Dying for Millions

by Judith Cutler

  Chapter Three

  RIVERS, ANDREW MICHAEL. Passed away in his sleep, 14 February. Reunited with his dear wife Freya. Private funeral. No flowers.

  I’d been leafing idly through the courtesy Evening Mail at the Chinese takeaway. In the kitchen, someone added garlic to a pan; two middle-aged men were condoling with each other on West Bromwich Albion’s recent bad performance.

  – Passed away in his sleep—

  ‘Two frie’ ri’e; chicken and bean sprou’; beef with green pepper?’

  No! No, not Andy. Someone else. Andrew Rivers was a common enough name. This Andrew Rivers couldn’t be my cousin Andy. I’d know the moment he died, without having to read about it in a evening paper. I’d know.

  ‘Don’t use their heads, see. All those lofted balls …’

  – dear wife Freya—

  I forced myself to look at the TV on the corner of the counter, but they’d turned the sound down. The decor, then: I tried to concentrate on the tasselled lanterns and what seemed to be a shrine next to the till.

  But my eyes wouldn’t focus, and when I closed the paper firmly my hands opened it again. Andrew Robert Rivers …

  ‘Szechuan chicken and plai’ ri’e?’

  It didn’t make sense.

  ‘Szechuan chicken and plai’ ri’e?’

  ‘Isn’t that yours, love?’ someone asked.

  Embarrassed, I got to my feet, left the paper on the formica table, and collected my food.

  I rarely drank spirits before a meal, but this time I left the containers on the hob to keep warm while I sank a large slug of Jameson’s. The sensible thing was to phone Andy, just to make sure everything was all right, but the logical part of my brain was outraged. Of course everything was all right!

  But it wasn’t. OK, Andy Rivers was not an unusual name – but Freya certainly was. In fact, I only knew one other, the teenage daughter of a friend. Andy had married his Freya when he was eighteen and into serious mistakes. She’d been a wispy girl, limp and pallid in the high-waisted, floating dresses already going out of vogue, and doing nothing in particular. I’d tried to love her, for Andy’s sake, but was relieved when after a couple of years she drifted off with a colleague of Andy’s further up the success ladder and into proportionately heavier drugs. She died of some bizarre drug cocktail before she reached her twenty-fifth birthday. Andy was by then deep into another relationship, but Freya’s death had shocked him into giving up even coffee. For a while, at least.

  The whiskey did little more than fuddle my thinking, so I emptied the rest of the glass down the sink and put the bottle away. To stop myself thinking about the notice, I watched the news while I ate. As soon as it was over, however, I was into worry-mode again. Clearly Andy was alive and well – the whole nation would have heard Michael Buerk breaking the news otherwise – but I was still uneasy. I reached for my ‘Do Tomorrow’ pad: Phone the Evening Mail and check the provenance of the death notice.

  And then I phoned Andy anyway. To ask after Ruth, naturally.

  ‘Bloody virus,’ she whispered. ‘All those years teaching – you’d have thought my throat would be made of leather.’

  Her voice stopped abruptly.

  ‘She’s supposed to be Trappist for the next week,’ said Andy, trying not to sound anxious but failing to sound amused. ‘So she won’t be coming over to Dublin for the gig there. That’s for definite.’

  ‘What about the Music Centre?’ Surely nothing would stop her missing that.

  ‘Yeah. A bit of a milestone, isn’t it?’

  ‘I can’t imagine it without her. Couldn’t she come along to the party and gesture? It’s about all most of us can do after that level of decibels.’

  ‘We’ll do what the medics say. Only thing.’ His voice was sombre.

  After that, I didn’t mention the ad. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof …

  The girl I phoned at the Evening Mail was adamant. There was a procedure for checking that notices placed by phone were valid, and it was always enforced. No one on the phone desk ever authorised a small ad without phoning back to make sure the caller was bona fide.

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Never. We simply won’t accept the item if someone’s calling from a phone box. We’d want an office number if they weren’t calling from home. We actually prefer the information to be faxed.’

  ‘So if I wanted to let you know I was engaged—’

  ‘Ooh, congratulations! Not many people bother these days—’

  ‘Which I’m not, you’d make sure my putative fiancé endorsed it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I thanked her humbly, aware that I was wasting her time.

  And mine; I looked at my watch. I’d better try to match the vacancy at the airport with the students wanting work experience. But before that, there was a session on Joyce – A Painful Case. And after that, at the beginning of my lunch-break, the meeting with Richard Jeffries, my boss, about those allegations of racism.

  Richard was about eight weeks away from premature retirement. The economy drive which had led to the staff teaching all those extra hours had also been aimed at middle-aged and senior staff, encouraging them with the prospect of redundancy payments or pension enhancement to go well before they reached sixty. Richard had embraced the offer with fervour, even if the financial climate was too inequitable to allow him to fulfil his dream of setting up a small bookshop in Hay-on-Wye. Nonetheless, on the calendar hung by his desk – tasteful portraits of steam locomotives – he’d crossed out every day passed since Christmas, like a prisoner waiting for parole. If you looked closely you could see that a little figure had been pencilled in over each date: he was now on retirement minus fifty-six or thereabouts.

  ‘You really think there’s something in this lot?’ he said wearily, flicking through the student’s report on her apparently lecherous temporary employer.

  ‘Enough to make me want to talk to Naheeda.’

  ‘You haven’t yet?’ Behind his glasses, hope that she’d deny everything glimmered briefly.

  ‘She’s off sick at the moment.’

  ‘Genuine?’ He was getting interested. ‘Or doesn’t she want you to ask her questions?’

  ‘I suppose it’s genuine.’ I hadn’t given it much thought. No doubt that was why people like Richard got to be boss.

  ‘Might be worth popping round to find out.’ Relief: he could postpone making a decision. ‘When you’ve got time, that is.’ He was begging me to tell him I was too busy. Couldn’t I leave it, he was asking, until some young Turk had taken his job? Then I could go ahead and discover all sorts of nastiness, take all sorts of high-profile action. But couldn’t it wait eight weeks?

  I relented. ‘I’m pretty busy at the moment. Up to my eyes with this work experience business.’

  ‘Don’t let it do to you what it did to Tim.’

  Tim was my predecessor. He’d been pressed to continue just a little longer, though he’d dearly have loved to retire to his hand-painted narrowboat – and had been rushed to hospital just after Christmas with a burst duodenal ulcer.

  ‘Any news?’

  ‘He’s leaving, of course. Premature retirement on the grounds of ill health. Do you know, I haven’t even been to see him,’ he said, ashamed.

  ‘You’re pretty busy yourself.’ Not that any of us lower orders liked to think management ever did anything.

  ‘Tell you something,’ he said, lowering his voice and looking around him as if he feared the room might be bugged, ‘I’m counting the days till I go.’

  And he couldn’t understand when I started to laugh.

  I was still grinning to myself when I turned the corner of the corridor leading to my fifteenth floor staff room and ran slap into Gurjit, a tall, elegant Sikh student returning consistently high grades for all her A-level subjects. She’d just passed her driving test and been rewarded by a Clio like mine – but not a second-hand one. Her parents had made a point of coming to our otherwise poorly-attended par
ents’ evenings, and had made it clear that they would support Gurjit in anything that would improve her prospects of university and a subsequent job. What about the airport work experience opportunity for Gurjit? Her car would enable her to travel backwards and forwards safely in the dark, and I was sure her earnestness would score highly with Mark Winfield.

  ‘I’d have to discuss it with my parents,’ she said slowly. ‘But in principle it seems an excellent idea.’

  I beamed: not many students used phrases like ‘in principle’ these days.

  ‘Did you have any dates in mind, Sophie? I wouldn’t want it to clash with my assignments.’

  There was so much invested in her, wasn’t there?

  ‘Working only one day or evening a week should mean your assignments don’t suffer.’ I said, as enthusiastically as if the whole idea had been mine, not Mark’s. ‘In any case, we’re very flexible here – most people would give you an extension if you needed it. And,’ I added, mentally clinching it, ‘you may get some material you can use for your Computer Studies project – you know you have to do one in your second year.’

  She nodded. ‘I will have to discuss it with my parents and confirm it—’

  ‘By Monday, please. If you don’t want the placement, I must offer it to someone else straight away.’

  She nodded. ‘I understand. Excuse me, Sophie – I have to see Mr Jagger. He’s promised to help me with my criminal law.’

  Everyone else called him Mick, of course, even the principal. If only she could relax …

  I was just unwrapping a canteen sandwich which insisted it was cheese and salad when Karen drifted into the staff room. This is not a common room, where staff can let their hair down, but a work room and office combined, occupied by a dozen staff constantly summoned by three phones and invaded by a steady trickle of students, none of whom ever feel the need to knock.

  ‘Is it all right? About the photograph?’

  ‘Photograph? Oh, you mean you and Andy.’ A bit of cucumber – in fact, as I subsequently discovered, the only bit of cucumber – came adrift and slithered down my blouse.

  ‘The concert’s the day after tomorrow?’

  So it was. Dublin this evening for a TV interview, the Dublin gig tomorrow evening and a midnight flight into Birmingham: then the Music Centre gig on Saturday evening.

  ‘I’ll talk to him on Saturday, Karen.’

  ‘But the concert’s on Saturday? And it’s sold out?’

  From the day booking opened. ‘So neither you nor your mum can get in?’

  ‘Mum can,’ she said. ‘And she won’t give me her ticket?’ She looked at me, demanding sympathy.

  I resisted a strong impulse to say, ‘I should hope not!’ and bent my brain to more positive solutions. Andy would give her a pass, without question, and probably one for the party afterwards – plus one for her mother. But I don’t like to see my students getting something for nothing when with only a little effort they could get a lot more.

  ‘Are you any good at washing-up?’ I asked.

  ‘Washing up?’

  ‘Mmm. They always want teams of washers-up back stage. It’s not an exciting job, but everyone knows it isn’t so a lot of people come and talk to you. Not just the roadies and the caterers, but wives and children of the band.’

  A spasm of disgust crossed her face. ‘Wives? Children?’

  What else did she expect?

  ‘And the backing singers. And Andy always makes a point of going round to say thank you. You and your mum might get a pass to go to the party afterwards.’

  ‘Mum?’ More disgust.

  ‘You’d be able to introduce her to Andy,’ I said diplomatically; what I actually had in mind was that Mum would be able to curb any possible teenage excesses. ‘I hope she won’t faint!’ Karen did not smile. ‘Shall I fix it for you? There’ll probably be free food to take home, too. I got roped in for a Phil Collins gig and I fed my friends for a week on stuff that would otherwise have been thrown away.’

  ‘Would I – really – get to talk to him? Really?’ Her voice was suddenly intense; I could have sworn she went pale.

  ‘If I can get you in, I’m sure you’ll get to talk to him. And I’ll take a photo of you together. If. Shall I try?’ I reached for the phone. ‘It’ll be a long day, but apart from anything else you’ll be able to put it on your CV.’

  I got through to Ollie, a mate of Tobe’s: one of the Brum roadies, as opposed to those that toured with Andy’s show. Ollie was apparently eating crisps in a very loud pub, but recognised my voice.

  ‘Hi, our Soph! Nice to hear you. How’s old Andy? What’s this about him and this bird?’

  ‘What bird?’

  ‘The professor old enough to be his mum?’

  ‘She was a teacher and she’s a couple of years older than me!’

  ‘Funny business, all the same.’

  I didn’t want to comment, and rushed straight in with the question of Karen.

  ‘No probs. Me missus’ll show her the ropes. Tell her to wear, you know, sensible stuff. Phiz is on and we don’t want to give him too many ideas, do we? The missus could meet her outside nice and early. OK?’

  ‘How early? Half-eight?’ Although the question was for Ollie, I looked at Karen.

  Karen nodded. If it meant meeting Andy she’d be there at dawn, her eyes implied.

  Eleven o’clock. I sat drearily over a pile of essays which didn’t seem to get any smaller.

  The trouble was, I always put to the bottom of the pile those by people who hadn’t any ideas, or whose handwriting was illegible, and inevitably I lived to regret it. I decided to give up, pour a finger of Jameson’s, and retire with Middle-march to the bath. I’d got no further than packing away the marking, however, when the phone rang.

  ‘Sophie?’

  Andy!

  ‘How’s Dublin?’

  ‘Wet and windy. Don’t know why I came over early – the RTE interview was crap. I could have stayed with Ruth till tomorrow.’

  ‘And you can’t even phone her to have a moan in case she starts talking?’ That at least explained his phone call to me: he wanted someone to natter to.

  ‘Right. I just told her I was OK and hung up. Lead us not into temptation.’

  ‘It’s that bad?’

  ‘No one knows what it is. They’ve done swabs and everything. Nothing bacterial. I even wondered about having a shrink see her, in case it’s psychosomatic, but that means her having to break the vow of silence.’

  ‘Any other symptoms?’ Not that I was a doctor – I was just interested. And it struck me as odd that he should even consider a psychiatrist at this stage.

  ‘A general malaise. She gets tired very quickly. No fever, nothing you can put your finger on.’ His voice was tight with anxiety. At last he changed gear: ‘And how are you? You sounded a bit stressed last night.’

  ‘I’m fine!’ I tried to keep my voice light. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m fine too.’

  So neither of us was.

  ‘Talk?’ I said.

  ‘When I see you.’

  Very far from fine. We’d just have to wait – both of us.

  Since I taught on Fridays from nine till four, with a meeting for lunch, there was little chance for me to repine. I managed to fit in a zap round Safeway’s before choir practice in the evening, and then, having had the forethought to leave the car at home, I drank rather more wine than was sensible. Back home, I collapsed into what I hoped would be a deep and dreamless sleep. I could trust Andy not to wake me when he let himself in.

  Chapter Four

  I woke so suddenly that I didn’t know where I was. What the hell—? Then came another scream, from my spare room. Andy!

  I was in his room, switching on the light, before I realised I was on my feet.

  ‘It’s all right, love. It’s only one of your dreams. Come on – wake up!’ I sat on the bed, shaking him gently, as I’d done so often when we were children.

  At la
st he woke. He grabbed me convulsively. ‘Ruth?’

  ‘No, love, it’s me. Sophie. You’ve been having one of your nightmares. Wake up, now.’

  He pulled himself into my arms; I pressed his head to my chest, as if we were six again. ‘What was all that about?’ But I knew, didn’t I? ‘How about a cup of tea?’

  He was swinging himself out of bed before we realised he’d been sleeping in the nude.

  ‘Hang on! I’ll get you my dressing-gown.’

  It was a unisex towelling affair, a little long for me, and he always used it when he came so he could travel light – an overnight case held all he needed. He was, however, the only visitor I had who always brought his own rubber gloves so he could wash up.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said, wrapping my dressing-gown round him.

  ‘Tea? Or cocoa, or whiskey?’ I asked. ‘Here or downstairs?’

  He shuddered. ‘Cocoa. Downstairs. Christ!’

  Fortunately I’d enough milk for cocoa, and I doubled his usual intake of sugar. And, on second thoughts, mine. His hands were still shaking when he wrapped them round the mug. It was his favourite, with a transfer of a Ferrari on the front; it reminded him of the shiny red one he’d written off fifteen years ago.

  ‘You’d better tell me all about it,’ I said, sitting next to him at the kitchen table. ‘I know something’s up.’

  ‘You always did.’ He didn’t move, though, still clutching the cocoa mug with both hands; the dressing-gown sleeves, far too short, rode up his forearms. ‘You haven’t got any of your home-made jam, have you?’ He got up to rummage in the usual cupboard, but had to make a grab for decency. ‘Tell you what, I’ll go and put some knickers on and get you your duvet. That nightie looks horribly like winceyette but you’ll still need something.’

  ‘I dress for warmth and chastity these days,’ I said, lightly.

  The clocks on the cooker, the microwave and the ghetto-blaster told me it was four-twenty-three. Good job it was Saturday – I had a terrible feeling I wasn’t going to get much sleep this particular night. I switched on the central heating: we might as well be miserable in comfort. Then I made thick toast, found the jam. I reached out honey too, just in case.