Grave Truths

by Anne Morgellyn

  ‘It was Philip Larkin.’

  ‘Right. Your parents might fuck you up, but it’s your job as a grown up not to stay fucked up. Get over it.’

  ‘Stop it,’ I murmured. ‘Roy’s just come out of hospital …’

  ‘You’ve just come out of hospital, Louise. Roy’s probably been fucked up by Sammy Shrink. Who fucked you up? What’s your excuse?’ Chas reached for the wine bottle. ‘I’m sorry for you, Roy, but all this talking and going over it again and again and again doesn’t bring home the bacon. You’re a fit guy by the look of you. You’re not stupid.’

  ‘You mean I should get on my bike?’ Roy laughed. He had been shovelling rice in his mouth. A grainy cluster fell into his beard trap. ‘On yer bike, Roy, on yer bike.’

  ‘Well, what do you want to do with your life?’

  ‘What life?’

  ‘There’s plenty of guys worse off than you,’ Chas insisted. ‘Plenty of guys. You’ve got hands, haven’t you? You’ve got a brain.’

  ‘You sound like Norman Tebbit,’ I said. ‘On your bike, Chas.’

  ‘I’d give him a job,’ Chas said. I stared at him.

  ‘In the mortuary?’

  ‘Why not? Remember Yorkie? He’d had psychiatric problems …’

  ‘Quite,’ I said, outraged. ‘And look how it upset him. He was thieving organs, for God’s sake.’

  ‘He wasn’t on his own.’

  ‘Hey Louise, you’re out of order there,’ Roy said, ‘I’m no thief. I’m no dope-smoker either, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.’

  ‘You can’t possibly give Roy a job there,’ I told Chas. ‘It’s irresponsible.’

  ‘Behave Louise,’ Roy said.

  ‘Yes, behave, Louise,’ Chas echoed. ‘I could give you a list of technicians who were plain weird – sorry, Roy. Some of their quirks or tics, or whatever you want to call them, would make Roy here look like the most normal person on the bus. Look at you, Louise, you were my technician once, you think you’re more suited than Roy here?’

  I was silent. I had not been able to hack it in the end, the endless toil of cutting and bottling the dead.

  ‘What’s normal anyway? You know, or at least I think you know, that schizophrenia is heavily disputed as an illness. That’s what they said you’ve got, isn’t it, Roy, that’s the diagnosis?’

  Roy wiped his mouth with his fingers. ‘I’m stuck with it. They said I’m in remission, but I know I’m stuck with it for life. I think my mam was crazier than me. She used to see a devil in her wardrobe. It was just the grain of the wood, you know, mahogany, but she swore it was a little green devil with an emerald on his head, the teardrop of Lucifer she called it. I never saw anything like that. I wish I could.’ He coughed more rice. ‘I wish I could see John Lennon come back from the grave. She said he’d put me in her stomach, that devil. He taken the good girl away. She always wanted a girl. She got me instead.’

  ‘Maybe she just said that when you were naughty, Roy,’ I put in gently.

  ‘She used to say, I’ll drive that devil out of you, you swine.’ Roy started giggling. ‘One time, she ran out into the road when they were digging it up and jumped into the hole. She said she was running away from the little green devil.’

  ‘How about it then, Roy?’ Chas said. ‘I know you said you couldn’t stand the sight of blood, but there isn’t that much. No pressure, you see – it doesn’t fly up.’

  ‘Please,’ I said.

  ‘The bottom line is, if I’m prepared to give you a job, then others would be too.’

  ‘What I want to do is play guitar,’ Roy said.

  ‘Oh, well I can’t help you there then,’ Chas said.

  ‘Like John.’ Roy reached again for the cartons of take-away. ‘John saw his mam run over, you know.’

  ‘What’s this thing about John Lennon?’ Chas asked. ‘He was a success. I used to spend a lot of time in New York,’ he went on, ‘not far from the Dakota Building. I was there when Lennon was shot.’

  ‘You weren’t!’ said Roy and I together.

  ‘Well, not exactly when he was shot. I mean, I was on the East Side. I was living in Boston actually, doing my postgrad year, but I was often in New York. I worked in a mortuary there that summer. You saw all sorts there, I can tell you. And you think you are crazy.’

  ‘Imagine,’ I said.

  Roy’s eyes were huge: ‘You knew the Dakota?’

  ‘I have to say I wasn’t a fan of John Lennon,’ Chas told him. ‘I thought he was overrated. The one thing Lennon needed to get over was himself. Bigger than Jesus Christ my arse!’

  ‘That really upset my mam, what John said there. It really, really upset her.’ Roy’s expression changed from light to dark. I had seen that look before, and feared it. He started rocking backwards and forwards.

  ‘He wasn’t that great a musician,’ Chas insisted. ‘I was more of a Rolling Stones man …’

  ‘He fucking well was,’ Roy said. ‘He was the greatest.’

  ‘OK, we disagree. He knew how to touch hearts and minds, I’ll grant you that, and if you were stuck for choice between Lennon and Adolf Hitler in turning people’s minds, I know who I’d choose.’

  ‘Too right,’ Roy said. ‘Imagine all the people, living life as one. You may say I’m a dreamer …’

  ‘Lennon wasn’t that much of a dreamer,’ Chas scorned. ‘You don’t make all those millions without being sharp. He knew what he was doing when he sat in bed all week with Yoko Ono …’

  ‘He did that for peace,’ Roy said. ‘For the peace of the world.’

  ‘He took drugs as well,’ I mused. But Lennon had made no bones about that. He had been an honest sort of saint, a working class hero (in his dreams), a saint manqué.

  ‘What about it, Roy?’ Chas asked, ignoring me. ‘You could bring your guitar into work, I suppose. I knew a technician who used to bring his Scalextric set into work. He held races round the lab when we weren’t busy.’

  ‘My guitar got nicked.’ Roy was gloomy again, although at least he had stopped rocking. ‘All my books about John, all my souvenirs, just gone. That was my mam’s fault.’ He looked at me. ‘Louise knows. That’s why I pushed her.’

  Chas picked up the take-away cartons and threw them into the bin. How could I throw Roy out into the night like this? I would not have been able to do it myself. I hadn’t the courage. I would have to let Chas do it – pass the buck and still feel guilty.

  ‘The offer’s open if you want it, Roy,’ Chas said. ‘Now I’d like to have a quiet word with Louise if you don’t mind. A quiet word in private. I can drop you back to Hammond House if you want.’

  ‘He hasn’t got a bed at Hammond House,’ I said. ‘They threw him out.’

  ‘Hammond House has a roll on, roll off policy as I understand it,’ Chas said. ‘They book you in a night at a time. Who’s to say they haven’t got a bed tonight?’

  ‘I don’t want to go back there anyway,’ Roy said.

  ‘Suit yourself. I’ll drop you on the High Road then. Come on Roy, mate, you know the score. You can’t stay here with Louise.’

  Roy looked at me and I looked dumbly back at them both, two men with black beards, equally weighted. They were almost exactly the same build, though Roy looked bulkier because of his layers. If you saw them naked there would be nothing much to choose between the pair of them. Which one would I have down as the professor if I hadn’t known which one was which? But they weren’t equally weighted because I knew the labels. One denoted luxury goods, the genuine article. The other was a reject.

  At last Roy made a grunting sound and got up. ‘I thought we had things to say to each other, Louise,’ he said. ‘I thought we had an arrangement. Seems not. So long then.’

  ‘No, wait a minute, Roy,’ I started, but Chas was on his feet now too, escorting Roy to the door. Still, they were unequally matched.

  ‘I’ll try to firm things up about the rose,’ I said. ‘I promise …’

  ‘You know what I want,’
Roy said. ‘And you know you’re all mouth, Louise. All fur coat and no knickers,’ he tittered. ‘Mutton dressed as lamb.’

  ‘There’s no need for that,’ Chas said firmly, giving him what might have been a shove. ‘You know where I am if you want that job. Charity’s Hospital.’

  ‘The Charitable Hospital of St Roche-without-the-Walls,’ I added grandly.

  ‘Come straight to the medical school,’ Chas said. ‘I’ll tell them to look out for you, shall I?’

  ‘See you in hell first,’ Roy said. ‘Hello-goodbye, Louise. You say goodbye and I say hello.’

  ‘See you, Roy. Just think – you could earn enough to pay for another guitar.’ Chas shut the door on him. I sat on at the kitchen table, feeling shame, remorse, but also a flush of relief.

  ‘Where do you think he’ll go now?’ I said to Chas. ‘We shouldn’t have pushed him out, suppose he harms himself?’

  ‘What makes you think he’d do that? He’ll sort himself out. Roy’s a survivor. That’s what they call them these days, isn’t it? Survivors of the mental health service. The ones that got away. I told him to come to me.’

  ‘Offering him a job at the mortuary like that, as though it was appropriate …’

  ‘It would be perfect for him.’ Chas swallowed the last of the wine. ‘Think about it. Not only does he get a job in the warm for the winter, he gets a job in a hospital, an institution, Louise, with doctors, yes – you reading me? He’d get his medication topped up and regular routine. It would be the making of that guy, I tell you. He doesn’t need this mooching around, sounding off to people about his lousy childhood. He’s wasting himself up in these ideas, and he’s wasting your time. You shouldn’t encourage him like that. He’s a fucking poodlefaker.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A poodlefaker. Look it up. I thought you were meant to be literary.’

  ‘He needs help in coming to terms with this,’ I said.

  ‘With what?’

  ‘With the death of his mother, what do you think?’

  Chas snorted. ‘Who helped me come to terms with the death of my mother? Why must you think everybody you encounter needs your help?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I cut in. ‘I never knew they died in a crash like that, your parents …’

  ‘Don’t start on me now, please, Louise. I came to terms with it, like Roy needs to come to terms with his practical situation. He hasn’t got a house or job. I said I’d take him on if he shows up. I meant that. Not sure about the guitar playing though.’

  ‘On the one hand you think he should pull himself together and get over it, on the other you seem to want to have him around just like he is, like some trained monkey.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with the way he is – it’s the way he thinks he is that’s the problem. That may be Veil’s fault,’ Chas said mildly. ‘Look, you haven’t eaten. Should I go out for more take-away?’

  ‘Not particularly. I’m tired though.’ I pressed my hands to my head. It was time for another painkiller. Another magic bullet.

  ‘Maybe I should leave you to your rest?’

  ‘Do you have to go?’ I said quickly. ‘I mean, Roy might come back.’

  ‘I doubt it, but I’ll stay if you want me to.’

  ‘Do you want to?’

  ‘Oh for Christ’s sake, Louise. Behave.’ He started mimicking Roy’s nasal accent. ‘Behave, Louise.’

  ‘You shouldn’t poke fun at him.’

  ‘Stop treating the guy like some kind of delicate plant, for Christ’s sake. He’s got two choices, sink or swim. You don’t treat me like that,’ he went on irritably.

  ‘You’re tough.’

  ‘You think Roy isn’t? Have you any idea what it must be like out on the streets, in the nuthouse even? Have you been to one of those places, Louise?’

  ‘I can imagine,’ I said. ‘That’s why I want to help him.’

  ‘I can help him,’ Chas said. ‘You heard me offer him a job. That’s more than you can do. And I’m not doing it from some displaced notion of guilt,’ he added. ‘We need another technician. You turned me down for Byrne.’

  ‘You think Roy would be all right there, witnessing eviscerations?’

  ‘Why not? Pushing trolleys around, stocking formalin bottles, no one to bother him much, the routine would suit him down to the ground. All he needs is medication to regulate his brain chemistry …’

  ‘Just like you, you mean?’ I laughed.

  ‘I could refer him for that maybe,’ Chas said. ‘The last thing that guy needs is Sammy fucking Veil.’

  ‘Or me.’

  ‘You’ve been indulging him, Louise. You’ve indulged his fantasy. Maybe you’re his dream girl. Imagine!’

  ‘I can’t believe Roy would want to work in the morgue with you.’

  ‘Like I said, Louise, he’s got two choices, just like you. So do I stay or do I go?’

  ***

  Chapter 21

  Roy did not turn up at the mortuary. He went out into the night and disappeared in a puff of smoke, in a clap of his own thunder. He was absent for over a month. I asked all the gardeners I came across during my searches in the Park, but they were mostly indifferent: Gone walkabout maybe. I hoped he’d gone to Liverpool, to visit John Lennon’s old house, as he had wanted, to buck himself up, to give him hope. (Imagine!) I even rang the National Trust up there, but no one remembered Roy, and he would have been noticed for sure, I thought, with his parka, his Beatles obsession. I tried The Nunnery, but Dr Veil refused to take my calls. I tried the other hospitals, one by one, and the mortuaries too, one by one, but what would there have been to identify Roy Woods, except his clothes and his transistor radio? I had no picture of him, other than the one I carried round with me in my head, the one that was always with me. But I kept the faith, visiting his bench whenever I could spare the time from work. I had started the job with Mr Byrne, but the counselling course I put on hold. My confidence in my abilities in that line, in that line altogether perhaps, had whittled away after my failure with Roy Woods.

  But finally he came back; a mixed blessing, since it seemed we were back to square one. It was getting too cold to sit but Roy was there all of a sudden in his usual spot, frozen in his begging pose, refusing to acknowledge me. There was no need for us to fall out, I told him. I could help him out, if only he would let me, but he threw back all my offers, one by one. I tried approaching Social Services, but there was nothing they could do for Roy, it seemed, because he wasn’t deemed to be in crisis. He wasn’t vulnerable enough, at least no more vulnerable than the majority of homeless people, and he looked more robust than many, even though I saw his colour change from rust to yellow as the season changed and the leaves blew away in the winter winds. Like Chas said, Roy Woods was a survivor.

  ‘Has it occured to you that he might choose to live as he does?’ he asked. It had, although I could not believe that Roy was content to sit in his own little bubble, his exclusive world. He was an island unto himself all right, but the tide was coming in.

  I felt terrible leaving him alone at Christmas, listening to Sam Veil’s festive broadcast (the old queen’s speech, Chas joked) in some freezing doorway. I thought of offering him my place, just for the holiday, although he’d refused point blank to return since encountering Chas there that evening. He said he was a man who had reached conclusions. Chas and I were spending Christmas with Stasia. She did not keep it in the Christian sense but held a bonfire party in the grounds in celebration of the Winter Solstice. ‘She should have put Schneller on that,’ Chas commented. ‘It would have saved me a lot of money.’ He had not told Stasia about Gus’s addictions. When she asked about the insurance, he simply said that Gus had not kept up with the instalments. But Gustav’s Devon shrine was now attracting a host of visitors to offset Stasia’s debts. ‘At forty pounds a head,’ Chas said, ‘and fifteen double guest rooms full for most of the year, she might just start to swim a little.’

  I wished that Roy could just be one of the crowd f
or me now, one of the many grieving people I saw as I eased myself into the job with Mr Byrne. The work was not especially taxing. I managed the Chapel bookings, welcoming the mourners who arrived for viewing sessions, sometimes holding hands with them as I led them up to the casket and fetching bottomless cups of tea. Rarely did I have to say much after the preliminaries because the dead entered quickly into their own communion with the ones they’d left behind. Then I escorted the visitors out when they were done. But I saw that it was folly to make myself unhappy because of them, to think I had no right to be happy because they were grieving. But I couldn’t move on, because of Roy Woods. I couldn’t grow. I needed a sign from Roy, a sign of life.

  Most days I set a course for his stone bench, but he still wouldn’t communicate. I expect he thought I knew what it was he wanted, though he never mentioned the missing ashes, and nor did I. March came and went, and then it grew steadily warmer. The spring bulbs all came through, the park a sea of tulips and narcissi, and then these were carted away in wheelbarrows as the beds were all made ready for the new displays. Roy sat through it all, stolidly seated on his bench as though welded to it, his gaze fixed on the prize rose, Ena Harkness, which had been pruned right back to a thorny, brackish stem. His face, I noticed, had a thin sheen of grime upon it, like black ice. His beard looked rusty from the dust that blew about. He must need a bath, I thought, although he smelled of nothing but earth.

  ‘Are you eating well?’ I asked. ‘Are you in good health?’

  He didn’t answer me. He was growing increasingly silent, as though he was falling steadily into hibernation, in spite of the coming spring. Every day I threw a handful of pound coins into his upturned cap, but he never acknowledged them. ‘I can’t stay long,’ I said. ‘You know I’m on my lunch break. People want to help, you know, Roy. You should know that. You’re not on your own, not really.’ But the request he had made of me, the pursuit of the rose, I could not deliver. It was a thorny issue, the thorn in my flesh. ‘Let it go, Roy,’ I said. ‘Just let it go.’