by Maynard Sims
‘Yes I’ve smelt it, ever since the funeral. Do you think it strange that he was holding a rosary when they found him?’
Susan poured more tea into their cups and nibbled on a biscuit, careful not to let crumbs defile her artfully made-up lips.
‘Was he converting?’
‘To what?’
‘The rosary is used by the Roman Catholics, isn’t it? What with the incense. Was he having a mid-life crisis? Finding religion?’
Grace leaned her elbows on the table. Even in the sunlight, the metal still felt cold to the touch. At the edge of the lawn, a squirrel was scampering over the grass.
‘He looks busy.’
Mother and daughter turned as one at the sound of the male voice. It was Martin. He greeted both of them warmly, and then took a seat between them.
‘How have you been, Grace?’
Susan replied for her. ‘We’ve just been discussing how badly she is doing, as a matter of fact.’
Martin looked distressed. ‘Well, I don’t want to add to your problems.’
‘Nothing you could say could make it worse,’ Grace said. ‘In fact, you may have some answers.’
Susan was sniffing Martin’s neck. ‘That’s the same aftershave Simon used to wear,’ she said.
Martin recoiled as if she had hit him. ‘I never wear aftershave, or any of that muck. Funny you say that, though. He was always coated in the stuff; we used to tease him about it at the yard. I’ve smelt it for days now.’
‘Did he ever mention a woman called Charlotte Sanders?’ Grace said.
Martin choked on his tea. ‘Where did you hear that name?’
Susan all but pounced. ‘So you do know her.’
‘A man came to see me,’ Martin said. ‘This morning. Bold as brass, looking around the lorries and the stock. When I challenged him, he told me he’s working on the authority of the new co-owner. Charlotte Sanders, he said. She’s inherited Simon’s share. Who the hell is she?’
‘That’s what I intend to find out,’ Grace said.
***
Simon kept a paper diary as well as an electronic one. Which was just as well, because she soon discovered that the husband she thought she had known so well was extremely security-conscious with his life. All his computer and mobile device access was password-protected. Try as she might, with all permutations of possible password codes, she couldn’t get through.
She resorted to his paper diary. It was up to date. Instinctively she turned to the date of his death. She didn’t quite know what she expected to see, but there was no entry that read ‘Kill myself’.
She trawled through the routine entries. Work and personal life was mixed in the same pages, typical of the way his mind operated. There were birthdays, delivery dates, appointments for dentists and for the tax man.
Beginning a couple of months ago, there were entries for Father. Both Simon’s parents were dead, so it wasn’t his own father. Then, usually on the same day, there were the initials CS. It could only be her.
The landline telephone on the desk in his study, where she was working, rang. She nearly jumped out of her skin with the surprise. Very few people used the telephone these days, preferring the mobile or text or email. Impersonal, but quick and convenient.
Grace picked up the cordless phone. ‘Hello?’
‘Grace?’ It was Simon’s voice, but it sounded different. Not so intimate. It was as if someone had heard his voice and was trying it on for size.
‘Who is this?’
‘You know who I am.’
‘I know who it sounds like.’
‘Close enough.’
Then a female voice screamed down the line. ‘Tell her, Simon. Tell the bitch.’
Grace held the phone away from her ear, but she could still hear the loud quarrel that ensued at the other end of the line.
‘He’s leaving you,’ the woman shouted.
‘He’s already gone,’ Grace said into the air.
‘Charlotte, be quiet…’
And the line went dead.
The handset felt heavy, and Grace placed it listlessly on top of the desk.
The diary she had been reading lay closed on the desk. She was certain she had left it open at the page she was looking at. She opened it. Caught between the pages were three soft strands of auburn hair.
From the telephone came the sounds of music. Grace picked it up and cautiously held it to her ear. It sounded like hymns from a church.
***
There was only one Catholic church in the vicinity. It seemed a good place to start.
Grace parked her car outside the gates and walked through. Inside, she was surprised to find a bright and airy modern hall. So very different from the church she had attended for the funeral.
There didn’t seem to be anyone about. She looked around, and eventually she called out. A priest emerged from a side room and apologized for keeping her waiting.
‘How can I help you?’
Now she was here, Grace realised she had no idea what to ask. The priest sensed her uncertainty and kindly beckoned her to sit.
‘You aren’t from this parish?’
‘I live locally,’ she said. ‘But no, I don’t come here, I don’t worship.’
The priest was patient.
Eventually Grace composed herself. ‘Do they call you Father?’
He nodded. He must have been in his sixties, perhaps older. ‘Father Kenning. That’s right.’
Grace wondered if the entry in Simon’s diary was a reference to this man. ‘Do you know my husband… my late husband? Simon Bliss?’
An expression of sadness settled over the old man’s face. ‘A troubled soul.’
‘How did you know him?’
Kenning considered his response before he spoke. He had no wish to add to this woman’s grief. At the same time he had a duty of honesty. ‘He was seeing me for a short time. It was about the possibility of conversion. To the Catholic faith.’
An intense stench of incense suddenly pervaded Grace’s nostrils. She coughed, and Kenning mistook her discomfort for the emotions of the bereaved. ‘I advised against it.’
‘You know he took his own life?’
Kenning nodded gravely.
‘He was holding a rosary in one hand.’
‘The rosary comes from the Latin rosarium, which means the Crown of Roses or possibly the garland of roses. It is a form of prayer we use. The beads help us recite the prayers that are arranged in sets of ten Hail Marys preceded by one Lord’s Prayer and followed by one Glory Be to the Father. Your husband wasn’t anywhere near that advanced, and I doubt he ever would have been.’
‘So why was he holding the beads?’
Kenning sighed so deeply that Grace thought at first that he was struggling to breathe. The incense smell had permeated through the air, although it seemed to be concentrated where she sat.
‘I believe they were placed into his hands by someone else.’
‘Who?’ Grace said, although she believed she knew what name he would say.
‘It’s impossible. Every fibre of my being, of my belief, tells me it can’t be so, and yet.’
‘Yet what?’
‘Do you realise you have a thick set of auburn hair draped over your shoulder?’
***
Outside the church, as she walked to her car, Grace felt confusion as a counterpoint to her anger. If Simon had been having an affair, they could have got through his deception, couldn’t they? It wouldn’t have been easy, but she hoped she would have had the reserves of strength, and of love, to withstand the betrayal.
But he hadn’t given her the opportunity to find out. She had agreed to come back to the church later in the day, with her family.
Leaning against her car, as casually as could be, was the man from the church.
She hesitated a second, and then strode purposefully towards him.
The closer she got, the m
ore relaxed the man seemed to be.
As she drew nearer, she realised with a shock that he was dressed in one of Simon’s suits. The tie looked familiar, as well.
As she got close enough to reach out and touch him, if she wanted to, she smelled the incriminating cologne, the brand Simon had insisted was ‘his smell’.
‘Who are you?’ Grace said.
The man slouched from the car, as if greeting an old friend. He smiled, and Grace would have been lying if she didn’t recognise it as a reflection of her husband’s lopsided smile.
‘Don’t you know me?’
The voice was Simon’s, but about a beat behind.
‘I don’t know you. My husband is dead.’
‘You knew him, though, didn’t you, Grace. Didn’t you? You didn’t?’
Grace reached forward and grasped the man’s arm. It felt insubstantial. She wrenched his body away from the car, opened the door, and scrambled inside. She started the engine.
When she looked out of the window, the man had gone.
***
When they were all seated around the scratched table at the rectory, Father Kenning spoke. Grace, Susan and Martin had debated about whether Molly should be included, but decided it was better if she was there. Whatever was said, she needed to hear it all. Susan didn’t agree, but for once she was overruled.
‘Simon Bliss was a happily married man. He loved his family, all of you.’
‘Then why was he unfaithful?’
Kenning continued as if Susan hadn’t interrupted.
‘At a fundraising event, one of his lorries was commissioned to make a delivery. The driver was sick and Simon took on the job.’
‘I remember that,’ Martin said. ‘He missed an afternoon’s fishing with me.’
‘There he met Charlotte Sanders. Or so he thought.’
‘So, he was having an affair?’ Grace said.
Kenning stood and removed an old and dusty-looking book from a shelf. He placed the book on the table and searched inside for an entry.
‘Here it is.’ He pointed with one very wrinkled finger. It was a registry of births and deaths. Under a date in 1865 was recorded the death ‘by her own hand’ of one Charlotte Sanders.
‘That can’t be her.’ Susan snorted her disbelief.
‘She wouldn’t have been buried in consecrated ground,’ Kenning said.
At that moment a curtain of auburn hair, as if a sheet was being dropped from the ceiling, descended over them all.
Most of them stood, struggling to extricate themselves from the sweet-smelling hair.
And then it was gone.
Kenning tried to make light of it, but was as troubled as everyone else.
‘When she died, of course, the Church of England was the recognised faith of the country. My predecessor researched her story, as part of a book I believe he intended to write. He never did.
‘Charlotte Sanders did not pass peacefully. There have been stories, myths if you like, about her since her death. What my predecessor discovered was a series of men to whom she seems to have attached herself. Each went through the early stages of conversion; none completed the process.
‘Most of them died too young, many by suicide.’
Susan gripped Grace’s hand and the look on her face was as close to comfort as Grace could recall having seen from her.
Kenning shut the book with a loud snap.
‘In each case, the family of the deceased reported seeing a man – a stranger, yet one who seemed oddly familiar.’
‘There was a man at the funeral who said he was Daddy,’ Molly said.
‘The man seems to be an embodiment of the image of the deceased that Charlotte projects. She uses this man, controls him almost, as a means of constructing a life for herself that was denied her.’
***
As they said goodnight to Kenning, Grace looked around the car park for him.
He stood by the entrance, half-hidden behind a hedge of privet.
She walked towards him, and he made no attempt to move away.
When she was close enough so he could hear her words, she said, 'You’re not Simon. Not the man I knew.'
'I could have been.'
'I may not have known you, but I loved the man I lived with, and I always will.'
A voice behind her called out, 'Grace, are you coming?' When she looked across she saw that it was Martin. Susan and Molly were already in the car, waiting.
Grace turned back to the hedge by the entrance.
The man had gone. A distinctive aroma of strong cologne remained.
On the hedge, fluttering at her as if imploring fingers, was a lock of auburn hair.
AND IT GOES LIKE THIS
Many clubs will come alive at night. The noise, the chatter of excited voices, music, the sounds of people determined to enjoy themselves. Glasses clink as drinks are bought, consumed, and a fresh trail leads back to the bar. Men lean into women to shout above the loudness, to voice their thoughts into welcoming ears. Women lean forward as if eager to hear what their partner has to say, even if most of what is said gets drowned out by swirls of cacophonic shrills, shouts and laughter.
Robbie Press didn’t enjoy the Roadside Club much these days, but then, there was an increasing lack of enjoyment to most of his existence. At night, three evenings a week, he would perform his comedy routine, starting at ten and ending when the catcalls and heckling grew more amusing than his jokes. His act was getting shorter as each year passed by.
By day, the club was like an elderly woman first thing in the morning: presentable when dressed for the evening, but caught as a rabbit in headlights in the glare of sunlight. The outside of the club was in dire need of a coat of paint, the dull green dripping off the sills. The windows looked out into the side street in which the club was located, with the numb stare of the terminally ill.
Inside the warped front door, the worn red carpet was flecked with stains from spilled drinks and unidentified bodily fluids. The lobby smelled of disinfectant that was fighting a losing battle against the stench of sweat, alcohol and fatigue. The main room was laid out with tables and chairs in a misguided attempt to recreate a Vegas showroom. Under the harsh strip lights of day lay revealed the cheap and gaudy truth behind the nightly illusion. Sticky rings on table tops from wet glasses, dust and debris beneath grimy chairs. The thick red curtain across the stage, that sagged where it should have held firm, was a pale imitation of colour.
‘It wasn’t always like this,’ Robbie said.
The barman cleaning the glasses wasn’t really listening; he’d heard it all before. Working at the bar was the only job he’d been able to get since coming over from Romania. Doru thought this sad little man wasn’t very amusing when he was on stage, but then, his grasp of the English language wasn’t strong yet.
‘Used to be a classy place. You could hear a pin drop when I was performing.’
Doru shrugged; he didn’t know if that was good or not, and said, ‘You want a whisky?’
Robbie made a show of looking at his watch for a few long, drawn-out seconds. ‘Sure, why not. I’m not on for hours yet.’
His second performance of the week wasn’t until gone nine that night, and, with it barely past midday, he had a lot of hours to kill. Terminal boredom was his worst enemy, alongside the booze, and the gambling, and the cheap women; truth was, he had no enemy that was worse than the others – they all held equal sway. If there was one foe that he had never beaten, it was the one that looked back at him from the mirror each morning as he shaved.
As Doru handed the large whisky over to him, Robbie glanced in the smeared mirror behind the bar. The face that looked back was at least thirty years younger than his fifty-six years. Hair longer, darker, swept back from an unlined forehead.
‘I was quite handsome when I was younger,’ he said.
And then the face in the mirror winked at him.
Robbie slammed his gl
ass down on the top of the bar, spilling some of the drink from it.
‘What the–’
‘Whisky no good?’ Doru said.
Robbie wiped his hands over his eyes, dry-washing them, and then looked back at his reflection in the mirror. It was him, his face as it was now. The lines were buried deep, the hair grey and receding faster than the tide from a beach. He wasn’t fat – he didn’t eat enough for that – but the face had sagged from his prime, and his body was out of touch with exercise; if anything, it had started to creak.
He swallowed the whisky in one, and held out the glass for a refill. ‘No, it’s fine. Just someone walked across my grave, that’s all.’
Doru hadn’t heard the phrase before. Perhaps it was one of his jokes, this supposedly funny man. Doru didn’t laugh, just in case it wasn’t a joke. He didn’t laugh much during the full routine at night, either, and that had little to do with his grasp of the language.
Last night had been a rowdy crowd. Robbie hadn’t gone on until ten minutes past ten, and there were a few groups of men in who had spent all evening downing as many drinks as they could manage. Beer, shots to follow, and with a minimum to eat, they were loud and not afraid to make a nuisance of themselves.
Robbie came on with shouts of Get them off. And Here, it’s him off the telly.
The spotlight was blinding; it was always worse after he’d spent the afternoon propped at the bar. His head pounded, but any fears he might have had about forgetting his routine were dispelled by his familiarity with the material. He had been using it for so long now, it was an old friend, his closest, probably his only one.
‘Evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Roadside, arsehole of Essex.’
That always got a few cheap laughs, and the management had grudgingly allowed him to keep it in. He drew a decent crowd, courtesy of his fifteen minutes of television fame, and even if he didn’t, he kept profits up by spending most of his wages on drink.
‘And it goes like this,’ someone shouted from the audience. Laughter followed as others mimicked his catchphrase.
Robbie smiled with good humour, though on the inside he cringed. If he had a pound for every time he’d heard those words parried back at him, well, he wouldn’t be a rich man, but he’d be an extremely drunk one.
