Stories: All-New Tales

Then, as we limped into our sixties, we began to suffer from real illnesses, as opposed to passing scares. Rex was diabetic, arthritic. Chick was the first of us to be diagnosed with cancer. I think it was colon, he wouldn’t say. Even Rex refused to betray him on that occasion. His surgery seemed to cure him. We heard Jenny survived a stroke. By that time she hardly saw any old friends. When she had an operation, I’m not sure what for. Rex didn’t speak of the years when he’d seen her regularly, even as we grew closer than ever, all living up in those northern hills, from Todmorden to Kendal. Harry, of course, was still in Ireland. Billy Allard went to Corfu after his children grew up. Pete continued to be presumed dead. Peggy Zoran returned to New York and was very successful. The Cornishes moved to Kirkby Lonsdale. I had a hernia operation which went wrong. Bad stitching cut off an artery and caused problems in my leg. I couldn’t walk or climb anymore. Rex’s diabetes was complicated by drinking. Chick successfully got him on the wagon. In 2005, while we were at our place in Paris, I got an e-mail from Rex referring casually to Chick’s return to Airedale General, so I phoned the hospital at once. “It’s spread a bit,” Chick said. “I’ll be out in a few days.” So we flew home and drove over. Chick had lost a lot of weight. He was ghastly white but Rex pretended nothing was wrong. A lot of surgery was involved. Chick started a short story called “Over the Knife.” He showed it to us. Very mystical and sardonic. He got me to ask Jack Hawthorn if he’d take over Mary Stone, but Jack wasn’t up to it. The next thing we knew he was admitted again and we made the first of several trips to Skipton. Chick was bitter about friends who couldn’t find time to visit or phone. “Or send a bloody Hallmark card and a bunch of f**king flowers.” Rex, sometimes there when I was, echoed all this. I did what I could to make friends visit. Very few did. People were fighting to keep some sort of income, I suppose. At the hospital we made the usual jokes, complimented Chick on his courage. He found this amusing. “You’re just thanking me for not making you feel bad. It’s easy to be brave when everyone’s attention’s focused on you.” He could do the best wan smile, remembered Rex, giggling later. Chick asked us to stop sending flowers. The smell reminded him too much of funerals. I remembered my mother making the same complaint.

Rex was still pretty much in denial. Who could blame him? His responses became more and more monosyllabic, either because he didn’t want to cry or because he didn’t want to be reminded of what was happening. His partner of nearly forty years, however, spoke more freely. He had so little time. Subsequent operations were done to “repair” his intestines. When he went home he was only there for a matter of weeks, even days, before they sent him back again. Another series of surgeries was proposed but Chick refused any more. He wanted to die with a semblance of dignity. A quietly practicing Anglican for some years, he was ready to go. I asked if he was scared. “In a way,” he said, “as if I were going for a job interview.” He chiefly needed promises that we’d keep an eye on Rex, make sure he paid bills, had repairs done, all the jobs Chick had taken on so Rex could write without worry. “I know it’s hard, but you’re the best friends he has.” A kind of blackmail. I didn’t resent it. He probably said the same to others. “He mustn’t start drinking. He won’t look after the place unless you pester him. There’s still a bit on the mortgage. He’ll let the pool go. Make sure he gives you a key. Oh, and he has a gun. Get the bullets if you can. You know what a drama queen he can be.” Next time we saw him he had written out a list in his educated American hand. Where the stopcocks were, what needed watering when, the names and numbers of the oil-delivery people, the gas and electricity people, the best plumber, the most reliable electrician. Their handyman, the local rates office: all the details of their domestic lives. We promised to do all we could.

His thin, grey face with its grey toothbrush moustache became earnest. “In spite of anything Rex says?”

We promised.

“Or anything he tells you? Or I tell you?” This was puzzling, but we agreed. Once he had our promises, he drew a long breath. Then: “You know, don’t you, what he was doing with Jenny?”

“We don’t want to.” Lucinda spoke before I could answer. Of course I wanted him to tell me.

“Okay.” Chick turned on his pillows. “Probably just as well.”

Lu and I drove home in unspeaking silence.

Chick died a few days later. In late August many friends were on holiday and couldn’t make it to the funeral. Rex blamed them, of course. If Chick’s frail old dad could make the trip, then surely…? I went to stay with him. He was dazed. He’d found Chick’s diaries before we could. “I never realised what he gave up. Why he was so unhappy.” I pointed out that journals are almost always misleading. We use them to record miseries, frustrations of the moment, anger we don’t want to put into the air. We didn’t need them when we were content. But he refused to be comforted. He had failed Chick. That’s all he had to say. He was drinking again.

Rex was very particular about the funeral, insisting we wear what he called “full mourning,” which meant black hats and veils for women, suits and ties for men. There were only seven of us in the Grasmere cemetery where Chick wanted to be buried. Rex bore his grief through his familiar haughty disguise. Lucinda had organized the funeral meats, such as they were. Rex had insisted on everything being simple. Chick had wanted the same. After we had all gone to bed or home, Rex sat down in his study and phoned everyone who hadn’t been able to make it. If they didn’t pick up, he left messages on their machines. Not the usual whimsical tales. He told them what he and Chick had always said behind their backs about their lack of talent, their ugly child, their gigantic ego, their terrible cooking, their bad taste. When Rex hurt, everyone got hurt. Next day, high on his own vengeance, he told me in a series of vignettes what he’d done. Some of the people phoned me next. Many were in tears. Almost all tried to forgive him. Several wanted to know if he was right. My daughter Cass had given him Helena’s regards and been snubbed so badly by Rex she was still crying when she got through to me. She was readier to forgive him than I was.

About a week later, while Lu visited her hypochondriacal mother, I went over to see how Rex was doing. He’d been drinking heavily. “I’m glad you came,” he said. “I wanted you to know about a favour I did you a few years back.” I cooked us dinner, after which he told me what he’d done for me. He was sure I’d be pleased, he said. I didn’t know who he was mocking. Gasping and yelping with pain from the arthritis brought on by the booze, he poked up the fire and poured us cognacs. Then he started with the slow, dramatic relish he reserved for his readings. I suppose you could call it a revenge tale, with all the elements he enjoyed in Balzac and the Jacobeans. Soon after Jenny and I split up, and blaming her for “luring” him into the threesome with which he had taunted Chick, Rex became, in his words, her confessor, suggesting ideas to her for sexual adventures, often helping her make specific contacts and introducing her to what he called his list of “forty famous perverts.” He had sometimes accompanied her to dinners and parties, encouraging her to risks she’d never have dared take on her own. “I drove her farther and farther down that road, Mike. You’d have loved it! Whenever she faltered I was there encouraging her to stay the course. I told her he**in wasn’t addictive!” (Luckily he’d only been able to persuade her to snort it.) “I convinced her she was a natural whore. I became her best friend, just as Vautrin took Emma under his wing!” That terrible, self-approving chuckle followed as he sat there in his big leather chair overlooking the darkening fell, staring in sardonic satisfaction at the sky, speaking in the tones of measured mockery usually reserved for his satirical verse. “I knew you wanted to do it but couldn’t. So I took your revenge for you, Mike!”