A Dark and Sinful Death

by Alison Joseph

  Lianna shrugged.

  ‘And ... ’ Charlotte hesitated. ‘Mark ... ’ her eyes filled with tears. Lianna looked up at her, and for a moment the two young women were caught in each other’s gaze.

  ‘It’s knowing there’s someone out there ... ’ Lianna said. Charlotte nodded. Lianna smiled at her. ‘He were a man in a million,’ she said.

  *

  ‘Rachel’s been discharged,’ Teresa whispered to Agnes at tea in the staff room that afternoon.

  ‘Is she at home?’

  ‘Home? No, she’s here.’

  ‘Here?

  ‘Don’t shout. There’s no one at her London house, they’re all abroad.’

  ‘But she’s — ’

  ‘They said she wasn’t ill enough.’

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘I think it may mean that between you and Rachel, you’ve won this round.’

  ‘Colonel?’ Philomena’s voice echoed across the staff room. ‘Or Lieutenant?’

  ‘Yes, Sister?’ Agnes sighed.

  ‘Swann chappie.’

  ‘Neither, Sister. Rachel’s father’s in the Foreign Office.’

  ‘Ah, thought so. Need to get on to them.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘Right away. I’ve been looking for you,’ Philomena added, peering down at Agnes. ‘Seems to have become my main occupation.’ She swept away again.

  ‘Colin’s right,’ Teresa whispered. ‘Perhaps it’s roller skates.’

  *

  That evening Agnes went to Rachel’s room and knocked on the door.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s Agnes. Can I come in?’

  There was no answer. Agnes pushed the door open. Rachel was lying on her bed, staring vacantly at the ceiling. She looked pale, but the dark circles around her eyes had gone, and there was a spot of colour on both cheeks.

  ‘How are you?’ Agnes sat on the end of the bed. Rachel shrugged.

  ‘I brought you some fruit.’ Rachel glanced at the bowl as Agnes placed it on her desk.

  ‘How was the hospital?’

  Rachel turned her face away.

  ‘I’m glad they let you out.’

  ‘You weren’t there.’

  ‘I’m sorry — ’ Agnes began.

  ‘Sorry? You’re sorry?’ The girl turned to face her. ‘When you promised? When you said you’d be on my side?’

  ‘It would have made no difference. They were adamant — ’

  ‘It would’ve made a difference to me.’ Rachel turned away again.

  ‘I’m here now,’ Agnes said.

  ‘So?’

  ‘What do you want to do now?’

  Rachel didn’t answer.

  ‘You can go home. You can stay here.’

  ‘It’s not up to me, is it?’

  ‘It’s not up to anyone else, Rachel.’

  ‘I never wanted to go to hospital, but that was decided for me. I never wanted to eat but they made me — ’ Rachel’s voice choked.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Agnes leaned towards her, but Rachel shrank away. ‘Perhaps you should go home,’ Agnes said.

  ‘What’s home?’

  ‘I mean, go and stay with your parents for a while.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To get strong. To think about what you want to do with your life.’ Rachel shrugged. Agnes reached for an apple and took a bite of it. ‘Or maybe,’ she said, ‘you don’t want a life. Maybe you want to die instead.’

  ‘Maybe I do.’

  ‘Well, let’s talk about that, then. I mean, if you’re going to choose to die, we’ve got to make plans, haven’t we? We must work out where you’re going to do it, somewhere where they’ll let you starve yourself to death in peace.’ Agnes took another bite of apple.

  Rachel glanced at her.

  ‘Obviously not here,’ Agnes went on, ‘too full of busybodies who want you to stay alive. Somewhere where no one gives a damn. Any ideas?’

  Rachel was staring at her.

  ‘And the funeral,’ Agnes went on, ‘let’s get that all planned. If you’re going to kill yourself deliberately, which you seem intent on doing, at least tidy up all the loose ends. Make a will, perhaps.’

  ‘There’s no need to laugh at me.’ Rachel’s voice was barely audible.

  ‘Laugh? I’m not laughing. On the contrary, I’m serious. As serious as you are. If you’re determined to kill yourself, who am I to stop you?’

  ‘I wish everyone would stop going on about me killing myself.’

  ‘So you don’t want to die?’

  ‘Course not.’

  ‘Why aren’t you eating, then?’

  ‘I am eating. I ate in hospital.’

  ‘And now? What have you eaten today?’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘One digestive biscuit? Two?’

  ‘You’re as bad as they are.’

  ‘Because I want you to live? To be well?’

  ‘That’s what they all say. They only care about food, not about me.’

  Agnes stood up. ‘Listen, Rachel. You’re the only one who can do this. Firstly, if you want to go home, I’ll arrange it.’

  ‘I don’t have a home.’

  ‘Secondly, I’m leaving that fruit there. If you don’t eat it, I don’t care. If it all rots in the bowl, it’s nothing to me. The only person you’re hurting by not eating is you.’

  ‘So why does everyone make so much fuss when I don’t eat?’

  ‘Because you want them to.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  Agnes sat down again. ‘When I’ve been at my worst ... ’ she began, then stopped. She remembered a lunch at the house in Provence, a bowl of tomato and basil soup placed in front of her, warm and fragrant, with a swirl of cream at its centre. Feeling hungry. Watching her parents, still absorbed in some endless silent conflict that had been going on for days. I have become invisible, she used to think.

  ‘I must have been about your age,’ she began again. ‘I sat at this long table, with a white linen tablecloth, and I tipped a bowl of soup on to the table. All of it. Even though I was hungry.’

  ‘Were your parents there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did they do?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘They didn’t notice.’

  ‘They must have been pretending not to notice.’

  ‘I thought that at first. I waited. They had this way of talking to each other, because they were so used to having rows, and they knew each other so well, they used to argue in code. My father said, “Crystal.” He was talking about the glassware, someone had put out the wrong ones. And my mother rang for Liliane, and said, “My husband requests you to change the glasses.” And I sat there in this growing puddle of soup and I realised they hadn’t even noticed. And when Liliane changed the glasses, my father was inspecting the new ones, and my mother was busy disapproving of him, and Liliane cleared my place and laid a new cloth over the mess and poured some more soup for me and they didn’t even see.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I ate the soup.’

  Rachel put her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh, I couldn’t. I just couldn’t have eaten it. Not after that.’

  ‘What would you have done?’

  ‘Me?’ Rachel considered, animated now. ‘I’d have punched my fist through a window. Something like that.’

  ‘Yes, I thought of that. We had these glass doors between the two rooms. But I couldn’t have risked it.’

  ‘Risked what, the injuries?’

  ‘Oh, no, I didn’t care about hurting myself. But I couldn’t have risked bleeding to death in front of them and them still not noticing. The last great gesture, totally wasted.’

  Rachel started to laugh. ‘Your maid would have just laid a new rug over the blood and carried out your corpse — ’

  ‘ — and my parents would have been arguing about the cutlery by then.’

  ‘So you sat and ate
the soup.’

  ‘And planned my own funeral.’

  ‘I often do that.’

  ‘The thing is,’ Agnes said, ‘it only dawned on me later in life, there’s no satisfaction in your own funeral.’

  ‘But at least then they’d realise — they’d have to notice ... ’

  ‘Yes, but it’s too late by then.’ Agnes finished her apple and threw the core in the bin. ‘They’d feel awful — but you wouldn’t be around to see it.’

  ‘You might be, watching from the ceiling, like a ghost.’

  ‘Yes, but what’s the point if it’s too late to change your life?’

  Rachel reached across to the fruit bowl and took a grape.

  ‘Anyway,’ Agnes said, ‘we had a house guest. I couldn’t have killed myself in front of him, they’d have reproached me for my lack of manners.’

  Rachel giggled again. Then, carefully, she ate her grape.

  *

  ‘Your David Smurthwaite’s a tasty geezer, isn’t he, sweetie?’ Athena poured tea into delicate cups.

  ‘Snaith, not Smurthwaite. And I hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘Of course you had.’ Athena leaned back in her pink armchair. In the background, Agnes could hear the muzak of the hotel foyer.

  ‘He’s very unhappy,’ Agnes said.

  ‘Sorrow is very becoming in a man.’

  ‘And did you like his work?’

  ‘Simon did. There were all these shipyard ones — ’

  ‘Can’t have been shipyards.’

  ‘Coal mines or something then, a bit colourless for me, but Simon’s delighted. You greedy poppet, I wanted that eclair.’

  ‘There are two, Athena.’

  ‘And did he ask you?’ Athena took an eclair and a strawberry tart from the cake stand.

  ‘Did who ask what?’

  ‘The world cruise, of course.’

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘Wonderful, sweetie, so you’re going, of course.’ She looked up and caught Agnes’s expression. ‘Or rather, you’re going to agonise about it for ages and then go.’

  ‘It’s not that simple, Athena, I can’t just go, can I?’ Athena shrugged. ‘I would.’

  ‘You’re not committed to a religious order.’

  Athena giggled. ‘Just as well.’

  ‘It would ruin my life, Athena. To throw all this away, all this hard spiritual work of the last few years, all my attempts to try and live in God’s service, to work towards understanding what God might want of me — if I just threw it all back at my order and took off with James, I’d be back to square one, wouldn’t I? The order wouldn’t have me back, and they’d be right. I’d have shown I was incapable of transcending my own desires, my own selfish wishes, that I’m just constantly clinging to what I want now, just Me, Now, instead of understanding that the self is temporary, illusory — and that you only find peace when you cease to listen to its constant demands.’

  Athena was eating the second strawberry tart.

  ‘I wanted that,’ Agnes said.

  *

  Driving back to the school in the fading daylight, Agnes heard the chirrup of her phone.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Agnes, it’s David. Can you meet me, now?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The Woolpack.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Something odd. I’m not sure ... ’

  ‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’

  *

  ‘Look.’ He pushed a photograph across the table to her. ‘It was stuck through my letterbox, I found it when I got back from meeting your friends.’

  She picked it up. It was the Allbright’s athletics team. ‘It’s exactly the same as the one I’ve got,’ she said. She turned it over in her fingers. It was printed on photographic paper, and looked new.

  ‘Only this one’s not a press cutting. And look — ’ David pointed.

  There were no names listed underneath, but the faces were the same. Amongst them, Mark, David and Reg. And on each of the three, a line had been drawn in pencil circling their faces.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Agnes took a sip from her mug of cold tea. She wrote down the last name from the athletics team. She pulled her dressing gown around her. She yawned, closed the phone book, and then put the photograph back in the file. Longley, Snaith, Hanson, Pashley, McKinnon, Snaith, Styring, Weston, Graham, Adams, Bullock. And Naismith. There was no point finding a number for Reg Naismith.

  In the phone book there were two Hansons, one Pashley, several McKinnons, Styrings, loads of Westons, Adams, Grahams, and Bullocks.

  And what would she say to them once she’d dialled their numbers? Do you know anyone in the athletics team who had a grudge against Reg and the Snaith boys?

  And what if it was nothing to do with the athletics team? And how had someone got hold of the photo and sent it on to David?

  She’d told David to go straight to the police with it. She hoped that was what he’d done, though it was more likely he’d stayed in the Woolpack for just another pint or two. Or three.

  It was late. She stared at the files, thinking she really ought to go to bed. She pulled out Reg’s file again and flicked through it. More names: his supervisor at the mill; the military officer responsible for his call-up; the other lads who joined up with him.

  More names. She wrote them down. Jones, Coulter, Highworth, Chadwick. She stared at them. These names belonged to young soldiers, young men sent off to battle in 1942. They might be anywhere now. They might be living out their peaceful last years with children and grandchildren around them. They might be dead.

  She opened the phone book, searched out Chadwick, Coulter, Highworth. There was no point trying Jones. There was an F. Chadwick, listed, with an address near the estate. And an M. Coulter, also, judging from the A-Z, nearby. She wrote them down. She turned to Billy’s file, wrote down his address and phone number, put all the files away, took off her dressing gown and went to bed.

  *

  ‘In the day of my distress I seek the Lord, I stretch out my hands to Him by night; my soul is poured out without ceasing, it refuses all comfort.’

  In the chapel Agnes glanced around her, seeing Charlotte, Leonora and Rachel, their lips moving with the service. The words stayed with her, still ringing in her mind as she returned to her room and sat down at her desk.

  She reached for the files, as the phone rang. She heard Julius’s voice.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about you,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I don’t want you to go away.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you.’

  ‘Have you had any further thoughts?’

  ‘All I know is that I should live in the service of the Lord.’

  ‘So that hasn’t changed?’

  ‘You know me better than that. Of course it hasn’t.’

  ‘So the question is, does He want you to stay put or does He want you to visit your mother? And, more to the point, couldn’t you do both? I could talk to your provincial about it, plead the case for a sabbatical — ’

  ‘And then what? I’d come back to the same difficulties, the same refusal to live in community — ’

  ‘Perhaps that’s your path.’

  They sat in silence. ‘Julius ... ’ Agnes said at last. ‘It would be the same if it was you going away. If it was you asking me to come with you.’

  ‘But I wouldn’t go away. I’m someone who stays put.’

  ‘I wish I was the same.’

  ‘Perhaps — ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It might be helpful if you reflect on the good things about your religious life. You see — what I mean is, you going away — it may appear to be the right decision now, but if you stayed put, in the long term, you might be grateful that you didn’t go. It might be that long-term, it’s the right decision to stay.’

  ‘But I’ll be old, Julius.’

  ‘Does it matter if it takes that long?’

&nb
sp; ‘Yes, if I’ve spent all the time in between being resentful and full of rebellion — and it’s not good for the order, either, if I’m like that.’

  Julius was quiet. Then he said, ‘I’m worried he doesn’t care about you enough — to have put you in this dilemma ... ’

  ‘But he does. He always has. He’s only asked me because he can see I’m unhappy.’

  ‘How noble of him.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you do the same?’

  ‘Don’t forget, I have to be your conscience too.’

  ‘Only because I ask you to be.’

  ‘Agnes — ’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Just reflect on the good things. Please. For both of us.’

  *

  ‘What does Julius think?’ James paused on the path that led away from the village. The moorland slopes dipped away from them, still bare and wintry.

  ‘I don’t know, to be honest.’

  ‘He must want you to stay.’

  ‘Yes. I think he does.’

  ‘He’s probably right,’ James said, glancing at her. She walked at his side, her head bowed.

  ‘Are the Campbells expecting me?’ she said after a moment.

  ‘Yes, I told them we were both coming.’

  They walked in silence for a while. Agnes paused, taking in the beauty of the afternoon, the crisp air, the soft clouds nudging the shadows of the slopes ahead.

  ‘You see,’ she said, ‘Julius imagines me being one of these old nuns you meet, full of wisdom and joy and peace, like Sister Katharina in the London community, you should meet her one day, she’s extraordinary. She says things like, “Of course, the first fifty years were pretty tough ... Agnes broke off, laughing. ‘And you realise that she probably left all sort of opportunities behind, and she probably did her time in the laundry full of resentment, and she probably considered leaving countless times — and now she’s very glad she didn’t, and she’s learnt so much from staying put, and she’s filled with the Holy Spirit, you should see her face when she’s praying, just kind of radiant ... ’ She sighed. ‘And Julius has faith that I might be the same, when I’m about ninety. And I keep thinking — what if he’s wrong? What if I continue to rebel, what if I don’t come with you, and then I resent it, and start to shrivel up with bitterness — what kind of ninety-year-old will that make for? And what if I don’t get to that stage, isn’t it better to live now, to live with joy, with a sense of adventure?’