The Discourtesy of Death (Father Anselm Novels) (37 page)

‘Which is?’

‘We promise never to repeat what the other has said.’

‘Unless you confess to a crime.’

‘Agreed…’

And Doctor Ingleby had confessed to no crime. He could have done. The confession had been in his pocket the whole time. There was no reason for him to hide what he later claimed to have done. Anselm gazed over towards all that remained of the old abbey, built in the thirteen hundreds: tall arches, empty windows onto the sky; night stairs from a vanished dorter; moss, lichen and vermilion creepers swaying gently in the wind. The crisis – in terms of finding out the truth – had peaked not passed. For while the letter may have brought peace of mind to Jenny’s family, it had left Anselm tormented. Doctor Ingleby had said one thing and he’d written another. He’d left Anselm with a haunting a mbiguity.

Anselm brought Timothy to his circle of beehives, introducing each by its saint’s name, shortly digressing into the anxious question of commerce: what to do with the honey. So far he’d put the stuff in pots, made
swedgers
– ‘Glaswegian for “a sweet”’ – and he was now planning a devastating spiced mead, something to challenge Larkwood’s legendary cider. Then, reaching his pew, they sat down.

Where to begin?

Given his concerns, Anselm had decided to approach matters with the precise sensitivity of the lawyer and not the scruples of the monk. He would construe the
meaning
of Doctor Ingleby’s letter rather than assert – and thus adopt – its
implications
.

‘You understand that Doctor Ingleby has died?’

‘Yes.’

Timothy was dressed in jeans and a red jumper. Black ruffled hair moved in the slight breeze. He sat angled towards Anselm, vaguely apprehensive, but pleasantly so. Someone had told him the monk had a surprise for him.

‘He took his own life.’

‘Yes, my dad told me. He had cancer.’

It was chilly, but not uncomfortably so. After the lazy warmth of autumn that slight nip to the air brought the promise of crisp mornings, frost, a lively fire in the evening; the comforting dark of winter.

‘Yes, he did,’ confirmed Anselm, not wanting to believe that this was, in Timothy’s short life, his second experience of suicide. The boy thought both of them were related to choice in the face of illness. In fact, one of them was murder; the other was almost certainly not what it seemed.

‘He wrote a letter, explaining himself.’

Timothy nodded. Anselm paused.

‘He admits to having taken another life, once before; did you know that?’

‘No.’

He was a burdened boy. His voice flat and his speech dutiful. He ought to have been troubled by his appearance and preoccupied with the striking girl who routinely ignored him, not by this – the inescapable weight that comes with an irreversible decision; the greatest decision that any human being can make. Two years ago he’d acted with the terrifyingly simple moral outlook of a twelve-year-old submerged in a catastrophe. He’d seen no grey. No reason to hesitate. He’d known what he believed his mother had wanted. But since then, without necessarily knowing why, he’d grown ill at ease. Begun to feel some nausea. And, slowly, it had grown; like a signal from a tumour. He’d seen his grandmother crushed by his secret. He’d seen his father’s endless troubled glances over breakfast before hurling a brick at a boy just like him. He’d begun to question himself … unable to understand why this inner voice was both insistent and troubled. He’d been left adrift and anguished. All he’d learned was that the certainties of a twelve-year-old’s universe aren’t that robust.

‘He took another life?’ he repeated, lamely.

‘Whose?’

‘Your mother’s.’

The breeze returned to tousle the boy’s hair some more. ‘
My mum’s?
’

‘Your mum’s.’

Timothy’s wide, deep eyes began to swim. He couldn’t process the implications. Two years of his life – everything he’d ever thought and felt about his mother’s death – had suddenly disappeared. The sense of guilt distilled from his father’s and grandmother’s strained behaviour had evaporated.

‘It wasn’t me?’

‘That’s what the letter means, Timothy.’

‘I didn’t do it?’

‘Doctor Ingleby has left no room for doubt.’

And Anselm, in a low and measured voice, spelled out the implications of the text, because Doctor Ingleby’s words left no room for misunderstanding: by the time Timothy entered that room, his mother had already picked her flower and gone.

Timothy stood up, pushing both hands into his already tangled hair. He walked around the hives, raking his feet through the long grass. He muttered to himself and then came to a restive halt in front of Anselm.

‘It wasn’t me?’ he asked again.

‘That is what the letter means.’

Timothy threw his head back, unable to believe the news. He was no longer an exile. His father would look at him differently; his grandmother would stop buying him sweets and cakes and ice cream, all the confectionery she could think of to sweeten his soured world.

‘Not me?’ He was almost laughing.

Anselm made a gesture of surprised agreement. And then he spoke for Doctor Ingleby. It was part of the meaning of the letter. ‘Timothy, you can move away from the sitting room now; you don’t have to trouble yourself any more for what you thought you’d done.’

If this was Doctor Ingleby’s message, it had been delivered. But despite Timothy’s evident relief, Anselm felt ill at ease. He believed in the liberating power of the truth, not merciful fictions, and he didn’t know, in his heart, which of the two was now at work. There was no time to brood. Timothy was approaching him, hands working and suppliant.

‘Can I tell you what happened?’ he asked, unsure of himself but driven now to make a clean breast of everything. ‘I’ve never told anyone before and I’d like you to understand … to understand why I did it … even though I didn’t do it…’

Anselm pointed to the space on the bench at his side, moving his arm slowly, to introduce some calm; to communicate his readiness to hear anything.

‘All the time Mum lay there, unable to move, I couldn’t forget what she’d said,’ explained Timothy with remembered distress. ‘That she wanted to go if things got worse. And I couldn’t forget my dad, how upset he was, holding onto her hand, saying “no” when Mum was begging him to say “yes”.’

Anselm could picture the scene. This is who Jenny once was; not who she became.

‘And when she got cancer I knew she was frightened and worried and she actually said to my dad, “Things can’t get worse”, and he couldn’t reply because she was right, wasn’t she?’

Anselm made an ambiguous gesture, a tilt of the head, something to give him comfort.

‘And I remembered what my mum had said, that she’d want to go without realising it, after a party…’

Another gesture.

‘And that night … the night of my mum’s birthday … we had a chat, me and my mum.’

This Anselm did not know. His eyes flickered. What had Jenny said? If Doctor Ingleby’s confession was false, her son had killed her shortly afterwards. Instinctively, he moved along the bench, closer to Timothy, bringing a hushed confidentiality between them. Anselm sensed the darkened room, a low light, the silence from the garden and the distant fields.

‘She told me that despite everything, she was contented, but I knew it wasn’t true.’

But she was, Timothy.

‘She told me that she wasn’t worried about the cancer, and I knew that wasn’t true either.’

It was the truth, Timothy.

‘She said that before she died we could talk together and understand what it is to live, but I knew she’d already found her answer, but that she could never tell me.’

Anselm made no gesture. This was Jenny’s plea to salvage what was left of her life. Her son hadn’t believed her. Anselm gazed upon Timothy with horrified pity.

‘She asked me could we travel a journey together … but I knew she didn’t want to do it. She was being brave for me so that I wouldn’t feel upset.’

No, Timothy. You’re wrong.

‘I knew she was accepting the cancer because she had no choice … because my dad couldn’t do what she’d asked. And I understand why, because it’s not very nice, but … I’d heard her ask him … I’d seen her pulling at his hand and crying…’

Timothy became very quiet. He turned away from Anselm and began to look around, as if noticing his surroundings for the first time: the murmuring hives, the surrounding aspens, the white crosses of dead monks, leaning among the trees like strange markers for those lost in the woods.

‘She told me that she’d had a good life,’ said Timothy, his voice subdued and strained. He coughed to ease his throat but then he just let the tears go – fresh tears that no one had ever seen, because no one would have understood his distress … his tortured belief that she didn’t mean it. He’d had to keep them back. ‘My mum’s last words to me were that she’d had a good life … and all because of me.’

Again he was quiet and then he suddenly turned to face Anselm. His stained face was curiously alight, shining; his wide eyes deep and vulnerable.

‘I did it because I loved her,’ he murmured, wanting desperately to be understood. He was speaking from a very dark place in his memory. No one had ever joined him there before. ‘I only did it because I loved my mum … except’ – and he gazed at Anselm with a sad and sunny wonder – ‘it wasn’t me, was it? I didn’t end her life after all.’

They reached the car park and Anselm saw Peter Henderson peering into the plum trees as if checking for any remaining fruit. There was none. It had all fallen in late summer. He turned to Anselm, with a grateful smile. He’d begun growing a beard. It was silvery, in striking contrast to his black hair. He seemed younger. He was changing his appearance for the new world that had opened out in front of him. He was a different man. Old wine in a new skin.

‘I want to thank you for your persistence,’ said Peter Henderson.

Timothy, a packet of swedgers in his hand, had clambered into an olive-green E-Type Jaguar. The classic car that Anselm had seen in the work bay of Vintage Automotive Services. Peter Henderson had got his wheels back. He’d spoken to Vincent Cooper.

‘Except for Michael and I, we’re all talking,’ he said, scratching one cheek in amazement. ‘We’re telling each other how angry we are. It’s good. I can imagine that one day there’ll be different, warmer conversations. We’re all learning.’

Anselm hoped so, and he nodded to show his confidence.

‘I wasn’t there for Timothy’s childhood,’ said Peter Henderson, suddenly, as if they were back on Shingle Street when he’d made a false confession. ‘But I’m going to be there for the youth and the man. I’m going to guide him. Teach him. Lead him. Walk by his side. This is possible because of you.’

This was the new Peter Henderson: he was reduced, accessible and humble. Anselm couldn’t imagine him being rude on the
Moral Maze.
He liked him. The nation would, too. But as the sleek Jaguar pulled away, Anselm made a private vow.

At some point in the future, when the waters were calm, he’d tell Peter Henderson that Jenny had changed her mind. It was the truth given to Anselm by Jenny and it couldn’t be buried. Peter Henderson was a grown man; a skilled and nuanced thinker. He shouldn’t live in ignorance, not of the most vital truth in his personal history. It was necessary that he be told. How else was he to learn that Jenny had been transformed not by a planned death but because of his love for her? She’d wanted him to know this; it had been her last gift to him.

And then it would be for Peter Henderson to work out the implications of what had happened on the night Jenny died. How his dear friend Bryan had made a merciful mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. And then he would have to make the most significant decision of them all: whether to tell Timothy. Timothy, who once thought that he’d killed his mother.

And – Anselm was quite sure – he would make the disclosure. Because after a troubled past contaminated by merciful lies and merciful fictions, he’d want his son, now grown, to know the unmerciful truth. He’d want him to understand that killing is always complicated; that people’s preferences about dying complicate matters even more.

Later that evening Anselm stood patiently by the window in his cell watching the entrance to the Priory. Presently a car arrived. The driver alighted, looked around and then took a track into the darkening trees. Shortly afterwards, another vehicle pulled up. The driver followed the same winding path. Anselm came away from the sill. Opening a drawer, he retrieved the Browning and silencer. He looked at it for a while, finger on the trigger, testing its weight. The thing had nearly killed him. Leaving his cell, he paused in the corridor to lodge the gun behind his belt. It was only on lifting his eyes that he saw the archivist, aghast at the end of the corridor. Ignoring Bede’s open mouth, Anselm nipped past him and went quickly outside.

Anselm went to the agreed meeting place: Our Lady’s Lake. Michael and Nigel Goodwin were waiting for him, standing far apart like strangers trapped on Holy Island, each of them caught short by the shocking speed of the tide. They were looking in opposite directions, not daring to consider the space between them.

The water was a troubled mirror of the fading sky. There was no cloud, save a gash of red above the treetops. Centrally placed, surrounded by water, was a statue on a platform of rock. A woman’s arms were lowered, her hands open. Anselm came between the two men and faced the expanse of coloured water. Michael, hunched and broken, came to his right; Nigel, confused and remote, came to his left.

The family were talking, apparently, mused Anselm. The anger was coming out, at last. But it wasn’t anger that kept these two men at a distance. It was their understanding of conscience, heard or not heard, understood or mistaken. It was Michael’s incomprehensible actions and Nigel’s separation from the obligation to act. They were honourable men separated by experience. And that was the key, thought Anselm, looking at the carved figure on the rock. Nigel, who’d have sailed through that window of the Iranian Embassy without a second thought, had turned to the refinement of thinking; while Michael, like Barth himself, had been obliged to make certain decisions; he’d had to take his beliefs on bridge-building to their proper terminus, only he’d got lost. He’d needed his brother’s compassion and guidance. Instead he’d turned away, distracted by an unimaginable uproar.