Reginald Hill: Death

He stands up and takes his aunt's hand.

'Is Father well again?' he asks.

'No, Tom, though he is in a place where all are well,' she says. 'He has left us, Tom, he has gone to Heaven. You must be a comfort to your dear mama.'

The little boy frowns but does not speak as Aunt Maria leads him into the bedroom.

'Oh, Tom, Tom,' sobs his mother, embracing him so tightly he can hardly breathe. But all the time as she presses his head against her breast, his eyes are fixed upon the still figure on the bed.

His aunt prises him loose from the sobbing woman and says, 'Now say goodbye to your papa, Tom. Next time you see him will be in a better world than this.'

The boy goes to the bedside. He stands a little while, looking down into those staring eyes with a gaze equally unblinking. Then he leans forward as if to plant a kiss on the dead man's lips.

But instead of a kiss, he blows. Once, twice, thrice, each time harder, aiming the jet of warm breath at the pale mouth and flared nostrils.

‘Tom!' cries his aunt. 'What are you doing?'

'I'm bringing him back,' says the boy without looking up.

He blows again. Now the assurance which had marked his mien till this moment is beginning to fade. He is gripping his father's right hand, and squeezing the fingers in search of a respondent pressure. And all the time he is puffing and blowing, his face red with effort, like an athlete straining for the tape at the end of a long race.

His aunt moves swiftly forward.

‘Tom, stop that. You are upsetting your mama. Tom!'

She seizes him, he resists, not blowing now but shouting, and she has to pull him away from the corpse by main force. His mother stands there, clenched fist to her mouth, shocked to silence by this unexpected turn.

And as he is dragged out of the bedroom by his aunt, and across the landing, and down the stairs, his cries fade away like the calls of a screech owl across a darkling moor which still echo disturbingly in the mind long after they have died from the ear.

'Fetch the cow… Fetch the cow… Fetch the cow…'

Letter 1 Received Sat Dec 15 ^ th P. P

Reginald Hill

D amp;P20 – Death's Jest-Book

St Godric’s College

Reginald Hill

D amp;P20 – Death's Jest-Book

Cambridge

Fri Dec 14th The Quaestor's Lodging

Dear Mr Pascoe,

Cambridge! St Godric's College! The Quaestor's Lodging!

Ain't I the swell then? Ain't I a Home Office commercial for the rehabilitating powers of the British penal system?

But who am I? you must be wondering. Or has that sensitive intuition for which you are justly famous told you already?

Whatever, let me end speculation and save you the bother of looking to the end of what could be a long letter.

I was born in a village called Hope, and it used to be my little joke that if I happened to die by drowning in Lake Disappointment in Australia, my cruciform headstone could read

Here lies

Francis Xavier Roote

Born in HOPE

Died in DISAPPOINTMENT

Yes, it's me, Mr Pascoe, and guessing what could be your natural reaction to getting mail from a man you banged up for what some might call the best years of his life, let me hasten to reassure you: THIS ISN'T A THREATENING LETTER!

On the contrary, it's a REASSURING letter.

And not one I would have dreamt of writing if events over the past year hadn't made it clear how much you need reassurance. Me too, especially since my life has taken such an unexpected turn for the better. Instead of grubbing away in my squalid little flat, here I am relaxing in the luxury of the Quaestor's Lodging. And in case you think I must have broken in, I enclose the annual conference programme of the Romantic and Gothic Studies Association (RAGS for short!). There's my name among the list of delegates. And if you look at nine o'clock on Saturday morning, there you will see it again. Suddenly I have a future; I have friends; out of Despair I have found my way back to Hope and it's starting to look as if after all I may not be heading for the cold waters of Disappointment!

Incidentally, I shared my macabre little jest with one of my new friends, Linda Lupin MEP, when she took me to meet another, Frere Jacques, the founder of the Third Thought Movement.

What brought it to mind was we were standing in the grounds of the Abbaye du Saint Graal, the Cornelian monastery of which Jacques is such a distinguished member. The grounds opened with no barrier other than a meandering stream choked with cresses on to a World War One military cemetery whose rows of white crosses ran away from us up a shallow rise, getting smaller and smaller till the most distant looked no larger than the half-inch ones Linda and I carried on silver chains round our necks.

Linda laughed loudly. Appearances can deceive (who knows that better than you?) and finding Linda possessed of a great sense of humour has been a large step in our relationship. Jacques grinned too. Only Frere Dierick, who has attached himself to Jacques as a sort of amanuensis with pretensions to Boswellian status, pursed his lips in disapproval of such out-of-place levity. His slight and fleshless figure makes him look like Death in a cowl, but in fact he's stuffed to the chops with Flemish phlegm. Jacques happily, despite being tall, blond and in the gorgeous ski-instructor mould, has much more of Gallic air and fire in him, plus he is unrepentantly Anglophile.

Linda said, 'Let's see if we can't dispose of you a bit further south in Australia, Fran. There's a Lake Grace, I believe. Died in Grace, that's what Third Thought's all about, right, Brother?'

This reduction of the movement to a jest really got up Dierick's bony nose but before he could speak, Jacques smiled and said, ‘This I love so much about the English. You make a joke of everything. The more serious it is, the more you make the jokes. It is deliriously childish. No, that is not the word. Childlike. You are the most childlike of all the nations of Europe. That is your strength and can be your salvation. Your great poet Wordsworth knew that childhood is a state of grace. Shades of the prison house begin to close about the growing boy. It is the child alone who understands the holiness of the heart's affections.'

Getting your Romantics mixed there, Jacques, old frere, I thought, at the same time trying to work out if the bit about shades of the prison house was a crack. But I don't think so. By all accounts Jacques' own background is too colourful for him to be judgmental about others, and anyway he's not that kind of guy.

But it's funny how sensitive you can get about things like a prison record. These days I know that some ex-cons make a very profitable profession out of being ex-cons. That must really piss you and your colleagues off. But I'm not like that. All I want to do is forget about my time inside and get on with my life, cultivate my garden, so to speak.

Which is what I was doing quite successfully, and ultimately literally, till you came bursting through the hedge I'd built for protection and privacy.

Not once, not twice, but three times.

First with suspicion that I was harassing your dear wife!

Next with allegation that I was stalking your good self!!

And finally with accusation that I was involved in a series of brutal murders!!!

Which is the main reason I'm writing to you. The time has come, I think, for some straight talking between us, not in any spirit of recrimination but just so that when we're done, we can both continue our lives, you in the certainty that neither you nor those you love need fear any harm from me, and myself with the assurance that, now my life has taken such a strong turn for the better, I needn't concern myself with the possibility that once again the tender seedlings in my garden shall feel the weight of your trampling feet.