by P. D. James
She set out the ingredients as carefully as if this were a televised demonstration: hazelnuts, blanched almonds, glacé cherries, mixed peel and sultanas, a block of butter, caster sugar, single cream and a bar of the best plain chocolate. As she chopped, she was visited by a mysterious and fugitive sensation, an agreeable fusion of mind and body which she had never experienced before coming to the Dupayne. It came rarely and unexpectedly and was felt as a gentle tingling of the blood. She supposed that this was happiness. She paused, her knife poised above the hazelnuts, and for a moment let it run its course. Was this, she wondered, what most people felt for most of their lives, even for part of their childhood? It had never been part of hers. The feeling passed and, smiling, she set again to work.
For Muriel Godby the childhood years up to the age of sixteen had been a confinement in an open prison, a sentence against which there was no appeal and for some offence never precisely explained. She accepted the parameters, mental and physical, of her incarceration; the semi-detached 1930s house in an insalubrious suburb of Birmingham, with its black mock-Tudor criss-cross of beams, its small patch of back garden, its high fences shielding the garden from the curiosity of neighbours. The limits extended to the comprehensive school to which she could walk in ten minutes through the municipal park with its mathematically precise flower beds, its predictable changes of plants: the spring daffodils, the summer geraniums, the dahlias of autumn. She had early learned the prison survival law of lying low and avoiding trouble.
Her father was the gaoler. That undersized precise little man with his self-important gait and the mild half-shameful sadism which prudence made him keep within bearable limits for his victims. She had seen her mother as a fellow inmate, but common misfortune hadn’t bred either sympathy or compassion. There were things best left unsaid, silences which, both recognized, it would be catastrophic to break. Each cupped her misery in careful hands, each kept her distance as if fearful of contamination by the other’s unspecified delinquency. Muriel survived by courage, silence and by her hidden inner life. The triumphs of her nightly fantasies were dramatic and exotic but she never pretended to herself that they were other than make-believe, useful expedients to make life more tolerable, but not indulgences to be confused with reality. There was a real world outside her prison and one day she would break free and inherit it.
She grew up knowing that her father loved only his elder daughter. By the time Simone was fourteen their mutual obsession had become so established that neither Muriel nor her mother questioned its primacy. Simone had the presents, the treats, the new clothes, the weekend outings she and her father took together. When Muriel had gone to bed in her small room at the back of the house, she would still hear the murmur of their voices, Simone’s high half-hysterical laughter. Her mother was their servant, but without a servant’s wage. Perhaps she too had ministered to their needs by her involuntary voyeurism.
Muriel was neither envious nor resentful. Simone had nothing she wanted. By the time she was fourteen Muriel knew the date of her release: her sixteenth birthday. She had then only to ensure that she could support herself adequately and no law could compel her to return home. Her mother, perhaps at last realizing that she had no life, slipped out of it with the unobtrusive incompetence which had characterized her role as housewife and mother. Mild pneumonia need not be a killer except to those who have no wish to fight it. Seeing her mother coffined in the undertaker’s chapel of rest—a euphemism which filled Muriel with an impotent fury—she had looked down on the face of an unknown woman. It wore, to her eyes, a smile of secret content. Well, that was one way of breaking free, but it wouldn’t be hers.
Nine months later, on her sixteenth birthday, she left, leaving Simone and her father to their self-indulgent symbiotic world of conspiratorial glances, brief touches and childhood treats. She suspected, but neither knew nor cared, what they did together. She gave no warning of her intention. The note she left for her father, placed carefully in the centre of the mantelpiece, merely stated that she had left home to get a job and look after herself. She knew her assets but was less perceptive about her disabilities. She offered to the market her six respectable O levels, her high skills in shorthand and typing, a brain open to developing technology, intelligence and an orderly mind. She went to London with money she had been hoarding since her fourteenth birthday, found a bed–sitting-room she could afford, and looked for a job. She was prepared to offer loyalty, dedication and energy and was aggrieved when these attributes were less valued than more enticing gifts—physical attractiveness, gregarious good humour and a will to please. She obtained work easily but no job lasted long. Invariably she left by common consent, too proud to protest or seek redress when the not unexpected interview took place and her employer suggested that she would be happier in a post which made better use of her qualifications. Employers gave her good references, particularly lauding her virtues. The reasons for her leaving were tactfully obscured; indeed they hardly knew quite what they were.
She never saw or heard from her father or sister again. Twelve years after she had left home both were dead, Simone by suicide and her father two weeks later from a heart attack. The news, in a letter from her father’s solicitor, had taken six weeks to reach her. She felt only the vague and painless regret that the tragedy of others can occasionally induce. That Simone should choose to die so dramatically evoked only surprise that her sister had found the necessary courage. But their deaths changed her life. There was no other living relation and she inherited the family house. She didn’t return to it, but instructed an estate agent to sell the property and everything in it.
And now she was free of her life in bed-sitting-rooms. She found a square brick-built cottage in South Finchley, down one of those half-rural lanes which still persist, even in the inner suburbs. With its small ugly windows under a high roof, it was unattractive but solidly built and reasonably private. In front there was parking space for the car she was now able to afford. At first she camped in the property while, week by week, she sought items of furniture from second-hand shops, painted the rooms and made curtains.
Her life at work was less satisfactory, but she met the bad times with courage. It was a virtue she had never lacked. Her penultimate job, that of typist–receptionist at Swathling’s, had been a comedown in status. But the job offered possibilities and she had been interviewed by Miss Dupayne who had hinted that she might in time need a personal assistant. The job had been a disaster. She despised the students, castigating them as stupid, arrogant and mannerless, the spoilt brats of the nouveaux riches. Once they had taken the trouble to notice her, the dislike had been quickly returned. They found her officious, disagreeably plain and lacking the deference they expected from an inferior. It was convenient to have a focus for their discontents and a butt for their jokes. Few of them were naturally malicious, some even treated her with courtesy, but none stood out against the universal disparagement. Even the kindlier got used to referring to her as GG. It stood for Ghastly Godby.
Two years ago matters had come to a crisis. Muriel had found one of the students’ pocket diary and had placed it in a drawer of the reception desk waiting to hand it over when the girl next called for her post. She had seen no reason to seek the owner out. The girl had accused her of deliberately withholding it. She had started screaming at her. Muriel had gazed at her with cold contempt; the dyed red hair sticking out in spikes, the gold stud at the side of the nose, the lipsticked mouth screaming obscenities. Snatching up the diary, she had hissed her final words.
“Lady Swathling asked me to tell you she wants you in her office. I can tell you what for. You’re due for the sack. You’re not the kind of person the college wants on the reception desk. You’re ugly and you’re stupid and we’ll be glad to see you go.”
Muriel had sat in silence and had then reached for her handbag. It was to be one more rejection. She had been aware of the approach of Caroline Dupayne. Now, looking up, she said nothing. It was the el
der woman who spoke.
“I’ve just been with Lady Swathling. I think it’s quite right for you to make a move. You’re wasted in this job. I need a secretary–receptionist at the Dupayne Museum. The money won’t be any more I’m afraid, but there are real prospects. If you’re interested I suggest you go to the office now and give in your notice before Lady Swathling speaks.”
And that is what Muriel had done. She had at last found a job in which she felt valued. She had done well. She had found her freedom. Without realizing it, she had also found love.
11
It was after nine o’clock before Neville Dupayne’s last visit was completed and he drove to his flat overlooking Kensington High Street. In London he used a Rover when widely spaced appointments or a complicated journey by public transport made a car necessary. The one he loved, his red 1963 E-type Jaguar, was kept in the lock-up garage at the museum to be collected as usual at six o’clock on Friday night. It was his practice to work late from Monday to Thursday if necessary so that he could be free for the weekend out of London, which had become essential to him. He had a resident’s parking permit for the Rover but there was the usual frustrating drive round the block before he was able to edge the car into a vacant space. The erratic weather had changed again during the afternoon and now he walked the hundred yards to his flat through a steady drizzle of rain.
He lived on the top floor of a large post-war block, architecturally undistinguished but well maintained and convenient; its size and bland conformity, even the serried rows of identical windows like blank anonymous faces, seeming to guarantee the privacy he craved. He never thought of the flat as home, a word which held no particular associations for him and which he would have found it difficult to define. But he accepted that it was a refuge, its essential peace emphasized by the constant muted rumble of the busy street five storeys below which came to him, not disagreeably, as the rhythmic moaning of a distant sea. Relocking the door behind him and resetting the alarm, he scooped up the scattered letters on the carpet, hung up his damp coat, dumped his briefcase and, entering the sitting-room, drew down the wooden slatted blinds against the lights of Kensington.
The flat was comfortable. When he had bought it some fifteen years previously after his move to London from the Midlands following the final breakdown of his marriage, he had taken trouble selecting the minimum items necessary of well-designed modern furniture and subsequently had found no need to change his initial choice. Occasionally he liked to listen to music and the stereo equipment was up-to-date and expensive. He had no great interest in technology, requiring only that it should work efficiently. If a machine broke down he replaced it with a different model since money was less important than saving time and avoiding the frustration of argument. The telephone he hated. It was in the hall and he seldom answered it, preferring to listen to the recorded messages every evening. Those who might need him urgently, including his secretary at the hospital, had his mobile number. No one else did, not even his daughter and his siblings. The significance of these exclusions, when it occurred to him, left him unworried. They knew where to find him.
The kitchen was as unused as when it was first remodelled after he bought the flat. He fed himself conscientiously but took little pleasure in cooking and depended largely on made-up meals bought from the high street supermarkets. He had opened the refrigerator and was deciding whether he would prefer fish pie with frozen peas to moussaka, when the doorbell rang. The sound, loud and insistent, came so rarely that he felt as shocked as if there had been a hammering on his door. Few people knew where he lived and none would arrive without warning. He went to the door and pressed the intercom button, hoping that this was a stranger who had selected the wrong bell. It was with a sinking of his spirits that he heard his daughter’s loud, peremptory voice.
“Dad, it’s Sarah. I’ve been ringing you. I’ve got to see you. Didn’t you get the messages?”
“No, I’m sorry. I’m just in. I haven’t listened to the answerphone. Come on up.”
He released the front door and waited for the whine of the lift. It had been a difficult day and tomorrow he would be faced with a different but equally intractable problem, the future of the Dupayne Museum. He needed time to rehearse his tactics, the justification for his reluctance to sign the new lease, the arguments he would have to muster effectively to combat the resolution of his brother and sister. He had hoped for a peaceful evening in which he might find the will to reach a final decision, but he was unlikely to get that peace now. Sarah wouldn’t be here if she were not in trouble.
As soon as he opened the door and took her umbrella and raincoat from her, he saw that the trouble was serious. From childhood Sarah had never been able to control, let alone disguise, the intensity of her feelings. Her rages from her babyhood had been passionate and exhausting, her moments of happiness and excitement were frenetic, her despairs infected both parents with her gloom. Always how she looked, what she wore, betrayed the tumult of her inner life. He remembered one evening—was it five years ago?—when she had found it convenient for her latest lover to call for her at this address. She had stood where she stood now, her dark hair intricately piled, her cheeks flushed with joy. Looking at her he had been surprised to find her beautiful. Now her body seemed to have slumped into premature middle age. Her hair, unbrushed, was tied back from a face sullen with despair. Looking at her face, so like his own and yet so mysteriously different, he saw her unhappiness in the dark-shadowed eyes which seemed focused on her own wretchedness. She dumped herself in an armchair.
He said, “What would you like? Wine, coffee, tea?”
“Wine will do. Anything you’ve got opened.”
“White or red?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Dad! What does it matter? All right, red.”
He took the nearest bottle from the wine cupboard and brought it in with two glasses. “What about food? Have you eaten? I’m just about to heat up some supper.”
“I’m not hungry. I’ve come because there are things we have to settle. First of all, you may as well know, Simon has walked out.”
So that was it. He wasn’t surprised. He had only met her live-in lover once and had known then, with a rush of confused pity and irritation, that it was another mistake. It was the recurring pattern of her life. Her loves had always been consuming, impulsive and intense, and now that she was nearing thirty-four, her need of a loving commitment was fuelled by increasing desperation. He knew that there was nothing he could say which would give her comfort and that anything he said would be resented. His job had deprived her in adolescence of his interest and concern and the divorce had afforded her an earlier opportunity for grievance. All she ever demanded of him now was practical help.
He said, “When did this happen?”
“Three days ago.”
“And it’s final?”
“Of course it’s final, it’s been final for the last month but I didn’t see it. And now I’ve got to get away, really away. I want to go abroad.”
“What about the job, the school?”
“I’ve chucked that.”
“You mean you’ve given a term’s notice?”
“I haven’t given any notice. I’ve walked out. I wasn’t going back to that bloody bear garden to have the kids sniggering about my sex life.”
“But would they? How could they know?”
“For God’s sake, Dad, live in the real world! Of course they know. They make it their business to know. It’s bad enough being told that I wouldn’t be a teacher if I was fit for anything else without having sexual failure flung in my face.”
“But you teach middle school. They’re children.”
“These kids know more about sex at eleven than I did at twenty. And I was trained to teach, not to spend half my time filling in forms and the rest trying to keep order among twenty-five disruptive, foul-mouthed, aggressive kids with absolutely no interest in learning. I’ve been wasting my life. No more.”
“T
hey can’t all be like that.”
“Of course they’re not, but there are enough of them to make a class unteachable. I’ve got two boys who’ve been diagnosed as needing psychiatric in-patient treatment. They’ve been assessed but there’s no place for them. So what happens? They’re thrown back at us. You’re a psychiatrist. They’re your responsibility, not mine.”
“But walking out! That isn’t like you. It’s hard on the rest of the staff.”
“The Head can cope with that. I’ve had precious little support from him these last few terms. Anyway, I’ve left.”
“And the flat?” They had, he knew, bought it jointly. He had loaned her the capital for the deposit and he supposed that it was her salary that had paid the mortgage.
She said, “We’ll sell it of course. But there’s no hope now of dividing the profit. There won’t be any profit. That hostel they’re putting up opposite for homeless juvenile offenders has put a stop to that. Our solicitor should have found out about it, but it’s no good suing him for negligence. We need to get the place sold for what we can get. I’m leaving that to Simon. He’ll get on with it efficiently because he knows he’s legally liable with me for the mortgage. I’m getting out. The thing is, Dad, I need money.”
He asked, “How much?”
“Enough to live comfortably abroad for a year. I’m not asking you for it—at least not directly. I want my share of the profits from the museum. I want it closed. Then I can take a decent loan from you—about twenty thousand—and pay you back when the place has shut down. We’re all entitled to something, aren’t we, I mean, the trustees and the grandchildren?”
He said, “I don’t know how much. Under the trust deed all the valuable objects, including the pictures, will be offered to other museums. We get a share of what’s left once it’s sold. It could be as much as twenty thousand each, I suppose. I haven’t calculated.”