by Julian Gloag
“Yes.” He hardly listened. He had already decided not to talk to Trevor ever again, except when absolutely necessary.
“Secondly, when and if your uncle is allowed downstairs, you are not to be in the same room with him—or outside with him—unless either your aunt or myself is also present. Clear?”
“Yes.”
“Thirdly, you are not to talk about this matter to anyone. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. Now, I intend to enforce these rules. Any infringement will lead to the most severe consequences. I hoped I would be able to trust you, but since I obviously can’t, I have no alternative but to treat you as the child you so clearly still are. Do I make myself understood?”
“Yes. Can I go now?”
“You may.”
As he reached the door, Trevor said, “Er, Jordan, my boy. We can forget about the little chat we were due to have after tea.”
“Alright.”
Trevor smiled. “Still friends, eh?”
Jordan gave him a bare nod. He shut the door and stood in the passage. Then he went into the chapel. It had frosted glass in the windows like a lavatory. The floor was never polished. It smelled damply of religion. Jordan walked up to the altar table covered by a heavy brown-and-green embroidered cloth done by the women of the parish. He gathered the saliva in his mouth and let it fall in a blob on the cloth. He watched for a long time, until all the small bubbles of spittle had burst.
As he went into the passage, the gong rang for tea.
He was right; Mr. Mansard had been invited to stay.
35
He came to himself slowly in the half-darkness. For a moment he was a child sick within the soft comfort of a night light. But there was nothing soft about the unwinking eye of the peephole in the door.
He sat wrapped in a blanket. The pipes had long since gone cold, and he was chilly and grubby and stiff in the aftermath of a doze which had not rested his bones. It was after three in the morning. He put his head between his hands and massaged the bristles on his chin.
Outside on the landing the footsteps of a prison officer echoed flatly, as if in an old castle deserted for centuries.
Jordan closed his eyes. He was exhausted, but he could not give up. He was almost there now.
The prison officer halted, then continued. Jordan was stirred by the lonely footsteps marking with melancholy the suspension of all the life that lay there, imprisoned and dormant. The thorn-crowned Light of the World, tiptoeing sadly to his death.
He heard his own steps, tiptoeing too, across the attic floor and stopping at the door and waiting. A hundred times he must have stood there, listening for a movement, a word, a cough, a cry. But though often his hand had been raised to the doorknob, he had never gone in. He could never bring himself to do that simple thing. And inside, he knew, the old man sat, hands motionless upon the table, staring out of the window at the sun, the clouds, the rain, not even fighting old battles any more. But gradually the poignancy had faded, and his attempts at entrance had become less frequent, until at last it was altogether too late.
And then, as the sound of leather and steel upon the stone faded, Jordan remembered Cheppingden Castle.
He had left Willy in the great gardens, among the clipped hedges and stone nymphs and ordered beds, and taken Georgia into the castle.
“Where are the dungeons, Daddy?”
He laughed and, glancing through the sixpenny guide, told her there were none. He shared her disappointment, for the castle’s fortifications were purely decorative, and the rooms, though bleak and unfurnished, held no history of bloody murder or mediaeval anguish. In compensation, he related the only story of any interest connected with Cheppingden, about the queen, whose king had died, and who had secretly married her lover and come to live at the castle. The secret had been discovered, the lover disgraced, and she herself had died giving birth to a stillborn child.
“But they had a year,” he said, “almost a year to the day, I believe, of happiness. They must have strolled in the gardens and walked these rooms and felt safe from the world. So it wasn’t as sad as all that.”
Everywhere they went, their feet sounding on the flagstones, Georgia asked, “Did the queen die in this room, Daddy?”
“I don’t think anyone is sure where she died exactly.”
Georgia pulled him quickly to the next room. “Here then?”
“I shouldn’t think so. This was, let’s see, the small hall.”
Georgia was not convinced. “I expect she probably died here.” She ran over to the fireplace and walked in. He watched her looking up the chimney.
“I can see sky. Come and look.”
He went over and knelt by her side and stared up.
“We can’t see sky in our chimney at home, can we?”
He put one arm round her and held her tight. “See those pieces of iron all the way up inside the chimney, Georgia? They were for chimney sweeps. Children not much bigger than you, very often. They’d climb up those spikes and sweep the soot away.”
She looked up for a long time without saying anything. Jordan felt her soft flesh under his hand and smelled her hair, and a great wash of tenderness came over him so that he kissed her. She paid no attention except to lower her head and frown.
“Didn’t the children ever fall down, Daddy?”
“Yes, I expect they did.”
“They’d hurt themselves then, wouldn’t they?”
“Yes, they would.”
Georgia paused and glanced up quickly and then back to her father. “The children might even be killed, mightn’t they, Daddy?”
“Yes. If they were far up enough and fell, they might have been killed.”
Georgia nodded with slow satisfaction. She went into the middle of the hall and regarded the fireplace. “Does it smoke like ours, do you think, Daddy?”
“It probably did when the wind was in the wrong direction. But in those days people didn’t worry much about that kind of thing. When this castle was built there were still a lot of houses that didn’t have a chimney at all. They just had a hole in the roof, with a louver arrangement, and the fire underneath it. If there was a strong wind, the hall would have been filled with smoke. But they were used to it, you see, not like us.”
Georgia was pensive and wouldn’t hold his hand for a while as they went through the rooms.
At last she said, “Why doesn’t Mummy come with us?”
“She prefers the fresh air.”
“I don’t like the fresh air. Daddy, if you died, would Mummy marry a lover?”
“I’m not going to die.”
“But if?”
“I don’t know.” They came out into the courtyard, at one corner of which was a squat tower, the only part of the castle to predate the Tudors. “She might, I suppose.” The sky was clouding over what had started out as one of the few fine days of the summer. As the sunlight faded, Jordan felt mildly depressed. The castle had not lived up to expectations of excitement.
“Let’s go up the tower.”
“Well—” Jordan looked doubtfully at his watch. They had used up the half hour which he’d told Willy was all they’d need. “Well, I don’t see why not. If it’s open.”
They walked across the cobblestones and pushed at the heavy nail-studded door. It opened grudgingly and the light fell on a floor scattered with bird droppings.
“It’s lovely and dark,” Georgia said gleefully, “just like a dungeon, Daddy.”
Jordan stood on the step, resisting her pulls on his hand. “I’m not sure your mother would approve.”
“But you said, Daddy, you said!”
He smiled. “Alright, I don’t suppose it’ll do any—”
“Jordan!”
He turned as Willy entered the courtyard from the garden side.
“Jordan, where on earth have you been?”
Georgia tried to pull him inside the tower and whispered fiercely, “Don’t let her spoil it, Daddy, p
lease.”
“You mustn’t talk about your mother like—”
“Oh Jordan, you haven’t taken her up that filthy tower, have you?” She advanced briskly across the yard, voice raised and touched with impatience. Her tendency to shout in unfamiliar surroundings had always annoyed Jordan. “Come along now, or we’ll be late for tea.”
Jordan waited until she was closer and said, “I thought we might stop somewhere for tea on the way back.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the teas at the hotel. You know how whiny Georgia gets if we keep her out too long.”
“But, Mummy, we haven’t been up the tower yet.”
“And you’re not going to, my little poppet.”
“But Daddy promised—”
“Yes, I did say I would, Willy. It’ll only take a minute or two.”
Willy peered into the doorway. “Jordan, you are simply not taking Georgia into that filthy, smelly place. It’s probably dangerous too.”
“Oh don’t be ridiculous. It’s perfectly alright. Why don’t you start the car?”
Willy raised an eyebrow. “Darling, you are being unreasonable, aren’t you? If you can’t be polite to me, you might at least consider my daughter’s safety.”
“I’m not asking you to come. Just because you’re terrified of heights—”
“That’s absolutely beside the point.” The flesh over her cheekbones was white with anger.
“I’m not sure it’s beside the point at all.” He regretted having said it, but there was no help for it now. “You’re pushing your own fear onto Georgia and—”
“I will not listen to that—psychology. You’ll be saying I’m mad next. If anyone’s mad in this family it’s—”
“You’re damn well paranoiac at times, and you know it—”
“—on your side. Your uncle was round the bend for years,” she enunciated with precision, “and your—”
“That was a war wound!” he shouted at her.
“—your father was a dipso. So please don’t let’s have any of this vulgar name-calling.”
He let go of Georgia’s hand and stepped towards his wife. His arm seemed to move involuntarily.
“Don’t you dare hit me!”
He never knew whether or not he struck out, for the next thing he remembered was leaning against the doorpost with a dizziness in his head like a top wobbling to the end of its spin and seeing the figures of his wife and daughter tilting away from him across the courtyard.
Jordan raised his head from his hands. He was surprised to find that he’d been crying. He stood up, and the blanket fell away from his shoulders. He was not cold any more.
He went to the door and put his eye to the peephole. In reversed magnification, the deserted landing was endlessly far away and yet quite clear and sharp. He watched for some time, but no one came. He turned and leaned with his back against the door.
Then he moved to the corner of the room and wet his hands with cold water in the washbasin. He dried them carefully on the thin prison towel. He looked up at the window and had a curious fancy that perhaps outside there was indeed a broad spread of countryside, trees, meadows, grass, birds flying, bees humming. He put his hand on the chair to pull it beneath the window and look out and verify. He resisted the impulse—he was finished with the pursuit of dreams.
He looked down at his hand, a shapeless white on the back of the chair. He held the hand up, but it was too dim to see closely. He sat down at the table and lit a match. By its light he examined his right hand. There was no mark or scar on it, nothing strange or special. As the wood curled and the flame shivered and went out, he thought that if he were taken to a field of severed hands, he would never be able to pick out his own and match it to the stump. The lines and figures on the palm meant nothing to him, and the back of his hand was indistinguishable from ten thousand others.
And yet it was this hand that had clasped June’s to save himself from falling, this hand poised at the attic door but never turning, this hand seizing innocence but not held out to help, this hand wrenched from Georgia’s, raised to Willy, but always withdrawn unused, unscathed. Except for that one slim, sharp scratch, now healed and gone. And yet not gone—for it had been noted, tested, photographed. A murderer’s hand.
Fitting and just. He remembered George: “Come on, son, why not make it easy on yourself?”
Not easy, though, to stretch out a hand and lay it, veins up, on the blood-smoothed wood. The ancient penalty for traitors.
But he would do it. He could do it now.
He was filled with quiet contentment. He lay down on the bed and pulled the blanket over him.
Tomorrow—no, on Monday—he would change his plea to guilty; tomorrow he would instruct Tom Short. He smiled faintly, and immediately he was asleep, smiling.
The Living
36
He shaved with great care, going over the rough parts of his flesh again and again until they were entirely smooth. He washed the razor and dried the blade.
He dressed slowly, attentive to every detail, lingering over the buttoning of his clean white shirt, the insertion of the cufflinks, the attachment of the collar to studs, as though it were some kind of final parting. His shoes, the socks, suit, blue tie knotted perfectly, were of great value. Perhaps because they were tokens of a normality, of the happiness of things used every day, to which he had so long been blind and could see now only when they were gone. He felt a gentle sadness for all that life they stood for, and from which now he was irrevocably separated.
He felt, he was, purified. With his handkerchief he patted the razor-fine cut on his left cheek. And he remembered how June had kept a roll of cotton wool in her desk drawer for just this occasion. When a shaving cut opened again and bled, as it often did, she would hand him the cotton wool without a word. A solemn, small ritual which amused them both. There were many such things, he remembered now. Habits and words of daily closeness he had hardly noticed. The warm smell of her hair as she bent over his desk—not sallow, like poor Willy’s.
That last morning her sleep-charged softness, her fur slippers—like a child, like Georgia.
He smiled at the memory of all the endearing things that were now quite lost.
He was glad for the bareness of his room; glad that soon these clothes, smooth and fitting, would be taken away. He would wear garments of proper anonymity. And eat the food that the other prisoners ate.
Sadly, the past was bearable now. Even the dreams and visions and imaginings—the urgencies and quietness, the meetings and the partings—had the sweetness of a prior innocence. He could see her go up the stairs before him and into the room. And, as he shut the door and leaned against it, she put her hands on his lapels to help him off with the coat, and he kissed her. He unbuttoned her blue-and-purple-flowered housedress and slipped the pyjama top over her head. Her breasts were big and the nipples upright. He touched her white rounded belly. The bed was open for them. He never had such joy as in her eagerness for him. The sunlight bathed their bodies and she closed her eyes at the brightness as they made love…
This was permitted, as one is permitted a glass of water before communion.
He’d have liked to have stayed the whole day silent and unmoving. But he was quite resigned to the impossibility of this.
He went calmly with Denver, listening to every word the prison officer spoke, to the solicitors’ room, and he nodded courteously to Tom.
“I’ve told Geoffrey.” Tom looked grim.
“Oh, yes.”
“He’s anxious to see you. He’s coming in tomorrow afternoon. All the way from Suffolk.”
“I don’t think he’ll need to bother. Not when you’ve heard what I’ve got to tell you.”
Tom sighed. “What is it this time? Come on, spill the beans.”
“I’m going to change my plea to guilty.” Jordan was surprised to hear the tremor in his own voice.
Tom looked away with an air of heavy boredom. “You won’t need me then eit
her, will you?”
“No, Tom, I shan’t. But I’m grateful for all you’ve done. I shall see the governor this afternoon.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake!” Tom banged the table with his fist. “This is too bloody much. Maddox, you are without a doubt the most unmitigated fucking bore it’s ever been my disastrous luck to deal with legally—or, I may add, in any other way. No one expects someone in your position to be sensible, but you’re featherbrained to the point of lunacy. What the hell do you want, man? To be convicted of murder? Let me—”
“It’s not a matter of what I want. It’s what’s got to happen. It’s a matter of simple justice.”
“What are you trying to do? Get yourself interviewed on the telly? Do your memoirs for the Sunday Pic.?”
“I’m sorry, Tom. It is bad luck for you, I—”
“Balls!” He yelled the word. And then, with an enormous effort which left him white-cheeked, Tom spoke calmly. “Alright, Jordan. Tell me about it, then. You owe me that.”
“Tell you?” Jordan was nonplussed. There was really nothing at all to tell, nothing to … “What do you want me to tell you, Tom?”
“What happened? Did you just wake up one morning and decide it would be rather fun to pop round after breakfast to Number Twenty-seven Panton Place and croak June Singer?”
Jordan smiled. “It goes back a long way, Tom. I don’t know that I can begin to explain to you really.”
“I don’t want your life history. When did you decide to murder June? That’s what I want to know. When did it all start?”
“Well, I suppose … I suppose you could say, really, on that day June came down to Woodley. The day you rang up to ask me over for a drink.”
“Aha! I wondered when we’d get round to that. That was a nasty, unexpected little kick in the teeth from dear old Mrs. Payne, wasn’t it? Not unexpected to you, of course. You must have had a good deal of fun these last few days watching Geoffrey make a fool of himself.”
“Tom, believe me—”