by Jonathan Coe
‘The family doctor.’
‘That’s right: some quack physician they used to slip a bribe to every three or four years to make sure that Tabitha remained safely under lock and key. I’d passed his car on the road a few miles back, so I knew that he’d already paid a visit. I said that I’d been asked to give a second opinion.
‘How to convey an impression of Tabitha’s state of mind that morning? She told me what had happened, quite calmly, without any apparent shock or agitation: but beneath her composure I caught glimpses of such despondency, such disappointment … Her last hope dashed, her one taste of freedom squandered, forfeited … I am anything but a man of sentiment, Michael: womanly feelings are entirely foreign to me, and yet that morning, absurd though it sounds, my heart almost broke. I handed her Farringdon’s envelope; she put it away in her writing case without opening it; and just then Mortimer knocked at the door, come to say his farewells. I had but a few moments to conceal myself: just time to leap into her dressing room and close the door, while Tabitha picked up her knitting and resumed her habitual air of abstraction. Their conversation was brief. When it was safe for me to emerge, she and I exchanged only a few more words. She had a considerable sum of money in her purse, I remember, and she insisted on paying me in full for my services. Then I took my leave. I slipped out through a back doorway and took a circuitous route to the car; and that was the end of my dealings with Tabitha Winshaw. I have not seen her since.’
Findlay stared into space. A mood of profound melancholy seemed to have come over him, and for the moment I could think of nothing to say.
‘It was a glorious morning,’ he continued suddenly. ‘Bright sunshine. Deep blue skies. The leaves just turning to gold. Do you know that part of the world at all, Michael? I miss it sometimes, even now. Winshaw Towers is on the edge of Spaunton Moor, and since I couldn’t face going back to town, I drove to a quiet spot and walked for several hours, thinking back over the last few curious weeks, wondering what it all meant and where it left me. The seeds of my decision to come down to London were sown that day, I think. It was a Sunday, but there weren’t many walkers: I had the place more or less to myself, and the sun shone kindly on my schemes and resolutions.’
‘You were lucky,’ I said. ‘I remember that Sunday, too, but it poured with rain. At least where I was.’
‘Come come, Michael, you romanticize,’ said Findlay, chuckling incredulously. ‘You were only a young boy at the time. How can your memory possibly distinguish one such day from any other?’
‘I remember it vividly. It was my ninth birthday, and my parents took me to Weston-super-Mare, and it rained in the afternoon so we went to the cinema.’ This information didn’t appear to mean much to Findlay, and since we were now both in danger of sinking into a nostalgic torpor, I decided that a rapid change of tone was called for. ‘Anyway – what do you want to do about this note? Hang on to it?’
He read the message again and then handed it over. ‘No, Michael. This is of no further use to me. I’ve committed it to memory, in any case.’
‘Aren’t you going to perform tests on it, or something? Look for invisible ink?’
‘What colourful ideas you entertain when it comes to the detective’s art,’ said Findlay. ‘My own procedures seem very prosaic in comparison. I must be a disappointment to you.’
His sarcasm was mischievous rather than icy, so I tried to enter into the spirit.
‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘I was brought up on a diet of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes. I even used to write detective stories once, when I was very little. I was rather hoping that you’d give it a cool, expert glance, and then look at me through half-closed lids and say something impressive like, “Singular, Mr Owen. Very singular”.’
He smiled. ‘Well, all is not lost, Michael. We still have work we can do together, avenues to explore, and besides …’ He tailed off suddenly, and a transient gleam seemed to flicker in his eye. ‘… and besides … You know, you may actually have a point there.’
‘I may? What point?’
‘Well it is singular, isn’t it? That’s the strange thing about it.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t follow.’
‘The word “biscuit”, Michael. Surely it ought to be in the plural. One biscuit, to be taken with some cheese and a stick of celery? It doesn’t sound very substantial, does it, even for a snack?’
I cast around for an explanation, and said rather lamely: ‘Well, this was during the war. Perhaps with rationing, and so on …’
Findlay shook his head. ‘Something tells me,’ he said, ‘that wartime economies would not have impinged very seriously on the Winshaw ménage. They have never struck me as being among nature’s belt-tighteners. No, this is beginning to look more interesting than I’d supposed. A little further thought may be called for.’
‘And there’s another mystery, too, don’t forget.’
Findlay waited for me to explain.
‘Don’t you remember? All that business about Tabitha thinking that she could hear German voices coming from Lawrence’s bedroom, and how she locked him in there but it turned out that he’d been in the billiard room all along.’
‘Well, of course, there’s a perfectly plausible explanation for that. But we’d have to visit the house itself to put it to the test. In the meantime, I thought we might try approaching the problem from the other end.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that there’s one part of this story, one component, which sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb. One player who sits so uneasily with the others that you wonder whether he hasn’t wandered in from a different drama altogether. My reference, Michael, is to yourself.’
‘Me? What have I got to do with it? I just drifted into this whole business. It could have been anybody.’
‘It could have been anybody, naturally. But it wasn’t. It was you. Now there may even be a reason for this, and it may be possible to find out what it is. Tell me, Michael, don’t you think it’s about time that you met Tabitha Winshaw? She may not be around for much longer, after all.’
‘I know, I’ve been putting it off. Also I’ve always had the sense, somehow, that the publishers have wanted to discourage it.’
‘Ah, yes, your inscrutable publishers. Quite an outfit, I must say. I was most impressed by their offices, or what I could see of them, on my brief and unofficial visit. I even helped myself to one of their brochures, you’ll be shocked to hear.’ Reaching over to his desk, he brandished a glossy, expensively printed catalogue and flicked through its pages. ‘The list is certainly eclectic,’ he murmured. ‘Take this, for instance: Dropping in on Jerry: A Light-Hearted Account of the Dresden Bombings, by Wing Commander “Bullseye” Fortescue, V.C. Sounds hysterical, I must say. This one caught my eye: A Lutheran Approach to the Films of Martin and Lewis. Or, better still, The A-Z of Plinths, by the Reverend J. W. Pottage – “an invaluable reference companion”, it says here, “to his earlier groundbreaking work”. Well, well. Quite a cornucopia, isn’t it?’
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ I said. ‘I get sent a parcel of the things for Christmas every year.’
‘Well, that in itself is rather generous, don’t you think? There seems to be no shortage of money in their line of business. This fellow who runs it – McGanny, isn’t it? – must be something of a shrewd operator. I’ve a feeling that it might be worth looking a little more closely into his affairs.’
I was disappointed by this proposed line of inquiry, and couldn’t hold back from saying so. ‘How’s that going to help us find out what Lawrence was up to in 194z?’
‘Perhaps it won’t, Michael. But perhaps that isn’t the real mystery in any case.’
‘What are you suggesting, exactly?’
Findlay got up from his armchair and sat beside me. ‘I’m suggesting,’ he said, laying a claw-like hand on my thigh, ‘that the real mystery is you. And I intend to get to the bottom of it.’
∗
Kenne
th said: ‘Miss, you don’t happen to know where my bedroom is, do you?’
Shirley shook her head sadly and said: ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t.’
Kenneth said: ‘Oh,’ and paused. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll go now.’
I thought about Findlay’s description of me: ‘one player who sits so uneasily with the others that you wonder whether he hasn’t wandered in from a different drama altogether’. It seemed oddly perceptive, suddenly exact about the way I tended to feel when contemplating the Winshaws. This evening, for instance …
Shirley hesitated, a resolve forming within her: ‘No. Hang on.’ She gestured with her hand, urgently. ‘Turn your back a minute.’
Kenneth turned, and found himself staring into a mirror in which he could see his own reflection, and beyond that, Shirley’s. Her back was to him, and she was wriggling out of her slip, pulling it over her head.
… leaving Findlay’s flat, catching the Number 19 bus, feeling the characteristic lowering of the spirits as I returned to South West London; arriving home. All this mundanity, my too familiar surroundings, made his narrative and the mad, gothic horrors towards which it gestured seem like a grotesque fantasy …
He said: ‘J– just a minute, miss.’
Kenneth hastily lowered the mirror, which was on a hinge.
Shirley turned to him and said: ‘You’re sweet.’ She finished pulling her slip over her head, and started to unfasten her bra.
… Did they have the same worries that I had, these absurd people? Did they have the sort of feelings I would even understand? It wasn’t enough to say that they came from a different walk of life. It was more extreme, more final than that: they belonged to a different genre of existence altogether. One which actually horrified me …
Shirley disappeared behind Kenneth’s head.
Kenneth said: ‘Well, a – a handsome face isn’t everything, you know.’
Continuing to hold down the mirror, he tried not to look in it, but couldn’t resist taking occasional glimpses. With every glimpse, his face registered physical pain. Shirley put on her nightgown.
… and one which over the last few years had almost caused me to lose, I now realized, any sense of life as it ought to be lived. Had almost killed me off, in fact, or at least put me to sleep: bringing on a paralysis from which I might never have recovered if it had not been for that knock on my door: if Fiona had not appeared, to unfreeze the frame …
Kenneth said: ‘All that glitters is not gold.’
She emerged from behind his head, her body swathed in the knee-length gown, and said: ‘You can turn round now.’
He turned and looked at her. He seemed pleased.
‘Cor. Very provoking.’
I turned off the television. Kenneth and Shirley dwindled to a pinpoint of light and I went into the kitchen to pour myself another drink.
Every time I went in there, now, and saw my reflection in the window, it reminded me of the night she had first come round, asking for my name on her sponsorship form and having to repeat herself again and again to make me understand.
And here was the reflection again. But if you looked beyond it, what did you see? Nothing much. Dreamer though I was, I did not have the power of Cocteau’s Orpheus, who could pass through liquefying mirrors into unimagined worlds. No, I was more like Kenneth Connor – and always would be – forcing myself not to look in the mirror at a gorgeous, terrifying reality disclosing itself only a few inches behind my back.
Except that last night I had seen a new reflection: only briefly, because I had had to close my eyes to the beauty of it, and yet it had been so vivid, so real, that I looked for traces even now, scarcely believing that the window itself could have no memory.
… Les miroirs feraient bien de réfléchir advantage. Trots fois …
Fiona had called round with a small fuchsia cutting which she proposed to add to the ever-expanding forest of greenery which now covered most of the available surfaces in my flat. She was wearing an old jumper and a pair of jeans and she didn’t want to stay for a drink or a chat: she wanted to get to bed, even though it was only about eight o’clock. It had been a long day at work, apparently, and her temperature was up again. In spite of this she seemed to be finding excuses for not leaving right away, making a point of checking up on the condition of all the plants even though I could sense that her mind wasn’t really on it. It felt as though there was something she wanted to say, something important. And then when we got into the kitchen, where the lights were bright, and I was asking her if she was sure she didn’t want a beer or a gin and tonic or a vodka and orange or something, she suddenly leaned back against the fridge and asked if I would do her a favour.
I said yes, of course I would.
She said: ‘Do you think you could feel my throat?’
I said: ‘Your throat?’
She tilted her head back and looked at the ceiling and said: ‘Just touch it. Touch it and tell me what you think.’
If this was the beginning, I thought, if this was how the whole business was going to start up again, then it wasn’t what I’d been expecting. Not at all. Any sense of control over the situation had drained out of me: I felt as though I was plunging to earth, and I walked towards her with the tread of a sleepwalker, my fingertips outstretched until they came into contact with the pale skin at the base of her neck. From there I traced a slow line, sensing a film of fine, downy hair as I touched the soft ridges of her throat. Fiona remained perfectly still, and perfectly quiet.
‘Like that?’ I said.
‘Again. To the left.’
And this time I came upon it almost at once: a small obstruction, a ball of hardness about the size of an olive lodged well beneath her skin. I stroked it, then pinched it gently between forefinger and thumb.
‘Does that hurt?’
‘No.’
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What did the doctor say?’
‘Nothing. He didn’t seem very interested.’
I took my hand away and stepped back, searching her blue-green eyes for clues. They stared back neutrally.
‘Have you always had it?’
‘No. I noticed it a few weeks ago.’
‘Is it growing?’
‘Hard to say.’
‘You should go back to the doctor.’
‘He didn’t think it was important.’
I had nothing else to say: just stood there, as if rooted to the spot. Fiona watched me for a moment and then folded her arms and hunched her shoulders, withdrawing into herself.
‘I really am tired,’ she said. ‘I must go.’
‘OK.’
But before she went I put my hand against her neck again and we slid into an embrace which was clumsy at first, but it didn’t matter, we persisted, and by the end we were clasping each other tightly: I clung to her silence and, closing my eyes to our reflection in the kitchen window, pictured a knot, made from the threads of her wordless fears and my famished longing, which would hold fast against the very worst that the future might throw at us.
Dorothy
To hug someone, and to be hugged, now and again, in return: this is important. George Brunwin had never been hugged by his wife, and it was many years since he had taken a mistress. None the less, he regularly enjoyed long, rapt, tender embraces, stolen, more often than not, in darkened corners of the farm which he had once been pleased to call his own. The latest willing object of his advances was a veal calf called Herbert.
Contrary to local rumour, however, George had never had sex with an animal.
Although he probably never rationalized it to himself, it was one of his more deeply rooted beliefs that the life unvisited by physical affection was scarcely worth living. His mother had been a great one for touching, cuddling, swaddling and coddling; for ruffling of hair, patting of bottoms and dandling on the knee. Even his father had not been averse to the occasional firm handshake or manly embrace. George had grown up in the assump
tion that these delightful collisions, these outbursts of spontaneous, loose-limbed intimacy were the very stuff of loving relationships. Furthermore, the rhythm of life on his father’s farm was dictated, to a large extent, by the reproductive cycles of the animals, and George had proved perhaps more than usually sensitive to these, for he developed a healthy sexual appetite at an early age. In the light of which, he could hardly have found a less suitable partner (not that he was ever given much choice in the matter) than Dorothy Winshaw, to whom he was married in the spring of 1962.
They had spent their honeymoon at a hotel in the Lake District, with a view over Derwent Water: and it was in this same hotel, twenty years later, that George found himself drinking, alone, one clammy evening in June. Clouded as it was by alcohol, his mind still carried an unpleasantly vivid memory of their wedding night. While she had not exactly fought him off, Dorothy’s stolid passivity had itself been resistance enough, and there was also – to add to the humiliation – a discernibly bored and mocking aspect to it. Despite all that George could provide in the way of foreplay, his questioning fingertips had met with nothing but tight dryness. To have proceeded further in these circumstances would have been to commit rape (for which he hadn’t the physical strength, apart from anything else). Three or four more attempts had followed, over the ensuing weeks, and after that the subject – like George’s hopes – was never raised again. Looking back on those days now, through his alcoholic fog, he found it absurd, laughable, that he should ever have expected the marriage to be consummated. There had been, between Dorothy and himself, an absolute physical incompatibility. Sexual union between them would have been as impossible as it had recently become for the misshapen turkeys which his wife was now obliged to propagate through artificial insemination: their meat-yielding breasts so horribly enlarged through years of chemical injections and selective breeding that their sex organs could not even make contact.
