The Malcontents (25 page)

It would be her only recourse for months, and perhaps years, to come. She was to derive no comfort from one phenomenon about memories of Bernard which no one had foreseen. As a matter of fact, she remained once more in total ignorance. The inquest, in a week’s time, proceeded according to the lawyer’s prediction. The medical evidence about the traces of drugs wasn’t firm and was given with scientific dubiety: Dr Evans wouldn’t take it as proved, and blarneyed the jury into giving a neutral verdict. The presence of Bernard in Lance’s flat, and his death, were mentioned at the trial, as explaining the first police search. That wasn’t allowed to go further, and soon afterwards it seemed likely that Bernard’s name was forgotten. But it didn’t happen quite like that.

The core had organized their network of contacts with professional thoroughness – so much so that the information couldn’t be damped down now. True, the politicians, the public relations men and the journalists could, because of legal dangers, say nothing. That however didn’t prevent gossip seeping round the way-out left in half-a-dozen universities. There was so much secrecy, so many mutters of drugs and double agents, that the gossip became distorted and for a time – not to a mass extent, largely to persons who liked the air of conspiracy and of being in the know – Bernard became a cult hero of some fringe groups. He had killed himself to keep a secret, was one rumour. Another was that the CIA were teaching ‘our people’ how to make away with the real leaders who were going to bring ‘the system’ down. Bernard was one of the real leaders. In one university, photographs of him were on sale. It helped that some of his remarks, pro-Arab, anti-Zionist, were on record; they had been made at a meeting of pro-Arab Jewish students, and were the only ones of his to be preserved.

The curious thing was, Emma came to believe in this apotheosis of Bernard. In order not to compromise Sylvia, Stephen, Tess and Mark hadn’t revealed to the others who had betrayed them, or that they had a source of precise information. Stephen had, on the afternoon before the inquest, given an indication to Neil, but not of how certain he was nor of how he knew.

Although they soon died away, there were one or two mentions of Bernard in newspapers during the months after the inquest. In a demo in the summer term, a small file of students, parading outside the Israeli Embassy, chanted ‘What about Bernie Kelshall? What about Bernie Kelshall?’

Mrs Kelshall did not read any newspaper except the local evening one, and was not to know.

That Friday morning, the Bishop had watched what had taken place between her and Stephen. He patted Stephen’s arm.

‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘It’s only natural. Poor folk, poor folk.’

He went himself and talked to them. His face was open with empathetic sorrow. Stephen heard Mrs Kelshall say ‘Thank you, sir. Thank you.’ She and her husband began to cry, and the Bishop talked on, sustaining a background of brotherly murmuring.

Soon he shook hands with them, taking in turn each of their right hands in both of his. ‘God bless you.’ It was all part brotherly, part paternal, just a shade episcopal, as Stephen and Tess observed him: he had given at least a moment of consolation, altogether beyond their power. And yet, as he walked with them down the office stairs, into the narrow street, it was Stephen who was thinking of the Kelshalls, not the Bishop. The Bishop had seen too much bereavement to carry it away with him: you shared it when you were in its presence, and then you left it behind; it might have seemed like professional callousness, but the Bishop, if he had thought about it, wouldn’t have felt guilty: he, like a doctor, had to live like a war-correspondent of mortality, it was the only way to live.

As they came into the harsh, throat-biting air, he gripped Stephen’s arm.

‘I must say, Stephen,’ he said, with a joyous countenance, ‘this is splendid news!’

He went on: ‘When my girl told me, you could have knocked me down with a feather.’

He glanced lovingly at Tess, who herself was looking up at Stephen, knowing his concentrated moods better than her father did. He gave her a flicker of a smile. He said: ‘I’ve been very lucky.’

‘I hope you’ve both been very lucky,’ said the Bishop. ‘If I say so myself, she is a good girl.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ said Stephen.

‘And I believe that you are a good young man.’

Suddenly, after all the cosiness, he had spoken with surprising sharpness and authority. Stephen replied in an identical tone.

‘I can’t let you think that.’

‘Others have to judge it for you, you know.’

‘I’m not sure what it means,’ said Stephen, ‘or whether it means anything at all.’ (Tess was thinking, indulgent, irritated, that this wasn’t the time for semantic quibbling.) ‘But, in any sense that you could use it, it doesn’t begin to be true.’

‘You’re very honest, arent you?’

‘You always have been,’ put in Tess.

‘Not even always that,’ said Stephen.

‘Do you think any of us are always that?’ the Bishop asked. He was beginning to understand something of what his daughter had told him about Stephen. He was arrogant often, but didn’t like himself much. The Bishop thought that too much self-dislike could splinter a character: and yet, though this young man was accepting no assurance that morning, there was something enduring about him. ‘We shall see! We shall see!’ the Bishop was enunciating cheerfully to himself. They had arrived opposite the cathedral gate, and he said: ‘Come to the office, just for a mo.’ Then, as they walked across the yard, he ruminated, again cheerfully: ‘Marriage is tactically disastrous. But strategically vital.’ That was not the kind of comment he made at marriage services, and until they were sitting down, opposite the crucifix, he was telling them what sounded more like the conventional wisdom.

Then he said: ‘No announcement until it’s all cut-and-dried! We don’t want any leaks.’

He put a finger to the side of his nose, with an air of preposterous cunning. Tess must have told him, Stephen realized, that the news was not yet broken to the Freers.

‘Announcement as soon as possible,’ said Stephen. ‘Monday or Tuesday.’

‘Very good, very good.’ The Bishop regarded them. ‘There’s one thing you might remember. The minute this is public property, it’ll give people round here (he waved a short arm) something else to think about. People aren’t very much use at thinking of two things at once. Perhaps it’s a bit of a bonus to you now.’

To Stephen, that seemed a piece of superficiality, not relevant to the situation, less worth listening to than anything the Bishop had said, either this morning or two days before in that office. But it wasn’t entirely so. The Bishop didn’t approve of the worldliness of the world, but wasn’t unaware of it. Neither Stephen nor Tess had given it a thought, but a respectable marriage might save them both some slander.

‘Well then. Well,’ said the Bishop to his daughter, ‘I think it’s time I took you away.’

That came on Stephen unprepared. Seeing that Tess made no resistance (he had relied on having her to himself) he misunderstood, and thought it was a piece of misplaced tact, leaving him alone before the evening confrontation. But it was nothing like that. The Bishop’s wife cherished strong and dutiful family feelings, and she had a sick sister coming to stay. Before the Bishop and Tess left home that morning – and before Tess had told him of the engagement – Mrs Boltwood had said that she expected them to join her at the station. It hadn’t escaped the Bishop that Tess had chosen to speak to him in her mother’s absence: strong and dutiful family feelings weren’t so harmonious as outsiders took for granted, including Stephen, who still believed they were simpler, warmer, more homely (in the English sense) than his own. The Bishop wasn’t prepared for Tess to let him give the news to her mother at second-hand. So he was making her do her duty at the railway station. Tess, because she was happy, was agreeing to be obedient that day.

Thus, before midday, Stephen was left alone. He had a sandwich at a pub, and then went to the reference library, near to Hotchkinson’s office, to get out of the cold, sitting there with boys from the local grammar schools. He tried to read some of Einstein’s letters, on the unity of all things, on the God (which was an atheist God) expressed in the order of the natural world. What majesty, what repose: but the words wouldn’t stay in his mind, even the grandest of men made existence easier, more conformable with their desire, than it truly was. For a time, he daydreamed. It was not until half past three, when he would expect the house to be empty, that he returned home.

On the telephone pad was a request to ring a number, Mark’s. They hadn’t met since Wednesday night, a day and a half ago.

‘Hallo.’

‘Hallo.’ This was Stephen. ‘I was going to call you anyway.’

‘Any news?’

‘I’ve been settling various things. Tess and I are going to get married.’

‘Oh, I’m delighted.’ Mark’s voice was spontaneous, fresh, generous. ‘It’s the best thing for both of you. Much the best thing.’ Then he went on, still eager: ‘I must see you. Right away.’

‘No, not now.’

‘Yes, I must.’

Stephen explained that he had to speak to his parents: about his decisions, including this one. ‘It won’t be nice.’

‘When are you doing that?’

‘This evening. The sooner I get it over, the better for everyone.’

‘I must see you before that.’

‘Let’s meet tomorrow.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Mark was gentle, inflexible. ‘I’ll be round in half an hour.’

After that telephone conversation, Stephen lay back on the window-seat in the drawing-room, gazing out, seeing nothing, neither the cathedral spire against the clouds nor the reflections of the room’s lights in the murk outside. He was thinking, not at all of Mark, but of how to get the evening over and to finish with what he had to do.

It came almost as a surprise, something he had forgotten, an interruption that was irrelevant and irksome, when Mark came into the room. His face was radiant.

‘It’s wonderful about you and Tess,’ he said, and, crossing over to the window, shook his friend’s hand.

‘I wasn’t sure you’d have the sense,’ he added, giving out pleasure that was absolute and free from envy, infused with knowledge of Stephen’s earlier passions.

‘Perhaps I’ve learned a little,’ said Stephen.

‘Perhaps.’

Stephen, still awkward because of this interruption, said that it was too late for tea, was it too early for a drink?

‘No, no. Nothing for me,’ said Mark. ‘You’re getting like your father, you know.’

‘Not much, I think.’

Mark had spoken lightly, and hadn’t expected the hard reply. For once, his antennae had failed him.

Stephen had left the window-seat, and they sat opposite Thomas Freer’s favourite picture, glowing under the hidden light above.

‘You’ve settled some other things, did you say?’ Mark asked.

‘I shall do what you wanted me to do.’

‘What’s that?’

Stephen said that he would give evidence for Neil. There was no going back on that.

‘Good. Very good.’ Mark went on, in an eager, intimate tone: ‘And you decided that without knowing everything. Maybe that was better.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Oh, you will soon. I mean, on Wednesday night – you know, we were at my house – you thought you might have a way out, didn’t you? That is, if you could persuade yourself that Neil had done the doping, you only had to persuade yourself, that would let you out–’

‘You’re right.’

‘And you couldn’t persuade yourself.’

‘I knew I was making an excuse.’

Mark, expression washed clean, gave a brilliant smile, eyes shining.

‘I wasn’t honest with you that night. I don’t know why not, as a rule it’s easy to be honest. It is now.’

‘What about?’ But that was a formal question.

‘It wasn’t Neil who did it. It was me.’

Blankly, with extraordinary loneliness, Stephen asked: ‘Whatever for?’

‘The honest answer is, I just don’t know.’ Mark went on: ‘I don’t believe that I had a reason that you could call a reason. Of course, I knew he (Bernard) was the one who’d given us away. But I could take that easier than you could. Perhaps I wanted to mark the fact that I knew, all right. But I didn’t put a few drops in his drink on the off chance that he’d begin to talk and tell us all about it. Or to immobilize him for a few hours, while we got on with the job. That was someone’s bright idea, wasn’t it? Oh no, it was nothing like so rational as that.’

Then he said, with a baffled, open air: ‘No, it seems to have been just something that I did.’

‘Good God, is that all you can say?’

‘I don’t know what else there is to say.’

‘And now you’re going to have this to live with–’

‘I’m not even sure about that,’ said Mark. ‘It’s easy to be honest, but it doesn’t give the answers you expect. The truth is, it seems such a little thing.’

Stephen said, brutally, harsh with pain: ‘It might have seemed a little thing if you’d stuck him with a knife.’

Mark replied: ‘I dare say it might.’ He had spoken absently, as though struck by wonder. He had not imagined the innocence of an act which neither they, nor anyone else, were faced by, until the act had consequences which seemed to exist in another dimension from the three dimensions of the flesh. A sexual act: writing words on a piece of paper: a stroke of one’s arm: they were all so simple, so concrete, disconnected from, not in the same world as, the results which flowed from them.

‘But still,’ said Mark. ‘Putting a few drops into someone’s glass. Without any reason. God knows, I might have done that in yours. Any time in the last few years, if we’d had the stuff to hand.’

‘That’s softening everything for yourself.’

‘It doesn’t feel like that.’

‘Are you also going to say that he committed suicide?’

‘No.’ Mark’s gaze was steady. ‘If I’m being detached, I should say that we shall never know.’

‘You’re being too detached to be human.’

‘Am I?’ Mark said. ‘I was going to tell you, I don’t believe he did.’

‘You’re sorry that he’s dead?’

‘Of course I’m sorry. I’m sorry for anyone who dies young. But I won’t pretend. Even that may be sentimental. I’m really sorry for those who loved him.’