‘Okay.’ Her smile was suddenly wary. ‘But I’m not sure there’s much more I can tell you.’
Murray set the chairs on the floor and piled the boxes neatly in a line against the far wall while Audrey started to unpack, then together they heaved the table into the centre of the kitchen and set the chairs around it. He straightened the last one and asked, ‘What next?’
She was rooting around in a plastic laundry bag and didn’t bother to look up.
‘I thought you wanted to ask me some questions?’
‘Okay.’ He leaned against one of the kitchen units, waiting to see what she was looking for. ‘A lot of your husband’s research seems to have been direct interviews with people who knew the deceased artists.’
‘Yes, that was Alan’s preferred method.’ Audrey pulled out an electric drill and went back to rummaging in the bag. ‘He’d completed a historical section, looking into artists of the past — people whose contemporaries and doctors were long gone, but had perhaps left written impressions of the subject’s state of mind. Now he was working on modern-day artists. It gave him a lot more scope. His final intention was to do a comparison, see if society’s attitudes, artists’ attitudes in particular, had altered.’ She pulled out a paper bag, ‘Aha, gotcha’, and poured a selection of drill bits onto the table. ‘I shouldn’t do that. I’ll end up scratching the surface.’ She turned and lifted a large carrier bag from behind the door. ‘Ask me another.’
‘Do you know if he interviewed associates of Archie Lunan prior to his trip to Lismore?’
‘No.’ Her voice was impatient. ‘Like I said, I didn’t want to know the details of who Alan was interviewing. I can give you an outline of Alan’s methodology, beyond that I’m not much good to you.’
‘Okay.’ Murray injected a false brightness into his voice. ‘I’ll settle for a summary.’
Audrey shot him a glance.
‘The obvious way to begin would be by dividing the subjects into categories.’
‘What kind of categories?’
‘The classic ones, I imagine.’ His face must have looked blank because she started to explain. ‘Sociological theory classifies suicide into three main categories, altruistic, egoistic and anomic. The first two are pretty self-explanatory. Killing yourself for the greater good of others. Captain Oates is the classic Western example, “I’m going out now and I may be some time.” But it’s not unknown in tribal societies for old people to pop off rather than hold back the rest of the clan. I sometimes think our pensioners could learn something from them instead of living on to a hundred bemoaning the state of the NHS while sucking up most of its resources.’ She saw Murray’s expression and laughed. ‘I’m only joking. How are you at heights?’
‘Okay, I think.’
‘Good, I’m terrible at them.’ She pulled a roller blind from the bag. ‘How would you feel about putting this up for me?’
He looked up at the top of the window, ten feet or so above their heads.
‘Do you have a tall enough ladder?’
‘Sure do.’ Her eyes shone with the fun of a good dare. ‘I’ll even hold it for you.’
The ladder turned out to be a little short for the task, so Murray stood on the topmost rung, his feet covering a paper sticker that read, ‘Warning! Do not stand on this step.’ He waited until he’d drilled the holes for the rawl plugs before asking, ‘What defines the other types?’
‘Of suicide?’
‘Yes.’
Audrey seemed a long way below.
‘Well, egoistic is pretty obvious, I guess: an individual feels dislocated from society and decides to take their own life. In a way it’s the opposite of altruistic suicide. Most of your artistic suicides get placed in this category, the romantic agony and all that.’ The ladder wobbled a little and she asked, ‘Are you okay up there?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Of course, there’s an extra investment for artists — the chance that if he or she manages a memorable death, they’ll stake a place in posterity.’
‘Does falling off a high ladder count?’
‘Not unless you’ve been drinking absinthe and snorting coke cut with your father’s ashes. Anyway, it’s nonsense. I’d never heard of half the suicides Alan studied.’
Murray finished inserting the rawl plugs and started to screw in the brackets that would hold the blind in place. He risked a look down.
‘And the final category?’
‘Anomic suicide. The result of a big change in someone’s life: divorce, death of a loved one, financial collapse. It all becomes too much, and so they end it.’
‘Simple as that?’
‘No, rarely simple. That’s why Alan and his colleagues could theorise endlessly about it.’
One of the screws was refusing to go into its plug. Murray turned the screwdriver round and used its handle to batter it in place, hoping Audrey wouldn’t realise what he was doing.
‘You said you didn’t know much about your husband’s research, but that’s a pretty impressive summary.’
‘I was more involved in the early days. It’s the old story, Alan was one of my PhD supervisors. Looking back, I can see it was as his research developed that I started to get a bit squeamish. Maybe it’s something to do with having Lewis. Motherhood alters your perspective on some things. I started to find it hard to listen to a catalogue of young lives snuffed out. Too threatening, I suppose, when I had a young life to take care of.’
‘Is that the psychologist talking now?’
He pulled the next screw from his pocket and started to twist it home; it went in smooth as butter.
‘I wasn’t very psychologically aware at the time, I’m afraid. I could get quite vicious about it.’
He was on the final bracket now.
‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘That’s because you don’t know me.’ She snorted. ‘We had a massive row one Sunday morning. It’s the climax of the British week, isn’t it, Sunday morning? A cooked breakfast, the Archers omnibus, Sunday papers — peace perfect peace, or boredom bloody boredom, depending on how you look at it.’
Except for a guarantee of no teaching, Murray’s own Sundays didn’t particularly differ from the rest of his week, but he said, ‘I suppose so.’
‘Well, that particular Sunday, the Observer carried a front-page story about a young British artist who had committed suicide at the age of forty-one. Walked off into the woods and didn’t come back. His body was found a few weeks later. It would be wrong to say the news made Alan happy, he wasn’t a complete ghoul, but he was energised by it, abandoned his breakfast and went off into his study to start downloading the artist’s work. Not quite whistling, but purposeful. For some reason it incensed me. His cheery, workmanlike mood, while somewhere some mother, wife, or girlfriend was breaking her heart.’ She laughed, half-embarrassed. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this.’
‘Perhaps because I didn’t know Alan.’
‘Perhaps.’ Her face was turned away from Murray, the red-blonde crown of her head glossy against the streetlamp’s glow. ‘It’s not like it caused a rift between us or anything, but looking back, I think after that row he told me less about his research and I didn’t ask.’
She passed the blind up to Murray and he slid it into place, feeling a spurt of achievement. Perhaps he’d feel like this every day if he’d learned a trade instead of going to university.
‘How does it look?’
‘Perfect, thanks. Safe from peeping Toms.’
She held onto the ladder as he descended. He turned, ready to step from it, and glimpsed the hollow between her breasts. He imagined each one snug in its lace cup. Sometimes he wished he could smother his sex drive. It was like a second pulse, forcing his blood, fiercer than his heart.