by P. D. James
“Then I suggest you let her know the cost of her obstinacy.”
Maycroft said, “Is that all?”
“No, it is not all. I said there were two matters. The second is that I propose to take up residence permanently on Combe as soon as the necessary arrangements can be made. I shall, of course, require the appropriate accommodation. While I am waiting for a decision on Atlantic Cottage, I suggest additions are made to Peregrine Cottage to make it at least temporarily acceptable.”
Maycroft desperately hoped that his face didn’t convey the dismay he felt. He said, “I shall, of course, tell the Trustees. We’ll have to look at the Trust deed. I’m not sure if permanent residents other than those actually working here can be allowed. Emily Holcombe, of course, is provided for in the deed.”
Oliver said, “The wording is that no person born on the island can be refused admission. I was born on Combe. There is no prohibition on the length of stay. I think you’ll find that what I propose is legally possible without the need to change the terms of the Trust.”
Without another word he turned and was gone. Staring at the door which Oliver had shut with a firmness just short of a slam, Maycroft sank into his chair, a wave of depression as heavy as a physical weight on his shoulders. This was catastrophe. Was the job he had taken as an easy temporary option, a peaceful interval in which he could come to terms with his loss, evaluate his past life and decide on his future, to end in failure and humiliation? The Trustees knew that Oliver had always been difficult, but Maycroft’s predecessor had coped.
He didn’t hear Emily Holcombe’s knock, but suddenly she was crossing the room towards him. She said, “I’ve been talking to Mrs. Burbridge in the kitchen. Millie’s there bleating about some problem down at the quay. Apparently Dan has dropped Oliver’s blood sample overboard.”
Maycroft said, “Oliver’s been in here complaining. He took it very badly. I tried to explain that it was an accident.” He knew that his dismay and—yes—his inadequacy were written on his face.
She said, “An odd kind of accident. I suppose he can give another sample. There must be some blood left even in his grudging veins. Aren’t you taking this too seriously, Rupert?”
“That’s not all. We’ve got a problem. Oliver’s threatening to cut the Trust out of his will.”
“That will be inconvenient but hardly disastrous. We’re not on the breadline.”
“He’s made another threat. He wants to live here permanently.”
“Well, he can’t. The idea’s impossible.”
Maycroft said miserably, “It may not be impossible. I’ll have to look at the Trust deed. We may not legally be able to stop him.”
Emily Holcombe made for the door, then turned to face him. She said, “Legally or illegally, he’s got to be stopped. If no one else has the guts to do it, then I shall.”
4
* * *
The place that Miranda Oliver and Dennis Tremlett had discovered for themselves had seemed as propitious and unexpected as a small miracle: a grassy depression on the lower cliff, about a hundred yards south of an ancient stone chapel and less than three yards from the sheer forty-foot drop to a small inlet of churning sea. The shallow was bounded by high granite rocks on each side and accessible only by clambering and slithering down the steep boulder-strewn incline tangled with bushes. They provided convenient boughs to hang on to, and the descent wasn’t particularly difficult, even for the partially lame Dennis. But it was unlikely to tempt anyone who wasn’t looking for a secret hiding place, and only a watcher peering down from the extreme edge of the friable overhanging cliff would have a chance of seeing them. Miranda had happily discounted that possibility—desire, excitement, the optimism of hope had been too intoxicating to admit what were surely unlikely contingencies and spurious fears. Dennis had tried to share her confidence, had forced into his voice the enthusiasm he knew she expected and needed from him. For her, the closeness to the dangerous cliff edge enhanced the invulnerability of their refuge and gave an erotic edge to their lovemaking.
Now they lay bodily close but distanced in thought, their faces upheld to the blue tranquillity of the sky and a tumble of white clouds. The unusual strength of the autumn sun had warmed the enclosing boulders, and they were both naked to their waists. Dennis had pulled up his jeans, still unzipped, and Miranda’s corduroy skirt was crumpled over her thighs. Her other clothes lay in a tumbled heap beside her, her binoculars thrown over them. Now, with the most urgent physical need satisfied, all his other senses were preternaturally acute, his ears—as always on the island—throbbed with a cacophony of sound: the pounding of the sea, the crash and swirl of the waves and the occasional wild shriek of a seagull. He could smell the crushed turf and the stronger earth, a faint unrecognised smell, half-sweet, half-sour, from the clump of bulbous-leaved plants brightly green against the silver of the granite, the sea smell and the pungent sweat of warm flesh and sex.
He heard Miranda give a small, satisfied sigh of happiness. It provoked in him an uprush of tenderness and gratitude and he turned his face towards hers and gazed at her tranquil profile. She always looked like this after they had made love, the complacent secret smile, the face smooth and looking years younger, as if a hand had passed over her skin conjuring away the faint etchings of incipient middle age. She had been a virgin when they first came together, but there had been nothing tentative or passive about their desperate coupling. She had opened herself to him as if this moment could compensate for all the dead years. And sexual fulfilment had released in her more than the body’s half-acknowledged need for warm responsive flesh, for love. Their stolen hours, apart from the overriding need for physical love, had been spent in talk, sometimes desultory, more often a spilling out of pent-up, long-repressed resentment and unhappiness.
He knew something of what her life with her father had been; he had watched it for twelve years. But if he had felt pity, it had been only a fleeting emotion untouched by any affection for her. There had been an intimidating unattractiveness about her too-obvious efficiency, her reserve, the times she seemed to treat him more like a servant than her father’s confidential assistant. She seemed almost at times not to notice he was there. He told himself that she was her father’s child. Oliver had always been a demanding taskmaster, particularly when he was undertaking overseas publicity tours. Dennis wondered why he still bothered; they couldn’t possibly be commercially necessary. Publicly Oliver said that it was important for a writer to meet his public, to speak to the people who bought and read him, to undertake in return the small service of signing their copies. Dennis suspected that there were other reasons. The tours ministered to a need for public affirmation of the respect, even the adoration, which so many thousands felt for him.
But the tours were a strain compensated for by fussiness and irritation, which only his daughter and Tremlett were allowed to see. Miranda made herself unpopular by criticisms and requests which her father never voiced directly. She inspected every hotel room he was given, ran his baths when the complicated apparatus controlling hot, cold, shower and bath was beyond him, made sure his free time was sacrosanct, ensured that he had the food he liked served promptly even at inconvenient times. He had peculiar foibles. Miranda and the accompanying publicity girl had to ensure that readers who wanted their books dedicated presented him with the name written plainly in capitals. He made himself endure long signing sessions with good humour but couldn’t tolerate being presented, once his pen was put away, with late requests for dedications from the bookstore staff or their friends. Miranda would tactfully collect their copies to take back to the hotel, promising that they would be ready by the next morning. Tremlett knew that she was seen as an irritating addition to the tour, someone whose peremptory efficiency contrasted with her famous father’s willingness to put himself out. He himself was always given an inferior room in the hotels. They were more luxurious than anything he had been used to and he made no complaint. He suspected Miranda would have r
eceived the same treatment except that she bore the name Oliver and her father needed her next door.
And now, lying beside her quietly, he remembered how the love affair had started. It was in the hotel in Los Angeles. It had been a long and stressful day, and at eleven-thirty, when she had at last settled her father for the night, Dennis had seen her at the door of her room, half leaning against it, her shoulders drooping. She seemed unable to get the card into the lock, and on impulse he had taken it from her and opened the door. He saw that her face was drained with exhaustion and that she was on the verge of tears. Instinctively he had put his arm round her and had helped her into the room. She had clung to him, and after a few minutes—he wasn’t sure now quite how—their lips had met and they were kissing passionately between incoherent mutterings of love. He had been lost in a confusion of emotions but the sudden awakening of desire had been the strongest and their move towards the bed had seemed as natural and inevitable as if they had always been lovers. But it was Miranda who had taken control, it was Miranda who had gently broken free and picked up the telephone. She had ordered champagne for two and directed it “to come immediately, please.” It was Miranda who had instructed him to wait in the bathroom until it was delivered, Miranda who had put a Do not disturb notice on the outside of the door.
None of it mattered now. She was in love. He had awoken her to a life which she had seized on with all the obstinate determination of the long-deprived, and she would never let go, which meant never letting him go. But he told himself that he didn’t want to go. He loved her. If this wasn’t love, what else could he call it? He, too, had been awakened to sensations almost frightening in their intensity: the masculine triumph of possession, gratitude that he could give and receive so much pleasure, tenderness, self-confidence, the shedding of fears that solitary sex was all that he would ever have, or was capable of, or deserved.
But now, as he lay in mild post-coital exhaustion, there came again the inrush of anxiety. Fears, hopes, plans jostled in his mind like lottery balls. He knew what Miranda wanted: marriage, a home of her own and children. He told himself that that was what he wanted. She was radiantly optimistic; for him it seemed a distant, unrealisable dream. When they talked and he listened to her plans, he tried not to destroy them, but he couldn’t share them. As she poured out a stream of happy imaginings, he realised with dismay that she had never really known her father. It seemed strange that she, who was Oliver’s child, who had lived with him, had travelled with him all over the world, knew less of the essential man than did he after only twelve years. He knew that he was underpaid, exploited, never admitted to Oliver’s full confidence except when they were working on a novel. But, then, so much had been given: removal from the noise, the violence, the humiliation of his teaching job at an inner-city comprehensive and, later, the uncertainty and poor pay of his job as a freelance copy-editor; the satisfaction of having a part, however small and unacknowledged, in the creative process; seeing a mass of incoherent ideas come together and be formed into a novel. He was meticulous in his copy-editing, every neat symbol; every addition or deletion was a physical pleasure. Oliver refused to be edited by his publishers, and Dennis knew that his value went far beyond that of copy-editor. Oliver would never let them go. Never.
Would it be possible, he wondered, to carry on as they were now? The stolen hours which, with cunning, they could increase. The secret life which would make everything else bearable. The thrill of sex heightened because it was forbidden fruit. But that too was impossible. Even to contemplate it was a betrayal of her love and her trust. Suddenly he recalled long-forgotten words, lines from a poem—Donne, wasn’t it? Who is as safe as we where none can do / Treason to us, except one of we two. Even when he was warmed by her naked flesh, treason slithered like a snake into his mind and lay there heavily coiled, somnolent but unshiftable.
She raised her head. She knew something of what he was thinking. That was the terrifying thing about love: he felt that he had handed over the key to his mind and she could wander in at will.
She said, “Darling, it’s going to be all right. I know you’re worrying. Don’t. There’s no need.” She said again, with a firmness close to obstinacy, “It’s going to be all right.”
“But he needs us. He depends on us. He won’t let us go. He won’t let our happiness upset his whole life, the way he lives, how he works, what he’s used to. I know it would be fine for some people, but not for him. He can’t change. It would destroy him as a writer.”
She raised herself on her elbow, looking at him. “But, darling, that’s ridiculous. And even if he did have to give up writing, would that be so terrible? Some critics are already saying that he’s done his best work. Anyway, he won’t have to do without us. We can live in your flat, at least to begin with, and go in to him daily. I’ll find a reliable housekeeper to sleep in the Chelsea house so he won’t be alone at night. It might even suit him better. I know he respects you and I think he’s fond of you. He’ll want me to be happy. I’m his only child. I love him. He loves me.”
He couldn’t bring himself to tell her the truth but at last he said slowly, “I don’t think he loves anyone but himself. He’s a conduit. Emotion flows through him. He can describe but he can’t feel, not for other people.”
“But, darling, that can’t be true. Think of all those characters—the variety, the richness. All the reviewers say the same. He couldn’t write like that if he didn’t understand his characters and feel for them.”
He said, “He does feel for his characters. He is his characters.”
And now she stretched herself over him, looking down into his face, her pendulous breasts almost touching his cheeks. And then she froze. He saw her face, now uplifted, white as granite and stark with fear. With one clumsy movement he broke free from under her and clutched at his jeans. Then he too looked up. For a moment, disorientated, all he could see was a figure, black, motionless and sinister, planted on the extreme edge of the upper cliff and shutting out the light. Then reality asserted itself. The figure became real and recognisable. It was Nathan Oliver.
5
* * *
It was Mark Yelland’s third visit to Combe Island and, as on the previous occasions, he had asked for Murrelet Cottage, the most northerly on the south-east coast. Although farther from the cliff edge than Atlantic Cottage, it was built on a slight ridge and had one of the finest views on Combe. On his first visit two years previously he had known from the moment of entering its stone-walled tranquillity that he had at last found a place where the daily anxieties of his dangerous life could for two weeks be put aside and he could examine his work, his relationships, his life, in the peace which, at work and at home, he never knew. Here he was free from the problems, great and trivial, which every day awaited his decision. Here he needed no protection officer, no vigilant police. Here he could sleep at night with the door unlocked and the windows open to the sky and the sea. Here were no screaming voices, no faces distorted with hate, no post that it could be dangerous to open, no telephone calls threatening his life and the safety of his family.
He had arrived yesterday, bringing the minimum necessities and the carefully selected CDs and books which only on Combe would he have time to listen to and read. He was glad of the cottage’s relative isolation and on the two previous visits had spoken to no one for the whole two weeks. His food had been delivered according to written instructions left with the empty canisters and thermos flasks; he had had no wish to join the other visitors for the formal evening meal in the house. The solitude had been a revelation. He had never realised that to be completely alone could be so satisfying and healing. On his first visit he had wondered whether he would be able to endure it, but although the solitude compelled introspection, it was liberating rather than painful. He had returned to the traumas of his professional life changed in ways he couldn’t explain.
As on the previous visits, he had left a competent deputy in charge. Home Office regulations required tha
t there should always be a Licence Holder or deputy Licence Holder in the laboratory or on call, and his deputy was experienced and reliable. There would be crises—there always were—but he would cope for the two weeks. Only in an extreme emergency would his deputy ring Murrelet Cottage.
As soon as he had begun unpacking the books, he had found Monica’s letter, placed between the two top volumes. Now he took it from the desk top and read it again, slowly and with careful attention to every word, as if it held a hidden meaning which only a scrupulous rereading could discern.
Dear Mark, I suppose I should have had the courage to speak to you directly, or at least handed this to you before you left, but I found I couldn’t. And perhaps it’s just as well. You will be able to read it in peace without needing to pretend you care more than you do, and I shan’t feel I have to go on justifying a decision I should have arrived at years ago. When you return from Combe Island I won’t be here. To write about “going home to Mother” is humiliatingly bathetic, but that’s what I’ve decided to do and it is sensible. She has plenty of room and the children have always enjoyed the old nursery and the garden. As I’ve decided to end our marriage, it’s better to do so before they start secondary education. There’s a good local school prepared to take them at short notice. And I know they’ll be safe. I can’t begin to explain what that will mean to me. I don’t think you’ve ever really understood the terror that I’ve lived in every day, not just for myself, but for Sophie and Henry. I know you’ll never give up your work and I’m not asking you to. I’ve always known that the children and I are not in your list of priorities. Well, I have my own priorities. I’m not prepared any longer to sacrifice Sophie, Henry or myself to your obsession. There’s no hurry about an official separation or divorce—I don’t much care which—but I suppose we’d better get on with it when you return. I’ll send you the name of my solicitor when I’ve got settled. Please don’t bother to reply. Have a restful holiday. Monica.