The People on Privilege Hill

by Jane Gardam

  He managed very well, still under the discipline of his long-dead mother. A firm cleaned for him and did the garden, and another firm his laundry. The Jones money seemed to be holding out, managed (at a price) by a London solicitor. The church next door—“My church,” he called it—helped with shopping, ran in with cakes and marmalade, looked after him when he was ill—which was almost never—and saw to his flu jabs. When he had been a sidesman for over fifty years the church bought him a television and video recorder, which he ignored. A neighbour asked what would become of the house when he ... when he could no longer look after himself and Mr. Jones said that it was left to the church, who planned to expand. He wanted to do something for the homeless.

  The neighbours became less certain of the charm of Mr. Jones after they learned about the homeless, and less certain still when their children joined the infant school on the Common and they discovered that Mr. Jones sat watching them every afternoon.

  2.

  One morning Mr. Jones stood at his bathroom window, drying himself on a hard towel, and saw a policeman standing in his back garden.

  Very odd.

  He dressed and walked downstairs to the kitchen where he set the kettle on the stove, and the policeman was looking at him through the half-glazed kitchen door.

  “Hello?” said Mr. Jones, opening it.

  “Good morning, sir. I came round the back. Didn’t want to draw attention. Left the car on the corner by the church.”

  “Come in. Would you like some tea?”

  “No tea, thank you, sir.” The policeman looked into the distance, rather ill at ease.

  “Is something the matter?”

  “There have been complaints, sir.”

  “About me? My accountant says we can have the house repainted next year.”

  “No, sir.”

  “I agree. It’s a disgrace. I can’t think what my mother—”

  “It’s about the children on the Common, sir. It’s said you go there every day?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do. For many years I am proud to say, in all weathers.”

  “Just to look at the children, sir?”

  “Oh yes. I have always been with children on the Common. I was the little one, you see. The youngest. A large family. All the rest of us are dead now.”

  “You are very fond of children, sir?”

  Mr. Jones poured his tea and thought about it. “As a matter of fact, no. Not of children per se.”

  “Pure what, sir?”

  “I’m not fond of people just because they begin as children. To tell you the truth I’m more fond of dogs. I miss my dogs. The children miss my dogs. I had to have them put down, you know.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. But, if you don’t care for children, why do you have to go and watch them every day?”

  Mr. Jones brooded and said he didn’t know. “They seem to like me. Since I was a baby,” he said, “children won’t leave me alone. I don’t know why. Mother said that there are just some people like that. My brothers and sisters used to hug me all the time. Children follow me. Mother said that the famous novelist, Jane Austen—you may have heard of her—had the same trouble.”

  “No, sir. I hadn’t heard.”

  “I don’t like to tell them on the Common that I’m not really interested in them. I—you see, I tend to look at ghosts.”

  “Ghosts, sir?”

  “All the ghosts. The old ghosts. All gone now.”

  “I have to ask you something, sir. Do you ever wish you could see the children in the nude?”

  “In the nude? Of course not! I never ever saw my brothers—good gracious! I never saw my sisters—my mother—oh, good gracious!”

  “I’m afraid I have to warn you, sir. It’s the climate of the times.”

  “I don’t take The Times, I take the Daily Telegraph.”

  “Have you a solicitor, sir? Just in case.”

  The following Sunday Mr. Jones hung about after the church service until the coffee was finished and the coffee ladies had washed all up. The vicar, seeing him, was worried. “Care to come back for a bite of lunch, Mr. Jones?” and his wife said, “Oh yes, please do. It’s only fish pie, but come.”

  “Delighted,” said Mr. Jones, but spoke hardly a word. He did not seem hungry.

  Afterwards she said, “Mr. Jones—what’s wrong? Go and talk to George while I clear up.”

  “Trouble?” asked the vicar.

  “A policeman came,” said Mr. Jones.

  “I’d heard something,” said the vicar.

  “Said I mustn’t watch the children on the Common. I can’t think why. I always did. Some people watch the tennis. Now people seem to be keeping away from me.”

  “I’ll fix it,” said the priest, and went down the hill to the station on the Monday morning.

  “I’m not having this,” he told them. “Right? I’ve known Jones for years. We all know him. He’s an innocent.”

  “It’s with the Crown Prosecution Service now, sir. It’s out of our hands. There’ve been allegations.”

  “Of what?”

  “Come in here, sir, for a minute. There have been allegations of gross indecency. About forty years ago. A woman of fifty has alleged rape. When she was eight. On the Common. Persistent rape. A hundred times in three months.”

  “Mr. Jones?”

  “You’d be surprised, sir.”

  “Nothing surprises me. Was this woman in therapy? Going through the menopause? Useless husband?”

  “Something of the sort, sir,” said the policeman, surprised.

  “They so often are,” said the vicar. “Wanting to find a reason for an unsuccessful life. ‘Nothing ever came up to my lovely childhood’—destroyed by a pervert. Tripe. We’re only just beginning to learn about the memory. And the powers of suggestion. Innocence is not considered.”

  “I’m afraid there are quite a lot of allegations, sir. One woman seems to have jogged the memories of others. We’ve been working on this case for a long time. The neighbours are not happy. Some of them have children.”

  “The Common is where Mr. Jones feels safe. You must see he’s a bit strange. A lonely man. One on his own.”

  “It’ll be his only hope, sir. ‘Diminished responsibility.’ Otherwise it’s going to be—well, you know—a custodial sentence.”

  “Send Mr. Jones to prison? At eighty-three!”

  “Look in the papers, sir.”

  “The police have gone mad.”

  The inspector walked the vicar to his car and said, “Look. Now we’re alone. Listen. I wonder if you realise the filth the police have to face? The videos? The Internet muck? You don’t hear of what it does to the police. You don’t hear of the nervous breakdowns. Do you think the police enjoy it? The foul age we live in?”

  “All ages are foul. All ages are also glorious. And Mr. Jones has no videos and no Internet. No child has been across his doorstep.” And he drove away.

  “Priests have to watch it,” said the inspector, “as we know full well.”

  Half an hour later Mr. Jones opened the door to the vicar, shaky, but immensely pleased to see him. They sat in the schoolroom, the priest with his back to the shelves of children’s books. “Mr. Jones,” said the priest, “I’ll stop this if it’s the last thing I do. I can’t have policemen calling here and going for you.”

  “He was a decent man,” said Mr. Jones. “I didn’t know what he was saying.”

  “Before I take this to hell and back,” said the vicar, “tell me this. We don’t go in for the Sacrament of Confession at our church, do we? We are Low. You know that?”

  “Oh yes. My mother was always Low.”

  “I want you, even so, to treat this talk we’re having as secret as the Confessional. Answer me, Jones, as you will have to answer on the Dreadful Day of Judgement. Tell me the absolute truth. Have you something to tell me that frightens you? Of which you are ashamed? That troubles you deep down in yourself? That you do not understand?”

  Mr. Jones stared hi
s blue stare for a long time. He seemed to be trying to read the titles of the books behind the vicar’s head. “Yes,” he said at last. “I have.”

  There was silence.

  “I am troubled. I have always been troubled somewhere. I think it is a sort of shame. Yet I don’t know why. I could never talk about it. My father died when I was eight. I could never have asked Mother.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well. I can’t understand what is meant by ‘sexual urges.’”

  “Sexual urges of any kind?”

  “Yes. You see, they don’t happen to me. And I’m afraid that what I understand of them disgusts me. It was the only thing about the dogs I did not care for. On the Common. Yeoman. Oh, I could not even think about it!”

  “And your childhood?”

  “Oh yes. I understand childhood. I’ve always wanted childhood again. I’m so sorry.”

  The priest stood up, put his hand on Mr. Jones’s shoulder and said, “God bless you. We’ll blast them all to hell.”

  It was Christmas time and at eight o’clock one morning there was a ring at Mr. Jones’s doorbell, and eight policemen were on the steps and police cars prominent in the road. A handcuff was fastened on to Mr. Jones’s wrist and its other link round one of the policemen’s. Two policemen went upstairs and two more disappeared into the schoolroom. “We have to ask you to come to the station, sir.”

  Mr. Jones had just finished breakfast and had not yet put on his shoes. He turned pale as his moustache. “I am still in my slippers.”

  “Slippers will do, sir. Do you want to sit down for a moment?”

  “I have to ... I have to go to the WC.”

  “You can go at the station, sir.”

  “It is urgent. I have just had breakfast and I am well brought up. I am like clockwork. There will be an accident.”

  They removed the handcuff and the lavatory door key and let him go in. “Don’t pull the chain, sir.”

  Then they took him away to charge him, offering to contact his solicitor. Mr. Jones could not remember the solicitor’s name. It would not come. “I must see my parish priest. He will want to be here.”

  “We’ll let you see him later. First you must hear the charges made against you. Shall we read them out to you?”

  “I am able to read.”

  But reading, he did not understand.

  “Do you want to sign these allegations, sir?”

  “I want to see my parish priest.”

  Four hours later, he was given a cup of tea. Mr. Jones was allowed home. The handcuff was not restored. “We’ll drop you on your doorstep, sir. The padre will be there looking out for you. We found him. You’re staying with him tonight.”

  Mr. Jones stared.

  “We’ve insisted, sir. It’s usual. We don’t want you doing something foolish. By the way, don’t forget that we’ll need your passport. Get the padre to bring it in.”

  “I have no passport. I’ve never been abroad.”

  “Here we are then, sir. There’s the light on—he’s there.”

  The wonderful familiarity of the front door. The brass bell and letter box. The door was on the latch.

  But inside the house felt different. Antiseptic. The kitchen dresser, the wardrobe in the bedroom, the bathroom cupboards, some slightly open, had a self-consciousness he had not seen before. The downstairs lavatory door stood open and a rubber glove lay on the floor.

  “Mr. Jones? Hello? Is that you? Don’t come in here—”

  But it was too late. Mr. Jones went into the schoolroom and saw that all the children’s books were gone, and only then did he burst into tears.

  3.

  After the police search of Mr. Jones’s house, and the charges made that he had been once a rapist, they left him to himself for some months, only requiring that he did not leave his premises overnight without informing them of his whereabouts. Mr. Jones never went anywhere overnight and was only persuaded once or twice to stay at the vicarage or with a parishioner when faceless grey men with cameras began to hang about his gate. This happened on the occasions when he had to appear at a more important police station and then at the Crown Court. His solicitor was changed to one more used to crime and he found a Silk who specialised in this sort of case. This was a woman so busy that she hardly saw Mr. Jones but said they would meet properly at the trial. Mr. Jones looked at her with mild interest. She reminded him of one of the more forceful of the whistle-blowing teachers at the infant school who had apparently told the police, “We never quite took to him.”

  “The QC is very good,” said the vicar. “So we hear.”

  Mr. Jones thought that she hadn’t looked particularly “good,” but certainly strong and determined. Obviously he was not the easiest client because he was finding speaking more and more difficult. At one point the magistrates asked if he was deaf. It was the vicar who stood near him in the dock and answered the questions, Mr. Jones observing the scene in silent and bewildered dignity.

  The legal steps went forward steadily for several more months before the trial. The press came and went at the gate. At each court appearance there was now a report in the Surrey newspapers and a footnote or two in the Guardian where he was described as a pensioner, grey-haired and tall. The year drew to its end.

  Mr. Jones still walked on the Common but now went round two sides of a triangle to avoid the pond and the long seat. He walked out beyond the pine trees and the site of the old Roman fort where he could hear the steady throb of the motorway along Ermine Street. As a sort of comfort and passport he carried the dogs’ lead. He avoided people with children. Sometimes a child who had known him ran up to him and he would turn his back and shout into the distance, “Yeoman? Farmer? Here, boys, here.” People with dogs smiled at him and on the far tracks through the woods riders on horseback sometimes reined up and spoke to him. “Take care out here on your own, sir. It’s getting late. You can easily get lost. There are nasty people about.”

  “I know every inch of the Common,” said Mr. Jones. “I’m never afraid.”

  But most days he was invisible; lurking inside his house. Sometimes he even missed Sunday church, which was why it was not until Christmas time that he caught on to the news that his vicar was moving to a parish in the north of England. Mr. Jones said nothing, but after Evensong that dark night he was seen by the vicar’s wife standing across the road from the vicarage in the rain. She ran out without her coat, pulled him into the house and in the little hallway held his cold, gloveless hands. The vicar appeared and said, “Oh God! We’ve prayed, we’re still praying that this ridiculous business will be dropped before we leave. We didn’t want you to know we were going until you’re settled again. Mr. Jones, we shall not ever desert you. I shall be at your trial. I promise.”

  “Trial?”

  He told Mr. Jones (yet again) the date fixed at Quarter Sessions. He reminded him there would be a jury. He said that his Counsel was excellent. That there was money enough to pay her. That everyone was totally supporting him.

  “I’m not sure,” said Mr. Jones.

  “Stay with us tonight.”

  But Mr. Jones preferred to go home.

  In the rain, now turned to sleet, he went padding away and as he came to the church he saw that there were lights inside it. The Christmas lights, for it was still Epiphany, the feast of the Three Wise Men at Bethlehem. Turning off church lights had been his dominion for half a century and his reaction was immediate and automatic. This was somebody else’s disgraceful negligence. He turned into his house where there was still a church key behind the front door next to the dogs’ lead and hurried back again. He unlocked the church, switched on the light inside so that he would be able to see his way out again, as he had done a thousand times. He walked down the south aisle to switch off the tree. How very careless. How dangerous. Never happened before. And the light inside the Christmas crib was on, too, and the usual torch hidden in the hay around the holy family. The whole church could be ablaze by morning.
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br />   A barefoot child was looking at the crib. He was examining in his hand one of the little carved kings.

  “How dare you!” Mr. Jones astonished himself with a parade-ground voice. “What are you doing here? This is holy ground. You behave as if you owned the place. Put down the Wise Man.”

  The child replaced the figure in the stable, and disappeared.

  The weather worsened. Mr. Jones kept within doors. Some people began to be kind. They left him Christmas cake and mince pies and leftovers from the turkey at his back door. One or two of the grand neighbours even asked him to their New Year’s parties. He did not reply. The vicar’s farewell party in the church hall took place without him. The vicar sent letters from his new parish, and reminded him that he was not alone and would not be alone at his trial.

  The neighbours began to notice an extended darkness over Mr. Jones’s house. The curtains stayed drawn in the daytime. There was scarcely a light. Nobody answered the doorbell. Someone among the grand neighbours said at a party that they had seen the police raid. Hundreds of pornographic books had been seized. Someone else said they had heard that Mr. Jones believed he was Jane Austen, and one of the male “partners” said that he had been jogging one evening just after Christmas and Mr. Jones had burst out of the church shouting, “I have seen the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Or something of the sort.