The Judgement of Strangers

by Taylor, Andrew

  ‘It’s about yesterday,’ I said.

  Rosemary gave no sign that she had heard.

  ‘When we came back from the Cliffords’, you were flat-out on the sofa with a bottle of sherry beside you. Or what was left of it.’

  Still she said nothing.

  ‘I presume you’d drunk quite a lot of it, and that’s why you fell asleep.’ I waited, but she neither confirmed nor denied what I had said. ‘It’s not that we mind you having the occasional drink but –’

  ‘We. I wish you wouldn’t keep saying we.’

  ‘Vanessa’s your stepmother. She cares about you very much, as do I. I don’t know if you drank all that sherry because you were unhappy, but take it from me that alcohol doesn’t dissolve unhappiness.’

  That at least earned a reaction. Rosemary raised her head and stared directly at me, her eyes brilliant. ‘Audrey thinks it does,’ she said. ‘When I saw her the other evening’ – Rosemary paused for effect – ‘she was as pissed as a newt.’

  I stared at her. ‘I don’t like you speaking like that about anyone, let alone a friend such as Audrey.’

  ‘She’s not a friend of yours. You hate her. You take everything she gives you, all the help with the church, but really you think she’s an embarrassment.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ But there was enough truth in what Rosemary said to make me feel even more uncomfortable than I already was. I wondered too if she really had seen Audrey drunk. Audrey had always liked her glass of sherry, but recently she had been drinking rather more than usual.

  ‘You laugh at her,’ Rosemary said softly. ‘As if she’s just a bad joke.’

  ‘That’s absurd. In any case, I’ve not come here to talk about Audrey. I’ve come here to talk about you.’

  ‘But I don’t want to talk about me. There’s nothing to say.’

  ‘Darling, I know life seems hard sometimes. But it will get better. I know your results weren’t quite as good as you wanted, but it doesn’t really matter.’

  She turned her head away from me.

  ‘Your results are more than adequate. Anyway, as far as Oxford is concerned, it’s the entrance exam that counts. That and the interview.’

  Her head was lowered. With a fingertip she traced an invisible spiral on the cover of The Four Last Things.

  I wondered whether to mention Toby. Better not – Rosemary wouldn’t thank me for breaching her privacy. I persevered for a few more minutes, trying to encourage her to respond to me, but got nowhere. She needed help, I knew, but I could not find a way to give it to her. Another failure; and the fact that this failure concerned my own daughter made it worse. When I left I kissed the top of her head. She opened the book and began to read.

  I closed the door softly and went across the landing to Michael’s room. Rosemary and I had kept our voices low automatically – as one had to in this house – but I wondered if he’d heard anything. He was still sitting up in bed.

  ‘Good book?’

  ‘Yes.’ He marked his place with a finger. ‘Agatha Christie. Five Little Pigs. But I think I know who did it, and I’m only a third of the way through.’

  I perched on the end of the bed and for a few minutes we talked about Agatha Christie. ‘By the way,’ I said as I was leaving, ‘Miss Oliphant found one of your handkerchiefs this afternoon.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the park.’

  ‘I expect it was down by the river. We usually go there.’

  ‘No – it was on the other side. Between the Cliffords’ garden and the council estate.’

  Michael looked sharply at me. ‘In Carter’s Meadow? Where Rosemary found the fur and blood?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, I don’t know what it was doing there,’ he said carefully.

  ‘Not to worry. Anyway, I expect Miss Oliphant will give it back to you soon.’ I cast around for a reason for the delay. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she wants to wash it first.’

  Michael smiled politely at me. He looked vulnerable in his pyjamas, and younger than he was. I would have liked to give him a hug, as I used to do when he was much younger, but I was afraid of embarrassing him.

  I said good night and went downstairs to report my failure with Rosemary to Vanessa. On the way down, I thought that a bloodstained handkerchief was just the sort of clue you would expect to find in an Agatha Christie novel. But if Agatha Christie presented you with a handkerchief marked with the name of the suspect, you knew it was probably a false clue. And you also knew that when you had found the person who had planted the false clue, you had almost certainly found the criminal.

  30

  After breakfast on Tuesday, I went across the road to buy cigarettes at Malik’s Minimarket. Audrey and two other women were talking to Mr Malik, their heads nodding together over the counter. When I came in there was a lull in the conversation.

  ‘David!’ Audrey cried. ‘And how are you this morning? Bright and breezy?’

  ‘Fine, thank you.’ I noticed that the other women had turned aside to study a poster advertising a new brand of instant coffee. ‘And how are you?’

  Audrey smiled bravely. ‘As well as can be expected. Now – you go first.’ She opened her handbag and peered inside. ‘I’m looking for my shopping list.’

  I asked for a packet of Players No 6.

  ‘So Mrs Potter is now a landowner.’ Mr Malik grinned at me as he gave me my change. ‘To be sure, I shall be treating her very respectfully in future.’

  ‘Carter’s Meadow,’ Audrey said at my elbow. ‘At least two acres. It does seem a little odd. After all, when all’s said and done, Doris was only the charwoman. Still, Lady Youlgreave wasn’t really herself in the last few years, was she? When I think what she was like before the war … Of course, I’m sure we’re all delighted for Doris, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she finds it a bit of a white elephant.’

  I smiled and said goodbye. To my dismay, Audrey followed me out of the shop.

  ‘You’d think she’d have had the decency to leave something to the church, wouldn’t you? After all, she was the patron of the living.’

  ‘We’ll survive without it.’

  ‘And singling out Doris in that way – really most peculiar. And have you heard that she’s taken in those dreadful dogs? After what they did to Lady Youlgreave! I was never so shocked in my life. Not a very sensitive thing to do.’

  I looked at my watch. ‘You must excuse me.’

  Audrey laid a hand on my sleeve. ‘Just one more thing. No, I tell a lie – two. I phoned the vet, but unfortunately he’s on holiday. So we’ll have to wait until next week until he can run the tests.’

  ‘Do you really think it’s necessary? I had a word with Michael last night, and I’m sure he had nothing to do with Lord Peter.’

  Audrey looked at me, and her look said, You would think that, wouldn’t you? She rushed on, ‘The other thing, of course, is the fete. Toby Clifford rang up this morning. So nice and friendly. We’re going to add fortune-telling to our advertisement in the paper. And if you agree, we thought we’d put his tent beyond the books and the home-made cakes and jam. Right in the corner of the garden. I think there’ll be enough room if we move the white elephants along a little. Rather a squeeze, perhaps, but I’m sure we all agree that Toby’s well worth a little inconvenience.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be wonderful –’

  ‘I must fly. Such a lot to do. If I’m not there to chivvy her, Charlene works at a snail’s pace.’

  With a wave of her hand, and a whiff of cologne and body odour, Audrey was gone. I turned to cross the road. I was just in time to see Joanna emerging from the drive of Roth Park.

  At that moment, a heavily laden gravel lorry rumbled slowly down the main road, shielding Joanna from me. I waited outside Malik’s Minimarket. Thoughts chased across my mind at breakneck speed during the tiny patch of time while the lorry blocked my view of her. Perhaps she would not be there when the lorry had passed. Perhaps I wanted to see her so ba
dly that I had imagined her. Or I had projected her appearance on to some other young woman. Or Joanna had been real; but she would have glimpsed me and, embarrassed and mortified by the memory of what had happened yesterday, she would have ducked back into the drive to avoid meeting me or even seeing me. And, of course, it was quite out of the question that I should talk to her or have anything to do with her at all. A lover’s logic is as elaborately fantastic as a schizophrenic’s.

  The lorry rolled over the bridge. Joanna was still standing in the mouth of the drive. She waved to me. No, she beckoned me.

  At that moment there was a gap in the traffic and she darted over the road to the green. I crossed to the green myself and we walked slowly towards each other over the scrubby, litter-strewn grass. Her hair bounced on her shoulders as if endowed with separate life. I wanted to break into a run and put my arms around her. When only two or three yards were between us, we both stopped.

  ‘I hoped you’d be here,’ she said. ‘I hoped you’d be early. I couldn’t stop thinking of you.’

  ‘We mustn’t – someone might see.’

  ‘What is there to see?’ She smiled at me. ‘We’re neighbours.’ The smile twisted and slipped away. ‘We mingle with each other socially.’

  ‘The family at the Vicarage and the family at the big house,’ I said wildly. ‘Just like a Jane Austen novel.’

  ‘I want to kiss you again.’

  ‘Joanna –’

  ‘And we need to talk.’

  I felt as though she were older than I. Not that it really mattered, in one sense. When you are in love, your respective ages shrivel into irrelevance.

  ‘I’m worried,’ she murmured. ‘Not just about us. It’s Toby.’

  ‘What’s he been doing?’

  ‘Cooee!’

  I turned round. Audrey was standing at the gate of Tudor Cottage. She waved vigorously at us.

  ‘Cooee! Miss Clifford! Can you spare a moment? It’s about the parking for the fete.’

  ‘Coming,’ Joanna called. In a lower voice, she said to me, ‘I’ll come out for a walk at about eight this evening. No, let’s make it nine – it’ll be beginning to get dark. I’ll be on the drive, or near it, or perhaps in the churchyard. Please come if you can.’ She lifted her face, full of pleading, towards mine. ‘David.’

  She waved casually at me and set off across the green towards Audrey. I remembered to wave to Audrey. My hand was trembling.

  I walked back to the Vicarage, narrowly escaping a collision with a speeding Ford Capri, and went into my study. I sat down and put my head in my hands.

  There was a dreadful irony about all this. I had married Vanessa for the comforts of friendship and sex. Especially sex. But sex with Vanessa had become like the jam in Through the Looking-Glass, perpetually retreating into the past and the future. Now something far worse had happened: I wanted to make love with a woman who was young enough to be my daughter. I could cope, after a fashion, with that – after all, I had had plenty of practice at suppressing that particular urge in the last decade.

  Sex was not the real problem. When I married Vanessa, I had thought in my arrogance that love in the adolescent sense – as a romantic prelude to the biological necessities of mating and procreation – belonged to a stage of my life which I had left behind in Rosington. So Providence had sent Joanna Clifford into my life.

  Providence had decided I should fall in love with her. And what did Providence intend me to do about it?

  ‘Wonderful news.’ Vanessa had just returned from work, and was leaning against the jamb of the study doorway. ‘I went to see Nick Deakin today, and really he couldn’t have been nicer.’

  ‘You talked about the papers?’

  She came into the room and dropped her briefcase on a chair.

  ‘Apparently old Mr Youlgreave phoned from Cape Town, about something completely different. But Nick mentioned that I was working on the family papers, and asked if he would mind me continuing. And Mr Youlgreave – his name’s Frank, by the way; I wonder if Francis is a family name? – said I was welcome to carry on if Mr Deakin could vouch for me, which of course he did, bless him. He – Frank Youlgreave, I mean – wants me to send him a sort of catalogue raisonné of what’s there, and then we’ll talk about what we do next.’

  Vanessa’s face was pink, the flush spreading to the roots of her hair; and the excitement bubbled almost visibly out of her. I thought, without particular sadness, if only I could have made her do that; not that it mattered now.

  ‘And I’ve actually got them here. I’ve got the tin box in the boot of the car. I can’t believe it. Nick said it was a bit irregular, but seeing as the new owner had given me permission, and seeing that I was a vicar’s wife, he thought it would be all right. Such a sweetie.’

  ‘Do you know what’s missing yet?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve not had time to have a proper look. Would you mind if we ate early this evening? I’d like to make a start after supper.’

  Of course I didn’t mind. That is another thing that love can do: it turns its victims into conspirators.

  ‘On my way home I went to the Central Library. Did you know they’ve got a back file of the Courier? All the way back to eighteen-eighty-six.’ She stared at her hands. ‘My fingers are filthy.’

  ‘The report on the inquest?’

  She nodded. ‘Took me ages to find it. Officially it was an accident. During the night Francis fell from the window of his room. He landed near the fountain.’

  ‘So it must have been the east window?’

  ‘I suppose so. It was a very hot night, and he hadn’t been well. A maid found the body in the morning. The coroner sent his condolences to the family and warned about the danger of leaning too far out of the window. Not a hint of suicide.’

  No hint of angels, either?

  ‘“The distinguished poet,” the Courier called him. “Formerly a Canon of Rosington until ill health forced him to retire.”’ Vanessa picked up her briefcase. ‘Supper in about half an hour?’

  She left me alone with the ghost of Joanna. I smoked and looked out of the window. Ronald Trask phoned to ask if I had finished compiling my parish statistics, which were several weeks overdue. I told him I was working on them. He wanted to discuss how I intended to implement his latest brainchild, the Diocesan Ecumenical Initiative, but I put him off by leading him to believe that I had a visitor with me. Indeed I had: the ghost of Joanna.

  Eventually Michael came to tell me that supper was ready. The four of us had a hurried meal of baked beans, toast and cheese. I seemed to have mislaid my appetite. Michael and I washed up while Rosemary made coffee.

  Everyone made it easy for me. Vanessa wanted to examine the Youlgreave papers. Rosemary went upstairs to work in her bedroom. Michael asked if he might listen to a programme on Radio Luxembourg while he wrote to his parents.

  At ten to eight I went into the sitting room. Vanessa was at her desk with the black box on a little table by her chair. She was working her way through a bundle of letters and making notes on a sheet of foolscap.

  ‘I’ll lock the church,’ I said, trying to make my voice sound casual. ‘Then I might make one or two parish calls.’

  The pen continued to travel over the paper. ‘OK.’

  ‘I’m not quite sure how long I’ll be.’

  Vanessa unfolded another sheet of paper. ‘I’ll expect you when I see you.’ Suddenly she looked up. ‘You don’t mind me doing this, do you?’

  ‘Of course not.’ I forced a smile. ‘Have fun.’

  ‘I’ve already found a holograph poem that’s not in any of the collections. It’s called “The Office of the Dead” – undated but middle-to-late period, I think; probably Rosington.’

  ‘You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you? I’m so glad.’

  She reached out and touched my hand. ‘You are good to me. I know we don’t get much time together. I feel guilty.’

  ‘But you mustn’t feel guilty. Please don’t.’


  Guilt was my prerogative, not hers. Besides, I wanted Vanessa to be happy. And I also wanted Joanna. I said goodbye and left the house. Feeling like a truant sneaking out of school, I walked through the garden and through the gate to the churchyard. I followed the path that skirted the east end of the church. Absurdly superstitious, I averted my eyes from the steps leading down to the Youlgreave vault.

  What if Francis is down there, watching me?

  I let myself into the church by the south door. I made a circuit of the inside of the building rather more quickly than usual. I found that I did not want to let my eyes linger on certain objects – on the cross on the high altar, for example, on the smoky colours and swirling shapes of the Last Judgement panel painting, and on the moonface of Francis Youlgreave’s memorial tablet.

  As I returned to the south door, I thought, quite dispassionately, that my behaviour was abnormal; I might well be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I should go and see somebody about it, preferably Peter Hudson when he returned from Crete. Not yet, though; I was not ready to share my possible nervous breakdown with anyone except Joanna. But should Joanna be considered as its cause or its effect?

  I locked the door behind me and walked slowly through the churchyard. I looked at my watch. It was ten past eight. I was fifty minutes early. I did not mind. There was pleasure even in being alone and being able to think of her.

  I passed through the gate from the churchyard into the grounds of Roth Park. It was cool under the oaks and noticeably darker than in the churchyard. The sky was cloudy. I stopped for a moment and waited, looking around. This was, after all, a public place. People walked their dogs along the footpaths. Children played here. Adolescents found other pleasures. For all I knew, Audrey had chosen this evening to mount another detective expedition into the grounds of Roth Park. The need to be furtive heightened my pleasure.

  I looked at my watch again. Another forty-five minutes, assuming Joanna was on time. I knew nothing about her, I realized – not even whether she was the sort of woman who was usually early or late. I patted the pockets of my jacket, looking for cigarettes.