogg looked anxious.

  “Parole board?” I said.

  “She’s the chairperson; he’s a banker. Very influential, great supporters of the church, close friends of our bishop. A truly Christian couple. They’ve driven all the way down from North London to see how Oliver’s getting on.”

  Daisy avoided my eyes.

  “Let me introduce you,” Hogg said without conviction.

  Eleanor Merril-Price emerged from the Range Rover holding a large green apple in her hand, half chewed. She wore a long fur coat, slacks, scarf, and sweater. Elegant, tall with a long face, in her mid-forties. She watched her husband walk to the front offside wing of the car to inspect something, then shrugged and turned toward us.

  “Eleanor Merril-Price, James Knight, barrister at law.”

  Eleanor finished chewing, threw the remains of her apple into a bush. “Biodegradable,” she said, and smiled. It was a patrician’s smile, full of authority and money. She allowed me to hold out my hand just long enough for me to feel foolish before shaking it, then turned to Daisy. “How beautiful you look,” she said.

  Her husband was shorter, stocky, with hard eyes that turned doggy when he looked at his wife.

  “Isn’t she fantastic?” Daisy whispered to me.

  As we were about to enter the vicarage, Cranmer appeared, an inexhaustible bundle of energy.

  “Oh, what a gorgeous Alsatian! Tom, doesn’t he remind you of—”

  “Yes, darling.”

  She knelt down by Cranmer and held him behind his ears, while he wagged his tail furiously.

  “You’ll soil your fur, darling.”

  “Then we’ll clean it.”

  Cranmer woofed. Thirst appeared silently from behind the house and stood still. Eleanor got to her feet, searching his face.

  “Hello, Oliver.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Merril-Price.”

  “You can call me Eleanor—you’re a free man now.”

  “Almost.” His eyes shifted.

  “How are things?”

  “Good. The reverend has been very kind.”

  She gave a short laugh that made Thirst redden. “The reverend? You don’t make him call you that, do you, James?”

  “I don’t make him call me anything.”

  “Call him James, or Vic—it’s good for him.” She winked at me.

  “Eleanor thinks I take my vocation too seriously,” Hogg said. His blush frequency had increased. He had started wringing his hands behind his back.

  “Anyone who thinks he’s got a vocation is definitely taking it too seriously.” She turned to me. “Have you got a vocation?”

  “Sometimes, ma’am, I don’t even have a job.”

  A poor joke, but the first of the weekend. Everyone laughed. Daisy looked proud.

  “He did a good job for Oliver,” Hogg said.

  “Yes,” Oliver said. “Got me off a driving-and-taking-away charge first and won my appeal second.”

  “Well, I hope the driving and taking away wasn’t a Range Rover,” Eleanor said.

  Thirst hung his head, grinning. Hogg said, “Why don’t we all go inside,” and looked at Eleanor. She said, “Yes, let’s,” and there was a short embarrassed standoff while we all waited for someone else to go first. I noticed that Eleanor’s husband, Tom, had shut down most of his functions. He had examined my face for a second to see if I was the kind of barrister of whom he could approve, and decided I was not.

  When we were inside, I realized that the room’s natural light had begun to fade. Already the short country day was coming to an end.

  “It’s cold,” Eleanor said as we sat around the mahogany table.

  Thirst knelt by the fireplace, lit a corner of the crushed newspaper with a match. I watched the flames grow until they curled up the chimney.

  Eleanor sat at the end of the table, her long dramatic face illuminated in the half-light by the fire. “Well, let’s not have an evening full of undercurrents. First I want to know if Oliver’s forgiven me. If he hasn’t, I shall go straight home.”

  “Nothing to forgive,” Thirst said. “You know I don’t hold nothing against you; I told you that before.”


  “I was against giving Oliver early parole, you see.” She studied me for a moment. “Your victory in the Court of Appeal tipped the balance. I was outvoted.”

  I laughed. “So it’s my responsibility?”

  “No, it’s mine.”

  We all looked at Thirst, who stood up. “You don’t have to worry,” he told Eleanor. “I’m not going back. They can kill me first.”

  It would have been an impressive exit had he not stumbled over a mat at the door. Everybody laughed. He found the grace to bow comically before he left.

  18

  At dinner Thirst watched me carefully. He was following my actions: small plate for bread on the left; tip bowl outward when finishing soup; gravy on the roast potatoes, mint sauce for the lamb; only a small helping of apple crumble. His concentration was absolute. He kept all movements to a minimum, seemed to breathe shallowly, like a fugitive waiting for the dogs to pass by. Eleanor stole a glance at him from time to time, while she kept up a discussion with Hogg about the parole board.

  Eleanor had been sitting next to me, talking to Hogg. Now she turned, and I knew she was waiting for me to say something.

  “How long have you been chairperson of the parole board?”

  “Ah! the harmless questions: how long and do you like…I think there’s more to you than harmless questions, James Knight. Why don’t you ask me something more daring? I’m sure you’d like to.”

  “Why are you chairperson of the parole board?”

  “Better, much better. Shall we say that I became interested in criminals when my son became one?”

  “That doesn’t disqualify you?”

  “Not anymore. He’s dead. Drugs, alcohol, and fast cars don’t go so well together. It made me want to know why. I’ve read more books on criminology than you have.”

  “That wouldn’t be difficult; it’s not a compulsory subject for lawyers.”

  “But from your experience you know which social groups most criminals come from?”