Peter Dickinson - Some Deaths Before Dying

“Now that’s what I call a well set up lass…Shouldn’t care to meet them in a dark alley…”

Already almost exhausted, Rachel gazed vaguely at the passing images. Faces and postures. Strangers, friends, family, that didn’t matter, wasn’t what they’d been chosen for. The photographs were in this series of albums because when she’d begun to compile them in the second long winter of her widowhood, each had seemed to be, as it were, a passing remark—nothing so solemn as a statement—on what it meant to be a human being.

“Look at that hairdo! And those shoes! You should’ve heard what my Nan said when I showed up on her doorstep got up like that! I thought she wasn’t going to let me over the mat—”

“Stop. That one.”

“Teds…we had’em too. Welsh Teds. There was a Welsh word for them, even— Tedwboi , was it? Not that I knew more than a dozen words in Welsh myself. What was the point in Bangor? And now my other niece and her hubby—never mind he’s from Norfolk—they talk Welsh at home, and the kids too…Ready?”

“Wait. Please.”

Rachel willed her mind into focus and studied the half-hidden face. Bewildering that she must have seen it twice in the flesh, and then at least four times more in this image—looking through the rough prints, printing it up, and then selecting and reprinting it for the album, and had not then made the essential connection. Only now this ambush.

How long had the intervals been? She could actually remember taking the photograph, pretending to focus on the outfielder so as not to distract her quarry out of their speakingly self-conscious poses, that special uncertain swagger…1955, she guessed. Dick had captained a team against Fish Stadding’s Walthamstow youth club (of course Jocelyn had had to do the actual work of getting eleven players together). Rachel had gone along to be with them both—Dick consented to be so little at home…

It had been the group, not any of the individuals, that had caught her eye. No reason she should have recognised one of them, meeting him two years later. Jocelyn had died in’59, so it would have been’61 or’62 when she was working on this album. Only four or five years, then, since she’d truly seen him, watched and studied him for an hour or so…And she must have looked carefully at the photograph when she was deciding whether to include it. Perhaps she’d still been mesmerised by the group, not to pick him out. Yet now, another thirty-five years on, instantly, on a page half glimpsed as it was turned.

“Thank you, Dilys. Rest now.”

As far as possible she blanked her mind while Dilys lowered the bed, peeled back the covers and changed her pad. She was wet, of course, but to judge by the odours had stayed clean. Dilys had clearly been greatly impressed by Sergeant Fred.

“Funny how different they all go,” she said. “Not that I’ve seen a lot of them like that, looking after themselves and everything, just the mind a bit wandery—they don’t need my kind of nursing, that sort. There was an old lady I looked after—stuck in a wheelchair she was, and mostly didn’t know nor care if she was coming or going, but the family used to take her along Sundays to visit her sister—in a home she was, and her mind gone too, but the two old things would sit together for a couple of hours on end just holding each other’s hand, and the family swore blind that they both knew whose hand they were holding, and they were the better for it after. But it wasn’t them I was thinking of. There was another old dear in this home—Lettice her name was—and she was spry enough but she was the sort who says the same thing over and over and over, like one of those dolls with a string in its back, only they’re all electronic now, I suppose. Anyway, everyone loved this Lettice, but for one or two of the snarky old crabs you always get in a home, biting everyone’s heads off ’cause of not being able to bear it, what they’ve come to, but Lettice was just the other way, she was so happy. And what made her happiest was helping anyone up the stairs, or down them. Opening doors for them and holding them and closing them after they’d been through was better than nothing, but stairs were the best. She’d hang around in the hall-way looking at the pictures, which she’d seen over and over and over, but as soon as anyone showed up she’d take a quick peek at them—she knew not to try and help the ones who could manage, but if they were using a frame or maybe just a stick, she’d be at their elbow…There, now, that’s a bit better. Last little drinkie?”

“Please.”

Rachel sipped gratefully.

“Thank you. Flora?”

“Mrs. Thomas said to say she was out saving the children, but she’ll look in later if you’re up to it. You want me to put your parcel back in its hidey hole before she comes?”

“No. Leave it. In drawer. Not secret. Now.”

“Right you are. And she’ll be wanting to hear all about the old gentleman too, won’t she? You have a good rest, and you’ll be feeling perky for her.”

When Dilys had gone Rachel lay and gazed through the window. The rooks were raucous and active in the tree, but she was too exhausted to attend to them. Too exhausted for anything…

No! It wouldn’t do. It was another excuse, another shying away, the latest of countless evasions over the years. The thing must be faced, now, and in detail. If it was there, the answer would lie somewhere in the details, just as the young man’s image had lain so long unnoticed in the album.

Buried memory, unconsidered for decades, can’t simply be dug up, unpackaged and laid out for inspection. After such a span in the earth, though the shape may still be plain, the individual parts will at first be unrecognisable, compacted, clogged, corroded, some of them of stuff too transient to endure, others readable after careful cleaning. Fragments, though, persist almost unchanged—a coal fire in a half-lit room, the stealthy opening of a door in an empty house, squat fingers uncapping a bottle, the tweed of a greatcoat against her cheek in a dark car park, Jocelyn pausing at the study door, absorbing what she’d told him—from such morsels, with willed persistence, Rachel teased out most of the rest of it. All the essentials she was sure of, though parts she knew to be reconstructions—sequences of minor events, the actual words of a conversation—but even these didn’t merely ring true but were flecked here and there with the gleam of metals that burial doesn’t corrode.

Twice Dilys came in and took her pulse, but Rachel closed her eyes, pretended to be asleep and waited until she heard her leave. By night-fall she had as much as she thought she was going to get.

2

Begin at the beginning. A mild, dank October day. Late morning. The telephone call. She took it in the hall.

“Hello?”

The clatter of coins being fed into a public telephone.

“Ray?”

“Oh, it’s you, darling. What’s up?”

“Can’t tell you over the telephone. I’ll be late back—on the eleven-twelve. Don’t meet me. I’ll take a cab. Sorry.”

“Bother. All right. Shall I keep supper?”

“I’ll eat on the train.”

“Is it something serious?”

“Afraid so. Tell you when I see you. Look after yourself.”

“You too, darling.”

“Do my best.”

She put the handset down, disappointed for herself because she wanted him home—yesterday’s lonely evening had been more than enough—and troubled for him, though mainly about his personal discomforts. The late train was always crowded, the dining car often full for two sittings. Though what was keeping him in London was obviously important and by the abruptness of his tone unpleasant, it would be part of his public world, and he would deal with it as such. He would tell her about it, as he’d said, but by then he would have decided exactly what to do about it, and so would not bring it home in the form of a disruptive worry.