D&P20 - Death's Jest-Book Read online

  Reginald Hill

  Death’s Jest-Book

  The woodcut illustrations which prefigure each of the novel's thirteen sections are taken from Hans Holbein the Younger's Dance of Death and the decorated letters at the start of each chapter derive from the same artist's Alphabet of Death

  For death is more 'a jest' than Life, you see

  Contempt grows quick from familiarity.

  I owe this wisdom to Anatomy.

  T. L. beddoes Lines to B.W. Proctor

  ... fat men can't write sonnets T. L. beddoes The Bride's Tragedy l.ii.

  1

  The Physician

  Imagined Scenes

  from

  AMONG OTHER THINGS: The Quest for Thomas Lovell Beddoes

  by Sam Johnson MA, PhD (first draft) '

  Clifton, Glos. June 1808

  That's it, man. Hold her head, hold her head. For God's sake, you behind, get your shoulder into it. Come, girl. Come, girl.’

  The shouter of these instructions, a burly man of about fifty years with a close-cropped head and a face made to command, stands halfway up a broad sweeping staircase. A few stairs below him a rustic, his naturally ruddy complexion even more deeply incarnadined by exertion, is leaning backwards like the anchor in a tug-o'-war, pulling with all his strength on a rope whose lower end is tied round the neck of a large brown cow.

  Behind the beast a nervous-looking footman is making encouraging fluttering gestures with his hands. From the marble-floored hallway below a housekeeper and butler watch with massive disapproval, while over the balustrade of the landing lean a pair of housemaids, arms full of sheets, all discipline forgotten, their faces bright with delight at this rare entertainment, and especially at the discomfiture of the footman.

  Between them kneels a solemn-faced little boy, his hands gripping the gilded wrought iron rails, who observes the scene with keen but unsurprised gaze.

  ‘Push, man, push, it can't bite you!' roars the burly man.

  The footman, used to obey and perhaps aware of the watching maids, takes a step forward and leans with one hand on each of the cow's haunches.

  As if stimulated by the pressure, the beast raises its tail and evacuates its bowels. Caught full in the chest by the noxious jet, the footman tumbles backwards, the maids squeal, the little boy smiles to see such fun, and the cow as if propelled by the exuberance of its own extravasation bounds up the remaining stairs at such a pace that both the rustic and the burly man are hard put to retreat safely to the landing.

  Below, the butler and the housekeeper check that the bemired footman is unhurt. Then the woman hastens up the stairs, her face dark with indignation, which the maids observing, they beat a hasty retreat.

  'Dr Beddoes!' she cries. 'This is beyond toleration!'

  'Come now, Mrs Jones,' says the burly man. 'Is not your mistress's health worth a little labour with brush and pan? Lead her on, George.'

  The rustic begins to lead the now completely cowed cow along the landing towards a half-open bedroom door. The man follows, with the small boy a step behind.

  Mrs Jones, the housekeeper, finding no answer to the doctor's reproof, changes her line of attack.

  'A sick room is certainly no place for a child,' she proclaims. 'What would his mother say?'

  'His mother, ma'am, being a woman of good sense and aware of her duty, would say that his father knows best,' observes the doctor sardonically. 'A child's eye sees the simple facts of things. It is old wives' fancies that give them the tincture of horror. My boy has already looked unmoved on sights which have sent many a strapping medical student tumbling into the runnel. ‘Twill stand him in good stead if he chooses to follow his father's example. Come, Tom.'

  So saying, he takes the boy by the hand and, passing in front of the cow and its keeper, he pushes open the bedroom door.

  This is a large room in the modern airy style, but rendered dark by heavily draped windows and illumined only by a single taper whose glim picks out the features of a figure lying in a huge square bed. It is a woman, old, sunken cheeked, eyes closed, pale as candle wax, and showing no sign of life. By the bedside kneels a thin black-clothed man who looks up as the door opens and slowly rises.

  'You're too late, Beddoes,' he says. 'She is gone to her maker.'

  ‘That's your professional opinion, is it, Padre?' says the doctor. 'Well, let's see.'

  He goes to the window and pulls aside the drapes, letting in the full beam of a summer sun.

  In its light he stands looking down at the old woman, with his hand resting lightly on her neck.

  Then he turns and calls, 'George, don't hang back, man. Lead her in.'

  The rustic advances with the cow.

  The parson cries, 'Nay, Beddoes, this is unseemly. This is not well done! She is at peace, she is with the angels.'

  The doctor ignores him. Helped by the rustic and observed with wide unblinking eyes by his son, he manoeuvres the cow's head over the still figure in the bed. Then he punches the beast lightly in the stomach so that it opens its jaws and exhales a great gust of grassy breath directly into the woman's face. Once, twice, three times he does this, and on the third occasion the cow's long wet tongue licks lightly over the pallid features.

  The woman opens her eyes.

  Perhaps she expects to see angels, or Jesus, or even the ineffable glory of the Godhead itself.

  Instead what her dim vision discovers is a gaping maw beneath broad flaring nostrils, all topped by a pair of sharp pointed horns.

  She shrieks and sits bolt upright.

  The cow retreats, the doctor puts a supporting arm round the woman's shoulders.

  'Welcome back, my lady. Will you take a little nourishment?'

  Her gaze clearing and the agitation fading from her features, she nods feebly and the doctor eases her back on to her pillows.

  'Take Betsy out, George,' says Beddoes. 'Her work is done.'

  And to his son he says, 'You see how it is, young Tom. The parson here preaches miracles. We lesser men have to practise them. Mrs Jones, a little nourishing broth for your mistress, if you please.'

  Clifton, Glos, December 1808

  Another bedroom, another bed, with another still figure stretched on it, arms crossed on breast, eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. But this is no old woman paled into a simulacrum of death by illness and debility. She, by the mercy of God and the ministrations of her doctor, still lives, but now Thomas Beddoes Sr, aged only forty-eight and looking as strong and wilful as ever he did in life, has leapfrogged his ancient patient into the grave.

  Two women stand by the bed, one with her face so scored by grief she looks more fit to be laid on a bier than her husband, the other, some years older, with her arm round the wife's waist, offering comfort.

  'Do not give yourself over so utterly to grief, Anne,' she urges. 'Remember the children. You must be their strength now, and they will be yours.'

  The children . . . yes, the children,' says Anne Beddoes distractedly. They must be told . . . they must be shown and take their farewells

  'Not all of them,' says the other gently. 'Let Tom do for all. He is a thoughtful child for his age and will know how best to tell the others. Shall I fetch him now, Sister?'

  'Please, yes, if you think it best. . .'

  'But first his eyes . . . should we not close his eyes?'

  They look down at the strong staring face.

  The parson tried but could not draw the lids down,' says Anne. 'He was in his prime, so full of energy ... I do not think he was ready to leave the world he could see for one which is invisible

  'It is a great loss, to you, to us all, to the poor of Bristol, to the world of science. Compose yourself a little, Sister, and
I will fetch young Tom.'

  She leaves the room, but does not have far to go.

  Little Thomas Lovell Beddoes is sitting on the top stair, reading a book.

  ‘Tom, my sweet, you must come with me.’ she says.

  The boy looks up and smiles. He likes his Aunt Maria. To the world she is Miss Edgeworth, the famous novelist, and when he told her that one day he too would like to write books, she didn't mock him but said seriously, 'And so you shall, Tom, else you would not be your father's son.'

  Also she tells him stories. They are good stories, well structured, but lacking a little of the colour and excitement he already prefers in a narrative. But this is no matter as when he retells the tales to his brother and sisters, he is quite capable of adding enough of these elements to give them nightmares.

  He stands up and takes his aunt's hand.

  'Is Father well again?' he asks.

  'No, Tom, though he is in a place where all are well,' she says. 'He has left us, Tom, he has gone to Heaven. You must be a comfort to your dear mama.'

  The little boy frowns but does not speak as Aunt Maria leads him into the bedroom.

  'Oh, Tom, Tom,' sobs his mother, embracing him so tightly he can hardly breathe. But all the time as she presses his head against her breast, his eyes are fixed upon the still figure on the bed.

  His aunt prises him loose from the sobbing woman and says, 'Now say goodbye to your papa, Tom. Next time you see him will be in a better world than this.'

  The boy goes to the bedside. He stands a little while, looking down into those staring eyes with a gaze equally unblinking. Then he leans forward as if to plant a kiss on the dead man's lips.

  But instead of a kiss, he blows. Once, twice, thrice, each time harder, aiming the jet of warm breath at the pale mouth and flared nostrils.

  ‘Tom!' cries his aunt. 'What are you doing?'

  'I'm bringing him back,' says the boy without looking up.

  He blows again. Now the assurance which had marked his mien till this moment is beginning to fade. He is gripping his father's right hand, and squeezing the fingers in search of a respondent pressure. And all the time he is puffing and blowing, his face red with effort, like an athlete straining for the tape at the end of a long race.

  His aunt moves swiftly forward.

  ‘Tom, stop that. You are upsetting your mama. Tom!'

  She seizes him, he resists, not blowing now but shouting, and she has to pull him away from the corpse by main force. His mother stands there, clenched fist to her mouth, shocked to silence by this unexpected turn.

  And as he is dragged out of the bedroom by his aunt, and across the landing, and down the stairs, his cries fade away like the calls of a screech owl across a darkling moor which still echo disturbingly in the mind long after they have died from the ear.

  'Fetch the cow . . . Fetch the cow . . . Fetch the cow. ..'

  2

  The Robber

  Letter 1 Received Sat Dec 15th P.P

  St Godric’s College

  Cambridge

  Fri Dec 14th The Quaestor's Lodging

  Dear Mr Pascoe,

  Cambridge! St Godric's College! The Quaestor's Lodging!

  Ain't I the swell then? Ain't I a Home Office commercial for the rehabilitating powers of the British penal system?

  But who am I? you must be wondering. Or has that sensitive intuition for which you are justly famous told you already?

  Whatever, let me end speculation and save you the bother of looking to the end of what could be a long letter.

  I was born in a village called Hope, and it used to be my little joke that if I happened to die by drowning in Lake Disappointment in Australia, my cruciform headstone could read

  Here lies

  Francis Xavier Roote

  Born in

  HOPE

  Died in

  DISAPPOINTMENT

  Yes, it's me, Mr Pascoe, and guessing what could be your natural reaction to getting mail from a man you banged up for what some might call the best years of his life, let me hasten to reassure you:

  THIS ISN'T A THREATENING LETTER!

  On the contrary, it's a REASSURING letter.

  And not one I would have dreamt of writing if events over the past year hadn't made it clear how much you need reassurance. Me too, especially since my life has taken such an unexpected turn for the better. Instead of grubbing away in my squalid little flat, here I am relaxing in the luxury of the Quaestor's Lodging. And in case you think I must have broken in, I enclose the annual conference programme of the Romantic and Gothic Studies Association (RAGS for short!). There's my name among the list of delegates. And if you look at nine o'clock on Saturday morning, there you will see it again. Suddenly I have a future; I have friends; out of Despair I have found my way back to Hope and it's starting to look as if after all I may not be heading for the cold waters of Disappointment!

  Incidentally, I shared my macabre little jest with one of my new friends, Linda Lupin MEP, when she took me to meet another, Frère Jacques, the founder of the Third Thought Movement.

  What brought it to mind was we were standing in the grounds of the Abbaye du Saint Graal, the Cornelian monastery of which Jacques is such a distinguished member. The grounds opened with no barrier other than a meandering stream choked with cresses on to a World War One military cemetery whose rows of white crosses ran away from us up a shallow rise, getting smaller and smaller till the most distant looked no larger than the half-inch ones Linda and I carried on silver chains round our necks.

  Linda laughed loudly. Appearances can deceive (who knows that better than you?) and finding Linda possessed of a great sense of humour has been a large step in our relationship. Jacques grinned too. Only Frère Dierick, who has attached himself to Jacques as a sort of amanuensis with pretensions to Boswellian status, pursed his lips in disapproval of such out-of-place levity. His slight and fleshless figure makes him look like Death in a cowl, but in fact he's stuffed to the chops with Flemish phlegm. Jacques happily, despite being tall, blond and in the gorgeous ski-instructor mould, has much more of Gallic air and fire in him, plus he is unrepentantly Anglophile.

  Linda said, 'Let's see if we can't dispose of you a bit further south in Australia, Fran. There's a Lake Grace, I believe. Died in Grace, that's what Third Thought's all about, right, Brother?'

  This reduction of the movement to a jest really got up Dierick's bony nose but before he could speak, Jacques smiled and said, ‘This I love so much about the English. You make a joke of everything. The more serious it is, the more you make the jokes. It is deliriously childish. No, that is not the word. Childlike. You are the most childlike of all the nations of Europe. That is your strength and can be your salvation. Your great poet Wordsworth knew that childhood is a state of grace. Shades of the prison house begin to close about the growing boy. It is the child alone who understands the holiness of the heart's affections.'

  Getting your Romantics mixed there, Jacques, old frère, I thought, at the same time trying to work out if the bit about shades of the prison house was a crack. But I don't think so. By all accounts Jacques' own background is too colourful for him to be judgmental about others, and anyway he's not that kind of guy.

  But it's funny how sensitive you can get about things like a prison record. These days I know that some ex-cons make a very profitable profession out of being ex-cons. That must really piss you and your colleagues off. But I'm not like that. All I want to do is forget about my time inside and get on with my life, cultivate my garden, so to speak.

  Which is what I was doing quite successfully, and ultimately literally, till you came bursting through the hedge I'd built for protection and privacy.

  Not once, not twice, but three times.

  First with suspicion that I was harassing your dear wife!

  Next with allegation that I was stalking your good self!!

  And finally with accusation that I was involved in a series of brutal murders!!!

  Whi
ch is the main reason I'm writing to you. The time has come, I think, for some straight talking between us, not in any spirit of recrimination but just so that when we're done, we can both continue our lives, you in the certainty that neither you nor those you love need fear any harm from me, and myself with the assurance that, now my life has taken such a strong turn for the better, I needn't concern myself with the possibility that once again the tender seedlings in my garden shall feel the weight of your trampling feet.

  All we need, it seems to me, is total openness, a return to that childlike honesty we all possess before the shades of the prison house begin to close, and perhaps then I can persuade you that during my time in Yorkshire's answer to the Bastille, Chapel Syke Prison, I never once fantasized about taking revenge on my dear old friends, Mr Dalziel and Mr Pascoe. Revenge I have studied, certainly, but only in literature under the tutelage of my wise mentor and beloved friend, Sam Johnson.

  As you know, he's dead now, Sam, and so, God damn his soul, is the man who killed him. Unless of course you pay any heed to Charley Penn. Doubting Charley! Who trusts nobody and believes nothing.

  But even Charley can't deny that Sam's dead. He's dead.

  When thou know'st this, thou know'st how dry a cinder this world is.

  I miss him every day, and all the more because his death has contributed so much to the dramatic upturn in my life. Strange, isn't it, how tragedy can be the progenitor of triumph? In this case, two tragedies. If that poor student of Sam's hadn't overdosed in Sheffield last summer, Sam would never have moved to Mid-Yorkshire. And if Sam hadn't moved to Mid-Yorkshire, then he wouldn't have become one of the monstrous Wordman's victims. And if that hadn't happened, I would not be basking in the glow of present luxury and promised success here in God's (which, I gather, is how the illuminati refer to St Godric's!)

  But back to you and your fat friend.

  I'm not saying that I felt any deep affection for the pair of you or gratitude for what you'd done to me. If I thought of you at all it was in conventional terms, good cop, bad cop; the knee in the balls, the shoulder to cry on, both of you monsters, of course, but the kind that no stable society can do without, for you are the beasts that guard our gates and let us sleep safe in our beds.