Rock Paper Scissors

by Alice Feeney

  By now, the visitors will know that the chapel belonged to Henry and that he is dead. Robin wishes that she could have seen their faces when they found the headstone, but she and Bob were long gone by then. He’s a very friendly and affectionate dog – even if he does bark at the wind occasionally – the kind who trusts everyone.

  It’s cold, even inside the cottage. Robin lights the fire and sits down on the rug next to it, trying to warm her bones. She misses her pipe but that’s gone now, so she opens a packet of jammy dodgers. The dog lies down by her side resting his chin on her legs, staring up at her while she eats, hoping she might drop something. Robin likes to nibble each biscuit, biting off tiny pieces of the outer edges until only the jam centre is left – making the pleasure it brings her last as long as possible.

  Despite sitting so close to the open flames, she can still hardly feel her hands. Her fingers were a rainbow of red and then blue after using them to wipe all that snow off Henry’s headstone. But the visitors never would have found it if she hadn’t, and she needs things to stay on track. There is a reason why she invited them here this weekend, and not any other.

  Robin remembers when Henry died.

  ‘I need you to come.’

  That’s what he said when he called. Not ‘Hello’ or ‘How are you?’ Just five little words. I need you to come. He didn’t need to say where, even though they hadn’t spoken for such a long time. He didn’t need to say why either, but he did.

  ‘I’m ill,’ were the two extra little words offered when she didn’t reply. That turned out to be rather an understatement.

  She knew Henry had sold his London flat by then and was living in his Scottish hideaway full-time. He’d always been a hermit who preferred his own company. What she didn’t expect, was that she would be the one he would call in his hour of need. But then having nobody else was one of the few things they had in common. Writers are capable of creating the most elaborate and popular worlds, sometimes leaving rather small ones for themselves. Some horses need blinders to do what they do best and win the race. They need to feel alone and with no distractions. Some authors are the same; it’s a solitary profession.

  Silence cannot be misquoted. It was one of Robin’s mottos. But when she still didn’t speak, the phone line crackled, and Henry spoke once more before hanging up.

  ‘I’m dying. Come or don’t come. Just don’t tell anyone.’

  She can still hear the dial tone now if she closes her eyes.

  He explained later that he had run out of change for the hospital payphone. Insisted that he had not been deliberately dramatic or rude. Robin didn’t believe him. She never did. But she got in the car anyway, because life can be as unpredictable as death.

  She didn’t recognise the man perched on the edge of the hospital bed. His last official author photo had been taken at least ten years earlier, and Henry had not aged well. The trademark tweed jacket looked too big, like it belonged to someone else, there was no silk bowtie, and all that was left of the shock of white hair were a few thin strands, combed over his pink balding head. It seemed odd that his face was not more familiar to her, but then people lose touch all the time. Distance wasn’t a deciding factor in such matters. Even neighbours living side by side don’t always know each other’s names.

  There was no greeting. No hug. No thanks.

  ‘I want to go home,’ was all he said.

  Robin watched as Henry signed the release forms using a fountain pen taken from his inside jacket pocket. His shaky fingers gripped the barrel so hard that the bones in his hand looked like they might burst through his paper-thin skin. She waited without a word while he initialled various statements to acknowledge that he was leaving the hospital against medical advice.

  The hospital was over an hour away from Blackwater, and they sat in silence for the entire journey along winding Highland roads. Once back inside the chapel he had turned into a home, Henry hobbled through to the lounge that he had turned into a library, beckoning for her to follow. Then he opened the secret door in the back wall of books. Robin wasn’t impressed – she had seen it before – but it was the first time he had ever invited her inside his study.

  She stared at the white rabbits that seemed to cover every surface. The wallpaper was covered in a shimmery pattern of them, the roman blinds were stitched with a leaping variety, there were matching big ears and bobtails sewn onto the window-seat cushions, there was even a rabbit in one of the stained-glass windows.

  Then she noticed the cage in the corner of the room. Big enough to hold a small child. That was something she’d never seen before, and it wasn’t empty.

  ‘You have a rabbit for a pet?’ Robin asked, staring at the creature.

  ‘More of a companion really. I’m rather fond of white rabbits.’

  ‘I noticed,’ she replied, taking in the room again. ‘Does it have a name?’

  He smiled. ‘She does. I called her Robin.’

  Robin didn’t know what to make of that. ‘Why?’

  His smile faded. ‘She reminded me of you.’

  Henry shuffled over to the chair at his desk and sat down.

  ‘I don’t know how much time we have, so best not to waste it. I’d like to show you where my will is kept. Everything is arranged, I just need someone to push the button, so to speak, when the time comes. There are plans written down for what I would like to happen to me. I want to be cremated, but everything you need to know is in the folder. I’m halfway through my latest novel, I won’t be able to finish it now. My agent will look after almost everything book-shaped when the time comes. But there might be some decisions about my literary estate that I would prefer…’ He looked up at her, his big blue eyes pleading as though waiting for Robin to say something. When she didn’t, he seemed to give in, gently picking up his weary thoughts almost from where he had left them. ‘You must do whatever you think is right. That’s all any of us can do in the end. I promise I tried to. There are a couple of other email addresses you should probably have – people who need to know that I’m dead before they read it in the newspapers – why don’t I scribble them down now while I remember.’

  Robin watched as he took a laptop from the desk drawer. Henry’s face stretched into something resembling a smile when he saw the expression on hers, the plentiful lines and creases on his skin doubling in number.

  ‘I know, I know. Everyone thinks I don’t understand how to use modern technology, but I’m old, not senile. I quite like that they think I’m so ancient that I write the novels with a feather quill and a pot of ink, but this little laptop saves me a lot of time. It’s much easier to edit for starters. I use the typewriter for the final version to send to my agent – to maintain the illusion of the person they think that I am – but I use a computer for all other drafts. I draw the line at mobile phones, though – those things cause cancer, you mark my words.’

  He typed the password into the laptop using just his index finger, and very slowly, so she saw what it was without really meaning to: Robin. The knowledge that he used her name for his passwords as well as his pet made her feel an overwhelming sense of bewilderment and guilt. She didn’t know what to say so – once again – said nothing. He opened up his email account using the same password, and it made her want to cry. She knew him well enough to know that he wanted to live – and write – forever. But all the money in the world cannot buy more time.

  ‘Probably stuff and nonsense, it normally is,’ Henry said, turning his attention to some unopened post on the desk. He took a silver letter opener, which looked heavy in his frail hand, and sliced between the folds of the top envelope. His fingers shook a little as he removed what was inside: a letter from his agent. Robin read it over his shoulder, and saw how the old man beamed when he learned that his latest novel was a New York Times bestseller.

  ‘Isn’t that something?’ he said, looking much more like his old self, the one she remembered. ‘I didn’t know when I was writing it, but that was the last book I’ll ever pu
blish. It means the world to me that my readers liked it.’

  ‘Well, their opinions always mattered most,’ Robin said, and his face crumpled. ‘I mean, congratulations,’ she added, because what else could she say to a dying man? She looked at the laptop again. ‘Your agent still writes you letters and sends them in the post?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He doesn’t know that you have email?’

  Henry smiled. ‘There are a lot of things my agent doesn’t know about me.’

  An unspoken conversation took place between them, a rare moment of understanding. Then they reset themselves and it was gone.

  ‘There is some champagne in the crypt,’ he said. ‘Go and get us a bottle, will you? Have one drink with me to celebrate my last bestseller? Then I promise I’ll tell you everything else you need to know. I locked the trapdoor – even I get the heebie-jeebies sometimes.’

  ‘But all those stories about bodies being found in the crypt, and witches, and ghosts… you made all that up to keep people away from here.’

  He grinned. ‘Yes, all just a figment of my dark and twisted imagination. But it worked, didn’t it! The only thing the builders found down in the crypt when we restored the place was damp. I like peace and quiet and privacy. I don’t want people bothering me, but sometimes I scare myself. Sometimes I spent so many years inside those stories, that the world I made up felt more real to me than the one I lived in.’ His blue eyes watered, and Robin could tell that his mind had wandered somewhere far away. But then he blinked and was back. ‘The key for the padlock on the trapdoor is in one of the kitchen drawers… I forget which.’

  Robin hesitated, but then did as he asked. The first thing she saw when she walked into the larder was the giant freezer, then she noticed all the tools lined up on the wall, including all the woodwork chisels and stonemasonry tools neatly arranged according to size. The axe frightened her just as much then as it always had. For years, Henry had enjoyed carving things out of wood and stone, he said it was a bit like carving fiction from real life. It just required patience, imagination, and a steady hand. Every summer, he would chop down an old tree that was blocking his view of the loch with that axe, then carefully carve an animal sculpture into the remaining stump. Owls and rabbits were his favourites. All with spooky, oversized eyes, a bit like his own.

  The trapdoor really was locked, and it took her forever to find the key. The smell of damp as she walked down the stone steps reminded her of so many things that she would rather have forgotten. But there were no ghosts in the crypt – at least not that variety and not that day – only alcohol. By the time she returned to the study holding a dusty champagne bottle, she was surprised to find Henry still staring at the fragile clipping of The New York Times bestseller list. His agent had circled his book in red. It was number one.

  Robin poured two glasses and held one out for the old man to take, but he didn’t. When she looked a bit closer, she could see that he wasn’t moving and his blue eyes hadn’t blinked for some time. She felt for a pulse but there wasn’t one. On the desk, she noticed some items that hadn’t been there before: an empty bottle of pills, a list of instructions, and a will. She drank the glass of champagne that was in her hand. Not in celebration, but because she required alcohol. At least he died happy.

  Robin buried Henry that night, scared that someone might see if she waited for the sun to come up. She wrapped his body in an old bedsheet along with some of his favourite books, then dragged him out of the chapel. In his will, he had asked to be cremated, but having a cemetery right outside, and a shovel, had proved to be very convenient; albeit hard work. There were other instructions Robin chose to ignore, too. Like telling anyone at all that Henry had died. The following morning, she ordered a very nice-looking headstone online using Henry’s bank account details, and when it arrived, she engraved it herself using Henry’s tools. He had a staggering amount of money – more than she’d imagined – but Robin never spent a penny of it on herself. Despite it being clear in his will that the author had left her a considerable sum. The only time she ever used his bank card again was to buy props for the visitors, because that was for them, not her. Two days after Henry died, she sacked his cleaner, knowing that nobody else ever came to visit the recluse. Even the Blackwater Inn had closed down years earlier, thanks to Henry. He would be as alone in death as he chose to be in life.

  When Robin found Henry’s work in progress on his laptop, she read it out of curiosity more than anything else. It was another typically dark and twisty Henry Winter novel. She hadn’t realised that she was holding her breath during a particularly frightening scene, until the rabbit made an unexpected sound in its cage and made her jump. Robin didn’t like her namesake being locked up. She carried the enormous white rabbit outside the chapel, and when it didn’t run away, she closed the doors behind it, hoping that she would never see it again. But it didn’t budge. When she carried it farther away, closer to the long grass and the loch, it just came back, sitting outside those huge gothic doors as though waiting to be let in. She didn’t understand back then, but not everyone wants to be set free.

  Bronze

  Word of the year:

  atelophobia noun the fear of not doing something right or the fear of not being good enough. An extreme anxiety of failure to achieve perfection.

  29th February 2016 – our eighth anniversary

  Dear Adam,

  We didn’t celebrate our anniversary this year.

  I’ve been spending a lot of time with a friend from work and you’ve been, well, spending time with your work. You struggled with the latest adaptation of Henry Winter’s books. Personally, I think because you were trying too hard to please the author instead of being true to yourself. But as you said when I offered to try and help a couple of weeks ago, what do I know?

  I do know that the lies we tell ourselves are always the most dangerous. And I know that sometimes the thoughts we hide in the margins of our minds are the most honest, because they are ours alone, and we think nobody else will see them. While you’ve been thinking about Henry Winter and his books, I have been thinking about leaving you.

  My friend at work is kind, and caring, and genuinely interested in me. They never make me feel stupid, or insignificant, or taken for granted. Face blindness isn’t the only way that you make me feel invisible. You make me feel as though I’m not good enough every single day. It’s a terrible thing to confess, but sometimes I wonder if the only reason I stay is for Bob. And this house.

  I love this big old beautiful Victorian relic, hidden away in a corner of London that time forgot. My blood, sweat and tears literally went into every inch of the place while I restored it. With little and mostly no help from you. When we were younger, I didn’t dare to imagine we might share a home like this one day. You probably did; your dreams have always been bigger than mine. But then so are your nightmares. You and I had the kind of childhoods that are better forgotten, but seeds of ambition grow best in shallow soil.

  How dare you invite him here without even asking me first.

  I’d had such a difficult day at work – and, no offence, but my job is a real one, I don’t just sit around making shit up writing all day – all I wanted was to come home, shower, and open a bottle of wine. I could hear voices inside the house before I had even put my key in the door. Yours and one other. And it smelled like something was burning. I found you in the lounge, drinking whisky with Henry Winter, while he smoked a pipe in our nonsmoking home. I thought I was imagining it at first, but the tweed jacket and silk bow tie looked authentic enough to be real.

  ‘Hello, darling. We have a visitor,’ you said, as if I couldn’t see that for myself.

  Anyone else would have recognised the look of horror on my face – he did, but you didn’t because you can’t. Still, I would have thought you could have picked up on my extreme discomfort in another way. Sometimes you display the emotional intelligence of a brain-damaged frog.

  Both of you stared at me, waiting
for me to speak, but what could I say? One of you was completely clueless about the situation, while the other seemed only too happy about it.

  ‘Look, this is Henry’s new book,’ you said, holding up a bright red hardback and looking pleased as punch, as though you had written it yourself and wanted a gold star.

  Henry gave a shrug of false modesty. ‘It’s probably not your cup of tea.’

  ‘Not really, no. I see enough horror in the real world,’ I replied. You might not be able to read the expressions on my face, but I’m fluent in yours, and if looks could kill I would have been in the morgue. We could have cut the tension with a teaspoon, so it wasn’t surprising that Henry picked up on it.

  ‘I’m so sorry to intrude. I sold my London flat last year and retreated to my Scottish hideaway full-time – you and Adam must come to visit – I’ve got a meeting with my publisher in town tomorrow, but there was some last-minute problem with my hotel reservation, and your husband insisted I stay here…’ I didn’t say a word. ‘… but I don’t want to intrude. I could always—’

  ‘You’re more than welcome here. Isn’t he, darling?’ you interrupted, looking at me.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’m actually just getting changed and popping out to see a friend. I hope you have a lovely evening.’

  I felt like an unwanted guest in my own home.

  I practically ran up the stairs and packed a bag. I spent the entire weekend with my friend from work. We went to an art gallery one day, and the theatre the next. I felt alive, and happy, and free. I enjoy her company more than yours these days. She tends to like animals more than people too, that’s why she started volunteering at Battersea Dogs Home. She listens to me, laughs at my jokes, and doesn’t make me feel second-best all the time. She’s a bit too fond of microwave meals and tinned food for lunch – I’ve never seen her eat a salad or anything green – but nobody is perfect and there are plenty of worse things in life to be addicted to.