Death in Holy Orders

by P. D. James

  “And you were happy about his vocation?”

  Father Martin took his time before replying.

  “Father Sebastian was, but I wonder whether he may not have been influenced by Ronald’s academic record. He wasn’t as clever as he thought he was, but he was clever. I had my doubts. It seemed to me that Ronald was desperate to impress his father. Obviously he couldn’t measure up in his father’s world, but he could choose a career which would offer no possible comparison. And with the priesthood, particularly the Catholic priesthood, there’s always the temptation of power. Once ordained, he would be able to pronounce absolution. That at least is something his father couldn’t do. I have not said this to anyone else and I could be wrong. When his application was considered I felt I was in some difficulty. It is never easy for a Warden to have his predecessor still in college. This was a matter on which I didn’t feel it right to oppose Father Sebastian.”

  But it was with a sense of deepening if illogical unease that Dalgliesh heard Father Martin say, “And now I expect you would like to see where he died.”

  Eric Surtees left St. John’s Cottage by the back door and walked between his neat rows of autumn vegetables to commune with his pigs. Lily, Marigold, Daisy and Myrtle came galumphing across to him in a squealing mass and raised their pink snouts to sniff his coming. Whatever his mood, a visit to his self-built piggery and its railed enclosure could meet his need. But today, as he leant over and scratched Myrtle’s back, nothing could lift the weight of anxiety that lay like a physical load on his shoulders.

  His half-sister, Karen, was due to arrive in time for tea. Usually she drove from London every third weekend and, whatever the weather, those two days always remained sunlit in his memory and warmed and lightened the weeks between. In the last four years she had changed his life. He couldn’t now imagine his life without her. Normally her coming this weekend would be a bonus; she had been with him only the Sunday before. But he knew that she was coming because she had something to ask of him, a request to make which he had refused the previous week and knew that he must somehow find the strength to refuse again.

  Leaning over the fence of the pigsty he thought back over the last four years, about himself and Karen. The relationship hadn’t at first been propitious. He had been twenty-six when they met; she was three years younger, and for the first ten years of her life her existence had been unknown to him and his mother. His father, a travelling representative for a large publishing conglomerate, had successfully run two establishments until, after ten years, the financial and physical strain and the complications of the balancing act had become too much for him and he had thrown in his lot with his mistress and departed. Neither Eric nor his mother had been particularly sorry to see him go; there was nothing she enjoyed more than a grievance and her husband had now handed her one which kept her in a state of happy indignation and fierce battling for the final ten years of her life. She fought, but unsuccessfully, to own the London house, insisted on having custody of the only child

  (there was no battle there), and conducted a long and acrimonious dispute about the allocation of income. Eric had never seen his father again.

  The four-storey house was part of a Victorian terrace near the Oval underground station. After his mother’s protracted death from Alzheimer’s disease he stayed on alone, having been informed by his father’s solicitor that he could continue to do so rent-free until his father died. Four years ago a massive heart-attack killed him instantly while on the road, and Eric discovered that the house had been left jointly to him and his half-sister.

  He had seen her for the first time at his father’s funeral. The event it could hardly be dignified by a more ceremonial name had taken place at a North London crematorium without benefit of clergy, indeed without benefit of mourners except for himself and Karen and two representatives of the firm. The disposal had taken only minutes.

  Coming out of the crematorium his half-sister had said without preamble, “That’s how Dad wanted it. He never went in for religion. He didn’t want any flowers and he didn’t want any mourners. We’ll have to talk about the house, but not now. I have an urgent appointment at the office. It hasn’t been easy to get off.”

  She hadn’t invited him to drive back with her and he went home alone to the empty house. But next day she had called. He vividly remembered opening the door. She was wearing, as she had at the funeral, tight black leather trousers, a baggy red sweater and high-heeled boots. Her hair looked spiky, as if it had been brilliantined, and there was a glittering stud in the left of her nose. Her appearance was conventionally outre but he found to his surprise that he rather liked the way she looked. They moved into the rarely used front room without speaking and she looked round with an appraising then dismissive glance at the leavings of his mother’s life, the cumbersome furniture which he had never bothered to replace, the dusty curtains hung with the pattern towards the street, the mantel shelf crowded with gaudy ornaments brought back from his mother’s holidays in Spain.

  She said, “We’ve got to make a decision about the house. We can sell now and each take half the profit, or we can let. Or, I suppose, we could spend a bit of capital on doing some adaptations and convert it into three studio flats. This won’t be cheap, but Dad left an insurance policy and I don’t mind spending it, as long as I get a higher proportion of the rents. What are you thinking of doing, by the way; I mean, did you expect to stay here?”

  He said, “I don’t really want to stay in London. I was thinking, if we sell the house, I’d have enough money to buy a small cottage somewhere. I might try market gardening, something like that.”

  “Then you’d be a fool. It’d need more capital than you’re likely to get and there’s no money in it anyway, not on the kind of scale you’re thinking of. Still, if you want to get out, I suppose you’re keen on selling.”

  He thought: she knows what she wants to do and it will happen in the end, no matter what I say. But he didn’t really greatly care. He followed her from room to room, in a kind of wonder.

  He said, “I don’t mind keeping it on if that’s what you want.”

  “It’s not what I want, it’s what’s the most sensible thing for us both. The housing market’s good at present and likely to get better. Of course if we do convert, it will lessen its value as a family residence. On the other hand, it would bring us in a regular income.”

  And that inevitably was what had happened. She had, he knew, begun by despising him, but as they worked together her attitude perceptibly changed. She was surprised and gratified to discover how good he was with his hands, how much money was saved because he could paint and paper walls, put up shelves, install cupboards. He had never bothered to improve the house which had been his home only in name. Now he discovered unexpected and satisfying skills. They employed a professional plumber, an electrician and a builder for the major work, but much of it was done by Eric. They became involuntary partners. On Saturdays they would shop for second-hand furniture, for bargains in bed-linen and cutlery, showing each other their trophies with the happy triumph of children. He showed her how to use a blow-torch safely, insisted on the proper preparation of the woodwork before painting despite her protests that it wasn’t necessary, amazed her by the careful dedication with which he measured up and fitted the kitchen units. As they worked she gossiped about her own life, the freelance journalism in which she was beginning to make a name, her pleasure in achieving a by-line, the bitchiness and gossip and small scandals of the literary world on the fringe of which she worked. It was a world which he found terrifyingly alien. He was glad he was not required to enter it.

  He dreamed of a cottage, a kitchen garden and perhaps his secret passion of keeping pigs.

  And he could remember of course he could the day when they became lovers. He had fixed slatted wooden blinds to one of the south-facing windows and they were emulsion-painting the walls together. She was a messy worker and half-way through announced that she was hot, sticky, splatte
red with paint and would take a shower. It would be a chance to test the efficiency of the newly installed bathroom. So he too had stopped painting and had sat cross-legged, resting against the one unpainted wall, watching the light slant in through the half-open blinds to lattice the paint-splattered floor and letting happy contentment bubble up like a spring.

  And then she had come in. She had twisted a towel round her waist but was otherwise naked, and she was carrying a large bath-mat over her arm. Laying it down, she had squatted there and laughing at him, had held out her arms. In a kind of trance he had knelt in front of her and whispered, “But we can’t, we can’t. We’re brother and sister.”

  “Only half-brother, half-sister. All to the good. Keep it in the family.”

  He had muttered, “The blind, it’s too light.”

  She had sprung up and pulled the blind shut. The room was almost dark. She came back to him and held his head against her breasts.

  It had been for him the first time and it changed his life. He knew that she didn’t love him and he didn’t yet love her. During that and subsequent astonishing love-making he had shut his eyes and indulged all his private fantasies, romantic, tender, violent, shameful. The imaginings tumbled into his brain and were made flesh. And then one day for the first time, when they were making love more comfortably on the bed, he had opened his eyes and looked into hers and had known that this was love.

  It was Karen who had found for him the job at St. Anselm’s. She had had an assignment in Ipswich and had picked up a copy of the East Anglian Daily News. Returning that night, she had come to the house in which he was now picnicking in the basement while the work continued, and had brought the paper with her.

  “This might suit you. It’s a handyman’s job at a theological college just south of Lowestoft. That should be lonely enough for you. They’re offering a cottage and apparently there’s a garden, and I dare say you could persuade them to let you keep hens if you wanted.”

  “I don’t want hens, I’d rather have pigs.”

  “Well pigs then, if they’re not too smelly. They’re not paying much, but you should get two hundred and fifty pounds a week from the rents here. You could probably save some of that. What do you think?”

  He had thought it almost too good to be true.

  She said, “Of course they might want a married couple, but it doesn’t say so. But we’d better get moving on it. I’ll drive you down tomorrow morning if you like. Phone up now and ask for an appointment, they give a number.”

  Next day she had driven him to Suffolk, leaving him at the gate of the college saying she would return and wait for him in an hour. He had been interviewed by Father Sebastian Morell and Father Martin Petrie. He had worried in case they had wanted a clerical reference or asked him if he were a regular churchgoer, but religion hadn’t been mentioned.

  Karen had said, “You’ll be able to get a reference from the Town Hall, of course, but you’d better prove that you’re a good handyman. It’s not an office drudge they’re looking for. I’ve brought a camera along. I’ll take photographs of those cupboards, shelves and fitments you’ve put up and you can show them the Polaroids. You’ve got to sell yourself, remember.”

  But he didn’t need to sell himself. He’d answered their questions simply and had taken out his Polaroids with a rather touching eagerness which had shown them how much he wanted the job. They had taken him to view the cottage. It was larger than he had expected or wanted, but it lay some eighty yards from the back of the college with an unobstructed view across the shrub land and with a small untended garden. He hadn’t mentioned the pigs until he had worked there for over a month, but when he did no one had raised any objection. Father Martin had said a little nervously, “They won’t get out, will they, Eric?” as if he had been proposing to cage Alsatians.

  “No, Father. I thought I could build a sty and enclosure for them. I’ll show you the drawings, of course, before I buy the wood.”

  “What about the smell?” Father Sebastian enquired.

  “I’m told pigs don’t smell, but I can usually smell them. Of course I may have a more sensitive nose than most people.”

  “No, they won’t smell, Father. Pigs are very clean creatures.”

  So he had his cottage, his garden, his pigs, and once every three weeks he had Karen. He couldn’t think of a life more satisfactory.

  At St. Anselm’s he had found the peace that all his life he had been looking for. He couldn’t understand why it was so necessary to him, this absence of noise, of controversy, of the pressures of discordant personalities. It wasn’t as if his father had ever been violent towards him. For most of the time he hadn’t even been present, and when he was present his parents’ discordant marriage had been more a matter of grumbling and muttered grievances than of raised voices or open anger. What he saw as his timidity seemed to have been part of his personality since childhood. Even when working in the Town Hall -hardly the most provocative or exhilarating of jobs he had held apart from the occasional spats of ill-feeling, the minor feuds which some workers seemed to find necessary, indeed to provoke. Until he knew and loved Karen no company in the world had seemed more desirable than his own.

  And now, with this peace, this sanctuary, his garden and his pigs, a job he enjoyed doing and was valued for, and Karen’s regular visits, he had found a life that suited every corner of his mind and fibre of his being. But with the appointment of Archdeacon Crampton as a Trustee everything changed. The fear of what Karen might demand of him was only an added worry to the overwhelming anxiety that had come with the arrival of the Archdeacon.

  On the occasion of the Archdeacon’s first visit, Father Sebastian had said to him, “Archdeacon Crampton may call in to see you, Eric, sometime on Sunday or Monday. The Bishop has appointed him as a trustee and I expect there will be questions he will find it necessary to ask.”

  There had been something in Father Sebastian’s voice as he spoke the last words which had put Eric on guard.

  He said, “Questions about my job here, Father?”

  “About the terms of your employment, about anything which enters his mind, I have no doubt. He may want to look round the cottage.”

  He had wanted to look round the cottage. He had arrived shortly after nine o’clock on Monday morning. Karen, unusually, had stayed for Sunday night and had left in a hurry at half-past seven. She had had an appointment in London at ten o’clock and had already left it dangerously late; the Monday morning traffic on the Ai2 was bad, particularly as it approached London. In the rush and Karen was always in a rush she had forgotten that her bra and a pair of knickers were still hanging on the clothes-line at the side of the cottage. They were the first thing that the Archdeacon saw as he came down the path.

  Without introducing himself, he said, “I didn’t realize you had a visitor.”

  Eric snatched the offending articles from the line and stuffed them into his pocket, realizing even as he did so that the act, in its mixture of embarrassment and furtiveness, was a mistake.

  He said, “My sister has been here for the weekend, Father.”

  “I’m not your father. I don’t use that term. You can call me Archdeacon.”

  “Yes, Archdeacon.”

  He was very tall, certainly over six foot, square-faced with bright darting eyes under thick but well-shaped eyebrows, and a beard.

  They walked down the path towards the pigsty in silence. At least, thought Eric, there was nothing he could complain about in the state of the garden.

  The pigs greeted them with far louder squealing than was normal. The Archdeacon said, “I hadn’t realized you kept pigs. Do you provide pork for the college?”

  “Sometimes, Archdeacon. But they don’t eat much pork. Their meat comes from the butcher in Lowestoft. I just keep pigs. I asked Father Sebastian if I could and he gave permission.”

  “How much of your time do they take up ?”

  “Not much, Fath… Not much, Archdeacon.”

  �
�They seem extremely noisy, but at least they don’t smell.”

  There was no answer to that. The Archdeacon turned back to the house and Eric followed him. In the sitting-room he mutely offered one of the four upright rush-bottomed chairs round the square table. The Archdeacon seemed not to notice the invitation. He stood with his back to the fireplace and surveyed the room: the two armchairs one a rocker, one a Windsor chair with a padded cushion in patchwork -the low bookcase along the whole of one wall, the posters which Karen had brought with her and fixed to the wall with Blu Tack.

  The Archdeacon said, “I suppose the stuff you’ve used to put up these posters doesn’t damage the wall?”

  “It shouldn’t. It’s specially made. It’s like chewing gum.”

  Then the Archdeacon pulled out one of the chairs sharply and sat down, motioning Eric to the other. The questions which followed were not aggressively put but Eric felt that he was a suspect under interrogation, accused of some as yet unnamed crime.

  “How long have you worked here? Four years, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Archdeacon.”

  “And your duties are what, precisely?”

  His duties had never been precise. Eric said, “I’m a general handyman. I mend anything that gets broken if it isn’t electrical, and I do the outside cleaning. That means I wash down the cloister floor, sweep up the courtyard, and clean the windows. Mr. Pilbeam is responsible for the inside cleaning and there’s a woman comes in from Reydon to help.”

  “Hardly an onerous job. The garden looks well kept. You’re fond of gardening?”

  “Yes, very fond.”

  “But it’s hardly large enough to supply vegetables for the college.”

  “Not all the vegetables, but I grow too much for my own use so I take the surplus up to the kitchen for Mrs. Pilbeam and sometimes I give vegetables to people in the other cottages.”

  “Do they pay for them?”