A Judgement in Stone (17 page)

“Is it worth it?” said George.

“I talked to Mary Cairne on the phone today. She said she’d put up with positive abuse, let alone dumb insolence, to have a servant like Miss P.”

George kissed his wife but couldn’t resist a dig. “Let her try it then. It’s nice to know Miss P.’ll have somewhere to go when I sack her.”

But he didn’t sack her, and on the Thursday, Thursday, February 4, something happened to distract them from their discontentment with their housekeeper.

Things were getting too much for Norman Smith. He also was snowbound with a fellow being who was uncongenial to him, only the fellow being was his wife.

Norman had often in the past told Joan she was mad, but in much the same way as Melinda Coverdale told Giles Mont he was mad. He didn’t intend to imply she was insane. But now he was sure she literally was mad. They still shared a bed. They belonged in that category of married people who share a bed without thinking about it, who would have shared a bed even if they were not on speaking terms. But often now Norman woke in the night to find Joan absent, and then he heard her in some other part of the house laughing to herself, laughing maniacally, or singing snatches of Epiphany hymns or reciting prophecies in a shrill uneven voice. She had ceased altogether to clean the house or dust the goods in the shop or sweep the shop floor. And each morning she bedizened herself in bits of bizarre clothing saved from her Shepherds Bush days, her face painted like a clown’s.

She ought to see a doctor. Norman knew quite well that she was in need of treatment for her mind. A psychiatrist was the sort of doctor she ought to see, but how to get her to one? How to go about it? Dr. Crutchley held surgery twice a week in Greeving in a couple of rooms in a converted cottage. Norman knew Joan wouldn’t go of her own volition, and he couldn’t imagine going
for
her. What, sit in that waiting room among coughing and snuffling Meadowses and Baalhams and Eleighs,
and then explain to a tired and harassed doctor that his wife sang in the night and bawled bits from the Bible at his customers and wore knee socks and short skirts like a young girl?

Besides, the worst manifestation of her madness he couldn’t confess to anyone.

Lately she seemed to think she had a right, godlike or as God’s censor, to investigate any of the mail that passed through Greeving Post Office. He couldn’t keep the mail sacks from her. He tried locking them up in the outside lavatory, but she broke the lock with a hammer. And now she was an expert at steaming open envelopes. He winced and trembled when he heard her telling Mrs. Higgs that God had punished Alan and Pat Newstead by killing their only grandchild, information Joan had culled out of a letter from the distraught father. And when she imparted to Mr. Meadows of the garage that George Coverdale was in debt to his wine merchant, he waited till the shop was empty and then he struck her in the face. Joan only screamed at him. God would have vengeance on him, God would make him a leper and an outcast who dared not show his face in the haunts of men.

This was one of her prophecies which was to prove only too true.

On Friday, February 5, when the thaw had begun and the lane between Greeving and Lowfield Hall could be negotiated without a struggle, George Coverdale walked into the village store at nine in the morning. That is, he walked in after he had banged peremptorily on the front door and fetched Norman, who was still at breakfast, out to open up.

“You’re early, Mr. Coverdale,” said Norman nervously. It was seldom that George had set foot on that threshold, and Norman knew his coming boded ill.

“In my opinion, nine is not early. It’s the time I usually reach my place of business, and if I shan’t do so this morning it’s because the matter I have to discuss with you is too serious to postpone.”

“Oh yes?” Norman might have stood up to George, but he quailed when Joan, her yellow hair in curlers, her skin-and-bone
body wrapped in a dirty red dressing gown, appeared in the doorway.

George took an envelope from his briefcase. “This letter has been opened and reseated,” he said, and he paused. It was horrible to him to think of Joan Smith spreading about the village that his wine merchant was threatening him with proceedings. And it was made all the more horrible by the fact that the letter was the result of a computer mistake. George, having paid his bill in early December when it was due, had argued the whole thing out with the retailer by phone and obtained a fulsome apology for his error. But he scorned to defend himself to these people. “There are smears of glue on the flap,” he said, “and inside I found a hair which I venture to suggest comes from the head of your wife.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” Norman muttered. He had unwittingly used Eunice Parchman’s phrasing, and this inflamed George.

“Perhaps the postmaster at Stantwich will. I intend to write to him today. I shall lay the whole matter before him, not forgetting previous occasions when I have had cause for suspicion, and I shall demand an official enquiry.”

“I can’t stop you.”

“Very true. I merely felt it was just to tell you what I mean to do so that you have warning in advance. Good morning.”

All this time Joan had said nothing. But now, as George moved towards the door, distastefully eyeing the dusty packets of cornflakes and baskets of shrunken mouldy vegetables, she darted forward like a spider or a crab homing on its prey. She stood between George and the door, against the door, her sticklike arms spread against the glass, the red wool sleeves falling back from flesh where the subcutaneous tissue had wasted away. She lifted her head and screamed at him:

“Generation of vipers! Whoremonger! Adulterous beast! Woe to the ungodly and the fornicators!”

“Let me pass, Mrs. Smith,” said George levelly. Not for nothing had he seen service under fire in the Western Desert.

“What shall be done unto thee, thou false tongue? Sharp
arrows of the mighty with coals of juniper.” Joan waved her fist in his face. “God will punish the rich man who taketh away the livelihood of the poor. God will destroy him in his high places.” Her face was suffused with blood, her eyes white with the pupils cast up.

“Will you get your wife out of my way, Mr. Smith!” said George, enraged.

Norman shrugged. He was afraid of her and powerless.

“Then I will. And if you care to sue me for assault, you’re welcome.”

He pushed Joan and got the door open. Outside in the car, Giles, the least involved of people, was actually watching with interest. Joan, only temporarily worsted, ran after George and seized his coat, shouting gibberish, her dressing gown flapping in the icy wind. And by now Mrs. Cairne had appeared at her window, Mr. Meadows by his petrol pumps. George had never been so embarrassed in his life, he was shaking with distaste and repulsion. The whole scene was revolting to him. If he had witnessed it in the street, an angry man, a half-dressed woman clinging to his coat, shouting abuse at him, he would have turned the other way, vanished as fast as possible. And here he was, one of the protagonists.

“Be quiet, take your hands off me,” he found himself shouting back at her. “This is outrageous!”

And then at last Norman Smith did come out and get hold of his wife and manhandle her back into the shop. Afterwards, Meadows of the garage said he slapped her, but George didn’t wait to see. With what shreds of dignity remained to him, he got into the car and drove off. For once he was glad of Giles’s detachment. The boy was smiling distantly. “Lunatic,” he said before lapsing back into his own mysterious thoughts.

The incident upset George for the day. But he wrote his letter to the Stantwich postmaster without mentioning the scene of the morning or even that he had particular grounds for suspecting the Smiths.

“Let’s hope we’re going to have a quiet weekend,” he said to Jacqueline. “What with battling to work through all this snow
every day and then this fracas this morning, I feel I’ve had enough. We’re not going anywhere, are we, or having anyone in?”

“Just to the Archers’ tomorrow afternoon, darling.”

“Tea with the rector,” said George, “is just the kind of somniferous non-event I can do with at present.”

Melinda was not expected home, and Giles didn’t count. It was rather like having a harmless resident ghost, Jacqueline sometimes thought sadly. It stalked the place, but it didn’t bother you or damage things, and on the whole it kept quietly to the confines of the haunted room. She wondered from whose writings he had taken the Quote of the Month:
I hope never again to commit a mortal sin, nor even a venial one, if I can help it
.

It was the last quotation Giles was ever to pin to his cork wall, and perhaps it was appropriate that the lines he had chosen, from Charles VII of France, were said to be their author’s dying words.

But, as it happened, Melinda did come home. Since January 5 she hadn’t been back to Lowfield Hall, and her conscience was troubling her. Of course she would go home for the thirteenth, for that was George’s birthday, but it seemed awful to stay away for five weeks. Also there was the matter of the tape recorder. George’s present was her most prized possession, and because of it she was the envy of her college friends. Melinda didn’t like to say no to people who asked to borrow it, but when someone took it to a folk concert and afterwards left it all night in an unlocked car, she thought the time had come to remove it from harm’s way.

Without having told anyone she was coming, she arrived in Stantwich as the dull red sun was setting, and at Gallows Corner after dark. She was just a little too late for Geoff Baalham, who had passed that way ten minutes before, and it was Mrs. Jameson-Kerr who picked her up and told her George and Jacqueline had gone to tea at the rectory.

Melinda went into the house through the gun room and immediately
upstairs to find Giles. But Giles also was out. He had taken the Ford and, after a session with Father Madigan, gone to a cinema. The house was warm, spotless, exquisitely tidy and silent. Silent, that is, but for the muted tumult throbbing through the first-floor ceilings from Eunice Parchman’s television. Melinda put the tape recorder on her chest of drawers. She changed into a robe she had made herself out of an Indian bedspread, put a shawl over her shoulders and a string of limpet shells around her neck, and well pleased with the result, went down to the morning room. There she found a stack of new magazines which she took into the kitchen. Ten minutes later Eunice, coming down to remove from the deep freeze a chicken casserole for the Coverdales’ supper, found her seated at the table with a magazine open in front of her.

Melinda got up courteously. “Hallo, Miss Parchman. How are you? Would you like a cup of tea? I’ve just made it.”

“I don’t mind,” said Eunice, the nearest she ever got to a gracious acceptance of any offer. She frowned. “They’re not expecting you.”

“I do live here, it’s my home,” was what Melinda might have said, but she was not a prickly or defensive girl. Besides, here was an opportunity to go on being nice to Miss Parchman, whom she had neglected along with her family since the New Year. So she smiled and said she had made her decision on the spur of the moment, and did Miss Parchman take milk and sugar?

Eunice nodded. The magazine on the table intimidated her as much as a spider might have intimidated another woman. She hoped Melinda would concentrate on it and shut up while she drank her tea, which she rather regretted accepting. But it was evident that Melinda intended to concentrate on it only with her participation. She turned the pages, keeping up a running commentary, looking up from time to time with a smile for Eunice and even passing her the magazine for her to look at a picture.

“I don’t like those mid-calf-length skirts, do you? Oh, look at the way that girl has done her eyes! It must take hours, I shouldn’t have the patience. All those forties fashions are coming
back. Did they really dress like that when you were young? Did you wear bright red lipstick and stockings? I’ve never possessed a pair of stockings.”

Eunice, who still wore them and who had never possessed a pair of tights, said she wasn’t much for dress. Lot of nonsense, she said.

“Oh, I think it’s fun.” Melinda turned the page. “Here’s a questionnaire.
Twenty Questions to Test If You’re Really in Love
. I must do it, though I know I am. Now, let’s see. Have you got a pencil or a pen or something?”

A firm shake of the head from Eunice.

“I’ve got a pen in my bag.” This battered holdall, literally a carpetbag made out of Turkey rug, Melinda had dumped in the gun room. Eunice, watching her fetch it, hoped she would take bag, pen, and magazine elsewhere, but Melinda returned to her place at the table. “Now, Question 1: Would you rather be with him than … Oh, I can see the answers at the bottom, that’s no good. I’ll tell you what, you ask me the questions and tick whether I get three marks or two or one or none at all. Okay?”

“I haven’t got my glasses,” said Eunice.

“Yes, you have. They’re in your pocket.”

And they were. The tortoise-shell ones, the pair the Coverdales knew as her reading glasses, were sticking out of the right-hand pocket of her overall. Eunice didn’t put them on. She did nothing, for she didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t say she was too busy—busy with what?—and nearly half a pint of hot tea remained in the mug Melinda had given her.

“Here.” Melinda passed her the magazine. “Please do. It’ll be fun.”

Eunice took it in both hands and stumbled from memory through that first line Melinda had read. “Would you rather be with him than …” She stopped.

Melinda reached across and picked the glasses out of her pocket. Eunice was cornered. A flush darkened her face to a deep wine colour. She looked up at the girl and her underlip trembled.

“What is it?” There was a let-out here if only Eunice had
known it. For, instantly, Melinda jumped to a conclusion. Miss Parchman had reacted rather like this before, when asked what name she would have given her son if she had had one. Obviously there was something in her past that was still painful, and she, very tactlessly, had again touched the scar of that ancient disappointed love. Poor Miss Parchman, who had once loved someone and was now an old maid. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said gently. “I’m sorry if I said something to hurt you.”