“Thank you for making the effort to be pleasant at dinner tonight, Dad,” he said. “It makes all the difference to some of these men just to be treated as normal as they try to readjust to life.”
“I’m not an ogre, you know.” Tom was irritated that he should be complimented on so small an effort. Trevor’s uncertain attempt to begin on an amiable note was typical of their dealings with each other: lacking in spontaneity, failing because of the cautious thought which was designed to avert failure. “Don’t think because I make some effort to be civil to these people that I approve of what you’re doing.”
Trevor sighed. “I still hope that when you see the positive results of our support in action you will be converted to our way of thinking.”
Tom thought, “He speaks like a book, not like a man.” He eyed the tightly rolled sheet of white paper which Trevor had brought into the room with him, wondering what it signified. This was mere small talk, an attempt to trade on a relationship the two of them did not have, so that the real news could be dropped into a receptive ear. Well, he did not intend to play that game. “You know what I think about jailbirds in the house. Let’s not go into all that again.”
“I wish you wouldn’t keep calling them that, Dad. There isn’t much chance that society at large will accept them if —”
“It’s what they are, Trevor. Neither you nor I can alter that.”
“I prefer ‘ex-prisoners’, Dad, if you have to think of them in those terms rather than as individuals. Because that’s what they are, you know. They’re quite different from each other, widely ranging personalities. Those differences are far more important than the one fact they have in common, that they have all served a certain time in prison.”
Tom was not so sunk in his prejudices that he did not recognise some truth in this. His own observations, even this evening, supported Trevor’s point. That rather pleasant Harry Bradshaw seemed to have nothing at all in common with that devious little shyster Hogan. But he was not about to concede the point to his son. He switched his ground and muttered, “It’s all right for you, you’re out all day. Leaving your wife and children alone with these people. I’m surprised you can do it.”
Trevor looked down at his father, slightly hunched in his armchair, his thin hair almost white, his eyes staring at the carpet as his mouth tightened into a small, disapproving line. He thought, “He’s getting old. I can see him now as he will be at eighty.” A searing sadness shook him for a moment, the more disturbing because it was unexpected.
Trevor said gently, “I wouldn’t leave them if they weren’t perfectly safe. These people are really no different from other people, you know. Safer, if you like, because they have more to lose by any bad behaviour than others.”
“They are different from other people. They’re convicts.”
“They’ve been in prison, yes. They aren’t convicts any longer.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me they’ve ‘paid their debt to society’.”
Trevor shrugged. “I wasn’t, but it’s true enough. We shouldn’t go on punishing them after their sentences are over.”
“Agreed. But I don’t want them rehabilitated in my house.”
Trevor bit back the impulse to tell him that it wasn’t his house, or not entirely; that wouldn’t do any good at all. Trevor’s mother had left her half-share in the house to her son and the rest of her money to her daughter. It had seemed at the time a sensible provision against death duties, approved by the whole family. Now it meant that neither father nor son was wholly in control of Westhaven and its future.
Trevor said, “That’s just the NIMBY syndrome, Dad; you must see that,” and immediately wished he hadn’t. The phrases he used every day as a social worker with his colleagues were rarely well received by his father, who resented the jargon of a calling — he refused to call it a profession — he despised.
Tom had genuinely no idea what the mnemonic meant. He showed his puzzlement and suspicion, and Trevor had to say, “It means ‘Slot in my backyard’, Dad. We meet it all the time: people think things are a good idea, so long as it’s someone else who has to bear the immediate consequences.”
His father considered the idea for a moment, then decided to ignore it. His face darkened and his lower lip jutted as he said, “I don’t want jailbirds near my grandchildren. Surely that’s reasonable, isn’t it?”
“It isn’t, I’m afraid, Dad.” Trevor spoke in the tone he used for the most ignorant of his clients, the tone his social-worker colleagues, most of whom had scant regard for the Cloth, called his vicar’s voice.
His father, who was looking for it, heard himself patronised. He caught it again as his son went on with a dismissive laugh. “Apart from the fact that the children scarcely see our guests, the ones who come here are hand-picked, you know. There are no child-molesters, no one with a history of violence.” He thought of gentle Harry Bradshaw, who had murdered his wife, and decided that as this was definitely a one-off domestic crime it did not invalidate his statement.
Tom said, “You can’t guarantee that. Prison changes a man, makes him a hardened criminal where he might not have been before. Three out of four convicts end up back in prison, you know.” He produced the figure with an air of triumph, though he was not sure where he had heard it or whether it was accurate. Rather to his surprise, his son did not reject it.
“All the more reason, then, for us to try to change such statistics. In our own small way, that is what we are about here.”
“What you are about, you mean. Don’t include other people in your grandiose schemes: they may not agree with you.” He felt the childishness of the point even as it sprang to his lips; then he told himself stubbornly that Trevor took the agreement of those around him far too much for granted.
“Ros is solidly behind me in what we are trying to do, Dad. I know you aren’t, but we’ve given you your privacy, as far as we can.”
It was true enough. Tom wondered how the two of them had floundered into this. As with many of their arguments, neither of them had meant to get into it, and neither was quite certain now who had started it. And neither of them knew now how to get out of it. He wished his son was a drinking man at times like this, but the sight of him holding a glass of whisky as though it were medicine would only annoy him further. Once Trevor had gone, he would pour himself a generous one.
Lifted by the anticipation, he determined to say nothing. There was a long moment of silence, in which Trevor looked at him rather desperately and he refused to allow his eye to be caught. Then his son turned awkwardly to the desk and carefully unrolled the long white cartridge of paper he had brought almost apologetically into the room.
Tom could see even from his armchair that the lines on the large sheet were plans. Building plans, presumably. For a wild moment, he thought Trevor might be planning a move to a modern residence, about to be built from scratch. He stood up, moved unhurriedly across the small space to the desk, and switched on the desk lamp immediately above the sheet.
The precise blue lines of a scale drawing were starkly evident: “North elevation”, “East elevation” flashed across his eye. But he scarcely comprehended them: it was the large capitals across the top of the paper that caught and held his attention. “EXTENSION AT WESTHAVEN FOR MR TREVOR HARRISON.”
Trevor’s hand was wandering vaguely in the air above the drawing, as if it were a waiting guidance on where it should fix itself. Tom saw the hand in unnatural detail beneath the bright white light of his desk lamp. His son’s fingers were trembling a little; there was dirt beneath the nail of the index finger as it roamed in search of a task.
Trevor said nervously, “I should have talked to you about this before, Dad, but I wanted to see how feasible it all was before I bothered you with it.”
“And what exactly is it all about?” Tom articulated each syllable carefully. His voice was harsh, unnaturally loud in the small, high room. His son had the feeling he had experienced before in this room of
a presence above them in the darkness, listening impassively to their exchanges. He wondered whether that supernatural mumbo jumbo, which he thought he had long discarded, was with him still, for it was his dead mother and her reactions to this that came to his mind.
Trevor said, “It’s a little development at the back of the house to make things a bit easier all round. The appearance from the road at the front wouldn’t be altered at all. Just —”
“What kind of development?”
Trevor breathed in slowly, trying to control tension in the way he advised his clients to do in stress situations. This was not the way he had planned to do this. He had envisaged an amiable discussion, coming by roundabout means to the matter in hand. He had even thought that, after a generalised conversation on the progress of the people in the house, he might persuade his father to suggest that it was a pity they had not more room. For a man who continually projected himself as a practical, down-to-earth operator, Trevor Harrison was an incorrigible dreamer in domestic matters.
He said, “The idea is to incorporate the garages into the house; the whole of the old stable block, in fact. It wouldn’t need an awful lot of building work, not for the amount of extra space we’d get. We can use most of the existing walls.” He knew he was piling phrase upon phrase too quickly, like a man fearful of interruption before he can get the points of his argument across. “And of course, there’s already water and power out there. We might need to —”
“And what is the purpose of this — this new wing?” Tom turned his lips in contempt upon the word.
Trevor felt like a schoolboy confessing his sins to the headmaster, instead of a man trying to do some good for the community. The unfairness of it struck him suddenly, like a sharp rap on his forehead. “It’s hardly a new wing, Dad. It’s no more than a sensible adjustment to the present building, to make the most of its potential. It —”
“What’s it for?”
“Well, it could have a variety of uses. The extra space would be quite flexible. If you look here…” At last he found a use for the finger which had been poised over the plans for so long.
But his father refused to look down. His blue eyes glittered unblinkingly, not eighteen inches from Trevor’s face. “What is it for, please?” His voice had the ominous quiet of the man who is only just retaining control.
Trevor was reminded again of standing before a teacher. This was ridiculous: he was nearly forty. He’d be calling his parent “Sir” next, like a Victorian adolescent. There was no chance of being diplomatic in this atmosphere. “It will allow us to develop the work we’ve begun here. We’ll be able to take at least three more newly released offenders.”
He paused this time, expecting to be interrupted, waiting for the outburst he now felt was inevitable. Instead, there was an interval in which each heard the other’s breathing, unnaturally loud. Then Tom said heavily, “You would need my consent.”
“I’d hoped we’d be able to carry this forward together. That it wouldn’t be a case of —”
“I won’t give it.”
This time it was Trevor who paused, gathering about him the arguments he had not prepared. He wondered how he could ever have thought that it would not come to this. “There’s no need to jump in now, Dad. These are only plans. They can still be changed. I was hoping you’d look at them with me. Bring your own experience and thoughts to them. Perhaps suggest various improvements on what’s been set down so far. We’re still at a very preliminary stage.”
“That’s good. It won’t cause too much upset for anyone when these drawings are abandoned, then.” Tom moved the paperweight his son had set on the end of the parchment to anchor it, and the sheet rolled itself up, so that the offending lines were removed from his sight. He had not once looked down at them.
Trevor said, “It’s a good extension. It wouldn’t cost much, for what we would get out of it.”
“That might well be so. But I can’t approve its purpose.”
“Dad, that isn’t fair. The people we’ve had here are mostly doing quite well now in the world at large. You can’t —”
“I don’t approve the use to which this house is being put. You can’t expect me to foster an extension of that use.”
“Dad, you’ve not really considered it. Try to keep an open mind for a few days, and then perhaps we’ll talk again. We could give the family completely self-contained quarters by doing this, if you want that.”
It was his last throw, and it failed. His father said, “I won’t feel any different in a few days, Trevor. Not about this.”
Trevor slipped the elastic band carefully around the cartridge of paper, performing the small action with exaggerated care to conceal his anger. He said, “I don’t think I actually need your approval, if it comes to it. I don’t want to quote the terms of mother’s bequest, but I think you’ll find they allow me to go ahead with this if I think it is necessary to develop the unit for newly released offenders.”
“Do you, indeed? We shall see.”
They stared at each other for a moment; it was the only time in the meeting when they had looked into each other’s eyes. Neither of them trusted himself to say more. Trevor muttered the curtest of good nights, put his plans under his arm, and was gone.
Tom poured the whisky he had promised himself and settled carefully into the big armchair. Fifteen minutes after his son had gone, he could still feel the pulse throbbing in his temple. Strangely, he did not feel cast down. It was like being back in business, with a battle to be won, his will to be asserted against the wills of others. He had not realised how he missed such contests. And he would win this one.
It was an hour after their argument before he realised that he had not even told Trevor he was going to sell the house. He sipped his second large scotch with relish. If he needed to play it, that would be the ultimate card. He surely could not lose.
Chapter Five
“It’s still around seventy degrees out here, Dad, even though we’re going into our winter. You’d love it.”
“I expect I would, love. Pity you’re so far away.”
“It’s not as far as it used to be, you know. You can fly to Wellington in less time than it took the train to get to Italy when you were a lad. Why don’t you take the plunge and come to see us?”
“Perhaps I will, Barbara, perhaps I really will.” Tom had said it before often enough, and both he and his daughter knew it. But why shouldn’t he go and see his beloved daughter, instead of waiting impatiently for the visits home she managed about every two years? Next winter perhaps. Now if he sold this house and moved to somewhere small and modern…
“We never get a frost, you know. Dahlias just flower themselves to death here. And geraniums.” She was going on a little desperately, scratching her childhood for the images she thought might entice him to come. He had always been so proud of the summer borders at Westhaven.
The picture set off a different train of thought in him. “Trevor wants to develop the back part of the house. It would take in part of the garden.”
There was a tiny pause. The line was so good that 12,000 miles away she had caught the change in his tone of voice. “What does he want to do, Dad?”
“Oh, take in the old garages and join them to the existing buildings. We’d lose part of the garden and the conservatory, I think.” In truth, he had not looked at the plans, so that he was now fumbling for detail, feeling awkward because he could not convey to his daughter’s precise mind an exact picture of what her brother envisaged.
“Sounds sensible. You’d get a lot of extra room without too much in the way of building costs, I should think. What would you use it for?”
“I wouldn’t. Trevor wants to develop his work with the jailbirds.”
“They’re not jailbirds, you silly old sod!” she laughed. She had always been able to twit him, even when he was at his most solemn and no one else dared to. For a moment, he wished that Trevor had been able to treat his objections as lightly as this on t
he previous night.
He saw his two children playing together a quarter of a century ago in the garden which was now threatened. Trevor had always responded well to his younger sister and her sense of fun; he had become more pompous in the years since her departure to the other side of the world. Tom said, “Trevor can do what he wants, so long as he doesn’t involve me.”
Looking from her window at the late morning sun on the mountains outside Wellington, Barbara could see her father’s chin jutting stubbornly, the lips set in a tight line, the frown beneath the thinning white hair. “He’s trying to do good work, Dad. Would it really affect you so much?”
“You think I should let him go ahead?”
Her slight pause seemed to him to last an eternity. “No. Not necessarily. I know how much Westhaven means to you.”
“But you think I should consider the scheme.”
“Consider it, yes. Then turn it down, if it doesn’t suit you. You’re my priority you know, you funny old thing. But try to look at the scheme with an open mind.”
It was the very phrase his son had used when he produced the plans. Why should he now consider the advice so seriously, when the words in Trevor’s mouth had merely made him bridle? For the first time, he broached the idea he had hugged to himself for 36 hours: Barbara must be the first to hear it. “I think I might sell Westhaven.”
This time, with the whole world spinning between them, both of them felt the pause. Eventually she said quietly, “Could you?”
She was asking the emotional question: could he sell the house to which he was so attached and which held such memories for him. He answered only the more direct legal query he chose to hear in her words. “Yes. The terms of the bequest specifically allowed me to sell if I want to. I should have to give Trevor his half of the proceeds, that’s all.”
Who Saw Him Die? (Inspector Peach Series Book 1) Page 3
