The Undiscovered Country

By Gervase Shorter

A ghost story with a difference: it ́s told by the ghost himself – Adam Rigby reviews his past life from beyond the grave as he witnesses the turmoil taking place in the lives of the people he once knew. As he watches their different destinies unfold he becomes agonizingly aware that he himself bears a heavy responsibility for the tragedies in which some of them are now involved.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gervase Shorter
• Release date: May 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476111513

Gervase Shorter

Born in England, Gervase spent his military service hunting terrorists through the forests of Mount Kenya. After studying medieval history at Oxford he caught the Transiberian train to Vladivostok on his way to Japan, where he lived for four years. He travelled back to Europe overland and then spent three years in Lisbon, moving in 1973 to Rio de Janeiro where he now divides his time between an apartment overlooking the lagoon and a farm 3,000 feet up in the mountains where he grows bananas, avocados, persimmon and pecan nuts. He is married with four adult children.

Book preview

THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

A ghost story

By

Gervase Shorter

The Undiscovered Country

Copyright: Gervase T.M. Shorter 2011

Smashwords Edition: License Notes

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Gervase Shorter´s other novels:

Crime Fiction for Beginners

Prince Korasoff´s Road Map

A Feeling in my Bones

are available as e-books from:

amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, smashwords.com

Barnes & Noble, Sony, Apple and Diesel

DISCLAIMER

‘The Undiscovered Country’ is a work of fiction and all of the characters in it are imaginary. Any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental.

The disclaimer reproduced above is one that I have had printed at the beginning of my three previous novels and is true. I understand that it provides a measure of protection against libel suits. So far no such suits have been brought so its effectiveness has not been tested in practice.

I pondered for a long time over whether or not to write this novel, the idea for which came to me early in 2010. It has been my experience that there is a class of reader who doesn´t believe fiction is fiction: this class of reader believes all fiction is really autobiographical so that every novel is a roman à clef. As a result I have been amazed to learn that a supposed identification has been made between characters in my earlier books and some of my real life friends and relations. ‘The Undiscovered Country’ is told by a narrator in the first person and the type of reader I am referring to will certainly be tempted to think that the ‘I’ who is the narrator, Adam Rigby, is none other than that other ‘I’, the author, Gervase Shorter. Like most authors it is true that I have recycled a few real life events and locations but that does not mean that the story is in any way connected with real life people. Adam Rigby is not me. His wife, children, friends and associates are not my wife, children, friends or associates. Nor are any of the opinions expressed by the various characters in the book my opinions. Reader, please accept that this is fiction.

"Man´s days are like those of grass; like a flower of the field he blooms;

The wind sweeps over him and he is gone, and his place knows him no more.

But the kindness of the Lord is from eternity to eternity toward those who fear him."

(Psalm 103 Douay-Challoner version)

" …. death

The undiscovered country from whose bourn

No traveler returns."

(Shakespeare: Hamlet)

PART I

∞ ONE ∞

All my life I have been wrestling with words, fiddling about with them, changing their order, trying to make them convey ideas that have floated up from nowhere into my consciousness, trying to twist words into expressing new subtleties and all too often I´ve suffered the frustration of not quite making the words express anything more than an approximation of what I want to say or, worse still, the very much greater frustration of drying right up, of finding that I have no thoughts worth clothing in words. But the words have always been there and the challenge has been to find them. Now I am experiencing a situation that is quite new: it´s not that I can´t find the right words to describe where I am. It´s that no words for it exist. The best I can do - and it´s not even close enough to be called an approximation – is a weak, vague sort of simile.

It´s as if I were lying out on a mountainside on a moonless night with no stars. It´s icy cold. If you look very carefully you can just sense the faintest of dim lights to the east. It´s too dark to make out anything but the mere outlines of big masses, which are more felt than seen but that faint light to the east is the guarantee that dawn will eventually come and that when it does it will irradiate everything with its warmth - yes, including even myself though I feel so deeply frozen that I can´t begin to imagine being irradiated by it - and then an entire new landscape with all its intricacies and grandeur will be spread out before us, stretching away endlessly far into the distance.

I´m not alone – far from it. There are countless others, some of whom I recognise, out here on the icy mountainside with me. Some can practically see and feel the sunrise already while for others the dim light to the east is even fainter than it is for me, but still visible nevertheless. We communicate, but not in words. The feeling that one is surrounded by goodwill and solidarity is one of the things – that and the prospect of dawn, however distant – that makes the icy cold and the bitterness of remorse just bearable.

None of us want to be here but nevertheless it is what all of us have chosen. We could have chosen - still could choose - the comfortable warmth of what looks from here like total blackness with no prospect of a future dawn though we all know that, when one emerges into it (as we´ve all occasionally done) that blackness doesn´t seem black at all. On the contrary, all the delights to be found there, all the varied attractions it contains are welcoming and well lit in exhilarating, hot, brilliant sunlight. They are attractions of which we have all of us occasionally availed ourselves and we are here because we still hanker after them. The choice between that blackness with its immediate, comforting warmth and the harsh, icy mountainside was not easy – certainly not easy for me and not one that everyone else chooses to make. Dawn, we know, will only come when the blackness has receded to the point where choosing it would be out of the question because we have become indifferent to its attractions and they have faded away forever. When that time comes the anguish and remorse we now feel will give way to serenity.

And time? Yes, there is time here but it´s different. Again, adequate words to describe time as I experience it now simply don´t exist. My own past is all there and I can switch to any episode, forwards or back, just as I please. For the rest it´s like seeing all the frames of a film simultaneously and yet separately, something that can´t be conveyed in words or at any rate not in a way that would be easy to understand. I shall have to describe the events I witness as if I were seeing them one at a time.

∞ TWO ∞

The first person to arrive is the last person I am expecting, someone I haven´t thought of for a long time, someone I haven´t met or spoken to for over thirty years, someone I never expected would appear on this particular occasion: Iris. How she´s aged, I think, only a trace of her former good looks now remaining and her general appearance one of shabby gentility; her dark grey coat, which must once have been smart is now showing signs of wear. It is a little too wide across the shoulders and I suspect it has been bought for the occasion at an Oxfam shop. I am sorry to see how her circumstances have evidently gone downhill and I watch as she takes her seat in the back row, furthest from the aisle.

My sister Jean arrives punctually for once. She´s put on a navy blue coat and skirt for the occasion, seats herself at the further end of the front right hand pew, sits down and stares into space.

Soft, piped music begins. It sounds ethereal, like music composed for a film with a bittersweet ending. There´s an organ in the background and quite a few passages for solo cello. It´s a recording of course but you can imagine the cellist with his instrument between his knees, drawing his bow slowly back and forth. It´s quiet, tasteful, but not a composition that I recognise.

I look round for Sammy who I thought would have been here by now. In fact, I expect him to deliver some kind of a sermon, tactfully tailored to the congregation´s lack of belief as most of my friends and relations are atheists or agnostics.

Jimmy and Sandra Hollis and Jack Stephens and his wife Dorothy, old friends who know each other from Oxford days, come in and sit together four pews from the front. Mrs Pereira, our daily help comes in, chooses a place on her own at the back, kneels briefly, crosses herself, then sits.

My wife Sylvia arrives escorted by my literary agent Nigel Collingwood. As always, she is beautifully dressed. She is wearing a smart black overcoat with a sable collar open at the front to reveal a tight fitting black silk dress draped in elegant folds over her hourglass figure. On her head she has a wide, black velour hat with glossy black feathers. Black pearls hang from her ears and round her neck. She occupies the place of honour in the front pew and looks, I think, very well in control of herself. I wonder for a moment how mixed her feelings may be but the presence of so many others makes it difficult for me to separate her or any other individual´s emotions from a general ensemble in which regret and even a little genuine sadness are present along with the prevailing boredom at this time wasting ceremony as well as barely concealed impatience to get it over with and return to more interesting ways of passing the time.

Tommy Yeats, my editor, arrives and sits down but I can´t help noticing that he is my publisher´s only representative, rather a poor showing in my opinion. I think I deserved better. Tommy looks round, displays no sign of regret. He is pleased that there will be no further tiresome and time wasting wrangles with me over the petty changes he wants me to make to what I´ve written. I find I am no longer irritated by merely looking at him as I used to be in life. I see him now as a well meaning, hard working but limited pen pusher.

More friends arrive along with Dick Bosford and Angela his wife, the people who live in the flat below ours in Pont Street. Very good of them to come, I think.

Wherever can Sammy have got to? This is an occasion that I simply can´t imagine him missing … but … though he´s not here I can see him now. He is looking haggard, as if he´s been up all night, tramping the streets. He´s on the Embankment, leaning over the balustrade, looking down into the river´s murky flow as the tide turns. He is deeply worried, his thoughts in a whirl.

My cousins, Tom and Dennis, Sylvia´s younger brothers, sit down in the pew behind her. The other three cousins, Sandra, Lily and Jasper, have evidently decided they don´t need to attend.

My three children Oliver, Joanna and Piers come in together and seat themselves in the front row. Joanna, dressed in one of the dark trouser suits she always wears, sits next to Piers who is also, for once, in a dark suit with an open necked shirt. Oliver is wearing a formal, three piece suit with a plain blue shirt and black knitted tie. I can at last acknowledge something that I have consistently refused to admit to myself or to anyone else: of my three children Jo is the one I feel closest to. The other two have always recognised this in the face of all my denials over the years and their jealousy, never far below the surface, erupts at the most unexpected moments. Jo´s face, pale and without lipstick or other makeup, looks drawn. What is she feeling, I wonder.

It´s time for the proceedings to begin.

Nigel Collingwood, sitting in the front row next to Sylvia, is wearing a double breasted charcoal suit with a white shirt and black silk tie. With his distinguished air it gives him a faintly naval appearance, as if he just needs some gold braid round the cuffs of his jacket and some medal ribbons to be a rear admiral. As I look, he turns to whisper something to Sylvia. She nods. Collingwood rises to his feet and walks forward to the lectern. As he does so the volume of the piped music gradually diminishes until the only sound that can be heard is a faint murmuring from the back rows where some people are talking in low voices.

Collingwood takes some handwritten notes out of his breast pocket and places them on the lectern. Then he puts on his reading glasses and, looking over them, taps the microphone to make sure it is working, runs his eyes along the rows of people in front of him, decides that he has their attention and begins. I take up a position just behind him and to his left, a presence of which no one is aware. I gaze along the rows of faces, registering for the most part indifference disguised as grief. Sylvia is distinctly dry eyed. So is Jean, who looks exhausted, as if she is too overcome to shed tears.

Collingwood´s delivery is good: he speaks clearly in measured, respectful tones, looking up from his notes from time to time in order to gauge how his address is being received.

"We are gathered here today to celebrate the memory of Adam Rigby and to bid him a last farewell. To Sylvia he was a loving husband, while to the others of us here present he was an understanding father, a devoted brother, a loyal friend, a generous colleague.

"We shall all of us, I think, feel very much the poorer for his absence in many different ways. We shall miss his erudition, we shall miss that dry, self deprecating humour which was so characteristic of him, his invariably lavish hospitality, that way he had of giving one a patient hearing no matter how arid the subject matter. We shall miss his company and his conversation, the anecdotes he told so well, the cheerful, not to say jovial companionship he provided at all times.

"Adam Rigby came of a well established south Yorkshire family. He was born in 1927 and was brought up in Montfort House, the old Rigby family home near Leeds, where he passed the war with his family and lived through the tragic loss of an elder brother, killed at the Battle of Cassino. Adam studied first at Hedingham and then at University College Oxford, where he took a second class honours degree in modern history. It had been his intention since adolescence to become a writer and, on coming down from Oxford he moved to London and set about writing his first novel and for the rest of his life he pursued a successful literary career. In 1957 he met and married his first cousin Sylvia Rigby and in due course became the father of Oliver, Joanna and Piers.

"Adam was always a keen traveller and, in the course of his life visited many parts of the world, spending lengthy periods in East Africa, Japan and South America, all of which provided the settings for one or more of his novels. Until nearly the end of his life he enjoyed invariably robust good health but about four months ago he was diagnosed with a cancer which began gradually to spread. Adam submitted to surgery and painful treatment with the greatest of courage and a stoic lack of complaint, remaining cheerful to the very end.

"We are also here to celebrate the memory of Adam Rigby the artist. Adam was the author of twelve published novels and one travel book, besides other minor works of various kinds, some published, some not. I remember him once telling me that he considered the writing profession to be a kind of priesthood. It was certainly an activity that, throughout his life, he invariably approached with the utmost seriousness and a concern for the highest of literary standards as he understood them to be. Those of us who were fortunate enough to receive a letter from him will remember the pains he took over any correspondence that was not of a purely business nature. Many of his letters, even those on the most casual of subjects, were drafted over and over again until he felt that they expressed precisely what he wanted to say, with every nuance carefully considered. And then, of course, he always made a point of writing the final text out by hand in that delicate Italic calligraphy of his. It was his intention that each letter should be a little masterpiece of its kind, one that its recipient would retain and treasure.

"Adam inherited a private income and so he was one of that increasingly rare band of authors who do not depend on their writing for a living. It meant that he could devote himself to writing the books he wanted to write; he did not need to take account of commercial considerations, nor of the ever changing fashions in the literary world. He could afford not to be trendy.

"His novels cover a quite remarkable range, starting, as authors so frequently do, with a bildungsroman that was largely autobiographical, describing the widening of his horizons as he reached maturity, but with a backward look towards his childhood in episodes that were at once humourous and touching, and then the steady growth of his leading character´s personality as he grapples with the problems of adult life. ‘The Goose Boy’ achieved a modest critical success as a first novel and was