by P. D. James
On first reading the letter, he had been surprised how calmly he had taken her decision, surprised too that he’d had no idea that this was what she had been planning. And it had been planned. She and her mother had been allies. A new school found and the children prepared for the move—all that had been going on and he hadn’t noticed. He wondered whether his mother-in-law had had a hand in composing the letter. There was something about its matter-of-fact coherence that was more typical of her than of Monica. For a moment he indulged the fantasy of them sitting side by side working on a first draft. He also was interested that the regret he felt was more for the loss of Sophie and Henry than for the end of the marriage. He felt no strong resentment against his wife, but he wished she had chosen her moment better. She could at least have let him have his holiday without this added worry. But gradually a cold anger began possessing him, as if some noxious substance were being poured into his mind, curdling and destroying his peace. And he knew against whom with increasing power it was being directed.
It was fortuitous that Nathan Oliver was on the island, fortuitous too that Rupert Maycroft had mentioned the other visitors when he met him on the quay. Now he made a decision. He would change his plans, phone Mrs. Burbridge, the housekeeper, and ask who had booked in for dinner at the house tonight. And if Nathan Oliver were among them he would break his solitude and be there as well. There were things he needed to say to Nathan Oliver. Only by saying them could he assuage this surging anger and bitterness and return alone to Murrelet Cottage to let the island work its mysterious ministry of healing.
6
* * *
He was standing with his back to her, looking out of the southern window. When he turned, Miranda saw a face as rigidly lifeless as a mask. Only the pulse-beat above the right eye betrayed the bitterness he was struggling to control. She willed her eyes to meet his. What had she been hoping for? A flicker of understanding, of pity?
She said, “We didn’t mean you to find out like this.”
His voice was quiet, the words venomous. “Of course not. No doubt you were planning to explain it all after dinner. I don’t need to be told how long the affair has been going on. I knew in San Francisco that you’d at last found someone to fuck. I confess it didn’t occur to me that you’d been reduced to making use of Tremlett—a cripple, penniless, my employee. At your age tupping him in the bushes like a randy schoolgirl is obscene. Were you obliged to take the only available man who offered, or was it a deliberate choice to inconvenience me? After all, you could have done better. You have certain inducements on offer. You’re my daughter, that counts for something. After my death, unless I change my will, you’ll be a moderately rich woman. You have useful domestic accomplishments. In these days when I am told it’s difficult to find, let alone keep, a good cook, your one skill could be an inducement.”
She had expected this conversation to be difficult, but not like this, not to be faced with this coruscating anger, this bitterness. Any hope that he might be reasonable, that they might be able to talk things over and plan what could be best for them all, died in a welter of despair.
She said: “Daddy, we love each other. We want to get married.”
She had come inadequately prepared. She knew with a sickening wrench of the heart that she sounded like a querulous child asking for sweets.
“Then marry. You’re both of age. You don’t need my consent. I take it that Tremlett has no legal impediment.”
And now it all came out in a rush. Their impossible schemes, the happy imaginings which, even as she spoke, seemed small verbal pebbles of hopelessness thrown against his implacable face, his anger and his hatred.
“We don’t want to leave you. It needn’t change anything. I’d come in to you by the day—Dennis too. We could find a reliable woman to take over my part of the house so that you weren’t alone at night. When you’re on tour we could be with you as usual.” She said again, “Nothing need change.”
“So you’d come in by the day? I don’t need a daily woman or a night nurse. And if I did, no doubt both can be obtained if the pay is high enough. I take it that you’re not complaining of your pay?”
“You’ve always been generous.”
“Or Tremlett of his?”
“We didn’t talk about money.”
“Because you assumed, presumably, that you’d live off me, that life could go on for you as comfortably as it always has.” He paused, then stated, “I have no intention of employing a married couple.”
“You mean Dennis would have to go?”
“You heard what I said. Since you seem to have talked over your plans and settled my future for me, may I enquire where you intend to live?”
Her voice faltered. “We thought in Dennis’s flat.”
“Except, of course, that it isn’t Tremlett’s flat, it’s mine. I bought it to house him when he came to me full-time. He rents it furnished on derisory terms under a legal agreement which gives me the right to terminate the tenancy at a month’s notice. Of course he could buy it from me at its present value. I shall have no use for it.”
“But the flat must be worth double what you paid for it in 1997.”
“That is his and your misfortune.”
She tried to speak but couldn’t form the words. Anger, and a grief more terrible because she didn’t know whether it was for herself or for him, rose like nauseous phlegm in her throat, choking speech. He had turned again to look out of the window. The silence in the room was absolute, but she could detect the rasp of her own breathing, and suddenly, as if the ever-present sound had for a time been silenced, the sonorous murmur of the sea. And then, unexpectedly and disastrously, she swallowed hard and found her voice.
“Are you so sure you can do without us? Don’t you really understand how much I do for you when you are on tour—checking the hotel room, running your bath, complaining on your behalf if the details aren’t right, helping to organise the signing sessions, protecting your reputation as the genius who’s not too famous to bother about his readers, making sure that you get the food and wine you like? And Dennis? All right, he’s your secretary and copy-editor, but he’s more, isn’t he? Why do you boast that your novels don’t need editing? That’s because he helps edit them—not just copy-editing—editing. Tactfully, so you won’t have to admit even to yourself how important he is. Plotting isn’t your strength, is it, not in recent years? How many ideas do you owe to Dennis? How often do you use him as a sounding board? Who else would do as much for so little?”
He didn’t turn to show her his face, but even with his back to her, the words came to her clearly, but not in a voice that she recognised.
“You’d better discuss with your lover what exactly you propose to do. If you decide to throw in your lot with Tremlett, the sooner the better. I shall not expect you back at the London house, and I shall be grateful if Tremlett will hand over the keys to the flat as soon as possible. In the meantime, don’t speak about this to anyone. Do I make myself clear? Speak to no one. This island is small, but there should be space enough for us to keep out of each other’s way for the next twenty-four hours. After that we can go our separate ways. I’m booked in here for another ten days. I can take my meals in Combe House. I propose to book the launch for tomorrow afternoon, and I expect you and your lover to be on it.”
7
* * *
Maycroft wasn’t looking forward to Friday’s dinner. He seldom did when any of the visitors had booked in to dine. What caused anxiety was not their eminence, but his responsibility as host to encourage conversation and ensure that the evening was a success. As his wife had frequently pointed out, he was not good at small talk. Inhibited by his lawyer’s caution from participating in the most popular chatter—well-informed and slightly salacious gossip—he strove, sometimes desperately, to avoid the banalities of enquiring about the visitors’ journeys to Combe or discussing the weather. His guests, all eminent in their different fields, would no doubt have had interesting thin
gs to say about their professional lives which he would have been fascinated to hear, but they had come to Combe to escape from their professional lives. Occasionally there had been good evenings when, discretion put aside, guests had spoken freely and with passion. Usually they got on well; the egregiously rich and famous might not always like each other but they were at home in the topography of each other’s privileged bailiwicks. Still, he doubted whether his two guests tonight would gain pleasure from each other’s company. After Oliver’s eruption into his office and his earlier threats, he was horrified by the prospect of entertaining the man through a three-course meal. And then there was Mark Yelland. This was Yelland’s third visit, but he had never before booked in for dinner. There might be perfectly understandable reasons for this, such as the wish for a formal meal, but Maycroft saw it as ominous. After a final adjustment to his tie before the mirror in the hall, he took the lift from his apartment in the central tower down to the library for the usual pre-dinner drinks.
Dr. Guy Staveley and his wife, Joanna, had already arrived, he standing, sherry glass in hand, beside the fire while Jo had arranged herself elegantly in one of the high-backed armchairs, her glass as yet untouched on the table beside her. She always took trouble over dressing for dinner, particularly after an absence, as if a carefully enhanced femininity was a public demonstration that she was back in residence. Tonight she was wearing a silk trouser suit with narrow trousers and tunic top. The colour was subtle, a pale greenish-gold. Helen would have known what colour to call it, even where Jo had bought it and how much it had cost. If Helen had been at his side the dinner, even with Oliver present, would have held no fear.
The door opened and Mark Yelland appeared. Although guests could order the buggy, he had obviously walked from Murrelet Cottage. Taking off his topcoat, he laid it over the back of one of the chairs. It was the first time he had seen Jo Staveley, and Maycroft made the introductions. There were twenty minutes before the dinner gong would sound, but they passed easily enough. Jo, as always in the presence of a good-looking man, exerted herself to be agreeable, and Staveley somehow discovered that he and Yelland had both been at Edinburgh University, although not in residence at the same time. Staveley found enough academic chat, shared experience and common acquaintances to keep the conversation going.
It was nearly eight, and Maycroft began to hope that Oliver had changed his mind, but just as the gong sounded, the door opened and he came in. With a nod and a curt “Good evening” to the company, he took off his coat, placed it beside Yelland’s and joined them at the door. Together they went down the one floor to the dining room immediately below. In the lift neither Oliver nor Yelland spoke, merely acknowledging each other with a brief nod, like rivals observing the courtesies but saving words and energy for the contest ahead.
As always there was a menu written in Mrs. Burbridge’s elegant hand. They were to begin with melon balls in an orange sauce with a main course of guinea fowl with roasted vegetables followed by a lemon soufflé. The first course was already in place. Oliver took up his spoon and fork and regarded his plate with a frown, as if irritated that anyone should waste time forming melon into balls. The conversation was desultory until Mrs. Plunkett and Millie arrived, wheeling a trolley with the guinea fowl and vegetables. The main course was served.
Mark Yelland picked up his knife and fork but made no move to begin eating. Instead, elbows on table and knife raised as if it were a weapon, he looked across at Nathan Oliver and said with dangerous quietness, “I presume that the character of a laboratory director in the novel you’re bringing out next year is intended to be me, a character you’ve been careful to make as arrogant and unfeeling as you could manage without the man becoming completely incredible.”
Without raising his eyes from his plate, Oliver said, “Arrogant, unfeeling? If that’s your reputation, I suppose some confusion may arise in the public mind. Rest assured there’s none in mine. I have never before met you. I don’t know you. I have no particular wish to know you. I’m not a plagiarist of life; I only need one living model for my art, myself.”
Yelland put down his knife and fork. His eyes were still on Oliver. “Are you going to deny that you met a junior member of my staff in order to question him about what goes on in my laboratory? I’d like to know, incidentally, how you got hold of his name. Presumably through the animal-liberation people who dangerously disrupt his life and mine. No doubt impressing him with your reputation, you extracted his views on the validity of the work, how he justified what he was doing, how much the primates were suffering.”
Oliver said easily, “I undertook necessary research. I wanted to know certain facts about the organisation of a laboratory—the staffing levels, the conditions under which the animals are kept, how and what they’re fed, how obtained. I asked no questions about personalities. I’m a researcher of facts, not of emotions. I need to know how people act, not how they feel. I know how they feel.”
“Have you any idea how arrogant that sounds? Oh, we can feel all right. I feel for patients with Parkinson’s disease and cystic fibrosis. That’s why I and my colleagues spend our time trying to find a cure, and at some personal sacrifice.”
“I should have thought that the sacrificial victims were the animals. They suffer the pain; you get the glory. Isn’t it true that you’d happily see a hundred monkeys die, and in some discomfort, if it meant that you published first? The fight for scientific glory is as ruthless as the commercial marketplace. Why pretend otherwise?”
Yelland said, “Your concern for animals doesn’t much inconvenience your daily life. You seem to be enjoying your guinea fowl, you wear leather, no doubt you’ll be taking milk with your coffee. Perhaps you should turn your attention to the ways in which some animals—quite a number, I’m told—are slaughtered for meat. They would die a great deal more comfortably in my lab, I assure you, and with more justification.”
Oliver was dissecting his guinea fowl with care. “I’m a carnivore. All species prey on each other, that seems to be the law of nature. I could wish we killed our food more humanely, but I eat it without compunction. That seems to me very different from using a primate for experimental purposes which can’t possibly benefit it on the assumption that Homo sapiens is so intrinsically superior to every other species that we’re entitled to exploit them at our will. I understand that the Home Office does monitor the pain levels permissible and usually seeks detailed clarification on the analgesics being used, and I suppose that’s a small alleviation. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not a member or even a supporter of the organisations which inconvenience you. I’m not in a position to be, since I have benefited from past discoveries using animals and shall certainly take advantage of any future successes. Incidentally, I shouldn’t have expected you to be a religious man.”
Yelland said curtly, “I’m not. I have no supernatural beliefs.”
“You surprise me. I assumed you took an Old Testament view of these matters. You’re familiar, I take it, with the first chapter of the book of Genesis. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. That’s one divine commandment which we’ve never had difficulty in obeying. Man the great predator, the supreme exploiter, the arbiter of life and death by divine permission.”
Maycroft’s guinea fowl was tasteless, a gunge in the mouth. This was disaster. And there was something odd about the dispute. It was less an argument than an antiphonic contest in which only one participant, Yelland, felt genuine passion. Whatever was worrying Oliver, it had nothing to do with Yelland. He saw that Jo’s eyes were bright as they moved from one speaker to the other, as if watching an unusually long rally in a game of tennis. Her right hand was crumbling a bread roll, and she fed the pieces unbuttered into her mouth without looking down. Maycroft felt that something should be said, but as Staveley sat in in
creasingly embarrassed silence, he said, “Perhaps we should feel differently if we suffered from a neurological disease, or if a child of ours suffered. Perhaps these are the only people who have the right to speak on the moral validity of these experiments.”
Oliver said, “I’ve no wish to speak on their behalf. I didn’t begin this argument. I’ve no strong views one way or the other. My characters have, but that’s a different matter.”
Yelland said, “That’s a cop-out! You give them a voice, sometimes a dangerous one. And it’s disingenuous to pretend you were only interested in routine background information. The boy told you things he had no right to disclose.”
“I can’t control what people choose to tell me.”
“Whatever he told you, he’s now regretting it. He’s resigned his job. He was one of my most able young men. He’s lost to important research and perhaps lost to science altogether.”
“Then perhaps you should doubt the level of his commitment. Incidentally, the scientist in my novel is more sympathetic and complex than you seem to have grasped. Perhaps you didn’t read the proofs with sufficient understanding. Or, of course, you may have been imposing your character—or what you fear may be perceived as your character—on my creation. And I would be interested to know how you got your hands on the proofs. Their distribution is tightly controlled by my publisher.”
“Not tightly enough. There are subversives in publishing houses as well as in laboratories.”
Jo had decided it was time to intervene. She said, “I don’t think any one of us likes using primates for research. Monkeys and chimps are too like us to make it comfortable. Perhaps you should use rats in your experiments. It’s difficult to feel much affection for rats.”