The One and Only

by Francis King

  I nod.

  ‘These are things which few geneticists dare to say except among themselves. Intelligence is inherited, homosexuality is inherited, a propensity to crime is inherited. We are all moving in predestined grooves – trams, not buses! But that’s a truth which even geneticists refuse to face. Have you heard of Professor Kline, Professor Paul Kline of Exeter University? No, of course you haven’t! Well, in a recent book of his, with the title Intelligence: The Psychometric View, he recommends, actually recommends, that scientists should sacrifice the interests of objective truth to what he calls ‘‘the humaneness of the person’’! I ask you!’ Suddenly vehement, he leans across to me. ‘If a scientist doesn’t live for the objective truth, then he should not be living at all. What a fool!’

  ‘The humaneness of the person must be important too.’

  ‘Not as important as the truth. Not for me at least. I once gave a lecture in New York in which I pointed out that, in objective, totally objective, intelligence tests, black Americans score some twenty per cent less than white ones. You can imagine the stink! Abusive letters. Threats to kill me even. A boycott by my students. That’s why I’m now back here, instead of being over there. There are certain truths which are now, literally, unspeakable.’

  He stares across at me, and with difficulty I stare back. Then I ask: ‘What has all this got to do with me?’

  ‘Well … Your case has always interested me. It struck me from the beginning – when you went, well, berserk and did something so horrendous, so unbelievable, so totally out of keeping with your character as everyone had known it – that this was a case not of nurture but of nature being responsible …’ He holds out the packet of ham and, when I shake my head impatiently, says: ‘ No? Are you sure?’ Then he goes on: ‘Your family has a long history of irrationality and violence. Hasn’t it? On both sides. Your mother had those rages, when she would suddenly begin hurling plates and vases and anything else to hand. Her grandfather was that general who ordered the Bhopal massacre and was never subsequently prepared to admit he had done anything reprehensible in causing the deaths of – what? – three hundred or so largely innocent people. Your mother’s cousin went to prison for that vicious assault – not the first – on a policeman when he was drunk. Then there was your father. Suicide – almost everyone now agrees – is an act of aggression. Short of killing someone else, there is no more aggressive action. Your father might have killed your mother. Instead, he killed himself. I find all this fascinating. So, you see, I felt that your story – and the story of your family – was highly relevant to the thesis of my book.’

  I stare at him with, yes, a literally murderous hatred. Then I say: ‘But you know – you must know – that if it hadn’t been for you, I’d never have …’

  ‘Oh, come on! Come on!’ He bursts into laughter. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘It was you who put the idea into my head. You – you – inspired me to do it.’

  ‘I?’ He raises his hand to his chest and taps on it with a forefinger. ‘I? What the hell do you mean?’

  ‘You know what I mean. You yourself made those two tries.’

  He shakes his head. ‘Sorry. I’m not following you.’

  ‘The accident to the car. Ma’s illness on the train.’

  ‘You don’t think …?’ His incredulity seems to be wholly genuine. ‘I had nothing, nothing whatever, to do with either of those things … Yes, I know we talked of bumping her off. But that was a joke. A joke between silly schoolboys. For God’s sake, that was a joke!’

  ‘It wasn’t a joke to me.’

  ‘You mean you seriously thought …?’

  I do not answer.

  ‘Incredible!’

  ‘In a strange way – when I killed her …’ I am going to say: I killed her for you. But I shake my head, waving a hand in front of it, as though some fly were annoying me with its buzzing.

  ‘If I’d inspired you – as you put it – surely you’d have been a little more careful of the method you chose? No? When we used to joke like that about bumping her off, we were always thinking of foolproof methods. Remember? Foolproof. Insulin. Oxalic acid. A faked fall. Your method was hardly foolproof.’ He laughs. ‘You couldn’t have made more sure that you were caught red-handed. Literally,’ he adds with a grin. ‘And that was the saving of you. If it had all been premeditated – well, things would have been far less easy for you. Who would then have believed that you’d lost your marbles?’

  I close my eyes. I am dazed. I don’t know what to think. If it hadn’t been for him, then I’d never have killed Ma: that is all I know.

  I push back my chair. I have a sudden feeling that I am going to vomit. Then I say: ‘Bob … you were once my closest friend. Do something for me. Please. Please!’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ He pours some more wine into my glass. ‘ Well?’

  ‘Cut all that out. All that about me. It’s not necessary. It’s not essential.’

  Slowly he shakes his head, smiling as he does so. ‘Sorry. No can do. I’ve explained to you. It’s – it’s an integral part of the book.’

  ‘Not for me. Not just for me. For Noreen.’

  ‘Why should I do anything for Noreen?’ His dismissiveness is brutal. ‘I hardly know her. She hates my guts.’

  ‘Because she’s ill, very ill. A lot of publicity would kill her.’

  Again he shakes his head, with that same rueful smile. ‘No can do.’

  Without realising it, I put my hand out to the rusty bread-knife and pick it up.

  He looks down at the knife. He is not in the least alarmed. ‘Are you planning to stab me too?’

  Was I? Yes, for a moment I was. I put down the knife.

  ‘Please,’ I say. ‘For the sake of our friendship.’

  He considers. Then he says: ‘ For the sake of our friendship?’ He pushes back his chair, perfunctorily wipes his mouth on his paper napkin, gets to his feet. ‘All right. I’ll make a bargain with you. I’ll do what you ask for the sake of our friendship if, in return – for the sake of our friendship – you’ll do something for me.’

  I stare at him in bewilderment and a kind of premonitory dread. ‘What?’ I say. ‘ What do you want?’

  ‘Come.’ He beckons to me. ‘ Come!’

  I get to my feet and follow him, still with that bewilderment and premonitory dread, out of the kitchen and down the corridor and up the wide stairs. We go into a large, damp bedroom, with clothes and newspapers and dirty cups and glasses scattered here and there. There is a large brass bed, with its sheet and single blanket twisted and grey. Some pyjamas have been tossed across it.

  He says: ‘Undress.’

  I stare at him in amazement.

  Quietly he repeats: ‘ Undress.’

  I have hoped all along and feared all along and known all along that one day this will happen. With a sigh, I begin to take off my clothes, slowly, as though it were some ritual, long forgotten and now being resuscitated.

  He is taking off his clothes. Ma always used to remark on the grubbiness of his underclothes. They are grubby now.

  He puts his arms around me and then we tumble on to the soiled, unmade bed, in which no doubt he and his Laura always sleep together.

  But now, as his arms tighten around me and I feel his mouth on mine, the bed is not theirs but Ma’s, with its pink sheets and pillows and its darker pink damask silk bed-cover; and that potent smell is not a smell of wine, cigarettes and stale sweat but hers, uniquely, intoxicatingly hers, lemony, sharp, slightly peppery; and we ourselves are not two elderly men but two young boys, greedy, ardent, exhilarated, each The One and Only for the other …

  ‘Give me the typescript.’

  I go to the chair where he has left it and hand it to him. He walks down the corridor to the kitchen and I follow after. He pulls open the ancient Esso stove and chucks in the thick wad of paper. But it refuses to ignite. ‘Oh, God!’he exclaims. ‘I think I’ve let it go out. Laura will be furious with me.
She’s coming back this evening. I’ll leave the damper open. Let’s see what happens.’ He raises a hand to his forehead, rubs it. ‘Do you remember … in Bellagio … those roses I gave your mother … in the incinerator …?’ Then he laughs: ‘Anyway’ – he points to the typescript on top of the clinkers – ‘this was only a symbolic gesture. I have other copies.’ He stoops and peers up into my face. He knows what I am thinking and he is only amused, not hurt or annoyed. ‘No.

  Don’t worry. I’m not planning to break my word. A bargain is a bargain, after all. I’m going to remove all trace of you.’

  I wish that I could remove all trace of him. But now I know that I never can.

  Chapter Forty Three

  On the journey home, I keep repeating to myself, as though I were repeating it to Noreen: ‘I did it to save you. I had to do it. Otherwise the book would have killed you.’

  But I know that that is not why I did it. When he said goodbye to me, by the front door, he suddenly once again put both arms around me, and pressed his lips to mine. Then, with a laugh, he released me: ‘Thoughts have power. Dreams have power. Wishes have power,’ he whispered. Then he added: ‘Time regained.’

  Yes, on that rumpled, grimy bed, time was regained for me. From one Black Box I had passed, without knowing it, into another, larger Black Box, with Noreen as my fellow prisoner – or do I mean my gaoler? Now, giddily disorientated, I am free of both Black Boxes and am out in the open.

  I leave the car not in the garage but out in the street, hoping that no traffic warden will see it. Then I open the front door and call: ‘ Noreen! Noreen!’

  No answer comes.

  ‘Noreen!’

  Then I race up the stairs.

  She is lying diagonally across the bed, with her knees drawn up and a hand under one cheek. At first I think that she is only asleep. Then I see the patch of dried blood on the pillow, just below her mouth.

  As I move slowly towards her, with a mingling of horror and dread, I tread on something.

  It is the glitterwax rose, which I made for her so many years ago. It must have fallen from her hand at the moment when she died.

  Or, at least, that is what I want to think and try to think.

  Copyright

  First published in 1994 by Constable

  This edition published 2013 by Bello

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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  ISBN 978-1-4472-5850-6 EPUB

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  Copyright © Francis King, 1994

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