An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

by P. D. James

  Cordelia said: “But actions arise out of feelings.”

  “Oh, Cordelia, don’t you start! I’ve had this particular conversation too many times before. Of course they do!”

  They were silent for a moment. Then Cordelia, reluctant to shatter the tenuous confidence and friendship which she sensed was growing between them, made herself ask: “Why did he kill himself—if he did kill himself?”

  Sophie’s reply was as emphatic as a slammed door. “He left a note.”

  “A note perhaps. But, as his father pointed out, not an explanation. It’s a lovely passage of prose—at least I think so—but as a justification for suicide it just isn’t convincing.”

  “It convinced the jury.”

  “It doesn’t convince me. Think, Sophie! Surely there are only two reasons for killing oneself. One is either escaping from something or to something. The first is rational. If one is in intolerable pain, despair or mental anguish and there is no reasonable chance of a cure, then it’s probably sensible to prefer oblivion. But it isn’t sensible to kill oneself in the hope of gaining some better existence or to extend one’s sensibilities to include the experience of death. It isn’t possible to experience death. I’m not even sure it’s possible to experience dying. One can only experience the preparations for death, and even that seems pointless since one can’t make use of the experience afterwards. If there’s any sort of existence after death we shall all know soon enough. If there isn’t, we shan’t exist to complain that we’ve been cheated. People who believe in an afterlife are perfectly reasonable. They’re the only ones who are safe from ultimate disillusionment.”

  “You’ve thought it all out, haven’t you? I’m not sure that suicides do. The act is probably both impulsive and irrational.”

  “Was Mark impulsive and irrational?”

  “I didn’t know Mark.”

  “But you were lovers! You slept with him!”

  Sophie looked at her and cried out in angry pain. “I didn’t know him! I thought I did, but I didn’t know the first thing about him!”

  They sat without speaking for almost two minutes. Then Cordelia asked: “You went to dinner at Garforth House, didn’t you? What was it like?”

  “The food and the wine were surprisingly good, but I don’t suppose that’s what you had in mind. The dinner party wasn’t otherwise memorable. Sir Ronald was amiable enough when he noticed I was there. Miss Leaming, when she could tear her obsessive attention from the presiding genius, looked me over like a prospective mother-in-law. Mark was rather silent. I think he’d taken me there to prove something to me, or perhaps to himself; I’m not sure what. He never talked about the evening or asked me what I thought. A month later Hugo and I both went to dinner. It was then I met Davie. He was the guest of one of the research biologists and Ronald Callender was angling to get him. Davie did a vac job there in his final year. If you want the inside dope on Garforth House, you should ask him.”

  Five minutes later Hugo, Isabelle and Davie arrived. Cordelia had gone upstairs to the bathroom and heard the car stop and the jabber of voices in the hall. Footsteps passed beneath her towards the back parlour. She turned on the hot water. The gas boiler in the kitchen immediately gave forth a roar as if the little house were powered by a dynamo. Cordelia let the tap run, then stepped out of the bathroom, closing the door gently behind her. She stole to the top of the stairs. It was hard luck on Sophie to waste her hot water, she thought guiltily; but worse was the sense of treachery and shabby opportunism as she crept down the first three stairs and listened. The front door had been closed but the door to the back parlour was open. She heard Isabelle’s high, unemphatic voice: “But if this man Sir Ronald is paying her to find out about Mark, why cannot I pay her to stop finding out?”

  Then Hugo’s voice, amused, a little contemptuous: “Darling Isabelle, when will you learn that not everyone can be bought?”

  “She can’t, anyway. I like her.”

  It was Sophie speaking. Her brother replied: “We all like her. The question is, how do we get rid of her?”

  Then for a few minutes there was a murmur of voices, words undistinguishable, broken by Isabelle.

  “It is not, I think, a suitable job for a woman.”

  There was the sound of a chair scraping against the floor, a shuffle of feet. Cordelia darted guiltily back into the bathroom and turned off the tap. She recalled Bernie’s complacent admonition when she had asked whether they needed accept a divorce case.

  “You can’t do our job, partner, and be a gentleman.”

  She stood watching at the half-open door. Hugo and Isabelle were leaving. She waited until she heard the front door close and the car drive away. Then she went down to the parlour. Sophie and Davie were together, unpacking a large carrier bag of groceries. Sophie smiled and said: “Isabelle has a party tonight. She has a house quite close to here in Panton Street. Mark’s tutor, Edward Horsfall, will probably be there and we thought it might be useful for you to talk to him about Mark. The party’s at eight o’clock but you can call for us here. Just now we’re packing a picnic; we thought we’d take a punt on the river for an hour or so. Do come if you’d like to. It’s really much the pleasantest way of seeing Cambridge.”

  Afterwards, Cordelia remembered the river picnic as a series of brief but intensely clear pictures, moments in which sight and sense fused and time seemed momentarily arrested while the sunlit image was impressed on her mind. Sunlight sparkling on the river and gilding the hairs of Davie’s chest and forearms; the flesh of his strong upper arms speckled like an egg; Sophie lifting her arm to wipe the sweat from her brow as she rested between thrusts of the punt pole; green-black weeds dragged by the pole from mysterious depths to writhe sinuously below the surface; a bright duck cocking its white tail before disappearing in a flurry of green water. When they had rocked under Silver Street Bridge a friend of Sophie swam alongside, sleek and snout-nosed like an otter, his black hair lying like blades across his cheeks. He rested his hands on the punt and opened his mouth to be fed chunks of sandwiches by a protesting Sophie. The punts and canoes scraped and jostled each other in the turbulence of white water racing under the bridge. The air rang with laughing voices and the green banks were peopled with half-naked bodies lying supine with their faces to the sun.

  Davie punted until they reached the higher level of the river and Cordelia and Sophie stretched out on the cushions at opposite ends of the punt. Thus distanced it was impossible to carry on a private conversation; Cordelia guessed that this was precisely what Sophie had planned. From time to time, she would call out snatches of information as if to emphasize that the outing was strictly educational.

  “That wedding cake is John’s—we’re just passing under Clare Bridge, one of the prettiest, I think. Thomas Grumbald built it in 1639. They say he was only paid three shillings for the design. You know that view, of course; it’s a good view of Queen’s, though.”

  Cordelia’s courage failed her at the thought of interrupting this desultory tourist’s chat with the brutal demand: “Did you and your brother kill your lover?”

  Here, rocking gently on the sunlit river, the question seemed both indecent and absurd. She was in danger of being lulled into a gentle acceptance of defeat; viewing all her suspicions as a neurotic hankering after drama and notoriety, a need to justify her fee to Sir Ronald. She believed that Mark Callender had been murdered because she wanted to believe it. She had identified with him, with his solitariness, his self-sufficiency, his alienation from his father, his lonely childhood. She had even—most dangerous presumption of all—come to see herself as his avenger. When Sophie took over the pole, just past the Garden House Hotel, and Davie edged his way along the gently rocking punt and stretched himself out beside her, she knew that she wouldn’t be able to mention Mark’s name. It was out of no more than a vague, unintrusive curiosity that she found herself asking: “Is Sir Ronald Callender a good scientist?”

  Davie took up a short paddle and began la
zily to stir the shining water. “His science is perfectly respectable, as my dear colleagues would say. Rather more than respectable, in fact. At present the lab is working on ways of expanding the use of biological monitors to assess pollution of the sea and estuaries; that means routine surveys of plants and animals which might serve as indicators. And they did some very useful preliminary work last year on the degradation of plastics. R.C. isn’t so hot himself, but then you can’t expect much original science from the over fifties. But he’s a great spotter of talent and he certainly knows how to run a team if you fancy that dedicated, one for all, band of brothers approach. I don’t. They even publish their papers as the Callender Research Laboratory, not under individual names. That wouldn’t do for me. When I publish, it’s strictly for the glory of David Forbes Stevens and, incidentally, for the gratification of Sophie. The Tillings like success.”

  “Was that why you didn’t want to stay on when he offered you a job?”

  “That among other reasons. He pays too generously and he asks too much. I don’t like being bought and I’ve a strong objection to dressing up every night in a dinner jacket like a performing monkey in a zoo. I’m a molecular biologist. I’m not looking for the Holy Grail. Dad and Mum brought me up as a Methodist and I don’t see why I should chuck a perfectly good religion which served me very well for twelve years just to put the great scientific principle of Ronald Callender in its place. I distrust these sacerdotal scientists. It’s a bloody wonder that little lot at Garforth House aren’t genuflecting three times a day in the direction of the Cavendish.”

  “And what about Lunn? How does he fit in?”

  “Oh, that boy’s a bloody wonder! Ronald Callender found him in a children’s home when he was fifteen—don’t ask me how—and trained him to be a lab assistant. You couldn’t find a better. There isn’t an instrument made which Chris Lunn can’t learn to understand and care for. He’s developed one or two himself and Callender has had them patented. If anyone in that lab is indispensable it’s probably Lunn. Certainly Ronald Callender cares a damn sight more for him than he did for his son. And Lunn, as you might guess, regards R.C. as God Almighty, which is very gratifying for them both. It’s extraordinary really, all that violence which used to be expressed in street fights and coshing old ladies, harnessed to the service of science. You’ve got to hand it to Callender. He certainly knows how to pick his slaves.”

  “And is Miss Leaming a slave?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t know just what Eliza Leaming is. She’s responsible for the business management and, like Lunn, she’s probably indispensable. Lunn and she seem to have a love-hate relationship, or, perhaps, a hate-hate relationship. I’m not very clever at detecting these psychological nuances.”

  “But how on earth does Sir Ronald pay for it all?”

  “Well that’s the thousand-dollar question, isn’t it? It’s rumoured that most of the money came from his wife and that he and Elizabeth Leaming between them invested it rather cleverly. They certainly needed to. And then he gets a certain amount from contract work. Even so, it’s an expensive hobby. While I was there they were saying that the Wolvington Trust were getting interested. If they come up with something big—and I gather it’s below their dignity to come up with something small—then most of Ronald Callender’s troubles should be over. Mark’s death must have hit him. Mark was due to come into a pretty substantial fortune in four years’ time and he told Sophie that he intended to hand most of it over to Dad.”

  “Why on earth should he do that?”

  “God knows. Conscience money, perhaps. Anyway, he obviously thought it was something that Sophie ought to know.”

  Conscience money for what, Cordelia wondered sleepily. For not loving his father enough? For rejecting his enthusiasms? For being less than the son he had hoped for? And what would happen to Mark’s fortune now? Who stood to gain by Mark’s death? She supposed that she ought to consult his grandfather’s will and find out. But that would mean a trip to London. Was it really worth it?

  She stretched back her face to the sun and trailed one hand in the river. A splash of water from the punt pole stung her eyes. She opened them and saw that the punt was gliding close to the bank and under the shade of overhanging trees. Immediately in front of her a torn branch, cleft at the end and thick as a man’s body, hung by a thread of bark and turned gently as the punt passed beneath it. She was aware of Davie’s voice; he must have been talking for a long time. How odd that she couldn’t remember what he’d been saying!

  “You don’t need reasons for killing yourself; you need reasons for not killing yourself. It was suicide, Cordelia. I should let it go at that.”

  Cordelia thought that she must have briefly slept, since he seemed to be answering a question she couldn’t remember having asked. But now there were other voices, louder and more insistent. Sir Ronald Callender’s: “My son is dead. My son. If I am in some way responsible, I’d prefer to know. If anyone else is responsible, I want to know that too.” Sergeant Maskell’s: “How would you use this to hang yourself, Miss Gray?” The feel of the belt, smooth and sinuous, slipping like a live thing through her fingers.

  She sat bolt upright, hands clasped around her knees, with such suddenness that the punt rocked violently and Sophie had to clutch at an overhanging branch to keep her balance. Her dark face, intriguingly fore-shortened and patterned with the shadow of leaves, looked down at Cordelia from what seemed an immense height. Their eyes met. In that moment Cordelia knew how close she had come to giving up the case. She had been suborned by the beauty of the day, by sunshine, indolence, the promise of comradeship, even friendship, into forgetting why she was here. The realization horrified her. Davie had said that Sir Ronald was a good picker. Well, he had picked her. This was her first case and nothing and no one was going to hinder her from solving it.

  She said formally: “It was good of you to let me join you, but I don’t want to miss the party tonight. I ought to talk to Mark’s tutor and there may be other people there who could tell me something. Isn’t it time that we thought about turning back?”

  Sophie turned her glance on Davie. He gave an almost imperceptible shrug. Without speaking, Sophie drove the pole hard against the bank. The punt began slowly to turn.

  Isabelle’s party was due to begin at eight o’clock but it was nearly nine when Sophie, Davie and Cordelia arrived. They walked to the house, which was only five minutes from Norwich Street; Cordelia never discovered the exact address. She liked the look of the house and wondered how much it was costing Isabelle’s father in rent. It was a long, white, two-storey villa with tall curved windows and green shutters, set well back from the street, with a semi-basement and a flight of steps to the front door. A similar flight led down from the sitting room to the long garden.

  The sitting room was already fairly full. Looking at her fellow guests, Cordelia was glad that she had bought the kaftan. Most people seemed to have changed although not necessarily, she thought, into something more attractive. What was aimed at was originality; it was preferable to look spectacular, even bizarre, than to appear nondescript.

  The sitting room was elegantly but insubstantially furnished and Isabelle had impressed on it her own untidy, impractical and iconoclastic femininity. Cordelia doubted whether the owners had provided the ornate crystal chandelier, far too heavy and large for the room, which hung like a sunburst from the middle of the ceiling, or the many silken cushions and curtains which gave the room’s austere proportions something of the ostentatious opulence of a courtesan’s boudoir. The pictures, too, must surely be Isabelle’s. No house owner letting his property would leave pictures of this quality on the walls. One, hanging above the fireplace, was of a young girl hugging a puppy. Cordelia gazed at it in excited pleasure. Surely she couldn’t mistake that individual blue of the girl’s dress, that marvellous painting of the cheeks and plump young arms, which simultaneously absorbed and reflected light—lovely, tangible flesh. She cried out involuntarily so tha
t people turned to look at her: “But that’s a Renoir!”

  Hugo was at her elbow. He laughed. “Yes; but don’t sound so shocked, Cordelia. It’s only a small Renoir. Isabelle asked Papa for a picture for her sitting room. You didn’t expect him to provide a print of the Haywain or one of those cheap reproductions of Van Gogh’s boring old chair.”

  “Would Isabelle have known the difference?”

  “Oh, yes. Isabelle knows an expensive object when she sees one.”

  Cordelia wondered whether the bitterness, the hard edge of contempt in his voice, was for Isabelle or for himself. They looked across the room to where she stood, smiling at them. Hugo moved towards her like a man in a dream and took her hand. Cordelia watched. Isabelle had dressed her hair in a high cluster of curls, Grecian style. She was wearing an ankle-length dress of cream matte silk, with a very low square neckline and small intricately tucked sleeves. It was obviously a model and should, Cordelia felt, have looked out of place at an informal party. But it didn’t. It merely made every other woman’s dress look like an improvisation and reduced her own, whose colours had seemed muted and subtle when she bought it, to the status of a gaudy rag.