47

Timothy’s face had frozen, his fingers clutched tight to the written pages. He stared hard at the familiar script of loops and swirls and dots and crosses that she’d shaped with the gold nib of her fountain pen. Shiny black ink on cream parchment. Consonants and vowels fitted together in every combination of correct positions, the words formed with animation and resonance. The prose roared off the page, seeming to form a fist that struck out and hit him on the jaw. Something crawled out of his eye and slithered to the cavern of his ear. Smack-smack went his hand as he tried to rid himself of the irritation. He looked down. The pages were moving; an undulating wave caused by a myriad of wriggling, thread-like worms.

He dropped the pages and fell out of the sofa onto all fours. He’d become an alien; a nothing; a homeless nomadic creature; a filthy reptile crawling through the mire of life’s detritus. He leaned onto his knuckles with nausea rising in his throat. He began to pant loudly, hearing the resonance of his lungs gasping over the crackle of the fire, but he soon became aware that there was another sound in the room. A loud rustling. He turned to find himself being stared at by a group of sinister, shadowy strangers. ‘Pathetic clown,’ jeered an old woman in the front row. ‘Thinks he’s Fauntleroy, but he’s only a slut’s brat.’

Also in the front row stood a little boy. A little boy he’d just been reading about, afflicted with a cleft lip repair. Patrick. Bastard number one. Patrick, who he thought had been his friend. Perhaps he was his friend, in unity. Removed from the harlot for his own care and protection. In the back row he saw the fish porter, Patrick’s father. Stank of fish. She, too, stank from the touch of his fishy hands, and he could smell the oil of herring plastered on her body. Alongside the fish porter stood the rotting Rabbi. The filth that had created him. Bastard number two. Food and dribble stains down the front of his black jacket and a frill of greasy dandruff on the collar. His beard encrusted with food. His rancid sweat, his foul breath, the pissy stink of his lousy crotch.

‘Listen, Timothy,’ said the old woman. ‘Can you hear the sound? Boomp-boomp-boomp. That’s my body bouncing down the stairs. Kicked hard and pushed down by the hysterical doxy. Murdered by the whore, but no hangman’s noose or stoning for the sly beauty. No incarceration to pay the price for her sins. Rescued by a short, portly Quasimodo. Gratefully grabbing herself a rich sugar daddy. She’d have shagged the devil, that one.’

Saliva dripped from his mouth. The colours of the room faded away to a cold, hard grey, but the smells remained. He sank down, curled himself tightly into the foetal position and crossed his arms tightly against his pounding chest.

‘Despair. I must end my pain. There is no hope. My future squeezed onto a narrow shelf where falling off is certain. I have fallen. I have fallen into a big, cold, dark cavern. All is negative. No earthly chance of positive. No options. An unrelenting, oppressive sadness. Trapped in a deep black hole. No heaven exits. No relief. The pain will never end. Tomorrow will be the same, or worse. No way to find complete peace. No reason to live. The urge to die, intense. Nothing matters. The deep, black hole getting deeper and darker. A sharp dagger thrust into my heart. My heart has died. Life is a paralysis. The song of her lies shouts my death knell. I have no thoughts or wants or dreams. Only hate is left. Death is my only escape, but no trace of her or the filth of her past must remain. They must not know my shame.’

He lifted the cream vellum pages and the envelope and placed them on the fire. They immediately caught flame to become a hot blaze of yellow, scarlet and leaping streaks of blue. The degradation taken up the chimney and spat out into the wet night. Soon all that remained were delicate grey flakes, shaking and fluttering on the tops of the logs.

Timothy rose. He opened the casement doors that led into the garden and went out into the teeming rain. He kicked off his mules, walked onto the lawn and tore off the kimono. Down, down, down until he reached the lake. He waded in. The water lapped warm around his thighs. There was the loud noise of an angry swan flapping its wings, a warning, hissing cry, then just the perfect comfort of the watery haven.