by P. D. James
They walked in silence. Philippa tried to analyse her emotions. What was she feeling? Embarrassment? Not that. Comradeship? That was too sturdily complaisant a word for the tenuous link between them. Fulfilment? Peace? No, not peace. Here was a balance between excitement and apprehension, a euphoria which had nothing to do with the mind’s quietude. Contentment, perhaps. Now at least I know who I am. I know the worst, I shall know the best. Above all, a sense that it was right to be here, that this deliberate pacing, carefully distanced so that the first touch should not be casual, was a ritual of immense significance, an end and a beginning.
She thought for the first time since she had heard it: “I like her voice.” It was low, unpractised, tentative, as if English were a language her mother had learned. Words were symbols formed in the mind and seldom spoke. It was strange, thought Philippa, that she would have found it more difficult to live with a whining or grating voice than with the knowledge that this woman had killed a child.
Her mother asked: “What are you going to do? I mean, what job?” She paused. “I’m sorry. That’s the kind of question a ten-year-old gets asked and hates answering.”
“I’ve known since I was ten. I’m going to be a writer.”
“Are you gathering material? Is that why you’re offering to help me? I don’t mind. At least I shall have given you something. There’s nothing else I’ve given you.”
It was matter of fact, with no hint of self-pity or of remorse.
“Except my life. Except my life. Except my life.”
“Hamlet. It seems strange now, but I hardly knew Shakespeare before I went to prison. I promised myself that I’d read every play and in chronological order. There are twenty-one. I rationed myself to one every six months. That way I could be sure that they would last out the sentence. You can annihilate thought with words.”
The paradox of poetry.
“Yes,” she said. “I know.”
The gravel path grated Philippa’s feet. She said: “Can’t we walk into the garden?”
“We have to keep to this path. Rules. They haven’t the staff to hunt people down all over the grounds.”
“But the gate wasn’t locked. You could all walk out.”
“Only into another kind of prison.”
Two women, obviously staff, were hurrying across the grass, running gawkily, lurching together. They weren’t in uniform, but it was impossible to mistake them for inmates. One had thrown an arm round her companion’s shoulder. Their laughter was happy, conspiratorial. Remembering that they mustn’t be called warders, Philippa asked: “The prison officers, how have they treated you?”
“Some like animals, some like recalcitrant children, some like mental patients. I like best those who treat us as prisoners.”
“And those two, running across the grass, who are they?”
“Two friends. They always ask to get posted together. They live together.”
“You mean they’re lovers, lesbians? Is there a lot of that in prison?” She remembered Maurice’s snide innuendo.
Her mother smiled.
“You make it sound like an infectious disease. Of course it happens. It happens often. People need to be loved. They need to feel that they matter to someone. If you’re wondering about me, the answer is no. I wouldn’t have had the chance, anyway. In prison or out, people need someone they can despise more than they do themselves. A child killer is at the bottom of the heap, even here. Learn to be alone. Don’t draw attention to yourself. That way my sort survive. Your father didn’t.”
“What was he like, Father?”
“He was a schoolmaster. He hadn’t a university degree. His father, your grandfather, was a clerk with an insurance company. I don’t suppose any member of the family has ever been to a university. Your father went to a teacher-training college. That was regarded as a great achievement. He taught the senior boys at an inner London comprehensive school until he couldn’t stand it anymore. Then he took a job as a clerk with the Gas Board.”
“But what was he like? What were his interests?”
Her mother’s voice was a harsh grate: “His interest was little girls.”
Perhaps the bleak reply was meant to shock, to jolt her into a fresh awareness of why they were here, pacing the gravel together. Philippa waited until she could be sure that her voice was calm. She said: “That isn’t an interest. That’s an obsession.”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I’m not even sure that it’s true. It’s just that I don’t seem able to give you what you want.”
“I don’t want anything. I’m not here because of wanting.”
But it seemed to Philippa that her question had been only the first catalogue of wants. I want to know who I am, I want to be approved of, I want to be successful, I want to be loved. The question, “Then why are you here?” hung between them, unasked, unanswerable.
They walked on together in silence. Her mother seemed to be thinking, then she said: “He liked second-hand books, exploring old churches, roaming city streets, taking a train to Southend for the day and walking to the end of the pier. He liked reading history and biography, never fiction. He lived in his own imagination, not other men’s. He disliked his job but hadn’t the courage to change it again. He hadn’t the courage to change anything. He was one of the meek who are supposed to inherit the earth. He liked you.”
“How did he manage to entice her into the house?”
She disciplined her voice, politely interested, as if the inquiry were about some social trivia. Did he take sugar in his tea? Did he enjoy sports? How did he rape a child?
“He had his right hand bandaged. It was quite genuine. He’d grazed it when he fell over a garden rake and it had become septic. He had just come home from work when he saw her, walking home after her Girl Guide meeting. He told her that he wanted a cup of tea but couldn’t manage to fill the kettle.”
Ah, but that had been clever. He had seen a child coming down that suburban street, walking in the dangerous innocence of childhood. A Girl Guide in uniform. Her good deed for the day. He had used the one ploy that might succeed even with a suspicious or timid child. She hadn’t sensed danger where there was a need she could meet, something within her power. She could picture the child carefully filling the kettle at the cold tap, lighting the gas for him, offering to stay and make the tea, setting out his cup and saucer with anxious care. He had made use of what was good and kind in her to destroy her. If evil existed, if those four letters placed in that order had any reality, then surely here was evil.
She was aware of her mother’s voice.
“He didn’t mean to harm her.”
“Didn’t he? Then what did he mean?”
“To talk, perhaps. To kiss her. To fondle her. I don’t know. Whatever he had in mind, it wasn’t rape. He was gentle, timid, weak. I suppose that’s why he was attracted to children. I thought I could help him because I was strong. But he didn’t want strength. He couldn’t cope with it. What he wanted was childishness, vulnerability. He didn’t hurt her, you know, not physically. It was a technical rape, but he wasn’t violent. I suppose if I hadn’t killed her she and her parents would have claimed later that he’d ruined her life, that she could never make a happy marriage. Perhaps they would have been right. The psychologists say that children never get over an early sexual assault. I didn’t leave her any life to be spoiled. I’m not excusing him, only you mustn’t picture it as worse than it was.”
How could it have been worse than it was, Philippa wondered. A child had been raped and murdered. The physical details she could imagine, had imagined. But the horror, the loneliness, the last terrifying moment; it was no more possible to enter into these by an effort of will than it was physically to feel another’s pain. Pain and fear. To experience either was to be aware forever of the loneliness of the self.
Maurice, after all, had warned her, in one of their short bouts of disconnected talk during those four days when she had been waiting for her mother�
�s reply: “None of us can bear too much reality. No one. We all create for ourselves a world in which it’s tolerable for us to live. You’ve probably created yours with more imagination than most. Having gone to that trouble, why demolish it?”
And she in her arrogant confidence had replied: “Perhaps I shall find out that it would have been better for me if I’d been contented with it. But it’s too late now. That world has gone for good. I have to find another. At least this one will be founded on reality.”
“Will it? How do you know that it won’t turn out to be just as illusory and far less comfortable?”
“But it must be better to know the facts. You’re a scientist—a pseudo-scientist anyway. I thought you held truth to be sacred.”
And he had replied: “ ‘What is truth?’ said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Facts are sacred, if you can discover them, and as long as you don’t confuse them with values.”
They had circled the lawn once and were back at the Grange. Rejecting it, they turned slowly and began retracing their steps. She said: “Have I any relations on my father’s side of the family?”
“Your father was an only child. He had a cousin, but she and her husband immigrated to Canada about the time of the trial. They didn’t want anyone to know about the connection. I suppose they’re still alive. They hadn’t any children and they were both middle-aged then. About forty, I think.”
“And your side?”
“I did have a brother, Stephen, eight years younger than I, but he was killed in Ireland the first year of the Troubles, before he was twenty. He was in the army.”
“So my only uncle is dead, and there’s no one else?”
“No,” she said gravely, unsmiling. “Only me. I’m your only blood relation.”
They continued their slow pacing. The sun was hot on Philippa’s shoulders. Her mother said: “They provide tea for visitors, if you’d like a cup.”
“I would, but not here. I’ll get it in York. How much longer have we?”
“Before the bus? Another thirty minutes.”
“What do I have to do? I mean, can you just come to me when you leave, or are there formalities?”
She was careful to keep her eyes on the path, unwilling to face what she might see in her mother’s eyes. It was the moment of final offer and acceptance. When her mother spoke her voice was controlled.
“The present plan is for me to go to a probation hostel for women in Kensington. I hated the thought of another hostel, but there wasn’t any choice, at least for the first month. But I don’t think there’ll be any difficulty about coming to you instead. They’ll send someone to check that you’ve actually got a flat and the arrangements have to be approved by the Home Office. The first stage is for you to write formally to the Chief Welfare Officer here, but hadn’t you better take a week or two to think about it?”
“I have thought about it.”
“What would you normally be doing in these next two months?”
“Probably the same, taking a flat in London. I’ve left school. I got my Cambridge scholarship last year when I was seventeen. This year I’ve been taking philosophy and adding to my A-levels just to fill in time. I’m hardly the VSO type—Voluntary Service Overseas. I’m not altering my plans for you, if that’s what’s worrying you.”
Her mother accepted the lie. She said: “I shall be an embarrassing flatmate. How will you explain me to your friends?”
“We shan’t be seeing my friends. If we do run into them, I shall explain that you’re my mother. What else do they need to know?”
Her mother said formally: “Then, thank you Philippa. Just for the first two months I’d be very glad to join you.”
After that they spoke no more of the future, but walked together, each with her thoughts, until it was time for Philippa to join the desultory stream of visitors making their way up the wide sun-scorched path towards the gates and the waiting bus.
11
Neither Maurice nor Hilda asked any questions when she got home shortly after half past eight. Not to ask questions was part of Maurice’s policy of non-interference; usually he managed to convey the impression of not being particularly interested in knowing. Hilda, who looked flushed and rather sulky, kept a resolute and sullen silence, inquiring only if Philippa had had a good journey. She glanced fearfully at Maurice as she asked this seemingly innocuous question, and appeared not to hear Philippa’s answer. The tone was forced; she might have been speaking to a newly arrived and not particularly welcome guest. During a late dinner they sat like strangers; but strangers, after all, were what they were. It was a night when company would have been welcomed, but they drank their vichyssoise and ate their chicken marengo almost in silence. As she finally pushed her chair from the table, Philippa said: “My mother seems quite glad to share a flat for the next month or so. I’ll start looking tomorrow.”
The words came out unnaturally loudly, belligerent as a challenge. She was angry with herself that they should sound so forced, that despite her silent rehearsal throughout dinner speaking them aloud had been so difficult. She had never been frightened of Maurice. Why should she start being frightened of him now? She was eighteen, officially an adult, responsible to no one but herself. She was probably as free now as she was ever likely to be. She had no need to justify her actions.
Maurice said: “You won’t find it easy to rent a flat at a price you can afford, not in central London anyway. If you need to borrow money, let me know. Don’t go to the bank. There’s no point in paying interest at the present rate.”
“I can manage on my own. I’ve got the money I saved for my European trip.”
“In that case, good luck. You’d better keep your key in case you need to come back. And if you are intending to move out permanently, it would be helpful if we could have as much notice as possible. I could probably find a use for your room.”
He made it sound, thought Philippa, as if he were dismissing an unwelcome paying guest. But that was how he had intended it to sound.
12
On Monday 17th July, shortly after nine o’clock in the morning, Scase rang a number in the city which he had rung every three months for the last six years. But this time the information he requested wasn’t given to him. Nor, as usually happened, was it promised for a few days’ time. Instead Eli Watkin asked him to call in at the office as soon as was convenient to him. Within half an hour he was on his way to Hallelujah Passage off Ludgate Hill to see a man whom he had last seen six years ago. Then Mavis had been with him; this time he made his way past St. Paul’s churchyard and into the dark, narrow little alley on his own.
They had waited for three years after the end of the trial before getting in touch with Eli Watkin Investigations Limited. They found the firm’s name in the yellow pages of the London telephone directory among a list of some dozen private detective agencies, sandwiched between Designers and Diamond Merchants. They spent a day in London visiting each office in turn, trying to assess from the address and outward appearance whether it was efficient and reputable. Mavis had wanted to exclude any agency which accepted divorce cases, but Scase had persuaded her that this was an unnecessary limitation of choice. The task wasn’t easy. Mutually supportive and determined as they were, they nevertheless felt themselves on alien and frightening territory. They were intimidated by the smart, impersonal-looking offices of the largest concerns, and repelled by the seediness of some of the smallest. In the end they ventured into Eli Watkin Investigations because they liked the name of Hallelujah Passage, the office exuded a Dickensian atmosphere of cheerful amateurism, and Mavis was reassured and cheered by the window box outside the ground-floor window in which the spears of early daffodils were already beginning to show. They were greeted by an elderly typist, then shown upstairs to Mr. Eli Watkin himself.
On their entry into his small, claustrophobic office, they had found him squatting before a hissing gas fire, spooning cat food into three saucers while five squalling cats of var
ied sizes and hues butted against his thin ankles. A matriarchal tabby sat, paws folded, on top of a bookcase, regarding the mêlée with slit-eyed disdain. When the last of the food had been distributed, she jumped lightly down with a switch of her tail and arranged herself at the third bowl. Only then did Eli Watkin stand up to greet them. They had seen a squat, crumpled-faced man with a comb of white hair and heavy-lidded eyes. He had a disconcerting habit of appearing to keep them half closed when speaking, then of suddenly raising them, as if by a conscious effort, to display small but intensely blue eyes. He welcomed them with none of the smarmy condescension which Scase had feared. Nor did he seem at all surprised by their commission. Scase had practised what he intended to say.
