Peter Dickinson - Some Deaths Before Dying

“There was something going on, wasn’t there, when I took you to meet Uncle Albert first time?”

“It wasn’t that bad. You were there. It wasn’t my responsibility. I don’t know if I could’ve done it alone. Anyway, being Sister Jenny got me through dealing with Grandad, but really it was a way of bottling up the other stuff till I was out of his room, then when it was over I’d go out into the barn where there was no one to hear but the pigs and get rid of it by screaming and chucking things around. That’s Norma.

“I’ve never told anyone else about Norma. Sister Jenny’s the one people get to meet. They don’t like her much. Mummy invented Norma, not me, to try and get me out of my tantrums. She was supposed to be a joke, only she wasn’t. Not for me. Kids get things into their heads, you know. Like Grandad being dead. So I was two people. I don’t mean I’m clinically schizophrenic, or anything. It was just a way of coping, but it got a bit stuck, that’s all. Well, now you’ve met Norma.”

“Hi.”

“You aren’t worried?”

“Why should I be? Tell her to come in and make herself at home, if you feel like it. Unless you’re bothered about being married to a bigamist. Though I must say I don’t quite see what Jerry’s got in common with your grandfather.”

“It isn’t Jerry. It’s me being stuck with a filthy mess which isn’t anything to do with me, except I’ve been landed with it… No, I could cope with that. And Jerry himself couldn’t have been nicer. I mean he didn’t try to tell me the docket didn’t exist, or it didn’t mean what I thought it meant, and he was furious with Trevor for being so idle and incompetent, but he must have been ill for a while before anyone realised, including himself, and now he’s dying… Oh Jesus! I don’t know why this is getting to me so badly. People keep dying all the time, don’t they? It’s all right, darling—I can cope. It was just I had a sudden picture of him lying in hospital with all these tubes in him…It’s some kind of marrow cancer you have to catch early, and they didn’t. Jerry didn’t make a big deal of it, actually. I mean he said it was ghastly for everyone, of course, but it didn’t affect the principle of the thing, which is to do the best we can for old Mr. McNair. Jerry says he doesn’t think the docket would have made all that amount of difference, it’s just what Mr. McNair has fastened on because he’s known all along he was right about it. But what really lost us the case was that the manufacturer’d got hold of a much better expert than we had. I don’t mean he knew more about it, but he put on a much better show, and so did their QC, so we’d have lost the case anyway. But suppose Mr. McNair was told about the docket now, he’s not going to get the case reopened. All he can do is sue us for the money he lost. But he couldn’t stop his insurance company coming after us too—I told you about that—and the way these things are set up they’d have first claim on all assets and there wouldn’t be anything left for Mr. McNair, and he’d still have his costs to pay and they’d be a packet. So actually it might be kinder not to let him know.”

“A bit specious?”

“No. I mean, I think Jerry genuinely thinks that, and he’s probably right, except that in the meanwhile Mr. McNair is going crazy with the knowledge that he gave Trevor the docket and no one believes him. And then—Jerry didn’t make a big thing of this, apart from telling me that it was only fair to warn me that it was bound to come out that it was me who started the thing off, and it was an unfair world but people really weren’t that keen on hiring someone who’d pulled the rug out from under their firm in however good a cause—but he didn’t say anything about the firm going down the tube, or Trevor having a rather hopeless wife and three young children, or Millie with her mother to look after, or Selina’s bloke walking out on her and the kids—but of course he knew I’d know all that—it’s a very friendly office, and that’s mainly Jerry’s doing. He really is everyday decent…so all I could do was sit and listen and say helpful things and try not to think about Trevor lying in hospital…”

“Sister Jenny. With his mess to clear up?”

“That’s right.”

“And then go into the wood and scream? If you’d given me a bit of warning I could have arranged for some pigs.”

Later, lying on his back at some unknown hour, he said in a dreamy voice, “You were being persecuted by a dimwit. When I called from Paris.”

From time to time since he’d come home it had crossed Jenny’s mind that she should tell him about Mr. Matson’s visit, but she hadn’t, and she understood why, without having to think it out. This last—how long? Less than forty-eight hours—had been extraordinary. Nothing, not their first physical explorations of their passion for each other, not the boost of renewal on the honeymoon, had been like this hunger, endlessly satisfied, endlessly aching back into life, her whole body like a soft, faint bruise, delighting to be touched. Their need for each other was their only need, though their world, their assumptions, their lifestyle, everything, melted away around them. The stuff they had so far been talking about and dealing with, Jeff’s trouble with Billy, hers over Jerry, had been part of the melting, part of what allowed them to seal themselves into this capsule and watch the process with indifference. Only in the capsule could Jenny have brought herself to tell anyone, even Jeff, about Norma, and done it with such ease and such relief.

Mr. Matson’s visit was different. It concerned Jeff alone, she had been merely an agent, an intruder, who had made the first mistake and then compounded it. The event wasn’t, somehow, part of the melting process.

“I needed a drink,” she said.

“Everything is explained. And forgiven, where appropriate.”

“I may need to hold you to that.”

Adjusting her head on his chest she told him what had happened.

“He’s lying,” said Jeff when she’d finished. “Aunt Clarisse looked after Albert’s affairs until she had her heart attack. That’s when I took over, when I had to move him to Marlings…It sounds to me as if he knew about Uncle Albert all along.”

“Oh…I suppose he might have. He did ham it up a bit when he made the connection. And he was lying earlier on, telling me he’d got the other pistol. But I think a lot of the other stuff was true, or nearly.”

“It doesn’t matter, actually. The only thing that matters is whether he can prove he’s the rightful owner. If he can then I suppose we’ve got to hand the thing over. But I won’t say no to the money he’s offering if it’ll help tide Uncle Albert over for a few months.”

“You don’t think Mr. Matson’s father could have given it to him as a keepsake?”

“Splitting the pair up? And in any case, Uncle Albert would have had it hanging on the wall and told everyone about it, instead of…No, I don’t buy it. Hell, Uncle Albert isn’t going to like it. But I’ll ring this man tomorrow and tell him…”

“I think it is tomorrow. We’re wasting time. Come here.”

But the seal on the capsule was broken, and the late night trucks fumed past on the Ashford Road, and love was no longer any more than love.

DILYS

1

Soundlessly she opened the door and slipped into the room. She liked to find a patient still asleep, so that she could stand by the bed in the dimness and study the altered face. It spoke to her of things the waking mask didn’t, mostly just the peacefulness of being free for a little from the dreary indignities of waiting to die, but sometimes more than that. Sometimes there was a sort of translucency through whose mist she seemed to be able to make out what the face had been twenty, forty, sixty years before—as a child’s even. At other times she saw no more than discontents and rages at the betrayal that had so cynically abrogated the freedom and respect and command that had once seemed written into the contract.