Poison
June 2016
Josephine
is stuffing her suitcase with a random selection of clothing, without thought
or planning, just hoping that there’ll be something that’s right for each
occasion. The only item she is careful to select and fold, placing underneath
the rest of the jumble, is her plain, black dress. She dreads the unexpected flight
back across the Atlantic, and as she thinks about what she’ll be doing there,
she feels as if she’s being sucked into quicksand. Nowhere to go but down.
She got the
call from her older brother the day before. And his news shook her, making her
tremble like an aspen tree for the rest of the day. She couldn’t focus on
anything, nothing in her life seemed important any more. Pangs of guilt surged
through her. She should have stayed in England with her two brothers, rather
than come to Canada to study.
Despite the
turmoil in her head, she managed to get a flight, for sooner than expected. But
her living brother said he couldn’t put her up, so she had to find somewhere to
stay, and rent a car so she could get there from the airport. There’d be no-one
to meet her.
Scrunching
up her favourite sweater and thrusting it into the corner of her suitcase, she contemplates
her younger brother and the musical legacy
Blair leaves behind. If you listen to her older brother Geoff, Blair chose to
live below his potential. Giving
yourself up to music is not something Geoff is capable of understanding, and
Josephine knows that Blair’s lifestyle filled him with disdain. There isn’t a lyrical bone in her older brother’s body.
But the
irony is that, Blair, after several years of dedication and creativity, made it
into the big leagues. And, much to Geoff’s chagrin, he made a lot of money.
Geoff, meanwhile, was struggling as a pharmacist, ending up working in a supermarket.
He resented Blair’s success and openly displayed his anger at life, for its
unfairness, for rewarding art instead of hard work. At least that’s how
Josephine believes he saw it.
Josephine
chucks a toothbrush into her washbag, remembering the earlier phone call from
Geoff. He’d told her that Blair was on drugs and was in bad shape, and that
he’d found out that Blair had an appointment
to see a psychiatrist. Josephine wondered why the phrase ‘blood is thicker than water’ had no relevance to Geoff’s feelings
towards Blair. In fact, his feelings were more vitriolic towards his brother
than to anyone else that Josephine is aware of.
What Geoff
told her didn’t make sense, so Josephine texted Blair. And he phoned her right
away, denying any involvement with drugs. He dismissed Geoff’s accusations by
making a couple of jokes about his brother, suggesting that Geoff must be the
one smoking something. Blair sounded upbeat and enthusiastic about the record
he was about to release, and told her about the video he was making. He was
also going to make a debut appearance
at a theatre in London the following week.
She followed up with Geoff, who
told her that Blair’s condition was obviously serious and that he could be
suicidal. Those who are determined to commit suicide talk about the future, he
said, and share their concocted plans, to make sure that no-one is alerted. But
Josephine thought this was ridiculous mumbo-jumbo, and attributed it to Geoff’s
wishful thinking and the ongoing poisonous jealously which was eating away at
him.
But two
days later Geoff phoned her to say that Blair had, indeed, committed suicide
just as he’d predicted. An overdose of something. This was to be expected, of
course, blah, blah, blah. Josephine was shaking too much to take it all in.
Something was terribly wrong with this picture. So Josephine is packing
frantically, not just because she has a funeral to attend, but because she wants
to find out how Geoff managed to poison her little brother.
And, yes, I'm working on the sequel to "What Happened to Frank?"!
