The Discourtesy of Death

by William Brodrick

  ‘I didn’t write this,’ he said, laying the letter on the table cluttered with books. ‘But I could have done. Each and every word. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who was troubled … deeply troubled by Jennifer’s passing. And I’m relieved to learn that someone like yourself, someone who can operate outside conventional channels, is prepared to look into it. You’re dealing with a closed universe. Finding a way into Peter’s world is not going to be easy. Even I couldn’t find a route, and I was Jenny’s godfather. How can I help?’

  Somehow he was staring vigorously at Anselm.

  ‘In the first instance by telling me why you went to see Detective Superintendent Manning.’

  ‘Because there’s no one out there like you.’ Doctor Goodwin was being strictly factual, not complimentary. ‘I had an anxiety that I couldn’t in conscience keep to myself. I’d seen Jenny on her birthday, the day she died, and despite … despite her terrible condition … she was in fine spirits … a bit drowsy but otherwise … at peace. It was inspiring. But then, suddenly, she was dead. She’d recently had tests and as far as I know everything was fine. I spoke to her doctor and I sensed a certain anxiety … a compassionate anxiety. He smoothed away my imputations. Said he’d examined the body and she’d died of bowel cancer. The condition had been advanced. Devouring. Urged me to treat myself as I’d treat a distressed parishioner … to tell them that “death is completely natural … that it comes at the right time … that it’s we who rebel … that it’s we who cling onto life long after it’s time to let go”.’

  ‘What was the doctor’s name?’

  ‘Ingleby. Bryan Ingleby. He was a close friend of Peter’s. More of a father figure.’

  ‘Where was he based?’

  ‘Needham Market. He took over Jenny’s care just after the accident.’

  The sitting room door opened and Mrs Goodwin entered pushing a tea trolley on wheels. Everything was beautifully laid on a white embroidered cloth: fine china, biscuits and slices of the famous fruit cake. She busied herself, like Martha in the gospel, only there were no complaints etched onto her smooth face. Anselm was right: she didn’t want to talk. She’d already chosen the better part: mute service, a role the merits of which the evangelists had singly failed to appreciate. Thinking of what she’d already revealed, Anselm said, innocently, ‘I would be greatly helped if you could simply tell me the family story … from the moment Peter Henderson entered Jennifer’s life’ – the place in the narrative when, in fact, Mrs Goodwin had been compelled to leave off – ‘because it seems to me that this is where the territory of motive begins. This is where we have to look. If Peter Henderson killed Jennifer, the rationale will be imprinted on a simple succession of facts … neutral from one perspective, but – I hope – revealing from another. In a case like this, one simply has to keep walking around the facts … like Cartier-Bresson before he took a photograph.’

  The request snagged Mrs Goodwin. Perhaps she’d intended to slip out of the room to do the ironing. Instead she sat down, wondering – Anselm thought – how her husband would take up the tale. She looked worried.

  ‘I’d been moving around a lot,’ said Doctor Goodwin, stealing a cherry off the serving plate. ‘Parish appointments the length of the country, so I’d drifted out of touch with Jennifer’s family … my brother and Emma his wife. But we still shared a few important moments … and one of those was the day we all met Peter Henderson; a cold, unforgettable day in February.’

  Doctor Goodwin edged forward as if to share a secret. ‘We’d been invited to Sunday lunch. My brother Michael, he’s a … quiet man. Conventional. An old-fashioned liberal. Shirt and tie decency. Never saw him without polished shoes. Loved Evensong … well, he used to … and then there’s Emma: vaguely theatrical, a vet who might have been a stage actress. Very proper, occasionally racy. But always correct. Knew how to use a line of knives and forks. Went down a bomb at the mess dinners with her panache and wit. An ideal companion for Michael. And both of them devoted parents. Now, coming from that background, you’d have thought that Jenny would be drawn to some quiet type with a bit of unexpected colour … whereas Peter … well, he was a sort of roadside explosion.’

  Arrived in jeans. Hadn’t shaved. When Michael lit a cigarette, Peter said, soft spoken and reasonable, ‘No offence, but they’ll kill you. And possibly the rest of us if we hang around long enough.’ He sat with an arm around Jenny. A handsome man: clean lines to the facial bones; balding early; black tufts above the ears.

  ‘And Emma had made this beef Wellington,’ said Doctor Goodwin. ‘An immense fillet wrapped in pastry, and when she brought it in on a silver tray, Peter said, “I’m vegetarian.” “I beg your pardon?” says Emma. “I’m sorry but all the evidence suggests that animals are as loving, societal and emotionally complex as we are. They have rights. And one of the more basic is not to be eaten.” “I told you, Mum,” says Jenny, absolutely mortified. “Sorry, darling, I must have forgotten.” And then Peter says, as if to help out, “Emma, they’re as sensitive as you are,” which didn’t go down very well, so he threw his hands in the air and said, “I’m sorry, but the practice of meat-eating is one of the most serious moral questions of our time …” And so that was the first subject for discussion … over the beef … all the while no one daring to refer to the elephant in the room.’

  ‘Which was?’ asked Anselm.

  ‘His age,’ interjected Mrs Goodwin.

  ‘Peter was thirty-two and looked older,’ resumed her husband, ‘whereas Jenny was only nineteen and looked younger. She was still a girl … to me at least … and there she was, holding hands with a man who seemed old enough to be her father.’

  ‘Thirteen years,’ pressed Mrs Goodwin. ‘That’s a big age difference. Jenny was simply mesmerised by his confidence, flattered by his attention. A Cambridge don who appeared on telly had dedicated his latest book to her. Who could resist that?’

  Me, thought Anselm. ‘What was the subject?’

  ‘Charles Stevenson. An American philosopher,’ said Doctor Goodwin.

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘Emotivist school. Held there could be intelligent disagreement over moral questions.’

  ‘How refreshing.’

  ‘And ironic, because emotions were running high. At least on the Goodwin side. Within a very short time it became clear that Peter was atheist, anti-monarchist and pacifist. Frankly, I was attracted to him. He was unnervingly honest. Said what he thought, in clear, dispassionate terms. Didn’t seem to appreciate that a social situation might require tact over conviction. Or at least moderation of argument. You see … Emma had gone to enormous lengths to welcome him; she was standing there, holding the silver platter, and he didn’t seem to realise that her generosity needed some kind of acknowledgement. He only saw the issue of meat-eating. In a way he was innocent.’

  Perhaps he was annoyed, too, thought Anselm. Emma had forgotten Peter was vegetarian because she didn’t take the underlying argument seriously; didn’t consider his belief worth remembering. Wasn’t that the greater insult? He tried Helen’s cake and paused to think some more: it could not be fairly described, even tactfully, as magnificent.

  ‘How did Michael react to this challenge to his universe?’ asked Anselm. ‘You mentioned dinners at the mess and I imagine—’

  ‘Very observant,’ congratulated Doctor Goodwin, stealing another cherry. ‘My brother was in the Army. Royal Anglian Regiment. Served overseas. Cyprus. Germany. So he was uncomfortable with the jeans and so on. But he swallowed all that. The problem came when Peter turned his attention onto Northern Ireland. And I don’t mean the bravery of our boys in the fight against sectarian terror … I mean the scandal – his phrase – of collusion. British Intelligence feeding information about Republican targets to Loyalist murder gangs. The Army killing unarmed men before they could surrender. The whole “shoot to kill” controversy.’

  ‘I’d have thought Peter Henderson might have found a way to justify measu
res of that kind,’ said Anselm, dispassionately. ‘You know, a greater good requiring the moral destruction of the man who, in other circumstances, wouldn’t harm a fly. Doing a grave wrong to do a supreme right.’

  ‘But he didn’t,’ said Doctor Goodwin. ‘Peter’s point was that without legislative safeguards, anything could happen on the ground. Executive actions had to be subject to independent judicial scrutiny. You’d have thought Michael would have agreed. He’d never have sanctioned anyone doing anything outside the law. As it is, he was blown from his seat.’

  Anselm had let his eyes drift from the doctor to the dried-out cake, to Helen, the reluctant architect of the developing moment. She was rigid in her seat, one hand on each knee, her gaze burning holes in the carpet. They both knew that Nigel had given his roving work as the explanation for his distance from Michael, rather than it being a consequence of Michael’s mysterious trauma. More particularly, Nigel had abbreviated Michael’s CV, leaving out the posting to Belfast and the shift to intelligence work. And Anselm, tingling with prescience, now wondered if Michael’s return to England – traumatised to such an extent that he’d left the armed forces to translate faxes from Italy – might just be linked to the subject into which Peter Henderson had stumbled: the scandal of collusion. That, at least, appeared to be Helen’s belief. And probably her husband’s, too. Why else had he left those two otherwise innocuous facts out of the reckoning? Husband and wife had finally got an insight into why Michael had come home shattered. Alone, it seemed, Helen had linked the Belfast experience to Jennifer’s later death – another such moment, perhaps. She’d developed a murder theory in the dark that she couldn’t share with the man she loved and served. She’d never told anyone.

  ‘Blown from his seat?’ queried Anselm.

  ‘Sent flying.’

  ‘By an argument?’

  ‘No, insensitivity.’ Doctor Goodwin stubbed some cake crumbs on the plate with his finger. ‘Peter said that to shoot an unarmed terrorist as if he was a stray dog could be challenged on a number of grounds, but the most devastating and intellectually accessible was this: it was simply wrong … and it was then that Michael’s chair went flying backwards. Bear in mind, the merits of Peter’s argument had nothing to do with it. He was having a swing at Michael’s identity. He knew damn well that Jenny’s father had once been an Army man. The Canary Wharf bomb had gone off the week before, ending an eighteen-month ceasefire by the IRA … and here was Peter complaining about British atrocities in Northern Ireland. Michael couldn’t take it. He stormed out of the room. I can still see Emma, smiling brightly, “Anyone for baked Alaska? Hot on the outside, cold in the middle.” And Peter – imagine this – he didn’t even flinch when the chair went back, any more than he’d flinched over the beef Wellington.’

  Because he thought the issues were too important, mused Anselm. Poor Michael. Army pride to one side, he’d undergone every parent’s living nightmare. His daughter had hitched herself to a man he could never embrace as a son. Even so, Anselm hadn’t yet heard anything that warranted the description of a ‘roadside explosion’. Peter was different, yes. But wasn’t there something attractive about a man who couldn’t restrain his honesty? A man who actually had some beliefs, held them strongly, and was prepared to upset everybody in order to defend them?

  ‘Did Michael return to the room?’ asked Anselm.

  ‘Yes, he did. To apologise.’ Doctor Goodwin’s expressive face showed all the pain of that remembered humiliation. ‘He made a stumbling speech about his regimental tie and becoming an old bore. And then he held out his hand … that was so typical of him. He had to shake on it.’

  ‘And Peter took it?’ asked Anselm.

  ‘Oh yes. He even stood up. And that’s when Peter dropped the bombshell that no one had seen coming … only there was no uproar afterwards. Just a stunned silence. He said, “Jenny’s got something to tell you.” He made it sound as if he was blurting out the good news to smooth over any embarrassment. Jenny glanced at her mother and then her father and then her mother again … but we all knew already. She put on this hopeful, anxious, breaking smile … and then she said it. “I’m pregnant.”’

  Abruptly Helen stood up, frowning and distressed. ‘He’d staged the argument on purpose. Nigel doesn’t agree’ – she glared at her husband, ready to meet any fresh challenge – ‘but I don’t accept any of that intellectual honesty claptrap … his so-called “innocence”. He knew damn well what he was doing. He’d had a good go at both Emma and Michael. He’d played us all into position so he could minimise any chance of reproach. He’d got a nineteen-year-old girl pregnant when he should have protected her, when all he’d had to do was take precautions … simple, adult precautions’ – she glanced at Anselm as if he might not know what they were or, at worst, might entertain doctrinal objections of the more unyielding kind – ‘and then, rather than take any responsibility, he staged a fight with her father over nothing and waited for Michael to apologise … for Michael to apologise to him …’

  ‘Did the ploy work?’ asked Anselm, doubting if it had, in fact, been a ploy; thinking that the shoot-to-kill issue might have been ‘something’ rather than ‘nothing’.

  ‘Of course not,’ snapped Mrs Goodwin. ‘Given the fait accompli, no one in that room would have rebuked him … we just kept our thoughts to ourselves, for Jenny’s sake.’

  ‘Even Michael?’

  ‘Especially Michael. He made another speech. Shook his hand again. Accepted Peter into the family. And Peter just smiled as if he’d pulled off a military triumph.’ Mrs Goodwin paused as if to gather in the prophetic significance of that remembered Sunday afternoon. ‘Poor Jenny … she’d found someone wild and exciting and he was going to take her to a strange and foreign land. And in time, he did. And poor Michael, not knowing what would happen, bowed his head and served the coffee, laughing and nodding by turns at everything clever Peter had to say. He put himself under Peter’s feet and that … that smooth-talking bastard just wiped clean his dirty trainers.’ Doctor Goodwin looked at his wife as if she’d come clean off the leash. He reached for one of her hands and squeezed her fingers tight. He wasn’t reproving or annoyed. Just grateful, Anselm thought. She had a way with words. Said the sorts of things he could never say from the pulpit.

  ‘How did we end up getting into all that?’ he said, helplessly, all his energy gone.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Helen.

  Yes, you do. Anselm nodded to himself. It’s because of me. I took your hint.

  Doctor Goodwin let her hand go and he turned to Anselm. ‘I’ve more to say … about Peter and Jenny. I could do with some fresh air. Can I take you to where it all began and ended? There’s something important about place, don’t you agree?’

  Anselm did. Gratified, Doctor Goodwin went to a bureau in the corner of the room. With quite extraordinary care, he took a letter from a drawer and transferred it to an inside jacket pocket.

  ‘I’ll stay here,’ said Helen, pushing the tea trolley towards the door. ‘I’ve lots of jobs to do in the garden.’

  Of course you have, concluded Anselm. She had nothing else to add. In the end, despite getting cold feet, she’d done her bit for Jenny. With a little adroit nudging from Anselm, Nigel had completed Helen’s story about Northern Ireland without Helen having to open her mouth. It had gone without a hitch, for Nigel hadn’t quite known what he’d been saying – what the facts about Michael had meant to Helen. Anselm didn’t fully grasp them either. But it was only a matter of time. He just needed to brood upon the meaning of the suppressed information. Taking her hand at the door, he almost said, ‘Your secret’s safe with me.’ Instead he murmured, ‘Thanks for the cake.’

  She smiled. They both knew it was dried out; that it should never be called magnificent.

  15

  Evening light saturated the long pier at Southwold. The clouds above were soaked an angry crimson. Softer yellow smudges and faint purple streams ran into the watery blue of the sky. Mich
ael stood alone on the silvered wooden planking, hands in his coat pockets. He was looking at the Water Clock.

  The clock was an amusing scrap metal sculpture, tall like the grandfather kind, only twice the size and made up of different objects in a welded open casing. Beneath the round face at the top were two taps. They were open and the water tumbled into an old Victorian bath. In the bath lay two recumbent figures with short tubes sticking out of the sides of their mouths as if they were biting on cigarettes. On a platform beneath the bath were two other figures – boys, Michael thought – standing either side of a toilet basin. Near the ground, in a line like targets at a fair, was a row of tulips.

  The Nutting Squad had used a bath on Eugene. By the time he came up for air, he’d lost the will to resist. He’d told them what they wanted to know – what they already believed – even though it wasn’t true. There was nothing he could say to persuade them he was innocent. They’d gathered evidence from people who knew him backwards. It all pointed in one direction. Upwards. They knew he was a tout. But they were wrong. Just like the trader in the shop.

  Michael looked higher at the hands of the clock and higher still at the blood in the sky.

  According to the Belfast Telegraph, to get at the inner man, to reach what he was really thinking, they’d broken Eugene’s fingers and toes, burned holes in his muscles with cigarettes and placed a hot poker under his arms. Eventually, after a bath, he’d made a taped confession. They’d sent it to his wife as a kind of explanation.

  Michael closed his eyes against the wet clouds. He almost heard Liam’s tread on the weathered planking. The priest had gone and the informer had come back into the room.

  ‘What will you do?’

  Michael didn’t reply.

  ‘You’ll stiff him, won’t you?’ Liam knew the argot.

  Michael’s stomach turned. The priest had done Eugene’s bidding: a Brit who dealt with touts had been told a secret worth dying for. Néall Ó Mórdha was the stumbling block to any peace process. He would never abandon the armed struggle. He’d be alone in Donegal next week, Wednesday night.