A Sentence of Life

by Julian Gloag

  “Oh, Uncle Trevor, not in the hols!” The protest was expected of him, but he made it mildly. He would never again tempt that horrible animal fury which had mottled Trevor’s flaccid cheeks and shaken his short body. Not, at least, until he was old enough to … to get away from Sibley forever.

  “Well, a little extra coaching never did anyone any harm. You may find me a bit rusty, I’m afraid.” He smiled. “An hour directly after breakfast, when we’re both fresh, shouldn’t take too much out of your day, should it? No—well, that’s settled then.”

  Jordan knew that his uncle would look forward to that hour of Latin as much as he, Jordan, would hate it. It was almost an excuse for Uncle Trevor to enjoy himself. Jordan sighed.

  “Come, come, it won’t be as bad as all that. We’ll have some good fun.” He looked embarrassed. “And I’m afraid we old folks aren’t much fun for you, my boy. I worry sometimes that you will find Sibley a little on the dull side in the holidays.”

  “Oh no. Not really,” he said dutifully. It wasn’t exactly dull. It was empty. He had taken long walks, covered every inch of the hundred-acre field, down to the river, over to Istoke Park. But the campaigns he invented and the military engagements were laborious and without joy. He told himself he was growing out of those games, but he knew that really it was the absence of Uncle John.

  “I just wish that you had some companions your own age.” Uncle Trevor spoke with sudden emphasis. “Youth should be the really happy time. Of course, when I was your age, there were four of us Freemans: Mary and John and Lily—your mother—and myself. I believe we even had the reputation of being a rather gay lot. I expect you’ll find that difficult to credit. We played a great deal of tennis, I remember, in the summer; and in the winter we used to go skating on the canals. I remember …” He smiled a little sheepishly. “Dear me, I must be boring you.”

  “Not a bit. I don’t mind at all.”

  “Alas, those days are gone forever. The war came, and suddenly … I’m afraid we haven’t got as much time to give you as we should like. The war is responsible for that too, unhappily. Now that we have no maids, Aunt Mary has a great deal of extra work. And John isn’t—isn’t what he used to be.”

  Jordan looked out of the window at the tiny patch of sky he could see from his bed.

  “I’ll tell you what,” said Trevor hurriedly, “I’ve got to go into Istoke next week to see the archdeacon. I expect you’ll be up and about then. Would you like to come in with me? We could have lunch at the Grange and perhaps spend some of the afternoon at the secondhand bookshops in the market.”

  “Yes, I’d like to. That would be very nice.”

  Jordan decided he would take the opportunity of going into the bicycle shop. He still had Uncle Colin’s Christmas money, and secondhand bikes couldn’t be all that expensive.

  “It won’t be very exciting, I’m afraid, but it’ll be a change, my boy, eh? You and I haven’t had lunch together for a long time.”

  “No.” Wearily Jordan gathered himself to his social duty. “Did you have bikes when you were young, Uncle Trevor?”

  “Bikes? Oh, yes indeed. They had solid tyres in those days. We used to have some jolly bike rides…”

  15

  They were silent for a while. The visitor’s box they occupied was the one nearest the door. Apart from the two prison officers, one on each side of the barrier, there was no one else in the room. The steam pipes thumped in a sudden tattoo. The prison officers studiously avoided looking at prisoner and visitor.

  “Can’t smoke in here, I suppose,” said Colin. He had taken out his morocco cigar case. He picked a cigar and put it under his nose and sniffed. It was odd, thought Jordan, to see the same old ritual at work, and, in a way he could not define, disheartening.

  “Havanas cost the earth now,” Colin said. He slipped the cigar back into its case. “My cigar man tells me they often have to ship them halfway round the world before they get ‘em in. That damned American embargo. Indian ships, Spanish ships. They’re not used to handling cigars. Entire shipments are ruined. Oil leaked into one lot recently, he was telling me. They had to destroy the whole consignment—burnt ‘em. What an aroma that must have been.” He gave Jordan a quick smile and then looked down again.

  Colin had something serious to say. Jordan knew all the signs, but he hoped vaguely that if he proffered no help, Colin would let it go, whatever it was.

  “Get the papers in here, do you?”

  “No. I could take them if I wanted, but …”

  “Don’t blame you. Rags,” he said vehemently. He hesitated. “There’s been an awful lot of tripe about the case.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. At the magistrate’s court, when you were committed. I expect it’ll all blossom forth again at the trial. Weeds from a midden. They can’t say much about the case, of course, so they’re reduced to dredging up a lot of refuse they call ‘background.’ I had a couple of reporters barge in on me at the office.”

  “What did they want?”

  “Gossip, a lot of gossip. I turned them over to Miss Lawley. ‘Thou shalt keep thyself to thyself’ is the eleventh commandment to her. They didn’t come back after that.” He cleared his throat.

  “There isn’t much food for gossip in my life.”

  “No—o,” Colin said cautiously.

  “Pretty dull stuff.”

  “Well …”

  Immediately he thought of John. But they couldn’t, not possibly, have … “Not John?”

  “John? Good lord, no. But—there’s your father, of course.”

  “My father? But he’s been dead for thirty years.”

  “Yes. But he was a well-known name. Charles Maddox. Rather spectacular in his way. Not just any old run-of-the-mill R.A.” Colin paused, and Jordan was aware of being closely watched. “I see Willy hasn’t told you anything about it.”

  “About what?” Jordan asked unwillingly.

  “The press have dug up one or two rather—well, unpleasant things about Charles.”

  Jordan refused to be drawn.

  But Colin went on anyway. “I think you know what I mean. After Lily, after your mother died, Charles went off the rails a bit. Before he committed himself he got himself into a few scrapes that all of us hoped were dead and buried long ago. The worst was when he beat up the father of an eighteen-year-old girl he was having an affair with. The man was quite severely injured and—”

  “I know all that. You told me all that years ago.”

  “Yes. But the press have dug it up again. Jordan, when you get out of here, there are going to be one or two things which you’ll have to face.”

  “What has it got to do with me? What has my father got to do with me? I hardly knew him. I can’t even remember him.”

  “Yes. I know that. But the press don’t—nor the public, thirsty for warmed-over scandal. It’s unfair. But the inference is there. Like father, like son.”

  “Why are you doing this? What are you trying to say?” Jordan asked wearily.

  “Just this. It’s a roughish time for you, I know. But when it’s all over, I don’t want some of the things that have been raked over to come as a shock to you. I think you ought to know now, so you’ll be prepared.”

  He stared at his godfather. They insinuated themselves into this prison just to attack him. The police at least had the honesty to warn him, but … It was too damn much. “And you were deputed to tell me all this, I suppose?”

  “Deputed? What do you mean?”

  “I suppose Willy and Short and the Freeman clan put you up to this, didn’t they?”

  “Good lord, Jordan, surely … I’m only trying to help. We’re all only trying to help.”

  “Like the last time.”

  “The last time?”

  “When you warned me off Annie. So trivial you’ve forgotten it, no doubt. Something else you hoped was dead and buried long ago.”

  “Jordan, my dear good chap, you can’t possibly—”

&nbs
p; “Can’t I? Why not?” But even as he spoke, he didn’t understand his own challenge. Almost visibly his words seemed to rise up like smoke to the ceiling and disperse.

  Colin said slowly, “I’ve never been very proud of that, Jordan. At the time, I thought it was for the best. I still think it was for the best. You’ve been happy, haven’t you? But … all the same, I don’t …” He was silent, tensely concentrated, as a man in unaccustomed territory, aware of mines.

  “Oh, why don’t you leave me alone!”

  Colin stared at him, then nodded. “We must be a bother.” He patted the pocket where the cigar case made a smooth bulge. “I was wrong to mention it,” he said. “I know how you feel. But this mess isn’t going to last forever. It’s not easy for any of us. Willy particularly.”

  “Willy particularly,” said Jordan without expression. He just wanted Colin to go now.

  “These damn journalists had the cheek to ask her to write some articles about it, you know. For publication after the trial, of course.”

  “I didn’t know.” The thought of Willy’s strained epistolary formalisms transformed into Pictorialese was suddenly funny. “Publisher’s Popsy Not Pretty, Says Loyal Spouse.” If he’d had the energy, he would have laughed. “Look,” he said, “I’m sorry, Colin. I shouldn’t have burst out that way.”

  “I understand.” Colin managed to smile.

  They both stood up.

  “How’s the firm?”

  “We’re managing. We’ll be putting the Ballard manuscript into production next week.”

  Jordan had to strain his mind to remember who Ballard was. “The village idiot,” he said.

  “Yes. I lunched him at Blain’s, as you suggested,” Colin gave his tentative old maid’s smile.

  “Have you got a new secretary yet?”

  Colin shook his head.

  “You ought to look around right away,” said Jordan. “Better not leave it to me.”

  16

  “I couldn’t, Jordan. Really. You know I’ve got to study in the afternoons.”

  “Oh, come on, Annie. Forget the books. Let’s have a bit of fun.”

  “No, Jordan, really. What with Christmas and everything, I’m already behind.”

  He smiled. “Then an hour or two more won’t make that much difference—it’ll freshen you up. Besides, don’t you want to help me celebrate?”

  “You make it so hard to refuse you anything, but—”

  “Anything? I can think of one thing you’re pretty adamant about.”

  “Jordan!” She blushed. “Alright then, just this once.”

  At lunchtime she went home to change. They met, with their bicycles, at the corner of the lane out of sight of the village. Today Jordan succeeded in forgetting the furtiveness they were forced always to observe. Usually it irked him and, in some peculiar way, frightened him.

  “I say, you look snazzy,” he said.

  “Snazzy! What a dreadful word.” But she was pleased. Underneath her old black raincoat she wore dark-green slacks and a big polo-neck pink sweater. “It’s awkward riding a bike in a frock.”

  “I know, all those dirty old men crouching behind the hedges, leering.”

  They laughed together. He felt exultant and tender.

  They rode fast, for the shallow wind was with them to Istoke. The clouds were low and deep and moved sluggishly but, although it was warm and humid, it didn’t feel like rain.

  They chained the bicycles to the railings by the gates and went into the park. He took her hand, hot and rubbery from the handle of the bike, and she let him take it without hesitation.

  “You’d never think we’ve just had Christmas. It feels like spring,” she said.

  “Thank heavens Christmas is over.”

  She glanced at him. “I thought you liked Christmas. Don’t you?”

  “I used to. But I don’t any more. It’s a bore.” He didn’t think about what he was saying. She had let her hair free from the scraped-back style of domestic servitude. With her small face rising out of the baggy pink sweater she looked enchanting.

  “I don’t know. I still like it.”

  “It’s really nothing more than another date in the calendar.”

  “Oh Jordan.”

  “Today is a much better day than Christmas.”

  She smiled at him and freed her hand. “Where are we going?”

  “Let’s go up to the plantation.”

  They walked up the low hill, through the brown dead bracken to the iron fence which guarded the New Plantation.

  “It’s not really new at all,” said Annie. “It’s a hundred and twelve years old.”

  Jordan laughed. “Those poor little children still in their cradles, they don’t know what’s coming to them. By the time you’ve finished teaching them, it’ll be coming out of their ears.”

  “Facts are important.”

  “Oh, yes. And the fact is … Let’s go inside.”

  She looked round, but there was no one about. “Okay.”

  They climbed the fence and dropped onto the dead leaves on the other side.

  “Where shall we go?” Annie asked.

  “Into the middle. There’s a clearing there and a vista, so you can see Istoke.”

  The path was mossy and cut at the edges with old cart tracks. Yet sometimes the rhododendrons from either side would almost meet in the middle, so that Annie and Jordan had to rustle their way through the musty, cobwebbed leaves.

  There was a peeling green seat in the clearing, but it was surrounded by a huge puddle.

  “Come on,” Jordan said, “it’s not so bad here. It’s higher and won’t be so damp.” He took off his raincoat and spread it on the small hillock.

  They sat, knees up, on the raincoat and looked down the open avenue between the trees to Istoke. The cross in the marketplace was clearly visible, but the prospect as a whole was spoiled by the massive red Victorian barracks of the Hampshire Light Infantry which stood on the top of the hill.

  “Aren’t you glad you came?” he asked.

  “Yes, I am.” Hunched forward, she stared down the avenue. “It’s so wonderful about your exhibition.”

  “It’ll help,” he said.

  “Is it a lot of money then?”

  “Only forty quid a year—that’s if I manage to keep it.” Jordan raised his hand to her neck and began to rub gently. “It means I can save a bit more for when we get married.”

  Annie turned her head on her knees to look at him. “I wish you’d not talk about it, Jordan,” she said softly.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s so far away, it doesn’t seem real somehow.”

  “Of course it’s real. And it’s not so far away, either. We could get married while I’m still up at Cambridge.”

  “Jordan, don’t say it. How could we?”

  “Listen, in two years you’ll have your teacher’s certificate. Right? You don’t have to teach in Istoke. Why not Cambridge?”

  “You’ll have to be studying and—”

  “Do you think you’ll stop me working?” He smiled.

  “Besides, a teacher doesn’t earn much, Jordan. And I can’t see the rector supporting a married couple.”

  “He won’t have to support us.”

  “Forty pounds a year won’t go very far.” Puzzled, anxious at his lack of realism, she stared at him.

  “I’ve got more than forty pounds,” he said, looking away suddenly. “I’ve got about five or six hundred pounds a year. John’s money. Uncle John left me everything he had.”

  “Oh, Jordan, he didn’t!” But she was not contradicting him. When he turned to her, she was crying.

  “I wouldn’t have anything if it hadn’t been for Uncle John. Without him,” he said slowly, “well, I wouldn’t be anything either. I wouldn’t be free. I think that’s why he left me the money. He understood that.”

  Annie’s neck was warm and the little tufts of hair at the nape were soft and slippery. Lulled by his rubbing, she closed her
eyes. “That’s nice,” she murmured.

  “So you see, we don’t have to worry about Uncle Trevor or Aunt Mary or any of them.”

  They stayed silent for a while. Then Annie said, “But Jordan, I’m scared of what’ll happen when they find out that we—we want to …”

  “Get married. Say it, Annie.”

  “Get married.”

  “There isn’t anything they can do. They may not like it, but there’s nothing they can do.”

  “I’m scared though. It seems so … distant. Not impossible—I know you don’t like me to say impossible—but so far away.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her.

  They lay down on the raincoat and, heads back, looked up at the low, grey sky.

  Above, the young trees rose loftily around an occasional ancient oak or beech which had been there long before the plantation. A heron’s nest rested untidily in the higher branches. But the herons were dying out; the gradual pollution of the River Is was destroying their feeding ground.

  “It makes you dizzy, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said. “If you were a bird—a heron—you’d see everything so different. The ground wouldn’t matter. You’d be so sort of … removed.”

  “Detached.”

  “Yes.”

  “And lonely.”

  “Yes, I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Detached and lonely—I don’t think I’d care for it much.” He propped himself on one elbow and bent down and kissed her. She didn’t turn away as she so often did after a moment or two. She kissed him as though the kiss would resolve all doubts and send away her fears.

  He rested a hand on her stomach and then slipped it under the pink sweater. Her flesh was marvellously warm.

  He moved his hands upwards. She pulled her head away then and whispered, “No, Jordan darling.” But he kissed her again, and her body did not shy away.

  She just quivered a little when he touched her breast. He was startled that she was wearing no bra, nothing. He had never tried to touch her there before. Gently he caressed her, moving his fingers against the firm obstruction of her nipple.

  As he pushed her sweater up and bent his face to her flesh and kissed her breast, he was filled with awe and joy. She pressed his head against her with both hands.