The Judgement of Strangers

by Taylor, Andrew

‘I suppose it may cause problems with the book.’

  ‘It’s not just that.’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  Vanessa glared at me. She said, ‘Oh God,’ and began to cry quietly. I sat down beside her on the bed and put my arms around her. She leant against me. I hugged her, feeling her warmth. Desire stirred inside me and began to uncoil. Gradually she relaxed, and the tears stopped.

  I stroked her back, running my fingertips down the knobs of her spine. How many weeks was it since we last made love?

  ‘Vanessa?’

  She pulled herself gently away from me. ‘I need to blow my nose,’ she said. ‘And then I really must do something about supper.’

  24

  On Tuesday morning, I waited until I had the house to myself.

  Vanessa went to work. Half an hour later, Rosemary left to catch a bus – she was going into London to spend the day with a schoolfriend. Michael had already gone to spend the day with the Vintners. He and Brian had an ambitious project to build a tree house in the back garden. I had two hours before my first engagement of the day, a routine meeting with the diocesan surveyor.

  When I was alone, I went into the study, shut the door and telephoned Roth Park. I wondered if I had a temperature. I felt unlike myself – excited, and almost furtive. I let the phone ring on. I was on the verge of hanging up when Joanna answered.

  I apologized for disturbing her and asked if we could use the drive as an overflow car park at the fete.

  ‘Of course you can. You can park anywhere you like.’ It was almost ten o’clock yet she sounded half asleep. ‘It’s not exactly going to harm the lawn or damage the flowers.’

  ‘Should I check with Toby that it’s all right for us to park in the drive?’

  ‘Toby’s not here. Anyway, it’s nothing to do with him.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘It’s my house,’ Joanna said, her voice suddenly distorted as though she were yawning. ‘My land. Nothing to do with Toby.’

  ‘I see. I wonder – would it be convenient for me to walk up the drive and estimate how many cars there’d be room for. Audrey Oliphant feels it’s important to have a good idea.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘If it’s not inconvenient.’

  ‘You know the oak trees near the paddock?’ she asked. ‘I’ll be there in about ten minutes.’

  I hesitated too long. ‘There’s no need for you to come.’

  ‘I’d like some air. Besides, I – I need to see where the parking will be. Just in case there’s a problem.’

  We said goodbye and I put down the phone. I observed my own symptoms with a proper scholarly detachment: with perfect propriety, I was making arrangements for the church fete; yet I felt guilty: almost as though I had arranged a furtive assignation.

  It was a sunny morning, a relatively rare occurrence in that dreary August. I strolled through the churchyard and into Roth Park. A moment later I reached the oaks. I leant against a tree trunk and smoked a cigarette. From where I was standing I could see the rutted drive; I followed it with my eye as it curved round the hillock which concealed the house. It was very peaceful. Such moments of leisure were a rarity in my life. The only things moving were the smoke from my cigarette and a few wispy, almost transparent shreds of cloud high in the blue sky. In the real country, there would have been birds, and there would not have been the omnipresent rumble of traffic. But for the time being this would do very well.

  Then I saw Joanna on the drive. She raised her hand in greeting and I waved back. I threw away my cigarette and watched her approaching. She wore a thin cotton dress which came down almost to her ankles. Her hair was loose. As she drew closer, I saw that her feet were bare. Closer still, I saw that she wore no make-up and her eyes were smudged with tiredness. She looked up at me with those green eyes with their dark rims and their fragmented depths, shifting like a kaleidoscope. For a moment I did not know what to say. All I knew was that I should not have come. I was in danger. Joanna was in danger, too.

  ‘Can I scrounge a fag?’

  I gave her a cigarette and lit it for her. She touched my hand, quite unself-consciously, to steady the flame. That was good, I told myself: if she had been aware of what I was feeling, she would have avoided touching me.

  ‘I must get some more from Malik’s,’ she said. ‘Typical Toby. Drove off this morning with the last packet of cigarettes in the house.’

  ‘Where’s he gone?’

  She shrugged, then yawned. ‘Sorry. Can’t stop yawning this morning.’

  ‘Didn’t you sleep well?’

  She smiled, slyly. ‘I tried not to sleep at all.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I wanted to find out if the ghost would come back. You remember? The footsteps? So I took something to help me stay awake and I waited. But nothing happened. Except I grew more and more scared.’ She turned aside to stub out the half-smoked cigarette on the bark of a tree. ‘I didn’t see anything, or hear anything. But I felt something.’ She swung back to face me. ‘Something waiting. Silly, isn’t it?’

  ‘Fear isn’t silly. It’s frightening.’

  She nodded.

  ‘What about Toby?’

  ‘What about him? As far as I know he slept all night. I heard the car start up a little after nine. Off he went. No note, no cigarettes.’

  ‘Did he know you were staying awake?’

  ‘He’d have laughed at me. Especially after the fuss I made the other night.’

  I wasn’t sure whether she liked or disliked her brother. ‘Perhaps the other night was a bad dream. Sometimes one can have these dreams between sleeping and waking.’

  She shook her head vigorously. ‘David – could you do something about it? Say some special prayers. What do you call it? Exorcism?’

  ‘I could come and say some prayers, if you wanted.’

  ‘Would you? It can’t do any harm.’

  I felt my hackles rising. ‘It can only do good.’

  ‘Oh God – I’m sorry. And I didn’t mean to say that, either.’ She looked so contrite standing there in the dappled shade of the trees. ‘Double sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right. Do you want to do it now?’

  ‘Don’t you need equipment?’

  ‘The candle, book and bell?’ I smiled at her. ‘We save those for special occasions. To be honest, I don’t know much about exorcisms. I think the diocese might have an official exorcist, who goes where the bishop tells him. But full-dress exorcisms are very rare these days. Something less formal will often do the trick just as well.’

  She giggled. ‘You make it sound so normal.’

  ‘In a sense it is.’

  We walked up the drive to the house. Joanna speculated about the number of cars they could fit in. ‘At least another fifty if we use the bit outside the front door.’ While she was talking, I told myself that I was only doing my duty: my duty as a priest. We reached the dry fountain commemorating the visit of Queen Adelaide. Joanna stopped and leaned against the worn stone of the basin. She stared up at the facade of the house.

  ‘Ugly place, isn’t it?’

  ‘Why did you buy it, then?’

  ‘Toby wanted to.’ She glanced up at me through long lashes, as if assessing the effect of her words. ‘He can be very persuasive. He said it would be a good investment. He said I needed to get away from London.’ Suddenly her voice rose, and she turned to face me. ‘He’s told you, hasn’t he?’

  ‘He told me that your mother committed suicide,’ I said. ‘And that you found the body.’

  For a long moment we stared at each other. Then she dropped her eyes.

  ‘Did he tell you that after that I was ill?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s not true. I wasn’t ill. He likes to tell people I’ve had a nervous breakdown. He likes to hint I’m mad. I bet he’s done it with you.’ She paused, but I said nothing. She went on, speaking slowly and carefully: ‘He gives the impression that he’s looking after me out of the kindnes
s of his heart. That without him I’d just fall apart. That I’m something fragile that he has to treat very carefully.’

  ‘And you’re not?’

  ‘Do I look fragile?’ she demanded.

  I shook my head. Yet you hear ghosts. ‘Then why does he do it?’

  ‘I told you. He likes to. It makes him feel good.’ She shivered. ‘Let’s go inside and get this over with.’

  We walked towards the front door, our footsteps loud on the gravel. The door closed behind us with a dull boom like distant thunder. The house was cool and silent.

  Joanna said, ‘Should I offer you coffee or something?’

  ‘No. This isn’t a social call.’

  She looked at me again – why did she keep on looking at me? – and I hoped that she could not see too far. There’s no fool like a middle-aged fool: old enough to know better, and young enough to do something about it.

  I followed her upstairs, watching her dress frothing and whispering above her ankles. At the mezzanine level there was a window, and as Joanna walked past it, with the light beyond her, her body was outlined through the dress, just as Vanessa’s had been all those months ago at the Trasks’ party. History has a habit of almost repeating itself, like the pattern in a hand-woven carpet.

  ‘It’s quite a long walk,’ Joanna said over her shoulder. ‘I’m glad I wasn’t a maid in those days. It must have been sheer hell.’

  ‘I’ve never been upstairs before.’ I wanted to bite the words back. They seemed loaded with hidden meanings.

  We reached the main landing. A long corridor stretched into the heart of the house, its boards uncarpeted, the plaster bulging and cracking on walls like a relief map of the desert.

  ‘It’s less posh than downstairs,’ Joanna said. ‘I reckon the Youlgreaves ran out of money.’ We walked together down the corridor, our footsteps setting up a drumming in the silence. ‘I don’t know why they needed a house this big. It’s stupid. I’d much rather live somewhere smaller.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  She shrugged.

  I wanted to ask: Has Toby some way of keeping you here? Why did you buy this house for him? But of course I did not.

  ‘Mind the hole,’ Joanna said, steering me round it. ‘Toby put his foot through there the other morning. Woodworm.’

  ‘Are you going to start renovating soon?’

  ‘We need more money. Toby wants to find an investor.’ She glanced at me. ‘When Dad died, the money was left in trust to Toby and me. Mum had the use of it while she was alive. But Toby borrowed against it; he had this company which was importing stuff from India. But it didn’t work out. When Mum died, he had to use his share to pay off his debts.’

  I felt rather embarrassed. Englishmen do not like talking about money. Joanna stopped at a door near the end of the corridor. ‘We’re in the tower bit now.’ She opened the door and we went into a large square room with windows on three sides. ‘I always wanted to live in a tower.’ She led the way to another door in the corner. Beyond it was a spiral staircase with uncarpeted wooden treads. The stairs were lit by narrow windows like anachronistic arrow slits designed with dwarfs in mind. ‘I’m on the floor above. And the floor above that is the top room. Francis Youlgreave’s room.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Toby.’ She was already climbing the stairs and her voice floated down to me. ‘He mentioned it again last night.’

  To scare her?

  We came to an open door. My first impression was that emptiness and light lay beyond it. The room was square, with a round-headed sash window in each wall. The wallpaper – stylized golden tulips on a faded blue background, perhaps as old as the house – was beginning to part company from the walls. In the opposite corner from the door was a plain, cast-iron fireplace, the grate littered with cigarette ends and ash. A carpet designed for a suburban sitting room filled about a third of the floor; the rest was bare boards. On the carpet, as if on a castaway’s raft, were Joanna’s belongings – a mattress, the radio I had seen her with on the terrace, a green trunk, a pair of suitcases, an archipelago of discarded clothes, an ornate walnut-veneered dressing table with a tall mirror attached to it. The top of the dressing table was littered with cosmetics, paperbacks and an overflowing ashtray. The room smelled of a powerful, crude perfume, which overlaid another smell, sweet and spicy, reminding me of Indian food.

  ‘It’s a bit of a tip, I’m afraid.’ Joanna gave me a crooked smile – one corner of her mouth turned up and the other turned down. ‘If I’d known you were coming, I’d have done something about it.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  The bedroom was like a glimpse behind a drawn curtain. Rosemary and Vanessa were both tidy people. Their bedrooms showed only that they disliked clutter and knew how to control it. Joanna’s made a present of her personality to a visitor, and I was touched. For a moment I felt young and full of daring. For a moment it amused me to imagine what Audrey Oliphant or Cynthia Trask would make of my situation.

  I walked to the window and looked down on the drive, on the roof of the canopy over the front door with its slipped slates and its outcrops of moss like green pimples. The knowledge of my indiscretion sank in: a middle-aged clergyman alone with an attractive young woman in her bedroom. I turned back, eager to finish what had been started. Joanna was still standing just inside the doorway, watching me.

  ‘What will you do?’ she asked.

  ‘Just say a prayer.’

  ‘OK.’

  I fancied that she looked disappointed, as if she had been hoping for something more dramatic. She bowed her head and I prayed for the room to be filled with God’s peace. Then I invited Joanna to join me in the Lord’s Prayer. Her voice stumbled softly after mine, like a distant echo.

  When it was over, she said, ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Yes. Shall we go upstairs?’

  She nodded, and without a word slipped out of the room. I followed her up the spiral staircase. Our footsteps thudded on the bare wood. I kept my eyes on Joanna’s ankles, pale and flickering before me. At the top was a tiny landing, barely large enough for one person, and a closed door. It seemed colder to me here than it had been on the floor below.

  Joanna twisted the handle and pushed open the door. The room was a copy of hers – the same dimensions, the same round-headed sash windows, the same cast-iron fireplace. One of the windows was slightly open – the one overlooking the canopy and the fountain; and I had the foolish thought that this must have been the one from which Francis Youlgreave jumped into the arms of his angel. The wallpaper was modern – flowers once more, but psychedelic daisies in turquoise and orange.

  I moved slowly into the centre of the room. It was empty – no furniture, no carpet, no dust on the bare boards. Francis Youlgreave had left behind him a vacuum, waiting to be filled.

  ‘Well?’ Joanna was standing by the fireplace, the fingers of her right hand kneading the flesh of her left forearm. ‘What do you think? Can you feel anything?’

  ‘No.’ The room was merely a room, somehow incomplete like all unused rooms, but nothing more than that. ‘Can you?’

  ‘I don’t know what I feel any more.’

  Suddenly I wanted to be gone – away from this house and away from Joanna. In a brisk voice, I repeated the prayer asking for God’s peace. Once again I said the Lord’s Prayer, galloping through the familiar words with Joanna’s voice stumbling after mine. I wondered whether to say another prayer, one specifically for Francis Youlgreave. I glanced at Joanna. She was still clutching her arm, but the fingers were still. Her eyes met mine. She stared at me as if I were a stranger – or, for that matter, a ghost.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’

  She took a step towards me, stopped and looked over her shoulder. ‘I thought I heard someone crying. A child.’ She held up a hand, and for thirty seconds we listened to the silence. Then she shook her head. ‘It’s stopped.’ She took a step towards me, and then an
other, and another; her feet faltered; as if each footstep required a separate decision, and as if sometimes the decisions were unwelcome. She stopped a few feet away from me and raised her face to mine. ‘Do you think I imagined it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I wished she would look away from me. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Do you think I’m mad?’

  ‘Of course you’re not.’ I took a step backwards. ‘Now –’

  ‘David,’ she interrupted.

  I looked at her. Once, years ago, driving late on a winter night across the Fens to Rosington, I almost ran over a young badger who was playing in the middle of the road. The car went into a skid but stopped in time. For a long moment the badger did not move: he stared into the beam of my headlights.

  ‘It’s so strange …’ Joanna whispered.

  Another silence grew between us, and I did not know how long it went on for. What was so strange? This house? The crying child? Francis Youlgreave? Or even the two of us alone in this room?

  We did not move. There was a hair on Joanna’s cheek, and I wanted desperately to brush it away. Then I heard, or thought I heard, the beating of distant wings on the edge of my hearing. In my mind I saw the badger abruptly recollecting himself and stumbling into the darkness of the verge.

  ‘I must go. Goodbye.’

  Without another word, I scuttled out of the room and almost ran down the stairs.

  25

  The inquest was at 2.30 p.m. on Wednesday the 19th August. I myself was not called as a witness, but I drove Doris Potter there.

  The proceedings did not take long. The coroner was an elderly doctor named Chilbert, a sharp man who kept glancing at his watch as if impatient to be gone. There was a jury of seven men and three women – two in their twenties, two in their sixties, and the remainder scattered between; the only thing they had in common was an expression of wary self-consciousness, but even that wore off as the proceedings continued.

  Dr Vintner was the first witness to be called. He gave evidence of Lady Youlgreave’s identity. Then Chilbert took him through her recent medical history. James had seen a good deal of her because she had a terminal malignancy – breast cancer. It was clear that he thought she could have died at any time in the last few months. He described how he had tried and failed to persuade her to move into a nursing home. Her mind had been increasingly confused, he said, because of the morphine. It was true that osteoarthritis of the shoulders had made it impossible for her to raise her arms. But she had been quite capable of forgetting that she could not reach the bottle on the mantelpiece.