Devices and Desires

by P. D. James

  BOOK SIX

  SATURDAY 1 OCTOBER TO

  THURSDAY 6 OCTOBER

  1

  Jonathan had decided to wait until Saturday to visit London and continue his enquiries. His mother was less likely to question him about a trip on Saturday to visit the Science Museum, whereas taking a day’s leave always provoked enquiries about where he was going and why. But he thought it prudent to spend half an hour in the museum before setting off to Pont Street, and it was after three o’clock before he was outside the block of flats. One fact was immediately apparent: no one who lived in this building and employed a housekeeper could possibly be poor. The house was part of an imposing Victorian terrace, half-stone, half-brick, with pillars each side of the gleaming black door and ornate glass, like green bottle tops, in the two ground-floor windows. The door was open and he could see a square hall tiled with black-and-white marble, the lower balustrade of an ornate wrought-iron staircase and the door of a golden cage lift. To the right was a porter’s desk with a uniformed man on duty. Anxious not to be seen loitering, he walked quickly on, considering his next move.

  In one sense none was necessary except to find his way to the nearest tube station, return to Liverpool Street and take the first train to Norwich. He had done what he had set out to do: he knew now that Caroline had lied to him. He told himself that he should be feeling shocked and distressed, both at her lie and at his own duplicity in discovering it. He had thought himself in love with her. He was in love with her. For the past year there had been hardly an hour in which she had been absent from his thoughts. That blond, remote, self-contained beauty had obsessed him. Like a schoolboy, he had waited at the corners of corridors where she might pass, had welcomed his bed because he could lie undisturbed and indulge his secret erotic fantasies, would wake wondering where and how they might next meet. Surely neither the physical act of possession nor the discovery of deceit could destroy love. So why was this confirmation of her deception almost agreeable, even pleasant? He should be devastated; instead he was filled with a satisfaction close to triumph. She had lied, almost carelessly, confident that he was too much in love, too enthralled, too stupid even to question her story. But now, with the discovery of the truth, the balance of power in their relationship had subtly shifted. He wasn’t sure yet what use he would make of the information. He had found the energy and courage to act, but whether he would have the courage to confront her with his knowledge was another matter.

  He walked quickly to the end of Pont Street, his eyes on the paving stones, then turned and retraced his steps, trying to make sense of his turbulent emotions, so tangled that they seemed to jostle each other for dominance: relief, regret, disgust, triumph. And it had been so easy. Every dreaded obstacle, from contacting the detective agency to finding an excuse for this day in London, had been surmounted with greater ease than he could believe possible. So why not chance one further step? Why not make absolutely sure? He knew the name of the housekeeper, Miss Beasley. He could ask to see her, say that he had met Caroline a year or two ago, in Paris perhaps, had lost her address, wanted to get in touch. If he kept his story simple, resisted the temptation to embroider, there was no possible danger. He knew that Caroline had taken her summer holiday in France in 1986, the year he too had been there. It was one of the facts that had come up in conversation on their early dates together, innocuous chats about travel and paintings, the attempt to find some common ground, a shared interest. Well, at least he had been in Paris. He had seen the Louvre. He could say that that was where they had met.

  He would need a false name, of course. His father’s Christian name would do. Percival. Charles Percival. It was better to choose something slightly unusual; a too-common name would sound obviously false. He would say that he lived in Nottingham. He had been at the university there and knew the town. Somehow being able to picture those familiar streets made the fantasy believable. He needed to root his lies in a semblance of truth. He could say that he worked at the hospital there, a laboratory technician. If there were any other questions he could parry them. But why should there be any other questions?

  He made himself walk with confidence into the hall. Only a day ago he would have found difficulty in meeting the porter’s eyes. Now, filled with the self-assurance of success, he said: “I want to visit Miss Beasley in Flat Three. Would you say that I’m a friend of Miss Caroline Amphlett.”

  The porter left the reception desk and went into his office to telephone. Jonathan thought, What’s to prevent me just going up the stairs and knocking at the door? Then he realized that the porter would immediately telephone Miss Beasley and warn her not to let him in. There was security of a kind, but it wasn’t particularly tight.

  Within half a minute the man was back. He said: “That’s all right, sir. You can go up. It’s on the first floor.”

  He didn’t bother to take the lift. The double mahogany door with its numeral of polished brass, its two security locks and central spy hole was at the front of the house. He smoothed back his hair, then rang the bell and made himself stare at the peephole with an assumption of ease. He could hear nothing from inside the flat and the heavy door seemed as he waited to grow into an intimidating barricade which only a presumptuous fool would attempt to breach. For a second, picturing that single eyeball scrutinizing him through the peephole, he had to fight an impulse to flee. But then there was the faint clink of a chain, the sound of a lock turning, and the door was opened.

  Since his decision to call at the flat he had been too preoccupied with fabricating his story to give much conscious thought to Miss Beasley. The word “housekeeper” had conjured up a soberly dressed middle-aged woman, at worst a little condescending and intimidating, at best deferential, chatty, eager to help. The reality was so bizarre that he gave a perceptible start of surprise, then blushed at his own betrayal. She was short and very thin with straight red-gold hair, white at the roots and obviously dyed, falling in a gleaming helmet to her shoulders. Her pale-green eyes were immense and shallowly set, the lower lids inverted and bloodshot so that the eyeballs seemed to be swimming in an open wound. Her skin was very white and crêped with innumerable small lines, except over the jutting cheekbones, where it was stretched as fine as paper. In contrast to the skin’s unpainted fragility, her mouth was a thin gash of garish crimson. She was wearing high-heeled slippers and a kimono and was carrying a small, almost hairless dog with bulging eyes, its thin neck encircled with a jewelled collar. For a few seconds she stood silently regarding him, the dog pressed against her cheek.

  Jonathan, his carefully husbanded confidence rapidly draining, said: “I’m sorry to trouble you. It’s just that I’m a friend of Miss Caroline Amphlett and I’m trying to trace her.”

  “Well, you won’t find her here.” The voice, which he recognized, was unexpected from so frail a woman, deep and husky, and not unattractive.

  He said, “I’m sorry if I’ve got the wrong Amphlett. You see, Caroline did give me her address two years ago, but I’ve lost it, so I tried the telephone directory.”

  “I didn’t say that you’d got the wrong Amphlett, only that you won’t find her here. But, as you look harmless enough and are obviously unarmed, you had better come in. One cannot be too careful in these violent times, but Baggott is very reliable. Very few imposters get past Baggott. Are you an imposter, Mr.…?”

  “Percival. Charles Percival.”

  “You must excuse my déshabillé, Mr. Percival, but I do not normally expect afternoon visitors.”

  He followed her across a square hall and through double doors into what was obviously the drawing room. She pointed imperiously to a sofa set in front of the fireplace. It was uncomfortably low and as soft-cushioned as a bed, each drop-end festooned with thick tasselled cords. Moving slowly, as if deliberately taking her time, she placed herself opposite to him in an elegant, high winged chair, settled the dog on her lap and gazed down on him with the fixed unsmiling intensity of an inquisitor. He knew that he must look
as gauche and ungainly as he felt, his thighs enclosed in the softness of the cushion, his sharp knees almost touching his chin. The dog, as naked as if it had been skinned and shivering perpetually like a creature demented with cold, turned first on him and then up at her its pleading exophthalmic eyes. The leather collar, with its great dollops of red and blue stones, lay heavily on the animal’s frail neck.

  Jonathan resisted the temptation to look round at the room, but it seemed that every feature had entered his consciousness: the marble fireplace with above it a full-length oil painting of a Victorian army officer, a pale, arrogant face with one lock of blond hair falling almost to the cheek, which bore an uncanny resemblance to Caroline; the four carved chairs with embroidered seats set against the wall; the pale, polished floor with its wrinkled carpets; the drum-shaped table in the centre of the room; and the side tables with their photographs in silver frames. There was a strong smell of paint and turpentine. Somewhere in the flat a room was being decorated. After a moment’s silent scrutiny, the woman spoke.

  “So you’re a friend of Caroline’s. You surprise me, Mr.… Mr.… I’m afraid I have already forgotten your name.”

  He said firmly: “Percival. Charles Percival.”

  “Mine is Miss Oriole Beasley. I am the housekeeper here. As I said, you surprise me, Mr. Percival. But if you say you are Caroline’s friend, naturally I accept your word.”

  “Perhaps I shouldn’t say friend. I only met her once, in Paris in 1986. We went round the Louvre together. But I would like to see her again. She did give me her address, but I lost it.”

  “How careless. So you waited two years and then decided to trace her. Why now, Mr. Percival? You have managed, apparently, to control your impatience for two years.”

  He knew how he must look and sound to her: unconfident, shy, ill at ease. But that, surely, was what she would expect from a man gauche enough to believe that he could revive a dead and fleeting passion. He said: “It’s just that I’m in London for a few days. I work in Nottingham. I’m a technician at the hospital there. I don’t often get the chance to come south. It was an impulse really, trying to trace Caroline.”

  “As you see, she’s not here. She has not, in fact, lived in this house since she was seventeen, and as I am only the housekeeper it is hardly my place to hand out information about the family’s whereabouts to casual enquirers. Would you describe yourself as a casual enquirer, Mr. Percival?”

  Jonathan said: “Perhaps it seems like that. It’s just that I found the name in the telephone directory and thought it was worth a try. Of course she might not want to see me again.”

  “I should imagine that is more than likely. And, of course, you have some identification, something to confirm that you are Mr. Charles Percival of Nottingham.”

  Jonathan said: “Not really, I’m afraid. I didn’t think …”

  “Not even a credit card or a driving license? You seem to have come singularly unprepared, Mr. Percival.”

  Something in the deep, arrogantly upper-class voice, the mixture of insolence and contempt, stung him into defiance. He said: “I’m not from the Gas Board. I don’t see why I need to identify myself. It was just a simple enquiry. I was hoping to see her, or perhaps Mrs. Amphlett. I’m sorry if I’ve offended you.”

  “You haven’t offended me. If I were easily offended I wouldn’t work for Mrs. Amphlett. But I’m afraid you can’t see her. Mrs. Amphlett goes to Italy in late September and then flies to Spain for the winter. I’m surprised Caroline didn’t tell you. In her absence I look after the flat. Mrs. Amphlett dislikes the melancholy of autumn and the cold of winter. A wealthy woman need suffer neither. I’m sure you are perfectly well aware of that, Mr. Percival.”

  And here, at last, was the opening he needed. He made himself look into those terrible bleeding eyes and said: “I thought Caroline told me that her mother was poor, that she’d lost all her money investing in Peter Robarts’s plastics company.”

  The effect of his words was extraordinary. She flushed scarlet, the mottled stain travelling like a rash from her neck to her forehead. It seemed a long time before she could bring herself to speak, but when she did her voice was perfectly under control.

  “Either you wilfully misunderstood, Mr. Percival, or your memory is as unreliable for financial facts as it is for addresses. Caroline could have told you nothing of the sort. Her mother inherited a fortune from her grandfather when she was twenty-one and has never lost a penny of it. It was my small capital—ten thousand pounds, in case you are interested—which was unwisely invested in the schemes of that plausible rogue. But Caroline would hardly confide that small personal tragedy to a stranger.”

  He could think of nothing to say, could find no credible explanation, no excuse. He had the proof he wanted: Caroline had lied. He should have been filled with triumph that his suspicions had been justified, his small enterprise crowned with success. Instead, he was swept with a momentary but overwhelming depression and a conviction which seemed to him as frightening as it was irrational, that the proof of Caroline’s perfidy had been bought at a terrible price.

  There was a silence in which she continued to regard him but did not speak. Then she suddenly asked: “What did you think of Caroline? Obviously she made an impression on you or you wouldn’t be wishing to renew the acquaintance. And no doubt she has been in your mind during the last two years.”

  “I think—I thought she was very lovely.”

  “Yes, isn’t she? I’m glad you feel that. I was her nurse—her nanny, if one must use that ridiculous expression. You could say that I brought her up. Does that surprise you? I’m hardly the popular idea of a nanny. Warm lap, aproned bosom, Winnie-the-Pooh, The Wind in the Willows, prayers at bedtime, eat up your crusts or your hair won’t curl. But I had my methods. Mrs. Amphlett accompanied the Brigadier on his overseas postings and we stayed here together, just the two of us. Mrs. Amphlett believed that a child should have stability provided she was not required to provide it. Of course, if Caroline had been a son it would have been different. The Amphletts have never valued daughters. Caroline did have a brother, but he was killed in a friend’s car when he was fifteen. Caroline was with them but survived almost without a scratch. I don’t think her parents ever forgave her. They could never look at her without making it plain that the wrong child had been killed.”

  Jonathan thought: I don’t want to hear this, I don’t want to listen. He said: “She never told me that she had a brother. But she did mention you.”

  “Did she indeed? She talked about me to you. Now you do surprise me, Mr. Percival. Forgive me, but you are the last person I should have expected her to talk to about me.”

  He thought: She knows; not the truth, but she knows that I’m not Charles Percival from Nottingham. And it seemed to him, meeting those extraordinary eyes in which the mixture of suspicion and contempt was unmistakable, that she was allied to Caroline in a female conspiracy in which he had from the first been the hapless and despised victim. The knowledge fuelled his anger and gave him strength. But he said nothing.

  After a moment she went on: “Mrs. Amphlett kept me on after Caroline left home, even after the Brigadier passed on. But ‘passed on’ is hardly an appropriate euphemism for a soldier. Perhaps I should say ‘was called to higher service,’ ‘recalled to the Colours,’ ‘promoted to glory.’ Or is that the Salvation Army? I have a feeling that it’s only the Salvation Army who get promoted to glory.”

  He said: “Caroline did tell me that her father was a professional soldier.”

  “She has never been a very confiding girl, but you seem to have gained her confidence, Mr. Percival. So now I call myself a housekeeper rather than a nanny. My employer finds plenty to keep me occupied even when she isn’t here. It would never do for Maxie and me to live here on board wages and enjoy ourselves in London, would it, Maxie? No indeed. A little skilled sewing. Private letters to be posted on. Bills to be paid. Her jewels to be taken to be cleaned. The flat to be redecorated. M
rs. Amphlett particularly dislikes the smell of paint. And, of course, Maxie has to be exercised daily. He never thrives in kennels, do you, my treasure? I wonder what will happen to me when Maxie is promoted to glory?”

  There was nothing he could say to that, nor, apparently, did she expect him to. After a moment’s silence, during which she lifted the dog’s paw and rubbed it gently against her face, she said: “Caroline’s old friends seem very anxious to get in touch with her all of a sudden. Someone telephoned to ask for her only on Tuesday. Or was it Wednesday? But perhaps that was you, Mr. Percival?”

  “No,” he said, and was amazed at the ease with which he could lie. “No, I didn’t telephone. I thought it better just to take my chance and call.”

  “But you knew who to ask for. You knew my name. You gave it to Baggott.”

  But she wasn’t going to catch him like that. He said: “I remembered it. As I said, Caroline did talk about you.”

  “It might have been sensible to telephone first. I could have explained that she wasn’t here, saved you time. How odd that it didn’t occur to you. But that other friend didn’t sound like you. Quite a different voice. Scottish, I think. If you will excuse my saying so, Mr. Percival, your voice is without either character or distinction.”

  Jonathan said: “If you don’t feel you can give me Caroline’s address, perhaps I’d better go. I’m sorry if I came at an inconvenient time.”