The Lighthouse
Page 37
And shall you be? Shall I? The questions were unasked, the response not given. But there was something else he needed to know, whatever the risk of asking. He said, “When we got the news, when you realised that he was actually dead, was there a moment, no more than a second or two, when you were glad?”
She turned on him a look in which he could identify each fleeting emotion with a horrible clarity: surprise, outrage, incomprehension, obstinacy. “What a terrible thing to say! Of course there wasn’t. He was my father. He loved me; I loved him. I devoted my life to him. What made you say something so hurtful, so awful?”
“It was the kind of thing that interested your father, the difference between what we feel and what we think we ought to feel.”
She slapped the lid of the box down and got to her feet. “I don’t know what you mean. Get the Sellotape and scissors, will you. I put them in the top of that small grip. I suppose we ought to seal these down.”
He said, “I shall miss him.”
“Well, we both will. After all, you were just his employee; I’m his daughter. But it’s not as if he was young. He was sixty-eight. He’d made his reputation. And there’s no point in your getting another job. There’ll be plenty for you to do with the house to arrange, the wedding, and all the mail we’ll have to reply to. You’d better ring the office and tell them the cases are almost ready. We’ll need the buggy, of course. I was going to say that Padgett could bring it. Funny to think that he’s gone. I’ll never forgive him. Never.”
There was one last question which he dared not ask and didn’t need to; he already knew the answer. He thought of the galleys, the margins crowded with Oliver’s precise, almost illegible handwriting, the careful revisions which could have made his final work a great novel, and wondered if he would ever be able to forgive her.
He stared at the denuded shelves, their emptiness reinforcing his own sense of loss. He wondered how Oliver had seen him. As the son he never had? That was an arrogant presumption which only now, with Oliver dead, had he allowed to lodge in his mind. Oliver had never treated him as a son. He had never been more than a servant. But did it matter? Together they had engaged in the profound and mysterious adventure of language. In Oliver’s company he had come alive.
Following Miranda to the door, he stood in silence, taking a last long look at the room, and knew that here he had been happy.
4
* * *
The day came when they were at last able to leave Combe Island. Dalgliesh was ready early, but waited in Seal Cottage until the helicopter was in sight. Then he placed the key on the table, where it lay like a talisman promising that he would return. But he knew he would never see Combe again. Closing the door, he made his way across the scrubland to the house. He walked in a confusion of emotions—longing, hope and dread. Emma and he had spoken only rarely during the last two weeks. He who loved language had lost confidence in all words, particularly those spoken by telephone. Truth between lovers should be written, to be weighed at leisure and in solitude, or—better—spoken face to face. He had written once proposing marriage, not a protracted affair, and thought he’d had his answer. To write again now with the same request would be to badger her like a petulant child; to have done so while he was still sick would have been too like inviting pity. And then there was her friend Clara, who didn’t like him and who would have spoken against him. Emma was her own woman, but what if Clara was only echoing her own half-acknowledged misgivings? He knew that when they met Emma would say that she loved him. That at least he could be sure of. But what then? Phrases from the past spoken by other women, heard without pain and sometimes with relief, came into his mind like a litany of failure.
Darling, it’s been the best ever, but we always knew it wasn’t meant to last. We don’t even live in the same city. And with this new job I can’t keep mucking up my free evenings.
What we’ve had has been marvellous, but your job always comes first, doesn’t it? Either that or the poetry. Why don’t we face the truth and make an end before one of us gets hurt? And if there is hurt you can always write a poem about it.
I’ll always love you, Adam, but you’re not capable of commitment, are you? You’re always holding something back, and it’s probably the best of you. So this has to be goodbye.
Emma would find her own words, and he braced himself to hear the destruction of hope with dignity and without whining.
The helicopter seemed to hover interminably before finally setting down precisely in the middle of the marked cross. There was another wait until the blades finally stopped spinning. Then the door opened and Emma appeared and, after a few tentative steps, ran into his arms. He could feel the beating of her heart, could hear her whispered “I love you, I love you, I love you,” and when he bent his head the tears were warm against his cheek. But when she looked up into his eyes her voice was firm.
“Darling, if we want Father Martin to marry us—and if you’re happy, I’d rather like that—we’d better set a date quickly or he may say he’s too old to travel. Will you write to him or shall I?”
He held her close and bent his dark head to hers. “Neither. We’ll go to see him together. Tomorrow.”
Waiting at the rear entrance to the house, bag at her feet, Kate heard his exultant laugh ring out over the headland.
And now she and Benton were ready to leave. Benton lugged his bag onto his shoulder and said, “Back to real life.”
Miranda and Tremlett had left by boat with Yelland the previous day, but Dalgliesh had had final arrangements to discuss with Maycroft, and the team had been glad of these few hours to themselves. Suddenly the rest of the little group was with them. Everyone had come to see them off. Their private goodbyes had been said earlier, and Rupert Maycroft’s to Kate had been surprising.
He had been alone in his office and, holding out his hand, had said, “I wish I could invite you to come back and visit us, but that isn’t allowed. I have to abide by the rules if I expect the staff to. But it would be good to see you here again.”
Kate had laughed. “I’m not a VIP. But I shan’t forget Combe. The memories won’t all be bad. I’ve been happy here.”
There was a pause, then he had said, “Not so much two ships passing in the night as two ships sailing together for a time but always bound for different ports.”
Dalgliesh and Emma were waiting for them, standing side by side. Kate knew that, for her, something had finally ended, the vestige of a hope which, even as she indulged it, she had known was almost as unrealistic as her childhood imaginings that her parents were not dead, that any day they would arrive, her handsome father driving the shining car which would take her away from Ellison Fairweather Buildings for ever. That illusion, cherished in childhood for her comfort, had faded with the years, with her job, her flat, the satisfaction of achievement, and had been replaced by a more rational but still fragile hope. Now she let that go, with regret but without pain.
There was a low cloud-base; the brief St. Martin’s summer had long since passed. The helicopter lifted as if reluctantly and made a final circuit of the island. The waving figures became manikins and one by one turned away. Kate gazed down at the familiar buildings, which looked as compact as models or children’s toys: the great curved windows of Combe House, the stable block where she had lodged, Seal Cottage with its memories of their late-night conferences, the square chapel, still with that stain of blood, and the brightly coloured lighthouse with its red cupola, the most charming toy of all. Combe Island had changed her in ways which she couldn’t yet understand, but she knew she would never see it again.
For Dalgliesh and Emma, sitting behind her, this day was a new beginning. Perhaps for her, too, the future could be rich with infinite possibilities. Resolutely she turned her face to the east, to her job, to London, as the helicopter soared above a white tumble of clouds into the shining air.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
P. D. James is the author of eighteen previous books, most of whic
h have been filmed and broadcast on television in the United States and other countries. She spent thirty years in various departments of the British Civil Service, including the Police and Criminal Law Departments of Great Britain’s Home Office. She has served as a magistrate and as a governor of the BBC. In 2000 she celebrated her eightieth birthday and published her autobiography, Time to Be in Earnest. The recipient of many prizes and honors, she was created Baroness James of Holland Park in 1991. She lives in London and Oxford.
ALSO BY P. D. JAMES
Fiction
Cover Her Face
A Mind to Murder
Unnatural Causes
Shroud for a Nightingale
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman
The Black Tower
Death of an Expert Witness
Innocent Blood
The Skull Beneath the Skin
A Taste for Death
Devices and Desires
The Children of Men
Original Sin
A Certain Justice
Death in Holy Orders
The Murder Room
Nonfiction
The Maul and the Pear Tree:
The Ratcliffe Highway Murders, 1811
(with T. A. Critchley)
Time to Be in Earnest:
A Fragment of Autobiography
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2005 by P. D. James
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.
www.aaknopf.com
Originally published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber Limited, London.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
James, P. D.
The lighthouse / P. D. James
p. cm.
1. Dalgliesh, Adam (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Police—Great Britain—Fiction. 3. Seaside resorts—Fiction. 4. Islands—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6060.A467L54 2005
823′.914—dc22
2005051039
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, either living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
eISBN: 978-0-307-26433-6
v3.0