A Judgement in Stone

by Ruth Rendell

  “ ‘To my beloved wife, Jacqueline Louise Coverdale,’ ” she read aloud, “ ‘the whole of my property known as Lowfield Hall, Greeving, in the County of Suffolk, unencumbered, and to be hers and her heirs’ and successors’ in perpetuity.’ Oh, darling, ‘beloved wife’! I’m glad you put that.”

  “What else?” said George.

  “But shouldn’t it just be for my life? I’ve got all the money Daddy left me and what I got for my house, and there’d be your life assurance.”

  “Yes, and that’s why I’ve willed all my investments to the girls and Peter. But I want you to have the house, you love it so. Besides, I hate those pettifogging arrangements where the widow only gets a life interest. She’s a non-paying tenant to a bunch of people who can’t wait for her to die.”

  “Your children wouldn’t be like that.”

  “I don’t think they would, Jackie, but the will stands. If you predecease me, I’ve directed that the Hall is to be sold after my death and the proceeds divided between my heirs.”

  Jacqueline looked up at him. “I hope I do.”

  “Hope you do what, darling?”

  “Die first. That’s what I mind about your being older than me, that you’re almost certain to die first. I might be a widow for years, I can’t bear the thought of it, I can’t imagine a single day without you.”

  George kissed her. “Let’s not talk of wills and graves and epitaphs,” he said, so they talked about the parish council meeting instead, and fund raising for the new village hall, and Jacqueline forgot the hope she had expressed.

  It was not destined to be gratified, though she was to be a widow for only fifteen minutes.

  12

  The Epiphany Temple in Nunchester is on North Hill just above the cattle market. Therefore it is not necessary when driving there from Greeving to pass through the town, and Joan Smith could make the journey in twenty minutes. Eunice enjoyed the Sunday night meetings. Hymn sheets were provided, but as anyone knows who has tried to give the impression that he has the Church of England morning service off by heart (actually to use the Prayer Book being to betray unpardonable ignorance) it is quite easy to mouth what other people are mouthing and muffle one’s lack of knowledge in folded hands brought to the lips. Besides, Eunice had only to hear a hymn once to know it forever, and soon, in her strong contralto, she was singing with the best of them:

  “Gold is the colour of our Lord above,

  And frankincense the perfume of His love;

  Myrrh is the ointment which, with might and main,

  He pours down from heaven to heal us of our pain.”

  Elroy Camps was no Herbert or Keble.

  After the hymns and some spontaneous confessing—almost as good as television, this bit—the brethren had tea and biscuits and watched films about black or brown Epiphany People struggling on in remote places (in partibus infidelium, as it were) or delivering the Epistle of Balthasar to famine-stricken persons too weak to resist. Also there was friendly gossip, mostly about worldly people who hadn’t seen the light, but uttered in a pious way and shoving the onus of censure and blame off onto God. Certainly the brethren honoured the precept of “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

  On the whole, they were and are a jolly lot. They sing and laugh and enter with gusto into their own confessions and those of new converts. They talk of God as if He were a trendy headmaster who likes the senior boys to call Him by His Christian name. Their hymns are not unlike pop songs and their tracts are lively with comic strips. The idea of the elect being Wise Men who follow a star is not a bad one. The Camps cult would probably have been latched onto by young people of the Jesus freak kind but for its two insuperable drawbacks distasteful to anyone under forty—and to most people over forty, come to that. One is its total embargo on sexual activity, whether the parties are married or not; the other its emphasis on vengeance against the infidel, which means any non-Epiphany Person, a vengeance that is not necessarily left to God but may be carried out by the chosen as His instruments. In practice, of course, the brethren do not go about beating up their heretical neighbours, but the general impression is that if they do they will be praised rather than censured. After all, if God is their headmaster, they are all prefects.

  Eunice absorbed little of this doctrine which, in any case, was implicit rather than proclaimed. She enjoyed the social life, almost the first she had ever known. The brethren were her contemporaries or her seniors; no one questioned her or attempted to interfere unpleasantly with her life or manipulated her into corners where she would be expected to read. They were friendly and cajoling and liberal with tea and biscuits and fruit cake because, of course, they saw her as a future convert. But Eunice was determined never to convert, and for her usual reason for not doing something. She wouldn’t have minded the confessing because she would have confessed nothing beyond the usual run of evil thoughts and ambitions, but once she had taken that step she would be obliged to make the duty calls. And she knew only too well from her visits with Joan what that entailed. Reading. Drawing the attention of the visited to points in Follow My Star, picking appropriate bits out of the Bible, arguing with frequent reference to the printed word.

  “I’ll think about it,” she said in her ponderous way when Joan pressed her. “It’s a big step.”

  “A step towards Bethlehem which you would never regret. The Son of Man cometh like a thief in the night, but the foolish virgin has let her lamp go out. Remember that, Eun.”

  This exchange took place one raw damp afternoon when Eunice had walked down to the village store for a cup of tea, a chat, and to collect her week’s supply of chocolate bars which had again become an indispensable part of her diet. As they came out of the shop together, Jacqueline also came out of Mrs. Cairne’s house where she had been on some Women’s Institute matter. They didn’t notice her, but she saw them, and although Joan came only as far as the triangle of turf, it was obvious that what was taking place was no ordinary farewell of shopkeeper to customer. Joan was laughing in her shrill way, and while doing so she stuck out her hand and gave Eunice one of those playful pushes on the arm women of her kind do give to women friends in the course of making a joking reproof. Then Eunice walked off in the direction of the Hall, turning twice to wave to Joan, who waved back quite frenziedly.

  Jacqueline started her car and caught Eunice up just beyond the bridge.

  “I didn’t know you were friendly with Mrs. Smith,” she said when Eunice, somewhat reluctantly, had got in beside her.

  “I see a bit of her,” said Eunice.

  There seemed no answer to make to this. Jacqueline felt she couldn’t very well dictate to her housekeeper as to whom she chose for her friends. Not in these days. It wasn’t Eunice’s afternoon off, but they had all forgotten about those prescribed afternoons and evenings off since their holiday. She went out when she chose. After all, why not? It wasn’t as if she neglected her duties at Lowfield Hall, far from it. But Jacqueline, who until now had had no fault to find with her housekeeper, who had been aghast when George, five months before, voiced faint qualms, was suddenly made uncomfortable. Eunice sat beside her, eating chocolates. She didn’t eat them noisily or messily, but wasn’t it odd that she should be eating them at all, munching silently and not offering the bag? Nothing would have induced Jacqueline to eat a chocolate under any circumstances, but still … And hobnobbing with Mrs. Smith as if they were fast friends? Some awareness that George, if told of it, would concur rather too emphatically in her own view stopped her mentioning it to him.

  Instead, with her own particular brand of feminine perverseness, she praised Eunice to the skies that evening, pointing out how beautifully all the silver was polished.

  In Galwich, Melinda Coverdale, wise or foolish, had surrendered her virginity to Jonathan Dexter. It happened after they had shared a bottle of wine in his room and Melinda had missed the last bus. Of course, the wine and the bus were not accidental happenings.
Both had been inwardly speculating about them all the evening, but they were handy excuses for Melinda next day. She hardly needed consolation, though, for she was very happy, seeing Jonathan every day and spending most nights in his room. Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon and Baugh on the history of the English language weren’t so much as glanced at for a fortnight, and as for Goethe, Jonathan had found his Elective Affinities elsewhere.

  At Lowfield Hall Jacqueline had made four Christmas puddings, one of which would be sent to the Caswalls, who couldn’t face the upheaval of bringing two infants to Greeving for the holiday. She wondered what to buy for George, but George had everything—and so had she. Eunice watched her ice the Christmas cake, and Jacqueline waited for her to make some remark, reminiscing or sentimental, when the plaster Santa Claus, the robins, and the holly leaves were fixed to the frosting, but Eunice said merely that she hoped the cake would be large enough, and she only said that when asked for her opinion.

  Disillusionment over India had killed oriental religion for Giles. It would never, anyway, have fitted in with his plans for himself and Melinda. He saw them sharing their flat, devout Catholics both, but going through agonies to maintain their chaste and continent condition. Perhaps he would become a priest, and if Melinda were to enter a convent they might—say twice a year—have special dispensations to meet and, soberly garbed, have tea together in some humble café, not daring to touch hands. Or like Lancelot and Guinevere, but without the preceding pleasures, encounter each other across a cathedral nave, gaze long and long, then part without a word. Even to him, this fantasy seemed somewhat extreme. Before becoming a priest he must become a Catholic, and he was looking around Stantwich for someone to give him instruction. Latin and Greek would now have their uses, so Virgil and Sophocles received more attention. He put that line from Chesterton up on the wall, the bit about the twitch upon the thread, and he was reading Newman.

  Winter had stripped bare the woods and the hedges, and screaming gulls followed Mr. Meadows’ plough. The magical light of Suffolk became wan and opalescent, and the sky, as the earth turned its farthest from the sun, almost green with a streaking of long butter-coloured clouds. Blood is nipped and ways be foul and nightly sings the staring owl. From cottage chimneys the smoke of log fires rose in long grey plumes.

  “What are you doing for our Lord’s nativity?” said Joan in the tone of someone asking a friend to a birthday party.

  “Pardon?” said Eunice.

  “Christmas.”

  “Stopping at the Hall. They’ve got folks coming.”

  “It does seem a shame you having to spend the Lord’s birthday among a bunch of sinners. There’s nothing to choose between the lot of them. Mrs. Higgs that rides the bike, she told Norm that Giles is consorting with Catholic priests. God doesn’t want you contaminated by the likes of that, dear.”

  “He’s only a bit of a boy,” said Eunice.

  “You can’t say that about his adulterous stepfather. Coming in here and accusing Norm of tampering with his post! Oh, how far will the infidel go in his persecution of the elect! Why don’t you come to us? We’ll be very quiet, of course, but I think I can guarantee you a goodly reflection and the company of loving friends.”

  Eunice said she would. They were drinking tea at the time in Joan’s squalid parlour, and the third loving friend, in the shape of Norman Smith, came in looking for his dinner. Instead of fetching it, Joan went off into a repetition of her confession which the slightest mention of others who had offended in a similar, or assumed by her to be similar, way was likely to evoke.

  “You’ve led a pure life, Eun, so you can’t know what mine has been, delivering up my body, the temple of the Lord, to the riffraff of Shepherds Bush. Submitting myself unheeding to the filth of their demands, every kind of disgusting desire which I wouldn’t name to a single lady agreed to for the sake of the hard cash that my husband couldn’t adequately provide.”

  Courage came at last to Norman. He had had two whiskies in the Blue Boar. He advanced on Joan and hit her in the face. She was a very small woman, and she fell off her chair, making glugging noises.

  Eunice rose ponderously to her feet. She went up to Norman and took him by the throat. She held the chicken skin of his throat as she might hold a hank of wool, and she laid her other hand hard on his shoulder.

  “You leave her alone.”

  “I’ve got to listen to that, have I?”

  “If you don’t want me shaking the life out of you.” Eunice suited the action to the threat. It was for her a wholly delightful experience and one which she vaguely wondered she hadn’t indulged in before. Norman cringed and shuddered as she shook him, his eyes popped and his mouth fell open.

  Joan’s trust in her as a bodyguard had been justified.

  She sat up and said dramatically, “With God’s help, you have saved my life!”

  “Load of rubbish,” said Norman. He broke free and stood rubbing his throat. “You make me sick, the pair of you. Couple of old witches.”

  Joan crawled back into her chair to examine her injuries, a ladder in one of her stockings and what would develop into a mild black eye. Norman hadn’t really hurt her. He was too feeble and, basically, too frightened of her to do that. Nor had she struck her head when she fell. But something happened to her as the result of that weak blow and that fall. Psychological perhaps, rather than physical—and connected also with the glandular changes of the menopause? Whatever it was, Joan was altered. It was gradual, of course, it hardly showed itself on that evening except in a brighter glitter in her eyes and shriller note to her voice. But that evening was the beginning of it. She had reached the edge of a pit in which was nothing short of raving madness, and she teetered there on the brink until, two months later, whipped-up fanaticism toppled her over.

  13

  “We’ll go in the front way,” said Eunice, back from the Epiphany meeting. She sensed that Joan would be unwelcome at the Hall, though Joan had never told her so, had, on the contrary, at the time of her first visit said that the Coverdales would not object to her exploring their house because “we’re all friends in this village.” She had never heard from George or Jacqueline a hint of their suspicions as to their post, but somehow, by means of her peculiar and often unreliable intuition, she knew. Just as she was aware that, had she brought home with her Mrs. Higgs of bicycle fame or Mrs. Jim Meadows, these ladies would have been graciously received by any Coverdale who chanced to see them.

  Joan didn’t mean to stop long, having only come to have her measurements taken for some secret plan of Eunice’s to do with a Christmas present. They were already on the top flight when Giles’s bedroom door opened and he came out.

  “Looks as if he was backward to me,” said Joan in Eunice’s room. She flounced out of her white coat. “Bit retarded, if you know what I mean.”

  “He won’t say a word,” said Eunice.

  But there she was wrong.

  Giles wouldn’t have said a word if he hadn’t been asked. That wasn’t his way. He had gone downstairs to fetch his Greek dictionary, which he thought he had left in the morning room. There he found his mother alone, watching a concert of chamber music on the television. George had gone out for half an hour to discuss with the brigadier how to counter a proposal to build four new houses on a piece of land near the river bridge.

  Jacqueline looked up and smiled. “Oh, darling,” she said, “it’s you.”

  “Mm,” said Giles, groping under a pile of Sunday papers for his Liddell and Scott.

  “I thought I heard someone on the stairs, but I imagined it was Miss Parchman coming in.”

  Occasionally it flashed across Giles’s brain that he ought, say once a day, to utter a whole sentence rather than a monosyllable to his mother. He was quite fond of her really. So he forced himself. He stood up, spiky-haired, spotty, myopic, the mad young professor weighted down by a learned tome.

  “You did,” he said in his vague abstracted way, “with that old woman from the shop.” />
  “What old woman? What on earth do you mean, Giles?”

  Giles didn’t know the names of anyone in the village. He never went there if he could help it. “The lunatic woman with the yellow hair,” he said.

  “Mrs. Smith?”

  Giles nodded and wandered off towards the door, his dictionary already open, muttering something that sounded to Jacqueline like “anathema, anathema.” Her patience with him snapped. Briefly she forgot what he had said, or the significance of it.

  “Oh, Giles darling, you must not call people lunatics. Giles, wait a minute, please. Couldn’t you possibly stop down here with us sometimes in the evenings? I mean, you can’t have that much homework, and you know you can do it with your eyes shut. You’re turning into a hermit, you’ll get like that man who sat on top of a pillar!”

  He nodded again. The admonition, the request, the flattery, passed over him unheard. He considered very seriously, rubbing one of his spots.

  At last he said, “St. Simeon Stylites,” and walked slowly out, leaving the door open.

  Exasperated, Jacqueline slammed it. For a while, her concert being over, she sat thinking how much she loved her son, how proud she was of his scholastic attainments, how ambitious for him—and how much happier she would have been had he been more like George’s children. And then, because it was useless trying to do anything about Giles, who would surely one day become normal and nice, she returned to what he had said. Joan Smith. But before she could dwell much on it, George came in.

  “Well, I think we shall put a spoke in their wheel. Either this place is scheduled as an Area of Natural Beauty or else it isn’t. If it comes to a public enquiry we shall all have to get together and brief counsel. You say the parish council are very much opposed?”

  “Yes,” said Jacqueline. “George, Mrs. Smith from the store is upstairs. She came in with Miss Parchman.”