The Unburied

by Charles Palliser

  ‘As I have said, my wife was young, beautiful and she was even rich. I didn’t mention that, did I? Her mother had been a great heiress. So my wife was a wonderful prize. I was a very lucky man. And in some ways I knew it and yet at the same time I did not. My friend, the schoolmaster, stopped coming so often and on those occasions his friend – who never became a friend of mine for there was something in him I never cared for – came alone. He was handsome, charming and knew how to make himself very amusing. He had lived in exotic places and done extraordinary things. He had a little money of his own. Enough to indulge some of his tastes but not enough to live the kind of life he desired. He wrote poetry and travel sketches, and must have dazzled a young woman who had known only dusty university men. But he was unworthy of her. I felt so humiliated by her preferring him to me.’

  I had to break off for a few moments.

  ‘The worst time, I think, the worst time of all the bad times was when I suspected but did not know. It was in the last weeks of Trinity term just before the summer vacation. There was an occasion when I came home unexpectedly and happened to pass an open window and saw them in the drawing-room. They were simply looking at each other, not smiling or speaking but sitting at opposite ends of a sofa and gazing at each other with such an intensity of emotion between them that it was palpable. She seemed so sweet and innocent, and yet I believed she was planning to betray me. I started to follow her. I’m so ashamed of myself now. When she believed me to be in College I skulked about the streets near our house like a thief, waiting to see where she was going and whom she was meeting. The strangest thing was that I became frightened of her.’

  ‘Frightened?’

  ‘Yes, I mean literally afraid. She could do me so much harm. I felt I had mistaken her nature. She was not what I had fallen in love with. The innocent, sweet young girl I had loved could not have done such a cruel thing to me. By a horrible perversity, I believe my suspicions drove her into what she did. I believe I suspected the truth before there was anything to suspect, at least, before the situation had become irretrievable. But I said nothing. I found I could not speak to her about it. When at last I found out ... When I knew the truth ... For everybody in Cambridge knew the truth before I did. I was so humiliated. No, I believe I can guess what you are thinking. But it wasn’t the public shame that I can’t forgive her for. After all, I stayed on in Cambridge afterwards when I might have resigned my post and left. I found I couldn’t stay in the house, though. It frightened me. I started sleeping on a sofa in my rooms in College. After a year I gave up the house.’ Again, I had to break off for a moment or two before I was able to continue. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten what I was going to tell you.’

  ‘You were telling me about how you found out. But please don’t say any more if it would distress you.’

  ‘It came to a head in the summer vacation. The three of us – my wife and I, together with my friend, the schoolmaster – went to the coast, to Great Yarmouth in fact. She was very quiet, very sad. I feared she was missing her lover but I still was not sure of her feelings about him or what had passed between them. I kept trying to talk to her about it but I couldn’t. Then on the night before we were to return to Cambridge, I managed at last to raise the subject. To my horror – and, I suppose, my relief – she confessed. She told me the whole story. How she had believed she had been in love with me but when she had met this man she understood what passion really was. And he had returned her feelings, she said, with an intensity that she had never found in me. Though, God knows, I adored her. I suppose I lacked her new friend’s facility in expressing those feelings. She told me that our friend, the schoolmaster, seemed to have guessed from the beginning and she said that he even seemed to be encouraging them.’ I looked down at the floor. I felt there had been enough evasions. I said: ‘They had become lovers, she told me.’

  I broke off and covered my face for a moment. ‘She was not the person I had fallen in love with and married. She was not the innocent young girl I loved. That was the real deception.’

  I felt a touch on my arm and lowered my hands. Mrs Locard was looking at me solicitously. ‘Forgive me, Dr Courtine, but perhaps that was the cause of the misunderstanding between you. You believed you were married to an innocent young girl and it may be that she felt that she was no longer that – if she ever had been even when you first knew her.’

  I thought of Fickling’s cruel words about why she had married me.

  ‘Do you mean that she married me under false pretences?’

  ‘Not exactly, no. Or not deliberately. It may be that she came to feel more and more that you did not understand her true nature, that you did not see the whole of her. You wanted her to remain a sweet young girl but she was growing and learning and changing.’

  ‘And I was too immersed in my work to see that? Yes, there may be some truth in that.’

  ‘But more than that, you wanted her to stay as you imagined her to be when you first knew her. So when she told you what had happened you believed that she had betrayed you by hiding her real nature from you, and that’s quite understandable because what she did hurt you dreadfully. You think she acted simply from selfish motives but don’t you think it’s possible that she felt she was deceiving you – I mean, before she actually deceived you? She felt guilty and came to believe that it would end in unhappiness for both of you?’

  ‘Someone said something rather like that to me very recently. Is it possible that in some perverse way I wanted her to betray me in order to feel superior? To feel like a heroic martyr?’

  ‘There are people who invite betrayal. They are demanding towards themselves and don’t realize how hard they are on other people. They make it difficult for others not to fail them. And in some cases they even take a grim pleasure from being let down. But that’s not the same as saying they want to be betrayed.’

  ‘I believed I was being kind and fatherly to her. I was so much older than she.’

  ‘But if I’m right, Dr Courtine, that was part of the difficulty. You did not treat her in the way she wanted. And perhaps the other man did because he talked to her as an adult woman and an equal. And so she felt that her true self was engaged with him and only a false self with you.’

  I was not sure I was understanding her. Seeing my perplexity, Mrs Locard said: ‘May I ask if, when she made that admission that night in Great Yarmouth, she was asking you for a separation?’

  ‘No. She said she knew that what she had done was wrong. She had broken off relations with her lover. She wanted us to remain husband and wife. She wanted it to be as it had been before.’

  ‘Then did you refuse?’

  ‘I neither refused nor agreed. I found that I was unable to give her an answer. I knew that despite what she said, everything was changed utterly. I could never trust her again. She was not the innocent, guileless girl I had married. If she could inflict such misery on me, she could not love me. And it was worse than that. I now doubted that she had ever loved me. I asked myself if she had only pretended to love me? Had she always found me dull and plain? The situation continued like that and, hardly speaking, we returned to Cambridge. Her lover was sending messages to her every day. Several times a day. He was urging her to go abroad with him. This was now the middle of August.’

  When I stopped Mrs Locard said mildly: ‘And then?’

  ‘Then nothing. I was in a turmoil of emotions and yet I could not express anything to her. I recoiled from her when she tried to touch me. We haunted the house like two ghosts. After ten days she went to her lover. I have not seen or heard from her since then. For some years I’ve been letting people assume that I am a widower. It’s not entirely a lie for she is dead to me, but she is alive and is still my wife. They are living in Florence – or were when I last heard news of them.’

  ‘Yet you are not divorced?’

  I shook my head. ‘A private separation was arranged through our lawyers. She has her fortune back in her own hands. I wanted no part of it. He
r lover is now able to live the kind of life he has always wanted.’

  ‘She has not asked for a divorce so that they can marry?’

  ‘Yes, but I have refused because I am not prepared to legitimize a relationship founded on betrayal.’ My voice quavered on those last words. How pompous I sounded now that I had actually uttered the phrase I had used so often to myself.

  ‘I can see how painful it still is for you. It was wrong of me to question you.’

  ‘No, no, on the contrary. It’s a relief to tell someone about it at last. I’m not usually like this. Everything that’s happened in the last few days ... And something I didn’t know.’ I turned away from her and said: ‘They have a daughter. I have just learnt that and it has brought it all back. She is now fifteen. She was the child we should have had. I had no notion that such a child existed. Fickling told me because he wanted to wound me.’ As soon as the words were out of my mouth I realized that I had revealed that it was Fickling who had been the intermediary, but I imagined she had already guessed that.

  ‘It’s understandable that that should have upset you. Poor Mr Fickling has many reasons for being unhappy and wanting to make others the same. But I’m sure you don’t believe that they had the child just to inflict pain on you.’

  ‘Oh no, I’m not as self-obsessed as that.’

  She hesitated for a moment. ‘It might be easier for you if I say something which sounds cruel. I wonder if I should say it?’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘When someone has wounded us by rejecting us, we think they have acted from a desire to hurt us and that they are continuing to do us harm. And that is painful. But we find the thought of their malice is strangely reassuring because it at least implies that they are still interested in us. But the truth is nearly always that the harm was not the main point but an incidental effect. The truth is often that the other person soon feels nothing towards us. The pain we believe they are inflicting on us is something we are creating ourselves because mingled with it is a certain gratification.’

  It was difficult to accept and yet I felt the truth of it. I had gripped the memory of her like a thorn which hurt because that was preferable to losing her altogether. And then it came to me that inflicting pain on myself in that way had allowed me to continue to feel morally superior to them.

  ‘Then you think I should let them have the divorce?’

  ‘I think you should let yourself have it.’ Seeing my bewilderment she went on: ‘Wouldn’t it be best for yourself to put it all behind you? To end the difficulties for both them and you?’

  ‘For me? The fact that we are still married in the eyes of the law makes no difference to me.’

  ‘Does it not? Isn’t it rather like delaying the funeral after a death? It’s only when the burial is over that the process of grieving can begin.’

  ‘Begin? I’ve been grieving for twenty years.’

  ‘But grieving lets you eventually put the past behind you,’ she said with a smile that softened the reproach. ‘And you haven’t done that.’

  ‘You can’t leave the past behind,’ I said. ‘You are your past. As a historian, I’m bound to believe that.’

  She seemed to be searching for the right words. ‘But not granting a divorce has legal as well as emotional consequences. While it prevents them from marrying, it means that you can’t either.’

  I smiled in surprise. What an extraordinary conversation this was.

  She smiled back: ‘Why not? Gentlemen are so much more fortunate than we in being able to marry and, indeed, have children at an age when a woman’s active and useful life is judged to be over.’

  ‘That would mean forgiving them and why should they have everything and I have nothing when it is they who are guilty?’

  ‘They behaved badly – your wife and her lover and your friend – and you have every right to feel that. But I know from my own experience that we are usually harder on ourselves than on others, and so if you feel like that about them, I suspect that you blame yourself even more.’

  ‘Blame myself? Do you mean, for not being more on my guard?’

  She looked at me appraisingly.

  ‘I’m sure I wasn’t blameless. I was naive and trusting and I suppose that was because I was conceited enough to think my wife’s affection for me would remain.’

  Mrs Locard said nothing and after a moment I asked: ‘Do you think I should have forgiven her and taken her back?’

  ‘Dr Courtine, I would not dream of making that kind of judgement. But from the way you described that time, it seems you had no choice. You said you simply could not speak to her.’

  ‘I was in such a turmoil of emotions.’

  As I uttered the words I felt their inadequacy. I wanted to say more, to explain myself, to say that I could not speak because I could not reconcile the girl I loved with the woman I believed had deliberately injured me, but at that moment the door opened and Dr Locard entered. He had taken off his overcoat and hat but was carrying a wooden box the best part of a foot in length. He carefully put it down on a side-table. When he turned round he looked at us curiously and I was afraid that it was obvious that I had been upset. He poured himself some coffee while he apologized for having been away for so long.

  ‘Has anything happened, Robert?’ his wife asked.

  He made himself comfortable in front of the fire before he spoke. ‘There is very grave as well as some rather good news. The grave is that the Dean has just told me that the unfortunate Perkins was found dead early this evening.’

  His wife gasped and covered her face with her hands.

  Dr Locard gave us an account of how the young man had managed to hang himself in his cell, during which I was able to collect myself. Dr Locard made it clear that there was no suggestion that the death was anything but self-inflicted.

  ‘How could the police be so negligent?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘He leaves a wife and children, I believe. How many children does his poor widow have to bring up on her own?’ Mrs Locard asked.

  ‘The authorities have conducted themselves with a most reprehensible lack of diligence throughout this case,’ Dr Locard agreed.

  ‘I believe he had four children,’ I said to Mrs Locard.

  ‘A subscription must be got up for them,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, most certainly.’ I turned back to her husband: ‘So now we will never know the truth.’ I was aware of a feeling of guilty relief that I was spared some difficult consequences. And it occurred to me that my putting into the Dean’s hands the evidence of Sheldrick’s wrongdoing and of Slattery’s and Fickling’s blackmailing of him, had not, after all, worked against poor Perkins.

  ‘There will be no trial,’ he agreed, looking at me meaningfully. ‘Though this proves Perkins’s guilt since an innocent man does not commit suicide. I hope, however, that the truth will come out about the destruction of the will even though he is dead.’

  ‘I don’t see how.’

  ‘It depends on you, Courtine. Now more than ever. The people behind this affair must not be permitted to get away with it simply because Perkins was not man enough to take his medicine. If you will swear an affidavit in the terms we discussed earlier, justice may yet be done.’

  I said nothing and he went on: ‘You need not worry any longer about Fickling, Dr Courtine, if that is what you are concerned about. For my second piece of news is that he and Slattery have been dismissed.’

  ‘The dismissal of Fickling surprises me not at all. But I’m curious about Slattery. Is it thought that he played some role in recent events?’

  Dr Locard looked at me shrewdly. ‘What part might he have played?’

  ‘I’m not sure but I feel he must have.’

  When he saw that I was not going to say any more, he went on: ‘In strict confidence, Courtine, their dismissal is not directly related to the murder of Stonex but, rather, to an undertaking one of the canons has given the Dean this evening that he will resign on grounds of health within the next mont
h.’

  His wife looked up. ‘Canon Sheldrick?’

  Dr Locard winced. ‘I’m sure I can rely on your discretion,’ he said to me. His wife flushed. ‘Something occurred this evening which allowed the Dean to put an end to a difficult situation without unpleasant consequences.’

  ‘I won’t press you for more,’ I said with a secret feeling of pleasure at his surprise at my lack of curiosity. I wondered if he knew as much about this as I did. Did he even guess the role I had played in destroying the power that Fickling and Slattery had exercised over Sheldrick and therefore the rest of the Cathedral community?

  ‘Thorrold has sketched out what you need to say in your affidavit,’ Dr Locard said, reaching into his pocket.

  ‘Thorrold? You have seen him?’

  ‘He was, of course, consulting with the Dean in the light of this new development.’ He handed me a piece of paper. ‘This is merely an outline of the main points you would need to make. Thorrold advises that it would be better to do it with your own lawyer in Cambridge in order to avoid any appearance of collusion.’

  ‘Heaven forbid,’ I said, glancing at the document. I saw that Thorrold had written out precisely the form of words that I would need to swear to having heard old Mr Stonex utter: I intend to deposit this copy of my will with my lawyer.

  ‘Please think over the various matters that we have discussed,’ Dr Locard said.

  ‘May I have until tomorrow to decide?’

  ‘To decide?’

  ‘I mean, to decide whether I can remember Mr Stonex making that remark.’

  ‘By all means.’

  There was a brief silence. ‘I fear that Dr Sheldrick’s resignation will mean a great deal more work for you, Robert,’ Mrs Locard said.

  ‘Certainly I will have responsibility for overseeing the Choir School until a new Chancellor is instituted,’ he said, and I looked at him in surprise.