The Return of Harrison Poe

In 1980, the Drumfeld Examiner commemorated the successfully recovery of Constance Lewis's cat (a minor case that doesn't even feature in the archive) by printing a photograph of the Hamilton Coe Detective Agency. My own copy of the article was destroyed by Spencer in the course of his 2005 Christmas rampage, but by referring to my enhanced memory skills, I can recall every significant detail. I'm at the picture's centre, naturally, surrounded by Billy Ure, Spencer and my cousins Richard and Pamela Malcolm. One might ask exactly why Richard and Spencer, neither of whom had assisted in the case, were present in the picture. An excellent question! Aunt Isobel, an habitual meddler in matters outwith her personal concern, insisted that they be included. In the ensuing stand-off, I was prepared to send the photographer away, but eventually negotiated a compromise that the accompanying story refer to them as Hamilton Coe admirers rather than active investigators. With hindsight, I should have stuck to my guns. I probably would have done if not for the fact that Spencer was already in the throes of his first existential crisis: earlier that summer, Pamela and I, in the course of an unrelated investigation, had established the fact of his adoption. This might account for the forlorn expression he wore in the photograph, completely at odds with the general sense of jubilation prompted by the safe return of Mrs Lewis's cat.

Unlike her brother, Pamela was an enthusiastic investigator. A more natural and courageous detective than Billy, who feared and resented her, she played an integral role in several of my most challenging early investigations. Without Pamela's cool head, I might never have emerged unscathed from the Thompson farmhouse while she was on hand to rescue me from the incoming tide after the sham Christians of the Summer Crusaders buried me up to my neck on Kiloran Bay. She also intervened on various occasions when I was threatened by louts and delinquents hell-bent on countering the powers of intuition and logic with violence. Anyone eager to pummel Hamilton during the months of summer or Christmas, invariably had Pamela to contend with. At any other time, I'm afraid, Billy Ure was the only deterrent and his instinctive response to encroaching menace was to chew his lips into a jelly or crawl under the nearest hedge.

In 1984, however, Pamela's dedication to investigations diminished as she became enthralled by the malign influence of Valerie Cuthbert. That summer, Pamela arrived in Drumfeld with her new friend en tow. Valerie immediately made herself objectionable, making provocative observations and turning my shed into a smoking haven. When I reported this latter offence to my parents, she and Pamela responded by refusing to speak to me and, incredibly, smoking openly. As both were under sixteen, this behaviour wasn't only offensively precocious, but against the law. With hindsight, the official complaint I lodged at the Drumfeld Police Station (still in operation in these days) might have been an over-reaction. Certainly, the ticking off the girls received from P.C. Quigley did little to improve relations between us. For the remainder of the holiday I was left to conduct investigations with only Billy to assist me, while Pamela and Valerie consorted with Spencer and Richard. To add insult to injury, the four connived in sending me on a wild goose chase with a series of cryptic messages and archaic diagrams chalked on walls around Drumfeld. After weeks of false clues that led me into nettle patches and fields inhabited by vicious geese, the mystery was resolved by the discovery of a parchment on which was written 'Hamilton Coe is a speccy, fat snitch' hidden inside a hollow tree.

It's nearly ten years since Pamela's work in television editing took her to California. For years, communication from her was limited to the occasional e-mail or telephone call. I was astonished when, immediately after my mother's death, she appeared unannounced, intent on assisting in making arrangements for the funeral. As my father's incapacity through Alzheimer's and Spencer's preoccupation with his so-called 'birth family' had placed the burden of responsibility firmly on my shoulders, I was grateful for her help. Little did I suspect that she'd returned with the ulterior motive of accumulating material for a proposed television series about my fat-headed American equivalent, Harrison Poe. I was only alerted to her ploy months later when I inadvertently received a wrongly addressed e-mail with various scenarios attached in which, without beating about the bush, I'm portrayed as a bungler and a fool.

The experienced investigator recognises that the most elaborate of fantasies are invariably constructed around a kernel of truth. Pamela's narrative, unravelling over the course of 'Harrison's' mother's funeral, is indisputably based upon actual events. Pamela makes a great deal, for example, of the reception 'Harrison' hosts to give notice of his mother's passing. I've no compunction in conceding that a similar event was held in the House of Coe. I'm not sure why she finds this so remarkable. She must have witnessed stranger events during her time in Los Angeles. Certainly there was a minor incendiary incident involving one of my mother's friends, but the blaze was extinguished without any of the hullabaloo described by the story's precocious narrator 'Patsy', (a figment borne of characteristics borrowed from Christine, Muriel and Pamela herself.) Revelling in the unflattering depiction of 'Harrison' as a fat-headed parasite, incidentally, Spencer still seems oblivious to the fact that the character of his degenerate brother 'Steven' has only one possible source. The reader might judge the overall tone for himself from the following excerpts.

*My Uncle Harrison telephoned just as I was finishing off my packing for a week in Stacy McKenna's parents' cabin. A phone call from Harrison was rare occurrence. He and my mother didn't get along. The last time he had telephoned my mother's voice, over the course of a twenty minute conversation, rose from the tone of forced affability you might use to coax someone off a window ledge, to the screech of anger with which you'd tell them to go ahead and jump. "Why don't you go and fuck yourself, Harrison," she shouted before replacing the receiver with such force that the next day we had to buy a new phone. Obviously, I'd heard her swear before, but never with such feeling.

This time, as mom, six months into her marriage to the second and dumber of my stepfathers, was drinking with friends, I was forced to talk to my uncle for five minutes, holding the receiver away from my ear to avoid the full impact of his nasal bray. I still remember most of our conversation, a monologue, really, my own input comprising exaggerated yawns and hand gestures (made for nobody's entertainment but my own) while Harrison expounded on the fact that young people no longer carry tissues or cover their mouths when they cough. "Nobody thinks to tell them. You can't tell anyone anything without being sworn at." According to Harrison, this lack of awareness would inevitably lead to the pandemic that would wipe out the human race. I got the impression that, as a representative of the hygienically negligent young, I was being blamed for the imminent apocalypse of snot. Not once in the course of this contemplation of extinction did my uncle allude to his mother, far less the fact that she'd died less than two hours earlier. Even after I'd passed him on to mom, he repeated the points he'd just made to me before getting round to mentioning that Grandma had collapsed in the frozen food aisle of Price Rite. From what I could overhear of the conversation, my mother initially seemed less shocked by Grandma's death than the fact that she secretly shopped in Grenville's cheesiest discount store. "But they can't even spell their own name," she said at one stage, "Are you sure?"

*My efforts to exclude myself from the funeral party were in vain. By seven a.m. the next morning, I was slumped in the rear passenger seat of my stepfather's Hyundai waiting for the resolution of an argument as to whether or not he should bring his guitar, the appearance of which inevitably presaged a darkening of the happiest of occasions. Guy, who years before meeting my mother had been involved in a car accident which I suspected must have destroyed some vital neural component, seemed genuinely baffled as to why an enforced sing song might be inappropriate to the occasion. Normally, I would have taken my mother's side and argued that the recently bereaved have suffered enough without being forced to endure renditions of the sort of interminable plantation ballads Guy enjoyed. I'd determined, however, to maintain a sulky silence for the duration of the trip and said nothing, even as he affectionately strapped the dreaded "Doreen" (his pet name for his guitar) into the seat next to mine, one eye still blinking violently from the intensity of his recent argument.

*The return to Grenville, particularly in the two years since my grandfather was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, always caused mom to go from forced conviviality to outright panic via stages of escalating belligerence I'd learned to identify by the names of the towns we passed en route. I've always associated Peterson with tearfulness, for example, and Arbuckle with irrational rage. This time we drove in nearly silence, only interrupted by Guy's automatic chide of " People matter, Patsy" whenever we passed roadkill. He persisted in this admonishment throughout his relationship with my mother, despite being constantly reminded that he was confusing me with his own drippy daughter, Becky, who could be reduced to tears by the mere contemplation of the history of an uncooked hamburger. It always bothered me that my mother attached herself to someone who bred so haphazardly that he confused other people's children with his own. On this occasion, neither she nor I bothered to correct him. Mom stared out of the window, the only indicator of her mounting anxiety being a gradual stiffening of the jaw.

*In certain types of movie, homecomings are described by a soft, silly inner voice redolent of mental incapacity, the treacly tone of nostalgia. In my mother's movie, I expect, that voice would be replaced by one as harsh and metallic as a vengeful cyborg's. She and her younger brother Steven had left home at the earliest opportunity, mom to go to college, Steven, by his own account, to go on tour with a band, by everyone else's to work in a video store. Neither seemed eager to return. Only Harrison remained, surrounded by the accumulated junk of thirty-seven years and apparently oblivious to the expectation that he might ever leave.

*I didn't particularly like either of my uncles. Neither fulfilled the role of older but still fun relative with any great enthusiasm. They never sent presents for my birthday or Christmas, though my grandmother would add Harrison's name to gift tags and greetings cards as an afterthought. Steven occasionally sent mom his c.d.'s which she dutifully racked without every playing. Stacy and I once listened to one. The only coherent song was a fantasy about the murder of a girlfriend called Your Alien Eyes. Without telling me, Stacy wrote to him, complimenting him on his great mind. For six months she maintained a correspondence before showing me the collection of letters in which my thirty something uncle encouraged her to leave school and move to Bismark where he'd find her a job in a diner. At least he had a role in life, even if its benefit to humanity was minimal. Harrison, to the best of my knowledge, simply lingered, the human equivalent of a stain.

*When I was younger, it didn't occur to me that there was anything questionable about Harrison simply existing, annoying people. I once saw him emerging from the shed at the bottom of my grandparents' garden dressed as a tramp, limping dramatically, his cheeks partially obscured by a prosthetic fuzz. Perhaps on account of this, I'd nurtured a vague impression that he begged. I knew he hadn't gone to school, a fact of which he was inordinately proud, and I assumed that there was something wrong with him, some vague incapacity, insufficiently dramatic for me to be expected to take an interest. He could dress himself, communicate and move around without assistance. When dad was still around, he referred sardonically to Harrison's investigations and more than once mom referred to him as "the detective" in the same way as she might refer to someone as "the shithead" or "the pain in the ass". From their tone, I took it that Harrison was a detective in the sense that Aaron Ralston, who cycled aorund the cul de sac shouting into an imaginary c.b. handset was one of the Dukes of Hazzard.

* My grandmother had always accumulated magazines of a type normally found in waiting rooms, the only difference being that hers were published by the various charities she patronised. I can still remember some of the magazines' titles, Carer, Enable, Summit and Step Forward spring instantly to mind. Enable, the most prolific, dealt with the achievements (as opposed to problems) of mentally challenged adults. I was once mortified to arrive for our annual Christmas visit to be immediately confronted with a copy I'd defaced in the summer, darkening the cheeks and widening the eyes of a young man modelling knitwear and adding speech bubble with the proclamation, "I am a retard." This, I recalled, was a vengeful (and, I suppose, sly) response to being chastened for applying the word to Hamilton. While everybody else exchanged gifts, I had been forced to spend an hour writing a list of less clinical terms I might use to describe Hamilton or anyone else who irked me in the future: "fathead", "jackass", "dolt", "dufus", etc. In retrospect, this apparently bizarre punishment has proved useful (no-one else I know can insult people so eloquently without causing offence) but on the day after my grandmother's death the magazines seemed an eerie echo of her disapproval.

*My grandparents were never gregarious people. According to mom, visitors, on departure, were subjected to character analyses as rigorous as post mortems. The only non-family member I'd previously encountered in their house, with the exception of Val, the housekeeper, was a friend of Harrison's my mother referred to as Brian Mucous. On arriving on the day after my grandmother's death, however, we found an open door, beyond which it appeared that the world had dropped in. A subdued but distinctly cheerful throng milled in the hall, people sat on the stairs and children played as if a spell had been nullified. A profusion of candles flickered on every available surface and, although it was March, strands of red and forest-coloured tinsel had been unearthed from the Christmas decorations and draped around lamps and banisters. Percy and Desiree, the canaries normally captive in my grandparents' bedroom, flapped anxiously over head while Fu Manchu, Harrison's toothless Siamese cat pranced below, frenzied by the sudden opportunity for slaughter for years denied him. Guy, already anticipating the need for musicians in this festival of bereavement, looked toward my mother and nodded excitedly. Mom didn't respond to his look. I don't think she even noticed. At the time, I had no personal experience of contemporary death rites. My mother's expression, initially tautened by incredulity, briefly threatening to collapse in despair before settling in the look of profound resignation of a brain unable to compute an appropriate response, was sufficient to inform me that this was not normal procedure.

"Harrison," she said, in an apprehensive voice, as if worried that she might summon an entity from the bowels of creation. Nobody in the throng even noticed. Mom opened her mouth to repeat the request, thought better of it and closed her eyes, willing herself, I expect to disappear. At this moment, Val appeared at the top of the stairs, her eyes glazed and forehead beaded, she made a hurried descent, treading on hands and eliciting yelps of indignation in her haste.

"Cathy," she said, "I'm so sorry…."

"Where's Harrison?" repeated mom, rebuffing Val's attempt to hug her like someone repelling the affectionate embrace of a drunk.

"I'm sorry," said Val. "I just found out…. I just got here twenty minutes ago…. Harrison's taken control….."

"But Harrison's not equipped to take control," snapped mom. "You should have stopped him."

"But I just got here," repeated Val, palms spread in a gesture of helplessness. "The house was already full of people….He's been waiting for you so that he can make his announcement…."

"What announcement?"

"About your mother. He wants it to be a surprise."

"What sort of surprise? Is she going to jump out of a cake? Where's dad?"

"Harrison's locked him in his room…."

As mom ran upstairs, followed by Guy, no doubt intent on serenading my grandfather with songs about union disputes, I wandered up the hall. Approaching the kitchen, I could hear Harrison's aggrieved bellow: "Not that coffee! That coffee's specially imported. I don't have enough to go round. We have granules!" Pushing the door open, I saw Brian Mucous, surrounded by sandwiches and cookies, a cafetiere hovering over a collection of empty mugs, his pale, damp eyes apparently mesmerised by the figure gesticulating in front of him. Even though he had his back to me, I knew exactly what Harrison was doing. Whenever he tried to register incomprehension caused by what he perceived to be someone else's stupidity, he'd rub his forehead with his knuckles. It was part of a repertoire of gestures he used to impersonate normal human behaviour. Most of these, the shudders, double takes and tap dances of irritation, had been appropriated from the silent comedies he enjoyed. At moments of agitation he communicated entirely in an antiquated sign language rendered obsolete by the invention of amplified sound. The forehead rubbing was his own contribution to the lexicon of pantomimed emotions. As he suddenly turned to face me, his forehead was crimson. He looked as if he'd been cudgeled.

Harrison peered at me uncertainly. For as long as I'd known him, he'd struggled to remember my name. Every time I visited he was flummoxed by some minute alteration in my appearance. I've never known anyone, for example, to be so disorientated by something as insignificant as a trim or a new earring. On this occasion, however, he probably had cause for confusion. My face had recently been so ravaged by acne that it resembled a crime scene. As he stared at me, a half smile of embarrassment playing about his lips, I felt my face burning, though any sign of embarrassment must have been concealed by the virulent crust of adolescence.

"It's Patsy," I said finally, before he could comment. "Your niece…."

"Of course it is," said Harrison without conviction, before adding with acerbity, "You were supposed to be here last night. I've been left to do everything myself." He turned to Brian and shook his head. Brian, relieved by the appearance of a new scapegoat, returned the gesture, his chewed lips prissily compressed.

"Is there anything I can do?" I asked.

"No, not with the food," said Harrison quickly. "Hygiene's a priority….."

"Fine," I snapped.

"It's not your fault. I thought your mother might have pitched in a bit more enthusiastically. Where is she, anyway?"

"She's with grandpa," I said tersely.

"For goodness sake," said Harrison, making for the door. "She can talk to dad all she wants later."

"Do you want me to serve the coffee or not?" Brian shouted after him. There was no response other than the momentary draft of dismissal created by the door flapping in Harrison's wake. Brian looked at my plaintively, his soggy face radiating a silent plea for empathy which, for some reason, caused a visceral urge to kick him. Simultaneously excited and alarmed by the uninvited notion of committing an assault on the shin of a fragile young man, I returned his needy smile with a viciously improvised imitation, thrusting my fiery countenance toward him, twisting my features into what I hoped was an expression of deranged pity. If I couldn't inflict physical harm upon Brian, I wanted at least to wound his feelings. When I was much younger, my mother had referred to "hurting someone's feelings" as if it was on a par with breaking their limbs. Now I wanted nothing more than to hurt Brian's. As he recoiled, I was appalled to feel my eyes brimming. I wasn't normally prone to tearfulness, but was suddenly overwhelmed by the injustice of missing out on my weekend in order to mourn a grandmother who thought me sly with an idiot uncle who wouldn't let me touch his stupid buffet in case I was infectious.

"I'm sorry for your loss," said Brian quickly, with the spontaneity of a speak your weight machine.

"I don't care," I bubbled, turning and pushing open the kitchen door at precisely the moment the hem of Mrs Crabbe's skirt came into contact with one of Harrison's injudiciously placed candles.

*My recollection of Mrs Crabbe's near immolation has probably been embellished by various factors. The version of events I subsequently recounted to Stacey, and which I still find irresistible when describing the day my grandmother's friend became a human torch, was almost certainly exaggerated. In the theatre of my brain, Mrs Crabbe remains indistinguishable from the flames which engulfed her, the fact is, however, that, by all other accounts these were extinguished within seconds causing minimal damage to her person, though ruining her best tweed skirt. For years, I was also fond of the notion that the hem of her skirt came into contact with naked flame at the exact moment it occurred to me to kick Brian's shin. This can be attributed to a natural teenage propensity for self-importance. I wasn't the only person present whose eyewitness account differed from the consensus. Harrison, for example, immediately claimed credit for saving Mrs Crabbe's life, though my own (admittedly sketchy) memory is of him standing in the middle of the staircase, waving his arms ineffectually and shouting instructions to those who were actually rolling Mrs Crabbe on the carpet. It was Val, I think, who emerged from the lounge with a small fire extinguisher, saving Mrs Crabbe from further harm, if not indignity, by covering her with foam.

What is beyond dispute is that, confronted by guests, concerned that they'd been lured into a death trap, my mother and Val attempted to mollify them by confiding the real reason for their presence. Harrison, after furiously, but unsuccessfully attempting to stop them from ruining his surprise, desperately came up with another distraction, shouting, "Ladies and gentlemen, refreshments will now be served," and summoning Brian from the kitchen with mugs of imported coffee. Even that enticement proved insufficient to detain the guests whose distaste at having witnessed a near death by burning, was now exacerbated by the fact of their participation in a tea party which, by anyone's standards, might be considered ghoulish. I'm still not sure why Harrison was so determined to prolong events which were clearly going so catastrophically awry. Perhaps he'd planned games or a slideshow. For all I know he might have intended to change into a dinner suit and sing Nessun Dorma. It's impossible to apply logic to someone who had spent the previous evening calling everyone in his recently deceased mother's address book, inviting them to an informal get together without mentioning the most pertinent fact, that his mother was dead. Whatever scheme he had hatched, however, he was incensed by its last minute abortion.

"You can't just show up and impose your will," he berated my mother while trying to place himself between the door and departing guests. "Everything was having a nice time until you arrived…"

"They weren't supposed to be having a nice time, Harrison! Our mother died! It's not a cause for celebration…."

"Well, that's where you're wrong. We'd discussed this. It's exactly what she wanted…. You and Steven weren't here…. " Harrison stopped mid sentence. His mouth contorted as he clearly attempted to suppress a smirk.

"Where is Steven, Harrison?"

Still struggling to control his twitching lips, Harrison slapped his head in a gesture of self-chastisement. The smirk and the eyes gleaming cunningly beneath his splayed fingers suggested that the oversight had been anything other than accidental.

*Between the attic and the bathroom, I'd decided that, if cornered, I'd explain that I'd gone into Harrison's room to play with Fu Manchu. Finding the bathroom locked and identifying the occupant, from snatches of muttered profanity, as mom, I gave up hope of gaining access for at least another half hour and, still rehearsing my explanation, made my way downstairs. Entering the kitchen, the mad hope that I might again be spared embarrassment by a timely suicide was immediately shattered by the sight of both Harrison and Steven. Harrison, perched on the work surface, beamed "good morning" through apple filled cheeks while Steven, obviously anticipating the arrival of my mother, half rose as if to leave, resuming his seat when he realised the bathroom hadn't been liberated. Emitting a guttural groan, his face locked in a rictus of anguish which grew more profound as Harrison's mastication echoed around the room. From Steven's expression, the apple might have represented his own soul.

"I think the bathroom is still occupied," said Harrison, cupping one ear and holding aloft a forefinger to indicate the distant sound of running water. "Steven isn't well," he added for my benefit, smiling benignly toward where his brother, still clad in the same clothes as the day before, drummed a semaphore of distress with yellow tapered fingers on the table.

"Your mother realises," said Steven, "that there are other people in the world apart from her?"

"I guess so," I said, remembering that mom had once suggested that Steven's unhappiness could be attributed to two factors. The first was his persistence in the delusion that he possessed any talent whatsoever, the second committing himself to a lifestyle for which he was constitutionally unsuited. Reassured that he'd forgotten our encounter in Harrison's room, I was tempted to repeat this, or at least question the credentials of a nihilist reduced to squirming panic when denied access to a toilet. Instead I shrugged, wrinkled my nose in a manner I hoped he'd interpret as a comment on his personality rather than the mere stench emanating from his presence and turned my attention to the remnants of Harrison and Brian's buffet which were rapidly congealing on the table before me.

"Women take longer to get ready," said Harrison mollifyingly, winking down at me from his vantage point in a manner which caused me to brace myself for an onslaught of buffoonery. It wasn't the first time I'd witnessed the spectacle of Harrison attempting to defuse an unpleasant situation with his version of humour. As a child his Grandfather Jackson, a very bad influence, had convinced him that nobody can resist a good joke or, in Harrison's nomenclature, a "howler". Not only did Harrison collect magazine articles along the lines of "Laughter is the Best Medicine" or "Time Out For a Chuckle" but recorded other people's jokes in a large pad he referred to as his "Book of Jokes and Humorous Incidents". More than once I'd seen him disappear from the table, braying with mirth which, to anyone who didn't know him, would have sounded so artificial as to be sarcastic, in order to preserve some wretched quip, bon mot or pun. Now, undeterred by Steven's look of sheer loathing, he embarked upon a five-minute spiel on female eccentricity, the frame of reference of which was so antiquated as to include references, not only to women drivers but mini-skirts, suffragettes and Betty Grable. As usual, his schtick was accompanied by "whaddaya know?" type shrugs, and the occasional wink, apparently to reassure his audience that he hadn't taken leave of his senses. The act continued uninterrupted until my mother's eventual appearance prompted Steven's immediate exit. A joke about a "pop singer" suggested that Harrison, sensitive to his audience, was embarking upon a new topic when a roar of frustration from upstairs indicated that Guy had made it to the bathroom before Steven.

 

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