The Society Game

by H. Lanfermeijer

  ‘I wish you were here James,’ I began. My voice was a waspish slow rasp, like my mind, it was tired and it was now deadened to the sadness from the last twenty-two hours.

  ‘I’m sorry for everything, I’m sorry for picking up the gun and I’m sorry for shooting Mark, but most of all, I’m sorry for ever meeting him; but I did and now he’s dead.’

  I paused and allowed his answerphone to fill with the grey noise of the motorway. I was approaching the A27 towards Eastbourne.

  ‘Do you remember the weekend walks we used to take together? Just you and me walking side by side watching God’s English canvas being painted as the day progressed around us. How we loved watching the changing sky; with its mauves and pinks in the evening and sharp reds in the morning. You would love the sky around me now – the horizon is an orange band stretching across the fields either side of the road towards Beachy Head. Above this panel, and spreading across the morning sky, is a rose colour; it’s so soothing, so peaceful.

  James, do you remember the day we wandered across the cliff top then sat to have a picnic whilst watching the sun sink into the sea? I was happy then with you beside me.

  I have to go, the traffic is picking up now that I’m approaching Lewes. I like this town. I wonder if they’ll have their firework parade this year? I hope you get to go with your family. It’s a fun night watching the guy burn. Bye-Bye my sweet man.’

  Eventually the morning commuters dispersed around me to their respective jobs and left me to drive alone towards the edge of England. For the final half an hour I was a sole driver cruising through the countryside. I don’t remember the fir trees lining the road nor do I remember the tree tunnels I drove through, but I knew they were there because I noticed their absence when I neared the white cliffs. The road was now bare save for the cliffs to my right and empty rising fields to my left. The cracked road swept round the cliff top until it reached a National Trust car-park.

  There was one other car which I assumed belonged to the owner of the café in the far corner, overlooking the cliffs. I could see a stout lady preparing for the walkers who would undoubtedly arrive throughout the day. She had short curly hair and a striped apron. Like all the commuters I shared the road with, she too had a purpose to her day; she needed to rise each morning, prepare her restaurant and serve the cakes and soups she had made for her guests. Then she needed to close her café and most likely, return to her warm and loving husband, reeling off happy tales to him about her day and the people she had met. One such couple passed me whilst sitting in my car. They did not notice me as they had their head to the ground and I briefly caught their discussion about breakfast before their voices tailed away: one was to have a bacon sandwich and the other a fried egg sandwich with tomato sauce.

  Oh, Jason, how my body swelled with jealousy for each of these people. I craned my neck to watch them enter the café, chat to the waitress and then enjoy their earned breakfast. I yearned to be them, just to be leading a simple, gentle morning with no frustrations or fears that plagued me. I wanted to be a middle-aged lady who had aged gracefully and who was loved and who shared her life with someone. Instead I was a mannequin sitting in a white sports car in a white blood-stained dress.

  My mind was weary and my body felt cumbersome as I finally left my car. I did not look back as I walked away because I did not want to feel the pit of fear at abandoning the final part of my life. There was a path ahead of me which took me up the slight incline to the very edge dividing England and her seas. I was still barefoot but I deliberately looked up from where I was treading so that each large stone that dug into my soles stung me, allowing me to soak up the living sensation of pain.

  As I reached the cliff top the wind picked up and at times, along the cliff’s edge, my dress whipped around my legs making me unsteady on my feet. Ahead of me stretched long white chalk cliffs which led to the narrow, pebbled beach far beneath me. I found myself giggling at the competition I had set for myself as I walked this path towards a lighthouse in the distance: I forbade myself to look down to steady myself, so each successful step I made was an achievement to celebrate with another step. I mused that should I slip and topple to my right, down to the beach, then God was merely bored of the competition I was playing and had decided to throw me away from life’s board game.

  Finally, I got bored before God did, so I elected to stop and sit with my bare legs and bloody feet dangling over the edge. I know that I was a bizarre sight and I wondered what a walker in their walking uniform would make of me. I didn’t wonder for long as I watched a man in a bright yellow walking jacket and heavy grey walking boots with a tall staff, walk along the undulating path, starting from as far off as the lighthouse. I prepared myself for his intrusion over my welfare but as he finally passed he nodded my way.

  ‘Lovely day,’ he said,

  ‘Isn’t it!’ I replied.

  How quintessentially British we were? Two strangers politely ignoring the social misfit dangling over the edge of Beachy Head, in favour of a comment about the weather. Yet, how comforting for him to see a fellow human to comment about his day while how lonely for me to, again, be ignored.

  I don’t know how long I sat, but it was long enough to admire the sun clear the sky of any cloud and calm the sea beneath it. Throughout the morning the sky got progressively blue, so richly blue that I wondered whether, if I threw a stone high above my head, would it not splash and spread sleepy ripples across the sky?

  The warmth of the sun made me feel dazed, it helped to ease the spasms of panic that sporadically gripped me each time my mind wandered away from the tranquillity of this beautiful spot, looking out to sea and back to the destruction left in a grand house far behind.

  The hairs on my neck and the senses in my back eventually felt the movement of that massacre moving towards me, creeping slowly at first then deliberately striding to where I sat.

  ‘Olivia!’

  I resisted looking behind me as I wanted to keep hold of the beauty of the sea and the gentle warmth of the sun. How easy it would be to leap forward; I wondered how hard I would need to push off the cliff to dive into the calm waters and become part of the ocean.

  ‘Olivia!’

  I smiled at the knowledge that however hard I pushed I would never be part of it and I could only reach the sharp, stony beach separating me from the sea.

  ‘Olivia!’

  It was the dear voice of my beloved James.

  ‘Olivia, I’m here,’ he said, ‘I’m here to help you.’ His voice was as gentle as the sun, but still I did not have the courage to respond. I sensed him approaching me.

  ‘Olivia, I promise everything will be okay. I’ve spoken to the police and they have agreed that I can speak to you first. I reassured them that you won’t do anything stupid but please, Ol, please come closer to me.’

  ‘Are the police here?’

  ‘They are, we know what’s happened and, Ol, I’m so sorry.’

  I heard his worry and, for the first time since James said his first ‘hello’ to me, I heard a weakness in his mellifluous voice as it changed into a sad and scared tone.

  ‘And I am sorry. I’m so sorry. if I truly knew how bad things were, I promise, I promise I, we all, would’ve saved you earlier… instead of being here now.’

  My heart cracked as I heard James begin to whimper and so I rushed away from the edge to hold my James in my arms.

  I burrowed my head into his shoulder and he squeezed me tightly. The man I have always loved held me for the last time on a sunny day on top of the cliffs of England. We were surrounded by policemen who were waiting for me but I didn’t care as I held onto James for as long as he would allow. I truly believe he would have held me forever, but the police broke our union, leaving me with just a memory to hold.

  I was walked back down to the car park by a young policeman. I was not handcuffed until we reached the police car. I w
as read my rights then ushered into the car to be seated between two policewomen. As we drove away I saw my abandoned Porsche; the luxury goods I had favoured above my James. And James stood close by watching me being driven away flanked by a fleet of cars which, even then, I thought unnecessary as surely I was not a danger to society? But then what do I know? I was the mannequin who had murdered her husband.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Jason

  My aunt was taken to a holding cell somewhere near Eastbourne. It was twenty-four hours before we heard that she had been arrested for the murder of my Uncle Mark. I vaguely remember the news that evening.

  ‘A man has been found dead in his home in Stoning Town earlier today; the police are treating his death as suspicious.’

  The reason I remember it was because I placed greater prominence on hearing Stoning Town, on the radio than to the death of a human being. The next day, the novelty of hearing a place I knew well on the news slipped to shock when my mum rang early in the morning;

  ‘Olive has killed him. She’s killed him.’

  ‘Who?’ I innocently asked.

  ‘Mark, your Uncle Mark of course! It’s all over the news, it’s everywhere Jason,’ my mum screamed.

  It was not everywhere. The death of a wealthy business man only earned a one-line sentence on the radio on the day the murder happened. Then, once the camera crews were in place, Mark’s death was featured on the television with a view of the house in the background whilst a newsreader added a further sentence to this family’s’ tragedy, to inform the nonchalant public that, ‘His wife has been arrested on suspicion of the businessman’s murder in their multi-million pound house in the wealthy suburb of London… the investigation is on-going.’

  It was never mentioned again to the public’s prying eyes until the trial, but from that phone call, it dominated all family and friends’ discussions to the point that I began to resent my aunt’s actions; not because of her taking the life of my uncle, but because I could no longer have a conversation with anyone I knew until I had fulfilled the obligatory:

  ‘There’s no update on the trial date; all we know is she’s now at Holloway prison. Her lawyer is looking into the diminished responsibility route due to the stress of an emotionally abusive marriage, but we’re not confident as she deliberately went away to get the gun and returned to shoot him, so the prosecution is going for first degree murder.’

  Mum churned over the same facts seeking some solace in trying to find an explanation for why her little sister could kill someone. I watched Mum change throughout the winter months from sheer panic and shock about my aunt to raging anger, and in all that time she refused to see her sister. It was Dad who visited her and tried to do all the negotiations for the right lawyer and also trying to bolster Aunt Olive’s spirits for preparation for the forthcoming trial.

  I could see the strain this was placing on him as he struggled to keep up with his teaching and marking, appease Mum’s fears for her sister each time he walked into the house, liaise with the lawyers for Aunt Olive, find the money to pay for these lawyers and finally try to find time to see his sister-in-law; all of which he found harder to cope with as each week passed.

  I visited my parents as often as I could at the beginning to try and unburden the load from Dad.

  ‘I just don’t understand it Jason,’ Mum spat one evening, ‘she shot him, she went out of her way to find the gun then returned to kill him!’

  ‘She just saw red, Janet,’ Dad interjected on cue to the same conversation they had most evenings.

  ‘Oh, I grant you, my brother-in-law was an evil, cruel nasty little man who deserved divorce papers and to be stripped naked by a wolfhound of a lawyer vying for his blood, but Colin, not to be killed…’

  It was a rehearsed speech but Dad obliged by saying the same thing over and over to try and calm Mum down:

  ‘The man crippled her; he used to beat her and when he couldn’t get away with that he became emotionally toxic: he belittled her at every opportunity; he bought prostitutes back to the house, and he was a conman who was about to go bankrupt for dodgy business dealings!’

  ‘I know. But she wouldn’t leave. And now? How am I going to help her now? How am I going to get her off for murder?’

  At this part in the script Mum would start crying and either Dad or I would comfort her until she finally calmed.

  ‘What will be, will be, it’s in God’s hands and we have to wait it out… Now stop these tears, all of us and stay strong… I won’t cry, I mustn’t…Who’s for tea and a bourbon biscuit?’

  Just after Christmas, in the month burdened with the reputation for being boring, depressing and lacking in charisma, Mum finally agreed to see her little sister. So, on January 8th, I drove her to Holloway prison with visiting orders in her hand. I accompanied her through the security checkpoint and after being fully searched, scanned and interviewed about who I was seeing, I was ushered into the visitor’s waiting area. The walls were a pale blue with blue plastic chairs linked in three rows for people to sit and wait on. It was cold with a smell of disinfectant hanging in the air. Large mock windows separated the waiting room from the corridors surrounding it. In the background were sporadic entrance and exit buzzing noises, clanging of doors and inaudible shouts.

  Mum remained stoic throughout, staring firmly at her lap until our names were called and we were shown to another cold room with white tables which reminded me of my school canteen; except there were no rushing children scrambling to sit next to their mates carefree or munching on sandwiches, instead just a gentle hum of whispered voices from inmates. In amongst them all was Aunt Olive, gaunt, scared and with a distant stare across her face. Her hands were on the table and throughout the one hour meeting they were permanently squeezing together like two scrawny twins hugging one another.

  ‘I have a trial date,’ she whispered after an awkward greeting hug from her sister. ‘March 18th, two days after your birthday.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Mum replied, ‘at least we can er, look forward, well no, not look forward, but perhaps find closure, well no, a result I mean. Sorry, I don’t know what to say.’ Mum lapsed back into silence.

  ‘You’re doing well, Aunt?’ I asked, to fill in the silent hole.

  Aunt Olive’s once bouffant hair was scraped back into a pony tail, and grey roots were taking hold. She wore no makeup which highlighted the ‘swollen allergic reaction’ look she had adopted over the last fifteen years. Her eyebrows were still marker-pen dark stripes as she’d had them lasered off and then tattooed back on a few years ago. Sitting with her head bowed in front of me, she reminded me of a 1950s’ cinema Martian with a tiny weak body and a huge swollen head. But unlike the little green men designed to scare earthlings she just looked pitiful.

  At the end of the meeting we all stood up and then Mum grabbed her frail sister and hugged her.

  ‘You’ll be okay, sis, I promise.’

  ‘I know,’ she replied and, on the instruction from a nearby guard, they released one another.

  Mum remained silent throughout the journey home except for: ‘So, March. March it is.’ I dropped her back home and apologised that I couldn’t stay as I was taking my girlfriend out for a meal. It was a lie as she was at a training course in Nottingham but I couldn’t endure another twisted evening of questions about the outcome of my aunt so I raced home leaving Dad to comfort Mum.

  January left us, followed by a snowy February and finally a cold wet March arrived. The 18th knocked at our doors and we left our homes for London for the trial between the Crown and Mrs Olivia Hopkins. The trial was held at the Old Bailey and we were taken to a side gate to avoid the cameras at the front.

  ‘They’re not just for this trial as there’s the Beckett case in courtroom number four. However, they do seem a permanent fixture these days I’m afraid. They seem to cover every trial, I believe in the hope that their
day’s effort makes the news. Not allowed in my day but times have changed; times have changed – more channels and whatnot and I suppose we all have to make money some way or another. Best we take the side entrance and not the school gates as I like to refer to them.’

  My aunt’s barrister was a Mr Partridge, a tall thin man dressed in the stereotypical dark blue pin-striped suit under his court gown. He had an autocratic, dismissive air which I found comforting. We reached outside the courtroom where he introduced us to my aunt’s lawyer, a Mr Thomson. In contrast to Mr Partridge, he was an elderly, large man in a drab ill-fitting grey suit with a stained brown mud-coloured tie.

  ‘We need to go in soon,’ Mr Thomson said meekly. ‘I’ll be in there but my colleague, Mr Partridge, will be doing all the talking, maybe referring to me from time to time but er, that’s it. Er, you need to sit in the spectators’ gallery.’

  Mr Thomson was an uninspiring lawyer who appeared not just bored of the proceedings, but slightly irritated by the fact that he’d have to endure watching my Aunt Olive’s trial when he would rather be anywhere but here; preferably in the pub.

  ‘Good God,’ Mum said as we sat down, ‘the lawyer, Mr Thomson, seems incompetent. Look at him Jason, he looks like he needs a good dusting. That suit couldn’t be revived even if a good medic got hold of it. Look at the paperwork he’s holding; it’s all falling out of the folders and he hasn’t even noticed!’

  ‘I’m sure he’s done a good job Mum, don’t focus on that. Can you see Aunt Olive?’

  She’s coming in now,’ said Dad. ‘Dear almighty she’s aged; her hair is completely grey. Was she always that thin?’

  ‘I should have picked up the green suit; that black one is too big for her or is it because she’s now walking with a stoop? The front is all baggy,’ replied Mum.