The Skull Beneath the Skin

by P. D. James

  He looked down so that he need not meet her eyes, that compelling stare which was much more convincing than any words she could speak. There was a swathe of seaweed wound round his calf, brown as a gash on which the blood had dried. He bent and plucked at it. It tightened, a slimy ligature. He knew that she was watching him. Then she said: “Suppose she died. What would you do then?”

  “Why should she die? She isn’t sick, is she? She never said anything to me about being sick. What’s wrong with her?”

  “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with her.”

  “Then why are you talking about dying?”

  “She thinks she’s going to die. Sometimes when people think that strongly enough they do die.”

  His heart surged with relief. But that was ridiculous! She was trying to frighten him. Everything was plain to him now. She had always been jealous of him just as she had been jealous of his father. He picked up his jacket and tried to sound dignified through the chattering of his teeth.

  “If she does die I’m sure you’ll be remembered. I shouldn’t worry if I were you. And now perhaps you’ll let me get dressed. I’m cold and it’s time for luncheon.”

  As soon as the words were out he felt ashamed. She turned away without another word. And then she looked back and their eyes met for the last time. He knew what she must see in his, the shame, the fear. He was prepared to encounter anger and resentment. But what he hadn’t expected to see was pity.

  5

  A long arcade, brick-built but with columns and arches of patterned stonework, led from the west side of the castle, past a rose garden and formal pool, to the theatre. Making his solitary way, rather late, to watch part of the final run-through, Ivo could picture the slow after-dinner procession of Victorian guests passing under the arches, pale arms and necks above the richness of satin and velvet, jewels sparkling on bosoms and in the intricately piled hair, the white shirt fronts of the men gleaming in the moonlight.

  The theatre itself surprised him, less by the perfection of its proportions, which he had expected, than by its contrast to the rest of the castle. He wondered whether it was the work of a different architect; he would have to ask Ambrose. But if Godwin had been responsible, it was apparent that his client’s insistence on opulence and ostentation had prevailed over any inclination he himself might have had for lightness or restraint. Even now, with only half the house lights lit, the theatre glowed with richness. The deep red velvet of the curtains and seats had faded but was still remarkably well preserved. The candle lighting had been replaced by electricity—the conversion must have given Ambrose a pang—but the delicate convolvulus light shades were still in use and the original crystal chandelier still glittered from the domed ceiling. Everywhere there was ornament, sumptuous, florid, occasionally charming, but always splendid in its craftsmanship. Across the front of the boxes gilded, plump-buttocked cherubs held swags of flowers or lifted trumpets to pouting mouths, while the richly carved royal box with its Prince of Wales feathers and twin seats, regal as thrones, must have satisfied even the most ardent monarchist’s view of what was owing to the heir apparent.

  Ivo had settled himself at the end of the fourth row of the stalls with no intention of staying for more than an hour. He was anxious to disabuse the cast of any idea they might have that he was on the island primarily to review their performance and this casual appearance to watch the final rehearsal would remind them that he was less interested in what they managed to make of Webster’s tragedy than in the glories, scandals and legends of the theatre itself. He was glad that the seats, designed for broad Victorian rumps, were so luxuriously comfortable. The afternoon was always the worst time for him when his luncheon, however frugal, lay heavily on his distorted stomach and the monstrous spleen seemed to grow and harden under his supporting hands. He twisted himself more comfortably into the velvet plush, aware of Cordelia sitting silent and upright further along the row, and tried to fix his attention on the stage.

  The cast had obviously been instructed by De Ville, a director more at home with the moderns, to concentrate on the sense and let the verse look after itself, a ploy which would have been disastrous with Shakespeare but which succeeded well enough with Webster’s rougher metre. And at least it made for pace. Ivo had always believed that there was only one way to direct Webster, as a highly stylized drama of manners, the characters, mere ritual personifications of lust, decadence and sexual rapacity, moving in a stately pavane towards the inevitable orgiastic triumph of madness and death. But De Ville, half-sunk in lugubrious disgust at finding himself actually directing amateurs, was obviously aiming at some semblance of realism. It would be interesting to see how he dealt with the more gratuitous horrors. He would be lucky to get away with the proffered severed hand and the gaggle of madmen without a suppressed giggle or two. Revenge tragedy was hardly a genre for the inexperienced; but then, what classic was? Certainly this charnelhouse poet, heaping horror on horror until the appetite sickened, and then suddenly piercing the heart with lines of redeeming beauty, demanded more than the present enthusiastic bunch of playactors. Still, De Ville only had to get one performance out of them. It wasn’t what you could raise yourself to on one night but what you could continue to do, night after night and two matinées a week, for three months or more, that marked the professional from the amateur. He had known that the play was to be done in Victorian costume. The idea had seemed to him an eccentric, slightly ludicrous conceit. But he could see that it had its uses. The stage and the small auditorium fused into one claustrophobic cockpit of evil, the high-necked dresses and the bustles hinted at a sexuality which was the more lascivious because covert, overlaid with Victorian respectability. And there was some wit in the decision to dress Bosola as a kilted Highlander although it was hard to imagine Victoria’s good old Brown in this complex creature of nihilism and thwarted nobility.

  The four principals had been rehearsing now for nearly fifty-five minutes. De Ville had been leaving them pretty much to themselves, his heavy, frog-like face expressing nothing but a settled gloom. Probably he had resented being dragged away from his post-prandial nap and subjected to yet another sea trip merely to indulge Clarissa’s wish for a final run-through in costume of her more important scenes. Ivo glanced at his watch. Boredom was taking hold of him as he knew it would, but the effort of moving seemed too great. He glanced along the row and watched Cordelia’s face, upturned to the stage, the firm yet delicate chin, the sweet curve of the throat. He thought: two years ago I should have been mildly agonizing over her, scheming how I might get into her bed before the weekend was out, fretting at the possibility of failure. He recalled his past exploits, less with disgust than with a detached wonder that so much time and thought and energy should have been expended on such petty expedients against boredom. The trouble had been so disproportionate to the satisfaction, the desire less urgent than the need to prove himself still desirable. What, after all, would getting into bed with her have meant but a small fillip to the ego, ranking only a little higher than the quality of the food and wine and the wit of the after-dinner conversation as an index of the success of the weekend. Always he had aimed to conduct his affairs on the level of a civilized, uncommitted exchange of pleasure. And always they had ended in rows, recriminations, in messiness and disgust. It had been no different with Clarissa except the rows had been more bitter, the disgust more lasting. But then, with Clarissa he had made the mistake of letting himself become involved. With Clarissa, at least for those first six months when he had been cuckolding Simon’s father, he had known again the agonies, the ecstasies, the uncertainties of love.

  He made himself look again at the stage. They were playing the second scene of Act Three. Clarissa, dressed in a voluminous, lace-trimmed dressing gown was seated at her looking glass with Cariola in attendance, hairbrush in hand. The dressing table, like all the props, was authentic, borrowed, he supposed, from the castle. There was more than one advantage in staging the play in the eighteen-nineties. The
scene was being played with the accompaniment of a music box which had been placed on the dressing table and which tinkled out a medley of Scottish airs. That too was probably another of Ambrose’s pieces of Victoriana, but he suspected that the idea was Clarissa’s. The scene began well enough. He had forgotten how Clarissa could take on an almost luminous beauty, the power of that high, slightly cracked voice, the grace with which she used her arms and body. She wasn’t a Suzman or a Mirren, but she did manage to convey something of the high erotic excitement, the vulnerability and the rashness of a woman deeply in love. That wasn’t surprising; it was a part she had played often enough in real life. But to produce such conviction with a leading man who obviously saw Antonio as an English country gentleman sinning above his station was something of an achievement. But Cariola was a disaster, nervous and skittish, tripping across the stage in her goffered cap like a soubrette in a French farce. When she had stumbled for the third time over her lines De Ville called out impatiently: “You’ve only to remember three lines, God help you. And cut out the coyness. You’re not playing No, No, Nanette. All right. Take it from the beginning of the scene.”

  Clarissa protested: “But it needs pace, lightness. I lose the impetus if I have to keep going back.”

  He reiterated: “Take it from the beginning.”

  She hesitated, shrugged, then sat silent. The cast glanced at each other furtively, shuffled, waited. Ivo’s interest suddenly rekindled. He thought: “She’s losing her temper. With her, that’s halfway to losing her nerve.”

  Suddenly she took the music box and slammed down the lid. The crack was as sharp as a gunshot. The tinkling little tune stopped. It was followed by absolute silence as the cast seemed to hold their breath. Then Clarissa came forward to the footlights: “That bloody box is getting on my nerves. If we have to have background music in this scene, then surely Ambrose can find something more suitable than those damn Scottish tunes. They’re driving me mad, so God knows what they’ll do to the audience.”

  Ambrose called quietly from the back of the auditorium. Ivo was surprised to hear him and wondered how long he had been silently sitting there.

  “It was your idea, as I remember.”

  “I wanted a music box but not a bloody Scottish medley. And do we have to have an audience? Cordelia, can’t you find something useful to do? God knows, we’re paying you enough. Tolly could do with some help ironing the costumes, unless you propose to sit on your ass all afternoon.”

  The girl got to her feet. Even in the half-light, Ivo could detect the flush rising on her throat, could see her mouth half open in protest, then close resolutely. Despite those candid almost judgmental eyes, the disconcerting honesty, the impression of controlled competence, she was at heart a sensitive child. Anger rose in him, satisfyingly strong and uncomplicated. He rejoiced that he could feel it. With difficulty, he pulled himself erect. He was aware that all eyes had turned towards him. He said calmly: “Miss Gray and I will take a walk. The performance hasn’t been exactly riveting so far and the air outside will be fresher.”

  When they were outside, their going silently watched by the cast, she said: “Thank you, Mr. Knightley.”

  He smiled. Suddenly he felt well, extraordinarily well, his whole body mysteriously lighter.

  “I’m afraid I’d make a poor dancer in my present state, and if I had to cast you as any character in Emma it certainly wouldn’t be poor Harriet. You must excuse Clarissa. When she’s nervous, she’s apt to become rude.”

  “That may be her misfortune but I don’t find it particularly excusable.”

  He added: “And public rudeness provokes in me the kind of childish retort which is only satisfying for the second after it’s spoken. She’ll apologize very prettily when she next sees you alone.”

  “I’m sure she will.”

  Suddenly she turned to him and smiled: “Actually I should like a walk if you won’t find it too exhausting.”

  She was, he thought, the only person on the island who could say that to him without making him feel either irritated or embarrassed. He said: “What about the beach?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “It’ll be slow going, I’m afraid.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  How very sweet she was, with that gentle, self-contained dignity. He smiled and held out his hand to her.

  “ ‘Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia, the Gods themselves throw incense.’ Well, shall we go?”

  6

  They trudged slowly side by side along the very edge of the tide where the firmer sand made the going easiest. The beach was narrow, cut by rotting breakwaters and bounded by a low stone wall beyond which rose the tree-covered, friable cliffs. Much of the bank must once have been planted. Between the beeches and the oaks were clumps of laurel, old rosebushes twined among the thicker foliage of rhododendrons, woody geraniums distorted by the wind, hydrangeas in their autumn shades of bronze, lime-yellow and purple, so much more subtle and interesting, thought Cordelia, than the gaudy heads of high summer. She felt at peace with her companion and wished for a moment that she could confide in him, that her job needn’t impose such a weight of deception. For ten minutes they walked in undemanding silence. Then he said: “This may be a stupid question. Gray isn’t an uncommon name. But you’re not by any chance related to Redvers Gray?”

  “He was my father.”

  “There’s something about the eyes. I only met him once, but his was a face one didn’t forget. He had a great influence on my generation at Cambridge. He had the gift of making rhetoric sound sincere. Now that the rhetoric and the dream are not only discredited, which is discouraging, but unfashionable, which is fatal, I suppose he is almost forgotten. But I should like to have known him.”

  Cordelia said: “So should I.”

  He glanced down at her.

  “It was like that, was it? The revolutionary idealist dedicated to mankind in the abstract but not much good at caring for his own child. Not that I can criticize. I haven’t done too well with mine. Children need you to talk to them, play with them, give time to them when they’re young. If you can’t be bothered it isn’t surprising if, when they’re adolescents, you find that you don’t much like each other. But then, by the time mine were adolescents I didn’t much like their mother either.”

  Cordelia said: “I think I could have liked him if we’d had time. I did spend six months with him and the comrades in Germany and Italy. But then he died.”

  “You make death sound like a betrayal. And so, of course, it is.”

  Cordelia thought of those six months. Half a year of cooking for the comrades, shopping for the comrades, carrying messages, sometimes not without danger, finding rooms, propitiating landladies and shopkeepers, sewing for the comrades. They and her father believed implicitly in equality for women without troubling to acquire the basic domestic skills which would have made that equality possible. And it was for that precarious nomadic existence that he had taken her from the Convent, made it impossible for her to take up her place at Cambridge. She no longer felt any particular resentment. That period of her life was passed, finished. And she hoped that they had given something to each other, if only trust. She had early dropped Redvers from her name telling herself that it was an unnecessary piece of cabin luggage. She had been reading Browning at the time. Now she wondered if it had been a more significant rejection, even a small revenge. The thought was unwelcome and she thrust it away. She heard him say: “And what about your education? One was always seeing pictures of him being dragged off by the police. That’s all very admirable in youth no doubt. In middle age it begins to look embarrassing and ridiculous. I don’t remember hearing about a daughter, or of a wife for that matter.”

  “My mother died when I was born.”

  “And who looked after you?”

  “I was placed with foster parents for most of the time. Then when I was eleven, I won a scholarship to the Convent of the Holy Child. That was a mistake, not the scho
larship but the choice of school. They muddled my name with another C. Gray, who was a Roman Catholic. I don’t think father much liked it, but by the time he bothered to reply to the Education Officer’s letter I was settled and they didn’t like to move me. And I wanted to stay.”

  He laughed. “Redvers Gray with a convent-educated daughter! And they didn’t succeed in converting you? That would have taught Papa, dedicated atheist, to answer his letters more promptly.”

  “No, they didn’t convert me. But then they didn’t try. I didn’t believe but I was happy in my invincible ignorance. It’s rather an enviable state. And I liked the Convent. I suppose it was the first time I felt secure. Life wasn’t messy any more.”

  She had never before spoken so freely of her time at the Convent, she who was so slow to confide. She wondered whether this unusual frankness was possible only because she knew he must be dying. The thought seemed to her ignoble and she tried to put it from her.

  He said: “You agree with Yeats. ‘How but in custom and in ceremony are innocence and beauty born?’ I can see that it must have been reassuring, even one’s sins neatly categorized into venial and mortal. Mortal sin. I like the expression even if I reject the dogma. It has a note of splendid finality. It dignifies wrongdoing, almost gives it form and substance. One can imagine oneself saying, ‘What have I done with my mortal sin? I must have put it down somewhere.’ One could carry it around, neatly packaged.”

  Suddenly he stumbled. Cordelia put out her hand to steady him. His palm in hers was cold, the dry skin sliding over the bones. She saw that he looked very tired. The walk over the shingle had not, after all, been easy. She said: “Let’s sit for a while.”