Original Sin (33 page)

James, she knew, had no choice. He needed to go home to Rupert, and she envied him the necessity of obligation. She had never met his friend, never been invited to his house since Rupert's arrival there and she wondered now about their life together. But at least he would have someone with whom he could share the distresses of the day, a day which now seemed inordinate in length. They had, by common unspoken consent, left Innocent House early and she had waited while Claudia locked the door and set the alarm. She had asked, 'Will you be all right, Claudia?' and, even as she spoke, had been struck by the futility, the banality of the question. She had wondered if she ought to offer to go home with Claudia, but was afraid that this might only be seen as a confession of weakness, her own need for company. And Claudia, after all, had her fianc - if he was her fiance. She was more likely to turn to him than to Frances.

Claudia had replied: 'All I want at the moment is to get home and be alone.' Then she had added, 'What about you, Frances? Will you be all right?'

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The same meaningless, unanswerable question. She wondered how Claudia would have replied if she'd said, 'l'qo, I'm not all right. I don't want to be alone. Stay with me tonight, Claudia. Sleep in my spare room.' She could, of course, telephone Gabriel. She wondered what he was doing, what he was thinking, in that phin underfurnished apartment beneath her. He too had said, 'IN'till you be all right, Frances? Ring me if you need company.' She wished that he had said, 'Do you mind if I come up, Frances? I don't want to be alone.' Instead he had placed the onus on her. To ring for him was to confess a weakness, a need, which he might not welcome. What was it about Innocent House, she wondered, that made it so lifficult for people to express a human need or to give each other a simple reciprocal kindness? In the end she opened a carton of mushro from soup and boiled herself an egg. She felt extraordinarily tired. Curled last night in Gabriel's chair, her broken hours of fitful sleep hadn't been the best preparation for a day of almost continuous tramma. But she knew that she wasn't ready for sleep. Instead, after washing up her supper things, she went into the room which had been her father's bedroom and which she had now made into a small sitting-room and sat herself in front of the television. The bright images passed in front of her eyes; the news, a documentary, a comedy, an old film, a modem play. As she pressed the buttons, flicking from chamnel to channel, the changing faces, grinning, laughing, serious, mmgisterial, the mouths continually opening and closing were a visual drug, meaning nothing, evoking no emotion, but at least l>roviding a spurious companionship, a fleeting and irrational solace. At one o'clock she went to bed, taking with her a glass of hot milk laced with a little whisky. It was effective and she slipped away into unconsciousness with the last thought that she r,,vas, after all, to enjoy the benison of sleep. The nightmare returned to her in the early h-ours, the old familiar nightmare but in a new guise, more terrible, more intensely real. She was walking along the Greenwich tunnel between her father and Mrs Rawlings. They were holding her hands but their grasp was an imprisonment not a comfort. She couldn't run away and there was nowhere to run. Behind her she could hear the cracking of the tunnel roof but she dared not turn' her head because she knew that even to

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look back would be disaster. In front of her the tunnel stretched longer than in life with a circle of bright sunlight at the end. As they walked the tunnel lengthened and the circle became gradually smaller, until it was only a small gleaming saucer and she knew that soon it would recede into a pin-point of light, then disappear. Her father was walking very upright, not looking at her, not speaking. He was wearing the tweed coat with the short cape which he always wore in winter and which she had given to the Salvation Army. He was angry that she had given it away without consulting him, but he had found it and got it back. She wasn't surprised to see the snake wound round his neck. It was a real snake, immense as a cobra, expanding and contracting, draped round his shoulders, hissing with its evil life, ready to crush the breath out of him. And overhead the tiles of the roof were wet and the first large drops were already falling. But she saw that they weren't drops of water, but of blood. And now suddenly she broke free and began to run, screaming, towards that unobtainable pin-point of light while the roof ahead cracked and fell and there rolled towards her, shutting out the last light, the black obliterating wave of death.

She woke to find herself slumped against the window, her hands beating the glass. With consciousness came relief, but the horror of the nightmare remained like a stain on the mind. But at least she knew it for what it was. She went over to her bed and turned on the lamp. It was nearly five o'clock. There was no point now in trying to sleep again. Instead she put on her dressing-gown, drew the curtains and opened the windows. With the darkened room behind her she could see the luminous glimmer of the river and a few high stars. The terror of her dream was passing but it gave way to that other terror from which she had no hope of waking.

Suddenly she thought of Adam Dalgliesh. His flat, too, was on the river, at Queenhithe. She wondered how she knew where he lived, and then remembered some of the press coverage of his last and successful book of poetry. He was a very private man but that fact at least had emerged. It was odd that their lives were linked by this dark tide of history. She wondered if he, too, was wakeful, whether a mile or two upstream his tall dark figure was standing looking out over the same dangerous river.

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BOOK THREE

Work in Progress

36

On Saturday 6 October Jean-Philippe Etienne took his morning walk as usual at nine o'clock. Neither the time nor the route varied whatever the season or the weather. He would walk along the narrow ridge of rock between the marshes and the ploughed fields on which the Roman fort of Othona was said to have stood, past the Anglo. Celtic chapel of St Peter-on-the-Wall round the headland to the Blackwater estuary. It was rare for him to meet anyone on his morning perambulation, even in summer when a visitor to the chapel or a bird-watcher might be abroad early, but if he did he would say a courteous good morning, but no more. The locals knew that he had come to Othona House for solitude and had no wish to violate it. He accepted no incoming telephone calls, received no visitors. But this morning at half past ten a visitor would come who could not be refused.

Now in the strengthening light he looked across the calm straits of the estuary to the lights on Mersea Island and thought about this unknown Commander Dalgliesh. The message he had sent to the police by Claudia had been unambiguous; he had no information to offer about his son's death, no theories to propose, no possible explanations of the mystery to pat forward, no suspect he could name. His own view was that Gerard had died by accident, however odd or suspicious some of the circumstances. Accidental deaff seemed likelier than any other explanation, certainly far likelier tha murder. Murder. The heavy consonants of horror thudded in his mind, evoking nothing but repugnance and disbelief.

And now, standing as still as if petrified on the narrow strip of gritty beach where the minuscule waves spent themselves in a thi smudge of dirty foam, and watching the lamps across the water die one by one as the day brightened, he paid his son the reluctant tribute of memory. Most of the memories were troubling, but since they besieged his mind and could not be repelled it was perhaps better that they should be accepted, made sense of and disciplined. Gerard had grown to adolescence with one central assurance: he was the son of a

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hero. That was important to a boy, to any boy, but particularly one as proud as he. He might resent his father, feel himself inadequately loved, undervalued, neglected, but he could do without the love if he had the pride, pride in the name and in what that name stood for. It had always been important to him to know that the man whose genes he carried had been tested as had few of his generation and had not been found wanting. The decades were passing and memories fading, but a man could still be judged by what he had done in those turbulent years of war. Jean-Philippe's reputation was secure, inviolable. The reputation of other heroes of the Resistance had been sullied by the revelations of later years, but never his. The medals that he never now wore had been honestly earned. Jean-Philippe had watched the effect of that knowledge on Gerard: the compelling need for his father's approbation and respect, the need to compete, to justify himself in his father's eyes. Wasn't that what climbing the Matterhorn when he was twenty-one had been all about? He had never before shown any interest in mountaineering. The exploit had been time-consuming and expensive. He had employed the best Zermatt guide who, reasonably, had decreed a period of some months' hard training before the climb was attempted and had laid down his strict conditions. The party would turn back before the final assault on the summit if he judged Gerard a danger to himself or to others. But they hadn't turned back. The mountain had been conquered. That was something Jean-Philippe hadn't achieved. And then there was the Peverell Press. Here in his last years JeanPhilippe knew that he had been little more than a passenger, tolerated, undisturbed, no trouble to anyone. Gerard, when power passed into his hands, would transform Peverell Press. And JeanPhilippe had given him that power. He had transferred twenty of his shares in the finn to Gerard, and fifteen to Claudia. Gerard had only to keep the support of his sister to be sure of majority control. And why not? The Peverells had had their day; it was time for the Etiennes to take over. And still Gerard had come, month after month, to give his account as if he were a steward reporting to his master. He asked for no advice, no approbation. It wasn't for advice or approbation that he came. Sometimes it seemed to Jean-Philippe that the journey was a form of reparation, a penance voluntarily imposed, a filial duty undertaken now when the old man was past caring and letting slip from his

stiffened hands those frail cords which bound him to family, to the firm, to life. He had listened, had occasionally commented, but had never brought himself to say: 'I don't want to hear. I'm no longer concerned. You can sell Innocent House, move to Docklands, sell the firm, burn the archives. The last of my interest in Peverell Press was cast from me when I dropped those grains of crushed bone into the Thames. I am as dead to your busy concerns as is Henry Peverell. We are both now beyond caring. Don't think because I can speak to you, still perform some of the functions of a man, that I am alive.' He would sit immobile, and from time to time stretch out a shaking hand for his tumbler of wine, the glass, with its heavy base, so much easier now to manage than a'wineglass. His son's voice had come from a distance. 'It's difficult to know whether to buy or rent. In principle I'm for buying. The rents are ridiculously low but they won't be when the leases run out. On the other hand it makes sense to take a short lease for the next five years and free the capital for acquisitions and development. Publishing is about books not property. For the past hundred years Peverell Press have squandered resources on maintaining Innocent House as if the house was the firm. Lose the house and you lose the Press. Bricks and mortar elevated to a symbol, even on the writing paper.' Jean-Philippe had said: 'Stone and marble.' To Gerard's quick enquiring frown he added, 'Stone and marble, not bricks and mortar.' 'The rear facade is brick. The house is an architectural bastard. People say how brilliantly Charles Fowler wedded late Georgian elegance to fifteenth-century Venetian Gothic, but he'd have done better not to try. Hector Skolling is welcome to hmocent House.' 'Frances will be unhappy.' He had said it for something to say. He was untouched by Frances's unhappiness. The wine was strong in his mouth. It was good that he could still taste the robust reds. Gerard had said: 'She'll get over it. All the Peverells feel compelled to love Innocent House, but I doubt if she greatly cares.' Following the association of ideas, he added: 'You saw the announcement of my engagement in last Monday's Times?' 'No. I no longer bother with newspapers. The Spectator has a summary of the week's main news. That half-page is sufficient to reassure me that the world goes on much as it always has. I hope you'll be happy in your ma.rriage. I was.'

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'Yes, I always thought that you and Mother seemed to hit it off rather well.' Jean-Philippe could smell his embarrassment. The comment in its gross inadequacy had hung between them like a wisp of acrid smoke. Jean-Philippe said quietly: 'I wasn't thinking of your mother.' And now, gazing across the stretch of quiet water it seemed to him that only in those turbulent and confused days of war had he been truly alive. He had been young, passionately in love, exhilarated by constant danger, stimulated by the ardours of leadership, exalted by a simple and unquestioning patriotism which for him had become a religion. Among the confused loyalties of Vichy France his own had been clear and absolute. Nothing since had touched the wonder, the excitement, the glamour of those years. Never again had he lived every day with such intensity. Even after Chantal had been killed, his resolution hadn't faltered although he was confused by the realization that he blamed the Maquis as much as the occupying Germans for her death. He had never believed that the most effective resistance lay in armed action or in the murder of German soldiers. And then in 944 had come liberation and triumph, and with it a reaction so unexpected and so strong that it left him demoralized, almost apathetic. Only then, in the moment of triumph, had he space and time to grieve for Chantal. He felt like a man emptied of all capacity. for emotion except for this overwhelming grief which in its sad futility seemed part of a greater, a universal grieving. He had had little stomach for revenge and had watched with sick disgust the shaving of the heads of women accused of 'sentimental relations with the enemy', the vendettas, the purges by the Maquis, the summary justice which executed thirty people in the PuydeD6me without formal trial. He was glad, as was most of the population, when the due process of law was established, but he took no satisfaction in the proceedings or in the verdicts. He had no sympathy for those collaborators who had betrayed the Resistance, or who had tortured or murdered. But in those ambiguous years many collaborators with the Vichy regime had done what they believed right for France, and if the Axis powers had won, perhaps it would have been right for France. Some were decent men who had chosen the wrong side for motives not wholly ignoble, others were weak, some motivated by a hatred of communism, others seduced by fascism's insidious glamour. He could hate none of them. Even his