An Individual Will

by J.G. Ellis

  Chapter Fourteen

  I decided to go alone, since I thought this would likely prove the most productive approach. The sky was uniformly grey, but the worst of the storm had past, and the rain had abated to a light drizzle. She greeted me warmly and invited me in. I thanked her and followed her into the study, where she invited me to sit down and offered refreshments. She rather gave the impression that she’d been expecting me – indeed, that my visit was somewhat overdue.

  “I’m afraid I may have inadvertently offended your young man,” she said. “It highlights the importance of considering one’s audience when speaking. He strikes me as the sort of man who makes a virtue of common sense. Not, I fear, someone given to, or tolerant of, philosophical musings.”

  “Or perhaps he just thought the timing was bad,” I said. “You did, I believe, describe a young girl’s suicide as a philosophical victory.”

  “I suggested that one might choose to see it in that way, yes. And so one might. We have to be – or become – something more than just survival algorithms, and choosing the manner and timing of our own deaths is a step in the right direction. Understanding that you don’t have to be here – that someone else’s selfishness brought you to this sorry pass – is to have a worthwhile philosophical insight into your plight. As a society, we spend an awful lot of time trying to persuade our children that they should be grateful for something for which they never asked. The unborn don’t weep, Chief Inspector, neither do they suffer, and we were all unborn once.”

  I said, “You didn’t mention your phone-call with Adrian on Tuesday night.”

  “Sorry, Chief Inspector?” she said. “I appear to have missed something.” She sounded slightly irritated.

  “You didn’t mention to my young man that Adrian had phoned you on Tuesday evening.”

  “Oh, I see. That’s because I rather assumed that that’s why he’d come. Isn’t that the first thing you do – go through their mobile phones? He didn’t ask me about it, so I simply assumed he knew.”

  “What did you discuss?”

  “With Adrian, you mean. Well, quite a lot. We talked about his sister and her writings. Adrian said he wanted to gather them together in one place – as a tribute to her. He wanted to know if I had them all, and if I’d be willing to post them on a blog – a single blog he meant; most of her work is already online. She used to post her school essays to a private blog – open only to invited readers – because she was afraid the school would censor or destroy them.”

  “Did he give any indication that he was about to take his own life?” I didn’t add, and would you have done anything about it if he had?

  “No, he didn’t, but I wasn’t really surprised. Adrian was obsessed with his sister’s death and work – by which I mean her writings. He couldn’t reconcile her death with the prosperity of what he called happy idiots – most of society in other words. Insightful people are always going to be at a disadvantage from that point of view, since they see the walls of the prison all the time and chafe against it. This is especially true of the young because they haven’t had the chance to develop the necessary quality of resignation that makes prison life tolerable.”

  “Were you close to the Mansfields?” I asked.

  Martha smiled. “Oh, dear,” she said, “am I coming across as rather callous – a cold fish more interested in the philosophy than the people involved? The whole family have gone and I haven’t shed a tear, and you can’t help wondering why. Perhaps you think me rather ghoulish. Or are we simply engaged in the more practical business of looking for scapegoats?”

  “You haven’t answered my question,” I said calmly.

  “Close?” She made much of considering this. “No, I don’t think that’s quite the word – though I do have to remind myself that I never actually met Emma, so powerful was her presence in – or absence from – the family. If I was close to anyone, it would be Emma, though that statement’s probably best interpreted through an artistic prism as opposed to a purely social one. I admired – and admire – Emma in much the same way as one might admire any other dead artist, particularly one who died tragically young.”

  “Did she go to school in Amberton?” I asked. “Sorry, I’m assuming you know a very great deal about her, Ms Bottomley. Correct me if I’m wrong in that assumption.”

  “No, they moved to Amberton after Emma’s death – an attempt to make a fresh start. She went to school in Essex – the London end of it. Not a happy experience by all accounts. She played truant, spending her time in libraries reading and writing. She recorded with some amusement that no-one suspected you were playing truant if you were sitting in a library; they assumed you were doing some school project. The school behaved rather badly in the wake of her suicide, making rather obvious efforts to shift the blame elsewhere. Politics played its part. The school had been in the local paper over allegations by some parents that it was covering up incidents of bullying while obsessing about political correctness, though there was no suggestion that Emma had been affected by either of these issues. The English teacher came under some scrutiny because she’d raised concerns about the dark content of Emma’s work with the head teacher. She was, she said, concerned that it might hint at psychological problems. Actually, she was just a dumb bitch who couldn’t cope with a talented pupil. I believe it would have changed the course of Emma’s life had she had a teacher capable of appreciating the merit of her work. What she got instead was someone whose talents extended to spotting spelling mistakes and noticing whether or not a comma was misplaced or a sentence started with a capital letter.”

  “You sound rather bitter on her behalf,” I said. “I can’t help but wonder how much this reflects your own experience of school.”

  “I didn’t go to school, Chief Inspector. We – my sister and I – were educated at home, and I assure you we felt, and were, fully appreciated. Thanks to my parents, we adored learning. We were never bored, and never discouraged. Educating children at home is something that’s becoming increasingly difficult because the state wants everyone who isn’t privileged to be schooled in the same way. We can’t have too many people thinking for themselves.”

  “You never wanted to go to school?” I asked. “You weren’t curious?”

  “I wasn’t, but my sister was – or said she was. When she was ten – she’s a year older than me – she mischievously suggested that it might be fun to go to school for a day just to see what it was like. The next day, my father took us to see a local school at playtime. We stood on the free side of the railings and witnessed small creatures in uniform push and shove and fall over each other to an audio backdrop of shrieking and screaming. There seemed to be so many of them, and the noise was terrible. I remember dresses and short trousers and exaggerated, curiously blank, cartoon expressions. And lots of movement – they never stopped moving. I held hands with my sister and watched appalled. I remember her saying very formally, ‘Thank you, Father; I’d like to go home now.’ We tended to call him Father when we wanted to be serious about something. My father said, ‘No, Charlotte, wait for the bell.’ So we waited for the mysterious bell. When it rang, the creatures stopped and looked up, and then filed into the school building. I can’t remember if it was then or later that I thought of the Eloi marching to their doom in the film The Time Machine. When they had all gone, my sister said, ‘Can we go now, Father?’ She was rather shaken. When Mother asked us later where we’d been, Charlotte, somewhat recovered, told her, ‘Daddy took us to see the white monkeys’ tea party.’ I remember Father very much approving of this reply.”

  I turned to look out the window – at the garden and the rain. A plump ginger cat made its way – with reluctant haste – onto and over the fence, presumably en route to dry and warm domesticity. I was thinking, rather mischievously perhaps: I wish my young man were here to hear this; on more serious consideration, though, perhaps not. It was unlikely she’d have been quite so frank with him, or with him present.

 
; “How did you become involved with the Mansfields?” I asked.

  “Rather appropriately, in a library. Amberton library to be precise. I was doing a talk. Afterwards, Anne approached me to ask me what I thought of some writing she’d brought in in a folder. She told me it was her daughter’s, but she didn’t tell me her daughter was dead. I’m fairly used to people asking my opinion of their writing or that of their family and friends, and usually I’m non-committally polite because it’s usually dreadful. It’s a sad thing, Chief Inspector, but most people involved in most artistic endeavours have absolutely no talent in it whatsoever. I wish it weren’t true, but it is, and it means that the talented few must struggle all the harder to be heard over the expected dross. And I do mean dross. We’re not talking about stories I don’t like, or a sniffy sneering at the populist; rather, we’re talking outright, technically inept dreadful. And I do mean dreadful. Poor grammar, faulty punctuation, that sort of thing. This is to say nothing of dreary sensibilities and dull minds. Mostly one is simply dealing with an incompetence when it comes to craft. It’s quite extraordinary. You can imagine, therefore, I did not look upon Anne’s offerings with much in the way of hope. Indeed, before I’d even read the first sentence, I was, as it were, limbering up to be polite.” She paused. “Well, you can gather the rest. I read a page at random, and was immediately struck by the meticulousness of the writing. Such is the corrosive effect of low expectation that I couldn’t help wondering if the writer had made use of an editing service. I began reading another page and moved away from the main activity to sit down at a corner table – a sure sign I was interested. I began pulling pages out and reading bits of them before moving on to another page. This sounds rather more dramatic than it was, but she must surely have picked up on the fact I was impressed. I asked her if the work had been edited. She shook her head and said, ‘No, that’s exactly how she wrote it.’ I said, ‘Well, you should be very proud. Your daughter has a very promising literary career ahead of her.’ I was, as you can imagine, astonished when she dissolved into tears. Disintegrate would be a more apposite verb; it was like watching a statue fracture and fall apart in soggy clumps.”

  “Non-committally polite?” I said. “You don’t feel moved to tell them the truth – or, at least, what you really think?”

  “A nice distinction, Chief Inspector,” she said, amused. “No, I don’t. What would be the point of that? I don’t subscribe to the view that the truth is always good for you. Dreams – even unrealized ones – can sustain and nourish, and a good delusion can see you comfortably to the grave.”

  “Why do you think Adrian killed himself?” I asked.

  “Because he didn’t want to live any more,” she replied.

  We stared at each other.

  I said, “I’m sorry, is that amusing?”

  “Not at all, Chief Inspector. I’m simply stating a fact. You want to hear that he was distraught or disturbed, or broken in some way. Perhaps he was, but that would be an assumption and a presumption. Perhaps he simply added up the numbers and didn’t like the total.”

  I asked, “Do you know a girl called Sharon Hall?”

  “No,” she said. “Should I?”

  “Perhaps you should,” I said. “She hanged herself in her room in a grotty lodging house. I’m not sure yet if it would be entirely fair to say Adrian talked her into it, but he certainly encouraged her in that direction. She even asked him if they could commit suicide together, but Adrian didn’t think that was a good idea – probably for sound intellectual reasons. Perhaps you have a monograph he wrote on the subject in your collection. I’m fairly certain you won’t have any of Sharon’s literary output. All she wanted was a friendly arm around her shoulder and someone to tell her it was going to be all right. I’d have happily obliged.”

  “That’s surely not all she wanted.” She sounded curt, dismissive. “What she wanted was to have lived a different life, one that didn’t lead to loneliness and despair in a grotty lodging house. Of course, if she’d led that different life – one perhaps of privilege and indulgence – she wouldn’t have been the wretched, disenfranchised thing so worthy of your middle-class sympathy. Imagine a world, Chief Inspector, where there’s no need for charity or the condescension of kindness.”

  I said, “Can you think of any reason why Adrian would want to tie himself into a boat?”

  She said, “Symbolism probably. Something to do with being adrift on choppy, unpredictable waters. He was fond of boating, so it’s not surprising that he should choose that as his final mise-en-scène.”

  “Yes,” I said; “but someone spoilt it for him. Someone came along and stabbed him post-mortem, and someone – presumably the same someone – hung a sign round his neck declaring him an arse. Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to do that?”

  “Someone who didn’t like him, obviously. I don’t know of anyone in particular, I’m afraid, but I do know his opinions often made him unpopular. I know because he told me so. And I did suggest, for his own good, that he might express himself rather less freely.” She considered. “A disgruntled relative perhaps – someone who blamed Adrian for the death of their loved one? I’m sure you must already be looking into that.”

  My phone rang. Later I would remember this call through the filter of a dream in which the phone went on ringing after I’d answered it. Something very dreadful has happened – Emily Brampton’s voice. The persistent ringing of the phone and Emily’s voice: Something very dreadful has happened.

  The phone did, indeed, ring. I excused myself prosaically enough and answered it.

  Sergeant Turner: “Ma’am, something very dreadful has happened at St Mary’s school. A student has been found dead in the school grounds. Seems she fell from the school building.”

  “Thank you, Ron,” I said. “I’m on my way.” Well, that sounded brisk and professional enough. Next step, get up and get in the car. Come on, Barbara, you've done it many times before. It's a simple case of pretending nothing’s wrong. A friend of mine told me she used to worry about going mad as a child, but solved the problem – and stopped worrying about it – by telling herself that, if she did go mad, she’d just look around and copy what she assumed to be the sane people. Later on, she said, she began worrying that that’s what everyone else was doing.

  I looked at Martha and she seemed a long way away, though she clearly had no idea anything was wrong with me. My body felt huge and unwieldy – as though gravity had doubled on it – and I was plunging down through space on Martha’s sofa. Strange, distant noises came to me, and my head swam with shadows.

  I stood up. There, that wasn’t so bad. You really should try to be more phlegmatic, Barbara. Police officers are meant to be phlegmatic. I said, “Thank you for your help, Ms Bottomley. I appreciate your seeing me.” That must have sounded slightly stilted – I may even have misjudged the volume – and might have hinted at something further being amiss. Not that it mattered. In police work, something – notionally – is always amiss. I got into the car, and, with my hands on the steering wheel, experienced something like a sense of relief. I was alone now; I had made it this far. Deep breath. I started the car, and turned towards St Mary’s.