The Wimbledon Poisoner (16 page)

‘Mate,’ said Donald, ‘we’ve all got to go sometime. I’m going today. Very soon you’ll be on your way as well.’

‘Sure,’ said Henry.

‘And so,’ said Donald, ‘will all these people.’

‘Very, very, very soon,’ said Henry.

Billykins had decided to ‘dispense with the burial service as such’. Which, everyone in the street had agreed, was a bold and generous gesture on Donald’s behalf.

‘What does it mean?’ she had asked Henry, a day or so after Donald’s death, ‘what does it mean?’

‘Indeed,’ said Henry feelingly, ‘what does it mean?’

She had chosen three hymns: ‘Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth’, ‘Ye Holy Angels Bright’ and ‘Now Thank We All Our God’. And at the cemetery the vicar, a man who looked as if he needed far more consolation than he would ever be capable of dispensing, had agreed to say a few words before Henry’s address. Henry’s address, Billykins had said, would be the centrepiece of the occasion. Much, much better to have the sincere words of a family friend than some vicar who didn’t really know Donald.

In Henry’s hands was a crumpled piece of paper on which was written: ‘Skill at medicine 2 mins. Wit and tolerance 3 mins. Father and husband 8 mins. Golfing ability? Tennis serve? Value of house? Poss. tell Biarritz anecdote here (too crude???). Remember: don’t be tasteless, Henry!’ Lower down the page he had scribbled a quotation from Shelley: ‘Life stains the white radiance of Eternity’. This, as Henry looked at it, the piped organ music swelling through the chapel, seemed to sum up the complete irrelevance of English literature. ‘Stains the white radiance of Eternity’, eh? What did that mean when it came down to it? How many pints would that buy you? In case of trouble, underneath that, Henry had written – ‘Death is Nature’s way of telling us to slow down’. And, below that – ‘Death comes as the end. The everlasting friend. Sophocles.’

In his researches at Wimbledon Public Library he had not been able to find any really cheering quotations on the subject of death. There were a few of the I-am-not-really-dead-but-just-popped-out-for-a-packet-of-fags sort of lines, which all went on a little long for Henry’s taste, and quite a number of death-as-a-viable-alternative-to-life stuff, much of it from the fathers of the early church. Henry had thought of taking this line, but the trouble was, he found, one became almost too jolly at Donald’s expense, the implication being that he, the jammy bastard, was well off out of it, while they, the real sufferers, were condemned to a few more years of the horrors of living in Wimbledon.

The worms crawl in
The worms crawl out
The worms play poker on your snout
Be merry my friends be merry! (Trad.)

was also to be found on Henry’s scrappy sheets of paper. Next to it he had written: ‘Use this if golf joke goes well!’ And on the next page a long, uplifting sentence from a French sociologist, the gist of which was that dying was something we needed a lot of help with. The French sociologist, whose sentence was more like a paragraph, went on to argue that death was something that we needed to share – it needed to be seen publicly. The dying man should be surrounded by his friends and family, should make, as it were, a day of it. To Henry, the idea of being cheered on as you croaked, by Elinor, Mr and Mrs Is-the-Mitsubishi-Scratched-Yet, his mother, her mother, Maisie and anyone else with a few hours to spare was almost completely repulsive. But Donald, to judge from the size of the congregation – they were three deep in the aisles and old Mr Donovan from 21b (‘I fought two wars for you lot’) had to wait outside the double doors – Donald was not experiencing what the French sociologist called the Lonely Death. He was having, rather, the Oversubscribed Death.

At the end of the second hymn – Ye – Holy – Angels – Bright – Who-o-o-o wait at God’s right hand! – Henry found himself being tugged forward by Elinor. He looked up and saw the vicar carrying a book that looked more like an illustrated part work from W. H. Smith’s than Holy Writ.

‘Not yet . . .’ he hissed.

‘Donald Templeton,’ the vicar began, ‘was a man loved, and I mean loved, by all who knew him.’

Which did not, thought Henry, include you, chum.

‘Those who followed his career in television, from the role of humble assistant film editor, up through the features department of Granada Television, through to his incredibly successful period as editor of the BBC magazine programme,
Holiday ’76
, knew him to be resourceful, keen, and deeply aware, not only of the problems of travel – his chosen speciality – but also of such things as cuisine and interior design.’

Henry looked along the row. Billykins’s jaw sagged under her veil. Most of the other mourners were listening to this with the same rapt attention they might have accorded a vaguely accurate account of Donald’s life. It didn’t really matter, their expressions seemed to say, he might as well have been a short-order cook or a deep-sea diver or a male prostitute. He was just another wally like anyone else. In some ways, thought Henry, the man with whom Donald had been confused seemed to have had a better time of it.

‘Later,’ went on the vicar, ‘Donald Templeton showed himself a skilful cross-country skier, on and off piste, a witty raconteur and an enthusiastic do-it-yourselfer. But, when we think of him today, which I can assure you we do, we think of those left behind. Of Norman, of Jean-Paul and of little Beatrice who feels this as deeply as anyone, including the Sussex branch of the family who, because of the railway accident you all know about, cannot be with us here today. Donald Templeton—’

Whoever he may be
.

‘Smiles down at us today. His conversion to Islam, his rejection of that faith and the subsequent, troubled period, when the disease had made him all but unrecognizable to any but a few close friends, are things we may wish to pass over today, but—’

Here the vicar raised his eyes to the congregation and a look of panic passed across his face. Perhaps, thought Henry, there was another Donald Templeton. Perhaps . . . But whatever the reason, whether it was that everyone had been so busy reassuring everyone that no one had bothered to talk to the crematorium, whether they had got the time wrong, or whether the vicar had simply had a brainstorm, he now, you could tell, was dimly aware that he had not given an exemplary performance. Whatever the reason may have been, the vicar had no direction in which to go but forward.

‘But,’ he said, his voice challenging his audience to rise and refute him, ‘death, as someone said, is the great leveller. And in my father’s house are many mansions. And if ever a man sleeps well after a day’s work done well that man is, and I pray God give him rest, Donald Templeton!’

Here, overcome by a mixture of shame, embarrassment and some genuine fellow feeling for whoever it was inside the box some yards to his left, the vicar turned to the coffin and said, in a Shakespearian voice, ‘Goodbye, Donald!’

At which point Billykins, perhaps mindful of the more glamorous, civilized life she could have had as the wife of the editor of
Holiday ’76
, burst into tears and was comforted by Elinor.

Somehow or other, the vicar got off stage, and disappeared behind the altar, perhaps off to hurl himself into the flames that would shortly be consuming Donald. It seemed, thought Henry, the least he could do. As he left, Henry, pushed from behind by Elinor, crept up in the direction of the coffin.

Afterwards he blamed the vicar. Everyone blamed the vicar who, fortunately for him, was nowhere to be found. But Henry knew, however much he might blame the vicar, it was really his fault.

In picking up his notes, he glanced over in Donald’s direction. And it was only then that he understood that Donald was actually dead. Up to that moment, Henry had not been quite able to understand the connection between the Chicken
à la
Thallium he had accidentally served to his old friend and the thing everyone was calling a ‘tragic loss’ or a ‘shocking bereavement’.

At any moment, he had felt, Donald would crop up somewhere in the suburb. He had simply gone missing, somewhere between the Rose and Thorn, the library, the swimming pool or any of the other places where suburban fathers waited for their children. But now he realized with a sense of horror that Donald was actually in the box. That, over there, was Donald. And that woman in the front row, looking up at him severely, was Elinor. It seemed unfair.

The silence in the chapel, broken only by Billykins sobbing, lengthened. Should he, thought Henry, make some mention of the ghastly mistake that had been made? Should he just throw away his speech and talk, as one should, from the heart? Yes, thought Henry, I will. He crumpled the paper in his hands into a ball and fixed the congregation with a stern, preacher’s eye.

‘I didn’t recognize,’ said Henry, ‘the man that has been described here today.’

This, he thought, went down pretty well.

‘I don’t know which Donald Templeton he was talking about,’ went on Henry, ‘but it wasn’t my Donald Templeton. I’m not saying that that Donald Templeton wasn’t a nice bloke. Fair play to him. I’m sorry he’s obviously in the same situation that Donald finds himself. But no way. No way was my Donald Templeton the producer of
Holiday ’76
. I can’t think how this . . . cock-up has occurred and I’m deeply distressed by it. Distressed but also, in a way, glad. Because it shows us, I think, that death is a universal thing. It happens to us all, even if we are a producer on
Holiday ’76
, whatever we are, however famous and glorious and so on, death comes for us. We are all going to die. Fairly soon. Today, tomorrow, this afternoon. Pretty soon anyway. Pretty fucking soon!’

He had said ‘fuck’. At a funeral. He had sworn. At a funeral. Oh my Christ! Oh my sweet Jesus! Oh God! And it had been going so well. He had had them. There, in the palm of his hand. He had been direct, forceful, tough, compassionate, blunt, and then he had said the F word. Why had he done this? He seemed to be still talking and Billykins, doubled up with grief, was sobbing even harder. She looked, thought Henry, like someone who has just run the 800 metres rather faster than they had intended.

‘Donald,’ Henry was saying, ‘was a doctor. He was a doctor. Of Medicine. Not of Law, not of English, not, thank God, of Sociology. But of that art of healing which we all know that his widow, Mrs Donald, needs so much as do we all after the scene that we have here witnessed today. Yes—’ He was back on course now. ‘Yes, Donald was a doctor. Not a brilliant doctor. Not a high flyer. Not always, well, right! Often, as we know, to our cost, completely, hopelessly wrong in diagnostic terms. Way off the mark. Quite frequently.’

Billykins gave a juddering sob and started to bang her head against her knees. Elinor was signalling something to him. To stop, perhaps? But Henry couldn’t stop. Thinking about Donald in that box, he knew he had to go on, to try and find, in the middle of all this gibberish that was coming out of his mouth, one coherent sentence that would stand as a tribute to someone he had, yes he had thought, was a bloody nice bloke. A wee bit of a racist—

‘A wee bit of a racist,’ he was saying,
out loud
, ‘a wee bit of a racist. But who, I may say, when it comes down to it, and it does come down to it, isn’t? Who isn’t, in England, these days, fed up to the back teeth with hearing about Mad Mullahs chopping off people’s hands for blasphemy and—’

Why was he talking about Mullahs? He must get back to the matter in hand. He found he was looking straight at Sam Baker QC (almost) whose arms were folded and whose face bore a look of intense, sceptical concentration, as if he was listening to his opposing advocate.

‘Lawyers,’ said Henry, ‘like doctors, are the kind of people who live in Wimbledon and this is the kind of person Donald Templeton was. Not, as I say, a lawyer—’

Sam Baker QC (almost) shifted elaborately in his seat. ‘But a doctor. And people like Donald, as I say, are used to slurs that are cast at them. They’re not ashamed of being English, of being the people they are, of being the quiet, hard-working middle-class people who make up the backbone of England and indeed of America and—’

He caught sight of Sylvie le Perroquet from 109 (
Non Merci ce Soir Sylvie
). She looked almost frenzied with concentration.

‘Of France. But France, America, England, these aren’t the issue here. What is the issue is something that unites all those three countries, something that they all have in common, something that is as true of New York as it is of Wimbledon. I am talking, of course, about the situation which Donald finds himself in, the . . . er . . . dead situation.’

They had gone quiet again. He could pull it back. He knew he could. He found he was looking straight into the eyes of ‘Neighbourhood Watch’. Inspector Rush normally struck Henry as a dull little man but today his eyes seemed as bright as a squirrel’s.

‘But death, even in suspicious circumstances, is something that creates a bond between us. Because all of us, of course, are united by death. Death, as someone said, is no laughing matter. It’s not a subject for comedy. Except, of course, in the sense that we, all of us here today, English people here today to mourn a loved friend and colleague . . .’

Loved friend and colleague. That was the sort of thing, wasn’t it?

‘Here to mourn his passing but also, of course, yes, also to have, well, to have a laugh. To laugh because as Sophocles said – laughter is our only response, sometimes, to things. We laugh because the grief is too great, too deep, and that laughter can be as profound and meaningful an emotion as the tears that sometimes come with it, although they come, of course, out of amusement and not out of sorrow. I think comedy is as vital and meaningful as tragedy and I think Donald, if he were alive, which he isn’t, would agree, because Donald, like all of us, like all of the English, whether from the north—’

Henry caught sight of Dave Sprott’s grey hair and glasses bobbing up and down like some toy hung in the back window of a saloon car.

‘Or the south, was an Englishman. Yes. He was an English doctor and I think there are people in the world who think such people are not, intrinsically, interesting. They would rather hear about Aborigines or people who have it away with gorillas because they don’t care about the ordinary, decent people. They don’t give a fucking stuff about Donald Templeton.’