A short story by R J Dent
Published by D.F.L. Lit: https://dfllit.com/066-2/
Some notes on the creation of Legacy.
R J Dent says:
‘As with many short stories, Legacy started with a newspaper article that I read; one in which a man died in a car crash just days before he went on trial for several heinous crimes.
‘I used some elements of that newspaper report to write an imaginary back story for the man, trying to imagine what must have happened to him in his life to make him into the monster that he clearly was.
‘I wanted to write a story in which a decent person gets to ask difficult questions about something that would normally be impossible to ask – because the person they need to ask is no longer around. In Legacy, William Deacon gets to ask a question that he would never under ‘normal’ circumstances (whatever they are) get to ask. His question gets answered too.
‘My recent works (Revelation, Suki Takes It Off (Again) and Screaming at the Window in particular) are concerned with giving a voice to those who have either been silenced, or who are made voiceless for some reason. I provide those characters with an opportunity to ask unaskable questions – and to get answers to those questions.
‘As with many of my stories, there are several aspects of the story that are true. One person who read it said: ‘I love how British it is’ – to which I would add a slight refinement: Legacy is a very English story. The private boarding school system, the head boy becoming the headmaster, the Kent roads, the newspaper reports, and the denouement are all very ‘English’.
‘I wrote the story in three sections: the case history, the newspaper reports and the confrontation. The case history was the protagonist’s back story; the newspaper reports were the facts of his death; the confrontation was where the dead man’s brother got to ask the question he wanted to ask.
‘In Legacy, I wanted to examine the abuse of power and how that abuse engenders further abuses of power – leaving a legacy of corruption, psychological damage, destruction and death. There’s absolutely no redemption for anyone in the story, nor is there any proper resolution to the story either. The evil people get away with their crimes and the victims are left to suffer.
‘My interest was in William Deacon, specifically his reaction to the events. I wanted to examine how the brother of a monster deals (or doesn’t deal) with the fact that his brother is a monster. My main question was: What psychological acrobatics would William Deacon have to have performed to believe that his brother was ‘a caring man who went out of his way to help others’, whilst also knowing his brother was a victim of abuse and was also an adult abuser? William Deacon wants to get to the truth of why his brother was the way he was, but he also blames Michael Burton for his brother’s predilections. By doing that, William Deacon has absolved his brother from any personal blame for his actions.
‘In the third part of Legacy, William Deacon accuses Sylvia Burton of hiding her husband’s abuses and in doing so, he is both right and wrong. Mrs Sylvia Burton is evil – but so was his brother. Graham Deacon was not, as his brother claimed, ‘a caring man who went out of his way to help others’; Graham Deacon was a paedophile and a rapist. He was a victim of – and a perpetrator of – child sexual abuse, in that he had been an abused boy who grew up to be an adult abuser, as is sometimes the case with some abused children – and as has been documented.
‘Legacy does not state whether Graham Deacon’s death was deliberate or accidental. However, if Graham Deacon took his own life, then he had reached a point where he decided that rather than be ‘a caring man’ who would accept the appropriate punishment for his crimes and thereby go ‘out of his way to help others’, he would instead take his own life, thereby avoiding justice and condemning his child victims and his rape and assault victims to a lifetime of unresolved – and unresolvable – trauma.
‘Due to Graham Deacon’s death, his victims will never know what it is like to receive justice. As an abused child, Graham Deacon deserves everyone’s sympathy, but as an adult paedophile and rapist, it is Graham Deacon’s abuses which make him a monster. If his death was accidental, he escaped justice; if he committed suicide to escape justice, then he is irredeemable.’
R J Dent’s website: http://www.rjdent.com/
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