The Discourtesy of Death

by William Brodrick

  ‘And I remembered what my mum had said, that she’d want to go without realising it, after a party …’

  Another gesture.

  ‘And that night … the night of my mum’s birthday … we had a chat, me and my mum.’

  This Anselm did not know. His eyes flickered. What had Jenny said? If Doctor Ingleby’s confession was false, her son had killed her shortly afterwards. Instinctively, he moved along the bench, closer to Timothy, bringing a hushed confidentiality between them. Anselm sensed the darkened room, a low light, the silence from the garden and the distant fields.

  ‘She told me that despite everything, she was contented, but I knew it wasn’t true.’

  But she was, Timothy.

  ‘She told me that she wasn’t worried about the cancer, and I knew that wasn’t true either.’

  It was the truth, Timothy.

  ‘She said that before she died we could talk together and understand what it is to live, but I knew she’d already found her answer, but that she could never tell me.’

  Anselm made no gesture. This was Jenny’s plea to salvage what was left of her life. Her son hadn’t believed her. Anselm gazed upon Timothy with horrified pity.

  ‘She asked me could we travel a journey together … but I knew she didn’t want to do it. She was being brave for me so that I wouldn’t feel upset.’

  No, Timothy. You’re wrong.

  ‘I knew she was accepting the cancer because she had no choice … because my dad couldn’t do what she’d asked. And I understand why, because it’s not very nice, but … I’d heard her ask him … I’d seen her pulling at his hand and crying …’

  Timothy became very quiet. He turned away from Anselm and began to look around, as if noticing his surroundings for the first time: the murmuring hives, the surrounding aspens, the white crosses of dead monks, leaning among the trees like strange markers for those lost in the woods.

  ‘She told me that she’d had a good life,’ said Timothy, his voice subdued and strained. He coughed to ease his throat but then he just let the tears go – fresh tears that no one had ever seen, because no one would have understood his distress … his tortured belief that she didn’t mean it. He’d had to keep them back. ‘My mum’s last words to me were that she’d had a good life … and all because of me.’

  Again he was quiet and then he suddenly turned to face Anselm. His stained face was curiously alight, shining; his wide eyes deep and vulnerable.

  ‘I did it because I loved her,’ he murmured, wanting desperately to be understood. He was speaking from a very dark place in his memory. No one had ever joined him there before. ‘I only did it because I loved my mum … except’ – and he gazed at Anselm with a sad and sunny wonder – ‘it wasn’t me, was it? I didn’t end her life after all.’

  They reached the car park and Anselm saw Peter Henderson peering into the plum trees as if checking for any remaining fruit. There was none. It had all fallen in late summer. He turned to Anselm, with a grateful smile. He’d begun growing a beard. It was silvery, in striking contrast to his black hair. He seemed younger. He was changing his appearance for the new world that had opened out in front of him. He was a different man. Old wine in a new skin.

  ‘I want to thank you for your persistence,’ said Peter Henderson.

  Timothy, a packet of swedgers in his hand, had clambered into an olive-green E-Type Jaguar. The classic car that Anselm had seen in the work bay of Vintage Automotive Services. Peter Henderson had got his wheels back. He’d spoken to Vincent Cooper.

  ‘Except for Michael and I, we’re all talking,’ he said, scratching one cheek in amazement. ‘We’re telling each other how angry we are. It’s good. I can imagine that one day there’ll be different, warmer conversations. We’re all learning.’

  Anselm hoped so, and he nodded to show his confidence.

  ‘I wasn’t there for Timothy’s childhood,’ said Peter Henderson, suddenly, as if they were back on Shingle Street when he’d made a false confession. ‘But I’m going to be there for the youth and the man. I’m going to guide him. Teach him. Lead him. Walk by his side. This is possible because of you.’

  This was the new Peter Henderson: he was reduced, accessible and humble. Anselm couldn’t imagine him being rude on the Moral Maze. He liked him. The nation would, too. But as the sleek Jaguar pulled away, Anselm made a private vow.

  At some point in the future, when the waters were calm, he’d tell Peter Henderson that Jenny had changed her mind. It was the truth given to Anselm by Jenny and it couldn’t be buried. Peter Henderson was a grown man; a skilled and nuanced thinker. He shouldn’t live in ignorance, not of the most vital truth in his personal history. It was necessary that he be told. How else was he to learn that Jenny had been transformed not by a planned death but because of his love for her? She’d wanted him to know this; it had been her last gift to him.

  And then it would be for Peter Henderson to work out the implications of what had happened on the night Jenny died. How his dear friend Bryan had made a merciful mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. And then he would have to make the most significant decision of them all: whether to tell Timothy. Timothy, who once thought that he’d killed his mother.

  And – Anselm was quite sure – he would make the disclosure. Because after a troubled past contaminated by merciful lies and merciful fictions, he’d want his son, now grown, to know the unmerciful truth. He’d want him to understand that killing is always complicated; that people’s preferences about dying complicate matters even more.

  Later that evening Anselm stood patiently by the window in his cell watching the entrance to the Priory. Presently a car arrived. The driver alighted, looked around and then took a track into the darkening trees. Shortly afterwards, another vehicle pulled up. The driver followed the same winding path. Anselm came away from the sill. Opening a drawer, he retrieved the Browning and silencer. He looked at it for a while, finger on the trigger, testing its weight. The thing had nearly killed him. Leaving his cell, he paused in the corridor to lodge the gun behind his belt. It was only on lifting his eyes that he saw the archivist, aghast at the end of the corridor. Ignoring Bede’s open mouth, Anselm nipped past him and went quickly outside.

  51

  Anselm went to the agreed meeting place: Our Lady’s Lake. Michael and Nigel Goodwin were waiting for him, standing far apart like strangers trapped on Holy Island, each of them caught short by the shocking speed of the tide. They were looking in opposite directions, not daring to consider the space between them.

  The water was a troubled mirror of the fading sky. There was no cloud, save a gash of red above the treetops. Centrally placed, surrounded by water, was a statue on a platform of rock. A woman’s arms were lowered, her hands open. Anselm came between the two men and faced the expanse of coloured water. Michael, hunched and broken, came to his right; Nigel, confused and remote, came to his left.

  The family were talking, apparently, mused Anselm. The anger was coming out, at last. But it wasn’t anger that kept these two men at a distance. It was their understanding of conscience, heard or not heard, understood or mistaken. It was Michael’s incomprehensible actions and Nigel’s separation from the obligation to act. They were honourable men separated by experience. And that was the key, thought Anselm, looking at the carved figure on the rock. Nigel, who’d have sailed through that window of the Iranian Embassy without a second thought, had turned to the refinement of thinking; while Michael, like Barth himself, had been obliged to make certain decisions; he’d had to take his beliefs on bridge-building to their proper terminus, only he’d got lost. He’d needed his brother’s compassion and guidance. Instead he’d turned away, distracted by an unimaginable uproar.

  ‘Michael, you are a good man,’ said Anselm. ‘You are a moral man. A civilised man. And you nearly killed me. Speak to your brother. Tell him about the confusion of voices and how you lost your own. Talk to him about the still, small voice; what you heard, what you did and what you wish you h
ad done. Look back on that regret in the light of what you nearly did to Peter Henderson. There’s a truth in there waiting to be found.’

  Michael Goodwin had had the opportunity to reflect since Anselm had last seen him, sharing a pot of tea in the kitchen at Morning Light. Then, in the aftermath of what he’d nearly done, he’d been confused, unable to understand an experience that had overtaken him in the short distance between the door and the sitting room.

  ‘I still don’t know what happened,’ he said, speaking more to Anselm than Nigel. He wasn’t ready yet to take his brother all the way back to that Belfast tenement. To speak of Eugene and Liam and Father Doyle. He first had to share this overwhelming insight that had crashed upon him.

  ‘Twice in my life, I’ve heard a sort of voice,’ said Michael, eyes strained as if he were swimming under water. ‘Inside my head. It called out my name. On both occasions I didn’t want to know what it was going to say. The first time I closed my eyes and fired, the second I ran away like hell. Each time it was like an ambush. Afterwards, when I did try and listen, there was nothing … absolutely nothing … so I thought this voice of mine, this sound in my head, was just my imagination, a fantasy. And then …’

  Michael fell quiet.

  Anselm waited. Nigel looked at his brother, hands joined with distressed understanding.

  ‘And then … in Jenny’s house … I followed the same route I’d taken in Donegal. I was doing it again, following the same pattern, intending to do what I wished I’d done the first time around: silence someone whose death would solve so many problems’ – he paused, squinting at the slash of orange, bright now, above the jagged black treeline – ‘but as I set off down the corridor, I heard myself again’ – Michael suddenly looked at Anselm as if he were haunted – ‘it was my voice, talking to me: “Michael, Michael, Michael …” and this time I couldn’t stop myself listening and it simply said what I’d always known to be true but had run away from, for the sake of Eugene and Liam and all the misery I’d seen in Belfast. It said, “This is wrong” … that’s all, very, very quietly, just as I raised the gun. And I knew it was true … that it was wrong now and it had been wrong then but I couldn’t stop myself. And, you know, it was Peter who once tried to tell me. And I hadn’t been able to listen.’

  Michael had finished: he was staring at the dying light with eyes that ached for the simple days of rough and tumble on the lawn. And this – thought Anselm – is why you could reach Timothy after his mother’s accident: you recognised his early exile from pranks and silly laughter. The days when lemon drops simply tasted bitter.

  ‘Mike, speak to me.’

  It was Nigel, hoarse and demanding. It was the older brother, arriving home to find his little brother devastated by the mess on the floor: broken heirlooms; breakages their parents would never forgive. There’d been an accident.

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘I can’t, Nigel.’

  ‘Tell me about Eugene and Liam, please.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘I’ll understand.’

  ‘I just can’t.

  I’m—’

  ‘You can,’ interposed Anselm. He turned to Michael. ‘You told me. And now try and turn to your family. At Larkwood we call it an “opening of the heart”. It is very painful. But it’s the only way to build relationships with depth.’

  Michael pulled his eyes away from the sky and stared at the shimmering water; but he didn’t speak.

  ‘We’ll go to Harlingen together,’ said Nigel, more ordering than suggesting. ‘We’ll take your car back and stay there for a while. As long as it takes.’

  ‘And when you return,’ said Anselm to Nigel, after a long pause, a pause that expressed Michael’s consent, ‘talk to Peter. Maybe you could help him understand your brother’s desperation, how he could be driven, out of love, disappointment and despair, to a kind of madness. Peter is a changed man. Perhaps now’s the time, at last, to have that “intelligent disagreement over moral questions”. If you can build a bridge to him, then in time maybe everyone else might be able to cross over … even Emma.’

  Ordinarily Anselm would not have been so liberal with his advice. He felt impertinent. But Jenny had asked him to try. And this was his one brief chance.

  ‘There’s one last thing,’ said Anselm.

  He put his hand beneath his scapular and slowly pulled out the Browning.

  Michael turned his whole body to one side, not wanting to see the dreadful thing, not wanting to be harrowed again by the memory of Liam’s young face, his outstretched hand and all the confusion that followed.

  Anselm was about to hurl it in the lake, when Nigel grabbed his arm. He took the gun, walked past Anselm and put his arm around his brother’s shoulders.

  ‘Mike, take it.’

  ‘I can’t, I can’t.’ Michael’s voice was strangled and sobbing.

  ‘You can, Mike, here, take it for the last time.’

  Michael shook his head, his shoulders heaving in a chilling upsurge of grief and regret.

  ‘Do you want me to do it for you?’ asked Nigel, quietly. ‘I’ll throw it, if you like, but you’ve got to watch at least.’

  Michael nodded and turned to the sparkling water, still under his brother’s arm. After a still, charged moment, Nigel tossed the pistol high in the air. It span, black against the sky, turning and turning until, with a short swallowing sound, it vanished for ever.

  52

  Anselm could not forget Doctor Ingleby. He wanted to know the answer to the conundrum: where did the truth lie? With the spoken word, uttered in the ruins of Leiston Abbey, or in the letter written before he’d even got there? The first had been given to Anselm in secret; the second publicly, for the world.

  It was an important question.

  A vital question.

  Because if Doctor Ingleby didn’t kill Jenny, then it was Timothy. And if it was Timothy, then it begged the question as to why Doctor Ingleby would assume responsibility. Either way, one of them had committed murder.

  Reflecting upon the matter during Lauds, Mass, Vespers, Compline and ‘Sailing By’, Anselm found himself drawn repeatedly back to the meal he’d shared with Doctor Ingleby in the former Chapter House. With each recollection, the eating and drinking assumed an increasingly ritual aspect, something to which Anselm had been blind at the time. What had seemed to be an admittedly peculiar picnic became something of a ceremony whose full meaning was known to Doctor Ingleby alone. Driven to understand its significance, and hoping to clear the ambiguity between word and text, Anselm contacted Olivia; and she put him onto Pat Randall, one of the detectives charged with examining the circumstances of the doctor’s death. She even gave him access to the house outside Needham Market. An interesting if puzzling picture had begun to emerge for the investigating officer.

  Doctor Bryan Sheldon Ingleby qualified as a general practitioner in 1968, starting his career at a practice in St John’s Wood, London. On his way to work he’d stumbled on the Beatles preparing to cross Abbey Road – the iconic shot, with Paul McCartney walking barefoot, holding a cigarette in one hand. Doctor Ingleby had held Paul’s shoes and socks, giving him a light just before the Fab Four had walked onto the zebra crossing. John Lennon had wanted him in the picture, leading the way, but for some daft reason Doctor Ingleby had said no. He’d instinctively recoiled from the limelight, and in so doing had lost his place in history. Doctor Ingleby had recounted the story to everyone the police had contacted.

  As it happened, the young Bryan was more of an opera fan. He’d already married the much younger Maxine, a German, who worked in management at Covent Garden. There was some talk among the detectives as to whether Maxine or her husband had ever met Jenny Goodwin while she was based with the Royal Ballet. There was no evidence either way, save that for six months Jenny, Maxine and Bryan had milled about the same building. Perhaps they’d crossed each other in a corridor. It was a tantalising possibility.

  At around the time that Jenn
y had met Peter, Maxine had disclosed to Bryan that she’d been seeing a colleague. Someone well known to him. A close friend, actually. For well over twenty years he’d argued with Bryan about the merits of Sutherland over Callas, Bryan not spotting that Maxine was carrying out a vaguely similar exercise about the men who shared her emotional life. In the fallout Bryan had let Maxine’s lawyers come up with a settlement and, wanting a quick resolution, he’d signed the papers not caring if he’d been taken to the cleaners or not. All he’d wanted was enough capital to buy a small property in rural Suffolk. They’d been childless. And this had been a great pain for him. Maxine had said no. Told him all they needed was each other.

  Motoring towards his own retirement he’d taken over a sole practice in Needham Market. Very quickly his reputation grew. At the time of his death, he had 732 registered patients, many travelling significant distances to see him. All of them knew the Abbey Road story. All said he was like a father to their children. He’d worked for years at the Grove Hospice in Leiston, soon becoming a vigorous and dedicated trustee. By his last will and testament all his assets had gone to the hospice, subject to a proviso that if declined, the RSPCA would become the sole and absolute beneficiary. He’d given his net worth to life, be they human or animal. Tributes had poured into the local press. Opinion was divided upon what he had done.

  Only, of course – thought Anselm – he might not have done it.

  Detective Inspector Randall had been to see the General Medical Council. Doctor Ingleby’s record was clean. Not a single complaint. No investigations, procedures, warnings or disciplinary action of any kind. Nothing. He’d written a number of articles in the Lancet on palliative care and end-of-life issues, and while he’d raised pressing questions about intervention and patient choice (with frequent references to Magellan), there’d been no evidence that Bryan Ingleby was a man who would support or oppose assisted suicide, be it inside a possible law or outside existing legislation. Nothing to explain why he might have cooperated with Jennifer Henderson (in the terms set out in his letter).