The Story That Had No Beginning

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Book Excerpt

Part One

            This story has no single definitive point in time when it could be said to have started here. It cannot be said that when Alice and I were taken into two separate foster homes at the age of eight our lives would cross the paths of the three others in this room but we would never meet again. Life is capricious enough without wild assumptions having a say in the making or the delusion of providence holding the deciding ace in any predetermination.

If I were to list the catalogue of misdemeanours I committed as a juvenile, or the petty crimes I was involved in as a young man, then add the violence of my later years, none would fully explain what led my twin sister to ask the opening question of her three invited guests this night, nor would one find any connecting items of merit in the achievements of the participants in the conversation. All of those antecedents help to paint the background to this tale, but the finer strokes of the artist, those intricacies of details from shade to light, are yet to be found in the shadowy past of us five. Yes,  we are five; four to dinner and I make the fifth guest. I was christened Tom Collins and occasionally I live in this house. My relationship to these four is crucial; for now I’m dead.

My sister differed from her night’s companions in many ways but, not it must be said, in the financial standing that a passer-by might use to measure another’s success. She was not born in the same social bracket that the others come from. No birth endowments had been bestowed on her. She deserved her membership to this club by right. She had earned her place. Now, however, she had reason to regret working her way up the same social ladder as those sitting around the yellow linen covered table, adorned with sparkling silver cutlery, empty white china plates and cut glass. Her style complemented the symmetry of her surroundings dressed in a pale, blue chiffon low-cut dress bought especially for the occasion from a designer boutique she favoured in Chelsea Green, just behind the King’s Road. Her vocation of photography had paid well, allowing the cultured surroundings that she had always longed-for, far away from the sins of my own shabby life.

* * *

          “Do you think lying is endemic in society today? I ask because earlier I was in Harrods when I overheard a woman telling her son of about six or seven years of age that all the oranges came from Spain where apparently her family had a home, surrounded by orange trees. At first, I presumed she was trying to instil a sense of importance in the boy’s mind for that home in Spain, but then I thought no, a lie is a lie. I confronted the woman and she confirmed my first impression. She was indeed commending Spain to the boy’s mind and nothing more. She was very upset when I said that it was a lie she had told her son. She couldn’t see it as being important. What do you think, Giles? You deal in lies almost every day of your life.”

Sir Giles Milton was one of only a handful of QCs, Queen Counsels, to be appointed before completing the usual fifteen years of practice as a barrister. Scotland had been his birthplace, but you would never know that by his accent. He was the fashionable face of an advocate: six foot four inches tall, black-haired, olive-skinned, narrow hazel coloured eyes with a handsome charismatic face that had adorned the covers of four top-flight magazines for his defence of a multimillionaire accused of murdering his equally rich new wife whilst honeymooning in the Seychelles two years and some months prior to tonight’s meal. Giles was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, where the Christ Church manner of assumed effortless superiority is born. He believed that the world should primarily be regulated for the benefit of those who were at Christ Church. He waded in popularity as would a hippo. Low flying blandishments and strangulation by his own honeyed words were the only dangers he faced. At the age of forty-one he considered he had conquered the material side of his world. Tangible wealth was not his God, but prestige and veneration were.

         “You’re not correct in the terminology you used, Alicia. It is not lies that I present in court. If everyone who appeared at the bar dealt only in honesty, then there would be no need of me or any well-remunerated barrister. There are mitigations to truth, or, as some people see it, a different story to tell. I am just the simple vessel through which those account flows. The example you give is innocent enough and I’m sure not meant to deceive the young boy into believing that all the oranges grown came from Spain. If that was the intention then ultimately it would fail as the boy would either view displays from elsewhere or become aware of imports from countries other than Spain as he grew. Although, technically you are correct inasmuch as it was a lie, it is a lie of no consequence. It was not said to permanently hoodwink the child, but simply as an extravagant stretch of the truth in order to magnify the significance of the family’s home in a foreign land and thereby cross invisible boundaries that may exist in the child’s mind. It could also be a challenge for the boy. One where he exercises his imagination and extends his education.”

         “Is that what a jury does when listening to your trial summery, Giles; use their imagination on your verbosity?”

That question was asked by Susan Rawlinson, formerly Barrett, editor of a national broadsheet newspaper and at thirty-eight years of age seemingly assured of a bright, rewarding future. Susan was an untamed beautiful, blonde haired, self-assured woman, capable, intelligent and determined, having succeeded in the majority of her ambitions. Her God was not wealth either. Hers was one of further recognition within the pitiless world of journalism and the literary acceptance of her soon to be published second novel on which my sister’s photograph of her enriched the front cover.

         “Isn’t it quintessential imagination that spurs you on, Susan? A little leaning to one way or the other when it comes to reporting the news to stimulate the average reader who has no real interest if it’s not about immigration or sex?” Giles retorted.

         “Bloody hard to find anything sexy in the rag that Susan’s in charge of. All anti-Tory bullshit if you ask me.”

And there we have our third and final guest: Rupert Barrett, called The Bear after the comic strip character much loved by his late mother. Chiselled, square jaw with a feral, craggy face. A winter man; bleak on the eye and raw to the senses. Once a revered English rugby union star and now the owner of ‘Bear Cave,’ nightclubs, places catering for a wide variety of night-time tastes, predominately in the north-west of England. A sturdily built man with brown hair and hazel eyed and the same lack of personality as any one of the many men he employed on the doors of his five nightclubs. His goals in life had all been fulfilled; adulation, fame and wealth, but those without personalities have few wishes beyond the materialistic and Rupert was no different in that regard. Susan and Rupert had been seeing each other, occasionally living together, over a shorter period than a year. It was a turbulent relationship no more so than when Rupert criticised Susan’s left-wing ideals.

         “When was the last time you read anything other than a comic book or bothered to watch anything other than the sports news, you big thick bear?” The question was asked with a smile on Susan’s face but a dagger hidden in her voice ready to stab him if the answer was not to her liking.

         “What’s the point? All news reporting is as I said, biased in one direction or the other.” She indulged him, but Alice did not.

         “Do you not believe anything that’s reported in newspapers or on the news, Rupert?”

         “I stopped believing newspapers when I met Susan, Alicia. She’s too beautiful to be bothered by the truth. As for the news channels, I think they’re sponsored by their individual political lapdogs with the idea of making ordinary people feel guilty if they’re not giving to one or another charity to save the world. Do any of them report good news? No, not a single one! But good things do happen. There’re not reported because people might start thinking, hey ho, this life ain’t so bad after all. Let’s start living it up a bit without the guilt of the whole of Africa sitting on our shoulders. Let’s go clubbing and dance the night away thereby putting more money in my tills.” His laugh split the room with a ratatatat, like a machine gun opening up in the stillness and silence of a high vaulted church. Giles smiled smugly, sharing Rupert’s knowledge of how beautiful Susan was. Susan smiled stoically, well versed in Rupert’s views on charity and governments, whilst Alice forged onwards.

         “So you agree with me about lies being the currency of today’s world, Rupert?”

         “Yes, I do. With news reporting it’s because the journalists either want to be, or are told to be, newsmakers. I know I’m seldom told the whole truth by the managers in my clubs. That’s why I employ a couple of real heavies to make sure the pilfering doesn’t exceed what I budget for.”

         “Are you saying you threaten these managers of yours, Rupert?” Giles asked, feigning surprise with widened eyes.

         “If you know a better way to stop someone else’s hands in what’s mine then I’d listen, but surely, Giles, isn’t what I do the same as the punitive justice system you represent; hold a rod of iron over would-be wrongdoers? That’s if they’re caught of course.”

         “Do you punish those managers who do steal from you, Rupert?” Alice asked naively, but it was Susan who answered.

         “Where are you going with this, Alicia? Of course he punishes them. What business owner wouldn’t? Would you want him, and all those involved in commerce, to include wording in the employment contract to reflect the degree of penalty imposed in proportion to any theft? Steal a bottle of water and your contract is torn up. You are flogged for the theft of a sandwich and if you dare to pocket an apple without paying then kiss your life away as the executioner sings God Save the Queen, swinging the axe.” Her sonorous voice resonated around the room.

Giles beckoned the man dressed in white livery who stood by the window overlooking the Thames, to serve more of the opened champagne that rested beside the other bottles on the antique serving cabinet. Skilfully he glided along both sides of the oblong dining table refilling the crystal glasses then returned to his position and effortlessly uncorked another Dom Pérignon, placing it back in its bucket of ice. Impassively he gazed across the river, noticing the floodlights now ablaze in Battersea Park lighting the football pitches, oblivious to the conversation in the room having ‘waited’ at several dinner parties held in the more intimate surroundings of a home instead of the restaurant where he, his wife and the chef once plied their trade. He did not know it was near those lights that I had died. That night, the night of my death, there was no reason for the lights to be on. However, if speculation is a game you enjoy, then the question of whether or not the lights being switched on making a difference, is, I expect, one you would like to be answered. As it was only I and one other hiding in the moon cast shadows I feel qualified to end your speculation. My answer would be an emphatic no, as I believe I was destined to die in the way it happened.

* * *

         “I imagine it’s already there to some degree - thou shall not steal from thy employer - or words to that effect,” Alice replied as her glass was replenished. “After all, domination is the only philosophy that’s lasted since the beginning of time. But that’s not my point. I wondered about the lack of honesty that is undeterred by any amount of threats, be they administered in Rupert’s way or by the threat of prosecution in a court of law. Where once was intuitive integrity there now seems none and I think all three of your professions embrace and perpetuate it.” She sipped her champagne and waited for their response. Now it is you, the reader who must wait. Longer than my twin and for a different reason. Nonetheless, wait you must as I reminisce of what’s gone by and tell more of my sister, Alice.

Here in my own special purgatory, where I expect my sins are being counted and then used to determine my eternity, I am at a loss to know why this power to see Alice’s past has been granted, nor why I can read the minds of those around her who have influenced the paramount phases in her life. It would appear that my vocabulary has grown beyond all recognition to those I used to be associated with who, if listening, would never know it is me who speaks. I suspect the dinner is where my knowledge will end, along with my newfound eloquence, as it’s the past and not the future I am cursed with. I have no idea how this night will unfold for the four who participate at the dinner party. All I can do is recount the story as it is shown to me without any interpretation, but bear this in mind as you continue to read. As I have been granted this ability to see the mistakes made in lives other than my own, are similar people such as I reading your thoughts and your hidden secrets as you indulge yourself with me? If so, then the skeletons in your past are being interrogated as I hold your attention.