undermined his confidence. The gloves he wore to conceal it explain the absence of fingerprints on the cup and the antifreeze bottle. CCTV images show him at Smoothie Heaven wearing his hat. He was on his way to the home in St. John’s Wood that morning. Apparently, he couldn’t face becoming a father, or the collapse of his business or his failure as a poet, or his loneliness in Shoreditch, where he was living in rented accommodation. After a row with his wife he left in distress. The wife blames herself. The interview with her had to be suspended a few times. The brother of the dead man was also present and did his best to be helpful.
Is reality so easily, so minutely arranged in advance? My mother, Claude and I are waiting tensely at the open front door. Between the conception of a deed and its acting out lies a tangle of hideous contingencies. At the first touch, the engine turns but does not start. No surprise. This vehicle belongs to a dreaming sonneteer. On the second attempt, the same wheezing failure, and so too on the third. The starter motor is sounding like an old man grown too feeble to clear his throat. If John Cairncross dies on our hands, we’ll all go down. Likewise if he survives on our hands. He pauses before trying again, gathering his luck. The fourth is weaker than the third. I conjure a view of him through the car’s windscreen, mimicking for us a quizzical shrug, his form almost obliterated by reflections of summer clouds.
“Oh dear,” says Claude, a man of the world. “He’s going to flood the carb.”
My mother’s viscera orchestrate her desperate hopes. But on the fifth, a transformation. With slow heaving and comical popping sounds, the engine internally combusts. Trudy and Claude’s straggling plant grows a hopeful bud. As the car reverses into the road my mother has a fit of coughing from what I take to be a cloud of blue exhaust blowing our way. We come inside, and the door is slammed shut.
We’re not returning to the kitchen, but climbing the stairs. Nothing is said, but the quality of silence—creamily thick—suggests that more than fatigue and drink are drawing us towards the bedroom. Misery on misery. This is savage injustice.
Five minutes later. This is the bedroom and it’s already started. Claude crouches by my mother and might already be naked. I hear his breath on her neck. He’s undressing her, to date a peak of sensual generosity unscaled by him.
“Careful,” Trudy says. “Those buttons are pearls.”
He grunts in reply. His fingers are inexpert, working solely for his own needs. Something of his or hers lands on the bedroom floor. A shoe, or trousers with heavy belt. She’s writhing strangely. Impatience. He issues a command in the form of a second grunt. I’m cowering. This is ugly, sure to go wrong, too late in my term. I’ve been saying this for weeks. I’ll suffer.
Obediently, Trudy’s on all fours. It’s
a posteriori
, doggy style, but not for my sake. Like a mating toad, he clasps himself against her back. On her, now in her, and deep. So little of my treacherous mother separates me from the would-be murderer of my father. Nothing is the same this Saturday noon in St. John’s Wood. This is not the usual brief and frantic encounter that might threaten the integrity of a brand-new skull. Rather, a glutinous drowning, like something pedantic crawling through a swamp. Mucous membranes slide past each other with a faint creak on the turn. Hours of scheming have accidentally delivered the conspirators into the art of deliberative lovemaking. But nothing passes between them. Mechanically they churn in slow motion, a blind industrial process at half power. All they want is release, to clock out, taste a few seconds’ respite from themselves. When it comes, in close succession, my mother gasps in horror. At what she must return to, and might yet see. Her lover emits his third grunt of the shift. They fall apart to lie on their backs on the sheets. Then
Is reality so easily, so minutely arranged in advance? My mother, Claude and I are waiting tensely at the open front door. Between the conception of a deed and its acting out lies a tangle of hideous contingencies. At the first touch, the engine turns but does not start. No surprise. This vehicle belongs to a dreaming sonneteer. On the second attempt, the same wheezing failure, and so too on the third. The starter motor is sounding like an old man grown too feeble to clear his throat. If John Cairncross dies on our hands, we’ll all go down. Likewise if he survives on our hands. He pauses before trying again, gathering his luck. The fourth is weaker than the third. I conjure a view of him through the car’s windscreen, mimicking for us a quizzical shrug, his form almost obliterated by reflections of summer clouds.
“Oh dear,” says Claude, a man of the world. “He’s going to flood the carb.”
My mother’s viscera orchestrate her desperate hopes. But on the fifth, a transformation. With slow heaving and comical popping sounds, the engine internally combusts. Trudy and Claude’s straggling plant grows a hopeful bud. As the car reverses into the road my mother has a fit of coughing from what I take to be a cloud of blue exhaust blowing our way. We come inside, and the door is slammed shut.
We’re not returning to the kitchen, but climbing the stairs. Nothing is said, but the quality of silence—creamily thick—suggests that more than fatigue and drink are drawing us towards the bedroom. Misery on misery. This is savage injustice.
Five minutes later. This is the bedroom and it’s already started. Claude crouches by my mother and might already be naked. I hear his breath on her neck. He’s undressing her, to date a peak of sensual generosity unscaled by him.
“Careful,” Trudy says. “Those buttons are pearls.”
He grunts in reply. His fingers are inexpert, working solely for his own needs. Something of his or hers lands on the bedroom floor. A shoe, or trousers with heavy belt. She’s writhing strangely. Impatience. He issues a command in the form of a second grunt. I’m cowering. This is ugly, sure to go wrong, too late in my term. I’ve been saying this for weeks. I’ll suffer.
Obediently, Trudy’s on all fours. It’s
a posteriori
, doggy style, but not for my sake. Like a mating toad, he clasps himself against her back. On her, now in her, and deep. So little of my treacherous mother separates me from the would-be murderer of my father. Nothing is the same this Saturday noon in St. John’s Wood. This is not the usual brief and frantic encounter that might threaten the integrity of a brand-new skull. Rather, a glutinous drowning, like something pedantic crawling through a swamp. Mucous membranes slide past each other with a faint creak on the turn. Hours of scheming have accidentally delivered the conspirators into the art of deliberative lovemaking. But nothing passes between them. Mechanically they churn in slow motion, a blind industrial process at half power. All they want is release, to clock out, taste a few seconds’ respite from themselves. When it comes, in close succession, my mother gasps in horror. At what she must return to, and might yet see. Her lover emits his third grunt of the shift. They fall apart to lie on their backs on the sheets. Then
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