Naming the Bones

by Louise Welsh

  It had resulted in nothing, until the phone message. He pressed Return Call and listened to the telephone ring out at the other end. He counted to twenty then broke the connection and dialled again. The ring had its own tone, its own rhythm, regular as a heartbeat. It jangled on, until he cut the call.

  He thought back again to the drive home, Rachel in the seat beside him, her hand guiding the car down the gears as they descended into the city. Sometimes lately he remembered their moments together as if he were on the outside, a viewer watching a film, or a man behind the wheel of a car in a darkened car park.

  Chapter Eleven

  MURRAY WASN’T SURE what happened to widows in the first three years after their husband’s death, but if he’d imagined Audrey Garrett at all, it was as stoical and underweight, a lady depleted if not destroyed.

  The woman who buzzed him up to her third-floor tenement flat was well-nourished, with pale skin flushed red, and strawberry-blonde hair tied firmly back in a thick ponytail. Her black jogging pants, white Aertex top and air of no-nonsense vigour reminded him of the members of the Officer Training Corps he sometimes saw loading the university minibuses. Then she smiled, and the impression was dispelled.

  They shook hands at the door. Her palm was warm to the touch. Murray was aware of a savour of fresh sweat and realised she was straight from exercising. He’d brought her flowers, a small bunch of yellow roses, conscious of avoiding anything flashy or funereal. He shoved them at her nervously, like an awkward suitor.

  ‘Thank you, but there was no need.’ She softened her words with a smile. ‘It’s a pleasure to share Alan’s work with someone who might be able to turn it to some use.’ Audrey raised the bouquet to her face, dutifully searching for scent in the cellophane-wrapped blooms, and Murray saw he’d forgotten to peel off the garage’s price sticker. ‘Come on through.’ She led him into a square entrance hall, messy with half-opened cardboard boxes, a jumble of bags and tangle of bikes.

  He’d thought she was English, a Londoner perhaps, but now he recognised an antipodean inflection to her accent: Australia or New Zealand? He couldn’t tell.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse the mess. As you can see we’ve just moved in. Normally, of course, we’re a super-tidy household.’

  She turned to check that he had got the joke and Murray met her eyes guiltily, wondering if she had seen his gaze drop reflexively to the tilt of her bottom. He looked away and met another pair of eyes peering at him from behind an open door in the hallway. They belonged to a small, solemn-faced boy with a mass of dark hair. Murray couldn’t judge his age: older than five but younger than ten, he guessed.

  ‘Hello, I’m Murray.’

  The boy’s expression remained grave. He silently pressed the door to.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse Lewis. He’s shy of new people. My sister-in-law’s coming round to take him swimming in a while.’ Audrey Garrett glanced at her watch. ‘She should be here by now, but as you can see everything’s running late – as usual. I meant to be showered and changed before you arrived.’

  ‘I’m grateful you made time to see me at all.’

  Murray glanced back towards the boy’s bedroom and saw Lewis Garrett’s eyes peering out again from the slit in the open door. He wondered if he should play the uncle and slip him a pound. But the boy saw him looking. This time he slammed the door.

  Audrey said, ‘Lewis, that’s not very polite’, but didn’t stop to argue the point. She led Murray into a large baywindowed sitting room piled high with boxes, like a fence’s secret warehouse.

  ‘Chaos reigns supreme.’ She flung herself down on the only piece of furniture in the room, a large right-angled couch that made Murray think of airports and long delays. ‘Lewis was only three when his father died. I’m afraid he’s a little shy of men, while also being completely fascinated with them, of course. He’s currently very taken with Mr Sidique across the landing. His beard is a big part of the attraction – reminiscent of Santa’s apparently. He may get his courage up and come through to interrogate you in a while, if Lisa doesn’t get her skates on.’

  Murray perched on the far promontory of the settee and rubbed his chin.

  ‘No beard.’

  ‘No, that may put you at a bit of a disadvantage.’

  He smiled, unsure of whether he should declare himself relieved or disappointed. Instead he said, ‘Lewis, after RLS?’

  ‘No, the spelling’s different. Choosing names for a child is an unexpected trial. Alan and I made a lengthy list. In the end we chose one we thought original only to spot it a month later, somewhere near the top of the most popular boy’s names in Scotland.’ She laughed. ‘Never mind, it suits him.’

  Murray remembered the collection of names he’d found in Archie’s effects and wondered if it resembled the list Audrey Garrett and her husband had made. He contemplated showing it to her, but Audrey had moved on. ‘I’ll make us some tea in a moment. I’m absolutely bushed. I’m usually working when Lewis is at school, but I played hookey this afternoon and went running before I collected him. I’m afraid I overdid it.’

  She stretched out a leg. Her feet were bare, their soles dirty, as if she had been sprinting shoeless through the city.

  Murray found her friendliness disarming. He wondered if it was typical or if her chatter was a delaying tactic; a means to avoid discussing her husband’s work with a stranger.

  He leant forward.

  ‘Don’t worry about tea. You’ve enough to do with your boy and all this.’

  He waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the boxes.

  Audrey Garrett smiled and said, ‘You’re wondering when I’m going to shut up and let you get on with it.’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘I guess I should tell you. He was in Lismore researching Archie Lunan when he died.’

  Just for a second Murray couldn’t think which man’s death she meant, then it struck him and he said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  She shrugged, managing to acknowledge his consolation and its uselessness at the same time.

  ‘I thought it might be better to get it out there so you understand if I’m a little … well …’ She smiled. ‘Even after this space of time, I’m not always sure how things are going to affect me.’

  ‘No.’ He looked away from her towards the piles of brown boxes piled high like a defence, wondering what the correct response would be. ‘Perhaps you’d like someone else to join us, your sister-in-law maybe?’

  ‘Lisa?’ Audrey Garrett laughed. ‘She’s worse than me. No, we’ll be fine.’ The doorbell rang and she got to her feet. ‘Speak of the devil and smell smoke. Excuse me a moment.’

  He heard a cheerful exchange of women’s voices, laughter and a child’s high, excited tones. Then the front door shut and there was a pause. He imagined her standing barefoot in the suddenly still hallway, gathering her strength. The new apartment held an atmosphere of brittle bravery. Murray pressed his hands together and sandwiched them between his knees. There would be a point when his own life tipped and the absent outweighed the living.

  ‘Peace, perfect peace.’ Audrey flung herself back on the settee, which shifted a little beneath her weight. ‘Lisa takes him overnight once a week to give me a bit of a break.’

  He unfolded himself and leaned back.

  ‘I’m interrupting your evening off.’

  ‘Don’t let it bother you. But you’re right, we should get down to business.’ She straightened up and turned to face him, brushing a loose strand of hair from her eyes. ‘I donated most of Alan’s reference books to the department library and some of his colleagues kindly packed up his university office for me a decent-ish interval after the accident.’ She gave an ironic smile. ‘As you know, space is at a premium up there. Most of what they packed is still in boxes. I kept all of Alan’s stuff together when we moved, so you’re welcome to work your way through it …’

  She hesitated and he said, ‘But?’

  ‘But inevitably I disposed of some stu
ff. It’s important we start to move on. Not forget, just …’ She sought for another phrase and gave up, smiling. ‘Just move on.’

  ‘Of course.’ He wondered what insights into Archie’s life had ended up in the recycling. ‘I understand Dr Garrett was a social scientist?’

  ‘Alan did a joint undergraduate degree in psychology and sociology, they both continued to inform his work.’

  ‘And his ongoing research was into artists who die young?’

  ‘Actually, it was more specific than that. Alan was interested in artists who commit suicide.’

  There was something shamefaced in the way that she said it. Murray wanted to tell her not to worry, that he had read weirder research proposals, invitations to the psychiatric ward or prison cell. But instead he nodded and asked, ‘He believed Archie came into that category?’

  ‘I suppose he must have. We never talked much about that aspect of his work. I found it morbid.’

  ‘I guess I can relate to that, but sometimes when you’re doing research,’ he paused, searching for a way to explain. ‘Things lose their power to disturb. You get fascinated with the minutiae and the subject becomes abstract.’

  ‘Maybe that’s part of what bothered me, the desensitisation.’ She wiggled her foot, looking at her toes as if she had just noticed them. ‘It’s sad something that meant so much to him became almost taboo between us. It’s one of my regrets. Perhaps if I’d paid more attention to Archie Lunan’s death, to the deaths of all the people he studied, I’d understand Alan’s more.’

  Murray felt the weight of the empty flat around them and wished the child hadn’t left. He rolled the pen he’d taken from his pocket between his palms then, when she remained silent, asked, ‘What do you mean?’

  It was as if the words had been waiting to tumble out.

  ‘When a sober man who’s fascinated with suicide slams a car with perfectly good brakes into a tree, you have to ask yourself if it was deliberate.’ She looked up. ‘I spoke with his doctor and searched his stuff, his effects. But Alan had no secret history of depression, no stash of happy pills he’d suddenly stopped taking. The inquest decided it was death through misadventure. A polite way of saying his own carelessness was to blame. Maybe he was tired, trying to squeeze everything he needed to do into too short a time so he could get home to us – except, of course, that he didn’t.’ Audrey got to her feet. ‘Sorry, that’s exactly what I was trying to avoid.’ She was all briskness now. ‘I’ve shoved Alan’s boxes together and marked each one with an X. I’m not sure if you’ll find much. I don’t know how long he’d been looking into your mutual friend, but I do know he’d taken some of the relevant notes up there with him. Presumably they were in the car when he crashed. I didn’t get them back.’

  She paused. Blood and shattered glass were in her silence.

  Murray imagined the dead driver slumped against a steering wheel, the unbroken blare of a car horn, precious pages streaming through a smashed window, littering the fields beyond, fluttering down towards the ocean where Archie had drowned.

  ‘I gave his computer to a Malawian appeal. I guess I should have held onto it, but you know how it is.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. Unsure of whether he did.

  ‘It was wretchedly oldfashioned, anyway. The Malawians were probably appalled when it arrived. I imagine they’re hooked up to solar-powered broadband by now, surfing porn like the rest of the world.’ She pulled at the hem of her top, straightening creases that bounced back into place. ‘Did that sound racist? It wasn’t meant to.’

  ‘No, of course not, you just meant we shouldn’t lumber charities with our junk.’ He realised what he’d said and coloured. ‘I didn’t mean …’

  But Audrey laughed and some of the tension lifted.

  ‘No, I know you didn’t.’ She was still smiling. ‘I’ll leave you to it. I’ve got plenty to occupy me. Shout when you’re finished.’

  *

  There were half a dozen cartons; less than he’d expected.

  There was always less than he expected, but when Murray started to work through their contents he realised they contained no teaching notes or delayed fragments of admin, no abandoned research proposals or half-written lectures. Everything related to the doctor’s suicide studies. The idea that Audrey Garrett had taken time to isolate the right boxes when she had a child, a job and a house full of unpacking touched him. But perhaps it was simply a way of speeding his departure.

  She had left the door to the living room ajar and Murray could hear the sound of a shower starting up somewhere beyond the hall. He got up and closed the door, pushing away an uninvited image of bathroom mirrors steaming with condensation and Audrey stepping naked beneath the spray.

  He took off his jacket, laid it on the couch, then crouched on the bare floorboards and opened the first box. The topmost folders held tables of statistical analysis that made no sense to him. He set them to one side, pulled out bundles of the Bulletin of Suicidology and flicked through a couple of issues. It was like every professional journal or hobbyist magazine he had ever come across: of no interest to anyone outside the group, but manna to the initiated. The abundance of adverts for books, courses and conferences suggested suicide was a booming industry. What would suicidology conferences be like? Rambunctious affairs where the bars roared with laughter, with Russian roulette in the halls and one less for breakfast every morning?

  He could understand Audrey’s squeamishness. But if Archie had topped himself it might make sense for Murray to read up on theories surrounding suicide. Topped himself. It was too flippant. He couldn’t remember using the phrase before. Maybe he was reacting to the soberness of the pages in front of him, like a mourner at a funeral suddenly felled by giggles.

  Murray extracted a bundle of loose papers and began sorting through them, careful to maintain the order they’d been packed in. A printed list from some website snagged his attention.

  Put on his best suit and shot himself.

  Gassed herself after bad reviews of her recent exhibition.

  Overdosed on sleeping pills in Baghdad.

  Threw himself on a ceremonial sword, then lingered for another 24 hours.

  Committed suicide in a psychotic fit, but not before killing his family.

  Jumped out of a window in Rome.

  Overdosed on barbiturates, and left notes about how it felt for as long as she could.

  Shot himself, then cut his throat.

  Hanged himself in the doorway of his father’s bedroom.

  The scant details seemed arbitrary; a method, a location, a reason. Could there ever be a good reason? He imagined how Archie’s entry would read.

  A poor sailor, he sailed out into the eye of a storm in an ill-equipped boat.

  Extreme pain would be a reasonable motive. But then he supposed it would be euthanasia, not suicide. There was a difference. The thought made him stop and stare into nothingness for a moment. Pain that you knew would only get worse. It was just cause.

  The room was growing darker; outside the sky was streaked with pink. It had been raining on and off all day, but it was a lovely evening, the turn into night, peace after the storm. Murray got up and clicked on the light switch, but the room stayed in shadows. The light-fitting was empty, the room bereft of lamps.

  ‘Fuck.’

  He dragged the box over to the window and continued sorting through it by the urinous glow of the streetlamp.

  Alan Garrett had been a biographer of death, every step of the lives he researched travelling towards their final moments, the cocked gun, the knotted rope, the ready pills and waiting cliff. But that was what biography was, a paper facsimile of life hurtling towards death. Murray’s book could only end in the freezing waters around Lismore with Archie sucked breathless beneath the waves.

  Had it occurred to him that Archie’s death might have been deliberate? Garrett’s hypothesis wasn’t a surprise. But he hadn’t considered it so boldly before. It might be good for the book if it were, he suppos
ed. Misery and suicide were more dramatic than self-indulgence and stupidity. Perhaps Murray’s could be one of the few academic works that slipped into the mainstream. He caught a quick vision of himself explaining his methodology on Newsnight Review, looking like an arse, tongue-tied and over-impressed, trying to avert his gaze from Kirsty Wark’s buttoned-down cleavage.

  Could Archie have been certain the boat would sink? However great the odds, the fierceness of the storm multiplied by his poor sea legs and simple craft, there was surely a chance that he might escape and sail beyond the squall into clear waters. Was it suicide to consign yourself to the fates? Murray wasn’t sure. But there must be a wonderful freedom in not caring.

  Murray looked down into the street below and wondered who would miss him if he were to smash his well-educated brains against the pavement. The news would probably work as an aphrodisiac on Rachel. Rab Purvis would organise a piss-up and Jack’s grief would no doubt be tempered by the prospect of whole new exhibition: My Only Brother’s Suicide – film, photographs and mixed media.

  He was getting maudlin. Maybe it was the relentless parade of young suicides or perhaps it was that he was on box three and had still found no mention of Archie. He supposed it was possible that all of Garrett’s notes on the poet had perished with him.

  Archie might be evasive, but he was getting a feel for Garrett. He’d been an organised scholar, thorough and not afraid of the legwork involved in primary research. Murray backed up his own research on a memory stick he guarded as carefully as his wallet. He wondered if he should ask Audrey if she had found anything similar in her husband’s effects. Perhaps he could work the conversation round to it by mentioning his own experience of sorting through the detritus the dead left behind.

  No, that would be crass and insensitive. He rejected the thought just as there was a knock on the sitting room door and Audrey stuck her head into the room. Her hair was damp and she smelt of something zesty. She’d changed into a scruffy V-neck and a pair of loose cotton trousers. He couldn’t imagine Rachel ever dressing like that, but perhaps she sometimes did in the privacy of her home; she and Fergus sharing a bottle of wine and watching a DVD, their bare feet occasionally touching, eyes shining with the prospect of bed.