We sat in the pub and thought about the postcards, about the possibility within them to shed light on lives, maybe even on our own. The more we talked about it and looked for some correlation between the people and the places they had visited the more I wanted to follow the trail, to plot these many locations given representation in the postcards and thereby make our own story borne of this shared framework, our own real story that would become part of this bigger story itself. With drunk enthusiasm I thought I should utilise a metafictional narrative, split down the middle into:
1. The self-conscious fiction we would compose from the postcard story.
and
2. The story of the real-life journey we would take together to research and write this fiction; a true story, itself laced with fictional asides and straight possibility but always remaining in the footsteps of an authenticity we made through living; all photographed and logged on typewritten sheets as we would drive the travelled roads of these other people’s lives from the clues they left cryptically penned on postcard backs, their language English but still all their own.
Their story – from postcards and fantasy – would become our story. Theirs would frame ours and ours theirs (I was reading “Bad Wisdom”, by Bill Drummond and Mark Manning, and I think it had influenced me a lot more than I realised at the time).
As I trawled through the pile two inches high I noticed a few postcards from the same place, the Langdale Chase Hotel in Windermere, the Lake District, this Britain. One of the postcards is striking in its monochrome, a black-and-white world beyond the terrace. “View from Langdale Chase Hotel”, it says, and the view is mighty trees and distant hills and the great expanse of the still barren lake and murky skies and two odd benches and stone globes heavy like guardsman like ancient Greece, the acropolis of Windermere:
Something about the name of the hotel, this Langdale Chase, made me think about an epic whodunit, of meticulously suited gentleman and their glamorous female companions travelling the country and the world and leaving behind them a trail of martini glasses and murder. It would be a postmodern Agatha Christie, but debauched and ultraviolent in fractured sentences and completely at odds with the otherwise formulaic structure of the genre. The names from the postcards would be my suspects, my victim, my detective, while the photographs would ground us geographically to this international mystery, giving us some sense of place, and at the heart of it all would be the Langdale Chase Hotel.
*
‘The applause of Lake Windermere dusted the terrace of the Langdale Chase Hotel like human hands. Joan and Leslie Ryden sat silently together, a visible consternation spotting their otherwise immaculate visage. They sipped Bloody Marys in the early dusk, the sun long dropped beneath low spring cloud, the sky dense and grey above the great lake, itself peppered by boats left empty on the waves, succumbed as they had to encroaching night. Six o’ clock. They had arranged to meet Marilyn over half an hour ago, but she was still yet to arrive. The letter left waiting for them at the hotel reception had been thick with uncertainty. Marilyn’s punctuality was beyond reproach.’
*
We talked about it for a while and decided to stick with the murder mystery idea, thinking it would be fun to plot a fiendishly complex crime alongside our own attempts to write about it. At the time neither of us could drive but we decided that as soon as one of us learnt we would buy a cheap car and set off to the distant places we saw in the postcards, and like a split personality I would write a page of each story consecutively, first the murder mystery and then the journey, each narrative constantly broken up by the other until they joined together somewhere in the future of what I might write. I would type it all on an Olivetti typewriter in the front passenger seat of the car or in hotel rooms and it would be on pages torn from a reporter’s notebook, with a jagged top edge from where it was ripped from its spiral binding.
The second of three postcards from the hotel was this:
Although not a view from the hotel itself (it’s Derwentwater, apparently) the correspondence says “Langdale Chase, Monday”. Sent by someone called Lillie (how perfect for my mystery! I can see her now, in the italics of her faded ink: the daughter of an eminent physicist! Her long elegant backless dress, her pearls and jewellery, her perfectly curled hair, her frightening makeup, her deep voice, her cigarette, her tiny tits, her voracious sexual appetite sweeping through the Lake District! O welcome Lillie!) she writes of rain and journeys, then sun and scenery. Her meteorological obsession is unhealthy. Is Lillie on the brink of insanity? Will Lillie’s obsessions lead to murder? Does her predatory sexuality hide a disgruntled genius? Where does Lillie stand in this false false murder?
*
‘Lillie loathed the lake; its steamers, its tourists, its banks, its merriment. She loathed the Langdale Chase Hotel. She peered again through the terrace windows. It looked like rain coming but only a shower, the day’s clouds too fickle by far for any greater commitment. She looked toward the barman – who hadn’t taken his eyes from her since she arrived – and nodded for his services. A funny little man, little more than five feet five, the blood vessels in his face reddened by the monotony of Lake District life. He walked to her table and bowed so slightly, his diminutive height even more noticeable up close.
“Martini,” she said drily, like the drink itself.
“Madam,” he said, and shuffled back to his bar, a white towel draped loosely across his jacketed arm.
She was the only guest in the quiet bar and she gazed out of the window, listening to her drink poured. The barman was soon by her side once more.
“Madam,” he said again, smiling as he handed her the glass. She sipped from it, her thick almost organic red lipstick staining the glass edge. A funny little man, but a man nonetheless.
She swallowed the rest of the drink down in one, leaving the olive behind. Lillie loathed olives. She handed the barman the empty glass along with a small square of white paper and left the bar, the movement of her hips like willow trees, he thought. He smoothed his thin hair back across his head and opened the paper to its fullest. Hotel stationery. A room number was written on it in perfect hand, blue ink.
Her room number.’
*
The third and final Langdale Chase postcard was sent by the same pairing as the first. Their elusive signature simply reads M & D. Mum and dad?, we posited over lager. A pair ripe for murderous intent by anyone’s standards. Mummy and Daddy, hideous and overweight. It is their deviant sexual practices that hold the Langdale Chase circle together. Their opium fuelled orgies bind this group of aristocrats, linked irrevocably in guilt and uncertainty. There is no escaping Mummy and Daddy, sensuous flesh pulsing with every thrust. They hold societal power, they are figures of importance, but beneath their wealthy surface lies violent depravity. They will stop at nothing to satisfy their own urges. Integral to my story they will read like the obvious suspects – their genitals, their debauchery, their aggression, their changeable moods, their barely concealed criminality. Too obvious. Their second postcard:
I have edited the address out of this. it is one of those long postcards that folds out into six different images within, with a long section for correspondence backing the pictures. Although most of the pictures are standard postcard fare, I will include this other one, of the Langdale Valley, as it might provide a wider sense of the geological features surrounding our now vital Langdale Chase Hotel:
I glanced through the pertinent points of their lengthy, near illegible correspondence, but found little of interest.: “I intended writing this last night,” it says on the reverse of picture postcard, “but we were joined by a mother and her son from Bradford [...] we sat and talked until 11:30 [...] full of Yorkshire humour [...] birds are singing [...] lovely pine trees [...] 10:30 Windermere station [...] sitting out on the terrace [...]Ullswater.” Coded? As I flicked through their text I realized how the truth of these people’s history had already ceased to matter. They had a new truth and I was making it. They were my characters and so was I.
*
‘”Ah Mummy and Daddy,” said the hotel clerk, without a trace of discomfort or irony. “Your usual suite is ready for you.”
“Very good Dervishly,” said Daddy through his plentiful moustaches. He was stretched into grey pinstripes and looked to the wall clock. Two local boys were carrying their luggage into the hotel foyer, and Dervishly rang the bell for service. Half past six. Daddy pulled his gold fountain pen from his jacket pocket and began to unscrew the lid.
“Shall I sign the register, Dervishly?” he asked.
“That won’t be necessary Daddy,” he replied. “It’s all been taken care of.”
“Excellent.”
“And how are you Mummy? You look, if I may say so, ravishing, Mummy, ravishing.”
“As always, Mummy,” said Daddy.
Blushing slightly, Mummy beamed, her doughy face compressing her small eyes to near invisibility within its fleshiness. Her considerable bosom quivered with delight.
“That’ll be all Dervishly,” said Daddy. “Have our bags sent up to the suite.”
Mummy and Daddy walked to the elevator and took the short journey to their deluxe suite. The barman Jenkins was standing outside room number 15. He looked nervous as they approached, and took two small steps away from the door.
“Jenkins,” said Daddy, smiling approvingly.
“Daddy,” said Jenkins, bowing. “Mummy.”
As Jenkins rapped uncertainly at room 15 they reached their own door and unlocked it slowly. The suite was dark, the curtains already drawn, only one lamp burning in the farthest corner. The smell of opium was heavy and sickly, but Daddy inhaled deeply, relishing the odour. He immediately began to undress, as did Mummy. There was a naked woman lying on the couch, in her 30s but in good shape. Her thick pubic hair sat in perfect contrast to her pale skin. She appeared unconscious though her eyes were open, her slightly cruel mouth parted at the lips by a half inch.
“Marilyn?” said Daddy, gently. He touched her shoulder, but the woman didn’t move. “Marilyn?” he tried again. Mummy took the extinguished pipe from Marilyn’s fingers and set it down on the coffee table at her side. Daddy lifted Marilyn in his thick arms and carried her towards the bedroom.’
*
We had been in Sussex while we decided whether to move to Norwich. We had left London and were staying with my parents, but were finding it hard to find a place to live because we didn’t have jobs and no one would rent a house to us. We offered to pay one landlord six months’ rent in advance, but he said he wanted to know where the money came from and we told him to put his house hard into his rectal sleeve. In the hope of finding work for the summer, and with half a thought to move back to Brighton, we went and stayed with my wife’s grandparents on the South Coast. It was hot and we didn’t find work. I was trying to finish the Nuclear Powered Heart but felt too anxious to write. Finding the postcards inspired me. We didn’t have a car and couldn’t drive and had no home it didn’t seem to matter. The postcards gave our story life.
Marilyn was from the postcards. She wrote like she was young, flat facts and tidy handwriting, her information minimal. She would have to be our murder victim, the crux of our mystery. The Marilyn of the postcards wrote from Perthshire:
But the Marilyn of my mind was American, lured to England by Mummy and Daddy. Orphaned, susceptible, Jewish – Rothschild, her family name – oddly beautiful, she was found in San Fran by Daddy’s sister Vera, who frequently holidayed in the US and worked as a barrister. Marilyn grew up in the Lord’s care at a convent school but was kicked out after being raped and impregnated by a visiting troupe of training clergymen. She had the baby and gave it away, lived destitute in California. She dreamt of movies and singing and salvation. Vera promised her all three things. Vera’s postcard was from San Francisco:
Vera was Daddy’s adopted sister. They grew up wealthy in the Suffolk countryside. They had fucked when they were teenagers and had been doing so since. Daddy often said Vera made him the man he was, made him realize the beauty of extremes in everything. All things are good when taken to excess became Daddy’s maxim. He and Vera held masked sex parties in their father’s house, for the good and great of society. The police commissioner’s balls would swing a wide arc into the socialite widow’s clitoris before the applauding young Daddy. The depravity of their experimental youth would shape their future, would drive the plot of the murder mystery. Vera’s social facade was immaculate but she was dark inside. She wanted to engulf youth as it had once engulfed her.
*
‘”What’s your name sweetheart?” said Vera. Her English sounded official in the California night.
“Marilyn.”
“Such a beautiful name. How old are you Marilyn?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Do you live here? On these streets?”
Marilyn looked away, her eyes stinging wet with the shame, the embarrassment of it. She was so lost and alone in this city, in this life. She knew how dirty her clothes must look, her fingernails, her pretty face sooty from the exhausts of the passing automobiles. In such glamorous company as this English lady, her dresses so meticulous and her jewellery so fine, she felt disgusting. The woman’s kind face leaned into her own. Her features were delicate, as though painted on by an artist’s steady hand.
“Come with me, Marilyn,” said Vera, holding her gloved hand out. “Come with me. I’d like to help you.”
Marilyn cautiously took her hand, weeping as she did, dabbing her eyes with end of her sleeve.
“Madam I...”
“Shhhh, Marilyn. Everything will be alright now.”
The two women embraced in the street, the world moving around them.
“What do you dream of Marilyn?”
“Of movies,” she sobbed. “Of singing.”
“Then sing you shall. I will take you England. My brother and I. We help girls like you.”
“Oh thank you!” she sobbed again. “Thank you.” She imagined the distant England, rich with its culture, its history. She was saved.
“My darling,” said Vera. “My sweet, sweet girl. Give me your hand.”
She did, and Vera lowered it, down her own front, over her stomach, and between her legs. Marilyn’s fingers pushing the glorious dress up. She felt Vera pushing herself down onto her fingers, felt the shape of her opening.
“You will be fine now Marilyn. You are safe now.”
Marilyn felt Vera’s hands dancing across her own two breasts, felt herself falling into a taxi, lowered onto a hotel bed, so thick and soft, felt her body stripped, felt the smoke inside her, in her lungs, in her veins, saw Daddy before her, on top of her nakedness, felt his flesh about her, felt the room cave in, she felt it all, felt it, it was a part of her.
“Think of England,” she whispered. “Think of England think of England.”
*
As my thoughts progressed through our conversation I realised how much the story was developing itself, in my mind, how already its homage to A. Christie had been superseded by a kind of neo-noir thriller, lipstick and shadows, grey urbanity and countryside steeped in depravity, a class divide centred around sexual exploitation and drug trafficking. I could feel the brutality forming behind the words. I wanted to hang to onto some of the whodunit formula – wanted to write the absurdity of a room full of suspects all patiently undergoing some casual interrogation by a genius cop, and have the contrast of this bizarre gentlemanly ritual sitting uncomfortably alongside the awful violence of the rest of the story – but I decided to follow the story, to let it lead me. The postcards and I had developed a weird relationship, organic. We were growing and developing together.
The next characters were three: Mary, Maurice and Christopher, M M & C the chosen abbreviation of their flourishing signature. My suspicions were aroused by their choices of holiday destination. Their postcards spanned the breadth of the northern Welsh lands, and so their characters formed themselves. Always together, the postcards signed as a trinity, they might have been a regular family – ma, pa, lad! – but I knew better. These three were showmen, freaks, they said, Maurice and Christopher born as one, conjoined twins, thoraco-omphalopagus, fused down the chest and sharing a heart, condemned to a life of fraternal proximity! And Mary, medium Mary they called her, medium in all her traits, physical and emotional, she was their keeper, of course, their agent. She was their mother, sold them out for scotch money and bacon bits and medical supplies, always together, always in wales, “THE LAND WHERE FREAKSHOWS NEVER DIED”:
This postcard is from Criccieth, and one of many sent from the M M & C Trinity. It’s a strange postcard. The random seated woman in the red top, enjoying the view of the temperate bay, is either unsettling or comforting, whichever way you look at it. The text provides few clues to the motive of their presence. One line says ominously:
I didn’t dare imagine what they were referring to. The other card of interest was as follows:
Twee without a shadow of, etc., but further evidence in our story of a consistent tour of Welsh villages, for reasons made plain above: the exhibition of the ‘joined two’: Maurice and Christopher, the brothers grim, found by Daddy and lured into his own depraved coital circle like sex aids, like living fetishes. It is the closing words of this correspondence that would send a shiver down any spine, which begin to tie together the dreadful extent of Daddy’s perverse network:
This was the first reference we have had to Anne, daughter of the Ryden’s and another pivotal character in the unfolding misery. So long, they say, in French, and to Anne specifically. Child Anne, virginal Anne. Where was the link, Anne and the three? We had Anne in our minds.
We’ll get to you, Anne.
*
‘Under dim electric lights the show went on, it always went on. Mary jeered from the wings, chain smoking, the audience baying in the Welsh language like ugly singing and flicking pennies onto the tiny stage. Maurice and Christopher walked out slowly; they wore just underpants, proof of their biological joining, their two chests attached and smeared into one, their faces oversized on their small shared bodies and contorted with an inner pain, the perpetual scream of their own death masque.
The audience gasped in their own saliva. They had known what to expect but they somehow hadn’t expected it. Women hid behind their hands but peered through fingers, guiltily intrigued. They whispered amongst themselves about the practicalities of life: just how did they do things? How did they toilet, how did they – no, I couldn’t possibly say the... how did they do... it? The vital act?
Maurice and Christopher performed their stand up show. One did jokes and the other the punch lines; the hand of one slapped the face of the other; they tried to chase each other about the stage but were, of course, conjoined. The roar of the crowd drowned out the organist. The show lasted for a quarter of an hour. Mary had walked off halfway through to speak with the organiser, demanding payment. She pointed at the twins as she spoke. They were bowing in their underpants.
A vast man approached Mary, applauding as he did so, a taut smile hidden beneath his powerful moustaches, themselves covered in a thin film of sweat. He handed her a card. It said “DADDY”.
“I want you three to come with me,” he told her. There was no Welsh in his accent. Englishman. “How much?”
“Where to?” asked Mary, pocketing the notes from the show’s organiser. Maurice and Christopher had walked down the stage steps and were trying to manoeuvre their way through the crowd towards Mary. The townsfolk were reaching out and touching them with probing fingers, as though they were alien creatures or something altogether despicable. “A show, is it?”
“Of sorts,” said Daddy. “I have... interests.”
“Interests?”
“And friends. Many of my friends would very much like to meet your sons. To know them.”
“Friends?”
“Human pleasures,” he explained, laughing jovially. “We want to offer you all a life of pleasure.”
“I’m not sure I...” Mary was rubbing her hands together, absentmindedly.
“I can make it very worth your while. My friends. They will pay well for such an... interesting experience.”
Mary folded her arms and looked at Daddy. He was very well dressed.
“Maurice, Christopher!” she yelled. “This is Daddy. He’ll be taking us on a trip.”
Daddy took off his own vast suit jacket and draped it across the twins’ bare shoulders. They were swamped in the material.’
*
They needed each other like internal organs, like oxygen. Alone they were nothing and Mary knew it.
Anne was the sender of many postcards. Throughout the collection we saw her grow through her handwriting, from a child travelling Britain (we guessed on residential school trips) to a young woman in Europe. Her youthful energy, her devastating good looks, her prized chastity, all of these make her vital to the story of Langdale Chase Hotel. It was her parents, the Ryden’s, who recommended the hotel to their acquaintances. Friends of Daddy’s since adolescence, Joan and Leslie Ryden, Anne’s dear parents, were very much within his circle. To Anne, he was Uncle Daddy. She knew only of his charms, his generosity, his big healthy smile, but Daddy was waiting for Anne; he wanted to be the first, and the Ryden’s would be handsomely rewarded. Anne saw the glitz of her parents’ lives and she wanted it for herself. She was very close to Marilyn Rothschild, Daddy’s adopted daughter. Marilyn told her of opium and how to love a man, Anne told Marilyn of Paris and Copenhagen and Barcelona. They slept together as friends but Marilyn would always be gone by the morning. She was an innocent, Anne, but there could never be hope for her in the sick wild world. From Denmark she sent this:
And on it she had written this:
I could imagine when the panicked Ryden’s received this postcard, their chaste angel alone in Copenhagen with crewmen and sexualised girlfriends! The risks were too high, Daddy had a huge stake in Anne’s continuing virginity, and they wouldn’t have her throwing away their fortune for a Carlsberg-fuelled five minute bunk up in a cramped berth. As parents they had to protect her! As parents they had to sell her young body, to entrench her in the perversity that had shaped their own lives, their upper class coital society, just a scratch beneath its respectable veneer! In desperation they had one of their people meet her in Copenhagen and return her safely to England, verifiably untouched. Showered with apologies and presents and all was forgiven, Anne none the wiser, Daddy’s offer still safe in hand.
*
‘Anne flounced into the room humming Billie Holiday. Joan and Leslie Ryden sat in stiff armchairs, Daddy stood powerfully in the middle of the room, basking in the heat of the fire. Anne’s hair was long and blonde and framed her gentle features. Daddy examined the way her skirt hung, the barely perceptible curve of her breasts beneath her crisp blouse, her tanned legs firm beneath her stocking. He did it in an instant. A thing of beauty. He approved.
“Uncle Daddy!” said Anne, enthused. “What a glorious surprise.”
“Ditto and likewise, dear Anne,” said Daddy, taking her hand gently in his obscene paw and placing the gentlest of kisses on its rear. He looked into her eyes as he did so. She smiled broadly. “May I say how lovely you look today? A feast for the eyes, wouldn’t you say Leslie?”
“Very much so,” said Leslie, looking not at Anne but at Joan. They smiled.
“Uncle Daddy, you’re exceptionally kind.”
“Exceptionally honest, Anne. It has always been my downfall.”
The room laughed heartily and Anne seated herself by the phonograph. She thumbed through the records but played none of them. Daddy felt her radiance in his trousers.
“And how are you, Anne?” he enquired.
“I’m very well Uncle Daddy. Thomas is taking me out tonight, to a show.”
Leslie’s eyes widened, his gaze jerking to Daddy, who stood unmoved.
“Thomas?” he asked, his tone playful. “A boyfriend, is he? The lucky chap.”
“Uncle Daddy,” said Anne. “You know that you’re the only man for me.”
The Ryden’s shivered at her flirting. She didn’t know how true her words were. She was a beautiful girl with an incredible allure. Had she yet realised that? Was she now blossoming as a woman, progressing towards intercourse with this... this Thomas?
“Oh Anne, you do know how to tease an old man!” said Daddy. He had walked over to where she sat and placed a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at the towering man. Was she nervous?
“Thomas is definitely not a boyfriend Anne,” said Joan. “You could do infinitely better than that... person.”
“Don’t worry mother, I have no romantic interest in Thomas.”
Daddy beamed at her and squeezed her shoulder.
“There’s nothing wrong with waiting for the right man, Anne. He might be the last person you would expect.”
Leslie swallowed his brandy and moved to the bar to pour another. It wouldn’t be long now.’
*
My wife noticed that the Ryden’s lived in Girton. I had been so engrossed with the pictures and the correspondence, and the fantasy that was growing out of my head, growing so big as to make itself real, that I hadn’t even noticed the address to which all the cards had been sent. It was weird because she had just graduated from Girton College that summer, a coincidence that seemed important. It felt more and more like these postcards had been there for us, been there for us to build their narrative.
We started to plot a theoretical route on a crudely drawn map of England, scrawled on a brown paper bag. It wasn’t really a route, more just the places from the cards that we needed to visit, dotted where we thought they might be. Starting with the Langdale Chase Hotel. Our geography wasn’t up to much, but we didn’t give a shit. Our own journey would give context to the murder, the plot inseparable from the stuff of our realities. I still have the map, its lines like spidery reminders to act, to act.
Like life our story needed a hero. Our story needed ANTHONY! A man not afraid of a little heroism! A man not afraid of a little foreign travel, for necessity or for the sake of it! A man not afraid of violence in the name of good, or swearing in the name of swearing! ANTHONY! A street-tough P.I. who speaks as he thinks: rarely, and crudely at that. A ‘crime expert’, he left a long career in the Metropolitan Police Force for both moral reasons and a change of lifestyle. Now based around Windermere, Anthony will be one unorthodox half of the crime fighting force that might solve our unfolding murder. His postcard hails from Italy:
Mountains, trees, sky of devastating blue – where does Anthony fit into this picture? The Italian decoy? Was he working, was this the product of an expenses paid trip to solve something unmentionable? A life tormented by darkness, intense Private Investigator Anthony’s Windermere is one of crime, his crusade one of goodness, his voice so strong it demands the first person, standing amidst the third, our metafiction shredded yet further by postmodernist method, boundaries blurring in skewed memories of films and Ellroy and expectation and disrupted narrative mode.
*
‘The dark night falls over me.
I smell the body before I see it and I know who it is before I smell it. Spoiled meat. She’d gone missing weeks before. Marilyn Rothschild. The District’s own premier American-Jewish orphan turned socialite, debutante and casual pornographer. Raised by Daddy. I took the job without thinking.
I know Daddy from an agriculture scam that we pulled across two or three years when we were kids. Left me good for money, he was in it for the laughs. I ended up in the police, then the PI game. He was a made man. Used my severance to buy an office space, some business cards, view of the lake. I was his first choice. He said I knew shit like no one else. He sneered when he said it, like I disgusted him.
The body's a mess. They’ve cut off her tits and broken her nose. Windermere breeds sexual violence. Her face is caved right in. She’d been a good looking kid. Not anymore. I look around for something to go on. In her busted mouth there’s a square of white paper. Langdale Chase stationery. It says: “Stop the global anti-animal Jewish conspiracy!” Rings a bell from some low-grade lit I’d picked up in a bad toilet. Animal whoring. Said the Jews were big on it. I say its bullshit, but there’s one dead body here and fuck knows what else. Where did a girl like Rothschild fit into something like that? I know she had porn racket going but fuck. I pocket the paper and phone the body in anonymously. Don’t need the bullshit. It’s my fuckin case. I call Daddy. He’s going to have to hear it from me. Marilyn and the animals.
At Daddy’s place the maid leaves me waiting in this huge hallway, says he’ll be a minute. I don’t sit down. There’s a photograph framed on an oak table. Daddy with these conjoined twins sat on his lap, flanked by two Doberman bitches. He’s smiling like he shits money. A door opens and I hear his voice.
“Anthony,” he says, drawing out the vowels.
“Daddy. Can we talk?”
“Come in,” he says. I do. He hands me a scotch and we sit on red leather chairs facing each other.
“What the fuck is this?” I toss the square of paper onto the table between us. He picks it up and reads it.
“Anti-Semitism’s what it is,” he says and hands it back, smiling.
“Yeah? What about the dogs?”
“Anthony.”
“And Marilyn’s little nympho penchant for the sex trade?”
“Indiscretions at worst,” he says. “A far cry from a network of animal prostitution perpetrated by my adopted Jewish daughter.”
“Really?” I say.
“You know me, Anthony.”
“I do,” I say, “and you’re a sick fuck. We both know what you’re into, Daddy. So did Marilyn.” We sit in silence a minute, the ice chinks on the side of the tumblers. “You sure this wasn’t you? One of your ‘parties’ get outta hand?”
He smiles again, amused.
“Why would I hire you if it was something to do with me? I would never jeopardise anything that goes on behind my closed doors, Anthony. We both know that, too.”
“Oh, I don’t know. To shake me off the scent? To cover your back? Money’s not an issue.”
“She was my daughter,” he said.
“Most people don’t fuck their daughters.”
“I’m not most people.”
He’s right about that, and the fact remains: Marilyn is dead, anti-Semitic shit littering the scene. The question is: fuckin why?’
*
In Anthony we found this unlikely hero, but we knew that we needed a balance, the cock to his balls, some more orthodox law enforcement, playing by both the rules of man and the rules of God. Although it was constructing itself into something else within my mind, I still wanted to use some of the formulaic elements of the classic whodunit, and for that I needed a straight laced cop who played it by the book. Anthony was the maverick, who turned his back on the force for the freedom and the expense account of the P. I. life. We needed a lawman whose rational insights bounced off of Anthony’s violent conjecture and underground connections until they reached the same conclusions, like they depended on each other, neither of their individual methods sufficient on their own. That’s where Bernard comes in. Bernard: The Religious Policeman:
What a considerate man he is, hoping upon hope for good sleep for all! And signing his correspondence with name, cross, and blessing from on high! This is our man, our BERNARD, fighting crime for King, Queen and Christ! Rejecting the priesthood in favour of something more tangible (police investigation), he nonetheless retained his Christian faith, and with a combination of prayer, reason and good policing has racked up an exemplary track record in high-profile cases. Sent to Windermere to investigate the shock murder of Marilyn Rothschild, Bernard is drawn into a world of loose morals, easy murder and sexual mania, where only his most intense Christian beliefs can save him from succumbing to the very real depravity of human life, but where a face from his past threatens the stability of everything that Bernard holds dear. He is a man tormented by his own inner turmoil, his own interior battle, constantly struggling to reconcile the urges of his own man’s brain with his love and respect for God, tortured, anguished. And yet amidst this crisis of faith and fuelled by their mutual desire to crack the case, Bernard and Anthony will be thrust together in darkness. It will be an unlikely buddy story, their hatred turning to respect with Bernard not afraid to get his hands dirty and Anthony not afraid to get his clean. A match made in Windermere!
*
‘“Bernard?” said Lillie, rushing onto the terrace of Langdale Chase Hotel. “Bernard? Is it you?”
Bernard looked around, the voice familiar but from where? He gasped when he saw her, knew his mouth was open.
“Lillie!” he said. He felt drunk on surprise, although he had never been drunk. She ran over to him and threw her arms around his neck.
“Dear Bernard,” she said. “How I’ve missed you!”
“Lillie!” was all he could manage to say, his tongue stuck on the word that rolled like music from its undulations.
“Let me see you,” she said, like a mother examining her prodigal son, despite him being almost ten years her senior. Her eyes were like lakes as she looked into his and he felt his knees weaken. He remembered the day they had met, in the seminary. She was the daughter of famed physicist Hans Krankberger, who was attending as part of a week-long science versus religion debate; he had brought Lillie with him. Bernard had met her over modest food and they had talked for hours, about science, God, priesthood, love. He had already felt his faith faltering, before Lillie, felt struck by the pointlessness of a priestly life; he wanted to help people practically, all people, not only the faithful – he had no interest in making that differentiation. For him, faith was a matter of practical life, this life on earth, and of doing what he could to make it better. His time in the seminary had made him realise his true calling: law enforcement. As he spoke to Lillie into the smallest hours of the night, he felt the torment of his faith afresh. She was so beautiful, radiant with all of God’s finery, and her young body seemed so out of place in the drab grey seminary. She talked about the wonders of the atmosphere and kissed him softly, and Bernard was paralysed. As her teenage hands wandered across all parts of his holy body Bernard had thought he was going to die, thought he was blacking out while her fingers tried to free him from his garments. In his mind he saw the crucified Christ child, saw the pain in his eyes and the blood of his wounds, he saw the end of the world, he saw hell and torment unfold around his own fornicating form. He screamed and fled the room, Lillie left on the bench behind him.
He had seen her again the following day, and he had awkwardly apologised, and she had warmly accepted, but he knew that things had changed, they had had to. How could they not? He left the seminary and joined the police force. That had been nearly twenty years ago.
And now here she was. Now thirty six, he guessed, she was still profoundly beautiful, and once again he felt the stirrings of his crushed lust in his blessed loins. He had tried to live as a Godly man, he had remained celibate despite leaving the seminary, but here, in the glorious setting of Lake Windermere, confronted by this angel, he felt the sin of the region biting away at him.
“What brings you to this hellhole?” asked Lillie, both of her hands clasped around one of his own. “Sorry,” she said, noticing Bernard’s wince as she uttered the word. “This... place?”
“Murder,” he said, taking his police identification from his inside jacket pocket. “Tell me, Lillie,” he said, leading her back through the French windows and into the bar. The little barman glared at them, he noticed, at Lillie in particular. She was stunning, pressing her body into his as they moved to a vacant table. He swallowed and prayed silently to himself, just three words: God help me. “Did you know a Marilyn Rothschild?”’
*
We talked about timeframes before our generations and our narrative were awash in incoherence, illogic and our own fresh gins and tonics. Linear it would never be, but accuracy was essential for a plot so entwined with itself. Considering our characters I posited a near-sixty year span, from the turn of the (twentieth) century up until approximately 1955 (as the year of the murder). Such dates would also tie in with the political leanings of two of our final key players. Madeline and Reg, married: one-time supporters of one Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists circa 1936, known violent anti-Semites and social flyers owning a wealth of Cumbria land. Widely travelled around the European continent – no doubt to Italy in Germany throughout the unrest of the 30s, key funders to Mussolini and the Nazis – this particular postcard hailed from sunny Mallorca:
‘Madeline and Reg smoked cigarettes in Daddy’s suite, poured exceptional scotch and dashed it with a touch of soda. Reg spoke with Leslie Ryden at length about the Jewish problem. His opinions had fallen firmly out of favour since the war, but there were numerous pockets of the upper classes who still burned with the passion of Mosley, saw the Jews as a harmful force responsible for their own problems and for the problems of the western world.
“You know why?” asked Reg, referring to a question he had asked minutes earlier. “Money.” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together as he said it. “It’s not a conspiracy if it’s true,” he said, as if it explained his position. It was sort of his catchphrase.
“Conspiracy?” asked Mummy. She was sittiing on the chaise-longue with Madeline.
“They call it a conspiracy theory, the Jewish problem, but it’s not a conspiracy, Mummy. It’s truth. The Jewry is running the western world; all of the power, the money, the influence is in the hands of the Jew. People are fools to think otherwise, and even greater fools to let the bastards get away with it.”
“But Reg,” laughed Leslie. “Surely you can’t be condoning Hitler’s actions? The Holocaust?”
“Can’t I? Perhaps the Fuhrer was slightly overzealous in his approach to the problem but it was a problem, and the man should be congratulated for trying, at least, to deal with it, for the sake of his own blasted country. Maybe it’s something we should have had the tenacity to address ourselves.”
“But you can’t be suggesting that all that needless death...”
“Now listen, Leslie. The Jews are a parasite, they are vermin. They sweep into a country en masse and they take it, they restructure its power for themselves, thus forming the most powerful international community in this great world. Their interests,” he said, drawing hard on his cigarette and savouring the smoke, “are not our interests. Something needs to be done about it. Our dear friend Tom – Tom Mosley – he had the courage to speak out, to open people’s eyes to the truth, and look what happened to him. People wouldn’t listen, Leslie. They are blind to it, but my eyes are wide open.”
“I bloody hate the Jews for one,” said Madeline gently. “Awful types.”
The door handle turned and Daddy entered the room with his customary pomp. He hung his hat and coat and ushered Marilyn into the room. Leslie stood up. Madeline gasped audibly, dropping her whiskey glass on to the thick carpeted floor. It smashed reluctantly.
“Good God!” muttered Reg scornfully.
“Ah, Madeline, Reg!” said Daddy. “How good of you to join us. Please meet Marilyn, my adopted daughter.”
Marilyn approached the pair, her fabulous hand extended in greeting, but neither reciprocated the politeness of her gesture.
“Pleased to meet you,” she said instead, the subtly American tinge of her accent arousing even more suspicion in Reg, who stood and walked briskly away from the girl.
“Hmmm,” was all Madeline could bring herself to say. She looked at the broken glass on the floor and rushed to join her husband at the bar.
“Is she... Jewish?” said Reg, his back turned on both Marilyn and Daddy. He tried to sound nonchalant, failing entirely.
“Is that a problem?” said Daddy, obviously amused.
“No, no. Which is to say. It might be, yes.”
“Reg,” said Daddy. “Just give it a go. She’s very... accommodating, aren’t you Marilyn.”
She said nothing. Daddy moved his enormous frame towards her and unbuttoned her blouse. Marilyn stood still, her arms limp by her sides. He removed the rest of her clothing with deft hands, well-practised. She stood naked before them. Daddy rubbed his hand between her legs and kissed her on the mouth.
“Very accommodating,” he said.
“But I couldn’t,” said Reg, staggering trancelike towards the allure of Marilyn’s flesh. “She’s Jewish...”’
*
I was aware of the extent to which reality was blurring. The barrier between the story we had created and the reality of the postcards had almost completely disintegrated; the fictions we had made had become more convincing character profiles than any measly facts we could extract from the monotony of the genuine holiday correspondence. There was no need to try to extract ‘truth’ from the postcards, it was a meaningless abstract. The truth was whatever we decided it was. There was no slur on the character of the people from these cards, no matter how outlandish our story became – they were nothing anymore, superseded by imagination and perversity, created by narrative.
For our primary cast of characters we had only two people left. Their correspondence sent from Pembroke Castle, Jim and Penny were legitimate business partners of Daddy’s, and ran an exceptional bakery with a tearfully good loaf, so perfect, in fact, that consumption of the bread would make the eater cry, heavily, involuntarily, lengthily, tears shed for yeast, for flour, for salt and water! It was a physical response, like a knee-jerk, and any eater was powerless to stop it. The bread was that fucking good.
They were only in their early thirties and had become involved with Daddy as personal bakers because Daddy was a bread connoisseur. As he wept his tears of yeasty joy he begged them to join his staff, which they did for money and creative freedom. Under their floury aprons they were shrewd businesspeople, never lured into Daddy’s debauched society parties. Catering: yes; merciless sexual intercourse and drug usage: no. They were there as professionals to provide bread for the happenings and that is what they would do (although Penny did once fuck Leslie Ryden it was a drunken mistake and not part of an orgy; it was a one-to-one affair, duration: 120 seconds of mild excitement). Compartmentalisation. As the flesh around them merged into one hideous genital, they spoke amongst themselves and planned new recipes, a skill as impressive as it was repulsive. Forever on the periphery, their role in the story would nonetheless prove to be more pivotal than one might at first imagine.
*
‘The bell above the bakery down rang. It was Daddy’s ring.
“Good Morning Jim,” he said. “The lovely Penny.”
“Hello Daddy,” said Jim. “What can I do you for? Is everything set for tomorrow?”
“Everything’s fine Jim. I just fancied a loaf. Of the good stuff.”
“Coming right up.” Jim kept the bread counter locked on his side. He pulled the key from his trouser pocket and opened it up, pulling a still warm loaf out. He bagged it up in paper and handed it over to Daddy. No charge. It would go on the account.
“Still warm,” said Daddy, dulcet, as though he were in the throes of an epic seduction.
“Just out of the oven a half hour ago.” Penny came out from the kitchen area and smiled at Daddy.
“Do you mind if I have some here?” asked Daddy, compulsively kneading at the bread through its paper wrapping.
“Be my guest,” said Jim. He strolled around the counter and pulled up a chair for Daddy, who sat down and tore off a hunk of the fresh loaf.
With a glance at Penny he lunged the bread into his mouth and chewed ravenously, as though he hadn’t eaten for weeks. As he swallowed the first mouthful the tears began, slowly at first but rising in quantity and intensity as he ate more and bread. He slumped down off of the chair and sobbed on the tiled floor. Jim stepped over his body and locked the shop door. He put his arm around Penny and they stood watching him together, Daddy clutching his bread – fingers sunk through into the soft dough – and crying like a child on the bakery floor, his great fat back quivering like an ocean.’
*
We had our cast, characters rich in life and absurdity and psychological potential, all mobilized and waiting for the story to develop around these parts of ideas. My wife’s grandparents were picking us up by car and so we left the pub to go and meet them, drunk in the streets and drained by the excitement. I clutched the postcards in the brown paper bag they had come in, the bag that had become our map, our guide through the madness of the story that was now writing itself in my mind. It felt like if I were to let go of them for even a second, I would let go of the whole story too, the whole stupid thing would come crashing down, replaced once more with the original dull truths written within the normality of the postcards. We had constructed something so much more vibrant than reality and I had to hang onto it with both hands, and nurture its brightness, and make our narrative what really happened.
But then we had our own story to write, the story of the pilgrimage we would take to bring another story to life. It was the story that never got written. Or maybe this is it. One story of writing another. Because I could never finish our mystery. Shit, I could never even start it. It was too big, too good. As time went on it felt more and more like it had to take care of itself, like it didn’t need me to get written, it didn’t need me to become true; it had already happened. The postcards as they were meant nothing to us; we had given them a new life, a new meaning, something that made sense to us. Did it matter that the murder stayed unsolved, that the story stayed as it was, just fragments of possibility? At the time it felt truer than a lot of things that happen. Still does probably.
We can try to imagine the murderer, if it makes us feel better, find the closure to this incomplete narrative, incomplete because it has to be, because it never stopped growing.
Was it Daddy, who slaughtered his Marilyn in a violent frenzy of his own bizarre sexuality, butchered by his own huge hands?
Was it Leslie and Joan Ryden, desperately trying to preserve their own daughter’s virginal integrity against Marilyn’s nocturnal charms, honouring their debt to Daddy?
Was it Anne herself, embittered to aggression at Marilyn’s spurning of her inquisitive lesbian advances?
Was it Vera, always cruel, always evil?
Was it Reg and Madeline, torn apart by the guilt of their inter-faith congress, their anti-Semitic ideology finally given physical manifestation in murder?
Was it Lillie, driven mad by jealousy when she discovered the shocking truth about her own biological parentage, discovered just how she came to be known as Lillie Krankberger and the role her physicist father had played in it all, discovered that Daddy is her daddy?
Was it Mary, Maurice and Christopher, the fuck-up three, responding with finality to Marilyn’s unconcealed disgust at their ghastly preferences?
Was it Jim and Penny, terrified of bankruptcy as they learn the truth of Marilyn’s Jewish heritage, her natural flair for baking and her longstanding dream of a kosher bakery on the shores of Lake Windermere, a direct threat to their tenuous bakery monopoly?
And what of our heroes, Anthony, Bernard? What of them? Do they unmask our murderer with all the civilisation of a whodunit, a simple conversation around a well-stocked dining table? Or do more people die, is more blood spilled as the quest for truth swallows Windermere and breaks out into the world, to Pembroke, Colwyn, Copenhagen, BOURNEMOUTH? Do we go out in a blaze of fists and pistols, of dreadful vomiting, confronted as we are with the deep-rooted atrocity of Daddy’s circle, of its integral role in high society, of its endless freedom from the hand of the law? Do these crimes ever end, are they ever solved? Can there ever be an end? I can see that it would always carry on, just as soon as we had started it.
My money’s on Bernard as murderer. The clues are all there.
The truth is, our real life got in the way of the story. There was too much to do, it was a busy summer. And there was no story. In 2007 we bought the postcards and we drew the map and we talked about a murder, about us travelling the land, following in the footsteps of these strange faceless people. It was a beautiful idea. We gave birth to it like parents and it grew like a child. It was going to be a story about us. I would type it on a typewriter in the front passenger seat but I didn’t know what it would say. It might be five hundred blank pages torn from reporter’s notebooks. I still don’t know. And I don’t know what fiction is. One wrong word can make a fiction. This is a fiction, but it’s also a story about us. Underneath it all it’s only a story about us. Everything is.
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