‘Dad! What’s—’
His father grinned. ‘Picked up the wrong one in the dark.’
‘You were going to tackle burglars, wearing pink satin?’
Shared laughter was a release: muffled, trying not to wake the sleepers above.
‘Greg, what’s worrying you?’ his father asked, abruptly serious. ‘Something must be. You’re not in trouble of some sort? You would tell me, wouldn’t you? You know I’m always here to listen.’
‘I’m fine, Dad, thanks. Honest. I just felt like standing out in the rain.’
‘Why?’
‘Don’t know, really,’ Greg said, sheepish. ‘It seemed like a good idea. Didn’t realize how cold it was.’
‘Get those wet jeans off. You’d better have a shower before you go back to bed, warm yourself up,’ his dad said, pushing him gently towards the stairs. ‘I’ll bring you some hot chocolate.’
Greg heard footsteps from Katy’s room; her bleared, incredulous face appeared over the banisters. ‘Has someone chucked a bucket of water over your head, or what?’ she demanded. ‘And why are you wearing Mum’s dressing-gown?’
‘Greg felt like a midnight excursion,’ their dad said, jollily.
‘Oh, fine. My brother’s a screwball,’ Katy said. ‘Did I hear you say hot chocolate, Dad?’
‘Good afternoon, Edmund,’ said the Reverend Tilley in a bracing tone.
‘Is it?’ Once the veneer of politeness was thrown off, how easy it was to be rude! As soon as Edmund had seen the vicar’s pony-trap arriving, he had come out to the summerhouse, but the Reverend Tilley had followed him there. Edmund wished he had made a more effective escape, down to the lake. ‘Father’s in his study,’ he said curtly.
‘I shall speak to him in due course, but it’s you I’ve come to see. Your father’s very concerned about you. Your . . . state of mind. Your behaviour. Your attitude. He thinks you ought to be persuaded to see a doctor.’
‘Pointless. There’s nothing wrong with me that a doctor could cure.’ Edmund would not look at the vicar. He stood with feet astride, looking up at the left-hand caryatid with her garland offering. Her beautiful impassive face gazed over his head. Edmund would readily have let himself be turned to stone in exchange for such untroubled serenity.
‘Edmund, I share your father’s concern. You seem deeply perturbed. What is it?’
Edmund looked at him. ‘The war isn’t enough?’
‘Of course, of course, we know you’re under strain. But your position is a privileged one, you know—you’re young, physically capable, able to take an active part in this conflict. When it’s over you will feel justly proud to have served your country, especially if you can keep your spirits up till the end. Some of us can only watch from the sidelines and offer up our prayers.’
‘So I’m to consider myself lucky? I shall remember that next time I’m taking cover in a stinking shell-hole.’
The vicar frowned: stinking shell-holes were not part of his view of warfare. ‘Edmund, you must not allow these hardships to make you bitter. You’re perfectly fitted by background, education and training to lead your men into battle. They look to you for an example of strength and courage. Don’t let them see bitterness and weakness.’
‘I can’t help it,’ Edmund muttered, hearing his voice like that of a petulant child.
‘Has something in particular happened to upset you?’ The vicar spoke more kindly. ‘You can confide in me, you know that. I’ve known you all your life, Edmund, and I’d like to think that I can share your burden. Shall we walk?’
He steered Edmund towards the long central path. Edmund hesitated; then, suddenly reckless: ‘Yes, there is something.’
‘I thought so! Go on.’ The vicar bent his head to listen.
‘My closest friend was killed. Not killed outright. He was caught by a bursting shell and he died slowly, in agony. He took three days, dying. I watched him.’
‘My dear boy, I’m so sorry.’
‘Yes, no doubt you are, but in a moment you’ll tell me that he had the great privilege of dying for his country, dying a hero’s death. It wasn’t. He died the death of a tortured animal. God—your God—showed no mercy—’ Alarmingly, Edmund’s voice wavered and broke into a sob. He covered his face with both hands. The vicar put a hand on his shoulder; Edmund moved away.
‘How terribly distressing for you.’
‘For him!’
‘Yes, for him of course. You must console yourself with the thought that he’s at peace now, with God—’
‘No! There is no God! How can there be?’
‘You must not speak like this,’ the vicar said calmly. ‘I will pray for your friend, and for you—’
‘Keep your prayers for yourself! I won’t have you interfering!’ Edmund burst out. ‘I loved Alex, I still love him, and you can’t bring him back with your prayers, or make it a fraction more bearable—’
‘You must avoid dwelling on it. Pray for him, if you can. If you cannot, think of your blessings. Think of all you have here at Graveney, to return to,’ the vicar said, waving an expansive hand. ‘This beautiful house, marriage, a loving wife, if you would only—’
‘Wife! I shall have no wife. Neither Philippa Fitch nor anyone else. Don’t you understand? I’ve just told you I love Alex.’
‘Love, yes,’ said the vicar, ‘but not of the same kind as for a wife—the love of a good friend is a blessing, but of a different kind.’
‘It isn’t different.’ Edmund spoke in a whisper. ‘I won’t let you take away what we had together, with your words. We loved each other body and soul. That was our blessing. We planned a future together—away from Graveney, if that was what it took.’
‘Edmund, recollect yourself! What are you saying?’ The vicar had recoiled as if from a noxious drain. ‘Are you implying that you—you and this man—knew each other carnally, shared physical intimacy?’
‘Yes!’
Edmund heard the vicar’s hissing intake of breath. ‘And you call that a blessing! It’s depravity—bestiality!’
‘It was not!’ Edmund met his gaze, chin high. ‘It was love—freely given, freely received. I refuse to view it in the way you do! Killing other men with grenades, killing with bullets, killing with bayonets, killing with poison gas—is that not depravity? Is that not sinful? No—according to your twisted logic, to kill is right and to love is wrong!’
‘Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; it is an abomination!’ the Reverend Tilley quoted fiercely. ‘So it is written in the Book of Leviticus. And what is wrong in God’s eyes cannot be made to seem right or justifiable, whatever the situation. I will not listen while you make excuses for your sin—if it is repulsive to me, imagine how much more repulsive to the Lord! You must realize, man, that not only is it morally repugnant, it is also a crime in the eyes of the law! Have you no shame?’
‘No,’ Edmund said, although he felt the uncomfortable stirring of a reminder that he had felt ashamed. ‘You said I could confide in you,’ he reproached.
‘Yes, but I did not for one moment imagine what you were about to tell me—tell me with such relish, such exultation!’ The vicar turned away to look over the ha-ha. ‘I don’t propose to carry on discussing your filthy indulgence. It is highly distasteful to me, as it would be to any decent human being, let alone a minister of God’s Church. It would be quite wrong of me to encourage you to carry on talking in this way. If your father knew of this, he would disinherit you—’
‘I’d willingly have disinherited myself,’ Edmund said, his voice breaking, ‘if Alex had lived.’
‘But God has seen fit to take him to Himself—this—this Alex. And let us hope that he repented at the last. As you must, now. As for this talk of disinheritance, of betraying your family’s love and trust, their hopes for you—Edmund, Edmund, you must cure yourself of this!’
‘There’s no cure,’ Edmund muttered.
‘Nonsense, boy! Do you know what tomorrow is?’
&nbs
p; ‘It’s Good Friday.’ Easter marked the end of Edmund’s leave. On Monday he would set off for Folkestone and the crossing to Boulogne.
‘Indeed it is.’ The Reverend Tilley looked at him accusingly. ‘The day when our Saviour willingly died on the Cross for our sins—for your sins. What better day to make clean of your life, to ask for forgiveness, to throw yourself at the feet of your Saviour and ask Him to deliver you from impure thoughts? I suggest that you spend some time in prayer and contemplation before coming to the service. I will also pray for you.’
‘I don’t want prayers,’ Edmund said sullenly. ‘I’ve told you.’
‘My boy, to sin is one thing, to persist wilfully in clinging to your sin is another. This stubbornness—this spiritual blindness—will do you no good; you must open your heart to God’s healing love. I won’t tell your father about the details of our conversation,’ the Reverend Tilley summed up. ‘You needn’t worry yourself that I will break your confidence. Not only would it be one of the most repellent tasks I have ever had to undertake, it would break your parents’ hearts if they knew how you have repaid their devotion. I will merely tell them that we have had a good talk, and that I hope—as indeed I do—that the Easter services will send you back to France in a more dutiful frame of mind, at peace with yourself. Good afternoon—until tomorrow, then.’
The vicar gave Edmund a last cold look before walking quickly back to the house. Edmund followed as far as the summerhouse, and stood as before looking up at the caryatid. How many conversations, arguments, pleadings, disputes had been overlooked by her imperturbable gaze? She was a godless, pagan figure, her sole purpose to offer her beauty and her self and her garland of vine leaves. Edmund preferred her to the vicar’s God, the forbidding God who could be shocked and appalled by the instincts of the humans he had created. But as God did not exist, Edmund need not worry about him. He was more concerned that he had betrayed Alex, letting the vicar’s filthy mind label him as depraved, bestial, perverted. He had allowed the vicar to speak his name, allowed his memory to be tainted. He leaned against cool stone and closed his eyes to the spring morning. ‘Why did I speak?’ he murmured to Alex. ‘Forgive me. Please forgive me.’
On the day of the Armistice, nineteen months later, Edmund sat with other soldiers drinking in an estaminet near St Omer. A church bell—not English peals, but the French intoning of a single, sonorous note again and again—announced that the war was over. It seemed impossible: the war had sucked him into its vortex, draining him of youth, of vitality, of love, and now it was going to regurgitate him and spit him out. Without caring whether he lived or died, Edmund had somehow come through, and the men with him had come through, and the Armistice had ended the purpose of their lives together and they must all find something else.
What now?
He had no home to go to, no family awaiting his return, no real name. He must build some kind of life for his new self, the self he had invented over the last year and a half.
He drank his beer, thinking of England in November: mists, and the opening meet, and the trees scattering their gold over the grass; the denuded garden showing its outlines, its bare hedges and skeletal trees. But Graveney Hall too was skeletal, a burned-out hollow. There would be no more opening meets, no more teas on the terrace, no more elegant guests spilling out to the lawns. It was a shell house, not a home any more.
When Edmund thought of Good Friday it was like watching the actions of a madman. He pushed his memories away from him and ordered another beer. They were part of his old life, not of this one.
He refused to go to church the morning after his conversation with the vicar. No amount of pleading or reproaches from his parents could make him change his mind. The Reverend Tilley would be looking out for him, he knew—would be looking for signs of shame and contrition. He would see none because he would not see Edmund.
‘Very well! Since you are so obstinate, we will see you at luncheon,’ his father said coolly, getting into the motor car. Edmund’s mother merely gazed at him sadly. Baillie, who became chauffeur on church days, touched his cap to Edmund and drove them away. Edmund stood watching as the Crossley made its steady, rocking progress along the track to the lodge gates.
He stood by the holm oaks on the eastern front and turned back to look at the house. It was waiting for him, waiting to claim him, body and soul. He belonged to it: it was nonsense to think of it the other way round. He had been conceived and born for Graveney; it dictated the course of his life. It was a great, sprawling excrescence on the face of the earth, a magnificent shell with coldness within. He hated it.
If there were no Graveney Hall, there would be no need for an heir. He would be free. The idea struck Edmund—simple, appealing—and took hold.
With most of the servants at church, there were few people about: only two or three maids and the cook, preparing luncheon. He went to the stableyard and into the harness room. There was a paraffin stove here, used in winter to take the chill off the air and prevent the leather from going damp and mouldy. There must be stores of paraffin, in cans. He went into the adjoining store room and rummaged around amongst tins of saddle-soap, neatsfoot oil and liniment.
Squat containers. Cans and cans of it. He screwed open a lid and sniffed.
On the shelf opposite he found matches.
So easy! Everything laid out for his convenience, as if it were meant.
There was no-one to see him return to the house and mount the back steps, with a can of paraffin in each hand and matches in his pocket. He did not hesitate. In the drawing room, he sprinkled a trail of paraffin across the carpet and dropped a lighted match. The flames licked up brightly, blue then yellow. He did not stay to observe the effects, but crossed to the dining room and tipped a liquid trail across the linen cloth that was spread in readiness for luncheon, striking a match and lobbing it at the centrepiece of spring flowers. The leaping flames were a fanfare of light, a triumph. Then it occurred to him that he should have started upstairs, or risk trapping himself if the blaze took hold. He ran up the broad staircase to the upper floor.
As he went from room to room, pouring, lighting, he developed a kind of reckless artistry: igniting a bowl of pot-pourri in his mother’s room, making a neat pyre of books in the centre of his father’s. With a lighted spill of paper, he torched the damask curtains that draped his mother’s four-poster bed, and made a bonfire of the crested and embossed stationery on her writing desk. It was an act of creation. Let there be fire: and there was fire. Let the fire be gathered unto one place: and it was so. And it was good.
Down again to survey the results of his work. Yes, taking hold nicely. He ran down the stairs and into the library. A slosh at the dry ranked books, his father’s collection, all leather-bound with hand-tooled titles: the encyclopedias, the essays, the bound London Illustrated and the books on botany and ornithology and horses and hunting. The pungent, oily smell of paraffin filled his nostrils. He struck a match and threw it, heard the satisfying whoosh, saw the steady blue flames turning gold, consuming. Good. The temperature was rising: sweat trickled on his forehead and down his neck.
He ran out through the hot tunnel of the main reception room and down the steps to the garden, carrying his cans. The servants would still be working in the kitchens, safe along their corridor, oblivious. By the fountain he turned and looked back at the dining room, seeing flames beating at the window, and a pall of black smoke.
He turned away, composing himself for the second part of his plan. He had sacrificed the house; now himself. Death by fire, death by water—he had chosen fire for the house, water for himself. It was really rather pleasing that it was Good Friday. Walking quickly through the gardens, he realized that he would never see them again: the fountains, the statues, the summerhouses, the ha-ha. But still he did not stop for a last look. He had to make sure he was gone when the fire was discovered.
Across the lower lawn went his feet, down the steps to the lake. He threw the paraffin cans in, one after
the other, hurling them as far as he could. Then he went into the grotto and sat on the bench. As an afterthought, he unwrapped his pocket-book and pencil from their protective oilskin, tore out a page and wrote a bland farewell message to his parents. He placed the note and pencil on the bench, weighted by a stone; then he sat leafing through his own poems and Alex’s letters, his most precious possessions.
No-one must find them after his death. He should have given them to the flames.
He kissed Alex’s signature and traced the flamboyant capital A with his fingertip. Then he folded the loose sheets inside the notebook and wrapped the oilskin tightly around. Standing, he tossed the package into the water: the words and eventually the paper would dissolve them, and all the feeling in them. Now he undressed, removing his jacket, his tie, his shirt, his boots and socks, breeches, undergarments. He smoothed his finger-tips over the initials EP, marked in tiles. He had a memorial here, ready-made.
Now.
He stood naked by the water’s edge. It felt like a gesture of bravado, exposing himself to the air: he could not rid himself of the notion that there might be snipers behind the trees and machine-gun posts on the slopes facing him. Across the lake the trees were beginning to come into leaf; he looked at the delicate colours, the pinky-browns, the first shadings of green, a frosting of wild cherry-blossom. The woods were full of birdsong: birds going about their business of nesting and living, while he went about his business of dying.
He closed his eyes and thought of Alex diving into the river near their Picardy farmhouse, where green weed flowed like hair. Alex was a strong swimmer; Edmund was not. It was time to follow.
The water was colder than he would have believed possible. He dipped one toe, stepped in with both feet, waded on yielding, sandy mud. There were creeping shocks of coldness as the water reached his testicles, stomach, chest—how wet it was! Now the final chilly clutch over his shoulders, ears, hair, and he was in, swimming. He would have to combat his instinct to keep afloat, deliberately fill his lungs with water. He raised his head, took a deep breath (why?) and ducked, sweeping with his arms to take him deep, out to the middle of the lake where weeds would entangle him and keep him down.
The Shell House Page 23