The Museum of Doubt

by James Meek

  It’s pointless for you to be checking the deaths, I said. He’s out there. He’s alive.

  Helmet levelled his heavy blackframed glasses at me over the top of the paper. If it says in here he’s died, he’s died. There’s nothing he can do about it.

  Does it say he’s died?

  Yes.

  There were two things I admired Helmet for: the hat and the dog. It wasn’t much. Everything else about him was repulsive. I looked in the paper. Sure enough, there was the old boy’s name, George Brynie. Peacefully, on 10 October, and a poem. We think of you most every day/ But now that you are gone/There’s really not much else to say/ We must be moving on.

  I got up and went to the back window. The door of the shed opened and the fisherman came out, coughing in waves of smoke. He caught my eye and raised his hand. I waved back. I looked at my watch. It was the tenth of the month.

  If you can pay for a death notice, I said, how about paying me back for the food?

  Helmet lifted his finger and held it still in the air for a second, his way of smiling, went over to a box on top of one of the shelves of records, took out a fifty pound note and gave it to me. I’d never seen one before, but that wasn’t going to stop me pocketing it.

  I wonder how this death notice is going to be enacted, I said.

  There’s a good sharp kitchen knife, said Helmet, taking off his glasses.

  I looked into Helmet’s eyes. We were standing in the narrow space on opposite sides of the bed. He’d always been calm, certain and determined, but nothing had ever seemed to come of it. It’d never been possible to believe that the only goal towards which his self-conviction was taking him was finding more space for his records, even in the days when he’d still lived with his parents and he’d only had a few hundred. I tried to remember all the trivial things we’d talked about. They were trivial. And if I’d known they were trivial even then it meant I’d always known there was something not trivial which was not being spoken of. If the trivial things had been about money and entertainment, the thing not spoken of was a man’s life. Helmet was sober and calculating now in his record-lined room which was more to him than the world he didn’t enter any more and so it was the man’s life, perhaps, that was trivial now. I feared for the fisherman. But I was wondering about the money too.

  I opened my mouth to speak about the law and understood for Helmet it would be necessary to go deeper.

  He hasn’t done you any harm, I said. You can’t do it.

  I won’t get found out.

  That’s not what I mean. I mean it’s wrong.

  Why? Is this something to do with your dream?

  It’s to do with thousands of years of human civilization.

  I haven’t been around for thousands of years. I’m only 29. He’s lived long enough. He takes up too much space. He stinks of smoke and fish.

  You’re exaggerating. He doesn’t get in your way. Killing him is too extreme.

  You’re only saying that because you think I’ll get found out.

  No! I’m not! I was trying to convince myself, and trying not to think about Helmet with a kitchen knife in his hand, coming up behind old Brynie in the kitchen while he was frying his supper that evening. It’s wrong, I said, it’s immoral, murder is wrong.

  Why?

  I looked out of the window at the sea. The edges of the waves slid up sharp and solid as the jags of a broken bottle. I tried to think of reasons for things we don’t usually seek reasons for because if we did we’d realise how badly we needed them at the same time as we realised how hard they were to find, as if you’d become addicted to a drug in your sleep and woken up to find it hadn’t been invented, as if you suspected a better world had been made and unmade behind your back before you’d had a chance to savour it.

  He’s a human being like you, I said. What if everyone killed anyone who got in their way?

  They won’t, said Helmet. Everyone’s afraid of getting caught. And the rest are afraid of having to clear up the mess.

  Jesus, I said.

  Is that your dream again? Is it religion, is that it?

  No! You know I don’t believe in that. Listen, Helmet, you’re a human being, it’s what you are, you can’t help it, and it’s in your nature to be angry, but it’s also in your nature to be merciful and feel pity.

  He doesn’t deserve any mercy.

  But he hasn’t done anything wrong!

  He has, he’s stopped me taking his room for my records.

  The whole house belongs to him!

  Exactly, said Helmet. That’s why I can’t go on like this.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed. I felt as if the blood bank’d just tapped me for all I had.

  When are you thinking of doing this? I said.

  After tea, said Helmet.

  All the blood came flooding back, with interest on the loan, and if the knife’d been there on the bed I would have filleted the boy on the spot. You’re fucking ill, you are, I said.

  Easy, said Helmet.

  You don’t see the seals killing each other.

  I’m not a seal. They don’t collect records. I could see his brain working in the flexing of the flesh of his forehead.

  And if they did, they’d have more room for them out there.

  The phone rang. It was out in the hall. The fisherman answered it. He knocked and put his head round the door. Phone, he said flatly and disappeared. He was a small man, bony. Getting the point of the knife through his dungarees and sweater and through between the bones would be hard. The worst moment would be halfway when Brynie was still alive but the blade was half in and it was too late to change your mind and say: God, sorry George, didn’t mean it. Especially if there’d been no row beforehand.

  Forget it, Helmet, I said. They’ll catch you anyway.

  Oh! he said, pointing at me as he went out. Like I said. And they won’t.

  I picked up the Courier again and leafed through. I shivered. Someone had draped my chest in a soaked bedsheet. The text blurred on the white. Scientists shocked by latest seal numbers, said a headline on a single column story. The rest of it was punched through by canine teeth and smeared with dog saliva. The worst thing was his trust in me. No, the worst thing was that his trust might be justified. That I’d wait until he did it, because surely he wouldn’t, and afterwards it’d be done, and Brynie would be dead, and there’d be no bringing him back, so what would the point be in destroying Helmet, let his conscience be his executioner? Not that he had one. And where did you go to denounce your friend for planning to murder a stranger? The victim? The police? His mother?

  Helmet came back. I could tell there was someone still on the line from the way he stood in the doorway. It’s the man, he said. D’you want to put something on the 1979?

  Tell him to call back. Let’s talk more about your plans for tonight.

  I’m putting a tenner on Callaghan.

  I got up and went out into the hall where the receiver hung bobbing on the end of its wire, stotting gently against the woodchip. Helmet watched without saying anything while I picked it up.

  Could you call back, I said.

  Minimum stake’s a fiver, said a voice like stones grinding together. Callaghan 5–1, Thatcher 3–2, Steel 100–1, Wilson 100–1. Ten minutes to the off so make up your mind, eh? Your pal took me for fifty quid last week.

  Fifty, eh?

  Backed Reagan in the 1980 at Washington on 2–1. The old guy was ahead by three furlongs. So’re you in or what? The voice went into a coughing fit. It sounded like someone was stirring his guts with a poker.

  I asked Helmet what the year was. He said 1997. I asked him what we were betting on.

  1979 general election results, he said.

  It was Thatcher, I said. Thatcher won it. You remember. You were already born then. Was he born? You couldn’t imagine him with an umbilical cord. With some people you could. With some people you didn’t have to imagine, they still had it, they were sitting in the pub and you looked down an
d you noticed this long, manky, trodden-in bit of fleshy string leading to the door, and you’d see it twitch a couple of times, and your drinking companion’d drain his pint and say must be getting back, they’ll be starting to worry. And off he’d go, coiling it in his hands as he went.

  How d’you know she won it? said Helmet.

  I remember, I said. It happened eighteen years ago. It happened. It occurred. Callaghan lost. He did. He wasn’t prime minister any more. You can’t go back. It’s already been. You know what your trouble is? You don’t go out enough. You sit in here with your records and you think it’s acceptable to murder people and time loses its meaning for you, you can’t tell the difference any more between good and bad and right and wrong and past and future. Don’t think you’ll convince me there’s money to be made betting on Callaghan to win the 1979 general election because these things happen only once, they’ve been already. D’you think it’s going to get to me because I sit here with you inside your four walls, inside your record collection, for an hour or two? It’s not, because I go outside and I see that what’s broken stays broken, and what’s dead stays dead, and what gets old doesn’t turn young, and that people live with that, they get so used to it they don’t even think about it, and they get by without killing each other and without trying to cheat the past. It can’t be done. And you will get caught if you kill the fisherman. Come out for a drink tonight.

  Helmet covered his upper lip with his lower one and looked down at the floor. He went over to the phone and told the guy to call back when he was ready to start. He stepped back on to the bed, scratching his stomach, and lay down. I sat down on the edge, facing away from him. Neither of us said anything for a while. From where I sat I could see a long red freighter gliding at speed upriver, powering flatly through the waves behind the delving pilot boat.

  So who d’you reckon’s going to win? said Helmet.

  Thatcher, I said. She wins the 1979 general election every time.

  Why don’t you put money on it if you’re so sure?

  Who’s the bookie?

  Don’t know. Just started ringing up. He sends a young lad round to collect the stake or give you your winnings. I’m ahead so far. He got skinned on the 1966 World Cup.

  You had your money on England, eh?

  There was a tip. What about the 1979?

  The phone rang.

  Go on then, I said.

  How much?

  Fifty.

  Fifty.

  We went together to the phone. Helmet placed the bet and held the receiver between our heads so we could both make out the commentary.

  There was a sound like a pistol shot down the line and they were off with the old guy doing the live commentary bit. And it’s Thatcher in the lead followed by Callaghan then Steel from Wilson and Callaghan going strongly and Steel and Wilson fighting for third and fourth place and Callaghan’s pulled level with Thatcher and they’re neck and neck and Wilson now, Wilson coming strongly into third but Steel’s coming up on the outside, now it’s Callaghan from Thatcher and Steel with Wilson trailing, and as they come into the final furlong Thatcher’s out in front and she’s opening up the gap, it’s Thatcher from Callaghan with Steel and Steel’s fallen! Steel’s fallen, and Callaghan’s putting on a sudden burst and he’s pulled ahead of Thatcher, Callaghan’s in front, he’s ahead as they cross the line and it’s Callaghan first, Thatcher in second, Wilson coming in a long way behind in third and the vets now moving swiftly over to David Steel, I’m afraid he’ll have to be shot, but what a superb finish from Jim Callaghan, beating the favourite Margaret Thatcher in a magnificent race which will yet again have the punters tearing up their form books in despair. Give Helmet the cash.

  Eh? I said.

  Just give Helmet the stake, the voice said. I’ll pick it up later.

  That was the 1979 general election.

  Plus five quid tax, that’ll be 55 pounds.

  That’s not on, I said. Thatcher won.

  Fine. You’re barred. D’you understand me? Barred. You heard the result, if you’d like to hand over the money to Helmet there we won’t have any further problems.

  I want to know who gave you permission to fuck around with history like that.

  If it’s history you want go to the library. This is the past we deal with here, and we can do what we like with it. It hasn’t been nationalised.

  I’ll give Helmet the money. But admit she won. I remember.

  That’s your business, sir. No-one’s trying to tell you what to put in your memory.

  Eighteen years of Tory rule!

  It could’ve been a dream. It’s your private business. All we ask is that you don’t try to spoil other people’s free use of the common past by dumping your memories all over it. The bookie hung up.

  I fancied Thatcher myself, said Helmet, taking the cash and sticking the notes into his waistband. He went back into his room, put a copy of Super Trouper on the turntable and lay down on the bed with his hands behind his head, looking at the ceiling. I expected to see fox fur under his armpits but the hairs were black, flat and separate.

  Come out for a bit, I said.

  No, said Helmet.

  If you came out you’d see what I mean about the way things are. It’d all fall into place. You’d see that time only goes one way, the past only happens once, and that killing people is too complicated.

  You’re saying I shouldn’t kill him because it’s too complicated? said Helmet, frowning at the ceiling.

  Yes, I said. That’s one reason. The sweat was over me again, hot this time. If you came out with me you’d remember there’s more than just you and me and the fisherman. There are so many people, and they’re all connected, and if you kill one of them, others are bound to get dragged in.

  I can put your mind to rest on that. It’s not complicated at all. It’s very simple. There’s me and the fisherman, and I kill him, and then there’s just me. That’s it. It’s not a problem.

  Are you coming out?

  No.

  Don’t do anything, I said. It’s not like taking a record off. You can’t put it on again. It’s not like the ships that come up the river and always go back out. It’s not like Thatcher. True enough, we never saw her in the flesh. Maybe she never did win. Maybe she doesn’t exist. But the fishermen does.

  Not for long, said Helmet.

  I went to the turntable, flicked the arm aside, took off the Abba album and snapped it in two.

  That’s what happens, I said.

  No it isn’t, said Helmet. I’ve got a couple more of them. That’s a fiver you owe me.

  What if I broke them all? I said.

  Helmet said nothing but I saw his lips press together and a dark tongue tip zip them up moist.

  I’m going out, I said. I’ll come round again before tea.

  Helmet was silent.

  Brynie was working on fish in the kitchen. I saw the big knife hanging flat vertical on a magnet.

  Hi, I said. How’s it going?

  All right, said the fisherman.

  Helmet said it’d be OK if I borrowed a knife for a couple of hours.

  Help yourself.

  I took the knife off the magnet. It was shiny stainless steel with a black plastic handle and a broad ten-inch blade. I held it suspended, holding the handle between thumb and one finger.

  Take care, then, I said.

  Brynie looked at me over his shoulder with his eyebrows arrowed into his nose and went back to his fish. I went out into the street.

  The sun had come out. There weren’t so many folk down where I was, near the old lifeboat shed. I saw a rapid movement across the wall of a tenement opposite, like a cursor fleeing across a screen. It was the light reflecting off the blade of the knife swinging in my hand. I was wearing a red woollen jumper and black jeans. I lifted the hem of the jumper and started pushing the blade down the front of my jeans, blade turned out. The thigh cringed from the cold of the metal as it went down. The point pricked me and I drew in br
eath. A white-haired couple went past looking at me and wondering out loud what the lad was doing. I pulled the jumper over the knife handle and set off for Visocchi’s. It was hard to walk without stabbing myself in the leg. It felt as if I already had. I limped along slowly, looking down every second to see if blood was blooming on my jeans. There was no sign but what an idea for a product: tampons for soccer casuals. I used to be afraid to wear white jeans to the game but now with super-absorbent wound-strength Tampax I can go out tooled up with absolute confidence.

  I went into the cafe. I saw the girl from the baker’s on her own in the corner with a pot of tea and a mini-pizza and asked if I could join her. She looked up from under eyelashes lumpy with mascara, like charred fishbones floating on a rockpool. She managed not to smile. She waved with her hand to the seat opposite. I sat down. The girl screamed and her knees snapped up to crash into the underneath of the table as she recoiled.

  I held up my hands. It’s OK, I said. There are things which can’t be explained but this isn’t one of them. I snatched a napkin off the table, opened it and spread it over my lap, covering the two inches of knife blade which had pierced the jeans and poked out into the open air from the top of my knee. I’ll tell you about it once everyone’s stopped looking.

  I need to be getting back, said the girl, pale.

  I turned my head. One by one folk went back to their food as they met my eye.

  It’s not mine, I said, picking up a menu and leaning forward. I just happen to have it on me this one time. And I thought if I walked through the streets of Broughty Ferry with a ten inch kitchen knife in my hands I might cause anxiety.

  You could have put it in a bag, said the girl.

  I didn’t have time. Listen, I’m going to take it out now, and put it on the table. OK?

  I need to be getting back.

  Just be calm. I don’t like it either. That’s why I want to take it out of my trousers right now, and put it on the table.

  Can’t you wait till I’ve gone?

  If I wait any longer I’m going to turn my leg into fajitas. Just be calm.