Death by Sheer Torture

by Robert Barnard

  I don’t suppose she was marked down for happiness, but in some other marriage, or in respectable spinster-hood, she might have got through life with some dignity and contentment. My picture of her is of sickness, and bewilderment, and a sort of helpless and impractical love for me and Cristobel. She was an ailing body, probably from my birth, or even before. I remember in the ’fifties her taking long cruises for her health—cruises to the West Indies, cruises round the world, in the belief that what she needed was sun and change. Nothing helped. She lay, almost throughout my childhood, on the sofa in her little sitting-room, flickering, angular, sad.

  I remember her taking me to her one day and telling me that if anything happened to her—as if I didn’t know, at ten, exactly what was going to happen to her—I was to look after my small sister. It came to me now with a pang that I hadn’t made much of a fist of it. I’d walked out on the job.

  The memories got on top of me. To get away from them I went through into my father’s study, a room where I never remember my mother going. It was the room with fewest personal associations for me, too: not a place we were called into often, or to which we went of our own accord, though it opened out into the little library, where I spent many hours. Dominating the room, on the wall that got most sunlight, was a painting by Salvador Dali, a picture of various things melting into various other things, a purchase of Aunt Eliza’s in the ’twenties: it was vaguely nasty, but it went with the room. Also dominant was the grand piano over by the leaded windows, where my father would go and try over the inspirations that crowded in on him. It was very dusty. I tried it and it was out of tune. On the table nearby was a pile of music, including a few of my father’s own compositions in manuscript. I took up the Jubilee Hymn of Tribute, written in my father’s thin, quavery musical notation: a page of it looked like the death-throes of a consumptive spider. It was a setting of some bilge by John Masefield, and I wondered whether it had in fact been written for the 1935 Jubilee, and resurrected for the more recent one. I moved over to the desk.

  In spite of his apparent openness about his amusing little vices, my father was in many ways a secretive man: he certainly didn’t ‘give himself’ (thank God) to his family, nor, I imagine, to his friends. On the other hand, he was meticulous in his habits, and I found evidence in the desk that my Uncle Lawrence’s condition of intermittent senility had frightened him and made him take precautions. For example, he left a notebook labelled ‘Apparatus’, with precise details of what had been ordered for his games room, and how much had been paid for it. It was clear that almost all the equipment had been devised and constructed by one Ramsay Percival, of 118 Reform Street, Newcastle. I went through the book, marvelling at the scrupulous recording of the progress of the various machines, often with little diagrams. He had noted down the sums paid to Percival—‘to prevent fraud in the event of my death or incapacity’. I totted up the various amounts relating to the strappado: it came to about the cost of a second-hand Mini. Well, I suppose we all have our own forms of self-torment. The rack, unfinished, looked as if it would have cost considerably more.

  The stubs of my father’s cheque-book also bore the name of Percival pretty frequently, but otherwise were unrevealing. Mostly they were to Cristobel, presumably for housekeeping purposes. There was nothing else around on the desk that was at all personal—no blotters with letters that could be read in reverse, no letters to him either (but who would write?). I tried the drawers: little clipped bundles of bills, unrevealing except for some from Soho bookshops and a receipt from a theatrical costumier (for the tights, no doubt).

  In the bottom drawer was my mother’s will. I thought of it fondly: it had left everything to be divided equally between Cristobel and me, and what it came to was about a thousand pounds each. It’s rather a neither-here-nor-there kind of sum, but I thought of it with gratitude, because it had tided me over when I slammed out of the house, before I got myself into the army, and it had paid for a fortnight’s honeymoon in Portugal, more or less. It hadn’t gone astray, my mother’s thousand. I took a bet with myself that Cristobel had just saved hers—a pretty lunatic procedure these days, but she is the sort that tries to be farsighted and falls into a gravel pit whilst being so.

  As I opened my mother’s will, a little slip of paper fell out—the sort of slip that you tear off a pad and write messages to yourself on. It just said, in my father’s anaemic script: ‘Letter WOAF.’ I puzzled over it for a bit. No doubt one of his hedges against mental decay, but what did it mean? Had it just fallen into my mother’s will, or did it for some reason belong there? There was nothing about a letter in the will itself, which was simple and touching in its references to Cristobel and me, and did not mention my father at all. And what on earth were the initials? It looked like some female branch of the armed services, but if so I’d never heard of it.

  I got up and shook myself: how my mother seemed to be coming back to me, like a courteously reproachful ghost, getting a gentle revenge for all those years when I’d shoved her to the back of my mind. It was my father that was my business, though. I walked over to the bookcases in the study. There were the tall shelves with his favourite scores: wispy composers like Fauré, Poulenc and Hugo Wolf. There were the books of musical reference. And then there was the case devoted to his own special kink: much loved works like Salammbô, Justine and (oddly in such company) various novels by Harrison Ainsworth. Then there were two shelves of those distasteful pseudo-scientific studies of torture which had haunted my childhood, shoulder to shoulder with several gloating studies of all varieties of corporal infliction. I flicked through the torture books and found the fullest possible description of strappado: it was much-thumbed, and had clearly formed the basis for the streamlined, motorized version downstairs. I put the book aside to show Tim Hamnet.

  I felt unclean. That sounds like a piece of evidence given by a respectable lady witness to one of the Whitehouse commissions on porn, but it’s exactly how I felt. I wanted to get out of that room, and I pushed open the door to the library and went quickly through. It was dark and musty and unused. Perhaps like the chapel it had outlived its day, had now only the stale whiff of an old habit, discontinued. I had spent many happy hours here in childhood—when I was a small child, that is, in the days before the apple-stealing and the sportiness and the general anti-Trethowan rumbustiousness. When I was small my mother worried about me—roaming around, climbing trees and fells, playing with the rough village boys. She liked me to be where she could call me, from her sofa. When she saw I was substantially there, she would fade away quite happily again into the chintzy background, and I could go off—to sit, as often as not, in this library and read. That’s the paradise of children with too much time on their hands. I read books much too old for me (or so librarians today would say, but how can they have been too old for me if I enjoyed them?). I read Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby—I always loved the Dotheboys Hall scenes, till my father put me off them by reading them aloud. I suppose I sensed the relish. I read Jane Eyre and The Mill on the Floss, and I even read bits of books ridiculously old for me: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, and The Way Of All Flesh. Here they all were, in their musty, dull bindings: heavy, three-volume editions that I had difficulty heaving off the shelves and propping up on my small lap. Here was my absolute favourite of all: Dombey and Son. Why had I loved that so much? There never was a boy less like Paul Dombey than I was. I suppose it was just the vague general resemblance which gave it its special relevance: the boy and his sister, the antipathetic father, the frail, distant mother floating gradually into eternity at the end of the first chapter.

  My mother . . .

  I sat there, with all my thoughts, and impressions, and the ideas that danced and jeered and tantalized by refusing to come forward. Only connect . . . I had an odd feeling that I had connected momentarily, and it had flown from my mind. I pulled myself together. It must be an illusion. In fact, I had spent the whole afternoon and early evening wallowing in my past, and
not at all doing what I was supposed to do. Still, I doubted if there was much here to discover that I had missed. I made a quick decision. I would go down and report to Tim Hamnet, and then I would go and tell the family (God! what an awful expression! As if they were mine!). I would go and tell the Trethowans that I would not be dining tonight. Then I would hijack a police car—the place was crawling with them—and go off to the village and spend the evening and night with Daniel and Jan. Since they had come, I might as well take advantage of it. I looked at my watch. Half past six. They could even have arrived by now.

  Tim was still on the ground floor, and boy! was he looking frazzled. His collar and tie were askew, and there were big, dark blue sweat marks under his armpits.

  ‘Sweet little kiddies, aren’t they?’ I said. ‘Talk about trailing clouds of glory . . .’

  ‘God! Don’t talk to me about them, Perry.’

  ‘How did it go? Did you talk to them all together?’

  ‘Do I look crazy? I sent three men to prise them apart, and a fourth to cope with their mother. I saw them one by one, and only the three eldest. Frankly, I couldn’t take any more.’

  ‘What did they do?’

  ‘Screamed abuse, ran at me and started scratching my face, yelled blue murder and started pounding on the door.’

  ‘Is there a magic recipe for dealing with them?’

  ‘I’d like to slaughter the lot of them.’

  ‘Ah, the Herod approach. Not allowed in the Book of Rules, unfortunately. What did you actually do?’

  ‘Made friends, cajoled, flattered, bribed, threatened, bullied—pretty much in that order.’

  ‘And what did you get out of them?’

  ‘Nothing. They had never done such a thing, never thought about it (but wish they had), were locked in their bedrooms all night, didn’t know Great-Uncle was dead until the morning, and would I tell them all the details? That was the oldest, and actually he asked for the details first: it was only by promising them I got the rest out of him.’

  ‘Do you believe them?’

  ‘Don’t altogether know. Their stories agree.’

  ‘Good sign, or bad?’

  ‘With that lot I’d be inclined to say good. I think if anyone had tried to spoonfeed a story to them, it would have had the opposite to the desired effect. What about you, Perry? Anything of interest?’

  ‘Meagre,’ I said. I showed him the notebook about the various torture machines, the book with the description of strappado, the meaningless slip of paper from the will—and that was about it. I really felt ashamed it was so meagre. We nattered things through for a bit, and then I told him in no uncertain terms I was going off duty. I don’t think he liked that, but I laid down the law (so to speak) to him: since I was down here quite unofficially, there was no way he could hold me to a twenty-four-hour working day.

  My spirits heightened perceptibly as I left the Gothic wing. At least for a night I was going to get out of this hell-hole, this Victorian gaol. I nearly sang as I strode across the hall—something nice, not Dolores. I’d drive to the village, and I’d have Jan and Daniel in my arms, and I’d play games with Daniel until his bedtime, and then we’d have a pint or two together in the Saloon and take whatever was offering in the way of food at the Marquis, and after that . . .

  I opened the door to the drawing-room. There they all were, assembled for sherry. There was Sybilla, in her usual flimsy drapes, with Mordred standing beside her. There was Lawrence, with Kate at attention by his chair. And there was Cristobel, very white and all too obviously trying to be brave.

  And there, looking ravishingly pretty, holding a sherry glass and talking animatedly, for all the world as if she were at home, was Jan. And clutching shyly to her skirts was Daniel.

  ‘Ah, do you know each other?’ said Uncle Lawrence.

  CHAPTER 10

  FAMILY AT WAR

  Now the fact is, I had prepared in my mind all sorts of injunctions and prohibitions for Jan as to how to behave when she finally came face to face with the awful shock of my family. Such as not admitting for a moment to the slightest twinge of interest in anything artistic or cultural: not even such things as singing in choirs, or Adult Ed. courses in batik. I had it all worked out: say you’re doing Arabic to help oppressed Middle-Eastern shop-lifters in London, or to write a book on conditions in the modern harem that will cause the Saudi-Arabians to break off diplomatic relations—anything except an interest in tenth-century love poetry. Give the Trethowans an inch and they claim four thousand acres and build a mansion on it: admit to the merest murmuring of an aesthetic sense and they rope you in on the family act, claim you as a spiritual soul-mate, invite you to participate in poetry readings with them.

  And it was all thrown away. For here was Jan swilling good sherry (I could see the bottle) with them, and talking—if my ears did not deceive me—about Harrison Birtwistle or some such OK name. Nevertheless, I folded her and Daniel in my arms, because after all it wasn’t their fault they hadn’t had the benefit of my good advice. While I was about it, I kissed Cristobel too, who was looking wan but serviceable and obviously benefiting from the Guiding instinct to keep hitting the trail.

  ‘What a lovely surprise for you, Perry,’ cooed Aunt Sybilla. ‘As soon as Mordred told me they were coming I knew you’d want to see them as soon as possible, and I sent down a little missive to the Marquis of Danby.’

  Since she obviously imagined I’d be delighted, I muttered my thanks, and shot Morrie the sort of glance a schoolboy gives the class sneak.

  ‘It’s awfully nice, Peregrine,’ pursued Sybilla, ‘that you at least married a truly spiritual person—I mean spirituelle. Alas, that is not always the case in our family. For example, Lawrence’s wives —’

  Uncle Lawrence burst out into a shout of complacent laughter: ‘Sluts! What I wanted. What I got. Sluts!’

  ‘Yes, well . . . And dear Maria-Luisa, though an excellent mother as far as quantity is concerned, does just a teeny bit lack esprit. But Janet, so she tells us, is studying Arabic love poetry! What a fascinating subject!’

  I deliberately let that remark fall into a dead silence, for I knew that Aunt Syb knew even less about Arabic love poetry than I did. Jan however was obviously not enjoying the Trethowan habit of treating an outsider as if he were not quite there—of talking at, around, above and below him as if he were a novice gymnast to whom they were awarding points. She said:

  ‘What have you been doing today, Perry?’

  ‘Going through my old home, actually,’ I said. ‘I’ve been snuffling around in the Gothic wing.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Sybilla, brightening up. ‘And did you find anything? Make any Holmesian discoveries? I have wondered whether your father didn’t have some fascinating but not entirely reputable secrets that he did not see fit to confide even to us.’

  ‘If he did, I found out nothing about them,’ I said. ‘As a matter of fact, I was thinking most of the time more about my mother than my father.’

  At this sudden mention of our mother, I saw Cristobel react—something between a blink and a flinch. But Sybilla ploughed on:

  ‘Your mother! How extraordinary! You know, I’d really forgotten all about your mother, though of course I knew you had one. You know, she was a case in point to what we’ve just been talking about. Charming woman, but not a grain of aesthetic feeling in her body. Sometimes it was difficult to remember she was there, when we were all talking!’

  ‘She was always nice to me,’ said Kate.

  ‘I’m sure we’re all nice to you, Kate dear. I don’t see the point of that remark. I suppose, Peregrine, you’ve been sitting up there thinking that your father was a bad husband to poor Virginia, and no doubt you’re right in a way, but the fact is that a little neglect was all your mother asked for, she just wanted to be left alone, so it worked out quite for the best for all parties.’

  ‘All the Trethowans make terrible husbands,’ pronounced Lawrence complacently. ‘Except m’father. And he was a fool.
’

  It was at this point that once again the sort of noise that must have assailed Davy Crockett’s ears as the Alamo fell sounded from a far corner of the house and came threateningly nearer. Daniel’s eyes (which had been gazing with mildly contemptuous curiosity at the present company) now grew round with fear, and he clutched convulsively to his mother’s skirts. I went and took his hand as the infant Assyrians burst in like wolves on the fold, and once more threw themselves, screaming and pummelling each other the while, into the lap of their fond grandfather.

  Today it wasn’t sweets they were after. They had something much more novel in their appalling little heads. As they climbed all over Lawrence’s chair they screamed: ‘G’anpa, we fought the policeman,’ and ‘G’anpa, he tried to beat me up, but I hit him back,’ all crowned by the oldest boy, who let out a great crow of ‘We won! We ground him in the dust!’

  This din of claim and counterclaim, complaint and rodomontade, went on for some minutes, during which Peter and Maria-Luisa sauntered in, nodded to Jan (not even that, actually, on Maria-Luisa’s part) and helped themselves to drink. Lawrence was drooling (literally: there was dribble coming down from the side of his mouth) over his monstrous grandchildren, telling them how clever they’d been, how the idea of questioning little children was scandalous, how he’d see some questions were asked in the right quarters, and so on, until finally, by some unspoken collective decision, they swarmed off him again and went to dispute in a far corner as to who had hit the policeman the hardest. Only then did Daniel, wonderingly, come out from behind Jan’s skirts and my leg.