The Office of the Dead (29 page)

It was as if they sensed blood. During that long evening, the reporters seemed to be everywhere. Two of them tried to talk to me on my way back to the Dark Hostelry. As I unlocked the garden gate, the photographer raised his camera. While Henry and I were making supper, they rang the back-door bell seven times. Until I drew the kitchen curtains, they crouched down on the pavement of the High Street and peered through the window.

We ate on trays upstairs in the drawing room. None of us said very much, Janet least of all. Her pale, perfect face gave nothing away. At one point David and Henry tried to have a conversation about cricket. I wanted to kick both of them.

Halfway through the meal the phone rang. Henry went to answer it. He’d started answering the phone after David swore at one of the reporters. Janet wouldn’t let us take the phone off the hook because Granny Byfield or Rosie might try to get in touch.

This time it wasn’t one of the journalists, it was the dean. David went to talk to him and came back looking even angrier than before.

‘He suggests we ask the police if we can move out for a while. He feels we’d be happier. And that this sort of attention is bad for the atmosphere of the Close.’

‘It mightn’t be a bad idea.’ I looked from Janet to David. ‘You won’t get any peace here, not for a day or two. You could take the car.’

‘Wouldn’t it cost a lot of money?’ Janet said vaguely, as if she was thinking of something completely different.

‘Blow the money,’ Henry said.

David put down his tray on the carpet and picked up his cigarettes. ‘Perhaps we
should
go away. It’s like living in a goldfish bowl.’

‘You must let me know if I can help,’ Henry said to David, in the awkward voice he used when he wanted to do someone a good turn.

‘We’ll manage, thanks.’

Janet stood up suddenly, knocking over an empty glass. ‘You all seem to have made up your minds about what we’re doing. I’d better go and think about what needs to be packed.’

She closed the door behind her and we listened to her feet on the stairs.

David cleared his throat. ‘Yes, no time like the present.’

He and Henry continued to talk about cricket. When it comes to burying heads in the sand, a man can out-perform an ostrich any day. I found Janet in Rosie’s room. She was sitting on the bed, her hands clasped together on her lap, staring out of the window. I sat beside her and the bed creaked. When I put my arm around her she felt as cold and stiff as a waxwork.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘You know what they say – the darkest hour’s before dawn.’

‘I thought I’d better see if there was anything of Rosie’s we should send on.’

‘I thought you were packing for you and David.’

‘Rosie’s more important.’

‘I’m sure she’s all right.’ I gave Janet’s shoulder a little shake. ‘Ten to one, you’ll find that Granny Byfield’s met her match.’

‘You’re too kind to me. You’ve always been too kind for me. I’m not worth it.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

A door dosed downstairs. The men’s footsteps crossed the hall. They were talking about the last test match in the West Indies.

‘Silly to worry, isn’t it?’ Janet said. ‘It doesn’t change anything.’

‘Would you like a hand with the packing?’

‘I don’t even know if we’re going anywhere yet.’

‘I really think you should.’

She turned her head and smiled at me. ‘You’re right. No point in staying here. But if you don’t mind, I think I’ll do it tomorrow. I’m feeling rather tired.’

I remembered belatedly that she was still coping with the miscarriage. I persuaded her to have a bath and go to bed. I went downstairs and bullied the men into making themselves useful. Half an hour later I took Janet some cocoa. She was already asleep. On impulse, I bent down and kissed her head. Her hair wasn’t as soft as usual. It needed washing.

I went to bed early myself. After a long bath, I got into bed to read. I flicked over the pages of
The Voice of Angels.
The poems were nasty pretentious rubbish, I thought, sadistic and unnecessarily difficult. But as well as all those things, they were also sad. As I picked my way through the verses, I hardly noticed the rest, only the sadness.

I heard footsteps on the stairs, my stairs, the ones to the second floor. There was a tap on the door and I said, ‘Come in.’

Henry smiled uncertainly at me from the threshold. He had a bottle of brandy under one arm and was carrying a couple of glasses.

‘David’s gone to bed. I saw your light was on. I wondered if you’d fancy a nightcap.’

I nodded and moved my legs so he could sit on the end of the bed. He poured the drinks and passed me a glass.

‘Cheers.’

I said, ‘Not that there’s much to be cheery about,’ and drank.

‘David’s in an awful state.’

‘Is he? I thought he was concentrating on cricket this evening.’

Henry shrugged. ‘It’s what he doesn’t say. I suggested they go to London. They could see Rosie.’

‘That’s assuming Inspector Humphries lets them.’

‘Do you think …?’

I took another sip. ‘I don’t know what to think. But if Humphries is right, Janet’s father didn’t kill himself.’

‘It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘Do you know, before he died, Mr Treevor was beginning to think he might be Francis Youlgreave?’

‘He was going senile. Wendy?’

I looked at Henry. ‘What?’

‘I’m sorry. Sorry for everything.’

He patted my leg under the bedclothes. We sat there for a moment, as awkward as teenagers. I thought about my schoolgirl passion for David and decided that even though it hadn’t actually come to anything, I didn’t have much to be proud about either. And I also thought about the Byfields and Mr Treevor and Francis Youlgreave. There was too much suffering in the world already. I held out my hand.

Henry took it and kissed it. Then our lips were kissing and we both spilt our glasses of brandy.

‘Phew,’ Henry said, as the bottle rolled off the bed and fell to the rug without breaking. ‘And thank God I put the cork in it.’

In the morning, we were still together, naked in that narrow bed, and the brandy bottle was still where it had fallen. It was like that other morning when Janet came into my room to tell me that Mr Treevor was dead. The light had the same pale, colourless quality.

But it was David, not Janet, in the doorway. He was in his pyjamas, unshaven, his hair tousled.

Henry grunted and turned towards the wall. I looked at David and he looked at me.

‘It’s Janet,’ he said. ‘This time it’s Janet.’

Time doesn’t heal, it just gives you other things to think about.

‘How are you feeling?’ Henry said, speaking gently so as not to startle me.

‘I’m fine, thank you.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Darling, I wish you’d stop treating me like a restive horse.’

He had been like this since we had discovered I was pregnant. I’d never seen him so excited, so happy. I was less certain about my own feelings. Over the years I had grown used to not being pregnant. So the possibility that I might be had been unsettling, like a threatened invasion. And the knowledge that I actually was left me breathless with excitement and fear.

‘Would it be better if I drove?’ Henry asked.

‘If you drive I’ll be holding on to the seat for the whole journey.’ I changed down for a corner and threw a smile at him. ‘I feel much more secure if I’ve got the steering wheel.’

We drove for a moment in silence through the gentle Hampshire countryside. It was September, and the afternoon still had the warmth of summer. I kept the speed down, dawdling along the A31 in our new Ford Consul, because we’d been invited to tea and I didn’t want to be early. Granny Byfield liked punctuality in others.

‘I wish the old hag wasn’t going to be there,’ Henry said. ‘It’ll be bad enough as it is.’

‘Not for you, surely. At least you’ve talked to David on the phone.’

‘It’s not the same. The sooner he gets another job, the better.’

‘And for Rosie.’

I didn’t want to see David, and I wanted to see Rosie even less. They would remind me of Janet.

‘If it’s a girl,’ I said, ‘I’d like to call her Janet.’

Henry touched my hand on the steering wheel. ‘Of course.’ He squeezed my fingers for an instant. ‘Darling, at least we’re making a fresh start now. Everything else is in the past.’

‘Yes, Henry,’ I said, and added silently to myself,
They’re all in the past, Francis, Mr Treevor and Janet, and even your Hairy Widow with those wonderfully frivolous navy-blue shoes.
You can never really go back to what you once were, not unless you grow senile like Mr Treevor. You can never forget what you and others have done.

Granny Byfield’s flat in Chertsey was in a small block near the centre of the town. David answered the door. I was shocked at the change in him. He had never been fat, but he had lost a lot of weight in the last few months. Suffering had made him less handsome than he had been, but in a strange way more attractive. He brushed my cheek with cold lips.

‘You look fit,’ Henry said.

They shook hands awkwardly.

‘I managed to do quite a lot of walking up in Yorkshire.’ David had spent nearly two months immured in an Anglo-Catholic monastery, a sort of gymnasium for the soul which Canon Hudson had found for him. ‘Mother and Rosie are in the sitting room. By the way, she doesn’t like one to smoke.’

Granny Byfield and Rosie were sitting at a tea table in the bay window. The room was large for a modern flat, but seemed smaller because it was filled with furniture and ornaments, and because the walls were covered with dark, striped paper like the bars of a cage.

Rosie had Angel in her arms. The doll was in her pink outfit, now rather grubby. Rosie seemed unchanged from that time six or seven months ago when I had first seen her in the garden of the Dark Hostelry. She was wearing a different dress, of course. This one was green with white flecks – I remembered Janet making it for her. But she must have grown a little since then, because the dress was getting small for her.

We shook hands with Granny Byfield, who looked us up and down but did not smile. I bent and kissed the top of Rosie’s head.

‘Hello, how are you?’

Rosie looked up at me. She said nothing. I hugged her, and it was like hugging a doll, not a person.

‘You must answer when you’re spoken to, Rosemary,’ Granny Byfield said. ‘Has the cat got your tongue?’

‘Hello, Auntie Wendy,’ Rosie said.

‘How’s Angel?’

‘Very well, thank you.’

‘Mama!’ said Angel, as if in confirmation.

‘Now sit down and make yourself comfortable,’ Granny Byfield ordered. ‘I’ll make the tea, and David can bring it in.’

The little tea party went on as it had begun. It would have been a difficult meeting at the best of times. But with Granny Byfield there we had no chance of success whatsoever. She could have blighted a field of potatoes just by looking at it.

I tried to talk to Rosie, but on that occasion I didn’t get very far. She answered in monosyllables except when I asked if she was looking forward to going to school.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I want to go home.’

‘I expect you and Daddy will soon have a new home, and then you –’

‘I want the home we had before.’ She stared at the top of the doll’s head. ‘I want
everything
to be like before.’

We stayed less than an hour. David came downstairs with us, pulling out a packet of cigarettes as we reached the communal front door of the flats. We left Rosie helping her grandmother clear the tea table, a small, blonde slave poised on the verge of mutiny.

Henry accepted a cigarette and produced his lighter. ‘Any news about a job?’

David shook his head.

‘Is it because of Janet?’ I asked.

His face didn’t change at the name but I felt as if I’d kicked him. ‘I don’t think it helps. But really it’s simply that the right sort of job hasn’t come along yet.’

‘A university chaplaincy, perhaps?’ Henry suggested. ‘You’ll want to carry on with your book and so on, I expect.’

‘I thought I might go into parish work. I’m helping out here.’

I was surprised but didn’t say anything.

‘I did a lot of thinking in Yorkshire,’ David went on, answering our unspoken questions. ‘And praying. I came to the conclusion it was time for a change of direction.’

Henry said, ‘Wendy and I thought – well, if you ever want a job in a prep school, you’ve only got to ask.’

‘I don’t think I’d be very good at teaching small boys. Or small girls, come to that.’

‘But you’ll come and stay, won’t you?’ I said. ‘Come now, if you like. And Rosie. There’s bags of room.’

‘Thank you. I’ll bear that in mind.’

He turned away from me as he spoke because gratitude never came easily to David. I glanced up at the window of the flat and saw Rosie looking down at us.

‘It would be nice for Rosie, of course,’ Henry said. ‘And I expect she’d be a civilizing influence on our little barbarians.’

‘Is she all right?’ I asked. ‘She seemed rather quiet.’

‘She wants her mother.’ David stared at the tip of his cigarette. ‘I think she’d like to be four years old again and stay that way for ever. Of course, there’s not much for her to do here, and that doesn’t help.’ He moistened his lips. ‘It’s not been easy for her. Or for my mother, come to that.’

‘Your mother must seem quite – quite formidable to a small child,’ I said.

‘Mother has very firm ideas about children and how they should behave.’ He glanced at me, and I thought I saw desperation in his face. ‘She thinks Rosie’s very babyish, for example. So she tries to encourage her to be more grown up. Once she took that doll away from her, and there was a terrific fuss.’

‘Rosie told me she wanted to go back home.’

‘She still finds it hard to accept what’s happened.’

‘To accept that it can’t be changed?’ I thought of the Hairy Widow. ‘To know that it’s something she’ll never escape from, for the rest of her life?’

Henry cleared his throat. ‘Poor little kid, eh? Still, time’s a great healer.’

David was still looking at me. ‘Mother’s right, in a way. Rosie is being babyish at present. But that’s only because on some level she thinks it might somehow cancel out what’s happened. You see?’

‘Like a sort of magic?’

‘Yes. But she can’t go on doing that for the rest of her life.’

‘What about clothes?’ I said.

‘What?’

‘I couldn’t help noticing that dress was rather small for her. Getting some new clothes might help her start making a break with the past.’

‘When in doubt, go shopping,’ Henry said. ‘It’s every woman’s motto, young and old.’

David rubbed his forehead. ‘I don’t think Rosie’s had anything new since we left Rosington.’

‘Then why don’t I take her up to town? I’m sure she’d enjoy that – it would take her out of herself, give her something new to think about. We could make a day of it.’

‘I couldn’t possibly –’

‘Why not? I’d enjoy it too. It would be nice if we could do it this week. We’ll be pretty busy after that.’

‘I must admit it would be very useful. Mother’s not as mobile as she was. She doesn’t really like shopping. And perhaps you’re right – perhaps it would help Rosie come to terms with things.’

‘That’s settled then.’ I took out my diary. ‘What about Thursday?’

‘Fine, I think. I’ll ring to confirm, shall I?’ He turned to Henry. ‘Are you sure this won’t cause problems? When does term start?’

‘Next week. I’m as nervous as hell, actually.’

‘Teaching’s like riding a bicycle,’ David said. ‘Once learned, never forgotten. Mother’s the same with people. Never forgets a face.’

It wasn’t the teaching that worried Henry. It was the responsibility.

David looked at me. ‘Which reminds me – my mother remembered whom she saw in Rosington.’

I looked at him blankly for a moment, and then nodded as the memories flooded back. I’d just driven Granny Byfield up from the station and she’d seen a woman whose face was familiar going into the Close by the Sacristan’s Gate. Henry and I had seen her lunching at the Crossed Keys a few hours earlier. Also, according to Henry, later that afternoon she’d driven up Rosington High Street in a big black car with Harold Munro beside her.

All this on the last day of Janet’s life. And at this moment I didn’t give a damn who the woman was. The only thing that mattered at present was David, who was trying to mention the day of Janet’s death as if it had been any other day. I wished I could hug him as I’d hugged Rosie.

‘My mother met her last month at a charity lunch in Richmond. It’s Lady Youlgreave.’

‘What on earth was she doing in Rosington?’ Henry said. ‘Did your mother find out?’

‘Oh yes. They had quite a chat once they discovered they had something in common. She’d been on a motoring holiday in East Anglia and she stopped for lunch in Rosington. Apparently Francis Youlgreave was her husband’s uncle.’

I dared not look at Henry. An idea slipped into my mind, as unwelcome as a thief in the night. If Harold Munro had been in Lady Youlgreave’s car, then didn’t that suggest that Simon Martlesham wasn’t Munro’s employer? Didn’t it make it much more likely that Martlesham was Munro’s quarry?