Direction General des Finances Publiques,
Department d’Excesse de Vitesse,
Montauban,
35911
France
Speeding Ticket numero 729/LXC/7653004
Mon Cher Gendarme,
Il est de mon devoir de vous informer que j’écris en tant qu’exécuteur du Last Will et Testament de M. Kennaway. Oui! Monsieur Kennaway est mort! Il keel ’imself dans une accident d’automobile 2 minutes après l’infraction ci-dessus, parce que as you point out he was doing le 32 kmh au-delà de la limite légale, et il sortie de la route et s’esté crasée sur votre road-signe qui dite RALENTIR ou comme on dit en Anglais, SLOW DOWN. Quelle ironique!
J’ai plus de mauvaises nouvelles pour vous: M. Kennaway mort un home sans monnaie. Il etait brassique, ou comme on dit a Londre: le skint. Je n’ai pas le 65 euros nécessaires pour régler cette amende. Je suis tellement telle m’enttellement désolé. Si c’est une consolation, il y a beaucoup d’autres personnes dans votre situation. Un marchand de sauccison local estdû £337,650. Oui, c’est incroiable mais M. Kennaway aime le porc produits beaucoup. Connaissais vous Le Ginster? Je le recommend beaucoup a toute les Gendarmes Français.
M. Kennaway était un auteur de livres. If ee become a best seller après sa mort je weel be able a payer votre inestimable department d’excèsse de vitesse avec les royalties! To help achieve thees s’il vous plait encourager vos gendarmes à acheter des livres de M. Kennaway et leave les reviews de customers positives sur Amazon.
Une dernier faveur, je vous e demande. Would eet be possible a acheter le signe de route que M. Kennaway s’ecrasé into? Nous n’avons pas le monnaie pour une headstone sur la tombe de M. Kennaway et j’ai l’idee a utiliser la signe qui dit RALENTER dans le cimetière. Faites le moi savoir. Je crains que nous can make un offrir de un euro pour eet.
Merci bien pour tout! Especiallament le grand sales drive du livres de M. Kennaway.
Mes plus profound et delicates et fraternal amicalements.
PAUL FRYER BSc (Avocat a gens mort)
I posted that as I left Castelnau. On the road north I remembered that that was not the first time I had killed myself. I had a number of times written – as my executor – to the Metropolitan Police in London to escape paying a parking fine. It had always worked.
Maybe my acceptance of Susie’s plan to blow the full-time whistle was connected to my idea that death was not an end but an escape. When my father died I comforted myself with the thought that a month or two later he would burst back through the front door laughing and saying ‘Sorry about that kids, I just had to lie low for a bit to get this ruddy producer off my back. The bloody man wouldn’t take no for an answer. It was a contractual thing. It was a stupid storyline. I couldn’t have done anything decent with it. I’m afraid there was no other way out of it. Come on, give me a hug. Am I pleased to see you!’ And I would kiss him and be wrapped in his tobacco and whisky embrace.
But he never came home.
He never came home.
Maybe I should have seen him dead. But we were protected from that sight. A change occurred to me around that time in my life. From then on I felt slightly different from everyone else I met, as though my father had taken a crucial part of me with him. I wondered if it were possible to go over and ask for it back. To get a short snatch of death and ask him a couple of things.
I sailed across the Channel on the Cherbourg to Poole ferry, making a late afternoon crossing on a warm humid day and placid sea. To get a break from the decor – it was no wonder people felt sick on that ship – I went to the rail at the stern and reviewed its height. It reached my chest; way too high for Stanley or Susie, and was fitted with rope netting so I couldn’t get a foot onto the metal bars to help myself up and over it, if I wanted to, which I didn’t.
I looked down the curved riveted steel of the ferry’s belly. Even on such a calm day the veined grey water was terrifying. I thought about tipping myself into it. I wondered if I’d bounce down the side of the ship before I hit the sea. Just that fall would be bad enough. But then the pitiless water. I’d be dragged under quickly, pulled into the vortex of the propeller, despite by this point desperately trying to swim away from the ship to save my life. Death right there. Tugging me towards him. Her. It. Sucked under the surface, I’d hear the grinding of the motor and spinning of the prop, which takes my leg off just below the knee. I’d manage to push my way up to the surface, blood in the water, to see the ferry chugging away. No one saw me go over, or heard my yelp, except for a couple of Brit truckers who didn’t mention it because it would only hold them up.
It was a healthy sequence of thoughts. Under normal circumstances I did not want to kill myself. Death was a terrifying, painful thought. Not easeful. When it became thinkable and then doable – that was the time to do it. We all carried a fail-safe device in our heart. We didn’t need the state to tell us when we could and when we couldn’t kill ourselves. We couldn’t, until we had to.
I looked up from the grimy water, and saw the setting sun gilding the Dorset coast, obliging all who looked with some god rays. The land to my right, up ahead, was purple and darkening with dusk. I started making out the twinkling lights of Poole harbour, and imagined cosy pubs on a steep cobbled high street. Through bay windows with swirly glass I could see a fire flickering in the hearth and a young barman reaching for a glass to pour a pint of British ale into. Life. Calling me. That’s what it did when things were going OK.