On Chasing Brad Through Purgatory (24 page)

The counterfeit said: “Danny you're wrong. You know the Creed better than I do. ‘And he descended into hell and on the third day …'”

For some reason I felt the tears begin to well. “Then what did he do while he was there? Pop out for an ice-cream sundae? If so I hope it gave him indigestion.”

“It may well have done—what he did while he was there. Chronic indigestion. He comforted the suffering. He stood beside the torture chair and entered in and instilled that incredible strength you've just been wondering at.”

Plausible. Oh, glib.

“Well in that case why has he broken me?”

“And is that how you truly see yourself my love? But just look at you! Fighting every single bloody inch of the way!”

Oh Brad. I am broken. What shall I do? Wherever you are—you the real you the bona fide Brad Overton—just tell me what I ought to do.

I hadn't asked this out aloud.

But of course that didn't make much difference.

“Listen Danny. Please listen. This
is
the real bona fide me. And when I said that stuff about not wanting to bring on a heart attack I agree it was just plain stupid. But there are three points you've got to let me make. Firstly we don't stop expressing ourselves badly just because we're dead. Not all at once. Secondly I think that even good things—if they happen too abruptly—can sometimes come as something of a shock. But I was nervous and I know I paved the way quite clumsily.”

“Nervous of
me
? The man you claim to have lived with for over the past two years? Oh yes. Naturally. I can fully understand that.”

“Nervous you idiot that I might say the wrong thing. Make a total cock-up. (As in fact I have.) But surely you must
know
: one always does get nervous with somebody one loves. Before the future's all tied up that is—while things could still go either way.”

“And the third point?” I inquired. Dry. Deadpan. Conceding nothing. “You did say there were
three
points?”

“And the third point: we're on the devil's ground, remember. He's frightened you're about to get away and he's contesting it like mad. There's nothing he'd like better than to see me make that total cock-up.”

“Which you said was already made.”

“I'm hoping it's retrievable. That so far it's only partial.”

“Anyhow. He's frightened that
I'm
about to get away then is he? So what about yourself?”

I'd kind of thought this was in the nature of a trick question. But I wasn't too sure how. In any case it was supposed to be ironic.

“I'm sorry?”

“I mean—isn't he frightened you're going to get away as well?”

“But no that doesn't enter into it. So far as he's concerned I'm just visiting. A free agent.”

“Although he knows you've come to take me back?” I realized then that I had indeed set a trap even without being fully aware of what it was. And now I could really hear the note of triumph in my voice—was ever any note of triumph more completely and pathetically specious? “I assume then they never told you a person can only be released from hell when somebody cares for him enough to take his place?”

“Oh Danny do you think I don't care for you enough to take your place?”

“And would you even know what it involves to take my place?”

“Yes I would. As I mentioned, I've been with you every step of the way. Every solitary step of the way. In fact my own testing has been wholly tied up with yours, from the very first moment of the crash and even before you took your life—because it was known of course you were about to do that. Not by me though. I was dumbfounded, staggered, literally can't express the gratitude I felt, even if at the same time I would have given anything not to have you do it. But that's why I had to leave the Halfway House before you yourself arrived. Again I would have given anything to be allowed to stay but …” There was a pause. “So yes. Oh God yes. To answer your question—I do know what it involves.”

“To answer it in brief.”

“Yes. Always admirably succinct.”

It seemed the two of us were enjoying a small joke.

“So in that case how could you ever have thought that you would get away?”

He replied very gently: “
I
didn't commit suicide.”

“Throwing God's most precious gift back in his face? The ultimate sin? Even less forgivable than murder?” Again, though, my tone had aimed at irony. The counterfeit made no response.

But was he that? Was he? Oh
Brad
… Wherever you are please don't give up on me. If I have ever needed to know you're there I need to know you're there right now.

“That isn't the point,” I said. “You're here in hell;
apparently
you're here in hell. That's what matters. So I need to have an answer. If you release me what makes you think that
you
can get away as well?”

“Oh my love my love. You ask one heck of a lot of questions! But then of course you always did. People used to comment.”

Which clearly meant he hadn't anything to say to that last and truly all-important one.

“Oh why don't you just go home?” I cried. “Go home! Back to wherever you've come from! I really can't be arsed to listen to any more of your stupid damned lies. And besides.” I felt less angry now than plain dispirited. “Even if you
had
been the real Brad this ploy of yours could never have worked. Do you honestly believe I'd have let the real Brad take over from me here? I know the likes of you won't ever understand this but you'd still have been wasting your time. Perhaps a crumb of consolation?”

He started crying. The counterfeit started crying for God's sake. I could hear it distinctly.

“Yes, shame,” I said. “It sure is a hard world out there! Is Daddy going to be most frightfully cross with you? You'll have to make him see it was an absolutely no-win situation—even
he
couldn't have done better. Either that or else you've just got to take your medicine like a proper man.”

I had reckoned this was the last weapon in his arsenal. Perhaps it wasn't, quite. “I love you so much,” he said. “I love you so very very much.”

Yes crocodile tears and crocodile sentiments but the thing was—he sounded so unbelievably like Brad. “Stop it,” I whispered, “stop it, please stop!” I took my hands away from the boulders and tried to block my ears. I started to hum as loudly as I could. After a few seconds I realized what I was humming. ‘Diamonds are a girl's best friend.' (Brad had often told me that gentlemen prefer blonds.) I went on for at least another half-minute.

Then I finished humming and also unblocked my ears. “And do we still find you there Mr Telepathy?” Unexpectedly, almost unaccountably, I realized I'd have been disappointed if no answer had come back. Relieved—yes probably—yet weirdly disappointed too.

He said: “‘The only thing you have to do is brush up on your telepathic skills.' That's a quote—from not so very long ago. Do you remember?”

That hadn't been in my mind. It hadn't been in my mind at all. I hadn't thought of it even once since that moment he'd first spoken it. (Well, maybe once but only that.) There was more than mere telepathy involved in all of this.

“Of course I do. It was the night on which you died. Correction; forgive me. It was the night on which Brad died.”

“That's right. We each thought the other had arranged for John to come to pick us up.”

“I will say this for you: you've definitely done your homework.” I almost added—
with a devotion beyond the call of duty
. It was quite true people used to comment on the fact I asked a lot of questions; Brad used to say it was because I was a writer. But this of course was what made the present lies so scarily persuasive: the way they adhered so closely to the truth.

For so much of the time. For so very much of the time.

“By the way, I never knew you sometimes read a Mills & Boon. I'm sorry you felt you couldn't tell me. Did you really think I might have minded? (Though I agree I would probably have teased you quite a bit. But in that department you always gave back as good as you got—
at least
as good as you got. Just as in every other.) And also … while we're vaguely on the subject … thank you my love for leaving a message at the airport for Suzanne.”

“I'm not impressed,” I said. “I am not in any way impressed. And please don't call me your love.” I don't know why it was only at this point I had latched onto that and even to me I sounded prissy; like Doris Day in one of those sex comedies with Rock Hudson. “But if you really want to impress me…?”

“Yes?
Yes?
”

I'd spoken recklessly without any real idea of what I meant to say. But there was something nagging at me; something hovering, yet again, just beyond the confines of my consciousness. And I had to admit that I was curious. No—curious was most definitely not the right word, nothing like it. But what I meant was: well there couldn't be one chance in a hundred that this man was genuinely Brad and yet while there remained even the faintest possibility of my being in any way mistaken …

Therefore I was praying again. Naturally. Seeking for a foolproof way to distinguish between truth and falsity and knowing as I did so that this would somehow be tied in with that elusive bit of recall. The trick would be finally to pin down the memory while at the same time concealing it from all hellishly canny thought-readers—a clause that was incorporated, very much so, within my current prayer. (And right now I was having to tell myself,
faute de mieux
, that prayers possibly could get through, because there was absolutely nothing else for it.) So I tried to fill my mind with images suggested by that tune I had so recently been humming: images of Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe blithely heading towards Europe and of some of their fellow passengers on shipboard.

“All right,” I said. “All right. You've plainly genned up on everything that happened on our last night. Tell me then of one way in which you were untypically illogical … thinking back also to our
first
night and making a clear link between the two.”

“Oh have a heart!” said Brad—said the man who was professing to be Brad. “No, come on Danny! That's really a bit difficult isn't it?”

“You think so? Mmm.” A kiss on the hand may be quite continental—but diamonds are a girl's best friend.

(That wasn't on the boat of course; that was after Dorothy and Lorelei had got to Paris.)

“Don't forget that I had drunk slightly more than I should have. A hold on logic doesn't always survive so well under such conditions.”

“Too bad,” I said.

“Can't you give one clue?”

“No.”

“Our first night and our last night together—a connection—something illogical—I thank you for that ‘untypically' but sadly it's no more deserved than that kindly notion you had about me simply romping ahead towards judgment; for which I also thank you my—for which I also thank you; very gratefully. But Danny you've just got to help me out on this.”

“Why? I thought you knew it all.” And naturally that latest insidious manoeuvre had scarcely gone unnoticed. This man had very clearly majored in the art of self-insinuation.

A kiss may be grand but it won't pay the rental—on your humble flat—or help you at—the automat.

Mind you in all fairness it
was
a bit difficult. Had our positions been reversed I had to admit I probably couldn't have done it.

“And don't forget,” he reminded me, “that only this morning you were importuning in the name of fairness. The best of men, you said, do at least try to be fair. And you should know. If anybody should.”

“Okay! Okay! I'll give you a clue. One clue.” Was there going to be no end to all this blatant wiliness? (
Feminine
wiles my mother always called them.)

But really I supposed, deep down, there was such a big part of me that so incredibly much wanted—

“We were looking at the moon reflected on the lake and you said something which I found a little hurtful.”

“I know!” he exclaimed. “I called you Narcissus! Darling I didn't—”

“No. Something
else
I found a little hurtful.”

Men grow cold as girls grow old and we all lose our charms in the end. But square-cut or pear-shape these rocks don't lose their shape …

Oh God if it is Brad please help him. But if it's an impostor then let him recognize he's beaten, make him just give up and compel him to get the hell out of here. Because I know I've said this before but I really can't hold out much longer.

“Cheesy,” the man said. “
The Watchers on the Bank
. You didn't like it when I said that titles given to pictures could be cheesy.”

“
Were
cheesy.”

“And I don't even know why I said it. Can't think what I could have had in mind.”

Diamonds are a girl's best friend. But help that's the end of the verse; how does the second one begin? There may come a time when a lass needs a lawyer.

Oh please God. Please.

Please.

Please
.

But diamonds are a girl's best friend. There may come a time when some hard-boiled employer—

“Pictures with titles…? And now I have to link this up with something I said on our first night? Something illogical?”

“Not
illogical
precisely. More, like, inconsistent.”

“Some comment I made at the Quebec?”

Thinks you're awful nice. But get that ice. Or else no dice.

“Or if not there … That little French restaurant we went to. With everything a bit fussy and overwhelmingly pink. You had your back to the wall—and above your head—”

Yes? Above my head…? Above my head—what?
What?