A Sentence of Life

by Julian Gloag

  “Yes, well, indeed I think so. There may be one or two odds and ends.”

  Jordan went to the door. He stood by it and looked back to the gloom in which his uncle was merely a darker patch. “Two hundred and forty-three pounds, you said?”

  “More or less.”

  “Less?”

  “There will be fees, you know.” Trevor’s voice was hoarse. “Connected with probating.”

  “And I suppose,” Jordan said as he opened the door, “you’ll want to deduct something for the loss of your fig tree.”

  Trevor gave forth a queer little sighing gasp. Jordan felt not the slightest pang of pity.

  41

  He turned up his coat collar and stepped out into the rain. As he walked down the drive, he marked the footprints of the returning funeral party which had formed innumerable small lakes in the soft gravel.

  He halted at the iron gates. They had never been closed that he could recall. On either side a high wall, topped with broken glass, encircled the rectory gardens and orchard.

  “Take a brigade to defend this position. If you wanted to defend it, that is.” Jordan stiffened at John’s short bark of a laugh.

  They had started here when he was tiny and could hardly keep his feet without John’s strong hand grasping his. They moved left, within the rectory grounds, along a little path close to the wall and darkened with tall pine trees. “No field of fire here. Couldn’t stop a pack of determined fuzzy-wuzzies. They’d slip over the wall and you’d never spot ‘em in all this damn greenery.” John’s stride lengthened and his step quickened—as it always did when he began to talk of soldiering—until he was almost dragging Jordan along by his side.

  “Uncle,” he said, “Uncle John.”

  “Too fast for you, Jordan? Up you come then.” With a lithe, easy movement he swung the little boy onto his shoulders. “A sharp lookout, now. Eyes skinned for those fuzzy-wuzzies.” They marched through the five-acre grounds like an army. Across the lawn, through the asparagus beds, ducking under the arch which led to the orchard where the dusty apple leaves brushed against his face. Down to the round pond green with duckweed, and back again. Stopping every so often for John to discuss the tactical advantages of holding or abandoning a patch of wall. “Leave this section unmanned, don’t you think? Put a platoon behind this hedge, another along the ditch there. Absolutely clear field. Over they come and you rake them with enfilading fire. Splendid, eh, Jordan? Wither ‘em. Wither ‘em.”

  High on his perch, clutching John’s hair with both hands, Jordan echoed excitedly, “Wither ‘em, wither ‘em.”

  “That’s the spirit.” John gave his sharp laugh. They returned slowly, circling the old stables and the dovecote where the doves purred softly. “Unreliable birds. Can never count on carrier pigeons.” Past the curate’s house, through the herb garden, then Jordan was lifted down and deposited at the kitchen door. “Fine reconnoitre, Jordan. Thank you.”

  Jordan opened the door and went into the kitchen.

  Annie was getting the plates out and stacking them on the trolley for dinner. She paused. “Hello.”

  “Hello, Annie.”

  He turned to the old-fashioned range. Behind the bars the fire gleamed with secret brightness.

  “Been for a walk then?”

  “A reconnoitre,” he said. He turned down the collar of his jacket.

  “You’re wet.”

  Jordan pulled out a chair and sat down. He touched his damp hair and then held out his hands to the grate. Behind him the rattle of plates began again, then stopped. He became aware of Annie standing beside him in the semidarkness of the kitchen.

  “A reconnoitre?”

  “That’s what he used to call it.”

  She drew up a chair and sat down. He looked at her. The redness of the fire was reflected on her cheeks.

  “What did happen, Annie?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “They don’t want me to know.”

  “No wonder. They killed him.”

  “They killed him?” He observed her in puzzlement.

  “Near as no matter.” Her lips tightened.

  “I’m not defending them, Annie, but Uncle Trevor is upset and—”

  “Him!” said Annie contemptuously. “You know what’s on his mind, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Jordan said slowly. “He’s mourning the loss of his fig tree.”

  “That. And something else.”

  “What?”

  “Consecrated ground.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He’s worried about his stupid consecrated ground. Someone that commits suicide isn’t supposed to be buried in a churchyard, you know.” Her voice took on the simpering tones of Uncle Trevor. “ ‘If a man dies by his own hand. Canon law is quite specific on that point. It is most distressing. I must wrestle with my conscience.’ I heard him telling her. If Colonel John doesn’t deserve to be buried on consecrated ground, no one does. And his own brother!” She looked at Jordan fiercely.

  “He’s always been like that, Annie. I don’t think he means any harm.”

  “Oh doesn’t he? You can do plenty of harm without meaning it. But don’t tell me he isn’t pleased when he has to tell somebody something cruel for their own good. You can hear it in that rector’s voice of his. How often have I heard him say to Mum, ‘That Emerald of yours, Mrs. Brierly, is a hopeless case,’ he says. ‘It would really be more responsible of you to send her to an institution where she could receive proper care.’ As if Mum didn’t love Emerald especially because she is the way she is, and look after her a sight better than any silly institution could. Mum gets that upset, but of course she just sits there and says, ‘Yes, Rector. No, Rector.’ And I tell you he enjoys it, being all smug and wise, and upsetting Mum that much, so when he leaves she runs upstairs and cries her eyes out.” She got up and poked the fire hard so that sparks flew, and sat down again.

  Her voice was quieter when she spoke. “And her—she’s worse, Miss Freeman is. What she did to Colonel John. The way she treated him. You know what he wanted Sunday night?”

  “No.”

  “A fire, that’s what he wanted. A fire in his room.” She laughed and turned her head away abruptly. “He’d had a cold, you see. All week he’d been sniffling round the house. He would sit up there freezing to death in that attic. And of course he wouldn’t drink the hot milk I used to bring him.”

  “You went up there, to his workroom?”

  “Of course I did. No one else would. They were just happy he was out of mischief. And then Sunday at supper, as I was handing round the stewed pears, Colonel John says, ‘Mary, I want a fire in my room tonight.’ You know the way he does—did—sudden, like he was in the army. Miss Freeman didn’t say anything, just went on ladling out the syrup onto the plate. Then he says, ‘Mary, did you hear what I said?’ She sighs as though she’s being tried beyond endurance. And she says, ‘John dear, you know perfectly well there are no fires before November. And we never allow fires in the bedroom unless somebody is ill.’ Colonel John waits a minute, then says, ‘I am ill. I’ve got a cold. I want a fire.’ And the rector just sat there eating his pears and junket without saying a word. And then Colonel John says it doesn’t have to be a large fire, a small fire will do. His bones are cold, he says.

  “She wouldn’t answer him for ever so long. At last she says, ‘Please don’t force me to repeat myself.’ And at that he drops his spoon on his plate and gets up. And he’s shaking all over, like he always did when he was angry. And he runs up to his room and you could hear him stamping up and down, up and down. After a bit he quietened down. Then I was just in the middle of washing up when I hear this horrible noise. A kind of wrenching noise—as though some big animal was tearing the house apart. He’d chucked himself out of the window and pulled the fig tree with him. The whole thing came away with him, broke right off clean at the bottom. He must have been terribly strong to do a thing like that. I ran out, and the rector and her
. All the doves were fluttering and clucking. The rector had a torch, but we couldn’t see much at first. Just a great heap of leaves and branches. You’d never have thought there could be so many leaves. And then the wall—the rector shone his torch up. It was worse the next day in the light—all raw. Suddenly the mistress sees an arm poking out of the leaves. ‘It’s John,’ she screams. ‘Get in the house,’ the rector tells me. But I wouldn’t go. He was dead—he fell straight on his head and broke his neck.” She turned her face to Jordan, and she was weeping.

  “He knew what smashing that tree would mean to the rector. Like paying them off for all those years. And it served them right, it just served them right. They never understood him. They treated him like a naughty child. Ever since that Greta Candle led him on. As if everyone didn’t know it was her fault. They never loved him. They just punished him. And he wasn’t a child. Or if he was—well, they should have loved him and been kind to him, shouldn’t they? He was the only one in this place with a bit of life to him. I think that’s what they hated him for, really.”

  Jordan gently touched her hand. They sat silent, until slowly her tears dried. “The strangest thing of all was he was naked. That shocked them more than anything. Quite naked he was when we pulled him out. The mistress runs off to telephone and the rector grabs hold of handfuls of leaves and puts them over his body. I felt like laughing somehow. The wind kept blowing the stupid leaves off him. The rector didn’t say a word. He just grabs more and more leaves. I could hear him sort of panting. What did he think he was hiding anyway?”

  Rain flicked at the kitchen windows. Otherwise the rectory was quiet.

  Annie rose. “I’ve got to get home.”

  “Aren’t you staying to serve dinner?”

  “It’s cold. They can serve themselves.” She shut the stove door with the poker and got her black coat and hat from the pantry.

  Jordan helped her on with her coat. “I’ll walk home with you,” he said.

  “You’ll get wet.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  She hesitated. “Jordan—you feel like I do about, about him, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  They didn’t speak as they went down the drive and through the gates and along the road past the church.

  Annie stopped by the war memorial. She pointed. “They ought to put his name on there.”

  “Yes.”

  The rain softened a little and a few leaves blew along the road.

  “I’m giving in my notice tomorrow,” Annie said.

  Jordan faced her. “Why?” The thought of her leaving was unbearable.

  “I’ve had enough. I only stayed because of Colonel John. Besides, we don’t need the money.”

  “Annie, please don’t go.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Because …” The rain was wet on his face and the clouds raced high above. “Because I don’t want you to.” There was a thickness in his throat. “I want you to stay.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that.”

  “I’d miss you. I’d miss you very much.”

  “But you’re not here most of the time.”

  “But when I am here. It’s not just the rectory being empty and lonely. I miss you even when I’m not here.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” she said, and her voice quavered. “You never told me about that.”

  He took her hand and moved close to her. “That’s because I didn’t know until now. Until this evening.”

  She gave a little laugh. “You’re just saying that because you’re sad.” Her face was against his and she said into his ear, “You’re a funny one.”

  “You won’t leave, will you?”

  “Alright. Not if you don’t want me to.”

  “Promise?”

  He felt the movement of her cheek as she smiled. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  Hand in hand they walked to the post office.

  “Annie, if I write to you, you’ll answer, won’t you?”

  “Yes, Jordan, I will.” She bent forward and kissed him. “You better be off before Mum sees us. She’d never get over me holding hands with Master Jordan from the rectory.”

  He walked back along the mean, grey street, not noticing the puddles he stepped in.

  He was soaked through, but he held his head up and let the rain fall on his face. He put his hands in his pockets and touched the leather medal cases.

  He entered the rectory by the kitchen door and went quietly up the back stairs to John’s bedroom. He shut the door behind him and, as he stood in the centre of the room, it seemed to him that already the typical smell was fading. Tobacco and tweed and bay rum and the faint sweetish scent of John’s skin.

  There was water still in the willow-pattern jug on the washstand. But the soap was a dry sliver on its dish.

  Jordan pulled back the bedspread. The bed was unmade, and the black and white stripes of the mattress stared up at him. He left the spread crumpled. It made up, a little, for the emptiness—the immaculate neatness. As though it had always been like this: spick and span, black and white, neat and decent.

  He moved across the room and opened the window. Below, a faint illumination came from the living room. Mary would have drawn the curtains at last. But there was enough light to show the dark grass and the black wounds made by the plunging branches of the fig tree. The tree itself had gone—carted off, chopped up probably, and already stacked for burning.

  Jordan turned away from the window, leaving it open. It was proper that the rain and the night should be allowed to drift in. He stared at the empty grate which shone dully with black lead. He saw Aunt Mary on her knees rubbing the ornate iron, polishing away any trace of Uncle John.

  He opened the top drawer in the chest. John’s handkerchiefs lay in a squared-off pile in the corner. Then, carefully arranged, his pipe and pouch, a tamp to push the tobacco down, a penknife, a yellow pencil with a broken point, a worn notebook, a length of post-office twine, two paper clips, a crocodile wallet, six shillings in silver, and a boiled sweet.

  In an instinctive act of preservation, Jordan gathered them together and put them into an old green canvas suitcase he found under the bed. From the wardrobe he took Uncle John’s faded regimentals and folded the long red tunic and the blue trousers as John had long ago shown him how: tunic four folds, trousers three. He laid them in the suitcase and added the medal cases and the box of miniatures, gold studs and cufflinks; he filled the remaining space with shirts and socks and John’s everyday suit of snuff-brown tweed.

  He carried the case up to the attic.

  He hadn’t been in the workroom for three years. He was surprised—somehow he had expected it to be disordered with dust and aimless despair, as though in his absence all must disintegrate. But it was the same as ever in its military exactness: the ranks of tools, the saws dull with oil, the lengths of wood graded and stacked. The only thing missing was any sign of work in progress.

  He put down the case and reached under the work table. Slowly he pulled out the wooden waste bin. He stared at it for a long time without moving. It was full to the top. So John had worked, so the tools had been used. It was filled with the curious shapes of a puzzle—an enormous puzzle. With a swift thrust Jordan tipped the bin, and the jigsaw pieces spilled onto the floor. He bent and picked one up. He turned it over in his palm. It was blank. He knelt down and quickly began to turn them all—the ancient preliminary for all solutions. And all were blank. Smooth-grained, clean-cut, not a rough edge among them. But every one blank.

  At last he gathered them in his hands and pushed them back into the bin, pressing down hard against the springiness of the wood.

  He looked round the little room slowly, counting and naming. Wood, metal, cloth—and human beings. He would not forget John’s years of joyless, pointless labour. He swore it aloud. Not to forget.

  As he shut the door and locked it, he was filled with this glad determination. And it would not be him alone
. There was Annie now. There had always been Annie, but he hadn’t known it. Together they would preserve John’s memory. In them, John would continue to live—as he had been, quick and joyful in the old games of war.

  Together they would make it up to him.

  He put the key in his pocket and went downstairs to supper.

  42

  Prison Officer Denver edged through the half-open door and dumped the tray on the table. “Ben’s best breakfast. Let’s see what he put up for you today.” He pulled the green-baize covering from the highsided wooden tray and lifted the lid of the plate. “Sausages, eggs and tommy-artoes. Smells good, don’t it?”

  Jordan had risen early, long before the lights were turned on. He had smoked continuously, and he could feel the walls of his stomach sticking emptily together. He’d been standing in the corner, halted by a thought which he’d lost when Denver came in.

  He went over and looked down at the food.

  “Makes you hungry, don’t it?”

  Jordan shook his head. It did not repel him, this sight of already congealing fried breakfast, but it had absolutely nothing to do with him. He couldn’t imagine ever having eaten food. He was not even sure he remembered how to manipulate a knife and fork.

  “You want to be like them eggs, Maddox. Keep your sunny side up.”

  “Sunny side up?”

  Denver grinned. “That’s what they call ‘em in America. Fried eggs—sunny side up.”

  “You’ve been to America?”

  Denver didn’t answer for a moment, then said quietly, “Yes. I was a seaman before the war. Got about a bit. Saw the world, as they say.”

  “Oh yes. Yes of course. You told me.”

  Denver put the cover back on the dish. “You ain’t half got a fug in here. Like a bit of fresh air?”

  Jordan looked up at the window. “I don’t know.” It was extraordinarily difficult to make a decision. “I don’t think so—perhaps. I’m a bit chilly.”

  Denver frowned. “Are you alright, lad?”

  Jordan turned to him. “Yes, I think so. I’m just not hungry today.”