Three and a Half Deaths (Short Reads) Read online

  Born in 1969, Emma Donoghue is an Irish writer who spent eight years in England before moving to Canada. Her fiction includes Slammerkin, Life Mask, Touchy Subjects and the international bestseller Room (shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange Prizes).

  ALSO BY EMMA DONOGHUE

  The Sealed Letter

  Room

  Landing

  Touchy Subjects

  Life Mask

  The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits

  Slammerkin

  Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins

  Hood

  Stir-fry

  Emma Donoghue

  Three and a Half Deaths

  Picador

  Foreword

  An accident, a suicide, an act of criminal negligence . . . and a near-death experience. These stories – set in France, the USA and Canada – bring together calamities from two centuries.

  ‘What the Driver Saw’ is inspired by the 1920s equivalent of Princess Diana’s last ride through Paris: a freak accident on Nice’s Promenade des Anglais so notorious, so iconic, that that it still spawns jokes about long scarves today. Death and fame make a romantic couple; this way, we never have to see the celebrity get older. After all, stars, in the classical legends, were favoured mortals the gods raised from earth to preserve at their shining best in the heavens. So an early, unexpected and preferably violent end gives a reputation a permanent lift, especially if we can half-blame the celebrity for recklessness...

  In New York, one night in 1878, when a bath began to fill up with blood, nobody was watching: it was a private ritual. Yet everything about the dead woman’s life that had led her to that point was a matter of public debate. Suicide is a fascinating death because it seems to obey the laws of literature more than life: it’s a statement, a cry in the dark by a human being insisting on writing the end to her own story. But of course other people have a hand in shaping that story, and perhaps the suicide of a scapegoat, as explored in ‘The Trap’, is murder by another name . . .

  ‘Sissy’ explores culpability too – the survivor’s guilt of the sister of a small child who died in the 1840s in London, Ontario – because the story of any death must include its lingering effects on the living. Although I often write about the famous, I have a particular interest in the obscure: people whose trace on the historical record is faint, taking the form of a footnote, or a handful of mutely eloquent bones.

  Finally, ‘Fall’ is about an incident at Niagara Falls in 1901 when a middle-aged schoolteacher decided to stake her whole future on an act so daring it could be called suicidal. A near-death, a sort of rebirth: the kind of moment that makes visible the discreet courage it takes to live a whole life.

  Emma Donoghue, Nice, 2011

  What the Driver Saw

  The car’s not a Bugatti. The Madonna kept saying it was a Bugatti, in fact she called me that as a nickname – hey, Bugatti – but the car is actually an Amilcar Grand Sport 1924. You don’t know Amilcar? A very popular make here in France, very sporty, very popular. A blue convertible with red, white and blue circles round the tail, SV engine, 1074 cc with four-wheel brakes.

  Enough about the car? Okay. You said you wanted to know everything about that day so I thought . . . Yeah, for your ten dollars I’ll tell you everything you want. You’re going to print what I say in your American newspaper? Put it in English, okay, that’s better. Will you send me a copy?

  No, the car isn’t mine, it belongs to the Helvetica Garage where I work. I fix cars right now, but I want to race them someday, that’s what I want. I like to go fast.

  to find

  the movement

  which expresses the soul

  I first met her just that day, the 14th. September 14th. No, okay, you’re right, I saw her a couple of days before, but I didn’t speak to her, it was in a restaurant called Tétu. She was with another American lady, she smiled at me and raised her glass, you know, coquette. I smiled back. Just to be polite, you understand; they were both middle-aged. Though she did move well, she had, what’s the word, grace? Her friend made a little face, like she didn’t think I should have had the cheek to smile back.

  Anyway the next time I was at that restaurant the patron said the American lady had left her address for me, she wanted to buy my car. She must have seen it out the window. I didn’t know which of the ladies he meant but I thought probably it was the tall one, the one who smiled. I went to the hotel, the maid brought me up to the room but it was the sour-faced lady who answered the door. She said her friend was sleeping, so I left my card.

  it is the eternal

  rising

  The next day I was out on a call, I was working on a lovely open-top Maserati. When I got back to the Helvetica the proprietor said a crazy American lady had come asking for me to demonstrate some Bugatti we didn’t have. I told him she must mean the Amilcar. I wanted to know what was crazy about her and he said her clothes, she had to be the only woman in Nice still wearing her skirts down to her ankles, hadn’t she noticed she was living in the Twenties?

  a music

  heard inwardly

  The address she’d left wasn’t her hotel, this time, but some sort of warehouse. It was ugly on the outside but like a church inside. The lady called it her studio, but she wasn’t a painter, apparently she practiced her dancing there. When she told me her name I got the impression she expected me to recognise it. I thought maybe she meant she used to be a dancer when she was young. The only dancing I’ve seen is in nightclubs or at the vaudeville, those girls are always pretty. It wasn’t that this American was ugly or anything – good eyes, big dark eyes – but she was soft and heavy, you know, like a mother. And her hair was dyed a crude kind of red and cut short to the jaw. Oh, I remember at one point she said she wasn’t really a dancer, her body was just a machine and its engine was her soul. I liked that, it stuck in my head because it sounded like driving.

  the central spring of all movement,

  the crater of motor power

  I don’t know, I didn’t know what to think of her. She was like a little girl, she laughed a lot. There were glasses and lemons and champagne bottles lying round, I could tell she’d been drinking. She said I wasn’t a garagiste called Bénoit Falchetto, I was a Greek god in disguise and the lovely Bugatti was my chariot. She kept calling me Bugatti, forgetting it was an Amilcar Grand Sport; that’s women for you. When she heard I’m half-Italian she laughed, she said I could call her the Madonna because she knew Italians adored their Madonna.

  I asked her when she’d given up dancing and she sort of stared at me and said she would never give it up. She said she was a woman of many turns, on an international odyssey, and that she had already changed the world. That’s what she said, that she’d changed the world; I thought I’d heard wrong, and then I thought she was really drunk. She claimed that people were now dancing her way all over the earth. Natural dancing, I think she called it, barefoot like the Greeks. I never saw that kind of dancing; the only Greek I know, he works at the garage, he can’t dance.

  the bird

  never struggles

  I was trying to be polite so I asked something about her costumes. She said she wore loose gauzes because the bourgeoisie were too scared of nudity. I had to look away when she said that, I nearly laughed at the thought of her dancing in the nude. No, she wasn’t wearing gauze when I met her, that was her dance costumes she was talking about! On the 14th, I don’t know, she was wearing some long skirt and lots of wraps and a felt hat. I don’t think she had a corset on; she kept pressing herself in the middle of the ribs and saying that was where all movement began, with a breath.

  life is the root,

  and art
is the flower

  Sure, I thought the Madonna was rich enough to buy the Amilcar, aren’t famous people usually rich? She sounded famous, and all that champagne. She boasted about her fans, said they used to unharness her carriage and pull it through the streets – I guess this was before cars – and they once broke the window of a restaurant to see her better. She claimed invalids were brought into the theatre on stretchers so the sight of her could cure them. I don’t know what country this was in. I didn’t know whether to believe any of this. She told me she was going to be filmed dancing but she wanted to lose some weight first, I could see what she meant.

  Yeah, she spoke French pretty well, but with an English accent, and she said I do for I did, that kind of thing. She didn’t speak it as well as you but she had a good voice, very rich. She had this dramatic way of talking, she’d repeat things: ‘Bugatti, Bugatti, what a name! What a name!’ Sometimes she made odd remarks. Like what? Well, for instance she told me she’d spent all her life swerving to and fro between America and Europe, and between men as well, she was une femme égarée, that’s the actual phrase she used. Like, astray. But that’s only said of a sheep or a cow, I think she meant vagabonde. No, I wasn’t really embarrassed when she said that about men, I was just startled that she’d say it to a stranger.

  an undulating line

  as the point of departure

  I heard afterwards that her son and daughter had different fathers and she wasn’t married to either, is that true?

  She mentioned her children, yeah. She told me she was unlucky with cars, she wanted to buy a lovely Bugatti and change her luck, because a car had wrecked her life. In Paris her children and their gouvernante had been in the car when it stalled and the driver got out to crank the engine; the brake must have slipped, because the car shot across the street and into the Seine and they were all drowned.

  I didn’t know what to say when she told me this, I thought it happened recently, but it turned out this was fourteen years ago, when her children were still small. It was a rented Renault, an old-fashioned car, I don’t like them. I told her the driver must have lied about remembering to put the car in neutral because it would only have jumped backwards like that if it was in gear. Then I wished I hadn’t said anything because she cried.

  of a movement that mounted,

  that spread,

  that ended

  Yes, of course I thought the Madonna really wanted to buy the Amilcar. Because she said so, that’s why, and I take people at their word. She hated to go by train, she liked to be driven, and open cars were the best, she liked the wind in her mouth, she said. She and her friend Mary – this was the sour face – had spent weeks being driven along the Côte d’Azur, they thought it would be beautiful but the forest fires were blackening everything. She got me talking about cars, the power and torque of the engines and also the bodies, the streamlining, how they’re designed to glide through the air. No, she never asked the price of the Amilcar but I thought that was because she was rich. She seemed like a big spender, there were lots of champagne bottles lying around, I only found out afterwards that she was broke. Apparently she’d sold her last car – another old Renault – to pay her hotel bill, and she was praying for some big publisher to buy her memoirs.

  there is between all the conditions of life a continuity or flow

  The Madonna was looking for more than a car? I don’t know.

  What does that mean, coy? Listen, mister journalist, I can tell she likes me, okay. She goes on about how well my driving costume suits me. But she’s fifty years old – she tells me so, she said, Can you believe it? – she’s older than my mother. She can’t expect anything.

  What else did she say to me? Lots of things, I don’t remember most of them.

  I am trying.

  Oh, it came up in conversation that I have a pilot’s licence, she was thrilled about that. That was what she was looking for, a man who wasn’t afraid of anything. She said she’d buy a plane and I could fly her back to America; I could tell she was just kidding. I didn’t get the impression she had any home to go back to. She’d been in the crowd in Paris last May when Lindbergh landed after the first non-stop solo across the Atlantic, there were a hundred thousand people half out of their minds. That made me so jealous when she told me that, I wish I’d been there. I haven’t been anywhere yet.

  motion

  is motivated by emotion

  Anyway, next thing, this man arrived at the dance studio, an American. Pretty old, tall, rich-looking, with a blond beard; he seemed to know the Madonna well. She flung her arms around him and called him Paris, I remember thinking that was a strange name. He said, I see you haven’t changed. I remember that because he sort of jerked his head at me when he said it. The Madonna, she seemed embarrassed, she said I was just an automobile salesman, Mary was in the market for a Bugatti. When in fact this Mary had never spoken to me except to tell me to go away the day before. I guess the Madonna was trying to make it seem like it was Mary who’d asked me to come. Anyway the Paris man didn’t seem to believe her, he rolled his eyes and said he wouldn’t intrude, perhaps he’d call again the next day. The Madonna got all agitated, she made a big show of hurrying me out of the studio because she was busy, and could I come to the hotel at nine tonight to show her how the car performed? I was getting irritated, to be honest, I got the impression she was using me to make her American jealous. I shrugged, and she said please come, she said it two or three times, like she didn’t think I would.

  attraction

  and repulsion,

  resistance

  and yielding

  What do you mean, was it an assignation? It was to take her for a ride, get her to buy the car. Yeah, I was friendly but remember the lady was twice my age. To be honest, I thought of staying home because I wasn’t sure what she wanted of me. And maybe that was God telling me not to go, and if I’d listened then everything would have been okay. But my job is cars, you know, and if there was any chance of selling such a pricey auto I wasn’t going to let it slip.

  So at five to nine I drove up to the hotel, I saw the Madonna pull back the curtain and look out. She came down right away, she seemed happy again; her breath smelled of champagne. Her friend Mary ran down after her, telling her she’d be cold in nothing but her dress and shawl. I offered her my leather coat . . . What scarf? No, it wasn’t a scarf, it was a red shawl she’d wrapped round and round her neck. Well, I don’t know, I’m not an expert on women’s clothes. It was huge, silk maybe, it had these long fringes. Yeah, scarlet, it clashed with her hair. Oh and there were Chinese characters on it too, I think, and a big yellow bird.

  So sure, I helped her in. Now, these low-slung racing models, the passenger seat on the left is set back from the driver’s, you understand? We weren’t sitting side-by-side, she was slightly behind me, that’s important. The front left wheel is right there beside the passenger, it sticks up.

  The Madonna waved up at the hotel room, she called out goodbye to her friends. No, I don’t remember.

  Is that what her friends say she said? Adieu mes amis, je vais à la gloire?

  Okay, I don’t know, I didn’t hear that. She might have said it, I guess, that was the kind of dramatic thing she liked to say.

  Precognition? No, I don’t think so, she seemed in a great mood.

  my heavy shoes

  were like chains;

  my clothes were my prison

  Yeah, I guess the shawl was blowing about when I shut her door, it may have been hanging out a little, but of course I’d have noticed if it got caught in the spokes of the wheel when I shut her door, what kind of idiot do you take me for? She must have moved after I got into the driver’s seat, she must have thrown the shawl over her shoulder.

  No, her friend Mary didn’t warn me about any bad feelings she had, didn’t beg me to drive carefully. Did she tell you that? No, I’m not calling her a liar, I just . . . No, I didn’t hear her shout out anything about the shawl. The engine was on by
then, it’s pretty noisy. Well, if she claims she shouted something, okay, but I didn’t hear it. I would have stopped if I’d heard any kind of warning, of course I would; I’d have killed the engine right away.

  Now I come to think of it I did look at the Madonna, just before I released the brake. I’d forgotten this till now. I glanced back over my shoulder and for a moment I saw she that was beautiful. You know how some women, they don’t look anything special till you happen to see them swimming or crying or holding their babies? Well the Madonna, she was like that. She put her head back when the engine started and it was as if I could see right past the rouge and the hair-dye, her face lit up like a candle.

  the head

  turned backward . . .

  the Bacchic frenzy

  possessing the entire body

  Can we stop there, mister? You know the rest. Yeah, I know you’re paying, but I don’t see what good—

  through my whole being

  I felt one

  great

  surging

  Okay, okay.

  I didn’t hear anything, it wasn’t that, it was a dragging sensation. There was something wrong with the car. I didn’t look over my shoulder, I was staring at the dials to see what the matter was. But when I stopped the car and it was quiet I could hear the screaming. It was her friend Mary, she came screeching down the street from the hotel.

  one great surging longing,

  unmistakable urge

  When I turned around the Madonna was gone, I thought for a second she’d disappeared, and then I knew she must have fallen out. I ran round the car and – oh, Christ! You know this bit, it was in all the papers.

  in a striking

  upward

  tremendous