by P. D. James
The ambulance bumped and gently swayed up the lane, then accelerated as it reached the narrow headland road to Lydsett. Suddenly it swerved and he was almost thrown from his seat. The paramedic sitting opposite him cursed.
“Some bloody fool going too fast.”
But he didn’t reply. He sat very close to Theresa, his hand still in hers, and found himself praying as if he could batten on the ears of the God he hadn’t believed in since he was seventeen. “Don’t let her die. Don’t punish her because of me. I’ll believe. I’ll do anything. I can change, be different. Punish me but not her. Oh God, let her live.”
And suddenly he was standing again in that dreadful little churchyard hearing the drone of Father McKee’s voice with Theresa at his side, her hand still cold in his. The earth was covered with synthetic grass but there was one mound left bare and he saw again the newly sliced gold of the soil. He hadn’t known that Norfolk earth could be so rich a colour. A white flower had fallen from one of the wreaths, a small, tortured, unrecognized bud with a pin through the wrapped stalk, and he was seized with an almost uncontrollable compulsion to pick it up before it was shovelled with the earth into the grave, to take it home, put it in water and let it die in peace. He had to hold himself tautly upright to prevent himself bending to retrieve it. But he hadn’t dared, and it had been left there to be smothered and obliterated under the first clods.
He heard Theresa whisper and bent so low to listen that he could smell her breath.
“Daddy, am I going to die?”
“No. No.”
He almost shouted the word, a howled defiance of death, and was aware of the paramedic half-rising to his feet. He said quietly: “You heard what Dr. Entwhistle said. It’s just appendicitis.”
“I want to see Father McKee.”
“Tomorrow. After the operation. I’ll tell him. He’ll visit you. I won’t forget. I promise. Now lie still.”
“Daddy, I want him now, before the operation. There’s something I have to tell him.”
“Tell him tomorrow.”
“Can I tell you? I have to tell someone now.”
He said almost fiercely: “Tomorrow, Theresa. Leave it till tomorrow.” And then, appalled by his selfishness, he whispered: “Tell me, darling, if you must,” and closed his eyes so that she should not see the horror, the hopelessness.
She whispered: “That night Miss Robarts died. I crept out to the abbey ruins. I saw her running into the sea. Daddy, I was there.”
He said hoarsely: “It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to tell me any more.”
“But I want to tell. I ought to have told you before. Please, Daddy.”
He put his other hand over hers. He said: “Tell me.”
“There was someone else there, too. I saw her walking over the headland towards the sea. It was Mrs. Dennison.”
Relief flowed through him, wave after wave, like a warm, cleansing summer sea. After a moment’s silence he heard her voice again: “Daddy, are you going to tell anyone, the police?”
“No,” he said. “I’m glad you’ve told me, but it isn’t important. It doesn’t mean anything. She was just taking a walk in the moonlight. I’m not going to tell.”
“Not even about me being on the headland that night?”
“No,” he said firmly, “not even that. Not yet, anyway. But we’ll talk about it, what we ought to do, after the operation.”
And for the first time he could believe that there would be a time for them after the operation.
10
Mr. Copley’s study was at the back of the Old Rectory, looking out over the unkempt lawn and the three rows of wind-crippled bushes which the Copleys called the “shrubbery.” It was the only room in the rectory which Meg would not dream of entering without first knocking, and it was accepted as his private place as if he were still in charge of a parish and needing a quiet sanctum to prepare his weekly sermon or counsel those parishioners who sought his advice. It was here that each day he read Morning Prayer and Evensong, his only congregation his wife and Meg, whose low, feminine voices would make the responses and read alternate verses of the psalms. On her first day with them he had said gently but without embarrassment: “I say the two main offices every day in my study, but please don’t feel that you need to attend unless you wish to.”
She had chosen to attend, at first from politeness but later because this daily ritual, the beautiful, half-forgotten cadences, seducing her into belief, gave a welcome shape to the day. And the study itself, of all the rooms in the solidly ugly but comfortable house, seemed to represent an inviolable security, a great rock in a weary land, against which all the rancorous, intrusive memories of school, the petty irritations of daily living, even the horror of the Whistler and the menace of the power station beat in vain. She doubted whether it had greatly changed since the first Victorian rector had taken possession. One wall was lined with books, a theological library which she thought Mr. Copley now rarely consulted. The old mahogany desk was usually bare, and Meg suspected that he spent most of his time in the easy chair which looked out over the garden. Three walls were covered with pictures: the rowing eight of his university days with ridiculously small caps above the grave, moustached young faces; the ordinands of his theological college; insipid water-colours in golden mounts, the record by some Victorian ancestor of his grand tour; etchings of Norwich Cathedral, the nave at Winchester, the great octagon of Ely. To one side of the ornate Victorian fireplace was a single crucifix. It seemed to Meg to be very old and probably valuable, but she had never liked to ask. The body of Christ was a young man’s body, stretched taut in its last agony, the open mouth seeming to shout in triumph or defiance at the God who had deserted Him. Nothing else in the study was powerful or disturbing; furniture, objects, pictures all spoke of order, of certainty, of hope. Now, as she knocked and listened for Mr. Copley’s gentle “Come in,” it occurred to her that she was seeking comfort as much from the room itself as from its occupant.
He was sitting in the armchair, a book in his lap, and made to get up with awkward stiffness as she entered. She said: “Please don’t get up. I wonder if I could talk to you privately for a few minutes.”
She saw at once the flare of anxiety in the faded blue eyes and thought, He’s afraid I’m going to give notice. She added quickly but with gentle firmness: “As a priest. I wish to consult you as a priest.”
He lay down his book. She saw that it was one he and his wife had chosen the previous Friday from the travelling library, the newest H.R.F. Keating. Both he and Dorothy Copley enjoyed detective stories, and Meg was always slightly irritated that husband and wife took it for granted that he should always have first read. This inopportune reminder of his mild domestic selfishness assumed for a moment a disproportionate importance, and she wondered why she had ever thought he could be of help. Yet was it right to criticize him for the marital priorities which Dorothy Copley had herself laid down and gently enforced over fifty-three years? She told herself, I am consulting the priest, not the man. I wouldn’t ask a plumber how he treated his wife and children before letting him loose on the leaking tank.
He gestured towards a second easy chair and she drew it up opposite him. He marked his page with his leather bookmark with careful deliberation and laid down the novel as reverently as if it were a book of devotions, folding both hands over it. It seemed to her that he had drawn himself together and was leaning slightly forward, head to one side, as if he were in the confessional. She had nothing to confess to him, only a question which in its stark simplicity seemed to her to go to the very heart of her orthodox, self-affirming but not unquestioning Christian faith. She said: “If we are faced with a decision, a dilemma, how do we know what is right?”
She thought she detected in his gentle face an easing of tension, as if grateful that the question was less onerous than he had feared. But he took his time before he replied.
“Our conscience will tell us if we will listen.”
“The s
till, small voice, like the voice of God?”
“Not like, Meg. Conscience is the voice of God, of the in-dwelling Holy Spirit. In the Collect for Whit Sunday we do indeed pray that we may have a right judgement in all things.”
She said with gentle persistence: “But how can we be sure that what we’re hearing isn’t our own voice, our own subconscious desires? The message we listen for so carefully must be mediated through our own experience, our personality, our heredity, our inner needs. Can we ever break free of the devices and desires of our own hearts? Might not our conscience be telling us what we most want to hear?”
“I haven’t found it so. Conscience has usually directed me against my own desires.”
“Or what at the time you thought were your own desires.”
But this was pressing him too hard. He sat quietly, blinking rapidly, as if seeking inspiration in old sermons, old homilies, familiar texts. There was a moment’s pause and then he said: “I have found it helpful to think of conscience as an instrument, a stringed instrument perhaps. The message is in the music, but if we don’t keep it in repair and use it constantly in regular and disciplined practice we get only an imperfect response.”
She remembered that he had been an amateur violinist. His hands were too rheumatic now to hold the instrument, but it still lay in its case on top of the bureau in the corner. The metaphor might mean something to him, but for her it was meaningless.
She said: “But even if my conscience tells me what is right—I mean, right according to the moral law or even the law of the country—that doesn’t necessarily mean the end of responsibility. Suppose if I obey it, do what conscience tells me, I cause harm, even danger to someone else.”
“We must do what we know is right and leave the consequences to God.”
“But any human decision has to take account of the probable consequences; that is surely what decision means. How can we separate cause from effect?”
He said: “Would it be helpful if you told me what is troubling you—that is, if you feel you can?”
“It isn’t my secret to tell, but I can give an example. Suppose I know that someone is regularly stealing from his employer. If I expose him he’ll be sacked, his marriage will be at risk, his wife and children injured. I might feel that the shop or firm could afford to lose a few pounds each week rather than cause all that hurt to innocent people.”
He was silent for a moment, then said: “Conscience might tell you to speak to the thief rather than to his employer. Explain that you know, persuade him to stop. Of course the money would have to be returned. I can see that that might present a practical difficulty.”
She watched as he wrestled with the difficulty for a moment, brow creased, conjuring up the mythical thieving husband and father, clothing the moral problem in living flesh. She said: “But what if he won’t or can’t stop his stealing?”
“Can’t? If stealing is an irresistible compulsion, then, of course, he needs medical help. Yes, certainly, that would have to be tried, although I’m never very sanguine about the success of psychotherapy.”
“Won’t, then, or promises to stop and then goes on stealing.”
“You must still do what your conscience tells you is right. We cannot always judge the consequences. In the case you have postulated, to let the stealing go on unchecked is to connive at dishonesty. Once you have discovered what is happening, you can’t pretend not to know, you can’t abdicate responsibility. Knowledge always brings responsibility; that is as true for Alex Mair at Larksoken Power Station as it is in this study. You said that the children would be injured if you told; they are being injured already by their father’s dishonesty, and so is the wife who benefits from it. Then there are the other staff to consider: perhaps they might be wrongly suspected. The dishonesty, if undetected, could well get worse, so that at the end the wife and children would be in deeper trouble than if it were stopped now. That is why it is safer if we concentrate on doing what is right and leave the consequences to God.”
She wanted to say, “Even if we’re not sure any longer if He exists? Even if that seems only another way of evading the personal responsibility which you have just told me we can’t and shouldn’t evade?” But she saw with compunction that he was suddenly looking tired, and she didn’t miss the quick glance down at his book.
He wanted to get back to Inspector Ghote, Keating’s gentle Indian detective, who, despite his uncertainties, would get there in the end, because this was fiction: problems could be solved, evil overcome, justice vindicated and death itself only a mystery which would be solved in the final chapter. He was a very old man. It was unfair to bother him. She wanted to put her hand on his sleeve and tell him that it was all right, he mustn’t worry. Instead she got up and, using for the first time the name that came naturally to her, spoke the comforting lie.
“Thank you, Father, you have been very helpful. It’s plainer to me now. I shall know what to do.”
11
Every turn and hazard of the overgrown garden path leading to the gate which gave access to the headland was so familiar to Meg that she hardly needed to follow the jerking moon of her torch’s beam, and the wind, always capricious at Larksoken, seemed to have abated the worst of its fury. But when she reached a slight ridge, and the light at the door of Martyr’s Cottage came in sight, it renewed its strength and came swooping down on her as if it would pluck her from the earth and send her whirling back to the shelter and peace of the rectory. She didn’t give battle but leaned against it, her head bent, her shoulder-bag bumping at her side, clutching her scarf to her head with both hands until the fury passed and she could again stand upright. The sky too was turbulent, the stars bright but very high, the moon reeling frantically between the shredded clouds like a blown lantern of frail paper. Fighting her way towards Martyr’s Cottage, Meg felt as if the whole headland were whirling in chaos about her so that she could no longer tell whether the roaring in her ears was the wind, her blood or the crashing sea. When at last, breathless, she reached the oak door, she thought for the first time about Alex Mair and wondered what she would do if he were at home. It struck her as strange that the possibility hadn’t previously occurred to her. And she knew that she couldn’t face him, not now, not yet. But it was Alice who answered her ring. Meg asked: “Are you alone?”
“Yes, I’m alone. Alex is at Larksoken. Come in, Meg.”
Meg took off and hung up her coat and headscarf in the hall and followed Alice to the kitchen. She had obviously been occupied in correcting her proofs. Now she reseated herself at her desk, swivelled round and looked gravely at Meg as she took her usual fireside chair. For a few moments neither spoke. Alice was wearing a long brown skirt of fine wool with a blouse high-buttoned to the chin and over it a sleeveless, pleated shift in narrow stripes of brown and fawn which reached almost to the floor. It gave her a hieratic dignity, an almost sacerdotal look of composed authority which was yet one of total comfort and ease. A small fire of logs was burning in the hearth, filling the room with a pungent autumnal smell, and the wind, muted by thick seventeenth-century walls, sighed and moaned companionably in the chimney. From time to time it gushed down and the logs flared into hissing life. The clothes, the firelight, the smell of burning wood overlaying the subtler smell of herbs and warm bread were familiar to Meg from their many quiet evenings together, and they were dear to her. But tonight was dreadfully different. After tonight the kitchen might never be home to her again.
She asked: “Am I interrupting?”
“Obviously, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t welcome interruption.”
Meg bent to extract a large brown envelope from her shoulder-bag.
“I’ve brought back the first fifty pages of proofs. I’ve done what you asked, read the text and checked for printing errors only.”
Alice took the envelope and, without glancing at it, placed it on the desk. She said: “That’s what I wanted. I’m so obsessed with the accuracy of the recipes that errors in the t
ext sometimes slip through. I hope it wasn’t too much of a chore.”
“No, I enjoyed it, Alice. It reminded me of Elizabeth David.”
“Not too much, I hope. She’s so marvellous that I’m always afraid of being overinfluenced by her.”
There was a silence. Meg thought: “We’re talking as if the dialogue has been scripted for us, not as strangers exactly, but as people who are careful of their words because the space between them is loaded with dangerous thoughts. How well do I really know her? What has she ever told me about herself? Just a few details of her life with her father, snatches of information, a few phrases dropped into our conversations like a falling match, briefly illuminating the contours of a vast unexplored terrain. I’ve confided almost everything about myself, my childhood, the racial trouble at the school, Martin’s death. But has it ever been an equal friendship? She knows more about me than any other living creature does. All I really know about Alice is that she’s a good cook.”
She was aware of her friend’s steady, almost quizzical look. Alice said: “But you didn’t fight your way in this wind just to bring back fifty pages of proofs.”
“I have to talk to you.”
“You are talking to me.”
Meg held Alice’s own unflinching gaze. She said: “Those two girls, Caroline and Amy, people are saying that they killed Hilary Robarts. Is that what you believe?”
“No. Why do you ask?”