Agnes Owens (40 page)

‘What royalties?' she said bitterly. ‘I could have made more money cleaning houses.'

‘Still,' I said, ‘being known as a writer gives you prestige. The publishers invite you to cocktail parties and to signing your books in shops. Aren't you proud of what you've accomplished?'

‘Not really. I wasn't popular. Drink up, there's more where that came from.'

I held out my glass, feeling sucked into a drinking session I didn't want. I had come because on the phone she sounded desperate. I said, ‘One more drink then I'll have to go home. Matthew will be wondering where I've got to.'

‘Surely you don't have to worry about Matthew?'

I was annoyed by this but before I could reply she leaned forward and took my hand saying, ‘Don't go yet, you're the only friend I have nowadays.'

She sounded tearful. I could hardly tell her I wasn't a friend so said, ‘I'll stay for ten minutes.'

The bottle on the table was now half empty.

I had come to know Isabel by accident. A crowd where I worked was going to a book launch and invited me along so I went, though it was not my idea of a good time. But we were given a glass of wine and treated to a reading by the famous author Isobel Anderson, who I had never heard of. Someone said she was very entertaining. I don't like being read to and found her boring, but we all cheered up when offered a second glass of wine, and I felt better when introduced to her. Later she came with us to a pub round the corner and we stayed there late, laughing, joking and acting in the foolish way women act when drunk. Isobel fitted in well with our company and promised to come out with us on the next literary occasion. We met her once or twice again but when these meetings petered out I was not sorry. All Isobel spoke of was herself and other writers she knew, and here I now was in her shabby room and not happy about it.

She filled my glass again and I decided I would certainly leave after finishing this one. She said, ‘You don't know what it feels like, being ostracised.'

‘I don't know what you mean.'

‘Nowadays you and your friends never get in touch with me. What have I done? I often wonder about that.'

‘Nothing!' I said, trying not to show embarrassment, ‘We thought you had better things to do than come out with us.'

‘Not really. Nobody wants to know me and I can't write any more. I don't know what's wrong with me. I've no energy nowadays.'

‘Why not cut down on your drinking? Maybe that's what's wrong.'

I was only guessing that she drank too much but had stopped caring about her. I had told Matthew I wouldn't be long and had now been away for more than an hour. She said, ‘Why do you think I drink too much? You don't know a thing about me.'

‘True,' I said, and stood up, and she burst into tears. It was hard for me not to leave at once. I said, ‘Oh, come on now, it's not that bad. You've just got to apply yourself like Hemmingway did, three hours of writing every morning, leaning with one elbow on a dresser.'

‘No wonder he killed himself,' she said with a rueful smile, drying her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Unluckily my writing was based on my family.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I put all the drastic things that happened to the family in that novel. When my mother found out she said I was a disgrace, writing about events that were nobody else's business. She's stopped talking to me.'

‘Is that why you stopped writing?'

‘Not altogether. But I dried up, and with the family not talking to me I began hitting the bottle. So you are looking at a ruined woman. Let's drink to that.'

I was now getting sozzled and forgot to say I didn't want any more.

We didn't speak for a while. The vodka was making me tired. I had difficulty keeping my eyes open. Though desperate to get home I felt sorry for her and it came as a shock when she asked for a loan of twenty pounds, saying I would be paid back first thing when she got her giro. I gave her it, just to get away, then looked at my watch and said, ‘Time to go.'

She said, ‘But you've hardly been here – it's still early.'

‘But Matthew worries if I'm away for long.'

‘Is he still in a wheelchair?'

‘Yes, and always will be.'

‘I'm sorry. What happened to him anyway?'

I knew she wasn't interested in Matthew and was just asking to keep me there.

‘He was knocked down by a motorbike. I thought you knew.'

‘I forgot. I don't remember things half the time. I suppose it's because –'

‘Because what?'

She hesitated then said, ‘I have cancer.'

I was shocked into silence. Saying sorry didn't seem appropriate, and I didn't know whether to believe her. She had already said she didn't know what was wrong with her. At last I said, ‘Are you sure?'

‘The doctor says I've got roughly six months. Don't look so serious!' she laughed. ‘I'm used to the idea.'

‘Is there anything I can do?' I asked stupidly, wishing more than ever to be out of this stuffy apartment smelling of vodka, then I remembered vodka has no smell.

‘No, there's nothing, but thanks all the same. Yes there is. Please get me another bottle.'

My sympathy vanished as she handed me back the note I'd given her.

‘Alright,' I said, ‘I won't be long.'

Outside I hurried past the licensed grocer and reached the bus
stop before turning back again. I couldn't leave her waiting for what seemed the only medicine that helped.

‘I'm back,' I shouted, hurrying up the stairs. ‘I'm sorry I took so long.'

The front door was unlocked but the living room empty. An empty glass lay on the floor. Her book was still on the table. I called her name but she was gone. Before leaving I took the book, though I don't know why. I might never read it, on the other hand I might, so the next time I called I could discuss it with her instead of feeling guilty. But in my heart I knew I wouldn't call on her again.

At home Matthew noticed the glum look on my face and asked what was wrong. In bed that night I told him about Isobel having only six months to live. He said, ‘Don't take it to heart, there's always people worse off than us. Besides, you've got me.'

He shut my mouth with a kiss. I began to feel better and fell asleep in his arms. He hardly ever sleeps but never complains, which is what I like about him. Five months later I saw Isobel's obituary in the paper and wondered if she had been alone when she died.

M
y life, as I remember it, began when I started school at the age of five years. A boy of the same age broke the zip of my new jumper so I punched and kicked him until he lay on the ground sobbing, then I ran home and told my mother that I wasn't ever going to school again. But she was adamant. I had to return and take my punishment. At that moment I stopped loving her, for it was the first time I did not get my own way.

For the next ten years I was a sullen pupil with no aptitude for learning. I scribbled on my jotter and drew skeletons sticking out of chimney tops. The teacher said I must be attracted to evil and put me at the bottom of the class. When fifteen I fell in love with an older girl who was beautiful and proud and never looked at me. I wrote her a letter declaring my love, then immediately tore it up. It was a relief when she and her parents moved away from the district.

After school I got a job in an office where I stamped envelopes and made tea for the staff who hardly spoke to me, though I felt their glances on my back. I left that job and lay all day in my bed for as long as I could.

‘Whatever will we do with you?' said my mother.

‘Send him to work on a pig farm,' said my father.

They did, and I liked it. There was no one to criticise me and the pigs ignored me, making gentle piggy noises with their soft brown snouts. That went on until my father died and I was again under my mother's thumb. She made rules that I had to follow without question. I was not allowed out to play on Sundays and on fine evenings had to walk with her along the river bank. This
was humiliating, especially if we met former school mates who jeered and called me a Mummy's Boy. But my mother said now that I was fatherless I must stay by her side or I'd be tempted to commit all sorts of crimes. But the pigs were my main preoccupation. I would sit on the fence round their pens, watching their fat bodies roll in the mud. The farmer told me, ‘Be careful – if you fall in beside them they'll eat you as soon as look at you.'

This made me think of a perfect way to make Mother disappear, but it happened another way. She died after tripping over a crack in the pavement while taking me down to the river.

Then the war came and people started dying in air raids. That's when I discovered my talent for killing. While pretending to save those buried in rubble I would partly dig them out with my bare hands then finish them off. I had to be careful when other rescuers were around but they said, ‘Look at that boy! He never stops trying to save those poor souls.'

Then I was called up by the army and sent abroad where I sometimes killed our own men as well as the enemy. It was an exciting time, but I was almost caught out. A fellow soldier followed me into ruins where I was pretending to help an old man find what had once been his home. I caught sight of this soldier from the corner of my eye and at once shot him dead, but was left with a bad feeling. Perhaps my luck was running out. I told the old man to go and he hobbled away without a backward glance.

After that I decided to lie low, but I was wounded and hospitalised. I never fully recovered from the shrapnel in my head but was fit enough to join the A.R.P. who were still picking up the living and the dead after raids in Britain. With so much temptation around I resumed my malpractices, sometimes killing prostitutes, not for sexual reasons but for the thrill of the chase. But at last I couldn't cope any more. Death was no novelty. I lost my appetite for it, being unable to compete with a war that was killing people in thousands. I decided to end my own life while I was still intact.

I took a dose of something lethal that should have killed an ox, and woke later with a nurse bending over me. She said, ‘You'll be alright,' and for the second time in my life I fell in love. So we married and might have lived happily ever after, if I hadn't become restless for something more exciting. I didn't know exactly what at the time, but had the taste of blood in my mouth.

‘Perhaps we should go a holiday,' said my wife.

‘Where to?' I asked, thinking of the beaches in Normandy.

‘Saltcoats,' she said, ‘Or maybe Largs.'

‘Why not Helensburgh or Dunoon?' I sneered. After years of disagreeing about it we finally went to Thailand and met the tsunami full in the face. I survived but my wife did not, which was unfair. But who am I to say what is unfair and what isn't?

When seventy-five, the doctor told me I had terminal cancer. ‘Wonderful!' I thought. At last I was going to leave this world of misery behind, but first I would put my house in order and make a list of people I would take with me, and I could be as careless as I liked about doing that since there's no punishment when you're dead. But a week later the doctor told me he'd read the wrong report, I had years left to live being as healthy as the next man. I got so angry that I choked him on the spot and to this day don't remember how I disposed of the body. I think most murderers who get caught are those who have ulterior motives and plan to do it. I have always acted on impulse.

The years dragged on. I became the leader of a writers' group and wrote a short novel about a man who murders a doctor for no apparent reason. It wasn't a great success but sold well enough to make me know I'm made my mark on the world, which was all I ever really wanted. The group and I parted company when a member accused me of copying a well-known novel I hadn't heard of. I was so upset that I went home and hardly ever left the house except to buy food and other necessities. After living like that for a year I decided enough was enough and again made preparations for my death, this time making sure there were no hitches. I had
the plastic bag ready, the aspirins, the bottle of whisky, the rope, and then the doorbell rang.

A young woman stood on the doorstep. She said, ‘I'm from Care in the Community and I was wondering . . .'

My heart sank but I heard myself say, ‘Do come in,' and resigned myself to the inevitable.

B
efore giros came by post I remember my Da saying we should all start walking to the broo to save on bus fares, since now we were in the hands of that heartless Tory Thatcher woman. Marlene, my older sister, said he could go and take a fuck to himself, she wasn't going to walk. My brother Danny said he didn't mind walking as long as he had enough fags to last all day without having to borrow from our mother. I was still at school so didn't have to say anything. Danny was a dab hand at borrowing money from Mother, always promising to pay her back with an extra pound. I don't think she ever got that extra pound, but he always wore her down by begging until she went to fetch her purse from the freezer where we all knew she kept it. Danny told me he was training to be a moneylender, since it was the only occupation that paid well. My sister was training to be a hairdresser, but I wasn't training to be anything. I'd sit in my room with lipstick on, staring at myself in the mirror and trying to convince myself that I wasn't bad-looking, but when I went outside I could only recollect a tall skinny girl with long straggly hair.

My main entertainment in those days was waiting up for Danny to come back late and give me the low-down on what he'd been doing. Some of it was a laugh and some of it, from my point of view, very worrying, but I never criticised him. He was the only company I had.

‘Can I come with you?' I once asked, knowing the answer would be no. He said, ‘Who ever heard of a girl in a gang?' and I suspected he didn't want me to know everything he did. Then he brought a girlfriend home and I was really cheesed off.