The Life of Death Read online

  Because I know today is going to be his last.

  He is a ghost of the man I know of old. His hair bleached white with age and his huge frame is stooped, shrunken. Once cobalt eyes are pale and watery, the whites yellowing and the drooping pips in the corner standing out fleshy and red. I accompany him as he goes about his business, spending the day in companionable silence. Shuffling to the corner shop. Fumbling with the papers. Stumbling up the steps. Everything an effort, everything taking an age. His breath huffs and puffs with every step, a cloud billowing out to hang momentarily in the damp air. Everything hurts now. He can barely remember what it felt like to run down the pitch, tossing a rugby ball to the lads without a thought. Now, when his legs do manage to do what he asks of them, it’s with a creak and a groan. An ache. A jab.

  His clothes are neat. His shirt ironed, his tie – always a tie – straight and full at the knot. Even the tie takes longer now, as fingers whose knuckles are swollen with arthritis fumble with the slippery fabric. But he can’t bring himself to wear one of those ready-made ones on their skinny strip of elastic. Angharad would be horrified.

  We get home. At least the place he calls home. A drab little council flat in a low rise block on the outskirts of Merthyr Tydfil. It’s not where his heart is, though.

  Muted greys and browns, flaking paint and rucking lino. Carpets stained by tenants before him, having been chosen by the occupants before them. Net curtains soak up condensation behind ill-fitting windows. It’s all on one floor – all he could possibly need and all he can possibly manage – hallway, living room, bedroom, bathroom. All no more than five steps from each other. It’s not a home. When he moved here he knew that. It’s the place he came to die. He just didn’t know when that would be.

  He moved here five long and lonely months after Angharad died. The terrace got too big for him, you see, and in every corner there was a whiff of her. A whisper. An overwhelming feeling that at any minute she was going to walk through the door, singing away to herself and popping the kettle on. Unbearable. The mattress they had shared for years still bearing the imprint of her body to remind him of her absence every time he woke in those long and lonely nights. Unbearable.

  And here, he has everything he needs. He’s got his things in a glass cabinet – his ‘bits’, he calls them. The cherry wood frame meticulously waxed and polished, the shelves packed with the ceramic birds that he’s been collecting for years, perched on their ceramic branches among pictures of Angharad.

  We sit, together, on the sofa. A cup of tea. Gulps and slurps break the silence. The rattle of an unsteady hand settling cup into saucer. A worn gold wedding ring on a swollen, gnarled finger clinks against china. We sit together, in silence. Staring into space, lost in years, decades. Lips wet and slack. Lost in a million moments.

  I don’t know how long we sit there. It could be minutes, it could be hours. The only indication of time passing is the light outside as afternoon turns to dusk turns to the blackest of nights. Darkness punctuated by the flickering on of sodium lights as they one by one come to life. Time lasts so much longer these days. It’s not unusual for him to wonder, as the carriage clock on the mantel strikes three, if it can still be Tuesday. When Tuesday feels like it started three days ago. Sometimes, he has no idea how long he sits here, while buses sweep past the window and tea goes cold in a china cup.

  Finally, time for bed. Another day over. Another long day endless in its emptiness.

  We get up slowly – knees creaking as he straightens at the hip, at the knee, finally drawing his back and shoulders upright. Checks over his bits one last time before he goes to bed – ceramic birds with heads cocked, Angharad’s face over and over. Forever twenty-one, thirty-six, forty-five, seventy in her wooden frames. ‘Nos da cariad.’ Night night, sweetheart. Every night the same. Every night the ritual.

  He switches off the living room light. Into the bathroom, avoiding the inevitable truth of the mirror under the bare strip light. Dentures into the glass by the sink. Through to the bedroom – throwing back the quilt Angharad stitched all those years ago. Nylon sheets crackling with static. Feet easing out of slippers, weight easing backwards to lift each leg up on to the bed, slowly, slowly, joints cracking. Everything takes so long these days.

  His mind’s going – they’ve been telling him that he should move into a home, that he should think about who’s going to look after him for the rest of his days. Gwen from down the road comes round every so often – checks he’s been paying his bills, that he’s got food in the cupboards, isn’t making his tea with stale milk, white flecks floating. She’s noticed more and more that he’s starting to forget things – leaving the two-bar gas fire on when he goes out, or forgetting to open the curtains in his bedroom. Going to the shop with his slippers on. Picking up yesterday’s newspaper and not remembering the stories he’d read the day before.

  And tonight, tonight dear reader, he forgets to check the bathroom window. And I’ve opened it. I’ve opened up his house to the outside world.

  Glasses on the bedside table. Lamp off. Sleep.

  I watch and wait while he settles. Brow furrowed in the concentrated sleep of babies and the old. Even sleep seems to be an effort nowadays. Eventually, I can leave him to his gentle snores. I have a job to do.

  Heading outside I see a boy, down by the garages. twenty-two, twenty-three years old – looks younger. Pale, spotty complexion. Yellowing teeth. Thin, so terribly, painfully thin. He’s trying to jimmy the lock of a Ford Mondeo. Darren Matthews. I’ve seen him before – laying out the tools of his trade in a dirty back room.

  Needles, spoon, citric. Belt wrapped round his upper arm, biting into young skin. Veins standing to attention desperate for the rush of the opiates on that spoon, for the euphoria to wash over, for the cramps and the sweats and the chills to subside. I’m always there, in the shadows of these grubby little rooms. Watching, waiting for the last hit. Waiting for the pulse to slow and the breathing to become shallow, for their shoulders to slump and their eyes to glaze. Waiting for the look of guilt when I crouch over the stiffening body and they see their mother, grandmother, their tiny, toddling daughter. Always, always the look of guilt.

  Darren Matthews. He’ll do.

  He can’t see me – he doesn’t know I’m there. Doesn’t know the path I’m going to lead him down. A stringless puppet with which to do my bidding. A noise spurs him to spin round, leaning casually against the car. Metal strip tucked into the back pocket of his jeans – nothing to see here. It’s a fox rifling through bins, eyes like mirrors in the moonlight.

  He turns back to the car, and with a flick of the wrist and a flash of steel, locks pop open and he’s in. Pops open the glove compartment to find an Elizabeth Duke watch and some scratched CDs. It won’t be worth much, the watch, but you never know with these things. Beggars can’t be choosers, as they say. And he’s buggered if he’ll let them see him begging.

  As quick as he’s in, he gets out, slamming the door and slipping the watch into his back pocket. Walks quickly, smartly in the direction of the flats with a quick glance over either shoulder to check he hasn’t been seen.

  And as he walks, I trot by his side to keep up. Gently take his elbow to steer him towards the walkway running down the front of the flats. The sodium glow of the streetlights reflects off the open window – leading the way, beckoning him in.

  Darren knows the place, knows the little old guy who lives there. Always banging on about the war. He had no kids – must be minted. Kids cost a fortune, so if you’ve never had any, you must have loads of cash. Stands to reason.

  A glance over our shoulders and quickly, noiselessly we’re in. Over the sill and dropping down lightly onto the cracked linoleum floor. Damp creeps up the wall, reaching its black fingers out between candy pink tiles around an enamel tub. A rubber hose hangs limply from a mixer tap. Drip, drip, drip. A single toothbrush in a toothpaste-stained glass on the sink.

  I’m right behind him, pushing him forward. Easing o
pen the bathroom door. Slowly. Slowly. Into the hallway. A creak underfoot. He pauses. Three doors in front of him – seventies wood veneer, aluminium door handles. To the left, Hywel is sleeping – Darren can hear the snores. He takes the central door – opening with a hushed brush over the thick pile of the pink carpet. Flicks on the light with the smallest of clicks – if the old bloke can sleep through that bloody snoring, he’s not going to notice the light. Looks round the room – small TV, worth nothing.

  Loads of bloody knick-knacks. Knick-knacks everywhere. A glass cupboard – full of birds and cups and little china vases. Birds and cups and little china vases and pictures of some bird. The same blue eyes smile out at us from wooden frames on every shelf.

  Angharad.

  I need Hywel in here. Need him to wake up and find us. I leave Darren to comb the room – opening drawers and rifling through their contents like that fox in those bins. Feral. Desperate. Nervous sweat exudes a musty stench.

  Into Hywel’s room. I bump into the bedside table, give him a bit of a shake. I see his eyes open in the gloom. Confused. Closes his eyes. Then he hears it, hears someone in the room next door. Darren’s done away with any subtlety and finesse – he’s ransacking and desperate. He knows there must something in there – now he’s in, he knows that he can’t leave with nothing.

  Hywel sits up. Leans against me as he stuffs gnarled toes into sheepskin slipper. Shuffles to the door – light from the living room peeking through the frosted window above the bedroom door. He’s sure he turned the light off.

  Out into the hall. More noises. The telephone sits on the table in the hallway by the front door. As he gets to it we bump into the table. A vase of plastic flowers rocks in the slowest of slow motion, it rocks to and fro, to and fro on its base and falls, tumbling through the air to land with a thud on the cold laminate floor.

  Darren hears the vase hit the floor, he’s out of the lounge and we’re working as one – my hands are his as we grab Hywel by the shoulders, push him up against the wall.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing, old man? Calling the fucking police? Not likely …’

  Together, we shake him. Our hands move to his throat – pin him into place. He’s weak, but he pushes back.

  ‘Get out of my house. Leave me alone. I don’t have anything worth taking. I won’t report you, just go. Leave me alone.’ His speech is muffled – missing dentures and the hangover of sleep make it hard for words to form.

  We grab his wrist, twisting his arm behind his back. His skin is paper to the touch. Force him down the hallway to the lounge. Five small steps, no more. Shove him into the room. Head makes contact with the glass cabinet. A bruise forms on his temple, swelling to close one eye. A thin trickle of mucus runs down his face from one nostril, spit dribbles out of his mouth onto my hand. He’s lying back, trying to lean up on his elbow to push up on to his knees. His aching, arthritic elbow. His aching, arthritic knees. To Hywel, Darren is gone. Fading in front of him as the oxygen seeps from his blood. All he can see is me. My face – his mother’s face. My hands – twenty-five-year-old hands from eighty-six years ago wrapped around his throat. Pushing, squeezing against windpipe and gullet. Cracking and grating.

  ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ His voice, strained against the force of my grip, stops me. ‘It was you I saw. In France. All those years ago. I thought I was going mad.’

  I nod. Tears well in my eyes. I let go of his throat as a lump forms in my own. ‘Yes.’ A whisper. We lean back, together. Resting against the glass cabinet, catching our breath.

  ‘I’ve thought about that for years. Wondered how my mother could be there. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. Angharad used to tell me I was a daft bugger, seeing my mam on the battlefield.’

  ‘It was me.’ My head rests on his shoulder.

  ‘And it was you I saw in the hospital after the mine went down. All those nurses I thought looked like Mam … All you?’

  I nod.

  ‘I wouldn’t look at them, you know. Wouldn’t look at you, I suppose. I didn’t want to go then.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I wish I’d known her, you know. Wish Angharad had had the chance to meet her. Mam would’ve loved Angharad. I just wish she hadn’t had to die for me to live, you know? I had one picture of her and my Da. All upright and proper like photographs used to be back in the day. Used to look at it all the time. But even though it was all upright and proper like, you could see it, in their eyes, that they loved each other. And I took that away. I’d’ve given anything not to have taken her away.’ His voice breaks with a dry sob.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Every time I saw her, you, I thought it was my mind playing tricks. That I was so desperate to know her that I would convince myself she was there. Like she was looking over me like a guardian angel. Silly really. But it was just you wasn’t it? Waiting for me to die.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry things have to end like this. But they do have to end and I don’t have a choice. I’m sorry. I’m so very, very sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be.’ The words stop me in my tracks and I twist my head up to look at him, eyes narrowed in confusion under a scrunched brow. Why?

  ‘I’ve never wanted to live without her, you know? Without Angharad. When she died a little bit of me died with her. And since then, not a day has gone past when I haven’t wished I was with her, wherever she is. Will I see her now, do you think? After you’ve gone?’

  The hope in his eyes hits me full in the face like a punch. ‘I don’t know, Hywel. I would love to say yes, but I just don’t know for sure. I can only take you so far.’

  I move round to kneel in front of him. Look into those eyes, those watery, yellowing eyes and put my hands back around his neck. A deep-seated survival instinct prompts him to reach up to pull them away but I’m resolute, determined, and we both know he hasn’t a hope. Fingers scrabble at my fists as I push and I squeeze and a crushed windpipe cracks and grates. Legs kick against air trying to get some footing to push against. Choking noises, straining against my grip. Eyes looking straight at me – burning into me. Choking, choking. The hands fall away, flapping helplessly. His body goes limp, the fight gone. I lay him down, cheek on the thick pile of the pink carpet, eyes staring up vacantly at the cabinet. I hope you find her, Hywel. I really hope you find her.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry …’

  I stare down at him, my hand cupped over my mouth. I can’t believe quite what I’ve done. Move myself to curl on the floor beside him, wrapping my arms around his lifeless body and gently rocking him. Smoothing his thin hair, yellow with age and hair-oil, drawing his eyelids closed to the scene that has unfolded around him. ‘I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry …’ Repeating myself over and over again as we lie on the floor until the words run into each other in a never-ending hush and shush of regret. As we lie on the floor, my face buried in his neck, tears falling unchecked. And as Angharad watches us from her glass shelf, forever twenty-one, thirty-six, forty-five, seventy in her wooden frames, as Darren Matthews steps over a cooling body with a muttered expletive, Hywel Ifor Williams slowly, quietly fades to black.

  8

  SOLES SLIP AND SLIDE ON SMOOTH PEBBLES AS I make my way across the beach, each footstep sinking backwards in loose scree. It’s early morning on the south coast and the bay is deserted, but for a dog walker high up on the cliffs and a lone figure in the far distance.

  Him.

  When I finally get there, I find Him settled into a low-slung folding chair, suit trousers rolled up to the knee to expose slim, white calves and feet snug in the finest cashmere socks and Italian calfskin loafers. He’s got an ice cream from somewhere and I watch as He tilts his head to dab His tongue at synthetic swirls. On this cold January morning on the Sussex coast He cuts an incongruous figure.

  I sink into the identical chair to His right, rusting metal frame shifting and settling into shingle and shale. Wait while He finishes this early morning treat, nibbling
His way through wafer cone and chocolate flake. Watch as He brushes the crumbs from a well-tailored lap.

  Finally he speaks. ‘Well?’

  ‘Done. One down.’

  ‘I know, Little D.’ He sighs, already exasperated with my reluctance to be forthcoming about having just killed a man. A defenceless old man who’s done nothing more than spend his life surviving. ‘Did you think I would just let you crack on and not bother to check? Oh, Little D, you are a charming little thing, aren’t you?’

  He leans His head back against his chair, stretching His legs out in front of Him and closing His eyes against the morning sun. Settling in for a story.

  ‘Come along. How do you feel? How did it go?’

  So this is the way it’s going to be. I might have known. Living and reliving. Analysing and assessing. I might have known He’d want to the gory details, want to hear an account straight from the horse’s mouth.

  And so I give Him what He wants. A step by step, blow by blow account of how, after eighty-six years, Hywel was no longer going to get away, to slip the net. Of how my hands still spasm and twitch at the thought of being wrapped around his throat. Of how I stood back and watched over him for the four days he lay alone in the lounge, with only pictures of Angharad and tiny ceramic birds for company and day turned to night turned to day turned to night in the world outside. How I stood and watched over him until Gwen popped her head round the door after umpteen unanswered phone calls. Listened as the stream of her chatter, her calls of ‘Cooee, only me!’ on entry were stifled by the rising stench of a stiffened body and the sight of an upturned hallway table lying abandoned next to an upended vase of plastic flowers. How I sat on the sofa, as drips of condensation chased themselves down the window and an ambulance was called from a cordless phone, huge buttons handy for arthritis-laced fingers and dwindling eyesight. How I watched with Angharad, held captive in her numerous frames, as police and paramedics arrived to remove the shrunken body and reveal the fingerprints of a local heroin addict dusted liberally across mantel and sill.