Time to Be in Earnest

by P. D. James

  What was fascinating to me was the investigation. It was extraordinarily incompetent. The various authorities—the river police, the night watchmen, the magistrates of Shadwell and those of Wapping—were more concerned to guard their own reputations and functions than to cooperate effectively. The end of the case was as macabre as the beginning. A young seaman, John Williams, was arrested for the crime but was found dead in prison, apparently by his own hand. His decaying corpse was paraded through the streets of East London to be buried at a crossroads with a stake through its heart. This was an act of public vengeance unique in the history of English criminal law.

  The case came to Tom Critchley’s attention when he was writing his history of the police in England and Wales, but when he mentioned it to me I remembered that I had read an account in the Newgate Calendar and had been very far from convinced of the guilt of John Williams. Accordingly, we sent for as many papers as we could find and started our investigations, arriving at a conclusion which cannot now possibly be proved but which seems far more logical and credible than Williams’s guilt. His conviction was certainly expedient. There was a tacit agreement among the authorities that the Ratcliffe Highway affair should be allowed to fade from the public mind. Whether Williams was an accomplice, whether he died by his own hand or was murdered by those who wanted to ensure their own safety, it seems likely that the body which was buried with ignominy at the crossroads of St. George’s Turnpike was the body of an eighth victim.

  MONDAY, 2ND MARCH

  The Committee of Management of the Whitbread Literary Awards met at 12 o’clock in Chiswell Street. I was full of a sensible resolution to take the Tube from Notting Hill Gate to the Barbican rather than get embroiled in traffic, but then decided against it and took a cab. I was glad I did when the cabbie drove into the park between tossing daffodils and bright patches of purple crocuses. On the Mall fortress the matted creeper, like a brown tufted rug, was falling from the wall in great swathes.

  After the working lunch I travelled from the Barbican to Westminster and arrived in the House of Lords at about 3:30 for the debate on the report stage of the Teaching and Higher Education Bill. We won a victory on Amendment 50, moved by Emily Blatch, to restore grants, and again on the Amendment providing that English students at Scottish universities shall not be required to pay for the fourth year. At present only Scottish students and those from overseas are exempt. Tessa Blackstone argued that the first year at Scottish universities is the equivalent of the final year of upper school in the rest of the UK, and that it is reasonable, therefore, for students other than those educated in Scotland to enter at the second year and complete their degree in three years. But it is unjust and, indeed, ridiculous that a student at Edinburgh University who lives in Belfast will pay £4,000 for his course and one from Dublin will pay £3,000, one from Manchester will pay for the extra year but the one from Munich gets it free. Both Lords’ Amendments will, of course, be lost in the Commons, but at least the Lower House will have to debate it again.

  We were less successful in amending Clause 18 of the Bill designed to reduce the powers of the universities. I wanted very much to speak but lost my chance; by the time I had got the words ready, Tessa Blackstone was on her feet to answer the points made in the debate. I shall have to be much quicker if I am to have a chance of asking a supplementary question.

  WEDNESDAY, 4TH MARCH

  I had my hair done this morning at 9:15 and then went to Goldsmiths’ Hall for the W. H. Smith Literary Award ceremony, which was due to begin at half-past twelve. It is, of course, considerably smaller than the Whitbread or the Booker, but it is usually agreeable since I can be sure of seeing friends. The prize was won by Ted Hughes for his translation of Ovid, the third time this book has been a prize-winner. He wasn’t able to be present but had written a short speech which Joanna Mackle delivered. I had the publisher John Murray on my left, who proved to be an entertaining luncheon companion. We talked about the poetry of our youth and happily recited together snatches of verse from old favourites, congratulating ourselves that we were at school before the arrival of political correctness.

  Children should be exposed to a large variety of verse and should be encouraged to learn their favourites by heart, not the ones thought suitable for them by teachers or parents. I can remember at a seminar I attended on the teaching of English being shown an anthology issued to schools as suitable for teenagers. Not surprisingly, it included Wordsworth’s “Daffodils.” This is a poem essentially for adults. Children do not often lie upon their couch “in vacant or in pensive mood” or, if they do, are unlikely to be thinking about flowers and are liable to be rapidly booted off the couch by their parents. One of the consolations of old age is the intense pleasure I now get from nature. It seems that in youth I was too busy confronting life and experience to stand still and gaze. I don’t doubt that children should be encouraged in this pleasure, but I doubt whether they will learn it from Wordsworth’s “Daffodils.”

  John Murray said that he had compiled a small personal anthology of the poems he had learned by heart in youth and would send me a copy.

  WEDNESDAY, 11TH MARCH

  Yesterday two young women came to interview me for a Norwegian magazine, one to do the actual interview and the other to take photographs. It was difficult to fit them in and I was only able to spare one hour, but inevitably the photography went overtime, as it always does.

  Then in the afternoon to the House of Lords for a continuation of the Education Bill, which finished its report stage. I stayed until 11:15 p.m., but after that, knowing I had an early start tomorrow, went home, confident that there would in any case be no further divisions.

  This morning I caught a train at Liverpool Street station to Colchester, where I was met and taken to speak at a luncheon in aid of the Essex Autistic Society. The other speaker was Barbara Erskine, who writes Gothic novels set in exciting mood-inducing old houses occasionally peopled by a ghost. She lives, apparently, in just such a house herself and her talk after lunch was mostly about ghosts, including the one which haunts her own house.

  She had an interested audience. I have seen no convincing evidence that ghosts exist, but most of us would like to believe that one or two may occasionally put in an appearance. Barbara Erskine seemed quite happy with her obviously benign apparition. Ghosts have no place in detective fiction, which is essentially a rational form. I can still experience a frisson when I reread M. R. James, particularly his “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad.” The genre, if one can appropriately use that word, is less popular today; Kingsley Amis has written probably the best modern ghost novel with The Green Man. But for me the most terrifying ghost story is Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw.

  I first came to this story in adolescence and found it a more disturbing work even than Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or The Picture of Dorian Gray. I remember that, even then, I attempted to apply to it the rationality of detective fiction and conceived the idea that it was the children, Miles and Flora, who were the evil instigators. Perhaps, I reasoned, they had discovered the love affair between Quint and Miss Jessel and were blackmailing these vulnerable subordinates into obeying their every whim, eventually driving Miss Jessel away to suicide. The ghosts appear, not to reclaim the children, but to warn the new governess. I am loath to relinquish my interpretation, but the plot can’t really bear the weight of it; nor am I convinced that the governess was a deluded sexually repressed neurotic. If we accept that the narrator is honest, then we must also accept that the governess is sane since he states that he knew her years after the event, that she was his sister’s governess and that he considers her to be the most agreeable woman he had ever known in that position. I think we must also accept that the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, is a reliable witness and that she disliked Quint and saw him as evil. But were the ghosts genuine apparitions or the product of the governess’s overwrought imagination? I think we must accept that they were more than a morbid preoccupation with Quint sin
ce she sees him on the roof of the house before she knows from Mrs. Grose of his existence.

  For me the story is about the moral ambiguity of physical beauty and its seductive power to subvert moral judgement. It is also about responsibility, or the lack of it. The uncle is the most irresponsible, using his authority and charm to relieve himself of any involvement in the lives of his small charges. The governess, beguiled both by his attractiveness and his flattering confidence in her, accepts a charge which she must have known was beyond her capabilities, and doesn’t even notify him when Miles is expelled from school. She puts her standing with her employer before her duty to the children. Both the governess and Mrs. Grose are so enchanted by the Botticelli angelic beauty of Miles and Flora that they find it difficult to believe them capable of wrongdoing, let alone evil. Henry James was right to make the children exceptionally beautiful, striking at our preconceived notions of the physical manifestations of evil. The wicked witch is always dark and ugly.

  And how exactly were the children corrupted? Henry James could not, of course, be specific. The story is overlaid with such Victorian preoccupations as childhood sexuality, the ambivalent position of the governess in the home and in society, and their fascination with the supernatural. Coming to the story afresh, I am surprised at its enduring power to puzzle and discomfort. Beside it, James’s short ghost stories—“Owen Wingrave,” “Sir Edmund Orme” and “The Friends of the Friends”—are no more than tales to frighten children.

  My visit to Essex was an enjoyable occasion and for a very good cause which I was glad to be able to help. I feel desperately sorry for parents with autistic children. It is hard enough to cope with physical disability but to have a child who is mentally remote, inaccessible, and may indeed be belligerent and incapable of responding to love, must be very difficult to bear. The day was overcast but the countryside still looked beautiful seen through a soft mist, the wayside daffodils sharply yellow against the muted green of the grass.

  SATURDAY, 14TH MARCH

  Yesterday I went to Stockport to speak at a dinner organized by the Patrons’ Club of the Altrincham and Sale Conservative Association. I decided to save them money by travelling standard class, but began to regret it when the carriage became full and the seats close by were taken by four young men each carrying four linked cans of beer. They became increasingly noisy as the journey proceeded and more and more beer was fetched from the buffet. After that at least three other passengers began using their mobile phones, so that the hope of a peaceful journey, with time to look at the countryside (though not particularly interesting, I admit, on this journey) and to think, was lost. But then I overheard some of the young men’s conversation with a neighbouring passenger, and realized that they were four squaddies returning from a tour of duty in Northern Ireland. Immediately the noise they were making seemed both excusable and, for my part, supportable.

  It was a much more comfortable journey back today, leaving me plenty of energy to walk down to Kensington High Street to shop. I went into the Roman Catholic church in Kensington Church Street, feeling the need to light some candles for friends who are ill, and also to rest for a moment and sit quietly. Preparations were being made for a wedding. Already the best man and some of the ushers, wearing morning dress, had arrived, someone was making last-minute rearrangements to the flowers and there was that quiet determined air of purposeful activity which is surprisingly restful if one is able to sit apart from it. The building for me has no architectural merit, but it is a wonderful staging post on the walk down to the High Street since it is always open and one can sit in solitude without disturbance. I need moments of absolute quiet and stillness, and churches are among the few places where one can find them.

  SUNDAY, 15TH MARCH

  This morning I went to Mattins at the Chapel Royal, St. James’s Palace, with Miss Ellen Lowe. I met her two years ago in the local hairdresser’s, but I have seen her fairly frequently since as we usually stand at the same bus-stop on Sunday mornings to go to church. She asked me if I would accompany her one day to the Chapel Royal, and this was the day.

  We took a cab, since it conveniently arrived, which made us rather early, so we walked for fifteen minutes in St. James’s Park. I never get tired of the view from the bridge towards Whitehall, seen this morning through a white flutter of seagulls’ wings. A plaque outside the Chapel stated that it was here that Charles I had received Communion for the last time before his execution. Before the service I sat quietly, thinking—I hope prayerfully—of that tragic king who paid so dearly for his obstinacy and folly. He now has a day in the revised lectionary, which seems to me entirely right. The Chapel was very full, and I enjoyed the quiet dignity of Mattins, now so seldom heard. The anthem, Parry’s “My Soul, There Is a Country,” is one of my favourites. It was helpful to find myself provided with a large Prayer Book I could easily read from a distance, and a comfortable hassock for kneeling.

  Afterwards we had lunch together at Il Carretto, an Italian restaurant at Notting Hill Gate, where I enjoyed hearing about Miss Lowe’s experience as a nurse at the Middlesex Hospital. Hers has been a life of quiet, determined dedication to a job she obviously loved. The hours were normally long and frequently nurses would stay overtime, as they still do. “After all,” she said simply, “if the patient needs you, you can’t just walk away.”

  To David Hebblethwaite’s flat in Powis Square in the evening for supper. The other guest was Sir Derek Pattinson, Secretary-General of the General Synod of the Church of England from 1972 to 1990. It was a good evening but one I had to cut a little short as I needed to be home at half-past ten when son-in-law Peter arrived to spend the night.

  THURSDAY, 19TH MARCH

  This morning I returned from three happy, if busy, days in Cambridge. On Monday morning I gave the Keynote Speech at a conference on “Sexing the Liturgy” held at the university’s Faculty of Divinity in St. John Street. I thought the title a little odd; I associate sexing with chickens. Perhaps “Liturgy and Gender” would have been more appropriate. It was an interesting three days, and educative for me, but I would have benefited more had the acoustics in the large barrel-roofed hall been better. The sound system seemed to amplify but also to distort, although I accept that my hearing isn’t good. The noise level seemed loud but individual words were lost. This made it particularly difficult since some of the young female theologians spoke very quickly, rather as if they were reading a dissertation or thesis and had to get through it in the time. The proceedings will be printed and I shall then have an opportunity to read and, I hope, learn and digest.

  I don’t suppose anyone was surprised at the stance I took in my Keynote Speech. I reviewed what I saw as the desiderata of liturgy: that it should be intelligible, which didn’t necessarily mean that it should be modern and up-to-date; that it should be capable of being spoken aloud in church by priest and people; that it should reflect doctrine; and lastly, but not least important, that it should be written in memorable language. Words in their beauty, their simplicity, their numinous power should be capable of so entering our consciousness that we do not need to remember them, search for them or concentrate on them, but rest confidently on their familiarity to bring us into that hoped-for communion with God which is surely at the heart of prayer and worship.

  I went on, perhaps rather late in the talk, to speak about gender and worship. I pointed out that Christianity is both an historical and a patriarchal religion. It was a Jewish patriarch, St. Paul, who was chiefly responsible for extending the Judeo-Christian inheritance to non-Jews. Christ Himself taught us to call God “Abba, Father.” I see a difficulty, at least for myself, in accepting such changes as “Mother” or “Sister.” This is surely to substitute one stereotype for another; since God is spirit He can have no gender. Even as a young child I never pictured God as a benevolent Father Christmas sitting in a white nightdress on a heavenly throne.

  Between lectures I looked at some of the theological books on sale in the hall. Most
seemed to me totally incomprehensible. Obviously doctrinally and philosophically they would be well above my understanding, but it seemed that the sentences themselves were incomprehensible, a string of polysyllabic words strung together from which I could get no meaning. Theology like other professions has its own obscurantism. The problem is surely that theology should impinge on the lives of ordinary non-theologians if it is to have influence. Surely it can sometimes be written in language the intelligent lay man or woman can understand.

  One of the women priests to whom I spoke is a hospital chaplain. She said that on a recent visit to the wards she had been accosted by a woman who had said, with extreme anger, “Don’t talk to me about the Church of England! Why did it have to snatch away Princess Di just when she was enjoying her bit of happiness?” I don’t know what answer the priest gave; I could think of none appropriate.

  After lunch at Trinity I walked and talked in the Fellows’ garden with the Professor of Divinity, the happiest time of my visit. Inevitably I thought of George Eliot, pacing between the trees in the same garden with a contemporary writer, F. W. H. Myers, and pronouncing on the words God, Immortality, Duty. “How inconceivable was the first, how unbelievable the second, and yet how peremptory and absolute the third.”

  I spent the night in the guest room at Peterhouse. This is an eccentric room. It was given to the college by an ex-member, and I suspect that he had something to do with the furnishing. The stairway leading up to the room is a rather disagreeable and violent purplish-red, with an immense coat of arms facing the door. The guest room itself is large, the bed high and curtained with a gold canopy surmounted by two huge crossed keys. The furniture is gilded, and in the bathroom a vast bath has a wide rim as if designed for the bather’s friends to sit round comfortably and chat. Four litres of bottled water were provided, suggesting that the extraordinary decorations might induce excessive thirst. But it was a comfortable night.