(This is a republication of another story by our late founder, Pauline Fisk)
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On the day he was to die, Robert the Canadian told the truth once, though not to himself, lied five times, as discovered afterwards, bought a swim, took a shave and shampooed his hair.
It was in the Quarry Pool, on his sixteenth lap, that he joked aloud about his dicky heart. That was his truth, not that he recognized it as such. Later, in the castle garden, he told the old lie about the sea-going yacht. He had a nautical air. The dog woman, whom he often talked to, never questioned him. Neither did the beggar on Pride Hill who was used to Robert striding past, crisp in plaid shirt, polished boots, woollen walking socks and combed-back thick white hair, dispensing coins because a rich man like him, with a house on leafy Kingsland Road – lie number two – liked to give to those less fortunate than himself
Lie number three had its moment in the Loggerheads that night, sitting in Poets’ Corner watching Pete the Painter sketching. He was off to Manchester next day, Robert said. Lecturing. Pete - who often disappeared himself - never thought to question the Canadian’s movements. The man came and went. He had a farm in the Scottish Lowlands, which he talked about with fondness, and did so again tonight, lie number four. Sometime he’d take Pete up there, he said, though Pete - who knew the Canadian as a man of his word - knew too [by what reason he couldn’t explain] that he wouldn’t do it. It took one to know one when it came to the fantastical. Perhaps that was it.
Pete went home, door locked, ‘Do Not Disturb’ note sellotaped to knocker on the off-chance that nocturnal friends came visiting. The Loggerheads closed its curtains. Its last drinkers took the hint, leaving only ghosts to haunt the staircases, or so the Landlady said, drinks in hands, hopes jangling in their pockets, a remembrance of bygone days when the pub had housed a brothel.
The streets of Shrewsbury after midnight are like a millpond sea without boats. Only the latest of night prowlers would have witnessed the last walk of Robert the Canadian down St Mary’s Water Lane and under the English Bridge, following the river, though not home to Kingsland Road as was his proud boast.
It was in the Quarry Park that he was found. Who knows why a man would choose one particular bench to die on over any other? In the morning his body was stone cold. A rough sleeper with polished boots - and nobody had known it. The dog lady hadn’t had a clue. The Loggerheads lady, so attuned to lost souls, never caught a whiff of his. The swimming pool attendant – where, as often as he could, he went to keep himself neat and tidy - never would have put him in the category of the man who begged on the street. It came as a shock.
