Paperback Writer

Eileen Dickinson

Paperback Writer

Simon had never really been interested in what Jackie wrote in her Friday writing group. It was just a bunch of silly old women writing stories that no-one would read, let alone publish.

She’d been going for five years now and he didn’t even know the names of the group members. Weren’t there a couple of Sue’s, maybe a pair of Irishwomen called Eileen?

He’d no time for any of them whoever they were. Women in their sixties and seventies were all pretty useless as far as he was concerned. Take Jackie, for instance. She’d been gorgeous when he’d first met her at the local disco. She was twenty-one and wore the tiniest mini dress he’d ever seen which showed off her shapely legs and bottom. Her hair had been the colour of autumn and she had beautiful brown eyes.

She worked damn hard too, at that garage in Crawley, as a receptionist/bookkeeper and PA, all rolled into one neat package. And she still had the dinner on the table at 6 o’clock when he got home. It was proper home cooked food in those days; shepherd’s pie, toad-in-the-hole, liver and bacon. She even made puddings. Now look at the state of her – hair with two inches of white roots showing, flabby arms, varicose veins. Of course, he knew she’d carried three kids, but couldn’t she have done some exercises to get her figure back? She wasn’t working by then and had plenty of spare time.

And the muck she put in front of him at dinner time these days! They had poached fish, chicken and even salad. No chips ever and certainly no puds. He’d had to start having a snack around nine o’clock each evening if he was to survive until morning.

And another thing. Since Jackie retired from that little job in the baker’s, she was never home. He’d not really bothered to find out where she went or what she did, but he thought she might belong to some other groups as well as writing. He’d once seen a badminton racquet in the hall and walking boots in the kitchen.

The house was a tip these days. Jackie used to spend all day Saturday cleaning and Sunday doing the washing and ironing. Now she was always scribbling in a notebook, filling page after page with her nonsense. Why only last week he’d needed a clean shirt and she’d actually said to him,

‘Well Simon, you know where the washing machine is. I can’t stop, I’m off to my History Class.’

He did go into the kitchen and stand in front of the washing machine, but he had no clue what all the knobs and dials were for. Where did the powder go and what was the right temperature? Should it be washed at 90 degrees or thirty?

In sheer frustration he took five shirts to the dry cleaner’s where they charged him an extortionate £20. It would have been cheaper to buy new ones from the charity shop.

Back home again he decided to make himself a cup of tea. Jackie used to bake deliciously light sponge cakes but not for ages. He’d even be lucky to find a ginger nut in the biscuit tin. He boiled the kettle but when he reached for the tea caddy it felt suspiciously light. Opening the lid, he saw that it was empty apart from some tea dust at the bottom of the tin.

He looked on the kitchen counter for a pen and paper to write Jackie a note to buy some more. He knew that they had an odds and ends drawer which held bits of string, batteries and take-away menus. He thought he might find a pen and some scrap paper in there. After opening a few drawers containing cutlery and kitchen utensils he located the correct drawer and opened it. While rummaging for a pen he noticed a pamphlet. The word ‘kill’, stared up at him, so pulled it out.

The full title was ’60 Ways to Kill Some-one.’ What in the high heaven did Jackie have that for? Simon flicked through the pages and saw that the methods were listed alphabetically from ‘Accident’ via ‘Poisoning’ to ‘Suffocation.’ A pink strip of post-it note had been inserted in the ‘A’ section to mark the place.

He felt cold sweat trickle down his back. Had Jackie found out about him and Leila from ‘The Pig and Whistle?’ It was only a bit of harmless fun, nothing to kill for or even get upset about.

His instinct was to take the pamphlet upstairs and shred it. That would surely put an end to anything she was planning. Half-way up the stairs he had another thought.

Wasn’t knowledge power? If Jackie didn’t know that he knew, surely that gave him the upper hand. He was a lot smarter than Jackie as well as being bigger and stronger. He could easily defend himself if she attacked him and then he’d get her put away for a very long time for attempted murder. He might even ask Leila to move in with him. She’d probably jump at the chance. He went back down again feeling a lot more confident than he had five minutes ago.

Over breakfast the next morning Jackie said to him,

‘Simon, if you’re not too busy today, can you clean out the back gutter? It must be full of moss and leaves. The rain is pouring down the wall like a waterfall.’

Simon, who had just taken a big bite of toast, choked and Jackie had to thump him on the back, rather hard as it happened.

‘You want me to go up a ladder?’ he asked once he’d got his breath back.

‘Well, yes,’ she said. ‘Like you do every year. Is there a problem?’

Simon could think of all sorts of problems; loose rungs or a fall caused by someone not holding the bottom of the ladder. They’d all look like accidents, just like it said in that damn pamphlet.

‘I’m getting a bit long in the tooth to be going up ladders now,’ he said. ‘I’ll get that gardener chap to come round.’

‘It’ll only take you ten minutes,’ said Jackie. ‘And you were up in the loft only last week, so I don’t know why you’ve suddenly decided that you can’t climb up a ladder.’

Simon decided not to argue further but to call Joe and get him to come round while Jackie was out. He could pay him cash and pretend he’d done the job himself.

One quick phone call later and it was all arranged. Joe would come on Friday afternoon while Jackie was at her writing group.

Jackie returned to find an ambulance on her front driveway, and Simon with a blood- soaked bandage around his head. Joe’s trowel had slipped from his hand and, from a height of ten feet, the metal edge crashed into Simon’s skull. The cut required several stitches the paramedic had said. Would she care to come in the ambulance or follow in her car?

Simon took a few days to recover from his injuries, during which time he wondered how Jackie had done it. He thought that she didn’t know that Joe was coming to the house, but she must have somehow found out. It was clever of her to pay some-one else to do her dirty work and have a cast iron alibi of the other writing group members.

To give her her due, she took pretty good care of him, popping out to get his newspaper and even cooking some decent grub for a change. But maybe that was also part of the plan, to put him off his guard. The thought even crossed his mind that she might put poison in his pie, but the food was so tasty that he ate it anyway.

After a couple of weeks Simon had recovered enough to start playing golf again. He wanted to invite the chaps back for coffee as they all seemed to have taken a turn and he was running out of excuses.

At dinner that night (some sort of stir fry which needed a lot of chewing), he said,

‘Jackie, I was thinking of inviting my golfing buddies back for coffee next week.’

‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘I’ll buy an extra packet of biscuits.’

‘Do you think you could clean the place up a bit before they come?’ he said.

‘What?’ said Jackie.

‘You know, hoover and dust. Make it nice for my friends. Like you did when your writing group friends came for lunch last Christmas.’

Jackie fixed him with a cold stare.

‘Simon, as these are your friends, I’m sure you could put the hoover round before they come. Failing that, I’m sure you could hire a cleaner as we now seem to have money to spend on such things.’

With that she grabbed her sports bag and left.

Simon looked in the cupboard under the stairs where they kept the hoover. He wheeled it out, surprised at how heavy it was. And what were all those brushes arranged on the outside? He decided to plug it in the and give their lounge carpet a quick going over. It would only take ten minutes. Why was she making such a fuss these days?

Forty minutes later Simon was exhausted. He’d realised that to do a proper job, at least some of the furniture had to be moved. Shifting the heavy oak coffee table, almost did his back in. What did she keep in the drawers anyway? He opened one and found that the offending pamphlet had been moved from the kitchen to sit in his lounge and mock him from the comfort of his armchair. He flicked through the pages and saw that she had underlined a chapter headed ‘Undetectable murders.’ He slumped onto the sofa, heart racing. The scar on his scalp started to throb. He wasn’t finished but he switched the hoover off. He felt far too weak to continue but what should he do? The boys were due soon. He reached for his phone.

‘Contract cleaners? Can you send some-one round right away?’

The young Bulgarian woman said she only had an hour, but after forty minutes she’d finished cleaning the lounge. Would Mr Chambers like her to do the kitchen floor?

Simon, who’d had no clue when he telephoned what he’d have to pay for an emergency cleaner, was determined to get his money’s worth. The woman found a mop and bucket and set to.

‘It’s not yet dry,’ she told him. ‘Give it another ten minutes.’

She took the two twenty-pound notes he proffered, put them in her purse and sped off on her moped.

Simon looked at his watch. It was one o’clock now and he’d had nothing to eat since breakfast. If he took his slippers off, he surely wouldn’t mess up the clean floor. In stockinged feet he walked towards the kettle, skidded and landed headfirst in the open dishwasher. A steak knife pierced his neck and blood poured onto the clean plates and bowls.

‘If you hadn’t found him when you did,’ said the A & E doctor later, I dread to think what would have happened.’

Jackie became a local celebrity for saving her husband’s life.

‘Isn’t it lucky I went on the first aid course?’ she told the young reporter.

She got her photo in the paper and an Outstanding Citizen award from the Mayor. Meanwhile Simon sat in his favourite armchair swallowing painkillers washed down with lukewarm tea and wondered how on earth Jackie had done it again.

He concluded that his phone must be bugged. As soon as he felt stronger, he took himself into town and bought a new mobile, throwing the old one into a skip on the way home.

Things were not going to plan at all. In the past four months he’d had two almost fatal ‘accidents’. According to that wretched pamphlet there were fifty-eight other things that she had yet to try, any one of which could result in an early grave for him and a wonderful widowhood for Jackie.

Lovely Leila had also completely lost interest in him. He couldn’t really blame her as on the rare occasions he went to the pub, he couldn’t drink on account of his medicine and he had put on more than a little weight through Jackie’s home cooking and him sitting in front of the telly all day.

On the other hand, Jackie seemed to be getting younger by the minute. She looked trim and her hair had been cut in a way that really suited her. Perhaps he’d pay her a bit more attention, buy her a bunch of flowers, that sort of thing. She might even change her mind about killing him. Maybe he could then relax and get a decent night’s sleep. Most days he felt tense and on edge and it was much worse at night.

‘The lightbulb on the landing needs replacing,’ said Jackie that evening as she put her coat on to go out with the girls. ‘Can you make sure you do it this evening, Simon. We certainly don’t want any more accidents, do we? I’ll be late back so don’t wait up.’

As he heard the front door close Simon’s heart beat so fast he thought he might be having a heart attack.

So, this was the final trap she was laying for him, was it? He rushed to the lounge, opened the drawer in the coffee table and took out the pamphlet. Sure enough, under ‘E’ was a section on electrocution. No doubt one of her classes was in DIY and she’d learnt all about electricity. She must have re-wired the socket and when he switched it on, he’d be fried to a crisp. Well, he wasn’t sleepwalking into that trap. Did she think he was a complete idiot?

He spent the evening feeling nervous and too scared to do anything. He sat in the dark and at ten o’clock decided to turn in for the night. He used his phone as a torch to get safely upstairs and into bed. He decided that in the morning he’d talk to Jackie and offer to go and stay with his brother. He couldn’t carry on like this, waiting to be murdered in his own home.

At three twenty he woke up and needed the toilet. He put the torch on and made it safely to the bathroom. He felt wired and wide awake. Perhaps a snack would help him go back to sleep.

He stupidly left his torch in the bathroom, so he clung onto the bannister as he crept downstairs. At the bend in the stairs he tripped and tumbled headfirst down, breaking his neck.

Jackie, on hearing the crash, came out of her bedroom. She calmly walked downstairs and lifted the box containing the final draft of her manuscript. The lid had come adrift, and the title stared up at her, ‘A Satisfying End.’ It had been a working title, but looking at it now, it seemed just right.

‘I should never have asked him to put a new light bulb on the landing,’ she later told the young policeman assigned to investigate the unfortunate accident, ‘knowing how accident prone he’s been lately.’