The Skull Beneath the Skin

by P. D. James

  When it was time to dress they went up together and Cordelia unlocked both rooms and made a check on Clarissa’s bedroom before she went in. All was well. She dressed quickly, put out the light, then sat quietly at her window looking out at the distant clumps of trees, black against the night sky, and the faint shimmer of the sea. Suddenly a light flashed from the south. She watched. In three seconds it flashed again and then for a third and last time. She thought that it must be some kind of signal, perhaps in answer to one from the island. But why and from whom? But then she told herself that the thought was childish and melodramatic. It was probably some solitary sailor on his way back to Speymouth harbour casually flashing a light over the quay. But there remained something discomforting and almost sinister about that threefold flash as if someone was signalling that the cast was assembled, the leading lady ensconced in splendour under the castle roof, that the drawbridge could be drawn up and the play begin. But this was a castle without a drawbridge, its moat the sea. For the first time since her arrival, Cordelia was touched by a sense of claustrophobic unease. Here their only lifelines were the telephone and the launch, both easily put out of commission. She had been drawn to the mystery and loneliness of the island; now she missed the solid reassurance of the mainland, of towns and fields and hills ranged at her back. It was then that she heard Clarissa’s door close and Tolly’s departing footsteps. Clarissa must be ready. Cordelia went through the communicating door and they made their way together to the hall.

  The dinner was excellent, artichokes followed by poussin and spinach au gratin. The south-facing room still held the warmth of the day and the wood fire had been lit more for its sweet-smelling and comforting glow than because it was needed. The three tall candlesticks threw a steady light on the epergne of coloured glass and Parian, the rich gold, green and rose of the Davenport dinner service and the engraved table glasses. Above the fireplace was an oil painting of the two daughters of Herbert Gorringe. Their poses were awkward, almost angular, and the faces with their bright, exophthalmic eyes under the strong Gorringe brows and the moist, half-open mouths looked flushed and feverish while the reds and deep blues of the evening dresses shone as brightly as if the paint had recently dried. Cordelia found it difficult to keep her eyes from the picture which so far from being tranquil or domestic seemed to her charged with a hectic sexual energy. Watching her gaze, Ambrose said: “It’s by Millais, one of the comparatively few social portraits which he did. The dinner service we’re using was a wedding gift to the elder daughter from the Prince and Princess of Wales. Clarissa insisted that I bring it out for tonight.”

  It seemed to Cordelia that there was a great deal which Clarissa insisted on at Courcy Castle. She wondered if she also proposed to supervise the washing-up.

  It should have been a festive meal but the pleasure didn’t match the food or the excellence of the wines. Beneath the glittering surface and the easy social chat flowed a current of unease, which from time to time spurted into antagonism. No one but Simon and herself with their youthful appetites did justice to the food, and he shoved it in furtively, watching Clarissa from the corner of his eye like a child allowed up for his first dining-room meal and expecting any minute to be banished to the nursery. Clarissa, elegant in her high-necked dress of blue-green chiffon, began by teasing her cousin about the absence of her partner who had apparently been expected for the weekend, a topic which she seemed reluctant to let go.

  “But it’s so odd of him, darling. Surely we didn’t frighten him away? I thought you wanted to show him off? Isn’t that why you schemed for an invitation? Who are you ashamed of, us or him?”

  Roma’s face was an unbecoming pink above the harsh blue of her taffeta dress.

  “We’re expecting an American customer to drop into the shop this Saturday. And Colin has got behind with the accounts. He’s hoping to get them finished before Monday.”

  “On a weekend? How conscientious of him. But I’m relieved to hear that you have some accounts worth doing. Congratulations.”

  Cordelia, finding that she could make little headway with Simon, who seemed afraid to speak, withdrew her interest from her fellow guests and concentrated on her meal. When she next took notice it was to hear Roma’s belligerent voice. She was addressing Ambrose across the table, clutching her fork as if it were a weapon.

  “But you can’t opt out of all responsibility for what’s happening in your own country! You can’t just say that you’re not concerned, not even interested!”

  “But I can. I didn’t collude in the depreciation of its currency, the spoliation of its countryside, the desecration of its towns, the destruction of its grammar schools or even the mutilation of the liturgy of its Church. For what am I personally expected to feel a responsibility?”

  “I was thinking of aspects which some of us see as more important. The growth of Fascism, the fact that our society is more violent, less compassionate and more unequal than it has been since the nineteenth century. And then there’s the National Front. You can’t ignore the Front!”

  “Indeed I can, together with Militant Tendency, the Trots and the rest of the rabble. You’d be surprised at my capacity for ignoring the ignorable.”

  “But you can’t just decide to live in another age!”

  “But I can. I can live in any century I wish. I don’t have to choose the dark ages, old or new.”

  Ivo said quietly: “I’m grateful that you don’t reject modern amenities or modern technology. If I should enter into the final process of dying during the next few days and need a little medical help to ease the way, I take it you won’t object to using the telephone.”

  Ambrose smiled round at them and raised his glass: “If any of you decide to die in the next few days, all necessary measures will be taken to ease you on your way.”

  There was a short, slightly embarrassed silence. Cordelia looked across at Clarissa, but the actress’s eyes were on her plate. For a second, the long fingers trembled and were still.

  Roma said: “And what happens to Eden when Adam, solaced with no Eve, finally returns to the dust?”

  “It would be pleasant to have a son to follow one here, I admit, almost worth marrying and breeding for. But sons, even supposing they came to order and if the process of getting them, deceptively simple physiologically, wasn’t so fraught with practical and emotional complications, are notoriously unreliable. Ivo, you’re the only one here with experience of children.”

  Ivo said: “It’s unwise, certainly, to look to them for vicarious immortality.”

  “Or anything else, wouldn’t you say? A son might easily convert the castle to a casino, lay down a nine-hole golf course, make the air hideous with speedboats and waterskiing and hold pretentious Saturday hops for the locals, eight-fifty a head, three-course dinner included, evening dress obligatory, no extras guaranteed.”

  Clarissa looked across at Ivo: “Talking of children, what’s the news of your two, Ivo? Is Matthew still living in that Kensington squat?”

  Cordelia saw that Ivo’s chicken had been pushed almost untouched to the side of his plate and that although he was forking his spinach into shreds, little of it was reaching his mouth. But he had been drinking steadily. The claret decanter was on his right hand and he reached for it again, adding to a glass which he seemed not to realize was already three-quarters full. He looked across at Clarissa, eyes bright in the candlelight.

  “Matthew? I suppose he’s still with the Children of the Sun or whatever they call themselves. As we don’t communicate I’m not in a position to say. Angela, on the other hand, writes a filial letter at boring length every month. I have two granddaughters now, she informs me. Since Angela and her husband refuse to visit a country where they might find themselves sharing a dining table with a black and I have a distaste for sharing a table with my son-in-law, I am unlikely to make their acquaintance. My ex-wife, in case you meant to inquire, is with them in Johannesburg, which she calls Jo’burg, and is said to be enchanted with the c
ountry, the climate, the company and the kidney-shaped swimming pool.”

  Clarissa laughed, a small bell note of triumph.

  “Darling, I wasn’t asking for a family history.”

  “Weren’t you?” he said easily. “Oh, I rather thought you were.”

  The table fell into a silence which, to Cordelia’s relief, lasted with few interruptions until the meal was at last over and Munter opened the door for the women to follow Clarissa into the drawing room.

  9

  Ivo wanted neither coffee nor liqueur but he carried the decanter of claret and his glass with him into the drawing room and settled himself in an armchair between the fire and the open French windows. He felt no particular social responsibility for the rest of the evening. The dinner had been sufficiently grim, and he had every intention of getting quietly but thoroughly drunk. He had listened too much to his doctors. Throw physic to the dogs, I’ll none of it. Obviously, what he needed was to drink more, not less; and if it could be wine of this quality and at Ambrose’s expense, so much the better. Already his self-disgust at allowing Clarissa to provoke him into that spurt of angry revelation was fading under the influence of the wine. And what was taking its place was a gentle euphoria in which his mind became supernaturally clear, while the faces and words of his companions moved into a different dimension so that he watched their antics with bright sardonic eyes as he might actors on a stage.

  Simon was preparing to play for them, arranging his music on the stand with uncertain hands. Ivo thought: Oh God, not Chopin followed by Rachmaninov. And why, he wondered, was Clarissa draping herself over the boy, ready to turn the pages? It wasn’t as if she could read music. If this was to be the start of her usual system of alternate kindness and brutality she would end by driving the boy out of his wits as she had his father. Roma, in the taffeta dress which would have looked too young on an ingénue of eighteen, was sitting rigidly on the edge of her chair like a parent at a school concert. Why should she care how the boy performed? Why should any of them care? Already his nervousness was communicating itself to his audience. But he played better than Ivo expected, only occasionally attempting to disguise the misfingerings by too fast a tempo and the over-use of the sustaining pedal. Even so, it was too like a public performance to be enjoyable, the pieces chosen to show off his technique, the occasion made more important than anyone wanted. And it went on too long. At the end Ambrose said: “Thank you, Simon. What are a few wrong notes between friends? And now, where are the songs of yesteryear?”

  The decanter was now less than a quarter full. Ivo stretched himself more deeply in the chair and let the voices come to him from an immense distance. They were all round the piano now, roaring out sentimental Victorian drawing-room ballads. He could hear Roma’s contralto, invariably late and slightly off-key, and Cordelia’s clear soprano, a convent-trained voice, a little unsure but clear and sweet. He watched Simon’s flushed face as he bent over the keys, the look of intense, exultant concentration. He was playing with more assurance and sensitivity now than he had alone. For once, the boy was enjoying himself.

  After about half an hour Roma drifted away from the piano and walked over to look at two oils by Frith, crowded anecdotal canvases showing rail travellers going to the Derby by first class and third class. Roma walked from one to the other, studying them intently as if to check that no detail of social or sartorial contrast had been neglected by the artist. Then Clarissa suddenly dropped her hand from Simon’s shoulder, swept past Ivo, her chiffon floating against his knee, and went out on the terrace alone. Cordelia and Ambrose were left singing together. The three of them at the piano were linked by their enjoyment, seemingly unaware of their audience, transposing and consulting, choosing and comparing and collapsing into laughter when a piece proved beyond their range or competence. Ivo recognized only a few of the songs: Peter Warlock’s Elizabethan pastiches, Vaughan Williams’s “Bright is the Ring of Words.” He was listening now with the nearest he had come to happiness since his illness had been diagnosed. Nietzsche was wrong; it wasn’t action but pleasure which bound one to existence. And he had become afraid of pleasure; to admit even the possibility of joy to his shrivelled senses was to open the mind to anguish and regret. But now, listening to that sweet voice blending with Ambrose’s baritone and floating past him out and over the sea, he lay back, weightless, in a dreamy contentment which was without bitterness and without pain. And gradually his senses began to tingle into life. He was aware of the cool stream of air from the window on his face, nothing as inconvenient as a draught, but a barely perceptible sensation like a stroking finger; of the sharp red of the wine glowing in the decanter and its softness against his tongue; of the smell of the wood fire, evocative of lost boyhood autumns.

  And then his mood was broken. Clarissa stormed into the room from the terrace. Simon heard her and stopped playing in mid-bar. The two voices sang on for a few notes then broke off. Clarissa said: “I’ll have enough of amateurs before the weekend’s finished without you three adding to the boredom. I’m going to bed. Simon, it’s time you called it a day. We’ll go together; I want to see to your room. Cordelia, ring for Tolly will you and tell her I’m ready for her, then come up in fifteen minutes, I want to discuss arrangements for tomorrow. Ivo, you’re drunk.”

  She waited with a shiver of impatience until Ambrose had opened the door for her, then swept out, merely pausing briefly to offer him her cheek to kiss. He bent forward but was too late and his pursed lips pecked ludicrously at the air. Simon bundled up his music with shaking hands, looked round as if for help, and ran after her. Cordelia went across to where the embroidered rope hung by the side of the fireplace. Roma said: “Black marks all round. We should have realized that we’re here to applaud Clarissa’s talent not to demonstrate our own. If you plan to make a career as secretary-companion, Cordelia, you’ll have to learn more tact.”

  Ivo was aware of Ambrose bending over him, of his flushed face and the black eyes bright and malicious under the strong half circles.

  “Are you drunk, Ivo? You’re remarkably quiet.”

  “I thought I was, but I seem not to be. Sobriety has overtaken me. But if you would open another bottle I could begin the agreeable process again. Good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well used.”

  “But shouldn’t you keep your mind clear for the task of tomorrow?”

  Ivo held out the empty decanter. He was surprised to see that his hand was perfectly steady. He said: “Don’t worry. I shall be sober enough for what I have to do tomorrow.”

  10

  Cordelia waited exactly fifteen minutes, refused Ambrose’s offer of a nightcap, then made her way upstairs. The communicating door between her room and Clarissa’s was ajar and she went through without knocking. Clarissa, in her cream satin dressing gown, was sitting at the dressing table. Her hair was tugged back from her face and tied with a ribbon at the nape of the neck; her hairline was bound with a crêpe band. She was scrutinizing her face in the glass and didn’t look round.

  The room was lit only by one bright light on the dressing table and the softer glow of the bedside lamp. A thin wood fire crackled in the grate and threw leaping shadows over the richness of damask and mahogany. The air smelt of woodsmoke and perfume and the room, dim and mysterious, struck Cordelia as smaller and more luxurious than in its daytime brightness. But the bed was more than ever dominant, glowing under its scarlet canopy, sinister and portentous as a catafalque. Cordelia was certain that Tolly must have been there before her. The sheets were turned back and Clarissa’s nightdress had been laid out, its waist pinched. It looked like a shroud. In the shadowed half-light it was easy to imagine that she stood in the doorway of a bedroom in Amalfi with Webster’s doomed duchess bright-haired at her toilet, while horror and corruption stalked in the shadows and beyond the half-open window a tideless Mediterranean lay open to the moon.

  Clarissa’s voice broke into her mood. “Oh, here you are. I’ve sent Tolly away so that we can t
alk. Don’t just stand there. Find yourself a chair.” On each side of the fireplace was a low, spoon-backed chair with carved arms and feet. Cordelia slid one forward on its casters and seated herself to the left of the dressing table. Clarissa peered at herself in the glass then unscrewed a jar of cleansing pads and began wiping off her eye shadow and mascara. Thin black-stained scraps of tissue crept over the polished mahogany. The left eye, wiped clean of makeup, looked diminished, almost lifeless, giving her suddenly the mask of a lopsided clown. She peered at the denuded lid, frowned, then said: “You seem to have enjoyed yourself this evening. Perhaps I should remind you that you were hired as a detective not an after-dinner entertainer.”

  It had been a long day and Cordelia couldn’t summon the energy for anger.

  “Perhaps if you were honest with them and told them why I’m here they’d be less likely to treat me as a fellow guest. Private detectives aren’t expected to sing, at least I wouldn’t think so. They probably wouldn’t even want to eat with me. A private eye is hardly a comfortable dining companion.”

  “What good would that do? If you don’t mix with them, how can you watch them? Besides, the men like you. I’ve seen Ivo and Simon looking at you. Don’t pretend that you don’t know it. I hate that kind of sexual coyness.”

  “I wasn’t going to pretend anything.”

  Clarissa was busy now with an immense jar of cleansing cream, smearing dollops of the cream over face and neck and wiping it off with strong upward sweeps of cotton wool. The discarded greasy balls were added to the mess on the dressing table. Cordelia found herself studying Clarissa’s face with as much intensity as did its owner. The eyes were a little too far apart; the skin was thick, unluminous, but almost without lines; the cheeks were flat and wide; the mouth with its pouting lower lip too small for beauty. But it was a face that could take on loveliness at Clarissa’s will and even now, bandaged, unenhanced and sunk in repose, it held the assurance of its latent, eccentric beauty.