Rupert Thomson - Dreams of Leaving

‘A dead man on fire?’ Peach raised his eyebrows. ‘A little unlikely, don’t you think?’ Glancing down at Lady Batley, he seemed to be addressing the question to her. Lady Batley’s eyes floated like pale helpless fish on the surface of her face.

‘I know it sounds unlikely, sir, but look. Smoke.’

Peach looked. ‘That’s not fire,’ he said calmly, ‘that’s breath. The man is still alive.’

Lady Batley collapsed moaning against Peach’s arm. He passed her unceremoniously to Fisher.

Lord Batley was removed from his coffin in full view of the villagers who had lined the streets in his honour, and escorted, under their disbelieving gaze, to the police station. His widow followed, still weeping — though for a different reason now. The funeral cortège was quietly disbanded. The villagers returned to their houses.

As a direct result of this episode, it has become much harder to die. Inhabitants of New Egypt are subjected to a series of rigorous tests before being allowed to rest in peace. Peach inspects each corpse in person. ‘One Lazarus is enough,’ he is supposed to have said in that winter of 1938.

But what of those who had taken bribes from Batley?

The doctor was carefully beaten up by PC Hazard prior to having his licence to practise removed. Tabasco died two months after the funeral — in place of Batley, perhaps. The sexton, meanwhile, was given a lecture on greed by Peach and forcibly retired on a meagre pension.

And Batley?

Batley is still alive and well and living in New Egypt. He is one hundred and three years old now and is believed by many to have lost the ability to die –

And here the manuscript ended. George had lost his momentum, lost interest. In that moment, the moment when he pushed his pen aside, he had realised that he was no different from any other New Egyptian. The apathy had taken hold. What better comment on the nature of the village than that its self-appointed historian had failed to complete his history of the place! How typical, how archetypal that was!

It had been ten years since he had touched the manuscript, and he now knew that he would never go back to it again. What was the point? Who could he give it to? When he died, it would fall into the hands of the police and end up in that fucking museum.

Not on your life.

He would destroy it first.

*

The following day, at three in the afternoon, a man with tangled grey hair stopped outside George’s house. It was Dinwoodie, come to pay his respects.

Dinwoodie unlatched the gate. A screech of metal disturbed a silence of dripping leaves. The gate, it seemed, was rarely opened.

He paused again, and stared up at the front of the house. Another death in the family. Another, though? He wished he knew. Even after all these years. Especially after all these years.

The front door opened before he could pretend to be moving, and George Highness emerged, wrapped in a brown overcoat and a yellow scarf. In his hand, a bunch of flowers. Dinwoodie jumped backwards, as if he had been caught red-handed at something. Which, in a way, he had been. Trespassing not so much on property as on grief. He gulped a hello.

‘Good afternoon, Dinwoodie,’ George said. To Dinwoodie, his composure seemed unnatural, suspect.

‘I — ’ he began.

‘You wanted to see me?’

‘Yes,’ Dinwoodie said. ‘I was on my way to visit you.’

‘And very nearly there, by the look of it.’ With his free hand, George indicated Dinwoodie’s feet which were planted on, if not rooted in, the garden path. ‘I was on my way out,’ he continued. ‘As you see.’

Cool customer, Dinwoodie thought. He tried again.

‘I wanted to offer you my condolences,’ he said. And then, by way of explanation, ‘The death of your wife. I’m very sorry.’

At last George looked surprised. He blinked and angled an embarrassed glance into the shrubbery that divided the path from the small front lawn. ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘but it seems a little like the death of someone who was already dead.’ A smile leaked from his face. ‘If you follow me.’

‘Yes,’ Dinwoodie said. ‘Yes, I think I do.’

The two men were both shuffling on the path now. Their eyes darted here and there as if following minnows in a pond.

‘If you’re going out,’ Dinwoodie ventured finally, ‘perhaps I could join you?’

‘All right,’ George said, but it was not too grudging. ‘I’m going to the cemetery to put these — ’ he held the flowers up as if they were slightly ridiculous — ’on my son’s grave.’

Dinwoodie murmured, bowed; he might have been giving permission.

Side by side, they walked up Caution Lane. When they reached Church Street they turned right and began to climb the hill. Spring was late this year. Rain hung in the trees like pieces of broken glass. The branches, grey, spindly, arthritic, seemed to be resisting growth. Dinwoodie could hear George’s knees cracking in the silence.

‘A lot of tragedies recently.’ Dinwoodie threw out the remark, then turned eagerly to George as if he had lit a fuse that might cause George to explode with some kind of revelation.

But George had withdrawn into himself. ‘Yes,’ he said. He fitted the word between gasps for breath. It was a steep hill.

A dark horse, Dinwoodie thought. Really a very dark horse.

He increased the pressure marginally. ‘Your wife, of course. And then Joel — ’ He scanned George’s face, but George still seemed more interested in the surface of the road, so he added, a little unnecessarily, perhaps, ‘The greengrocer.’

‘I heard,’ George said. And just as Dinwoodie was about to prompt him again, George added, ‘An extravagant plan, but doomed. Doomed from the very beginning.’

Dinwoodie, the fire that he was, kindled. Fingers spread in a primitive comb, he dragged a hand through his tangle of hair.

‘Too extravagant, you think?’

George settled for the conventional response. ‘Nobody’s ever escaped. Why should an extravagant idea be more likely to succeed than a simple one?’

‘You may be right,’ Dinwoodie said. George’s gloom didn’t dismay him too much; at least they were talking now. ‘But a simple plan,’ he went on, ‘might stand a better chance, you think?’

George gave Dinwoodie a look that Dinwoodie couldn’t decipher: he saw a gloating first, then condescension, then sadness — then all three merged until he couldn’t be sure what he had seen. He decided to risk it anyway. ‘I have a plan,’ he said.

‘Really? You surprise me. What is it this time, Dinwoodie?’

‘There’s no need to be sarcastic.’

George sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not myself at the moment.’

Crap, Dinwoodie thought. You’re yourself all right. He gave the churchyard gate a shove. It banged against the wall. Two crows, scared, broke away from the top of a yew tree. Black shrapnel against a lowering grey sky. George followed Dinwoodie up the path. He held his flowers upright in his hand and level with his face, the way you might hold an umbrella. As they climbed up through the cemetery, Dinwoodie’s head rang with unvoiced arguments. He wanted to believe that it was only a matter of time before George heard. But they reached the grave in silence, with Dinwoodie still uncertain how to reopen the subject. He read the inscription on the stone.

MOSES GEORGE HIGHNESS ONLY SON OF GEORGE AND ALICE

BORN MAY 22ND 1955

DIED JULY 14TH 1956

HE LIVES IN OUR THOUGHTS

Lines of scepticism showed on either side of Dinwoodie’s mouth. It was a charade. He knew, he just knew that George had pulled it off somehow. Patience failing, he struck out.