Stories: All-New Tales

“Jesus, Rex. She didn’t deserve…I would never…”

“Oh, Mike, you know what she deserved. You’d never do it, but Vautrin could, eh? I learned the lessons of Balzac better than you ever did!” At that point, as the world grew darker and the fire reflected on his face, he was every inch Balzac’s monster, apparently completely mad. I felt physically sick, concerned for his sanity, deeply sorry for Jenny. I wondered if Lucinda had guessed what had gone on. Was that why she had refused to let Chick tell us anything? Rex relished every revelation. Giggling, he explained how he persuaded her to do something particularly demeaning. I was no sadist but of course he was. He could hate women. He went on for ages, offering chapter and verse, names, places, bringing all the horror and misery back. He explained little mysteries, offered anecdotes, consequences, a whole catalogue of betrayal. Chick could not have known the half of it. I wanted to walk out on him there and then but I was too fascinated. Besides, I had promised Chick I would stand by Rex. I couldn’t abandon him. This was Rex’s way of being my friend. I knew how much he relished revenge. He sincerely believed others merely pretended not to take the same pleasure in it.

I had promised to stay the night. By the time I went to bed, I had nothing to say to him. I knew how kind he could often be, how kind he had been to Jenny. I could hardly imagine such complicated, elaborate cruelty. Around three A.M. I took a couple of sleeping pills and woke up at eight on a wonderful sunny morning. Under a clear grey-blue sky the granite glittered and the grass glowed. Rex was down in the big, stone-flagged kitchen making breakfast. I ate it as if it might be poisoned. Standing in his drive beside my car, I hugged him. “I love you, Rex,” I said. And I did, even at that moment, when I could barely look at him. He paused, appearing to consider this. Then he teared up, making that muted humming sound I became used to hearing when he searched for an appropriate word, the little smack of his lips and intake of breath when he’d found it.

“I love you, too,” he said at last.

I got home that afternoon. I’d had to pull over twice to collect myself. Lucinda was still out. I’d hoped so much she would be home before me. The message light was flickering on the phone. I had a sickening premonition something had happened to her. But it was Rex sounding dramatically cheerful, a sure sign he’d been drinking. “Hi, Mike! I know you’re off ratting with your friend the vicar and your Jack Russells. Clearly you’ve no time to spend for poor old Rex…” And so on until the machine cut him off. I was relieved I’d taken longer getting home. When Lu finally arrived with fish and chips from the local, she was too full of her own frustrations with her mother to notice my mood so I explained how I was tired from staying up all night with Rex.

We saw a bit more of Rex after that. Because I would never know anything different, I decided to treat most of what he'd told me that night as an elaborate fiction. I was probably right. A couple of months later, as if he had been practicing on me with the Jenny story, he began writing again. At first I was relieved, but we eventually realised he was unable to finish anything. He had lost his gift for narrative, his sense of the future. We did all we could to encourage him, to keep him engaged. The ideas themselves were as brilliant as ever. He phoned to read me a couple of opening paragraphs over the answer machine and they were so good, so typical of Rex at his best, Lucinda wouldn’t let me erase them. When I was home he might read several pages, even a chapter. But two chapters were the most he could manage of anything. Chick had always been the one to help with construction. After I stopped editing he wouldn’t let me do it anymore. He claimed Chick’s diary had left him unable to complete a story. “Maybe because I know how it finishes. How they all finish.”

Rex had spent his whole life telling stories. There wasn’t much I could say. He was still writing narrative verse and every fortnight or so he would phone again with the start of a new story, still leaving it on the machine if we weren’t in.

Then his troubles began to increase. Phoning him I learned how he was threatened by the VAT authorities because of his failure to send in his forms or how a builder had gone off on a second job in the middle of fixing the library roof, how rain was drenching his books. I’d go over and do what I could but eventually I’d have to return home. I felt horribly guilty, recalling my promise to Chick. Not that I failed to remind Rex of what Chick had mentioned, but I couldn’t be there the whole time. Often he seemed to resent our help. I suppose the boxed wine he bought by mail order didn’t help. He ate a lot, but badly for a diabetic, and for all the various domestic disasters, which his friends coped with pretty well among us, things appeared to improve with time. If anything his grasp on reality seemed to strengthen. He broke down less and began going to a few parties and conferences. He made his peace with the friends he’d insulted and was mostly forgiven. Optimistically, we spoke of him as becoming his old self again. He was introspective in a positive way.

When another August came round he seemed pretty positive. He might start off feeling miserable but conversation soon cheered him up. We’d share a piece of gossip or make fun of a good friend. That was how we were. He joked about Chick, too. I saw that as another sign of healing. Lucinda could always tell who was on the phone because of the laughter. I spoke to him on the first Monday in September. He was drunk, but no more than usual. He’d sent me an e-mail, he said. This was unusual. He hated e-mail as a rule. So I went to my PC and there it was. Rex rarely offered that amount of self-revelation and this had the feel of a continuing conversation, maybe with himself. It knocked me back a bit. So much that I made plans to see him the following weekend. It was as short as it was shocking:

“The story I never wrote was the story of my life, my unhappiness at failing to convince my father of my worth. I tried so hard, but I never had the courage or the method to tell that story. I wrote to impress. The verses always had to be witty, the prose clever. You remember me telling you, when we were young, how scared I was about dropping my guard. Truth wasn’t as important as success to me. I needed to impress the people my dad approved of. Nobody else’s opinion meant much. Either he saw me in the Saturday Evening Post or I simply didn’t exist as a writer.” I think he’d planned to say more, but that’s all there was.

On the Thursday, Jimmy Cornish called and told me Rex was dead. The rest was in the obits. Gone but not forgiven.