|
Back to First Page
Afterlife By David Gardiner
This story may be reproduced in whole or in part for any non-commercial purpose provided that authorship is acknowledged and credited. The copyright remains the property of the author
If you’re reading this it means that I am dead. It’s strange to be talking to you from beyond the grave. Do you think there’s anything after death? I don’t. I’m too much of a materialist, I suppose. I saw a crushed animal in the road this morning. Dozens of cars must have gone over it, it was quite difficult to tell what species it was. I think it was probably a young fox, though it could have been a dog. Does it make any sense to imagine that little animal having some kind of continuation in another life, while its body lies in the road in that condition? I don’t think so. The idea is ridiculous. But all our bodies end up like that, and a lot worse. Decayed to bones, or dust. How can anybody seriously entertain the idea that some part of us survives? Wishful thinking with a vengeance, in my opinion.
So I don’t exist any more. I’m fairly certain about that. But it matters to me that the rest of you understand some things now that I’m gone. I don’t know why it should, it isn’t logical, but the fact is—it does.
I lodged this document with my solicitor and set it up so that you would all hear it at the same time. People talk about the “Last Will and Testament” but what they really mean is the Will, the document that says who gets the money. Well, this is the other bit, the Testament. I’ve sorted out the money bit as well of course but it doesn’t matter to me at all. This is the bit that I care about. I want you hear me out. I hope you’ll do that.
I should make a brief apology before I begin: most of what I have to say is addressed to my wife and my two stepsons. Please forgive me if the rest of you feel a little left out.
You boys—sorry, you aren’t really boys any more but it’s how I think of you—I want you to know that when I first married your mother I loved her very much. I tried to love you too, and if I didn’t always succeed I apologise. It’s not something you can turn on and off like an electric light, but I think you’ll grant that I always treated you decently and fairly, even if I wasn’t the best father who ever lived. I’ve never been a demonstrative man, I know that, but we had a good understanding I think. We were comfortable with one other. For the last few years I’ve probably been closer to you than to your mother, which is something I would never have expected. I hope that you aren’t going to be hurt too much by what I have to say today. Don’t worry, I don’t mean I’m writing you out of my Will. You didn’t want for anything while I was alive and you won’t now that I’m dead. Your mother isn’t going to need anything either I think, but for a different reason. Sorry, I’m racing ahead.
Now I come to the hard part. You all know that our family was constructed out of two other families. Neither of us was young when we met, and it was the second time around for both Marion and me. Marion had you two boys, but something I never told you was that I also had a child, a daughter who was born out of wedlock (what an ancient-sounding phrase!) and whom I was never allowed to see officially. She was younger than the two of you, about three years younger than Phil in fact, and lived abroad with her mother. Her name was Sybil.
I would like Phil and Larry to do something for me at this point. Take a look at your mother. Has she gone pale? Go to her. Sit with her. She is going to need your support.
I wanted to make financial provision for Sybil while she was young but her mother never allowed me to. I suppose she imagined that if she accepted money I would want access—or something of the kind. It’s a long and sad story. Difficult to talk about, even now. And it doesn’t really matter. All you need to know is that it was a messy, unpleasant break-up and Sybil’s mother didn’t want me to have any place in their lives. I accepted it—well, I didn’t have very much choice—but when Sybil came of age and left home her mother could no longer prevent me from seeing her or from giving her a little money. Sybil and I became good friends. Most of my business trips to France were nothing to do with business. They were trips to visit my daughter.
I never mentioned Sybil to you boys or your mother. I know that I should have, and there wasn’t any compelling reason to keep her a secret, but the moment never seemed to be right somehow, and of course the more time that slipped by the harder it became. I think perhaps part of me wanted to keep my previous life separate from my new life. It hadn’t been a very happy time, Sybil was the only good thing that had come out of it, and there didn’t seem much point in dragging it all up again with Marion. It didn’t have anything to do with her. Anyway I never said anything and now I’m dead so I’m never going to, am I?
The unfortunate thing was that your mother got the idea that there was another woman in my life. I’ve never been much good at hiding things and she picked up little clues: a blonde hair on my jacket, theatre tickets for two on my credit card statement, a faint cough from a female voice in the background when I phoned from the hotel opposite the Gare du Nord. Tiny things, but of course over a period of years they added up.
We lived for a long time in a kind of mutual conspiracy of silence. She knew, or thought that she knew, and I knew that she knew, or thought that she knew. An elaborate game, and one that slowly drove us apart.
Why did I let it happen? I don’t know. I think I enjoyed the intrigue of the situation, the sense of mystery and drama—it gave me a kind of satisfaction to allow her to think the worst, knowing full well that I could establish my innocence any time I wanted to. And yet it wasn’t total innocence—there was deception. It had all the excitement of an affair, all the spectator interest, but none of the risk. In reality, it was little more than a joke. My daughter Sybil, whom I saw for a brief chat every few months, cast as the Scarlet Woman. I’m not proud of it but I think it gave me a kick of some kind to lead Marion along like that. It made me feel a bit more interesting and colourful. It gave me some little element of power over her almost. But that’s all it was to me, a silly game. I had no inkling of where it was leading.
I’m dead now so I may as well tell you the complete truth. There was another woman—just once, and it was here in London, not France. It lasted a couple of weeks while her husband was away. It meant nothing to either of us, beyond a bit of physical pleasure and some shared intimacy that was missing from both our lives at the time. My relationship with Marion was pretty cool by then. But the funny thing was, she never found out about it. Nobody did. It’s easier to have an affair than most people realise.
But I digress. Things grew cooler and cooler between your mother and me, and I increased the frequency of my “business trips” to Paris. Maybe subconsciously I was trying to bring it to a head, maybe I actually wanted to be found out, for the truth to emerge, maybe I thought things between us would get better if the game ended, I don’t know. But I was playing with forces a lot more powerful than I realised.
The truth is it never crossed my mind that Marion could be jealous enough or crazy enough to do something like that. Our relationship was more or less over anyway, we just shared a house, how could this imaginary affair of mine matter enough to get her into that state? But of course I couldn’t have been more wrong. My secret lover must have been all she thought about, day and night: the rotten festering core at the centre of her entire life. I just didn’t have the imagination to see it.
You’re probably wondering what it was that she did. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you Marion? Hold on to her boys, don’t allow her to leave.
I didn’t forgive you at first, Marion, and I don’t know whether or not I do now. That’s my dilemma in a nutshell, I have this knowledge that I must live with, knowledge that gives me power of a kind, and most certainly responsibility. I know exactly what you did, Marion. And how you did it. All the details that I can’t bear even to think about. You committed murder out of pure blind hatred—you didn’t wait to check your facts, you didn’t give her a chance to explain anything, you just pulled the trigger, again and again, until she was like that fox on the road this morning, an empty blood-soaked shell of nothingness. You destroyed my reason for living. You did it just because it made you feel good.
There was nothing to link Marion with Sybil. No witnesses. The murder weapon was never found. Sybil’s death wasn’t even reported in this country as far as I know. Another mindless shooting in some obscure Paris apartment, probably a lovers’ quarrel or a bungled robbery. Who knows, who cares? Life goes on.
But not for you, Marion. Life doesn’t go on for you.
You were careful and thorough, and I’m sure no police force could possibly have tracked you down. But hiding it from me was a slightly different proposition, wasn’t it? Did you think I didn’t know? Did you think I did know? It became a continuation of our little game, didn’t it? But a bit more serious now.
Well, let me satisfy your curiosity. I knew as soon as you looked at me that evening when you got back. And it didn’t take me long to piece it all together, and to collect a substantial box of physical evidence and draw up a meticulous file of your movements on the day of the murder, and other relevant facts. It will stand up in court, Marion. Trust me, I’ve been every bit as thorough as you.
But when I had all that material collected together, everything ready to hand in at the police station, I discovered that I couldn’t go through with it. I lacked the necessary courage, or perhaps the necessary—what shall I call it?—moral certainty, to do what I knew I should. I started thinking about what it would do to the boys to have a murderer for a mother. And asking myself if it would really achieve anything to have you put away. It wasn’t as if you were likely to kill again. What you had done, I could see, was something that I had driven you to, unintentionally of course, but unthinkingly and callously over a period of nearly two decades. I shared some measure of responsibility for what had happened. It was undeniable. And there was a part of me that didn’t want to let you off that easily. Part of me said, let her stay out of prison, you can make her suffer more than they ever will, right here in this house. I can’t bring myself to tell you some of the things that I had planned for you. Deep down, I’m not a very nice person. But then you know that, don’t you?
That was why I hesitated—stalled in my determination. I thought that maybe I should wait, let the fury inside me settle a bit. Maybe it was clouding my judgement and I should give things a bit more time.
So I stored my evidence somewhere safe and I waited. I could hardly bear to live in the same house with you, hardly bear to look at you or make pleasant conversation, but I gritted my teeth and I carried on. I don’t know what you must have thought. That I was missing my mistress, perhaps? I don’t know how much you understood of what was going on in my head, or in my nightmares.
Ah yes, the nightmares. I started having vivid dreams. Quite unpleasant ones. If I were not such a down-to-earth sort of man I might even call them premonitions. The dreams all involved my dying in some nasty and bloody accident.
And so I started asking myself, what if I were to have an accident before coming to my decision? My cache of evidence might not be discovered for years, or even decades. And that was when I came up with the idea of this letter, and lodging it with my solicitor, to be read at the same time as my Will. Then, if there was an accident, my decision would be made for me. I could stop trying to play God, which is a role for which I’m not very well suited. Let the proper bodies make these decisions. Let your lawyers talk about extenuating circumstances, or crimes of passion if they try you in France. Whatever. Why should I have to carry it all on my shoulders? I didn’t have the courage to do the right thing while I was alive, I am not a courageous man, but this letter will do it for me automatically after I die.
Did I die in an accident? I wonder. I’m sure that most of us never know the manner of our own deaths. Did you have a hand in it Marion? I don’t care if you did. For that at least I can forgive you. I don’t know if the court will forgive you though. It’s all out of my hands now and I’m pleased about that. Somebody uninvolved and wise and properly qualified can come in and do the right thing.
The box and the file are in the locker room where I work. I bequeath the entire contents of Locker No.14 to the Metropolitan Police, Scotland Yard, International Crime Division.
Please don’t think too badly of me—any of you. I was a morally weak man and this was the best I could do.
TO READ OR SIGN THE GUEST BOOK JUST CLICK ON THE
|
