Innocent Blood

by P. D. James

  Maurice looked relaxed, perfectly at home in this milieu, swivelling gently in the aggressively modern chair of chrome and black leather, one leg thrown lightly over the other. Philippa recognized the pattern of his socks, the discreet arrow pointing the ankle, the gleam of handmade leather shoes. He was particular about his clothes. The Bishop, stiffly upright in the twin chair, looked less comfortable. He was a large man. His pectoral cross, insignificant in thin silver, rested crookedly against the episcopal purple. She despised him for this timid affirmation of faith. A talisman, if one went in for these things, should be heavy, beautiful and worn with panache. He had obviously been trapped into fighting on his weakest ground and his heavy face wore the embarrassed, slightly ashamed and conciliatory half-smile of a man who knows that he is letting down the side, but hopes that no one but himself will have noticed it.

  Maurice was in excellent form. She anticipated each of the well-remembered mannerisms, the sudden twitch of the left shoulder, the lift of the head away from his opponent, the sudden clasp of his bony hands over the right knee and the hunching of the shoulders as if he were bending his mind to the nub of the argument. None of these antics had anything to do with nervousness. They were the extrovert pantomime of the interaction of mind and body, both too restless to be confined within this trendy contraption of steel and leather, the enclosing cardboard walls with their carefully designed title for the series, “Dissent.” His voice was reedier than normal, a pedant’s voice.

  “Well, let’s just recapitulate what you’re asking us to believe. That God, who you say is a spirit, which I take to mean is incorporate—doesn’t one of your creeds say without shape, form or passions?—has created man in His own image. That man has sinned. I won’t hold you to that fable of some celestial Kew Garden and forbidden Cox’s Orange Pippin—let’s use your own words, that he’s fallen short of the glory of God. That every child coming into the world is contaminated with this primeval sin through no fault of his own. That God, instead of demanding in expiation a bloody sacrifice from man, sent His only son into the world to be tortured and done to death in the most barbaric fashion in order to propitiate His Father’s desire for vengeance and to reconcile man to his creator. That this son was born of a virgin. Incidentally, you told us last week that sex was somehow sacred because ordained by God, and I confess to finding it curious that He despised the orthodox method of procreation which He Himself devised and presumably approves. We are asked to believe that this miraculously born, God-made man lived and died without sin to atone for man’s first disobedience. Now we may not have a great deal of historical evidence about the life of Jesus of Nazareth, but we do know quite a lot about Roman methods of capital punishment. Neither you nor I, I’m happy to say, have witnessed a crucifixion, but we can agree that as a method of execution it was agonizing, degrading, slow, bestial and bloody. If you or I actually saw a victim being hauled onto that cross and could get him down—provided, of course, that we didn’t risk anything by interfering—I don’t think we could prevent ourselves from trying to save him. But the God of Love was apparently content to let it happen, indeed, willed it to happen, and to His only son. You can’t ask us to believe in a God of Love who behaves less compassionately than would the least of his creatures. I no longer have a son, but that is hardly my idea of parental love.”

  Her mother got up and, without speaking, turned down the sound. She said: “What does he mean, he no longer has a son?”

  “He did once, but Orlando was killed in a road accident with his mother. That’s why Maurice and Hilda took me on.”

  It was the first time that her adoptive parents had been mentioned between them and she waited, curious to see if this was the moment when their silence would be broken, whether her mother would ask about those lost ten years, whether she had been happy at Caldecote Terrace, where she had gone to school, what kind of life she had led. But she only said: “Is that how he brought you up, as an atheist?”

  “Well, he told me when I was about nine that religion was nonsense and that only fools believed it and then made it clear that I must think its tenets out for myself and make up my own mind. I don’t think he has ever been a believer.”

  “Well, he believes now, or why does he hate God so much? He wouldn’t be so vehement if the Bishop were inviting him to believe in pixies or the theories of the flat-earthers. Poor Bishop! He could only win by saying things that he’d be too embarrassed to utter and which neither the BBC nor the viewers—especially the Christians—would in the least wish to hear.”

  What things? she wondered. She said: “Do you believe?”

  Her mother answered: “Oh, yes, I believe.” She glanced towards the screen where Maurice, still articulating, had been reduced to a silent and ridiculously posturing cypher. “The Bishop doesn’t know for certain, but loves what he thinks he believes. Your father knows and hates what he knows. I believe, but I can’t love anymore. He and I are the unlucky ones.”

  Philippa wanted to ask: “What do you believe? What difference does it make?” She felt the mixture of excitement, curiosity and apprehension of someone putting a first tentative foot on dangerous and uncertain ground. She said: “But you can’t believe in hell.”

  “You can once you’ve been in it.”

  “But I thought anything is forgivable. I mean, isn’t that the whole point of it? You can’t place yourselves beyond the mercy of God. I thought Christians only had to ask.”

  “You have to believe.”

  “Well, you do believe, you’ve just said so. That’s lucky for you. I don’t.”

  “There has to be contrition.”

  “What’s so difficult about that? Feeling sorry. I should have thought that was the easiest part.”

  “Not sorry because you did something and the results have been unpleasant for you. Not just wishing that you hadn’t done it. That’s easy. Contrition means saying ‘I did that thing. I was responsible.’ ”

  “Well, is that so difficult? It seems a fair exchange if you can get instant forgiveness and eternal life thrown in for good measure.’ ”

  “I can’t spend ten years explaining to myself that I wasn’t responsible, that I couldn’t have prevented myself doing what I did, and then when I’m free, as free as I’ll ever be, when society thinks I’ve been punished enough, when everyone has lost interest, then I can’t decide that it would be pleasant to have God’s forgiveness as well.”

  “I don’t see why not. Remember Heine’s last words: ‘Dieu me pardonnera, c’est son métier.’ ”

  Her mother didn’t reply. Her face had the closed withdrawn look of someone who finds the conversation painful or distasteful. Philippa went on.

  “Why don’t you like talking about religion?”

  “You’ve managed very well without it so far.”

  She glanced towards the television set, then suddenly rose and switched it off. The Bishop’s benign, embarrassed face dissolved into a diminishing square of light. Then another and more personal thought fell into Philippa’s mind. She asked: “Was I christened?”

  “Yes.”

  “You never told me.”

  “You never asked before.”

  “What did you call me?”

  “Rose, after your father’s mother. Your father called you Rosie. But you know that your name is Rose. It’s on your birth certificate. Before your adoption you were Rose Ducton.”

  “I’ll make the coffee.”

  Her mother seemed about to speak, then changed her mind. She went out of the kitchen and into her own room. Philippa took down the two mugs from the kitchen shelf. Her hands were shaking. She put them on the table and tried to fill the kettle. Of course she had known that her name was Rose, had known it as soon as she had opened that innocuous-looking official envelope and had taken out her birth certificate. But then it had been just another label. She had hardly taken it in, except to notice that Maurice, in relegating it to second place, had nevertheless allowed her to retain something from her
past. The edge of the kettle rattled against the tap. Carefully she placed it on the draining board and stood bent, clasping the cold edge of the sink as if fighting nausea. Rose Ducton. Rosie Ducton. Philippa Rose Palfrey. A row of books with Rose Ducton on the spine. It was a trisyllabic cypher, having nothing to do with her. I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. A trickle of water running over her forehead. It could hardly have been of any real importance since Maurice could wipe it away with a stroke of his pen. Where, she wondered, had she been christened; in that dull suburban church in Seven Kings under the stunted travesty of a spire? Rose. It didn’t even suit her. It was a name in a catalogue: Peace, Scarlet Wonder, Albertine. She had thought that she had got used to the knowledge that nothing about her was real, not even her name. Why, then, was she so shaken now?

  She had control of the trembling now and, careful as a child entrusted with an unfamiliar task, she filled the kettle. Rose. It was strange that her mother hadn’t once called her by that name, hadn’t once inadvertently let it slip, the name which, after all, she had chosen, or at least had accepted for her baby, the name which she had used for eight years, the name which she must have had in mind during the last ten years of solitude and survival. If she had believed in God, that strange eccentricity which she Philippa—she Rose—would have to explore, she must have used that word in her prayers, if she did pray. God bless Rosie. It must have taken a disciplined effort from their first meeting always to remember to call her Philippa. Every time she spoke that new Maurice-bestowed name she was playing a part, being less than honest. No, that wasn’t fair. And it was stupid to mind so much. What did it matter? But she wished that her mother had, just for once, forgotten to be careful and had called her by her right name.

  13

  The loneliness descended on him soon after breakfast, as dragging and exhausting as a physical weight. It was the more disturbing because it was so unexpected. Loneliness was a state he had got used to since Mavis’s death and he hadn’t expected to feel it again as a positive emotion nor to be visited by its sad aftermath of restlessness and boredom. By eleven o’clock Mrs. Palfrey hadn’t appeared and he thought it now unlikely that she would. It had been the same last Sunday. Perhaps this was the day when they went out together, leaving by car from the carriage road at the back of the terrace which his investigations had shown led to a row of garages. Without her to follow there was little chance of shaking off this weight of ennui. His life had become so linked with hers, his routine tied to her daily perambulations that, when she didn’t appear, he felt deprived as if of her actual company.

  The hotel was full; a new package tour of Spaniards had arrived on Saturday evening and service for the rest of the guests was perfunctory. The dining room was a jabber of excited voices, the hall obstructed with their luggage. Mario gabbled, gesticulated, rushed frantically from reception desk to dining room. Glad to get away from the crush, Scase had settled himself early at his bedroom window with his binoculars trained on number 68, but with no real hope of seeing her. It was a morning of alternate rain and sunshine. Fierce and sudden squalls slashed at the window, then as suddenly ceased; the nudging clouds parted and the pavement steamed as the sun reappeared, hot and bright. By half past eleven restlessness got the better of him and he went downstairs in search of coffee. Violet was at the switchboard as usual, the dog at her feet. Needing to hear a human voice, he said something to her about the pleasure of seeing the sun, then stopped appalled at his tactlessness. He should have said feeling the sun. She smiled, her sightless eyes seeking the echo of his voice. Then to his surprise he heard himself say: “I thought of going to Regent’s Park this afternoon to look at the roses. You go off duty at midday on Sunday, don’t you? Would you and Coffee care to come?”

  “That would be nice. Thank you. We’d both like it.”

  Her hand found the dog’s head and pressed it. The animal stirred and pricked its ears, bright eyes fixed on her face.

  “And would you like to have some dinner first? Lunch I mean?”

  She flushed and nodded. She seemed pleased. He saw that, under her fawn woollen cardigan, she was wearing what looked like a new summer dress in blue cotton. After he had spoken she stroked the skirt gently with both hands and smiled as if glad that she had taken the trouble to put it on. He told himself that having committed one folly, he had now embarked on a second. But it was too late now to draw back and he didn’t really want to. Then he wondered where he would take her for luncheon. There was a small sandwich bar off Victoria Street which he used occasionally during the week but he wasn’t sure whether it would be open on a Sunday. It was very clean but not at all smart. Then he remembered that the shabbiness of its cramped partitions wouldn’t matter since she couldn’t see them, and was ashamed that the thought had entered his mind. It was wrong to cheat her just because she was blind. He must try to make the occasion special for her. After all, she would be doing more for him than she knew. And she would be the first woman other than Mavis whom he had taken out since the day of his marriage. Admittedly she was blind. But then, if she hadn’t been blind, she wouldn’t have accepted his invitation. He remembered that there was an Italian restaurant fairly close to the station. Perhaps that would be open on Sunday. At least Coffee wouldn’t be any problem. Children, he had noticed, were seldom welcomed, but nobody minded a dog.

  The day brightened for him. It was time he took a day off, time too that he walked and talked with another human being. He made arrangements with her to call for her at the desk just before twelve and went back to his room. As he unlocked his room door it struck him that there would be little point this morning in taking with him his rucksack with the accoutrements of murder and he wondered whether it would really be safe to leave it in his locked room. But the rucksack had become almost part of him. He felt that he would walk strangely without its familiar weight on his right shoulder. And why shouldn’t he take it? It occurred to him that he had by impulse chosen the best possible person as companion on his walk. She wouldn’t wonder what he was carrying in the rucksack. She wouldn’t ask. And after the killing, if things did go wrong and the police traced him to the Casablanca, she was the one person they wouldn’t ask to identify him.

  14

  After breakfast, on 27th August, their second Sunday together, her mother said abruptly: “Do you mind if we go to church?”

  Philippa, surprised, managed to respond as if this were the most usual of requests. She had gone through a phase of sermon tasting and felt herself as well qualified to recommend a church for its service and music as she was to discuss its architecture. She inquired what her mother had in mind: the ordered ceremonial and beautifully balanced choir of Marylebone parish church? High Anglican Mass at All Saints’, Margaret Street, in a dazzle of mosaics, gilded saints and stained glass? The Baroque splendours of St. Paul’s? Her mother said that she would like somewhere quiet and close, so they went to the eleven o’clock Sung Eucharist in the cool, uncluttered interior of Sir Ninian Comper’s St. Cyprian’s where an all-male choir sang the liturgy in plainsong from the balcony, a gentle-voiced priest preached an uncompromisingly Catholic sermon and the incense rose pungent and sweet, clouding the high altar. Philippa sat throughout the prayers, but with her head slightly bowed since she had, after all, chosen to be there and politeness dictated at least a token compliance. They hadn’t compelled her in; why make an offensive parade of unbelief when neither belief nor disbelief mattered. And it was, after all, no hardship to listen to Cranmer’s prose, or as much of it as the revisers had left unmutilated. From these sonorous, antiphonal cadences Jane Austen, on her deathbed, receiving the sacrament from her brother’s hands, had taken comfort. That fact alone was enough to silence irreverence. Watching her mother’s bent head and clasped hands, she wondered what communication she was making to her god. Once, she thought, “Perhaps she’s praying for me” and the idea was obscurely gratifying. But although she herself couldn’t pray, she liked to sin
g the hymns. The sound of her soaring voice always surprised her. It was a rich contralto, deeper than her speaking voice, unrecognizable as her own, the expression, it seemed, of a part of her personality unrestrained and unpredictable, only released by poor metric verse and cheerfully nostalgic school-assembly tunes.

  Her mother didn’t move forward to the altar when the time came for the faithful to eat and drink their god, and she slipped out, Philippa following, during the last hymn. That way, as Philippa realized, there could be no risk that the priest or members of the congregation would introduce themselves, or try to make the strangers feel welcome. Whatever this strange, unsacramental, religious life meant to her mother, it could never include coffee in the parish room, or cosy valedictory gossip in the porch; and for that, at least, she could be grateful. Closing the porch door behind them softly as the last hymn drew to its close, they decided not to bother with cooking lunch, but to stay out as long as possible while the weather was fine. They would find themselves somewhere cheap to eat in Baker Street, then spend the afternoon in Regent’s Park.

  Although they lived so close, it was the first time that they had visited the park. The early morning rain had stopped and high sunlit clouds drifted imperceptibly across a sky of clear blue which deepened to mauve over a cluster of distant trees across the lake. The geraniums and ivy planted each side of the metal bridge trailed down to the water and the rowers laughed, rocking their skiffs as the fronds brushed their faces. The park was coming to life after the rain. Deck chairs, stacked under the trees for shelter, were brought out again. Their legs sank into the moist grass as little family groups settled into them to contemplate rose beds, distant vistas and the comforting proximity of toilets and the coffee house. Staid Sunday promenaders paced with their leashed dogs between the lavender and the delphiniums, and the queue at the coffee house lengthened. In Queen Mary’s rose garden the roses, plumped by the rain, held the last drops between delicate streaked petals, pink Harrinny, bright yellow Summer Sunshine, Ena Harkness and Peace.