The Universe Versus Alex Woods (35 page)

He talked at me for about ten minutes straight, but it was all completely insubstantial – repetitive, incoherent ramblings about how I’d misunderstood his wishes, how I hadn’t thought things through, how utterly preposterous I was being – that sort of thing.

I waited until he’d run out of steam, then said: ‘I think it should be quite clear that I
have
thought this through. I’ve spent days and days thinking it through. If any of the facts I’ve laid out for you are incorrect, then please correct me. If you can’t remember any of the facts, I’d be happy to repeat them for you.’

Mr Peterson said that I should forget the goddamn facts. The facts were no longer relevant. ‘The only fact that matters,’ he said, ‘is that I can’t let you help me. Not like that.’

I waited a few moments so that I could be sure he’d hear me very clearly.

‘Actually, that’s not your decision to make,’ I said. ‘You think that you should be allowed to choose your own destiny, and I agree. One hundred per cent. All I ask is that you extend me the same privilege. I’ve made this decision based on what I think is right – based on my conscience. To take that away from me would be unforgivable. If you respect me at all, you
have
to let me choose.’

I don’t know how many minutes ticked by after that – maybe two, maybe five. Several times Mr Peterson looked like he was on the verge of saying something, but on each occasion he pulled himself back. I didn’t need to say anything else. The longer the silence went on, the more secure my existing words became.

Eventually, Mr Peterson could only wave me away, pleading that he needed time to think. But I knew the conclusion was now beyond doubt. I could see tears in his eyes. It was the only time I ever saw him cry.

The next day, it was settled. Mr Peterson asked me if I understood exactly what I was agreeing to, and I confirmed that I did.

‘I’m not going to change my mind,’ he told me. ‘At some point, I’m gonna want it to end.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I just want that point to be as far away as possible.’

‘I’m putting myself completely at your mercy here, you understand that?’

‘That’s not really how I think of it.’

‘That’s how you
should
think of it. That’s the way it is. I can’t go into this unless you’re clear on that.’

‘I’m clear,’ I said.

From that point on, there could be no turning back. Our pact was made.

In the beginning, the situation was akin to a car crash. It was captivating but it was also confusing. Although something had clearly happened – something traumatic and vaguely sinister – the deeper nature of that something was difficult to define. For some time, no one was sure what had gone wrong – or where or why – and it would take a thorough sifting of the wreckage before conclusions could be drawn and guilt assigned.

Under British law, a number of crimes had been committed: that much was established early and was never in dispute. But if this was the case, then who was the victim and who the perpetrator? As I’m sure you’re aware, this was the key question that preoccupied the media in the weeks following my ‘arrest’ at Dover, and thinking mutated through several distinct phases.

Initially, most commentators were happy to dump all the blame at Mr Peterson’s feet. This option was appealing for a number of reasons. Firstly, he was dead, and therefore not in a strong position from which to defend himself. Secondly, he had no relatives to offend or enrage. Thirdly, he was an American. Fourthly, and most importantly, he was the adult in the situation. Even those who agreed that he had the unassailable right to end his own life if he so chose were aghast at the thought that he’d somehow involved me in the process.

I was a minor – this was the plain fact that everyone kept returning to – and as such, I lacked the moral competence to make the kind of decisions that had been ascribed to me in those preliminary police statements. I think at this stage there were only one or two dissenting journalists, who pointed out that if I lacked ‘moral competence’, I lacked it by only a few months. But these objections were quickly shouted down, because it wasn’t
just
that I was underage; it was also self-evident that I was in an extremely vulnerable position. The police had characterized me as an ‘intelligent but extremely naïve, and possibly disturbed, young man’. I had no father, no friends and a mother of dubious credentials and capability. And then there was the small matter of my ‘brain damage’. There could be no doubt that my ethical abilities were compromised. The fact that I’d been the one who’d driven the car to Zurich became irrelevant. If I hadn’t been kidnapped in the traditional sense, then I’d certainly been manipulated – probably in all sorts of ways.

It was this last point, of course, that opened the floodgate to a further wave of speculation, now concerning the ‘exact nature’ of the relationship under scrutiny. It was already known that this relationship had been ongoing since I was thirteen. Given that Mr Peterson had been happily and devotedly married for almost forty years, with no history of inappropriate contact with children (or, in fact,
any
contact with children), and given also the lack of a single scrap of evidence to support the suspicion, the tabloids naturally assumed paedophilia. You can’t libel the dead, and so for a couple of weeks the accusations flew – until, quite suddenly, their wings grew tired and the story’s emphasis shifted once more. It wasn’t that anyone became troubled by the lack of evidence. The paedophile hypothesis simply became old hat.

So the story shifted and a new villain came into the crosshairs. This time it was the clinic in Switzerland, and more specifically Herr Schäfer, its outspoken founder and director. After all, he was equally culpable in permitting me to attend the Assisted Suicide appointment. From what could be ascertained, he had even
encouraged
my active participation in ‘the procedure’. After ignoring these charges for several days, he eventually issued a rebuff. If there had been any suspicion of coercion or manipulation – and this applied to my being manipulated also – the procedure would have been immediately cancelled.

But for the media, the need for further investigation was beyond doubt. My moral incompetence had already been recognized and unanimously accepted. The next step was to prove Mr Peterson had been of unsound judgement, and this battle was already ninety per cent won. As if his actions hadn’t already spoken volumes, there was also the fact that he’d been hospitalized for six weeks on the psychiatric ward. He’d also been in Vietnam, a conflict that had left him permanently (if non-specifically) ‘damaged’.

Herr Schäfer’s response to these conjectures was terse: the Swiss authorities had read all the documentation, seen the recordings and were satisfied that everyone involved had acted properly, responsibly and in full possession of their mental faculties. Under Swiss law no crime had been committed.

His mistake, of course, was to mention the recordings. As you probably know by now, it’s standard practice to record an assisted suicide, as this provides the safest possible evidence that it was indeed suicide. But the press had not, at that point, cottoned on to this fact, which opened up a new world of possibilities. In no time at all, the whole country seemed to be screaming for Herr Schäfer to release the ‘Death Tapes’. It was undeniably in the public interest. People had a right to judge for themselves. It was the only way this matter could ever be put to rest.

Discounting the salutation and signature, Herr Schäfer’s final statement on this issue – published as a letter in one of the Sunday papers – was only one line long: ‘I understand that you do things differently in the United Kingdom, but in Switzerland, trial by media is not generally supported.’

This caused a minor diplomatic crisis and prompted a further week of mud-slinging in various editorials. But that really
was
Herr Schäfer’s last word on the matter. He’d decided to quit while he was ahead.

And that left only me in the firing line.

It started as a trickle – the odd question raised here and there concerning my motives – and ever so slowly, perceptions started to change. I wasn’t acting the way a victim should act. My emotional response just didn’t ring true. And soon enough the ‘revelations’ began: the fact that I’d been exposed to occult ceremonies at a very young age, my history of violent and obscene conduct in school, allegations that I’d been involved from the age of fifteen in some sort of strange religious cult. What had previously been deemed social awkwardness was now full-blown sociopathy, and all those speculations about the state of my brain took on a disturbing new light. It was quite possible, some said, that I didn’t even feel emotions in the same sense that regular people with regular brains did.

Of course, it would have been very difficult to re-brand Mr Peterson as a victim after all those accusations of paedophilia, but luckily there seemed to be a growing consensus that a case like this didn’t necessarily require victims; or if a victim was needed, then Morality itself could take that role. In this new interpretation of events, Mr Peterson and I became co-conspirators. He’d decided to kill himself and for a fee, paid in cash and narcotics, I’d been willing to help him. And this version of events was gaining popularity even before all that stuff about the will came out. But I’m not going to talk about that now. I suppose it will probably be the last thing I talk about. I’ve become a little sidetracked. The point I originally intended to address was as follows.

At every stage, the media seized upon the fact that I’d helped Mr Peterson die. They called our arrangement a ‘Death Pact’ – but, really, that’s not a phrase that tells you anything important. It’s just the kind of phrase that sells newspapers. For us, it was never about death. It was about life. Knowing that there was a way out, and that his suffering was not going to become unendurable, was the one thing that allowed Mr Peterson to go on living, much longer than he would have otherwise wanted. It was the weeks leading up to our pact that were shrouded in darkness and despair; after its inception, life became a meaningful prospect once more.

Let me tell you something about time: it’s not what you think it is. It’s not a regular pulse beating at the same tempo for every person at every point in the universe. This was something Einstein discovered about a hundred years ago, using his unusually large brain. He came up with some equations that showed that a person on a train travelling close to the speed of light would measure a different value for time than the person waiting for him at the railway station. Similarly, a person sitting on the surface of the Sun would find his watch subtly out of synch with a person floating weightless through interstellar space. Time has different values for different people in different circumstances. Einstein proved this idea mathematically, but, in my experience, it also holds true from a subjective standpoint.

I know, for example, that Mr Peterson did not experience the flow of time in the same way that I did during those final sixteen months. He told me often, particularly towards the end, that for him time had become a slow, peaceful drift. If I had to guess why this was the case, I’d say that maybe it was because this was time he’d never expected to have. Or maybe it was more that he was now
letting
time drift. There was a certain type of contentment in his outlook, which never strayed too far into the future. His life had become simple and uncluttered, and when you’re living like that, I think time
can
seem to stretch out for ever. Matters only change when you start fretting about all the things you need to get done. The more stuff you try to force into it, the less accommodating time becomes.

Of course, Mr Peterson couldn’t be completely oblivious to the future. There were still certain practicalities to be considered. There were emails and phone calls to the clinic in Switzerland, medical documents that had to be obtained, copied and posted (under the pretext of a consultation with a ‘private specialist’). But once Mr Peterson’s case had been assessed and a provisional green light granted, these matters could recede into the background. As long as he kept his records periodically updated, he knew that his way out had been secured. He’d be able to make his final appointment at relatively short notice, as and when the time came. But until then, it no longer had to be a daily concern. He could concentrate instead on all the other measures that were going to help him in the short and medium term.

On medical advice, he saw a physiotherapist at the hospital and was taught a regime of simple daily exercises to combat the developing problems with his gait and balance. His house was fitted with a stairlift, and sturdy railings were fixed to the walls in the bathrooms and hallways. He had Meals on Wheels visiting daily and a Lithuanian lady called Krystyn who came round twice a week to clean. In between the dusting and vacuuming and so forth, they spent a lot of time drinking coffee and talking about how peculiar the English were. Strangely, Mr Peterson’s life had become a whole lot more sociable now that he found himself so physically restricted. And it wasn’t just home help and the medical professionals, of course. Once people were aware of his illness, he had a small but dedicated division of weekly visitors. Mrs Griffith brought round cakes and casseroles every three or four days, regular as clockwork. Fiona Fitton and Sophie Haynes took it in turns to come over with various audio books and classical CDs ordered through Glastonbury Library. And since everyone now knew (almost) everything there was to know about Mr Peterson’s situation, there wasn’t much point in his being furtive any longer. He talked openly and frankly about his illness. On the subject of his suicide attempt and hospitalization, he always gave the same concise summary: ‘I didn’t think my life was worth living, but it turned out I was wrong.’ He said that he wanted people to understand the very sane reasoning that had motivated his actions. This may have been a joke. I’m not sure. Ironically, he seemed to find it much easier to be light-hearted now that he’d acknowledged he was dying.