Change Here For Babylon

by Nina Bawden

  I wondered if he was surprised when I had not shown the letter to the police. When he mentioned it, in the prison, it had been, perhaps, a gentle prompting.

  It was only in the morning that the reasoning seemed hollow; I clung to it because there was nothing else that I could do.

  Some time during the evening, Nora came into my room. She said, with carefully averted face:

  “Tom, in that letter—did she say she was going to kill herself? Shouldn’t you give it to the police?”

  I said, flinging it in her face, forcing myself to be brutal because it was the only way to silence her:

  “No. It wasn’t a suicide letter. It was personal—just a love letter.”

  Geoffrey’s trial lasted for three days. I was one of the last witnesses they called for the prosecution. I do not think I realised at the time how heavy was the weight of evidence against him.

  The lights in the court were very bright. When I turned away from the judge I could see the public benches with the rising tiers of blank staring faces. All of it had a cardboard quality, like a stage set.

  I do not remember what the prosecuting counsel looked like. He had a gentle voice. Counsel for the defence was a small man, thin to the point of emaciation. He had a white face and a savage mouth.

  He said: “Mr. Harrington, you say that you are sure Mrs. Hunter would not have committed suicide. Let me refresh your memory a little. You had both decided to break up your homes and go away together. A decision which one assumes was neither casual nor temporary. And yet you rejected her. You rejected her in front of her husband, the man she had left for your sake. And so she had no choice but to return home, unwillingly, with her husband. Can you not see that this was a situation that might well have been intolerable for someone far less sensitive? Can you still say, under oath, that you do not believe she would have killed herself?”

  I think that the prosecution objected at this point and that the objection was sustained. Certainly I know that I did not answer the question and the sharp, ferret-like features were replaced by the bland, anonymous face of counsel for the prosecution.

  “As I understand it, all that you said to Mrs. Hunter was that you could not leave your wife immediately. Is that so?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did she say?”

  I felt, although I could see no one clearly, that all the eyes in the court contained contempt.

  “She said that she was sorry.”

  “Did she appear despairing?”

  “I did not think so.”

  And then my evidence was over. I saw Geoffrev during the brief time I was in court, sitting in the dock with the warders on either side of him. He looked distinguished; he was listening to the evidence with complete, detached absorption. From time to time there was a look of faint amusement on his mouth.

  The trial ended that afternoon. I left the court because I could not bear to stay there. I sat in a café and waited for the verdict. It was a raw, foggy day, the people hurried by the wide window with their scarves across their mouths. In the café they served sweet, strong tea and enormous, sticky buns with a few lonely currants in them. The customers were mostly workmen from the factory; they left the sodden stubs of cigarettes floating in the brown dregs of their tea.

  In the end a newsboy came into the café with the evening papers. The verdict was in the stop press. To-morrow there would be photographs in most of the papers. He had earlier caught the public imagination as a romantic figure; on the last day of the trial several women had been removed, weeping, from the court. This evening there was nothing but the bare fact, in blurred, black type. He had been found guilty of the murder of his wife, Emily Maud Hunter. He had been condemned to death.

  A fortnight later there was an appeal and when the appeal failed, I went to see Walker. I had known all the time that I would have to go; I had been waiting, perhaps, for a miracle.

  They let me in at once. I had the impression, as I walked in the door and saw his bright, smiling eyes that he had been waiting for me.

  Of course he did not say so. He pretended to be surprised. He was smoking a cigarette and because I had not seen him smoke before I was surprised to see that his fingers were covered with nicotine stains.

  I said: “She wrote to me before she died.”

  “Yes?” he said. Leaving the word to trail in the air like the tobacco smoke.

  “It didn’t reach me. My wife didn’t want me to have it. I found it in the desk where she had hidden it.”

  He gave me no help. “Well?”

  “She said good-bye. She said she was sorry it had to end like this. It was a farewell letter.”

  He smiled with his mouth. “Did she say she was going to kill herself?”

  “No.”

  “People usually say so. Have you got the letter?”

  I said: “No. I burned it.”

  He looked at me across the width of the desk. There was a thoughtful expression in his eyes. “A pity,” he said. “Why didn’t you bring it to us before you destroyed it?”

  I told him about the postmark. I said: “It seemed to me to be conclusive.”

  “Ah,” he said; “but one mustn’t jump to conclusions.” He stubbed out his cigarette and emptied the ash-tray fastidiously into the wastepaper basket as if the dirty ash offended him.

  He said slowly: “Why should you think he posted it? There was a maid in the house, wasn’t there? It was one of her duties to collect the mail which was put out on the hall table and post it. At night and midmorning. She might have missed the late post.” He grinned suddenly as if it were amusing. “No proof, of course. She didn’t remember whether there was a letter to you among the mail. We asked her.”

  “For God’s sake,” I said. “What can we do about it?”

  “Do about it?” he inquired with what seemed to be genuine astonishment. “Do about it? Mr. Harrington, he has been convicted by, a jury of his peers. The case against him was pretty strong, you know. The only person who doubted it was Mr. Hunter himself. He was quite sure that he was safe and that no one could touch him. He was so sure that he didn’t bother to wipe his fingerprints from the bottle and from the cup. And perhaps, as you suggest, he posted his wife’s letter. They had quarrelled. There had been trouble about Parry’s death. And there was her story about the child. No proof, of course. Not allowable evidence. But sign of a troubled background. As you remember, I saw Mrs. Hunter on the day she died. She was a fine woman; there was a lot of life about her. I don’t believe she committed suicide.” He looked at me sharply. “What evidence can you put against this? A letter you say you have destroyed.”

  I said drearily: “She loved life so much that she was capable of leaving it.”

  “I don’t understand you, Mr. Harrington.”

  “She wouldn’t have been able to endure the framework of living if there was no reality there.”

  Quite suddenly his eyes were very kind.

  “You can’t let it alone, can you?” he said. “You know, you mustn’t mistake your own sense of guilt for a legal responsibility. It confuses the issue.”

  I remembered that Geoffrey had once said much the same sort of thing to me.

  I said: “Render unto Cæsar.” And he nodded slowly and smiled at me.

  I met Walker once more, after the execution. I had gone back to the university to pick up some papers I had left with my successor.

  I was walking down the main street and I saw Mrs. Foster, Stevie’s mother, on the other side of the road. I crossed, dodging the buses, and went up to her.

  I said: “Hallo, Mrs. Foster. How is Stevie?”

  I don’t suppose she had ever cut anyone before in her life. She reddened and walked on as if she hadn’t heard me, leaving me with a stupid smile of welcome dying on my face. So I didn’t see Walker until he was standing next to me. Curiously, he appeared to think it an occasion for festivity. He asked me to have lunch with him and we went to the Fleur De Lys. It was a busier place in the middle o
f the day than in the evening and we were lucky to find a table. We had a bottle of burgundy with our lunch, and afterwards the same aged waiter brought us brandy in balloon glasses.

  We talked about the weather and about my job. We told each other a few faintly dirty jokes. And then I asked him about Geoffrey. I had to know.

  He said: “He was sure, right up to the end, that he would be set free. Some of them are like that, you know. They can’t believe it. One wonders, sometimes, if there is ever a moment when it becomes real.”

  It was an unemotional generalisation. Geoffrey was not exceptional.… He had gone to his place of execution incredulous to the last, unable to believe that this should be the end of him, that for once there was no way out.

  We didn’t talk for a while and then I became aware that Walker was watching me. His eyes were shining and his brown face looked ageless. He was a stranger, suddenly, and I said, because it is easier to say these things to a stranger:

  “Is it my fault?”

  He was diffident, in spite of the brandy. Or perhaps because this was a social occasion and he needed the authority of his desk.

  He said: “You take it too hard, Mr. Harrington. Doubt is inevitable. On earth, no one can decide the ultimate responsibility. Not even you, with your letter. The letter you didn’t burn.”

  He smiled, and we finished our brandy silently. We left the restaurant together and, standing on the pavement, said good-bye to each other.

  I went to college and found the senior common room empty. I stood by the open window and looked out at the quad and the winter sun, moon-pale and low in the sky.

  I knew I was tired. I took out Emily’s letter and read it. It had become sharp, tangible evidence that I had failed her. The worst and heaviest burden is always the burden of other people’s love.

  There was a tray of dirty coffee cups on the table. I burned the letter over a saucer, lighting one match after another because the paper was thick and difficult to destroy. When there was nothing left but dark, charred ash, I took the saucer to the window and emptied it. The cold wind caught some of the dust and tossed it high, like small, grey, birds’wings. The rest blew back in my face.

  THE END

  Copyright

  First published in 1955 by Collins

  This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

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  ISBN 978-1-4472-3590-3 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-3589-7 POD

  Copyright © Nina Bawden, 1955

  The right of Nina Bawden to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted in accordance

  with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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