Original Sin

by P. D. James

  Jean-Philippe had watched the effect of that knowledge on Gerard: the compelling need for his father’s approbation and respect, the need to compete, to justify himself in his father’s eyes. Wasn’t that what climbing the Matterhorn when he was twenty-one had been all about? He had never before shown any interest in mountaineering. The exploit had been time-consuming and expensive. He had employed the best Zermatt guide who, reasonably, had decreed a period of some months’ hard training before the climb was attempted and had laid down his strict conditions. The party would turn back before the final assault on the summit if he judged Gerard a danger to himself or to others. But they hadn’t turned back. The mountain had been conquered. That was something Jean-Philippe hadn’t achieved.

  And then there was the Peverell Press. Here in his last years Jean-Philippe knew that he had been little more than a passenger, tolerated, undisturbed, no trouble to anyone. Gerard, when power passed into his hands, would transform Peverell Press. And Jean-Philippe had given him that power. He had transferred twenty of his shares in the firm to Gerard, and fifteen to Claudia. Gerard had only to keep the support of his sister to be sure of majority control. And why not? The Peverells had had their day; it was time for the Etiennes to take over.

  And still Gerard had come, month after month, to give his account as if he were a steward reporting to his master. He asked for no advice, no approbation. It wasn’t for advice or approbation that he came. Sometimes it seemed to Jean-Philippe that the journey was a form of reparation, a penance voluntarily imposed, a filial duty undertaken now when the old man was past caring and letting slip from his stiffened hands those frail cords which bound him to family, to the firm, to life. He had listened, had occasionally commented, but had never brought himself to say: ‘I don’t want to hear. I’m no longer concerned. You can sell Innocent House, move to Docklands, sell the firm, burn the archives. The last of my interest in Peverell Press was cast from me when I dropped those grains of crushed bone into the Thames. I am as dead to your busy concerns as is Henry Peverell. We are both now beyond caring. Don’t think because I can speak to you, still perform some of the functions of a man, that I am alive.’ He would sit immobile, and from time to time stretch out a shaking hand for his tumbler of wine, the glass, with its heavy base, so much easier now to manage than a wine glass. His son’s voice had come from a distance.

  ‘It’s difficult to know whether to buy or rent. In principle I’m for buying. The rents are ridiculously low but they won’t be when the leases run out. On the other hand it makes sense to take a short lease for the next five years and free the capital for acquisitions and development. Publishing is about books not property. For the past hundred years Peverell Press have squandered resources on maintaining Innocent House as if the house was the firm. Lose the house and you lose the Press. Bricks and mortar elevated to a symbol, even on the writing paper.’

  Jean-Philippe had said: ‘Stone and marble.’ To Gerard’s quick inquiring frown he added, ‘Stone and marble, not bricks and mortar.’

  ‘The rear façade is brick. The house is an architectural bastard. People say how brilliantly Charles Fowler wedded late Georgian elegance to fifteenth-century Venetian Gothic, but he’d have done better not to try. Hector Skolling is welcome to Innocent House.’

  ‘Frances will be unhappy.’

  He had said it for something to say. He was untouched by Frances’s unhappiness. The wine was strong in his mouth. It was good that he could still taste the robust reds.

  Gerard had said: ‘She’ll get over it. All the Peverells feel compelled to love Innocent House, but I doubt if she greatly cares.’ Following the association of ideas, he added: ‘You saw the announcement of my engagement in last Monday’s Times?’

  ‘No. I no longer bother with newspapers. The Spectator has a summary of the week’s main news. That half-page is sufficient to reassure me that the world goes on much as it always has. I hope you’ll be happy in your marriage. I was.’

  ‘Yes, I always thought that you and Mother seemed to hit it off rather well.’

  Jean-Philippe could smell his embarrassment. The comment in its gross inadequacy had hung between them like a wisp of acrid smoke. Jean-Philippe said quietly: ‘I wasn’t thinking of your mother.’

  And now, gazing across the stretch of quiet water it seemed to him that only in those turbulent and confused days of war had he been truly alive. He had been young, passionately in love, exhilarated by constant danger, stimulated by the ardours of leadership, exalted by a simple and unquestioning patriotism which for him had become a religion. Among the confused loyalties of Vichy France his own had been clear and absolute. Nothing since had touched the wonder, the excitement, the glamour of those years. Never again had he lived every day with such intensity. Even after Chantal had been killed his resolution hadn’t faltered although he was confused by the realization that he blamed the Maquis as much as the occupying Germans for her death. He had never believed that the most effective resistance lay in armed action or in the murder of German soldiers. And then in 1944 had come liberation and triumph, and with it a reaction so unexpected and so strong that it left him demoralized, almost apathetic. Only then, in the moment of triumph, had he space and time to grieve for Chantal. He felt like a man emptied of all capacity for emotion except for this overwhelming grief which in its sad futility seemed part of a greater, a universal grieving.

  He had had little stomach for revenge and had watched with sick disgust the shaving of the heads of women accused of ‘sentimental relations with the enemy’, the vendettas, the purges by the Maquis, the summary justice which executed thirty people in the Puy-de-Dôme without formal trial. He was glad, as was most of the population, when the due process of law was established, but he took no satisfaction in the proceedings or in the verdicts. He had no sympathy for those collaborators who had betrayed the Resistance, or who had tortured or murdered. But in those ambiguous years many collaborators with the Vichy regime had done what they believed right for France, and if the Axis powers had won, perhaps it would have been right for France. Some were decent men who had chosen the wrong side for motives not wholly ignoble, others were weak, some motivated by a hatred of communism, others seduced by fascism’s insidious glamour. He could hate none of them. Even his own fame, his own heroism, his own innocence, became repugnant to him.

  He had needed to get away from France and had come to London. His grandmother had been English. He spoke the language faultlessly and was familiar with the peculiarities of English customs, all of which helped to soothe his self-imposed banishment. But he hadn’t come to England out of any special affection for the country or its people. The countryside was beautiful, but then he had had France. It had been necessary to leave and England was the obvious choice. It was in London at a party – he couldn’t now remember which or where – that he had been introduced to Henry Peverell’s cousin Margaret. She was pretty, sensitive and appealingly childlike, and had fallen romantically in love with him, in love with his heroism, with his nationality, even with his accent. He had found her uncritical adulation flattering, and it was difficult not to respond with at least affection and a protective warmth for what he saw as her vulnerability. But he had never loved her. He had only loved one human being. With Chantal had died his capacity for any feeling warmer than affection.

  But he had married her, taken her for four years to Toronto, and when that self-imposed banishment grew irksome they had returned to London, now with two babies. At Henry’s invitation he had joined the Peverell Press, invested his considerable capital in the firm, taken his shares and spent the rest of his working life in that extravagant folly on a northern alien river. He supposed that he had been reasonably content. He knew people thought him rather dull; that didn’t surprise him, he bored himself. The marriage had endured. He had made his wife Margaret Peverell as happy as she was capable of being. He suspected that the Peverell women weren’t capable of much happiness. She had desperately wanted children and he ha
d dutifully provided her with the son and daughter for which she had hoped. That was how, then and now, he thought of parenthood; the giving of something necessary for his wife’s happiness if not for his own and for which, having provided it as he might a ring, a necklace or a new car, he need take no further responsibility since responsibility was handed over with the gift.

  And now Gerard was dead and this unknown policeman was coming to tell him that his son had been murdered.

  37

  Kate and Daniel’s appointment to see Rupert Farlow had been fixed for ten o’clock. They knew it would be almost impossible to park in Hillgate Village so left the car at Notting Hill Gate Police Station and walked up the gentle hill under the high limes of Holland Park Avenue. Kate thought how strange it was to be back so soon in this familiar part of London. She had left her flat only three days earlier but it seemed that she had moved away from the area in imagination as well as in fact and that now, coming up to Notting Hill Gate, she saw the raucous urban conglomeration through the eyes of a stranger. But nothing, of course, had changed; the discordant, undistinguished 1930s architecture, the plethora of street signs, the railings which made her feel like a herded animal, the long concrete flower beds with their straggling and dust-grimed evergreens, the shop fronts spilling their names in rivers of garish light red, green and yellow, the ceaseless grind of the traffic. There was even the same beggar outside the supermarket with his large Alsatian slumped on a rug at his feet, murmuring to passers-by his appeal for change to buy a sandwich. Behind this busyness lay Hillgate Village in its stuccoed, multi-coloured calm.

  As they passed the beggar and stood waiting to cross at the traffic lights, Daniel said: ‘We’ve got a few like that where I live. I’d be tempted to pop into the supermarket and buy him a sandwich if I wasn’t afraid of provoking a breach of the peace and if he and the dog didn’t already look over-fed. Do you ever give?’

  ‘Not to his kind, and not often. Sometimes. I disapprove of myself but I do it. Never more than a quid.’

  ‘To be spent on drink and drugs.’

  ‘A gift should be unconditional. Even a quid. Even to a beggar. And OK, I do know that it’s conniving at an offence.’

  They had crossed the road at the traffic lights when abruptly he spoke again.

  ‘I ought to go to my cousin’s bar mitzvah next Saturday.’

  ‘Then go, that is if it’s important.’

  ‘AD won’t welcome an application for leave. You know how he is once we’re on a case.’

  ‘It doesn’t take all day, does it? Ask him. He was very decent when Robbins wanted that day off after his uncle died.’

  ‘That was for a Christian funeral not a Jewish bar mitzvah.’

  ‘What other kind of bar mitzvah is there? And don’t be unfair. He isn’t like that and you know it. Like I said, if it’s important ask, if it isn’t don’t.’

  ‘Important to whom?’

  ‘How do I know? To the boy I suppose.’

  ‘I hardly know him. I doubt whether he’ll care much either way. But we’re a small family, he’s only got the two cousins. I suppose he’d like me to be there. My aunt would probably prefer me not to be. That way she’ll be given another grievance against my mother.’

  ‘You can hardly expect AD to decide whether pleasing your nephew is more important than disobliging your aunt. If it’s important to you then go. Why make such a big thing about it?’

  He didn’t reply, and as they made their way up Hillgate Street she thought, perhaps it’s because, for him, it is a big thing. Thinking back on it, the brief conversation surprised her. This was the first time he had even tentatively opened the door to his private life. And she had thought that, like her, he guarded with almost obsessive watchfulness that essentially inviolate portal. In the three months since he had joined the squad they had never spoken of his Jewishness, nor indeed of much else except work. Was he genuinely seeking advice or using her to clear his thoughts? If he needed advice it was surprising that he sought it from her. She had from the first been aware of a defensiveness in him which if not tactfully handled could become tricky, and she slightly resented the need for tact in a professional relationship. Police work was stressful enough without the need to propitiate or accommodate a colleague. But she liked him or, it might be truer to say, was beginning to like him without being sure why. He was sturdily built, hardly taller than she, strong-featured, fair-haired and with slate-grey eyes which shone like polished pebbles. When he was angry they could darken almost to black. She recognized both his intelligence and an ambition which mirrored her own. And at least he had no hang-up about working with a woman senior to himself or, if he had, was more skilful than most of his colleagues at concealing it. She told herself, too, that she was beginning to find him sexually attractive as if this formal and regular recognition of the fact could guard her against the follies of propinquity. She had seen too many colleagues make a mess of their private and professional lives to risk that kind of involvement, always so much easier to begin than to end.

  She said, wanting to match his confidence and fearing that she had been too dismissive: ‘There were a dozen different religions among the children at Ancroft Comprehensive. We seemed always to be celebrating some kind of feast or ceremony. Usually it required making a noise and dressing up. The official line was that all religions were equally important. I must say that the result was to leave me with the conviction that they were equally unimportant. I suppose if you don’t teach religion with conviction it becomes just one more boring subject. Perhaps I’m a natural pagan. I don’t go in for all this emphasis on sin, suffering and judgement. If I had a God I’d like Him to be intelligent, cheerful and amusing.’

  He said: ‘I doubt whether you’d find him much of a comfort when they herded you into the gas chambers. You might prefer a God of vengeance. This is the street isn’t it?’

  She wondered if he had wearied of the subject or was warning her off his private ground. She said: ‘Yes. It looks as if the high numbers are at the other end.’

  There was an entryphone at the left of the door. Kate pressed the bell and when a masculine voice responded said: ‘This is Inspector Miskin and Inspector Aaron. We’ve come to see Mr Farlow. He is expecting us.’

  She listened for the buzz which would indicate that the door lock had been released, but instead the same voice said: ‘I’ll be down.’

  The wait of a minute and a half seemed longer. Kate had looked at her watch a second time when the door was opened and they found themselves confronted by a stocky young man, barefoot and wearing tightly fitting trousers in a blue-and-white check and a white sweatshirt. His hair was cut in very short spikes giving the round head the look of a bristled brush. His nose was wide and chubby and the short round arms with their patina of brown hair looked as softly plump as a child’s. Kate thought that he had the snug compactness of a toy bear, needing only a price tag dangling from the earring in his left ear to complete the illusion. But the pale blue eyes meeting hers were initially wary, then changed as she met them to frank antagonism, and when he spoke there was no welcome in his voice. Ignoring the proffered warrant card he said: ‘You’d better come up.’

  The narrow hall was very warm, the air permeated with an exotic smell, part floral, part spicy, which Kate would have found agreeable if it had been less strong. They mounted the narrow stairs behind their guide and found themselves in a sitting-room which ran the whole length of the house. A curved archway showed where once there must have been the dividing wall. At the rear a small conservatory had been built out to overlook the garden. Kate, who thought that she had brought to an art the ability to take in details of her surroundings without betraying too obvious a curiosity, now noticed nothing but the man they had come to see. He was lying propped up on a single bed to the right of the conservatory and he was obviously dying. She had seen the extremity of emaciation often enough pictured on her television screen; viewing almost routinely in her sitting-room the dead eyes a
nd shrivelled limbs of starvation. But now, encountering it for the first time, she wondered how any human being could be so diminished and still breathe, how the great eyes, which seemed to be floating free in their sockets, could hold her with such a look of intense, slightly ironic amusement. He was enveloped in a dressing-gown of scarlet silk but it could give no glow to the sickly yellow skin. There was a card table close to the head of the bed with a facing chair and two packs of cards ready on the green baize top. It looked as if Rupert Farlow and his companion were about to begin a game of canasta.

  His voice was not strong but it did not waver; the essential self was still alive, still heard in its high clear tones. ‘Forgive me if I don’t get up. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. I’m conserving my energies for ensuring that Ray doesn’t get a sight of my cards. Do sit down if you can find a seat. Would you like a drink? I know you’re not supposed to drink on duty but I insist on regarding this as a social call. Ray, where did you hide the bottle?’