A Habit of Dying Read online

  A HABIT

  OF DYING

  DJ. WISEMAN

  Copyright © 2010 DJ Wiseman

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental

  Matador

  5 Weir Road

  Kibworth Beauchamp

  Leicester LE8 0LQ, UK

  Tel: (+44) 116 279 2299

  Fax: (+44) 116 279 2277

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador

  ISBN 978 1848765 436

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Typeset in llpt Aldine byTroubador Publishing Ltd, Leicester, UK

  Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

  DJ Wiseman has lived and worked in Oxfordshire since 1973. Lifelong interests include travel, maps, reading and photography. For the last 20 years he has had a passionate interest in genealogy, discovering branches of his family scattered round the globe. Despite a lifetime of writing, A Habit Of Dying is his first published full length novel. www.djwiseman.co.uk

  Much of this story is true, the rest is probably true.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  1

  Lydia splashed a little milk that was probably past its best over her bowl of cereal and hurried back to her bedroom, acutely aware that she was running late. Not so late as to matter but later than she intended to be. It was only a twenty-minute drive to the auction rooms but she had planned to leave earlier to give herself another chance to inspect the lots that she was interested in. Now she was in a rush, grabbing mouthfuls of her breakfast as she slipped out of her dressing gown and pulled on her familiar jeans and baggy sweater. It was her usual, one-outfit-suits-all-occasions, way of dressing. She squeezed into her jeans and pretended that it was less of a squeeze than it really was, then slipped the sweater over the frayed shirt that would be good for just one more day. Briefly she contemplated her reflection in the mirror as she passed a brush vigorously through her hair. For a few moments she considered the satisfactorily shapeless person who stared back at her. As with a dress which when first bought seems so right, so bright, so absolutely it, then one day quite suddenly is dated and a little faded, a little tired, so Lydia saw herself. She let the thought weigh a moment or two and then took a last spoonful from her bowl before grabbing her keys, her bag and setting off

  The Saturday morning traffic was light as she steered her little Nissan out of Osney and along the Botley Road on her way to Eynsham. It was the same route as she had taken the previous night when she had been to view the two lots for which she was planning to bid. The place had been busy with the usual eclectic selection of people poking through the equally varied boxes of china, well-thumbed books and bric-a-brac. It was the staple fare of the house clearance world, mainly worthless junk to anyone but the cheap collector or the car-boot sale enthusiast. But amongst it all there were a few good looking pieces of jewellery, a few real antiques of value and her own particular targets. The first was a box containing two service medals from the First World War. If she were successful in her bidding, Lydia planned to research them and then attempt to re-unite them with a relative of their recipient. It was something that she had done before, not with medals, but first with a family bible that she found at a market stall and months later with a photograph album she had picked up from the St. Frideswide’s church jumble sale.

  For many years Lydia had enjoyed researching her own family history but more recently she had grown weary of the subject, for it seemed there were so few pieces of the jigsaw left to put in place. Those that she had found lately concerned only the most distant of relatives, and the more distant the cousin, the less the discoveries enthused her. But the whole business of researching and assembling the results to form a picture, sometimes from the most obscure of places and with only the tiniest of clues, that element still gave her great satisfaction. The idea of finding a living relative of the family who had dutifully filled out their details in the Victorian family bible had come to her the instant she had seen it. And that Californian woman - where else, Lydia had thought rather uncharitably - had been more than happy to have the heavy volume air-freighted at considerable cost to her home in Sacramento. Lydia had asked no more than the cost of the bible itself and the freight cost, but Ms Tammy Mills had insisted on adding fifty dollars to the payment.

  The second re-uniting had taken a good deal less effort. The photo-album had looked as if it dated to the late nineteenth century and Lydia was not surprised to see that she recognised parts of Oxford in a few of the photographs. She loved the musty smell of the paper and enjoyed staring at the images, immersing herself in the sepia world they portrayed. As her Oxford was right there on her doorstep, she once took the album out with her to compare a scene in Jericho with one of the pictures. Best of all was a photograph of an old couple standing in front of their house on Osney Island itself, just a few streets away from Lydia’s own. Most likely a family who might still have a local presence she had thought, and so it had proved. Since the great boom in family history it has been said that today there is at least one researcher for every family on the 1851 census. It had taken Lydia no more than a few weeks of careful investigation and some judicious web postings to find a great-great grandchild to whom the album was very special indeed. Of course, the task would have been almost impossible without at least one of the photographs having a name attached to it.

  Today it was her intention to buy another such album, part of a job lot in a battered cardboard box, but under some of the pictures were names and places, neatly written in what Lydia had taken to be a young female Edwardian hand. The two medals were a different matter, not least because she had no idea of what price they might command or what interest there might be. She could afford whatever they might fetch for they were not special in any way, simply examples of the medals given to hundreds of thousands of servicemen for their part in the so-called Great War. From all she had read and learned there was precious little that was great about it apart from the number of savage deaths. But Lydia was not inclined to spend much of her money on a whim or what she still considered to be the luxury of her little hobby. Month on month she saw a small increase in her accounts and it had become an easy habit to fall into. If she could get the medals without endangering that monthly gain then she would, but if they went beyond her limit then she would let them go. It was all too easy to be a little carried away at an auction, each bid being just a few pounds more. If you were going to spend a hundred then why not a hundred and five, and if that then why not a hundred and ten?

  It took a few minutes to find a parking space on the little industri
al estate behind Eynsham where the auctioneers had their rooms. It amused Lydia that despite being no more than a scruffy little industrial unit sandwiched between a roofing contractor and an electrician, the auctioneers still liked to call it their ’rooms’. There was a better crowd than usual, which did not bode well. The hot snacks van parked outside was doing a good trade in bacon rolls and the inevitable dripping burgers. The sickly waft of hot fat and onions made her grimace and wonder, as it always did, how it was that she could have been so attracted by it as a teenager. Distant days now.

  Pushing through the knot of people at the entrance, Lydia made her way past the rows of cheap furniture, up the metal staircase to the upper floor where the sale would be held and where the crowded racks of smaller items were displayed. First, she checked that the little box with the medals was still in its glass display cabinet. A moment of anxiety as she couldn’t see it, but even as she looked closer an attendant placed it back on its shelf She became aware of another interested party, a man, in a threadbare black coat far too long and too thick for the clement weather. Unkempt grey hair, shiny and curling, hung over his collar. In another place he might have warranted no more than a glance, dismissed as a down and out, but the glint of heavy gold on podgy fingers said otherwise. Lydia thought she might have seen him at a previous sale and marked him down as a dealer, someone with more money than she had and with profit the only motive for purchase. But the medals were there, they had not been withdrawn at the last moment. She turned away, unwilling to show any further interest, and looked to the back of the room where the crowd was beginning to thicken. A few steps back and she could just see the cardboard box with the albums, tucked away under a table where she had carefully placed it the previous night. No point in making it too easy for a casual browser to find.

  Positioning herself where she might have a good view of the room and still be able to see if anyone rummaged in the box, Lydia spent a few moments observing the potential opposition. She had noticed in coming to these sales a few times that the less experienced would stand close to the item in which they were most interested, while the regulars would take a seat on the random selection of chairs set out in rows facing the podium. A lot of dealers were in, she thought, and realised that she had barely looked at the rest of the catalogue, so intent had she been on her own two prizes. She fumbled in her copious bag for the crumpled sheets. Big blue crosses marked her two lots, numbers thirty and eighty-nine. The medals were the first of these. About an hour and a half might see a result one way or the other.

  Lots one to twenty-eight came and went in fewer minutes then, on twenty-nine, a hiatus as the lot could not be found. Nervous laughter all round as the item, a gold wedding ring from the glass cabinet, was located on a lower shelf An unremarkable piece that attracted little interest. And yet, like nearly every item in the sale, it had a history and a story to tell, had once been a treasured possession, only to now be reduced to anonymous insignificance. Lydia prepared herself to follow the bidding for the medals. The auctioneer invited a start at a hundred, Lydia’s limit, but for the moment she was unperturbed. It was quite normal for no one to join on the opening offer. It started at fifty and leapt past a hundred in three bids. She watched in amazement as several bidders took the price to two-fifty She could see one bidder sat close to her but the other was more camouflaged. The unseen buyer won the day at three hundred and twenty five. Lydia was astonished. She was sure that the medals were completely standard issue, unique only by the name engraved on them. She could not believe that such things would command so high a price without there being some other story behind them. In thinking that, she immediately resolved to research the person to whom they had been issued, regardless of the fact that their medals now belonged to someone else.

  Judging there to be at least thirty minutes before she needed to be in her place, Lydia took herself back down the stairs and out of the building. She wanted a cup of tea and regretted leaving home so hurriedly, for she had planned to bring a flask Instead she was reduced to buying a cup from the burger van. It did not meet her needs, too hot to sip at once and too unpleasant when it had cooled sufficiently But she was in the fresh air and took the opportunity to people watch, a favourite pastime. She would imagine whole lives based on a moment’s observations. The clothes, the age, the smile or lack of it, the hands, the walk - she fancied that they told her everything and there was never anyone to tell her differently. She checked her watch. Time to go back and see how the sale was going, see if there was any life in the room.

  There was not. Lot seventy-one, a pair of binoculars, well used, went for five pounds, seventy-six, a box of assorted ephemera for two. Eighty-four was a selection of Second World War books and magazines that she had looked at carefully. They were interesting but not unusual and she had a copy of one of the books that her father had collected. Eighty-nine — A Quantity of Assorted Albums. This was her. Opening offer is twenty with no takers. Lydia keeps quiet and waits. Who’ll start at ten then? No takers. Come on, a fiver. Lydia waves her catalogue. Five, we have five do I see ten? Thank you, ten. Do I see fifteen? Lydia’s catalogue flutters again. Yes, fifteen. Twenty anywhere? Thank you, twenty. He looks at Lydia. Against you madam. Twenty-five? She nods. Twenty-five. Back to you sir, I’ll take two. Twenty-seven? Somewhere behind Lydia a man shakes his head. And he is probably right, thinks the successful bidder, twenty pounds should have been the top. To her surprise Lydia’s heart is thumping and, she mocks herself, all over twenty-five pounds plus commission for a box of old photo albums.

  Placing the box on the table next to her desk, Lydia contemplated its dusty contents. It was tempting to immediately open them up and pore over them but she resisted. It was not her way. First, she preferred to savour the prospect, rehearsing the method and the rewards to be gained in the next few weeks, perhaps even months. Now the cost of her purchase seemed more than justified, a paltry sum for the hours of investigative pleasure that would ensue as she followed each hint and clue until she’d unearthed all that could be discovered of the people fixed in the sepia pictures. Four photograph albums, one postcard album with most of the postcards missing and a couple of old ledgers. Of these seven remnants of forgotten lives, she had looked at only one volume during her flying visit of the day before. That alone contained the whole basis of her purchase, a photograph of a group of people in a garden, crucially dated as 1911. Vitally, right there beneath the print were written the names of the group. This she had taken to be the key to unlocking the door of discovery.

  For the rest of the afternoon Lydia held the prospect and possibilities of the photos in her head, the project enlivening her before she had even begun. Finally, when the domestic routines of her day were complete, she settled at her desk and began the first stage. Each of the volumes would be inspected in turn, no notes taken, no bookmarks placed at interesting points, just a slow turning of the pages, an absorption of their contents, their feel, their texture. Even then Lydia would not turn first to the album that contained her presumed key, but rather she would take each from the box in turn and let herself sink into their contents. She had called it her immersion therapy before discovering that the phrase meant the exact opposite to what she understood by it. Nonetheless, it remained as the way that she described it to herself

  The first album she took from the box was not an album at all but a ledger, completely devoid of any entries. An account book without accounts, every page still waiting for its first debit or credit to be entered in the proper boxes between the green feint denoting the columns. Its emptiness in some peculiar way saddened her. She guessed that it could have been printed at any time before around 1970. It was the spreadsheet of its day and its day had ruled for hundreds of years in one form or another. It had certainly ruled more elegantly, if rather less efficiently. Lydia put it aside, thinking that if nothing else she might one day find a use for it.

  The next album that came to her hand was in a sorry state, its cheap paper-and-card covers splitt
ing, the black pages barely held in place by the thin cord binding. But of the photographs it once contained, there was not one remaining. It had been used, it had been well used, its twenty or so pages had once held the faces of friends and family, often turned through and, in Lydia’s imagination at least, turned through with love and affection. All that remained of this gallery were the carefully written captions beneath the spaces that once contained their subjects. A woman’s hand, Lydia supposed, in white ink on the black card, reminding the viewer of the dates and the places. Ethel, Violet, Rose and Albert; Tooting, Clapham and Chelsea; first birthday, VE Day, Christmas 1938, August 52. The life of a family in snapshot captions. There was little to inspire beyond a certain sadness, a certain nostalgia for people and places unknown. The white writing on black pages brought to mind her own family and her mother’s little collection of photo albums. A parent’s own childhood, forever alien and obscure to the child, forever other-worldly, forever showing a different person than the mother or father that the child knows. Lydia allowed herself a few moments on each page, seeing the words rather than reading them, sensing the thoughts of the author rather than struggling to find perfect meaning where none would be found.

  Still she deferred the album that she had quickly flicked through, the album with names and places and photographs to match, the album she supposed to be the key to the ultimate satisfaction that awaited her. Preferring to savour that prospect, she chose instead a slimmer one, one she thought might be a little more modern, a little nearer her own time. Her guess proved correct. This third selection was indeed closer to her own childhood, a family album of smiling faces, of holidays and ice creams, of round faced children in plimsolls and airtex tops. There were a handful of colour pictures scattered on the last few pages, but mainly they were of a muddy black and white that spoke of cheap processing and Box Brownie imaging under an inexpert hand. A few had captions that gave a name or a year. Lydia let herself drift into the scenes, taste the ice cream that cost three pence when a threepenny bit was a single twelve-sided coin. She looked at the man posing proudly beside the shiny car, all chrome bumpers and white-walled tyres and wondered if his wife took the same pride in it. Their first car? Certainly the finest car that they had ever owned, something to mark them out from their friends and neighbours. And where to go in their new found affluence? Why, to Hastings and to Margate to make sand-castles across the promenade from the Beach Hotel, sea-view rooms a little extra. Lydia spent maybe half an hour slowly absorbing the scenes and the family, touching their lives, sharing their moments, becoming familiar with Fred and Archie, with Susan and Paul and the enigmatic ‘self’. At length she put them all aside, knowing that they would be revisited and examined as clinically as she was able.