One of Us Is Dead

4 Friday 23 September 2022

Because of the rain coming down even harder now, the mourners were dispersing rapidly. Taylor, holding up his umbrella, followed another group from the funeral along the High Street, which would have looked a lot prettier in sunshine, he thought.

After a couple of hundred yards they turned left towards a large municipal car park, and for a moment he wondered if he’d made a mistake following them, but then they hurried into a characterless, single-storey modern building, totally out of keeping with the mostly Georgian facades of the rest of the village.

If the outside was lacking charm, the interior, he thought, was even more bland. Trestle tables laid out with a buffet that only the British could do quite so badly. White bread sandwiches with the ends curling up, drab quiches, sausage rolls that looked like they were still defrosting, a platter of cheese and pineapple cubes pierced with cocktail sticks, and bowls of crisps, cheese straws, and mixed nuts and raisins. There were glasses and bottles of cheap red and white wine on another table, with no indication that the white wine was at anything other than room temperature.

Fifty or so people were already in the room, some awkwardly holding laden paper plates in one hand and glasses in the other, and many of them glancing around with an air of desperation, as if looking for someone they knew to go and talk to.

Taylor, whose sole interest in being here was to see if he could spot the man in the baseball cap and scarf, recognized none of them. Single himself once more, after a long and challenging divorce from his wife, Marianne, and custody fight for his ten-year-old son, Harrison, he was just getting back to feeling himself again after a difficult time. He knew it wasn’t really appropriate, but he couldn’t help casting a glance around at the women in the room — it had been at a funeral that he met Marianne. But none of them that he could see were his type. Not that he was really sure any more who was his type.

‘Hello, James!’

He turned sharply to see Barnie’s ex-wife, her veil gone now, smiling at him beneath stylish fair hair, holding a glass of red wine. A confident and very good-looking woman in her midthirties, with the faintly husky voice of a smoker. She smelled of smoke now — no doubt she’d had a quick fag after the service. Taylor, who had quit some years ago, still had the occasional craving, and he had one now. Badly.

‘Debbie!’ he replied. ‘I’m so sorry about Barnie.’

She gave him a wan smile. ‘Thanks.’ She hesitated. ‘I guess he was someone who was never going to make old bones. But I didn’t think he’d go this young.’ She shrugged.

‘It’s good to see you,’ he said. And it was, really good. Taylor had always liked her, although they barely knew each other. One of the few times he’d met her before had been at Rufus Rorke’s funeral.

‘It’s lovely of you to come. Really, I do appreciate it and it’s nice to see your face again.’

He shrugged. ‘Of course. Barnie and I go back a long way. How are you doing?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Although I’m sad. We became much better friends after we separated than when we were married. I’m really fine.’

And she looked it. Totally fine. Handsome, classy and even more attractive than when he’d last seen her two years ago. He’d always thought that Barnie had been punching above his weight when he and Debbie married. But there was no rationalizing attraction.

‘Of course I’m sorry he’s dead,’ she added. ‘And I’m sorry it never worked out for Barnie and me. He is... was,’ she corrected herself, ‘a lovely guy. But a dreamer. With a temper.’

Taylor frowned. ‘He had a temper? I never saw that at school.’

She tilted her head. ‘You never saw it?’

‘Nope! Honestly!’

She gave him a disbelieving frown.

He shook his head. ‘I was shy as hell — still am. Barnie always wanted to be the centre of attention. He made sure he got a part in every school play, but unfortunately the drama teacher always gave him the smallest role, usually with just one line or no speaking part at all. Barnie always accepted it. He told me he would be an A-list movie star one day. Or a rock star. I remember he started a school band, but the others kicked him out after a year because they said he was tone deaf. As well as being completely unreliable.’

‘That’s Barnie,’ she said with a wistful smile. ‘He tried hard to get into a drama school but none of them would take him — partly because he couldn’t sing. When we married, he was on the books of a film extras agency, hoping to get discovered in a walk-on part. But that never happened. He did once have a small speaking part in an episode of Endeavour — as a copper. He got to say “good morning, sir” to the actor playing the lead, Shaun Evans. But most of it was cut, so when he appeared he was like a tiny ant in the background!’

He grinned. ‘The old cutting-room floor, eh?’

‘Exactly. Then he lost his job as a chef at a pub when one evening all the diners went down with salmonella. He ended up doing telesales for a company in Newhaven that sold advertising space in the Network Rail staff bulletin and The International Review of the Red Cross journal. He’d come home all excited, telling me he’d sold a quarter-page, a half-page or a whole page! Then a week later, crestfallen, he’d tell me they’d cancelled.’

‘He was a nice guy, though,’ Taylor said.

She shook her head. ‘No, James, that’s what everyone thought, including me when I first met him. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but he turned into a total bastard, angry and bitter at a world that did not appreciate him. And he got increasingly desperate for success and recognition — to the point where he scared me.’

‘Scared you? In what way?’

She shrugged. ‘I can’t explain it very well. I just got the feeling, during that last year we were still together, he would have killed to get what he craved — that elusive success. I did my best but it was never enough.’

‘Instead he was felled by a mushroom.’

That made her smile. And when she did so, he knew again, after a long time, what his type was.

‘Let’s have lunch sometime,’ he said.

‘I’d like that, James. I’d like that a lot.’

‘So would I. A lot.’ He wondered about asking her if she fancied a cigarette, then he could cadge one from her, but first he asked, ‘Do you remember Rufus?’

‘Rufus Rorke?’

‘Yep.’

‘I do,’ she said, hesitantly. ‘I’m afraid I never liked him — the few times we met. But you, he and Barnie were tight, you were the Three Musketeers, right? Athos, Porthos and Aramis?’

‘We were.’

‘I always thought there was something of the night about him.’

‘Something of the night?’ Taylor frowned. ‘About Rufus?’

‘He had a dark side, I can’t explain — he made me feel uncomfortable. I went to his funeral with Barnie — you gave a great eulogy. Too bad you didn’t do the one today instead of that total twat,’ she added. ‘But I have always wondered just how heartfelt your eulogy really was?’ She questioned him with her eyebrows.

‘Heartfelt?’

‘Uh-huh.’

He looked at her, wondering how to reply. The truth was (not that he would ever have admitted it): Rufus had intimidated both him and Barnie. He had been a control freak, and part of the reason Taylor had delivered such a gushing eulogy was that, even though Rufus was dead, he was still a little in awe of him. Worried about upsetting him if he’d said anything Rufus didn’t approve of — upsetting him even beyond the grave.

Maybe in view of what he thought he’d seen in church, he had been smart to worry about that.

He looked her back in the eye. ‘Now there was someone with a big temper. Did you know Rufus had to go to anger management therapy due to awful road rage? It was terrifying if you were ever in the car with him, it was like a switch had flipped. We grew apart for sure, but we couldn’t change the fact we were very old mates. Boarding school at a young age bonds you with people — even those you’re not that keen on. It was like a glue that held us together despite us all growing up and changing, some for the better, some for the worse. I guess, as you say, we were the Three Musketeers, that’s why I did his eulogy. In all honesty I don’t think there was anyone else lining up to do it.’

‘All for one and one for all.’

He smiled. ‘Exactly!’

‘Do you really think Rufus would have given a toss about either you or Barnie, when the chips were down?’ she said, her voice suddenly laced with venom. ‘One for all? No way. Rufus was for Rufus and hang the world. You were generous to Barnie, I know you loaned him money a number of times. But Rufus never did — he’d made a fortune and he could have helped Barnie, it would have cost him relative peanuts. I’m not saying he deserved to die, but he was a shit, a total shit.’

‘You know, this is going to sound strange,’ Taylor said, ‘but I could have sworn I saw him in the church today, just now, sitting a few rows in front of me.’

She gave him an odd look. ‘Rufus?’

Taylor nodded.

‘At the funeral?’

‘Yes.’

‘What do you mean saw him? Like, you saw his ghost?’

‘No, not his ghost. I saw him. Rufus — or someone who looks very like him.’

She frowned. ‘Does he have a brother, perhaps — a twin?’

‘I’m certain he doesn’t. We were close enough friends at school for me to have known that. Maybe he has a doppelganger. I don’t know. They say we all have one. I just felt a shiver go through me when I saw him.’

‘Did you talk to him — this chap?’

‘I tried really hard to get to him at the end of the service, but there were dozens of people in the way. By the time I reached the door he’d vanished. I hoped maybe he’d be here.’

‘As far as I’m aware there was only one dead man in that church today,’ she said irreverently, and smiled.

Smiling back, he studied her face carefully. He saw no hint of disingenuity. If it really had been Rufus in the church, she genuinely had not seen him.

Then the drunk who’d delivered the eulogy tottered over, holding an open bottle in his hand, and put an arm around Debbie. ‘Think I messed it up a bit,’ he slurred.