The Judgement of Strangers

by Taylor, Andrew

  There was a pause. Vanessa had gone into the office this morning. She must have mentioned the events of last night to Cynthia, who had evidently lost no time in relaying the news to her brother. Anger stirred inside me. Ronald might have a right to interfere, but not in this heavy-handed way.

  ‘There’s just a chance we can nip this in the bud,’ he went on. ‘I think the best thing to do is to ring Victor Thurston.’

  ‘I don’t see any need to bring Thurston into this. It’s nothing to do with him. In any case, I think I’d prefer to handle it in my own way.’

  Ronald sighed, expressing irritation rather than recording sorrow. ‘Let me spell it out for you. This is just the sort of story that the more sensational elements of the press will leap at. First, it’s August, the silly season. They’re hungry for material. Secondly, anything that smacks of devil worship sells newspapers. It’s regrettable, but it’s a fact of life. Third, Cynthia tells me there’s local colour in the shape of that damned poet, the priest who dabbled in Satanism. Youlgreave – the one Vanessa’s so keen on. And finally, once the hacks start digging, heaven knows what they might come up with. How will you feel if they connect you with that business in Rosington? How will Vanessa feel?’

  I was so surprised that for an instant I forgot to breathe. I sucked in a mouthful of air. I had not even realized that Ronald knew about Rosington. He had never mentioned it. In that same instant there rushed over me the crushing knowledge of my own naivety. Of course he knew. Probably every active Christian in this part of the diocese fancied that they knew all about it. One of the less desirable qualities of the Church of England is that it is a nest of gossip.

  ‘Listen to me, David.’ His voice was gentler now, almost pleading. ‘You’ll get an army of journalists on your doorstep. You’ll probably have coachloads of sightseers coming to gawp at the church. You may even get copycat incidents.’

  I said nothing. It was true that devil-worshippers tended to be unimaginative. By and large, evil is banal; imagination is not a quality it nurtures, so repetition is common. Into my mind came an image of grey mudflats, silver streaks of water and a grey sky; and far above me I heard the sound of wings. The hand holding the telephone receiver was slippery with sweat, and my armpits prickled. Evil causes led to evil effects which themselves became causes of further evil. Could you ever hope to end the consequences, or would they stretch through the centuries from past and future?

  I tried to focus on Ronald, sensible and safe. I imagined him sitting at his polished desk, surrounded by serried ranks of dusted books; I gave him a silver vase full of white rosebuds; no clutter on the desk, just a blotter, a notepad and perhaps a file containing letters to be answered. And there was Ronald, impeccable in his suit and clerical collar, the very picture of a senior clergyman in waiting for a bishopric.

  It wasn’t good enough. The beating of the wings was growing gradually louder. My mouth was parched.

  The wall, I thought, the wall beside his desk. No bookshelves there. A crucifix. A plain wooden crucifix. No body on it, but there would be a rush cross, left over from Palm Sunday, tucked behind the crossbar. I thought so hard about the crucifix that I could visualize the colour of the varnish and the grain of the wood.

  ‘David? I’m trying to help.’

  Ronald was sane, I told myself. Ronald was good. Recognizing that was hard, too. He was doing his best to do his Christian duty, according to his lights. I had stolen the woman he had thought of as his future wife. He had every reason to dislike me, even hate me. Yet he was going out of his way to help me – or perhaps Vanessa. I might not enjoy his assumption of authority and superior knowledge, but that was a relatively minor matter.

  ‘Are you still there, David?’

  ‘Yes. I was thinking. Why should all this reach the papers in the first place?’

  ‘Through the local rag, of course. They’ll be in regular contact with the police. Fortunately, Victor Thurston’s on the board of the Courier group. I’ll have a word with him tonight.’ Ronald sounded cheerful now, delighted to have his hands on the reins. ‘He has some useful contacts with the police, too, through the Masons. Don’t worry. We’ll do our best to smooth things over.’

  There was another pause in our conversation. There was only one thing to say and in the end I made myself say it. ‘Thank you.’

  The trick with Lady Youlgreave was to catch her at her lucid times. Her body was a battlefield: old age, pain, decay, a cocktail of medicines and an almost wilful reluctance to die fought each other, changing sides frequently, forming shifting alliances.

  The morphine encouraged her mind to drift. Often she was confused about the day of the week, occasionally the year and, on at least one occasion, the century. Time is a slippery notion, a set of assumptions she found it increasingly difficult to grasp.

  She was at her best in the late mornings and the early evenings. I left the Vicarage at 5 p.m. on Friday, shortly after the phone call from Ronald Trask. I was restless, tired of my own company. Doing anything was better than doing nothing.

  I called upstairs to Rosemary but there was no answer. I went into the garden. Michael was playing patience on the grass in the shade of an old apple tree that had survived Ronald’s restless desire to modernize my house and garden. There was a deckchair on the lawn, with Nausea on the seat. The afternoon had been sunny, but now the sky was beginning to cloud over, and there was a clinging dampness in the air that presaged rain.

  ‘I’m just going out for a while,’ I told Michael. ‘I shouldn’t be more than half an hour. Will you be all right on your own? I’m sure the Vintners wouldn’t mind if –’

  ‘No. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘I’ll be at the Old Manor House if anyone needs me.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Is Rosemary upstairs?’

  ‘I think she went for a walk. She was here until about five minutes ago.’

  ‘Aunt Vanessa should be home between half past five and six.’

  ‘OK.’

  He smiled at me and returned to his game. I walked down the road, over the bridge and turned into the forecourt in front of the Old Manor House. The bird table stood at a slight angle from the perpendicular at the centre of the scrubby lawn. I went over to it. It was a simple affair – a small wooden tray nailed to a stake, obviously home-made. The surface of the wood was cracked and covered with a patina of dirt from the weather and traffic. I found no trace of the blood and bone which Vanessa had seen, and which had so excited the crows.

  I bent down and looked at the grass below the table. I felt ridiculous, like a schoolboy looking for clues, for cigarette ash or strands of hair. I abandoned the search, walked on to the door and rang the bell. The dogs barked. Doris answered the door.

  ‘Hello, Vicar.’

  ‘Is Lady Youlgreave well enough for visitors?’

  ‘She’ll be glad to see you. Just had her tea and that always gives her a bit of a lift. Which means she wants to talk. And I just don’t have time to listen.’

  I followed her into the gloom of the hall. Beauty was tethered to the newel post and did not bother to get up. She thumped her tail on the floor. Beast, trailing her tumour, waddled towards me and sniffed my shoes.

  ‘You should have more help,’ I said to Doris. ‘Either that or Lady Youlgreave should go into a home.’

  Doris shook her head. ‘She doesn’t like strangers in the house. And if you talk to her about going into a home, she starts crying.’

  ‘It’s not fair to you.’

  ‘I cope. Dr Vintner is in and out, and that helps. And then there’s the nurse from the Fishguard Agency at weekends. Not that they’re much use.’

  ‘Even so –’

  ‘She wants to die in her own home,’ Doris interrupted. ‘So why shouldn’t she?’

  There wasn’t any answer to that, or rather, none that Doris would accept. I wondered how much Lady Youlgreave paid her.

  ‘I hear your husband has a new job.’ I wished I could remember the
man’s name.

  ‘About time, too,’ she said. ‘If there was an Olympic gold medal for sitting on your backside in front of the telly, Ted would be in the running for it.’

  Beast slobbered over my shoe. She looked up at me with imploring eyes. What did she want? Everything to be all right again? For herself and Beauty and her mistress to be young?

  ‘You go and see her, then,’ Doris said, deciding it was time to dismiss me. ‘I’ll go and make her bed again. Can you find your own way? Otherwise I’ll get caught as well.’

  Lady Youlgreave was nodding over a book when I went in. She looked up with a start.

  ‘David? Is that you?’

  ‘Yes. How are you today?’

  ‘The same as always. Where’s the girl? It’s time for my medicine.’

  ‘Soon. Doris will be here soon.’

  I wasn’t sure if she had heard me. She closed the book slowly – a thin volume bound in green leather with gilt lettering on the spine. Then she said, ‘She’s late. She’s always late. If she doesn’t get her skates on, I’ll sack her.’

  I knew better than to argue. ‘Doris is making your bed.’

  ‘How odd.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Beds are made in the morning. Everyone knows that. Is it the morning?’

  ‘No.’ I looked at my watch. ‘It’s a quarter past five in the evening. Friday evening.’ I noticed that Lady Youlgreave was still looking expectantly at me, a worried frown on her face. ‘Friday, August the fourteenth.’ She was still frowning, so I added, ‘Nineteen-seventy.’

  ‘Oh. Where’s your wife? Not been in today. Or has she?’

  ‘No. Vanessa’s at work.’

  ‘Never thought you’d get married again. Poor old Oliphant. Bet it made her squirm.’ Lady Youlgreave paused, and her lips moved as though she were chewing something. A thread of saliva ran from the corner of her mouth, as though marking the passage of a tiny snail. ‘Could have liked you myself, once. Silly business, don’t you think?’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Sex. Best thing about growing old: not having to worry about sex.’ The little eyes peered at me and looked away. ‘You should stop Vanessa wasting her time on Uncle Francis.’

  ‘I can’t do that. I’m not her master.’

  ‘You should put your foot down.’

  I could imagine Vanessa’s response if I tried to do such a foolish thing. ‘What’s wrong with Francis, anyway? I thought you wanted Vanessa to go through the papers.’

  ‘I didn’t realize what he was like. Not then.’ Lady Youlgreave tapped the book on her lap. ‘Nasty mind. And getting worse. Do you know why he started killing those animals?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘I think you do.’ She sighed. ‘This was his last book.’

  ‘The Voice of Angels?’

  ‘More like devils. There’s one poem called “The Children of Heracles”. Disgusting. He must have had an evil mind to make up something like that.’

  I would have liked to take the book and glance at the poem, but her fingers had locked themselves around the covers. ‘It’s part of a Greek myth.’

  ‘So Heracles really did kill his children? He really chopped them up?’

  ‘As far as I can remember, Zeus’s wife, Hera, hated Heracles, and one night she put a spell on him. In his sleep, he lashed out with his sword, dreaming that he was killing imaginary enemies. Then he woke up and he saw that he’d killed his own children.’

  ‘And chopped them up.’ Lady Youlgreave snuffled, a sound that might have expressed mirth. ‘He did that, too.’

  ‘Francis?’ I smiled. ‘Not children, though.’

  ‘How do you know?’ She stared up at me. ‘There’s a lot you don’t know.’

  She opened the book and seemed to become absorbed in a poem. I waited for a moment. Vanessa had warned me that these mood swings were becoming more frequent and more pronounced.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Vanessa told me about your bird table. About the meat or whatever it was that the crows were pecking at. I don’t suppose you got a good look at it, did you? With your opera glasses?’

  She raised her head once more and I realized at once that I was not forgiven or forgotten. ‘I said there’s a lot you don’t know, David. Even about your own family.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I saw the whole thing. I’m not blind.’ The irises of her eyes were mud-brown pools, the pupils almost invisible. ‘It was in a paper bag.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘Whatever it was. A little head?’

  ‘So you saw who put it there?’

  ‘I told you. I’m not blind.’ She sniffed. Her eyes misted with tears. ‘I don’t understand. Why don’t I understand? Is it late? My watch has stopped. What’s the time?’

  The door opened and Doris came in. ‘How about a nice drink before bed, love? A nice cup of cocoa?’

  ‘Medicine.’ Lady Youlgreave brightened. ‘It’s time for my medicine.’

  ‘Not quite, dear. I’ve put it all out on your bedside table, like usual. You can have the first one when you get into bed.’ Doris looked at me. ‘You’ll want to be getting home, I expect, Vicar. I saw Mrs Byfield’s car go by.’

  19

  She rushed out of the drive of Roth Park, her arms outstretched towards me.

  ‘Father! Wait!’

  I stopped. Rain was drifting from a grey sky. Rosemary propped herself against one of the gateposts. She was out of breath and bursting with life. Even when wearing jeans and a white shirt which had once belonged to me, she somehow contrived to look elegant.

  ‘I found something. You’d better come and see.’

  ‘What is it?’

  She shook her head. ‘Come with me.’ She seized my arm and gave it a little tug. ‘Please.’

  I allowed her to draw me into the drive. ‘Why all the mystery?’

  ‘Not a mystery.’

  She led me past the churchyard and into the grove of oaks. Instead of continuing down the drive towards the house, she turned right on to the footpath which led into the paddock we hoped to use for the fete’s car park. It was raining harder, now, and I suggested going back for an umbrella. But Rosemary urged me on.

  On the far side of the paddock, the footpath split into two – one branch continuing north towards a cluster of council houses and the Jubilee Reservoir, the other cutting westwards across a patch of waste ground in a direction roughly parallel to the drive. The land had been part of the demesne of Roth Park, and was owned by the Cliffords.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

  She looked back, her eyes gleaming and her face full of colour. ‘Carter’s Meadow. Look – there’s the way in.’

  We followed the path to a five-bar gate made of rusting tubular steel, wired permanently closed. Rosemary and I climbed over. Nowadays Carter’s Meadow was a no man’s land sandwiched between the ruined formal gardens of Roth Park and the housing estate. Like so many places on the fringes of cities, it was permanently dirty: even the weeds were grubby.

  Rosemary led me past an abandoned car to a small spinney, a self-seeded clump of straggly trees and saplings. A track zigzagged through ash and birch, brambles and nettles. She plunged into it. I wondered what she had been doing here. Smoking? Meeting a boy? The air smelled rank, as though the spinney were a large animal beginning to decay. We came out on the far side of it.

  She stopped abruptly, wiping rain from her face. ‘There.’ She pointed to the ground beside a dead elder tree on the edge of the spinney. ‘Look at that.’

  I followed the direction of her finger. An empty bottle leaned against the tree. The grass at the foot of the tree was stained a rusty brown.

  ‘Look,’ she repeated, stabbing the air with her finger. ‘Don’t you see what must have happened here?’

  I hitched my trousers and crouched down. The grass was dry. The bottle had contained a cider called Autumn Gold. The label was fresh. The bottle might have been left there yesterday. Cigarett
e ends lay in various stages of decay between the blades of grass. There was sadness in this place.

  ‘It’s blood,’ Rosemary said. ‘Father, it’s blood, isn’t it?’

  ‘I think so.’

  I picked up the bottle between finger and thumb. Underneath was a tuft of black hair.

  ‘This is where they did it,’ Rosemary said. ‘You can buy that cider in Malik’s Minimarket. Did you know?’

  I wished she had not found this. It meant nothing but trouble. We could not be sure that the stain was dried blood, let alone that it and the fur came from Lord Peter. But I would have to tell the police, who would not want to hear. I would also have to tell Audrey, and the discovery would feed her forensic fantasies – and incidentally serve to confirm her belief that the youths from the council estate were responsible. And why did Rosemary have to be the one to find it?

  ‘What were you doing here?’ My voice was sharper than I had intended.

  ‘I wanted a walk.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘If you follow the path you get to the river. It’s pretty.’

  Pretty? I had not been this way for years. I had a vague memory of a tangle of trees on boggy ground, through which meandered the Rowan, scarcely more than a stream. But teenagers had different standards of beauty from adults. I looked at Rosemary and suddenly remembered my adolescent self finding a perverse satisfaction from reading Auden in the shell of a burned-out house: I had sat on a pile of rubble bright with rosebay willowherb and smoked illicit cigarettes.

  I stood up. The rain was falling more heavily now. The trees gave us partial shelter but I did not want to stay here any longer than necessary. There was poison in this place, and I felt it seeping into me.

  ‘Do you think they cut up Lord Peter here?’ Rosemary asked.

  ‘It’s possible. But we mustn’t jump to conclusions.’

  ‘This is where Francis Youlgreave cut up a cat, isn’t it?’

  ‘So they say. Come on.’

  ‘But we’ll get soaked.’