Some Deaths Before Dying

by Peter Dickinson

  “Well, well, well,” he said again. “The boot is now perhaps on the other foot. These are rather nice, you know. Chelsea, red anchor period, 1753 or so, pretty good condition—there’s a tiny chip here, and a flaw here, do you see? Unusual, too…Care to know what I’d offer you for these if you brought them in off the street?”

  “No, and please don’t tell me. If they’re worth something then I’m delighted, because I won’t have it on my conscience not paying you enough for the pistols. And the same with you about these, I hope. Is that all right?”

  “Indeed it is, Mrs. Matson. I believe this is what the economists call the Ideal Transaction. Both parties believe themselves to have done well out of it. O si sic omnia.”

  “Well, that’s all right, then. I’m so relieved.”

  So they had parted, and rather to her own surprise Rachel had found herself reluctant to return to Mr. O’Fierley’s shop when she had spare time in Nottingham. The episode was over, sealed, and could now be put away. The pistols were Jocelyn’s, unsullied by any sense of debt. She was still thinking about this when Flora knocked.

  “It’s all right now, Mrs. Thomas,” Dilys called.

  Flora, as usual, was speaking before she was through the door.

  “…don’t need to lock me out, Dilys. I always knock, and I don’t mind waiting.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t for you, Mrs. Thomas, but Mr. Matson didn’t knock and I didn’t know if he mightn’t come back.”

  “Blast him, and I gather he wore Ma out too. You’re sure she’s up to this?”

  “Well, we are a teeny bit tired, Mrs. Thomas, but she’s insisting she’s got to talk to you. So I’ll be in my room if you need me.”

  “Thank you, Dilys.”

  “That woman’s a jewel,” said Flora as soon as the door closed. “You’re sure you’re not too tired?”

  “Yes. Dick gone?”

  “Forty minutes ago, in a foul temper. He wouldn’t stay for lunch, which was a relief in the circs. We had a proper up and downer about Da’s pistols. He said they belonged to him.”

  “No.”

  “That’s what I kept telling him. He tried to make out that Da was past it when he changed his will, but I wasn’t having any. He was completely all there, only he had a bit of trouble making himself understood. I was bloody furious with Dick. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t care if he never sets foot in this house again.”

  “Tell you about TV?”

  “Yes, and I don’t think he was inventing it, though I wouldn’t put it past him. Isn’t it extraordinary? Did you have any idea the Laduries were worth that sort of money, Ma? I mean, I knew they were pretty special, belonging to old Murat and so on, but Da and you used to pop away with them on the terrace as if they’d been toys, of course Da was like that, it never bothered him what things cost or didn’t. But don’t you think we ought to look into this a bit? I mean, if some total stranger has somehow got hold of one of them. Dick says you told him they were in the bank, but I’ve just checked the list and they aren’t. When did you last see them, Ma? I’ve been trying to think. I remember Da showing Jack how to use them—that’d have been when we were engaged—and then I remember after his first stroke thinking it might do him good to play with them, but they weren’t on the table by his desk, where they used to be…Didn’t you tell me you’d put them away?”

  “Did I?”

  “Or was that after he’d died?”

  Rachel didn’t respond, relying on Flora to rattle off in some other direction.

  “And another thing—according to Dick the fellow on the box said the pistol he was looking at hadn’t been cleaned right, and Da always made such a fuss about that. I must say it’s all very baffling. I wonder if I couldn’t get hold of a tape of the programme, I’ll ask Biddy Paxton, her brother’s something fruity in the BBC…All right, Ma, you’re worn out and you need a rest. I’ll push off. I just wanted you to know I’m not going to stand any nonsense from Dick, and I won’t do anything without your say-so. There was just something you wanted me for, wasn’t there?”

  Rachel managed to smile. Her chief worry had been that Flora might try to appease Dick by conceding some kind of right over the pistols to him, but that obviously wasn’t now in question. She should have known Flora would do the right thing. She almost always did, though because of her manner those who didn’t know her very well tended to take her minor acts of virtue for a lifelong series of flukes. This was what made the coming deception oddly painful.

  “Tape,” Rachel whispered, as if that had been what was on her mind. “Good idea. But don’t tell Biddy it’s about pistol. Or anyone. Only Jack. Private. Family.”

  “Yes, of course, Ma. I know they were pretty special to you both, weren’t they?”

  “Thank you. No, wait…Just this. I want you to know you’re very good to me, darling. Much, much better than I deserve.”

  “Nonsense, Ma, you’re just tired. I’ll send Dilys along, and then you must have a good rest after your lunch. It’s truite au beurre noir for supper, and you’ll want to enjoy that.”

  3

  Rachel’s midday meal was usually little more than a snack, and then Dilys would put some familiar novel onto the machine and she would lie for an hour or two and half listen to it and nap off for a while into dream and wake and half listen again. Henry James was particularly good to doze to, but Jane Austen too insistently soporific.

  Today she was too tired to swallow more than a couple of mouthfuls, and then asked Dilys to close the curtains and leave her in silence, so that she could attempt real sleep.

  She succeeded, but woke weeping, ravaged with sexual expectation suddenly cut short. The setting was already vague. A boat, rocking on warm waves. Nighttime. The tock of the lanyards against the mast. The man not Jocelyn, not even some particular stranger, just depersonalised man, hands, mouth, weight, member. But herself, her own body, real and solid, not young, no identifiable age, but with senses vivid and focused…

  Her pad was sopping, of course. Her sheets might need changing.

  Why now? It was the first time since—oh, long before she’d been nailed to this bed.

  Within a few seconds the physical sensation, so intense in the dream, was mere memory, memory that thinned and became disgusting and absurd as it encountered the reality of her body. But she continued to weep, not now for the lost dream, but the lost years, the years after Jocelyn had come home.

  They had both been virgins on their wedding night, but Jocelyn, unlike many of his apparent type, had not been straitjacketed by his culture and upbringing; she in fact had started off the more squeamish and apprehensive, thanks to her mother’s embarrassed explications. But they had given each other confidence to explore the possibilities, discover what pleased them and then make the most of it.

  This hadn’t, in those days, been the kind of thing one talked about to even one’s closest friends, but one evening, about two years married, they’d been dining with the Staddings, and she and Leila had left Jocelyn and Fish to their cigars to sit out on the verandah with the punkah swaying softly overhead, its slow draft heavy with the scent of a nearby lemon tree. Beneath the silk of her dress and petticoat her skin felt like sentient velvet. It was that kind of night, but she was in no hurry to get home. The small hours were often the best.

  Now Leila decided that she wanted a chartreuse to bring her evening to full perfection, and demanded that Rachel should keep her company. Rachel had already been drinking with care, knowing her own needs and balances. When she refused Leila tried to insist.

  “Honestly, no thanks, I’ve had enough.”

  “But you’re pretty well stone cold sober. What’s the matter with you?”

  “If you must know, I’m feeling just right for when I get home with Jocelyn. If I drink any more, it’ll take the edge off it.”

  “Oh,” said Leila as if this had been something she couldn’t have imagined. And then, after a pause, “Tell me more, Ray. I’m not being nosy. Please. It s
ounds as if we’ve been missing something.”

  It had been Rachel’s turn to be surprised, though she was long used to the contrast between Leila’s exotic looks and her straightforward inner self. But Fish? Rachel knew him far less well, but looks, style and everything else about him made it impossible for her to believe that he had not come to the bridal bed already an experienced lover.

  “Please, Ray,” Leila had said again, so Rachel had done her best to communicate the nature of her pleasure and the means of it, and Leila had thanked her, telling her later that some of what she’d said had been very useful. Strange, at the time, and in hindsight differently strange.

  For the rest of their time in India her pleasure and Jocelyn’s in each other had been barely interrupted by the birth of children and by the jerky slither of the nations into war, continuing through the scramble of departure, and his brief leaves from various camps and barracks right up until his eventual sailing for what had seemed the comparative safety of Singapore.

  In the years of his absence Rachel had woken night after night aching with longing for him. Occasionally she had felt physically attracted by other men but had not for an instant thought, or even fantasised, about carrying it any further. She was wholly Jocelyn’s. She felt that for her any other man would have been, literally, impossible.

  Then he had returned, and she had once again slept curled in his arms, though it had been months before he had been well enough for anything beyond caresses. At this point, slowly, she had started to realise that she had not got all of him back. He could, and did, satisfy her physical need. He would initiate the performance and carry it through. But it was a performance. Not that he actively disliked what he was doing. He made the sounds and motions of enjoyment. But after a while she had to accept that what they had had before the war, what they had been so completely and passionately to each other, was now gone.

  She had tried to tell herself that it was only natural, that they were older now, and such passion is the province of the young. Her own body gave her the lie. The loss was hers, but it was in him and it had nothing to do with age. It was the result of what had been done to him on the Cambi Road. For his sake, then, she learnt to suppress and control the need, telling herself that if this was the price she must pay for having him home she would pay it ungrudgingly, heavy though it was, because it was worth it, worth it a hundred times over.

  She succeeded too. The ache came less often and when it did she was able to order it back to its lair. Sometimes they still made love, gently, without any fuss, like going for a walk together on a fine autumn morning. Thus all was fundamentally well and she loved him as deeply and strongly as ever, and was confident he did her. She had never in these years wept for her loss.

  She did now, acid little droplets that were all the withered ducts could wring out beneath the wincing eyelids. They had not ceased when Dilys crept in to see if she’d woken.

  “Awake at last? My, we’ve slept, haven’t we? Why, what’s up dearie? We’ve been crying.”

  “Nothing. Stupid dream. Pad needs changing. Sorry.”

  “Bound to after this time. Never mind, I’ll have you comfortable in a couple of minutes. Let’s just dry our poor face off first. Tsk, tsk, naughty girl, getting herself into such a state. Nice happy patients, that’s what I like. There. That’s better. Now let’s see to you.”

  With her usual sturdy deftness she did what was necessary, chatting away as she worked, a kind of professional tact on her part, a way of making it seem that this was a pleasant social occasion, and the indignities to which she was subjecting her patient were subsidiary and irrelevant.

  “Did I say, I got a letter from my niece yesterday? She’s the one who married a Yank, took her out to live somewhere in the middle where there isn’t much of anything except more of the same, and after a bit she couldn’t stand it any longer so she walked out on him, which wasn’t very nice of her, I’m afraid, but she always was headstrong. And then she went to live up in the top left corner—you can see the Pacific Ocean from her bathroom, she says—that’s when you can see anything because mostly it rains and rains like Scotland, she says, but without the bagpipes, though there’s a lot of wet sheep. Well I sent her a snap I’d taken of this house in the snow—just after I came, it was, if you remember, we had that snow—so she could see where I was living. But she didn’t answer and she didn’t answer and then, like I say, yesterday, I got this letter, fourteen whole pages on a typewriter, which is why I’ve only just finished reading it. I’m going to have to read it again, mind you, because it’s a muddle to sort out what she’s saying. She’s always flying off at an angle and going on to something else, and then, no warning, you’re back where you were before only you’ve forgotten where that was. Anyway, like I was telling you, I’d sent her this snap of the house and now she’s wanting to know all about it and how old it is, and everything. Victorian, I was going to tell her, and didn’t Mrs. Thomas say it was Colonel Matson’s grandfather that built it, him having done well out of his cotton mills, and with all these children to house, like families used to be those days—getting on a dozen, wasn’t it? Poor women, you can’t help thinking. I remember my mum telling me about some old aunt of hers who was a farmer’s wife, and her saying how she always loved the springtime, when the evenings were longer and the fields greener and there was milk in the cows and the baby was born. Almost done, dearie. There now, that’s better, isn’t it?”

  “Thank you. Albums.”

  “Out in the passage? Right you are. Which one? Look in the card index, shall I?”

  “No. Different from others. Top left. Blue ring binder. Show me. Something I want to see.”

  “Righty-oh, I’ll just get rid of this wet stuff and put a kettle on for our cup of tea, and then we’ll settle down and have a good look.”

  The folder was one Anne had put together for a Social History project. She was in the Sixth at the time, so it would have been 1952—a good year, Flora in her first job, in a tiny flat just behind Harrods; Anne in her last school year, intelligent, pretty, already a little tending to detach herself from the family, but not yet into the desperate withdrawal that came later; Dick at Eton, and according to his tutor showing signs of pulling himself together.

  “Would you like me to take a few photographs?” Rachel had suggested.

  “That would be super, Ma. Only if you want to, you know? You don’t have to go to town.”

  “Nonsense. It’ll give me a chance to play with the half-plate.”

  Not the least of Dilys’s virtues was her enjoyment of looking at photograph albums. She slid the reading desk across the bed, laid the folder in place and opened it at the beginning.

  “My, what a big picture! And doesn’t it look handsome like that.”

  Yes, the clear summer light and the motionless subject had suited the half-plate very well. There, on the first spread, opposite a page of Anne’s neat italic handwriting (still then showing the self-consciousness of a newly acquired skill) was the view of Forde Place from the main gate, with the monkey puzzle to the right and the stable block to the left. Almost nothing had changed since the afternoon when Rachel had first seen it.

  Jocelyn had stopped the car at the top of the drive.

  “Oh dear,” she had said.

  “I told you it was an eyesore,” he’d answered, and driven her on down to meet his parents.

  Anne’s researchers had tended to confirm the family legend that old Eli Matson hadn’t employed an architect, but had told his mill foreman to build him a house. The man, after all, was responsible for a couple of perfectly adequate mills. Certainly the house had that look. There was a vernacular style, still to be seen along these valleys: severe facades of brickwork, undecorated apart from a change of colour for the surrounds of the ranked, flat-arched windows; sweeps of narrow-eaved slate roof, soaring stacks; proportions, achieved by eye and instinct rather than theory, that were often strongly satisfying. When Rachel had realised how many demolitions were
likely to come she had spent eighteen months systematically recording what still stood, and years later had given her collection to the local record office.

  These virtues didn’t tame easily to domesticity. Forde Place hadn’t the look of a mill in miniature, but of one somehow compacted—drop it in water and it would then expand into a mill. Even the chimneys appeared to be lacking their upper sixty feet. The stables too—they should have housed bale-hoppers, not traps and horses. In the early years of her marriage Rachel couldn’t have imagined that she could bear to live here. Now she could hardly remember having wanted to live anywhere else.

  Dilys turned the page. Ah. Rachel had forgotten how beautiful. Almost pure abstract. The near-dead lighting of a cloudy noon. Course after course of dark unweatherable bricks, and the lower corner of a window. She and Jocelyn had once come round the corner of the house and found an old builder, there to repair one of the greenhouses, actually caressing a stretch of wall. At their footsteps he had looked up, unashamed. “Lovely work that,” he’d said. “You wouldn’t find a brickie to touch it, these days. Stand a thousand years, that will, and a thousand after.”

  Another page. The fire escape. Anne had told the story opposite, how Eli as a young man had worked in a factory that had been gutted by fire, and workers, some of them as young as eight, had died, trapped on the upper floors. All his mills had fire escapes, and so of course did his house, good solid cast iron, painted dark industrial green, zigzagging brazenly up the west facade to the nursery floor. Jocelyn’s parents had buried it in Virginia creeper, whose autumn blaze clashed hideously with the purple bricks of the house, but this had got honey fungus and died during the war. On taking over the house Jocelyn had had the ironwork scraped down and repainted, and Rachel had realised that she actually liked the fire escape for the same reason that she had learnt to like the whole building, that it was, emphatically and uniquely, itself.