Watson’s Apology

by Beryl Bainbridge

  ‘Then you’ll remember he believed that if a man was to develop that gift of reason which separates him from the animals, he should learn to go without everything save the necessities of life.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fraser. He was shocked by Watson’s vigour, by his almost indecent will to survive. The man was approaching his eightieth year and was practically a skeleton. Recently he had suffered an attack of nettle-rash which had put him in hospital; the backs of his hands were rubbed raw. Even now he was scratching.

  ‘Of course, at the time of writing,’ said Watson, ‘Seneca was a very wealthy man.’ He lectured Fraser for ten minutes on Stoicism, and concluded by saying that he didn’t think Seneca had slept with the Emperor’s mother. It was a lie put about by Publius Suilius Rufus.

  From the end of the corridor came the clanging of a hand-bell. The warders rushed forward to unlock the cages.

  ‘I can’t promise anything,’ said Fraser. ‘But I will try.’

  Above the rattling of the keys he heard Watson shout, ‘I must have them. Otherwise I shall go mad.’

  Fraser wrote to the Directors of Convict Prisons. He said he didn’t see what harm it would do to give an elderly man reading matter which could only uplift and sustain him in what was an otherwise miserable existence. It wasn’t as if John Watson was asking for extra rations of food or a supply of tobacco. He himself would provide the cost of books and writing materials.

  Six months passed. He wrote again, and after a considerable delay received an answer to the effect that permission had been withheld. It was a question of censorship. Anything written down on paper had to be rigorously studied by the prison staff, in case it contained any coded references to escape or other breaches of security. It should be realised that it would require special abilities, notably a knowledge of classical languages, to keep pace with any literary work undertaken by prisoner Y 1395.

  The notion that Watson was thought capable of plotting an escape from Parkhurst struck Fraser as so absurd that he nearly informed the newspapers. His wife stopped him. She said he had done enough – the old man would surely die soon.

  He wrote to Watson, telling him as gently as possible that it might be some time before the books arrived. He must be patient.

  Watson never replied.

  Shortly after dawn Watson climbed on to a three-legged stool and looking out of the window saw a rabbit crouched in the yard, sniffing at a tuft of grass that sprouted between the flag-stones.

  Just then the sun topped the wall and poured directly into the courtyard. A moment before, the rabbit had been a grey lump on a grey slab – now, fur tipped with light, it shimmered like a jewel. The transformation seemed to him miraculous, and he craned forward. The stool jerked from under him and fell over, and he was left hanging from the bars, his forehead pressed to the wall. He grimaced, afraid to let go, though he was only a foot or so above the floor. Then the strength went out of his arms and he dropped safely enough.

  At his bench in the tailor’s shop he couldn’t help mentioning the rabbit to the convict next to him. Generally he kept to himself and had hardly addressed a dozen words to him in as many years. He used the word ‘beautiful’. The man looked at him dully and licked his lips. ‘I’d sell my grandmother for a nice bit of rabbit,’ he said.

  Later that morning Watson felt ill. He slumped forward and his piece of chalk rolled across the floor. He was allowed back to his cell. When they brought him his dinner at midday he couldn’t eat it. It wasn’t like him to leave his food and the warder said he would fetch the doctor.

  He dozed a little, lying in his hammock. Then the chair appeared. He opened his eyes immediately – he had done with living in his head – but he was tired and his eyes closed again. The chair came back, and now there was a woman sitting in it. A man stood beside her, looking down at his hands with an expression of disgust.

  The woman’s chin was sunk on to her breast so that her face was hidden. The top of her head was spangled with fiery specks of light, and for a moment he thought of the rabbit. Then he was in the room with her and he saw the blood bubbling from her head.

  The man said, ‘Take her into the next room. I’m afraid of someone coming back and seeing her.’ He protested that it was none of his business, but the man insisted.

  He bent over the back of the chair, his arm round the woman’s chest to stop her from toppling forwards. There was so much blood gone from her that he couldn’t think why she was so heavy. He had to drag the chair to the door, tilting it like a wheel-barrow; her head fell backwards and her slippers dangled above the carpet. When he got her out on to the landing a dog bounded upstairs, barking and leaping. He kicked out and caught it on the shoulder with his boot, and it squealed and skittered away down the stairs. He left the woman on the chair in the next room and went halfway downstairs to look for the dog – it was a cruel thing to have kicked it. He held out his hands in front of him and saw that the cuffs of his shirt were stuck to his wrists. And yet his hands were quite steady. He called up to the man, though he knew in his bones there wouldn’t be any answer – while he had been dragging the chair into the next room the man had slipped from the house.

  He realised that he was in a dreadful situation. If the body was discovered he would be suspected of a crime. Someone was coming back, and he had to be prepared. He must behave as though nothing had happened.

  He returned to that room, hoping it was a dream, but she was still there on the chair, one bloody fist clenched on her knee. Squatting, he looked up into her face and was astonished at her disgruntled expression. She wore her brains on the top of her head like a squashed flower, like a bunch of crimson ribbon.

  He noticed that the furniture was dusty and the bed-sheets discoloured. There was a papier-mâché box on the bedside table with nothing inside but cheap jewelry – a bracelet, a beetle brooch, an enamelled pin with the Crystal Palace stamped on it. On the mantel-shelf – the fire was out – was a collection of combs, a curious shell, and a miniature of an old man wearing a black wig and a hunting coat.

  Suddenly he sensed danger. He picked up the shell and took it into another room. It was a precautionary measure. He was worried in case some sound, some last lascivious cry, had lodged within its crusted ear. He would get rid of it when he had the opportunity.

  And now he had to work quickly. He found a sponge and rubbed at the carpet where the chair had stood. Then he wiped the paint work. His boots were covered in some sticky substance and he found another pair under a bed and changed into them. He went downstairs to the basement and washed his hands under the tap. He took off his coat and was about to remove his shirt when he was seized with a fit of shivering. There were some scissors on a nail beside the window, and, pulling down his sleeves, he cut off first one cuff and then, with difficulty, the other. The material was as stiff as a board. He put the pieces in his pocket, and throwing the sponge under the sink went upstairs again.

  On the floor in the library, half hidden under the folds of the window curtains, he discovered an old pistol. He supposed the man had shot the woman with it. He hid it in a chest of drawers, under the man’s shirts.

  Somebody knocked at the front door. He called out, ‘Wait, wait,’ and ran up and down the passage, not knowing what to do. The knocking was repeated. He was sure they would be able to tell by his face that there was something terribly wrong in the house, and he extinguished the light in the hall before opening the door. He let in a friend; he had nothing to fear from her.

  When the girl had gone to bed he waited several hours before going in to attend to the woman. She seemed to have shrunk; all her bright blood had turned black. He tipped her out of the chair and she fell sideways. He propped her upright in a corner and threw an old blanket over her and carried the chair back into the library. He cursed the man who had run away.

  Afterwards – it was daylight – he went out into the streets and looked for a chemist’s shop. He was not sure any more that he wanted to live. He was in a state of such
frightful anxiety that he didn’t know how much longer he could endure it.

  He remembered that the man had a great many books, and he called on someone and asked if there was any space in the attic, but apparently there were women up there. Whatever the man had done, his books had to be looked after, so he went into a trunk-maker’s shop and ordered a packing-case.

  When he got back to the house he told the girl that he might be unwell at a later date. He was thinking of her; it was unacceptable that someone so young and so kind should find him dead without warning. She said, ‘I have been upstairs and tidied your boots away.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he replied.

  ‘I have put them in the wardrobe.’

  ‘The proper place,’ he said.

  ‘I saw her coat, her bonnet and her outdoor shoes,’ she said. Then she gave a loud cry and immediately clapped her hand over her mouth.

  ‘You’re a good girl,’ he said. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

  He went up to the bedroom and removed the stopper from the medicine bottle, intending to do away with himself there and then – but he couldn’t bring the bottle to his lips. He had no idea how long it would take for the poison to act, and he shrank from the thought of a lingering death.

  He walked to the railway station and stood on the platform waiting for a train to come. It was night time and there was no one about: he could hear the rumble of traffic and, far off, the frantic barking of a dog. He believed that when the train came he would throw himself under its wheels, but as the hours passed and still the train did not come, he began to feel relief. It struck him as absurd that he should die in place of someone else. Besides, what harm would it do to wait one more day? He went to the edge of the platform and taking the rags from his pocket threw them on to the rails. Then he returned to the house.

  As soon as he let himself into the hall he heard them arguing upstairs. Her voice was louder than his. He stood on the landing, listening to them.

  ‘My mother made my father happy,’ the woman said. ‘I remember a particular smile.’

  ‘You won’t remember mine,’ the man said, ‘particular or otherwise. You’ve not caused me to smile in twenty years.’

  He was glad that they had come back, and entered the room with the intention of averting a tragedy. Neither of them took any notice of him. The woman was holding a pistol on her lap. She said, ‘Unlike you, I was dismissed years ago. Now you know how it feels.’

  ‘You’re drunk,’ the man said.

  ‘You’ve never given me anything,’ she said. ‘Not love, not friendship, not hope. Never, never, never.’

  ‘You’re drunk,’ the man repeated.

  She lurched to her feet then and stabbed at his chest with the pistol; the barrel was so rusty and full of dirt that it left a grey smear on his coat. They stood there, swaying. The man wrenched the gun from her and raising his arm struck her on the head with it. She fell to the floor. Throwing down the pistol, the man went out of the room.

  ‘Help me,’ the woman said. She struggled to her knees and reaching out clutched the gun to her breast. The blood ran in stripes down her face.

  He took her in his arms and held her upright. He wept for her. At that moment the love he felt was so complete that he thought his heart must break. But she pushed him away from her. ‘It’s too late,’ she said. ‘You’ve never given me anything.’

  ‘You’re drunk,’ he said. ‘And your breath stinks.’

  She ran at him, jabbing at his chest with the pistol. He raised his arm to fend her off. She was gobbling like a turkey, working her jaws up and down, gathering saliva to hawk at him. Revolted, he punched her on the shoulder, and a gob of spittle dripped from her mouth on to his manuscript. She was winded, and he was ashamed of himself. He thought the contest was over, but she lunged at him again, eyes dilated, that wretched pistol still stabbing at him, catching him in the ribs, the stomach. I can sink no lower, he thought, listening to the dog raking its paws against the panel of the door.

  They were standing between the window and his desk. In front of the window was set an armchair covered in moroccan leather: one of its castors was missing and it stood lopsided, jammed against the skirting board for support. Just then the coals in the grate settled and there was a sudden leap of light across the blinds.

  ‘You had nothing to give,’ she said. ‘You’re a cold fish.’

  A curious thing – she had a brown mole on her cheek, with a hair sprouting from it. It was the shortest hair imaginable, and yet, when the pistol swung up and caught him on the ear, it seemed to him, looking at her face through tears of agony, that it had grown immeasurably. He took the gun from her and hit her repeatedly on the head. She clung to him, slithering down his chest, his stomach. A strand of her hair caught on his waistcoat buttons. She was moaning. He was horrified at the sound, and he hit her again and again to finish her off. Her hand clutched at his leg and he jerked her away with his knee and continued to strike at her, and still she held on to him. He pushed her down into the chair and struck her across the knuckles. At last she let him go.

  It was done now and he was glad. He had not harmed her, merely rid her of the bad things that had kept them apart.

  There was nothing in his head but light. He wondered if he was in the presence of God. He had never known anything so dazzling, so infinitely bright.

  July 5th, 1884

  Medical certificate sent from Parkhurst Prison to Directors of Convict Prisons: Re Prisoner Y 1395. Further imprisonment will probably not affect the life of the above, who is not likely to survive the next few days. Medical certificate enclosed.

  July 6th, 1884

  The Home Office, London, to Directors of Convict Prisons: Is this the clergyman and schoolmaster who killed his wife in Stockwell in 1871 and was very nearly hanged for it?

  July 7th, 1884

  Directors of Convict Prisons to the Home Office, London: Yes. Prisoner Y 1395. John Watson. He is in the prison hospital.

  July 8th, 1884

  The Home Office, London, to Directors of Convict Prisons: As his disease is said to be erysipelas from a cut on the ear it might be as well to ask the Governor of prison how it occurred, whether by accident or self-inflicted.

  July 9th, 1884

  Parkhurst Prison to Directors of Convict Prisons: He is dead now – there is no reason to suppose it was self-inflicted – he cut his ear when falling accidentally out of his hammock – on his tin pot.

  A Biography of Dame Beryl Bainbridge

  Dame Beryl Bainbridge is regarded as one of the greatest and most prolific British novelists of her generation. Consistently praised by critics, she was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize five times, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the W. H. Smith Literary Award, and twice won the Whitbread Award for Novel of the Year.

  Bainbridge was born in Liverpool in 1932 to Richard Bainbridge and Winifred, née Baines. Her father acquired a respectable income as a salesman but went bankrupt as a result of the 1929 stock market crash. Later in life, she reflected on her turbulent childhood through her writing as a cathartic release. She often said she wrote to make sense of her own childhood.

  Despite financial pressures, the Bainbridges sent their children to fee-paying schools. Beryl attended the Merchant Taylors’ girls’ school, and had lessons in German, elocution, music, and tap-dancing. At the age of fourteen, she was expelled, cited as a “corrupting moral influence” after her mother found a dirty limerick among her school things. She then attended the Cone-Ripman School at Tring, Hertfordshire, but left at age sixteen, never earning any formal educational degrees.

  She went on to work as an assistant stage manager at the Playhouse Theatre in Liverpool, which would become the basis for one of her Booker-nominated novels, An Awfully Big Adventure, a disturbing story about a teenage girl working on a production of Peter Pan. She successfully worked as an actress both before and after her time at the playhouse. As a child, she acted in BBC Radio’s Children’s Hour, and before the
birth of her first child, she appeared on the soap opera Coronation Street on Granada Television.

  While at the playhouse, Bainbridge met Austin Davies, an artist and set painter. They married in 1954 and had two children together, Aaron and Jojo. They divorced in 1959, and she then moved to London. There, she began a relationship with the writer Alan Sharp, with whom she had a daughter, Rudi. Sharp left Bainbridge at the time of Rudi’s birth.

  In 1957, she submitted her novel, Harriet Said, then titled The Summer of the Tsar, to several publishers. They all rejected the manuscript, citing its controversial content—the story of two cruel and murderous teenage girls. She then published two other novels, A Weekend with Claude and Another Part of the Wood. Her real success, however, came when she befriended Anna Haycraft, an editor, writer, and the wife of Colin Haycraft, owner of the Gerald Duckworth publishing house. This friendship marked a major turning point in her writing career. Anna loved Harriet Said, and Gerald Duckworth published it in 1972 to critical acclaim, establishing Bainbridge as a fresh voice on the British literary scene.

  After the success of Harriet Said, the Haycrafts put Bainbridge on retainer and found her a clerical job within the company. During her time working for the Haycrafts, Bainbridge wrote several novels, all positively received by critics, some of which were adapted into films—An Awfully Big Adventure, Sweet William, and The Dressmaker.

  Bainbridge’s earlier novels were often influenced by her past. The characters from The Dressmaker were based on her aunts, and A Quiet Life drew from her relationship as teenager with a German prisoner of war. Her 1974 novel, The Bottle Factory Outing, was inspired by her real experience working part-time in a bottle-labeling factory.

  In 1978, Bainbridge felt she had exhausted her own life as a source of material and turned to history for inspiration, beginning a new era in her career. She discovered a diary entry of Adolf Hitler’s sister-in-law and based her first historical novel, Young Adolf, on Hitler’s supposed vacation to Great Britain. She wrote other books in this genre—Watson’s Apology, Every Man for Himself, The Birthday Boys, Master Georgie, and According to Queeney. At the time of her death, she was writing The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress, about a young woman visiting the United States during Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, which was published posthumously.