Going Away and Other Stories Page 4

  The cackling lady laughed so much she seemed to be in a state of collapse. What had he said? Only an old joke. Oh well, give them at least 30 seconds . . . everyone was laughing.

  ‘Artist to picture dealer, “I painted this picture to keep the wolf from the door.” Dealer, after surveying it critically, “Well, why don’t you put it by the door so the wolf can see it.”’

  The lady actually slid off her chair and lay on the floor at this. Maurice thought she’d obviously had too much to drink, but everyone else was laughing too. And so it went on.

  Five minutes later he’d given them all the jokes he’d thought of in his bedroom and he realised for the first time in his life that he had held his audience completely. But how on earth was he going to finish off?

  ‘I will finish with a seasonal one. A vicar again. No, no parrots this time – only the Sunday School. It was Christmas and the vicar showed the children a picture of the nativity. The inn, the stable, and in the sky one large bright star. “Look at the star,” said the vicar. “What does it tell you?” A little boy put up his hand and said, “It means it isn’t a very good inn. Otherwise it would have three stars.”’ He didn’t wait for the laughter . . . ‘But we are lucky, aren’t we? We’re here in a three-star hotel at Christmas, and not only is it Christmas, it’s the seaside. Come on, Mildred, you must know this one, help me along, everyone join in. “Oh, we do like to be beside the seaside . . .”’

  He finished feeling supremely confident. He bowed graciously to Mildred to thank her and then to the audience three times to acknowledge the applause, and left the platform at something approaching a run. As he passed through the lounge the applause was amazing. Even some of the waiters were standing at the back, no doubt attracted by the laughter. One patted him on the shoulder as he passed and said, ‘Jolly good, sir!’

  He went out into the conservatory to light a cigarette and cool off. He could just hear Mildred at the piano and everyone singing. What a funny business! He sat down on a cane chair underneath one of the palm trees and took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. ‘Ah well, Ethel. Not such a fool maybe!’ he said, addressing the palm tree. But why? Why had they laughed so much? It was almost sinister. Mass hysteria, like when Princess Diana died.

  One of the young men had also come into the conservatory for a smoke. He saw Maurice and rushed forward with his hand outstretched.

  ‘Wonderful stuff, sir. Jolly well done. Haven’t laughed so much in years.’

  All Maurice could say was, ‘Thank you.’

  He thought it would be best to go up to his room. He wasn’t very good at accepting praise. He’d never had much during his life. He lay down on the bed. Well, he’d managed somehow to make them laugh. He got up and pulled back the curtains and looked out across the sea. It was very calm and the sky was full of stars. He thought of his flat and would have liked to have gone home at that moment. But tomorrow was Boxing Day and he wasn’t due to go home until the day after. There wouldn’t be any trains on Boxing Day anyhow. Oh well! There was a knock at the door. He supposed he’d better open it. It was Mildred.

  ‘Ah Maurice, I just wanted to say you were wonderful. Thank you, thank you.’ She put her arms round him and buried her head on his shoulder. That perfume again!

  ‘It’s kind of you to say so, Mildred. It all went very well, didn’t it, thanks to your organisation,’ he said, pushing her gently away.

  ‘Are you just going to stay in your room?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. I’m feeling rather tired just now. I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening.’

  He shut the door on her and slowly undressed, then put on his pyjamas and lay down looking at the stars. It seemed he had suddenly acquired that ‘special something’. But how he had come by it was a mystery. It had come about fifty years too late. Just think, in his young days he could have had a line of Mildreds queuing outside his dressing-room door!!

  He laughed to himself and turned out the light.

  Passing the Buck

  ‘It is difficult for me to write this. I was always rather fond of my uncle John, even though he could be stubborn and cantankerous at times. I suppose that was only to be expected from a bachelor schoolmaster. He didn’t retire from teaching at our local boarding school until he was 70. He said the headmaster begged him to stay on each year, but my wife and I suspected that John didn’t like the idea of moving to a place on his own. He’d always had a flat in the school.

  ‘However, when he eventually retired, he bought himself a very nice little cottage with beams and inglenook and a large neglected garden on the edge of the village in which the school was situated and announced that in addition to reading all his books he’d never had time to read he was going to spend his retirement creating “a wonderful garden – the sort of garden people would pay to visit”.

  ‘He showed me a plan of what he intended to do before he started. There was a large area of lawn with a rose garden, a herbaceous border and a vegetable plot. By way of adornment there was to be a pergola and a fish pond with aquatic plants. It seemed very ambitious for someone who had done little gardening before.

  ‘“I intend to do all the work myself,” he said, “apart from the initial clearing of the ground. It will keep me fit and busy!”

  ‘Well, three years later, although not fully mature, the garden looked wonderful. He’d taken advice from a local nurseryman about what to plant where, but he’d found all the plants and done all the work himself. The large fish pond must have been a considerable undertaking for a man of over 70 to excavate and line, but I noticed that it was in a slightly different position from the one shown on his garden plan. When I mentioned this to him, he was very brusque.

  ‘“Ah, well, I changed my mind about that. Looks better where it is, I think!”

  ‘After another season, I expected John to start opening the garden to the public. But now he seemed reluctant to do this. First he said he didn’t think the garden was quite ready, and then after another couple of years the excuse changed to that he didn’t want hordes of children rushing round his flower beds.

  ‘When he was 78 he fell and hurt his leg, which made keeping the garden in its normal immaculate state a great effort. And he refused to have any help. I suggested to him that it was time to call it a day as far as the garden was concerned and possibly he should consider moving into a residential home. There was a very good one nearby and he could afford the fees without having immediately to sell the cottage. But he was adamant.

  ‘“I want to die at Willow Cottage. No homes for me. Lot of old women jabbering all day long!”

  ‘Then early one morning he fell down the stairs. Fortunately, his daily help turned up five minutes later and found him and called the doctor, who lived only two houses away. The doctor pronounced that my uncle had broken a leg and probably cracked two ribs and summoned an ambulance. The doctor told me later that he was astonished that my uncle had made such a fuss about not wanting to be taken out of his house, and as he was carried through the front door on a stretcher, he had tried to grab and hold on to the door post.

  ‘The bones mended reasonably quickly, but the fall seemed to have affected the old man’s mind. He became, in popular parlance, a “nutcase”. All he kept saying was that he wanted to go home and when anyone tried to reason with him he shouted: “You don’t understand!”

  ‘My wife and I consulted the doctor, who was of the opinion that Uncle John would need nursing care for the rest of his life. When I asked the doctor, as I felt I had to, how long my uncle was likely to live, he said it might be for ages. There was now nothing wrong with him physically.

  ‘Whereas the residential home was something that could be afforded out of my uncle’s pension and income from savings without disposing of the cottage, full-time nursing care in a proper nursing home would be very much more expensive. The cottage would have to be sold or let as soon as possible, otherwise I could see I should have to make up the considerable shortfall out of my own pocket
. I had my uncle’s Power of Attorney so I consulted three local estate agents, all of whom were of the opinion that in the current state of the market an unfurnished letting would be the best option. I therefore instructed one of them to let the cottage, or better still, sell it. Meanwhile, my wife Jan and I supposed we’d better go through all the old boy’s papers and personal effects before calling in a house clearer to deal with the furniture and fittings, most of which were rather old and dilapidated. We’d done this sort of thing for my wife’s relatives twice before and didn’t look forward to it. However, we donned old clothes and set out for the cottage on a fine autumn day.

  ‘“You’d better do the downstairs study and living room, Nigel, and I’ll make a start in the kitchen. I suggest we dump anything burnable outside the back door and in due course you can light a bonfire,” instructed my practical wife.

  ‘So I made a start on Uncle’s desk. The top two side drawers were full of old letters in neat piles bound round with rubber bands and I put them in a cardboard box I’d brought with me to look through later. In the middle drawer there was writing paper, pens, paper clips and ink and, somewhat to my surprise, an envelope on which was written: “Strictly Private and Confidential for my nephew Nigel. Only to be opened after my death.” Well, I was in a dilemma. My uncle was not dead but he was completely gaga and unlikely to recover. I reflected for several minutes on what I should do for the best. I concluded that the letter probably consisted of some instructions to supplement his will, which I knew was deposited with his solicitors, and was most likely about various small belongings in the house, so I decided I’d better open it. I scanned the two pages written in my uncle’s precise copperplate handwriting and whistled under my breath. I went out into the garden and slowly walked past the pergola and the fish pond, both beginning to look somewhat neglected, and sat down on a stone seat. I then read the letter again, carefully this time.

  ‘My dear Nigel, you were, as usual, bright enough to notice immediately that I had moved the position of the fish pond from where it was shown on the garden plan. The reason for this was, when I started to dig in the original position, I unearthed a skeleton! A foot showed first, and then the rest of the leg. After a day’s careful work the whole thing was laid bare. I judged it was of a female as it was only about 5ft 3in tall and the most notable thing about it was that the left hand side of the skull had been bashed in. I suppose as soon as I unearthed the foot and leg I should have immediately notified the police. But I was worried. I thought of what had happened recently when skeletons had been found in other houses! The police would descend upon my cottage, dig up the whole garden and tear the house apart looking for more corpses – no doubt the work of a multiple killer. It would disrupt all my plans for the garden and a quiet life, and would probably make the cottage unsaleable when it comes to be sold. I covered the skeleton with an old tarpaulin and wrestled with my conscience, but couldn’t decide what to do. I think I was in quite a state because I impetuously got in my car and drove to see Bill Burgess, my old colleague from school who’d also retired, to talk the thing over with him and see if he could help me. But when I got to his house it was shut up and a neighbour said that he’d gone away on a holiday somewhere and didn’t know when he’d be back. I couldn’t think of anyone else I could trust with my secret and so reluctantly I drove home and decided I’d have to phone the police. But when I picked up the receiver the phone was dead. It had been working the previous day, but was now obviously ‘out of order’. I took Bill being out and the phone being out of order as some sort of omen and I went straight away out into the garden and started to cover the skeleton with earth and fill in the hole. The poor soul had been dead, at a guess, for say 20 years; a few more without a proper burial would not make any difference. There might of course have been other skeletons around the place but the same would apply to them. I hope all this doesn’t sound too callous or selfish! So, Nigel, I leave you to do whatever is necessary after I’m dead. I know this seems like passing the buck. And no doubt I shall be vilified a bit in the local press when it all comes to light but I shall have had uninterrupted possession of my cottage and garden. Your affectionate uncle, John.

  ‘I read the last bit of the letter again very carefully. Do whatever is necessary. I knew my uncle always chose his words with care as a classical scholar. I’d assumed that he would leave the cottage to me, but I hadn’t seen his will and I didn’t think I had the right to ask to see it. The words when it comes to be sold were neutral. Perhaps he’d left everything to the school? He knew I was reasonably comfortably off. The real problem was, of course, that my uncle only expected me to read the letter after he was dead and I would then know what was in his will. Oh dear, what a dilemma!

  ‘I shoved the letter in my trouser pocket and went back up towards the cottage. Jan was piling stuff outside the back door.

  ‘“I do wish you’d light the bonfire, Nigel. What are you doing wandering about the garden? We’ll never get finished today at this rate!”

  ‘So I found some matches in the kitchen and carried a pile of old newspapers and cardboard boxes onto a bit of rough grass at the side of the house and set fire to them. I then went back to the study and went through the rest of my uncle’s desk in case there might be some further communication for me. But I found nothing. I made a decision. I went out and, poking up the bonfire with a stick so that it blazed up, took the letter from my pocket, tore it into small pieces and carefully put each piece on the fire. At that moment, of course, Jan came out of the back door.

  ‘“What are you burning?”

  ‘“Oh, just some of Uncle John’s old letters.”

  ‘“Good, I’m glad you’re getting on. I’ll soon be ready to move upstairs to the bedrooms.”

  ‘In spite of being slightly interrupted by three sets of people being shown round the cottage by the estate agents, we managed to finish what we’d come to do by the end of the afternoon. I put the cardboard boxes containing all my uncle’s letters and other papers in the boot of the car to be looked through later and we drove home.

  ‘When we arrived home, I felt I needed a whisky and was just pouring it when the phone rang. It was the estate agents to say that they’d had an offer from some people to buy the cottage! I immediately told Jan.

  ‘“Oh excellent,” she said. “I know you were worried about having to pay the balance of Uncle John’s nursing home fees, particularly as you were hoping to be able to retire soon.”

  ‘She came over to me and patted me on the shoulder as she always did when she was pleased. Then she sniffed.

  ‘“Goodness, I didn’t notice it in the car, but you smell dreadfully of bonfires! I think you’d better change your clothes and have a shower.”

  ‘I’ve written this down in detail exactly as it happened, a sort of confession, to get it off my chest. If anyone thinks I acted to make my life an easy one, it has been anything other than that since then.

  ‘First of all, when I came to draw my pension I found it was much less than I expected. Something had gone wrong with the pension fund. Second, my wife and I were involved in a car crash. My wife was killed. I lost the sight in one eye and injured my right arm so badly that I can no longer play golf. Because of all that, I think, I developed shingles and now I have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. I am feeling very, very depressed. Uncle John is, amazingly, still alive but his mind has gone completely. He doesn’t recognise me at all any more. My uncle’s Willow Cottage burnt down two years ago and four modern houses have been built on the site. I hoped that when they were being built the excavations for the foundations would unearth the body, but apparently they didn’t.

  ‘I hope whoever reads this will not think too badly of me.’

  A police sergeant was standing in Nigel’s bedroom reading the handwritten confession. Nigel’s dead body lay on the bed beside it.

  The doctor had examined the body and the bottle of pills on the bedside table and announced, subject to a post-mortem
, that the deceased had apparently committed suicide.

  ‘I think you’re right,’ said the sergeant. ‘Read this stuff that was lying beside him. It’s a long confession, a suicide note I suppose, but the oddest one I’ve ever read. I shall have to pass it to the coroner. I pity those poor devils who bought the new houses in Willow Close. No doubt we shall be instructed to do what will be called “a thorough search”, but it could turn into a demolition job!’

  The Stoic

  It was a minor media sensation! The popular papers loved it. ‘Tessa head over heels’, ‘The Prof’s love nest’, proclaimed the headlines.

  The more serious papers also loved it in a more restrained way. One of their ‘diaries’ had this small paragraph:

  I understand that Professor Tom Pithy (62), who had such a resounding success with his series The Social Life of Primates on TV, recently has left his wife of 35 years, the well-known novelist Barbara Pithy (58), to live with the delectable Tessa Avon (24), star of the notable TV costume drama series The Life of Nelson and more recently the record-breaking British film To Sea Afar. The couple are apparently at a secret hideaway somewhere in Italy.

  And the papers’ columnists quickly grasped something new to pontificate upon. The most feminist of them was in something of a dilemma as she wasn’t quite sure whether to praise Tessa for her free spirit or commiserate with the deserted wife. So she wrote a rather boring article on father-figure fixation instead.