The Discourtesy of Death

by William Brodrick

  Of course, there’d been no marriage. Church or civil. Peter – rightly – wouldn’t take vows or enter a civil contract inconsistent with his beliefs. But right from the word go, he’d protected Jenny financially, placing all the main assets in her name. House, car, even the contents of the house. That was his avowal of trust and commitment. His only property rights were set out in Jenny’s will.

  ‘Till death us do part,’ observed Mitch.

  ‘Absolutely.’ The doctor flicked a crisp, brown leaf off the table.

  ‘The career in ballet,’ invited Mitch. ‘She just let it go?’

  ‘Sometimes the big decisions make themselves.’ Doctor Goodwin glanced at his questioner. ‘Jenny had become a mother. Suddenly, without time to think or choose, she had this little boy in her hands. But make no mistake about this: even though she’d lived and breathed for dancing, she wanted this child and all he represented. And as the years went by, though she didn’t dance, I got the impression she was grateful; thankful for this very different life that had come with the birth of her son. She’d been surprised by contentment.’ Doctor Goodwin paused reflectively. ‘And, I’m sorry to say, distress.’

  According to Emma – who’d told Helen – problems began to surface between Peter and Jenny within a year of Timothy’s birth. The age gap needn’t have been an issue, of course, but it was. Jenny was still very young, still growing up; whereas Peter was settled, mature, and knew his mind. There was a profound imbalance of experience. They were not equals – and couldn’t be. Before she could assert herself, Jenny had yet to catch up and become who she might be. But there was also the sheer intellectual disparity between them. Jenny wasn’t especially interested in the French Eighteenth-Century Argument. Or the English one. She listened to Peter’s valiant attempt to explain Kant’s Categorical Imperative, but had to cut him short to change Timothy’s nappy. Jenny had more important things to do. More pressing, at least.

  ‘So Peter found other company.’ The phrase was laden with meaning. ‘At the same time his media career was taking off and he was very much in demand, very much appreciated, and very much at home … when away from home.’

  Some women – Doctor Goodwin supposed – can tolerate the affairs of their partner. They can even be an agreed course of diversion. But Jenny wasn’t like that; and parallel relationships, however fleeting, had never been canvassed as part of the balance of things. But this was the central problem: nothing had been canvassed or agreed. They’d been bound together by Timothy’s birth and were now trying to learn about each other and find an agreed way forward.

  ‘My view is that Peter simply lost sight of Jenny,’ said Doctor Goodwin. ‘He could no longer see the qualities that had once attracted him. She was no longer the thin, haunting beauty he’d met in a wine bar off Soho. He wasn’t interested in playgroup gossip and the tensions that come with relationships determined by children. He bought a flat in London because of his media commitments. Couldn’t make it home, especially if he was on Newsnight. In effect there was a separation, though it was never decided, never named, and was, I can assure you, the last thing Jenny wanted.’

  ‘And what of Timothy?’ asked Anselm.

  ‘Well, there’s a curious twist to the story. Because of Peter’s absence, Timothy became very close to his mother. And she to him. They were … friends. And because of the strength of this bond, I don’t think Timothy quite noticed that his father was busy elsewhere. If anything, he was proud of him … this man who was always on the radio and television with his face peering out of magazines and newspapers. The person who really lost out, of course, was Peter. He wasn’t there for Timothy in those very early years. He didn’t watch him slowly grow. He regrets that now, I suspect.’

  For Michael and Emma, continued Doctor Goodwin, it was very difficult. They could only watch the years unfold. Emma was devastated. She saw Jenny lose her dancing career only to find herself alone while Peter stimulated some television producer’s assistant in White City (her phrasing). She found fault with all he did, especially his parenting after the accident, which set her apart – strangely – from Jenny. For throughout her ordeal – this sustained rejection – Jenny remained steadfast … waiting for Peter to come home.

  ‘And Michael?’ asked Anselm, from afar, polishing his glasses on his scapular.

  ‘He bottled it up. Silence was the price he paid for staying close to Jenny’s hand. He moved quietly across the room, offering fresh coffee.’

  Inwardly boiling, outwardly cold, thought Anselm. Baked Alaska the wrong way round.

  They ambled down a lane flanked by trees coming presently to a church of flint. Sheep were grazing in distant fields. Scattered headstones leaned in various directions as if to resist the wind. One of them was upright, still strong. Purple tulips stood in a vase beneath an inscription:

  Jennifer Goodwin

  1977–2008

  Dance, dance wherever you may be

  The doctor’s voice came very low. He was harrowed, as if he could see his god-daughter’s upturned face: ‘I was in Bristol at the time of the accident. I came to see her. And she just said, “God has left me.” She was in bed staring down at her legs. There was going to be no cure for the lame. No miracle on the Sabbath. All I could do was listen.’

  He reached inside his jacket pocket and he took out the precious envelope. Giving it to Anselm, he said: ‘I went to Zimbabwe ten days later. I wrote to her every week and never got a reply. It was only after I came back to Long Melford that she put pen to paper. It’s as though she was resuming the correspondence that had never taken place, referring back to my letters of encouragement. By this stage, she’d been diagnosed with bowel cancer. She’d been given a year to live. Five months had gone.’

  Anselm removed the letter. Mitch came close so that he, too, might read Jennifer’s message. The writing was small and elegant. There was no ‘Dear Uncle Nigel’. She’d written directly from her concerns:

  I cannot walk. I have cancer. I am going to die.

  I’ve decided to stay at home.

  I won’t have all those tubes and medicines.

  I won’t have different nurses holding my hand.

  I won’t be on the agenda when the night shift go home and the day shift turn up.

  I might be alone.

  It could be painful.

  I’ll be very frightened. I’m frightened already.

  I might hang around on the edge of living, held down by this body of mine that doesn’t work.

  Things couldn’t be much worse.

  You gave me the strength to write those words. You taught me not to be ashamed of saying that things are bad and awful, when they are. You said there’s a liberty in all honesty. You said, by the same token, that I should never give up on surprises. Well, as the end nears, I thought we might talk about that.

  Anselm slowly folded up the letter.

  Taking it back, Doctor Goodwin took a step towards him and said, his voice shaking: ‘I never found out what she wanted to say. The letter turned up the morning after she died. It had been written a couple of days earlier. When I saw her for the last time, on her birthday, she gave no clue about what she wanted to say. It was obviously going to be something very private. The fact is, she died that night. Seven months of projected life had vanished.’

  A terrible dark clarity lay between Doctor Goodwin and Anselm. Mitch was standing apart now, head down. The family history was over and the doctor’s energy was back, bristling with grief and confidence: ‘After the accident, Peter lost everything he’d worked for, everything he’d enjoyed,’ said Doctor Goodwin. ‘He couldn’t stay in London any more. He couldn’t take that invitation to speak at the University of Milan. He wasn’t free for Have I Got News for You. In a way, his life ended. He was as stranded as Jenny, only he could still move about. He was trapped in the house staring at a future he hadn’t chosen and didn’t want. This is the critical turning point for everyone: what do you do, faced with the loss of what once gave me
aning to your life? Do you accept it or do you hit out? What was Peter’s response? Emma’s letters to Zimbabwe told the story. He refused all help. Left his friends in London. Pushed Jenny’s friends out of the picture. Slowly and carefully he narrowed down her world until it was just the two of them. He was planning to kill her.’ Doctor Goodwin turned to Anselm. ‘We didn’t see what he was doing at the time. All we saw was Jenny in the sitting room, alone with Peter … where he could say and do what he liked.’

  Anselm looked at the tulips by the grave. Their purple heads were drooping. ‘Was there a gathering for Jenny’s birthday?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ replied Doctor Goodwin, with feeling. ‘Peter called a meeting beforehand. I couldn’t make it. But Helen went. He said he wanted to give her a special night. They discussed how best to do it and everyone agreed to bring something. He’d got the family together so they could see her for one last time … that’s what he was doing.’

  ‘Who was present at the party?’

  ‘Peter, Michael, Emma, Helen and myself … and Vincent Cooper, he dropped in and dropped out when no one else was there.’

  Anselm made a querying look.

  ‘A friend of Peter’s. Introduced him to Jenny. Emma couldn’t stand him.’

  ‘Do you have his address?’

  ‘No … but he manages a specialist garage in Newmarket. Classic cars.’

  ‘Six people, then. And you’re sure no one else came to see her?’

  ‘Yes. I asked Timothy … very carefully.’

  ‘Could you draw up a chronology for me?’ asked Anselm, coldly. ‘Leave aside the conclusion you’ve reached about Peter and simply put down who saw Jenny when. I want to know who spent time with her alone … even for a matter of minutes.’

  Doctor Goodwin’s expression showed he thought the exercise professional but pointless. He took out his diary and jotted down Larkwood’s fax number.

  ‘Ask yourself,’ he said, with a click from the ballpoint pen. ‘Why did Peter lose his head in Manchester? He found out what happens when you break the biggest convention of them all.’

  As the Land Rover trundled out of Long Melford, Mitch said, ‘The GP was something of a father figure.’

  ‘Yes, I noted that, too.’

  ‘So we see him next?’

  ‘No.’

  Doctor Ingleby had to be at the heart of the matter. He was close to Peter and he had treated Jenny. If anyone knew the truth, it was him. Which is why Anselm didn’t want to meet him until he was better prepared; armed, hopefully with information that would help him crack open any shell of secrecy.

  ‘Tomorrow we go to Newmarket,’ he said. ‘We go to the man who started the ball rolling between Jenny and Peter.’

  Mitch said he’d trace the address and … but Anselm drifted away, towards the last written words of Jennifer Henderson. She seemed to be whispering from the grave, telling him again and again that she’d kept waiting for a surprise. She’d held on while her body gave out.

  After Vespers that evening Anselm grabbed Larkwood’s archivist by the elbow.

  ‘Could you do some research for me?’

  Bede seemed to increase in size and get redder.

  ‘On what subject?’

  ‘The Force Research Unit. A part of British Military Intelligence. Operated out of Northern Ireland during the Troubles.’

  17

  The sun rose cold and determined, bringing little assurance of any future warmth. Under its indifferent gaze, Michael walked out of Southwold. His mind blank, void of thought or memory, he came to the mouth of the River Blyth, where he mooched around the fishing boats and wooden buildings that sold the night’s catch. Afterwards, he took the rowing boat ferry to Walberswick, the village where he’d urged Jenny to go back to dancing. He followed the dunes inland and arrived, finally, at the place where he’d stood with his daughter facing the vast expanse of shivering marshland and heath. He sucked a sherbet lemon. It was viciously sharp. His eyes watered and he could no longer see anything clearly. He almost felt Jenny’s hand in his.

  ‘You’re a dancer,’ said Michael. ‘So dance.’

  ‘I can’t remember how.’

  ‘Learn again.’

  ‘You’ve forgotten what it took out of me, Dad. Remember Semi-detached wiping the sweat off my legs with a box full of tissues? The injuries … the swollen knees and ankles? I couldn’t go through all that again.’

  Michael turned to his daughter. Her lank hair was pulled tight off her face, as she used to wear it when practising her routines. But now the explanation was carelessness. She looked old, though she was still young. Twenty-nine. She’d lost the glow of expectation that had once made her run rather than walk. She’d been battling to find a foothold in Peter’s world for too many years. Only they didn’t talk about Peter. Or his interesting friends. Or the dalliances. They were both loyal.

  ‘I daren’t try,’ she said, without returning her father’s gaze. She was drinking in the loneliness of Tinker’s Marshes. Birds darted just above the ragged stubble of reeds and winter grass.

  ‘What have you to lose?’

  ‘Height,’ she laughed, ironically. ‘I won’t be able to get these hooves off the ground.’

  ‘Then fly low, Jenny. You can still fly low.’

  With money from her parents, Jenny opened a small dance school in Sudbury. ‘School’ was a somewhat grandiose term for the upstairs floor of an abandoned bus station. But the premises enjoyed a convenient location and the tuition on offer came from a winner of the Prix de Lausanne and one-time member of the Royal Ballet. A trickle of children became a respectable flow. Within three months, Jenny had made links with local schools and an amateur brass band. And then, by chance, Vincent Cooper came back into her life.

  Cooper had been to the same school as Peter. He’d gone into modern dance and found regular work on the West End theatre circuit. Jenny had met him after a performance of Cats in a wine bar off Soho, the fateful and future introduction to Peter being born over a glass of Bordeaux. Going by those light-hearted remarks that disclose painful truths, it seemed that Cooper had been drawn to Jenny but had kept his distance because he was so much older, which had made Peter’s sweeping entrance into Jenny’s life all the more poignant. The man who would have protected Jenny had honourably stood back, unaware that by so doing, he’d left her exposed to the whims of a joyrider. Michael hadn’t met Cooper often, but when he had done, he’d sensed guilt and loss in his eyes. But that was all in the past. Tired of city life, Cooper had quit London for Sudbury, finding work as a dance therapist with a mental health charity. In his spare time he’d restored other people’s classic cars. But then he’d bumped into Jenny. He’d offered to help for nothing.

  ‘You needn’t turn up every day, Dad,’ scolded Jenny, one Saturday morning.

  Jenny glanced at Cooper who was limbering up in one of those leotards that had never been worn by anyone in the Royal Anglian Regiment, save predecessors in title during the war when Suffolk’s sons were compelled to throw a cabaret in the absence of women.

  ‘I’m fine now,’ she added, sincerely, reaching for his hand and finding his little finger. ‘You can go. I’m having lunch with Vincent …’

  Michael didn’t mind the gentle push. He ambled out of the old bus station as he’d once ambled out of Covent Garden. This was the role of the father … to usher his child from one room to the next, to help them make the great transitions, to be there, by their side, right to the end of each new departure.

  ‘You’re a good father,’ said Emma, chiding. ‘Me? I’d pour the coffee over Peter’s head. And as for that Cooper, dear God, he’s got a lot to answer for. He knew what Peter was like.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, darling,’ replied Michael. ‘No one is responsible for someone else … for what they do, for the choices they make, for what then happens. And he cares for Jenny. Always has done.’

  ‘He should have warned her, then.’

  Despite Jenny’s growing independence, Mich
ael still made fugitive visits to the school, but within minutes of his arrival, she nudged him away. She was up to something. He’d find out, she said. You’re in for a surprise, he told himself. Once, when leaving, Semi-detached arrived, striding past him as if she was late for a meeting with one of the Romanovs, an heir to the lost crown.

  ‘Nothing would surprise me,’ said Emma, serving a Marks and Spencer chicken Kiev. ‘I’m preparing myself for the worst.’

  The worst happened three months later. Michael and Emma were sitting in the front row, with Timothy sandwiched between them. Peter couldn’t make it. He was playing to the gallery on Question Time and, no doubt, would afterwards be playing the field or having a Scotch with the presenter. Jenny had booked a church hall with a stage. The Sudbury Brass Band had been retained. Semi-detached stood in the wings, severe, demanding and proud. After the young dancers had shown what they’d learned, Jenny came onstage, cheeks flushed, hair drawn tightly back, her eyes dark-rimmed and blazing. Funnily enough, the overstated make-up stripped her bare of any defences. The brutal contrast in shade magnified her vulnerability, revealing Jenny for who she was behind the day-to-day endurance: someone sad; someone faithful.

  ‘And now, a little surprise,’ she said, voice wavering.

  You’d have thought she was standing before the judges in Lausanne. Two minutes later, Jenny flew right off the platform into the trumpet section. The kids were stunned.

  Michael wiped his cheeks. That sherbet lemon had really pricked his eyes. He’d lost his vision. But now everything was coming back into focus. He looked around at the river and marshland. There were old wooden row boats beached on the orange silt. The heath towards Squire’s Hill was a cold, trembling green. The sky was vast with kinks of cloud like curled locks on the head of a sleeping child. The world, he thought, is a very beautiful place. But what madness had entered Jenny’s mind? She’d returned to the dance that had won her the Gold Medal in the Théâtre de Beaulieu when she was seventeen years old. Semi-detached had helped, scaling down the choreography to bring most of the steps within reach. But not all. There’d been one – just one – that had sent Jenny into a spin.