by P. D. James
But the last seven words sounded as grudging and patronizing as an invitation to an unwelcome guest. She tried again: “I shall be taking up my Cambridge scholarship in October and hope to find a flat in London for the next couple of months. If you haven’t finally decided on your plans after you leave Melcombe Grange and would care to share the flat, that would be agreeable for me, but please don’t feel that you have to say yes.”
It occurred to her that her mother might worry about her share of the rent. Presumably she wouldn’t leave prison with very much money. She ought to make it plain that no payment was involved. She began to write that the offer was without obligation, but that bleak commercial note was too reminiscent of a sales catalogue. And there would, after all, be obligations. The demands she would be making of her mother couldn’t be satisfied with money. In the end she decided the details could await their meeting. She ended the draft: “It will only be a small flat—a room for each of us and a kitchen and bathroom—but I hope to find one which will be reasonably central and convenient.”
Convenient for what, she wondered. Covent Garden Opera House, the West End shops, the theatres and restaurants? What sort of life was she implying? What was she visualizing for this stranger who would walk into freedom, if licence from a life sentence was ever freedom, carrying the weight of a dead child? She copied out the draft neatly and signed the letter Philippa Palfrey. She read it through carefully. It was, she thought, disingenuous. She wondered whether her mother would see through the careful words to the truth. There was no real choice for her. She was, in effect, being once again hunted down. The meeting between them was inevitable; if not now, it would come later. There was nothing her mother could do to prevent it.
Perhaps it would have been more honest and, since style depended on honesty, more satisfying to have written the brutal truth.
“If you have nowhere satisfactory to go when you’re released from prison, would you care to share a flat with me in London until I go up to Cambridge in October? It can’t be longer than that; I’m not intending to alter my life for you. I need to know who I am. If you need a room for two months it would seem a fair exchange. Let me know if you’d like me to come up to Melcombe Grange to talk about it.”
She heard two sets of footsteps mounting the stairs. Then there was a knock. That must be Hilda. Maurice—taught perhaps by Helena—would never have knocked. They stood there, side by side, like a deputation, dressing-gowned, Hilda in her flowered padded nylon, Maurice in his fine scarlet wool, looking diminished and vulnerable, bringing with them a childhood bathtime smell of soap and powder.
He said: “We have to talk, Philippa.”
“I’m too tired. It’s after midnight. And what is there to say?”
“At least do nothing until you’ve seen her, spoken to her.”
“I’ve already written. I’ll post it tomorrow, today I mean. The offer means nothing if it isn’t made before we meet. I can’t look her over first as if she were goods on approval.”
“You propose then to commit yourself, for weeks, for months, perhaps even for life, to a woman you don’t know, who has done nothing for you, who will be nothing but an embarrassment to you, who you probably won’t even like. The fact that she happens to be a murderess is irrelevant. It’s quixotic, Philippa. Worse, it’s self-indulgent stupidity.”
“I didn’t say anything about commitment.”
“Of course it’s a commitment. You’re not engaging a junior clerk. If she doesn’t give satisfaction you can hardly throw her out. What else is it but a commitment?”
“A sensible arrangement to help her over these first two months outside. All I propose to do is to make the offer. She may not even want to see me. If she does it won’t necessarily mean that she’ll want to share a flat. She’s probably made other arrangements. But if she hasn’t found anywhere to go, then I’m free for the next few months. At least she’ll have a choice.”
“It’s not a question of her finding somewhere to go. If she hasn’t a family willing to take her back, then the probation service will have found somewhere for her. She won’t be homeless. They don’t parole lifers unless the aftercare arrangements are approved by the Home Office as satisfactory.”
Hilda said nervously: “Aren’t there hostels, places like that? I’ve heard they’re quite nice. She’ll probably go to a hostel just until she’s sorted herself out, found herself a job.”
She spoke, thought Philippa, as if her mother were a convalescent being discharged prematurely from hospital.
Maurice said: “Or she’ll join up with some women she’s met inside. I don’t suppose she’s spent all those years entirely alone.”
“You mean a lover? A lesbian?”
He said irritably: “It’s not unknown. You know nothing about her. She let you go out of her life, no doubt because she thought it for the best. Now do the same for her. Hasn’t it occurred to you that you may be the last person on earth that she wants to see again?”
“Then all she has to do is say so. I shall write first. I’m not proposing to arrive at the prison unannounced. And if she gave me up it’s because she had no choice.”
Hilda’s voice was a thin wail of protest.
“But you can’t just leave! What are people going to think? What can we say to your friends, to Gabriel Lomas?”
“It’s nothing to do with Gabriel. Tell them I’m abroad until October. That’s what I was going to do anyway.”
“But they’re bound to see you in London. They’ll see you with her!”
“What if they do? She won’t be branded on her forehead with the divine stigma. I’ll think of something to tell your friends if that’s all you’re worried about. And it’s only for a couple of months. People do leave home occasionally.”
Maurice came into the room and walked over to the Henry Walton. Studying the picture, his back to her, he said: “How much have you read about the murder?”
“I haven’t read anything. I know that she killed a child called Julie Scase after my father raped her.”
“You haven’t consulted the newspaper reports of the crime?”
“No, I haven’t the time to grub about in the archives, and I don’t want to.”
“Then I suggest that, before you do anything foolish, make any decision, you get hold of the newspaper cuttings and the trial report and learn the facts.”
“I know the facts. They were told to me this morning with brutal explicitness. I’m not going to spy on my mother before I meet her. If I want any more facts, she can give them to me. And now, please, I’m very tired. I’d like to go to bed.”
8
Two days later, on Friday 14th July, Norman Scase celebrated simultaneously his fifty-seventh birthday and the last day of his career as a local government accounts clerk. He had told his colleagues that he had been left a modest legacy by an uncle, sufficient to enable him to freeze his pension for three years and to take a premature retirement. The lie worried him; he was unpractised in lying. But something had to be said to explain how a middle-grade unqualified clerk who, to their knowledge, had worn the same suit to work for the last five years could afford the indulgence of an early retirement. He could hardly tell them the truth, that the murderess of his child was due to be released from prison in August and that there were arrangements which he had to make, matters to which he must now devote the whole of his time.
Celebration was not a word he would have used either for the birthday or for his last day at the office. He would have been grateful to have been allowed to slip quietly away as he had at the end of every working day for the last eight years; but there were rituals in the treasurer’s department from which not even the least sociable and most private member of the staff was exempt. It was the custom of members of staff who were leaving, getting married, being promoted or retiring to mark the occasion with an invitation either to tea or to sherry, depending on their status and habits and the degree of importance which they attached to the impending change. The
invitation was typed by courtesy of the typing pool for those too lowly to have a personal secretary, and circulated by the junior clerical assistant with the miscellaneous departmental notes, circulars and periodicals which went the rounds. On its first appearance Miss Millicent Yelland, the senior personal secretary, would start collecting for a present, tripping conspiratorially from room to room with an envelope to receive donations and a greeting card on which contributors would sign their names under variously worded messages of farewell or good wishes. The choice of card was invariably left to Miss Yelland. At fifty-four she had sublimated her maternal instincts by taking upon herself the role of mother of the division, and had for the past fifteen years promoted, without noticeable success, the fiction that they were all one happy family.
She always took a great deal of trouble, browsing along the racks in the Army and Navy Stores and in the Westminster Abbey Bookshop, and even venturing occasionally as far as Oxford Circus. For more senior staff she usually chose a dog. Dogs were always acceptable, evoking in her mind a mixture of vaguely felt emotions and aspirations, loyalty and devotion, rough tweeded masculinity, mysterious upper-class activities on grouse moors and among the heather, a restrained good taste. Since a country cottage, with its suggestion of shared connubial bliss, was unsuitable for a widower, and it was impossible to associate Mr. Scase with anything as frivolous as bambis or black cats, she decided on a moorland scene featuring a shaggy dog of indeterminate breed with a pheasant in its mouth.
When she examined the card again in her office she had a qualm of doubt. The pheasant, at least she supposed it was a pheasant, looked so very dead, pathetic really, with its drooping neck and glazed eye. It was hardly what you would call a cheerful card. She hoped that Mr. Scase didn’t disapprove of blood sports. And when one came to examine it, the expression on the dog’s face was really most unpleasant, almost gloating. Well, it would have to do now. She had spent thirty-three pence from the collection of ten pounds—a disappointing sum, but then poor Mr. Scase had never particularly put himself out to be popular—and it would be an idiotic waste to buy another card. It was a pity that he was so difficult to choose for. On the death of his wife, eight months ago, about which he had been as reticent as he was about any of his private concerns, she had sent a mourning card on behalf of the division, a silver cross wreathed with violets and forget-me-nots. Afterwards she had wondered whether her choice then had been suitable. He had worked in the division for nearly nine years yet they knew virtually nothing about him except that, like herself, he commuted to Liverpool Street from one of the eastern suburbs. They seldom met on the station and sometimes she wondered if he deliberately avoided her.
Some years previously, emboldened by two glasses of cheap sherry at the office Christmas party, she had asked him whether he had children, and he had replied “No.” After a few seconds he had added, “We did have a daughter, but she died young.” Then he had flushed and turned aside as if regretting that brief confidence. She had been made to feel tactless and inquisitive. She had murmured something about being sorry and had moved away, replenishing the outstretched glasses and responding to the office banter. But afterwards she had told herself that to no one else had he spoken about his child, that the confidence, even if involuntary, had been to her alone. She never mentioned it either to him or in the office, but cherished it as a small secret which somehow affirmed her worth in his eyes. And the knowledge of his private tragedy lent him an interest, almost a distinction, which intrigued her. After the death of his wife she found herself indulging a private fantasy. They were both lonely. And he was thoughtful, conscientious. The junior staff didn’t appreciate him, just because he insisted on punctuality and a proper standard of work. It took an older woman, a mature woman, to appreciate his qualities. Perhaps here was someone who would be a friend and later, who knew, more than a friend. It wasn’t too late for her to make a man happy. She would have someone other than Mother to cook for and care for. But she knew she would have to make the first move.
Inspiration came to her from the advice column of her women’s magazine, where one of the readers wrote that she was interested in a boy in her office, but he had never been more than polite and friendly. There had been no invitation, no date. The answer had been explicit. “Buy two theatre tickets for something you think he’ll like. Then tell him that you’ve been given the tickets unexpectedly and ask whether he’d care to see the show with you.” It hadn’t been an easy ploy for Miss Yelland to put into effect. There had been the difficulty of persuading a neighbour to sit with her mother, the problem of deciding what tickets to buy. In the end, feeling that music was the safest bet, she had queued for two expensive seats for a Brahms concert at the Royal Festival Hall for a Friday night. On the Monday she spoke to him. The few stiff words had been over-rehearsed and her invitation sounded ungracious as well as insincere.
He hadn’t answered her at first, keeping his eyes on his ledger, and she began to wonder whether he had heard. Then he had got clumsily to his feet, looked briefly into her eyes and murmured: “It’s very kind of you, Miss Yelland, but I never go out in the evenings.”
She had read in his eyes not merely embarrassment, but a kind of panic. Afterwards, scarlet with humiliation since the rejection had been so absolute, she had sought solitude in the ladies’ cloakroom. Tearing up the two tickets she flushed them down the lavatory. It was, she knew, a stupidly extravagant gesture. The concert was a popular one; the bookings office could almost certainly have disposed of the tickets. But the gesture was some small comfort to her pride. She had never approached him again, and it seemed to her imagination that he became even more reserved, withdrew more completely beneath his carapace of quiet efficiency. And now he was leaving. For nearly nine years he had circumvented her loving kindness. Now he was escaping for good.
The formal goodbye was arranged for twelve-thirty, and by one o’clock Mr. Willcox, the chief accountant in the division, who undertook these ceremonies for staff whose status didn’t warrant the personal appearance of the treasurer, was in full flood: “And if any of you were to ask me, as his senior officer, what I regard as the salient feature of Norman Scase’s work in this division, I shouldn’t need to hesitate for a single second before giving you my judgement.”
He then hesitated for a nicely judged half-minute, giving the assembled division time to assume expressions of brightly anticipatory interest as if this fascinating question had indeed been on their lips, while the deputy senior accountant cast lugubrious eyes at the ceiling, the junior personal secretary giggled and Miss Yelland smiled encouragingly at Scase across the throng. The smile wasn’t returned. He stood there, holding the canteen glass in his hand, half filled with sweet South African wine, and stared slightly over their heads. He had taken the usual trouble with his appearance, neither more nor less. The formal blue suit was a little shabby now, the sleeves polished by the friction of desktop and ledger. The shirt collar was crumpled but very clean, and the nondescript tie precisely knotted. Standing there, a little apart, like a man under judgement, he reminded Miss Yelland of someone: a picture, a photograph, a newsreel, not someone known to her. Then she remembered. It was one of the accused in the dock at Nuremberg. The mental image, impious, offensive, shocked her; she flushed and gazed fixedly into her sherry as if detected in a solecism. But the memory remained. She fixed her eyes again resolutely on Mr. Willcox.
“It would be expressed in a single word,” he pronounced, and proceeded to use a thesaurus. “Conscientiousness, attention to detail, methodicalness”—he slipped a little over this and Miss Yelland wondered whether there was such a word—“complete reliability. Whatever he has put his hand to, that task has been carried through to the end with accuracy, neatness and with complete reliability.”
His deputy, lowering his eyes, swallowed his sherry in one gulp, since it was not a taste voluntarily to let linger on the tongue, and thought that if there were a more bloody boring, damning valediction, then he had yet
to hear it. He was intrigued by Scase’s early retirement. The legacy, of which he had heard rumours, must have been quite a sum if he could afford to go three years early, unless, of course, he had found himself another job and was keeping quiet about it. But that seemed unlikely. Who, these days, would want to take a fifty-seven-year-old chap without qualifications?
And so the self-satisfied rhetoric boomed on. Sly innuendoes about what Scase would do with his retirement; congratulations only half jocular, he couldn’t prevent the note of envy from creeping in that he could afford to freeze his pension and retire three years before he was due to go; the final conventional wish that he would enjoy a long, prosperous and happy retirement and that the division’s little gift would be used to provide some small luxury which would remind him of their affection and respect. The cheque was handed over, there was a brief outbreak of self-conscious clapping in which Mr. Willcox joined with a curiously soundless and rhythmic clasping and releasing of his palms like a half-hearted cheerleader at a revivalist meeting, and all their eyes swivelled and rested on Scase. He blinked at the envelope which had been pressed into his hand, but he didn’t open it. One might suppose that he didn’t know the convention, that he was supposed to pretend he couldn’t find the flap, raise a gratified eyebrow at the size of the cheque, exclaim over the design on the card, and study the inscribed names. But he clutched it in his delicate hands as a child might do, uncertain if it were really his. He said: “Thank you very much. I shall miss the division in many ways after nearly nine years.”
“Nine years hard,” someone called out, and laughed.
He didn’t smile.
“After nearly nine years,” he repeated. “I shall buy a pair of binoculars with your kind gift, and they will remind me of old friends and colleagues in local government. Thank you.”