The voice of Miss Sumpter resumes: ‘The house in which I had been living, in which I died, is not up for sale, since it is what’s called a Grace and Favour residence – that is to say in the keeping of the Royal Family to dispose of as they want. Terra Rosa, 21 Marlborough Court, London, NW8; pink-washed, discreet, charming. I wonder who will have it next? Perhaps Timothy Tovey’s eldest son James has a mistress, who could make use of it? I doubt it: he is altogether too boring, and genteel, as are all the children that my lover Timothy Tovey and his wife Janice made. Theirs was not a good mix, genetically. I told him it would be so, when the matter of his marrying Janice first arose: such a tall, pale, wavery woman! Perhaps Timothy Tovey’s mother will have her way in the end, and move into Terra Rosa? She is nearing ninety now. Well, we will see. The dead see everything. That is all the punishment they need. But the house is so delightful! A small, pink and white detached double-fronted Georgian villa, with a balconied bedroom over the front door, where in summer breakfasting lovers can sip their morning coffee and not care who sees. Well, I never cared. Timothy Tovey of course did. Mistresses may be known to exist, but not seen publicly to exist. Either his mother Julia would get to hear of it, or his wife Janice, or the passing ambassador of some friendly (or unfriendly) nation catch a glimpse of him. Timothy is in the Diplomatic Service: he cannot afford scandal.
‘Timothy Tovey was there at my bedside while I died. He left the palace reception where Janice was being awarded some medal or other for her perfectly boring work amongst the underprivileged and came at once. He had witnessed my face in that Little Death often enough: why not now in the great and final one? Poor Timothy: at thirty, tall, vigorous and proud, a gorilla of a man, huge-headed, long-armed, with the bright, bright eyes of the very intelligent; and the slow drawl of the overcultivated: at seventy, stooped and haggard – a long time now since he broke every chair he sat upon, made me cry out in fear for the safety of my small bones as he gripped me in our love-making. The cheekbones were still firm and prominent but the flesh caved in greyly beneath them. The jaw still jutted in its obstinate way, but the skin folded unkindly below. (Oh, what age does to us! Listen, I am glad to be dead: hurry, hurry, everyone, to join me!) But still he had the same bleak, bright, sideways look of defiance: now directed at the death which was to divide us, as in the past it had been directed at wives, mothers, children, politicians, prime ministers, kings – everyone who stood between us. He held my hand as I died.
‘Shall I tell you what happened at the moment of death?’
Here I maintain that the pinner priests have failed again. The version is garbled, in spite of the excellent equipment. My superiors maintain that the GSWITS, for his own purposes, does his best to keep this particular matter veiled. But the Great Screen Writer has an editor himself, does he not, to whom, presumably, representation from we bit part players in the great drama of the universe can be made? I do not believe that this is heresy: surely we, who have to put up with the pain and torments of the life he has decreed, have a human right to know more. If the GSWITS won’t satisfy us, won’t divulge the plot and purpose, surely those above Him will? The pinner priests say it is not our part so much as to conceive of the GSWITS himself as requiring guidance. But there are many others who think like me – who recognise a B-movie writer for what he is; more of us perhaps than the pinner priests realise.
Miss Sumpter described the moment of death in these terms. Her eyes misted; she was gazing at her hand, held in its turn by her lover’s hand. As she looked, the finger shapes became vague, turned, twisted, entwined and stretched and grew into a handsome, leafless tree on which hung a single fruit – and it was she. The fruit dropped, into something soft, like meadow grass – she imagined that sensation of falling and of being received was the actual moment of death – and as it dropped everything changed; as in the cutting of a film one scene abruptly passes to the next. She was in a long, long corridor; reddish, warm – one wonders whether she describes the birth canal: the reverse journey which must happen, spiritually, as we retreat from life? – and along this corridor she travelled, swiftly and composedly, and with great joy, knowing it was back the way she had come. And, as she passed, person after person stepped from the doors which lined the corridor – friends, some she knew and recognised, others she had forgotten but now remembered. They greeted her, welcomed her, fell in with her – though it no longer seemed her corporeal self, but spirit, soul, which swept along – so that when she reached the end of the endless corridor and stepped out into a great white brilliant space she was, as it were, the summation of everything she had ever known, everyone she had ever greeted, the sum of every flush of excitement, every effort at communication, every animation she had ever experienced – every emotion now showing its true and finer face; every insult and every humiliation now made good, repented of. It was as if, forgiving others in the sheer pleasure and excitement of their company, she needed no forgiveness herself – and she was in paradise, which was, simply, other people. What was more, it was not boring.
Well, so the pinner priests recorded Miss Sumpter’s account of the experience of death. I must say, myself, that if she is telling the truth, and they have recorded it accurately, she has got off very lightly, considering her behaviour in life.
Of course we in the GNFR do try to avoid the condemnation of others but sometimes it’s hard. Though virtue lies in consenting to the parts allotted to us, and we recognise that just as some can’t help being victims others can’t help being oppressors, and that the best we can do is help the Great Plot of Life go forward, with all its myriad, myriad sub-plots, sometimes we can’t help shaking our heads in disapproval. Part of me, the unreformed part, still sees Gabriella Sumpter as an adulteress, a woman too selfish, too self-centred to have children, who did nothing useful in all her life, for anyone. Yet, in the terms of the GNFR, she is a saint. She did not stand in the way of events. She went where the script dictated – where Fate led her. The fault must surely be in my comprehension, not in the manner of her living. Bow the head! Assent!
I try, but the thought will not be kept down – perhaps the GNFR is in error. Perhaps, in this world of initials we seem increasingly obliged to inhabit, as the pace of living hots up, as the GSWITS covers more and more pages, yet another initial is needed? The GNFR must become the RGNFR, the Revised Great New Fictional Religion. Am I perhaps the one to bring it about – not too humble, nor too elderly, after all?