The Discourtesy of Death (Father Anselm Novels) (33 page)

‘Timothy.’

The silence following Emma’s abrupt declaration acted like a vacuum sucking in the horror of those who’d always known and those who couldn’t believe what they’d heard. She’d used her cheery winter voice, the voice that dealt with difficult situations, only this time there was no baked Alaska on the table.

The truth, at last, was out. The contaminating history of resentment and disappointment had been surpassed, an incredible fact which dramatically reduced the importance of the family’s troubles, for any amount of adult conflict was as nothing compared to the moral and legal crisis which now fell to be resolved: a twelve-year-old boy had murdered his mother, thinking he was doing her a favour.

‘I knew and yet I didn’t know,’ muttered Peter Henderson.

Unable to sleep, he’d come downstairs in the middle of the night and found that Jenny wasn’t breathing. He knew she was dead. And he knew it couldn’t be the cancer, not yet, and he couldn’t think any further; wouldn’t allow himself to think of Timothy, the only other person in the house.

‘I called Bryan and when he came, I knew for sure it wasn’t the cancer.’ Peter looked over at his friend’s fallen face. ‘You were shocked, like me; and I know you thought I’d done something to cut short the disease. I couldn’t tell you what I feared. I couldn’t even tell myself.’

And so he’d prepared Timothy’s breakfast the next morning after the body had been taken away. Frosties. A boiled egg with soldiers. He’d watched his son eat slowly, reading all the signs of numbed responsibility, translating them into sadness, shock and distress. Humanising what had happened. Trying to keep the future vaguely normal.

‘Timothy had heard the conversation,’ interposed Emma, taking a packet of Pall Mall from her bag. She was rigid in her chair, commanding, ready to field any questions. ‘He’d heard the same banging window. He’d come downstairs and listened from the corridor to his mother talking to his father. He’d heard her say that she’d like to go if things got worse.’ She shuffled out a cigarette. ‘And they did. She got cancer. He’d heard her say she wanted a party … champagne … and he’d heard Peter say he just couldn’t do it…’

She broke off to strike the match.

‘I told him to help his father,’ mumbled Michael. ‘I told him to do the things he didn’t want to do … I meant the dishes…’

Emma resumed control, blowing smoke through the corner of her mouth. She was the only one who’d got used to the unthinkable. ‘His father threw a brick at a child. Timothy wondered why. Wouldn’t let the matter drop, no matter what I said. To get away from it all, I took him for a ride on the London Eye. Just as we got to the top, he started whispering in my ear. We’d gone up into the sky on a great big wheel … by the time we’d come down to earth I’d found out my grandson had smothered my daughter. He’d come downstairs with his Spiderman pillow and placed it over her face, counted slowly to twenty and then gone back to bed. Not much you can say to that.’

He’d only done what his father couldn’t do. He’d known about some wretched mask that no one wanted to use. He’d seen himself as joining a secret team. A
team
. He’d been the one who’d done the difficult bit. He hadn’t been on his own, not really.

‘Not much you can say to that, either.’

But Emma had had to find something. She’d told Timothy never to mention it again. She’d assured him – ‘Well, what else could I say?’ – that he’d helped his mother when no one else had been willing or able. Told him she did something similar every day to cats and dogs; that we were far kinder to animals than humans. She’d bought him a large waffle covered with Nutella and ice cream.

‘I told him it was our secret,’ said Emma. She paused to produce a small ashtray from her handbag and placed it on the edge of the table. ‘We’ve never spoken of it since.’

It struck Anselm at this point that Emma Goodwin had really drawn the short straw. She’d longed to be a figure of salvation in Jennifer’s life and, that desire denied, she’d found herself the confidante of her killer. She’d had to absorb the shock and work out her next move before the London Eye had reached ground level, where everyone had clambered out to get on with their lives. She’d had barely any time to think. No wonder she’d bought a waffle. But she’d stuck to her guns. She’d opted for secrecy and then devoted herself to living out the implications of the decision. As if following Anselm’s thought, she said:

‘And we need never speak of it in the future, if Peter will just pull himself together.’ She spoke as if she were in the officers’ mess, adjudicating over an unfortunate punch-up between an aspiring lieutenant and a brigadier. ‘Timothy was doing just fine until his father threw that brick.’

‘Emma, the boy has committed a murder,’ said Nigel, in a drugged whisper.

‘Oh wake up, Nigel,’ snapped Emma. ‘She was
my
daughter. I know what Timothy did. But you have to face facts. We all have to. Jenny would have died anyway within another six months. She went quickly. She was spared the cancer. It’s not an agreeable way to go. I’ve seen it. Animals are no different to us in that regard. Frankly, there’s something to be grateful for and now the boy needs
our
support and not
your
condemnation.’

‘But, Emma—’

‘Nigel, you weren’t there.’ Emma was imperial in her disdain. ‘You were preaching “My yoke is easy, my burden is light” in Chitungwiza. I’m the one who’s had to carry the weight of Timothy’s secret. I’m the one who’s had to work out what to do. I’m the one who’s taken all the responsibility. Now it’s your turn’ – she was speaking to everyone now – ‘you can all drop your mawkish sensibilities and give me some help.’

You really have hardened yourself, thought Anselm, from deep within himself. He was observing her, not minding that she’d seized control of the meeting. You made a decision to protect Timothy from what he’d done and you’ve never once drifted off course. When Peter began to crack you tried to help him with every fibre in your being – not because you cared for him, but because his collapse threatened to expose Timothy. In hurling that brick, Peter Henderson was accusing his son. He had to be stopped. So you planned to kill him. You used your husband’s love and his troubled past. Even now you can’t see what you’ve done and what is happening … that harm is following upon harm. That your decision was a fatal one.

‘What’s to be done?’ asked Helen, frightened and confused.

‘We have to do something,’ added Nigel.

Emma regarded them with monumental scorn. She eyed Peter and then Doctor Ingleby as if challenging them to make an equally trite contribution. But everyone was stunned, like deserters caught by a searchlight. Only Emma was used to the glare. She appraised Anselm harshly, challenge in her eyes.

‘I suppose you’d like to beat all the swords into ploughshares?’ she mused, as if the idea was as far-fetched as a light burden. She leaned forward to stub out her cigarette. ‘You’re off with the birds. Burying the hatchet … now you’re talking. It falls short of reconciliation but it works. I’ve been doing it for years.’

‘Emma, stop this,’ pleaded Nigel, no longer quite recognising his sister-in-law. ‘We all have to—’

‘Shut up and listen,’ she said, smiling bitterly, as if she were back in the London Eye. ‘There’s a decision to be made. There are only two solutions. You all have to make a choice. There are risks each way. It would be best if we can all agree to go in the same direction. Share the danger. Share the responsibility. Agreed?’

She didn’t need an answer. She shook a box of matches to check if she had any left, her roving eyes querying the level of courage and determination. Nodding more contempt, she knocked out a Pall Mall and lit up.

‘The first road is the widest, the easiest to take and it leads directly to hell,’ she said, leaning back, head held high. ‘It means going to the police station and explaining in a hushed voice exactly what happened … what is it, two years ago? It means sitting down with social workers dressed in black jeans and lawyers who want to be paid upfront – everything that Peter found so humiliating and exhausting and demeaning – and then going into some courtroom where a bewildered Solomon does his best to weigh up the mess that’s landed on the bench, wishing – I may be wrong, of course – that he hadn’t got out of bed that morning. Because this is no ordinary case. He’s going to sentence the boy for matricide. Compassionately, mind you, and he won’t allow the papers to print any names, given the boy’s tender years, but our Timothy will still come home with a criminal record stamped, “Murderer”. Everyone will know it was him that the papers were talking about. All the pundits will use “Boy G” as a tragic example of something gone wrong in our society or the legal system or God knows what, and “Boy G” will have to sit there listening or reading or watching, taking his medication and hoping his psychologist knows some good tricks on how to deal with exposure. He’ll end up with an entry in Wikipedia as the boy who’d committed an accidental mercy killing. Do you seriously expect Timothy to survive that ordeal?’

No one answered.

‘Because this is the route proposed by…’ – Emma didn’t quite know how to designate Anselm. She was enraged with him: for his interference; for what he represented; for his distance from the trauma in her life and that of her family – ‘… by this stranger who never knew Jenny. This idealist, detached from the messy circumstances of our lives.’

Anselm gave no visible reaction to Emma’s charge. He was waiting to hear the alternative course of action, watching Emma pull aggressively on her cigarette. She was about to make her bid for burying the hatchet.

‘There is a second road,’ she said, quietly and firmly. Her tone and manner had subtly changed. She was back to the role of advocate rather than prosecutor. This was the elegant, persuasive woman who’d appealed to the heart and mind of Judge Moreland. She was desperate to win the argument. ‘And this road is narrow and difficult and few would take it. But it leads to something like peace. Most important of all: we’re the ones who’ll have to survive an ordeal, not Timothy.’ Emma smiled pain and certainty at the confusion around her. ‘What do we do? I’ll tell you … nothing. We do absolutely nothing. We come together. We bury our differences and we support a boy who made a decision far harder than ours. We help him carry his burden. Make it lighter. Because it’s ours, too. We’re all part of the circumstances that led him to think it could ever be a good thing to take someone’s life. When he crossed over that line he brought us all with him.’

‘What do you expect us to do?’ asked Nigel, uneasily. ‘Buy more waffles?’

‘Yes, Nigel. Lots of them. With different toppings. Because a waffle is ordinary life. That’s what Timothy needs. He’s troubled by what he’s done. He’ll always have nagging doubts, but we’ll show him by our constancy that no one condemns him; that his secret is a family secret; that he acted for us all; that the past is dead in the past; and that he has a life to lead, now and in the future.’

‘Emma, you’re asking us all to be complicit in the covering up of a crime.’ Nigel Goodwin used a worried, collective voice, summoning everyone together, including Anselm. ‘You’re wanting us to follow where you’ve gone.’

‘That’s right, Nigel, I am. That’s the ordeal you have to accept. It’s the price you pay for having failed to shape your godson’s conscience. We’re all guilty of that one. Which is why I can’t and won’t turn around. To be honest, none of you have any real choice but to come my way. Any more than I had a choice when I’d got out of the London Eye … when I found myself standing where you’re standing now.’

Emma tapped ash into the ashtray, waiting for any further comments or questions.

‘It’s criminal,’ mouthed Helen, guiltily, but not quite objecting.

‘So what?’ replied Emma, smartly. ‘It’s the lesser of two evils. You understand that, don’t you, Nigel?’

Anselm had an acute sense of people stepping ever so slightly away from him. The atmosphere of indecision was palpable. They were all standing at a divide in the road. It was time to choose a future for Timothy. Neither was perfect. Both involved difficulty. One was wide open to problems, the other narrowed them down. Emma stood up as if to lead the way. With one last push, she said:

‘There really is nothing much to think about.’ She shouldered her red leather handbag. ‘If you don’t come with me, then it will be your responsibility to take Timothy to the police. You will have to sit with him while a detective calls social services. You’ll have to explain why the road to hell is paved with good intentions.’

Emma picked up her ashtray and emptied it on the fire. Without waiting for Michael, she left the threshing room. After a moment, he stood up, head down, and followed the strong scent of his wife’s perfume. With an embarrassed cough, Nigel pushed back his chair, helping Helen fuss to her feet. Leaning towards Anselm, he whispered, pastor to pastor, that he’d have to give the matter some careful consideration and that, well, the
issues
weren’t entirely … Anselm didn’t catch the rest. Shortly they’d gone. Peter Henderson was next.

‘I tried to warn you,’ he said, walking away. ‘I told you that pinning “Right” and “Wrong” onto events wasn’t that easy. That maybe, once in a while, we should just not bother trying. Out of humility. But you wouldn’t listen. Now you’ve fallen into the same pit as me … along with Emma and Nigel and Helen.’ On reaching the doorway he turned around. ‘Don’t try and climb out, will you? Sit tight and feel bad, for all our sakes.’

Only Doctor Ingleby was left. He sat, legs crossed, in no apparent hurry to go.

‘Well, that was a disaster,’ said Anselm at length.

‘Yes, it was.’

Anselm blinked uncertainly. He wanted a word with Schiller.

‘You may not have made a ploughshare,’ observed the doctor, after a suitable pause. ‘But you managed something verging on the miraculous. You’ve got the Henderson and Goodwin families talking honestly to one another. It’s the beginning. I wonder what will happen next.’

Anselm made a slight, puzzled start. Doctor Ingleby had spoken as if he knew the answer already.