I couldn't understand it. They needed the money. Dirk and Lemmy always needed the money. 'Why not?' I asked, trying to keep the petulance out of my voice. I was feeling a little let down. If friends weren't willing to help out with the decorating, then what on earth was the point of them?
'Bad vibes, man,' said Dirk.
'Armani campanella viscose dead men,' said Lemmy.
I frowned at him, trying to catch his drift.
'Lemmy says that nothing on earth will get him to go back into that bathroom,' Dirk translated, though as usual it seemed as though he was intermingling Lemmy's observations with more than a few of his own. 'Just after we started on your living-room, he went for a slash and came out looking like he'd seen a ghost. You should have seen him, Clare. His face was whiter than a tab of Amytal, and I swear his hair was standing on end.'
Lemmy's hair was shoulder-length so this had to have been a sight worth seeing.
'After that,' Dirk said, 'whenever one of us wanted to take a leak, we came down here to the pub.'
I'd noticed they'd been spending more time in the Saddleback Arms than in the room they were supposed to be painting, but since I'd been paying them by results rather than by the hour, there hadn't seemed much point in getting stroppy.
Dirk went to the bar to get more drinks. Forgetting for a minute that I needed him to act as interpreter, I leaned over to Lemmy and asked, 'What exactly was it about the bathroom that you didn't like?'
He looked straight at me and said, very slowly and clearly, 'Some guy cut his throat in front of the mirror.'
I jerked my head back as though he'd spat in my face.
Dirk came back to the table with the drinks. 'All right?' he asked brightly.
I managed to stammer, 'Wha-what did you say?' I could have sworn I hadn't mentioned Robert Jamieson's suicide to either of them.
'Deuteronomy costermonger mussolini,' replied Lemmy. 'Dick van dyke bad vibes.'
'Yeah,' said Dirk, nodding in agreement. 'Really bad vibes, Clare.'
Robert Jamieson might have been dead, but evidently there were people who were not yet apprised of the fact, because they kept on sending him mail.
'You'd think they'd have given up by now,' I remarked to Marsha one morning after we'd met in the hall to sort through the morning delivery. I was expecting a cheque, as well as half-hoping that someone somewhere would have sent me a postcard or invitation to a private view or launch party, but most of the post turned out to be for Marsha or Walter.
'What?' said Marsha, opening the latest of the many envelopes she received from all around the world. The picture on the stamp was of a red and yellow bird with an enormous fish sticking out of its beak. Marsha had friends in exotic places.
'That for Robert? Give it here.'
I handed the envelope over, a little reluctantly. The address was handwritten, and I was curious about the contents. 'What do you do with them?'
'With Robert's letters? I forward them. We're supposed to forward everything that isn't addressed to us.'
'What do you mean, forward them? Where on earth do you forward them to? The cemetery? The posthumous office? Isn't it all a bit Twilight Zone?'
'I send them to the agents,' said Marsha. 'Don't ask me what they do with them. Maybe everything's sent on to the family.'
'For a dead man, he certainly gets a lot of mail,' I observed, though I didn't say what was really exasperating, which was that he got more mail than I did.
'A fair amount,' agreed Marsha. 'But it's probably only junk. You live in any old house like this, especially one divided into flats, and you're bound to get loads of things addressed to people who don't live here any more. I mean, look…'
She picked up another envelope. 'Here's one for Arthur Mowbray. We've had quite a few for him, and he hasn't lived here for God knows how long. Before my time, anyway. And here's another one… for… Nicholas Wisley Esquire? Get a load of that fancy handwriting, will you? Oh well, this one's a first — I've never heard of anyone called Wisley.'
I looked wistfully at the rogue envelopes as Marsha rounded them up and tucked them into the pocket of her towelling bathrobe.
'Don't you ever feel like opening them?' I asked. 'Just out of curiosity?'
I'd shocked her. 'Clare! It's private! Anyway, what would be the point? It's not as though they're likely to be anything exciting. Besides, life's too short; I get quite enough letters as it is, and I don't want to have to read everyone else's as well.'
And with that, she gathered up her own correspondence, slapped me affectionately on the back, and marched back into her flat with a hearty slam of the door.
A few days later, when, as usual, the morning postal delivery failed to shower me in a cascade of exciting letters and invitations, I picked up the latest envelope bearing Robert Jamieson's name and took a long hard look at it. The address had been written in loopy Biro on blue Basildon Bond.
Damn it, I thought. Why should he get more post than me? And, not daring to stop and think, I slipped the letter down inside the waistband of my jeans.
I needn't have bothered with the subterfuge, because Marsha wasn't around. I thought she'd probably stayed overnight with her boyfriend — a twice-divorced travel agent who lived in Fulham. But I felt guilty, and half-remembered reading somewhere that tampering with mail was one of the few crimes, like setting fire to Her Majesty's shipyards, that was still punishable by death. So I slunk back upstairs, ready to hide the protruding edge of the envelope with my arm, even though there was no one else around.
Not surprisingly, I made it back to my flat unobserved. I poured myself a mid-morning cup of coffee and settled down to read the letter, as comfortably and as naturally as though it had been addressed to me.
Dear Robert,
My lawyer advised me not to write to you, but I still think a personal appeal is more likely to succeed than a court order. As you must surely be aware, Ben is fast approaching his fifteenth birthday. His teachers tell me he is interested in foreign languages, and has some talent in that direction, but in order to develop his oral skills he needs to spend time in France and Germany. The chance of a school trip has come up, but unfortunately I am already stretched to the limit and cannot possibly take on any more work, what with the two part-time jobs and all the extra stuff I do at home.
I know you have probably been finding things as tough as I have, which is why I have never nagged you about the outstanding payments. But I was wondering if perhaps you could possibly scrape something together over the next couple of months? He is as much your son as mine, and even though you have never displayed the slightest interest in his welfare, I can't believe you are as indifferent as you want people to think.
All my love, Maggie
PS. He has been asking about you. What should I tell him?
PPS. Please get in touch. Even if you can't send any money, I would love to hear how you're doing.
PPPS. Do you still write poems? I've still got the one you dedicated to me.
The letter was undated. I studied the postmark, but it was nothing more than a smudged arc across a conglomeration of different coloured stamps in minor denominations. I felt sorry for Maggie, whoever she was. Surely someone should have written to tell her what had happened, especially if there was a child involved. But what kind of man would lose contact with his son like that in the first place?