Element of Doubt, page 5
So he blamed the Priory. He put Harry’s story in its proper perspective and then he should have been ready for the real problem, that of dealing with Harry’s undoubtedly tormented state of mind.
He was not ready. There was another reason why Harry’s confession struck fear into him, one he had not advanced because it could not be demolished. The reason was Harry himself.
No amount of cheap fantasy could account for him. He was not an ordinary small boy – supposing there were such a creature. He was a fanatic. Far from being reassured, Joe understood for the first time how pitiless and predatory was the spirit that moved the child. The sin committed, he was prepared, he was waiting, to wither for it. His prayers were not for mercy but for strength to hide his fear.
Harry was capable of passions, not tantrums. Harry was – capable.
Chilled, Joe stepped to the window into a rod of sunlight. On the terrace he saw the grey figure of the boy, standing looking across the park. The wind flattened his hair, pressed his clothes on his narrow bones. He did not move. An aeroplane bumbled overhead. He did not look up at it. He stood for a long time before he went very slowly down the steps to the circular bench by the mulberries. He was going to be where he could be found.
How much longer can it last? thought Joe. He is stretched so tight a finger-tap will break him. Soon it won’t need even that. He will snap, physically or mentally or both, and whatever it is that makes him neither Tom, nor Dick, but Harry Steen, will be gone for good.
Joe turned away. Knowing Harry’s mind, it seemed, was only to know the size of the task. He could not even begin on the assumption that the boy was lying.
‘What I must know is whether he could have done it.’
How Romney had died was not a question he felt he could ask any of the household. Mrs. Brewer, perhaps, but he would need details and she had a knack of closing up at any hint of curiosity.
He left word that he would not be in for lunch and taking his hat and stick, let himself out by the cloister door, thus avoiding Harry by the mulberries.
This was the first time since his arrival that he had been away from the Priory and when he stepped out on to the dust-floured lane he felt, guiltily, that he was stepping into a welcome change of air. What it was, more likely, was Joe Rigby feeling ground underfoot where he had been out of his depth so long. For as he came into the lane he remembered that this was the way the bus went between Bessemer and the county town and thought of the county town reminded him that there would be a local newspaper with offices there. Offices with files and back-numbers. And Romney Steen, heir to the Priory, be he only half as brilliant as he was made out to be, would rate at least a paragraph in the paper when he died. There would be too, an account of something else, something that was the due of the dullest and the most significant, should he end suddenly enough. The inquest.
So when the bus came, the same high yellow bus sinking tides of dust on the hedges, Joe was rattled into town.
A stranger wishing to look through the back numbers of a newspaper did not occasion as much interest as Joe feared he might. He had a dread of someone’s coming to the same conclusion as his acquaintance in the bus on his journey down and taking him for a detective sent to rummage in the Priory affair. Besides, the last thing he wanted was for his interest to be reported back to anyone at the Priory. He was prepared to go to quite a lot of trouble by showing interest in anything else under the sun. But he was lucky. The lunch-hour was not yet over when he found the newspaper offices; even the desk-clerk had slipped out for a beer and the solitary boy in charge was less interested in Joe than in the orange he was peeling.
The back numbers of the paper were on battens in their chronological order and it took Joe very little time to find the issues of a year previous. It was a weekly paper and the report of the death was followed in the next edition by the report of the inquest.
Romney had merited more than a paragraph. He led the local news with two columns and a half. There was a photograph, the only one Joe had ever seen of him. It showed a young man, so much more of a man than a boy, standing with his gun under his arm at a local shoot. Handsome he was, the rough-grained print could not spot over that. One other attribute it revealed; his self-possession. In the fullest sense of the word, thought Joe, loving and possessing himself. Those large-lidded eyes, the idle graceful stance, were the outward signs of it. Joe could have sworn that here was one who did not make mistakes, who never endangered the comfort – let alone the safety – of his person.
He read rapidly through the reports of the shooting and the findings at the inquest, jotted down a note or two and left the building as the desk-clerk, breathing ale, came yawning back to his stool.
Joe went across the street, retracing the desk-clerk’s steps to The Burning Glass, and ordered a late lunch of bread and cheese and beer. It was good fresh bread and nutty cheese, but he ate without enjoyment; he was at the same time savouring certain unpleasant details.
Romney had gone out, as Harry described, to take a shot at some wild duck which had flown into the copse. His gun was heard several times, then there was silence. He was found by a gamekeeper, lying on his face with the gun by his outflung hand. He had been hit at very close range by his own shot. There were tussocks in the copse, there was one by Romney’s foot, there was even the imprint of his shoe on it. Anyone moving quickly, too eagerly, gun in hand fully cocked, anyone could trip and fall and, striking the trigger, blow out his own brains. Of that, the Coroner, with all the facts before him, had been satisfied. The verdict was ‘death by misadventure’. There was no indication whatever that anyone else had been to blame, nor the slightest grounds – as the newspaper said – ‘for suspicion of foul play’.
Recalling the tone of the reports, it occurred to Joe that this sudden blotting out of one so young and vivid and invulnerable had most severely shaken those who were older, dingier and more prone to disaster. And by the same token they had been glad that death was so impartial.
He waited in the Square for the bus back to Bessemer. Finding the answer to one question had posed another. Harry hadn’t killed his brother, so why did he say he had?
Joe thought he could make a guess. Harry’s warmth and affection, turned unwillingly to hate, must have amused Romney. So had Harry’s unquestioning love for his father. Romney had exploited both love and hate, baiting ‘Brother Rat’ as a pastime. How often must Harry have wished him dead and how expeditiously was that wish granted when Romney at his most cruel, at the height of Harry’s hatred, was mysteriously and terribly cut down. What could be more likely than that it should seem to Harry that the agency was his own ill-will?
He was fatally self-sufficient. He would be waiting at Bessemer now, his own judge, his own jailer and, given time, his own executioner.
Am I the only one who can stop it? Joe stood there, tapping his steel foot slightly with his stick; it was perhaps his timid self reminding him of his disability. That same self asked, alarmed, ‘How can I accept such a responsibility?’
Mr. Steen had asked for him during his absence. In the lobbylike room which he used for conducting the business of the estate, Joe found him methodically writing cheques for a little pile of bills. He nodded to Joe and pushed forward a box of cigarettes. Joe took one and lit it and for a moment or two the only sound was the rustle of Mr. Steen’s pen.
You are very like Harry, thought Joe; as like him as you were unlike the other. What flattery it must have been to have fathered the brilliant singular Romney, to know you were the source of those perfections. Whereas begetting dowdy little Harry was to perpetuate the ordinary in you. But whether you care for it or not, you had two sons and now one, poor devil, is damning himself. Can I help it? Who but you can undo the harm you’ve done him? You and your incomparable Romney.
‘Tomorrow,’ said Mr. Steen, clipping each cheque to its corresponding bill, ‘I am leaving for Brussels. I expect to be away a few weeks. You will have sole charge of Harry, do for him and get for him whatever is needful. I shall leave a blank cheque to cover any expenses.’
Yes, do that; tidy him away with your bills for sheep-dip and chicken-feed. Pin on a cheque and forget him. That’s Harry Steen dealt with.
Such a wave of anger overcame Joe that he had to move to conceal it. He stood up and stubbed out the cigarette on the table before him. It rocked slightly under his violence.
Mr. Steen said, ‘Is that satisfactory?’
‘Quite.’ Joe waited a moment before he went to the door. ‘Goodbye.’ He had it open, was half-way out when Mr. Steen asked, ‘How is the child getting on?’
‘It is a mistake to think of Harry as a child.’
‘Is it?’ Mr. Steen looked disbelieving. ‘He is still very young. I felt that was why I could never approach him.’ He crushed and rolled the edge of a tradesman’s circular with a gesture which was the twin of Harry’s. ‘We could not trust each other.’
Joe said harshly, ‘Harry’s chief fault has been that he is not Romney.’
Mr. Steen’s hands froze among the papers on his crowded desk. He did not look up. Joe, waiting for the pain to give way to anger, did not care if he were dismissed or not. But when at last he raised his head, Mr. Steen was smiling.
‘His chief fault? It is his chief virtue.’
Joe looked at that wry gentle smile, could make nothing of it.
‘Goodbye,’ he said curtly, and came away.
He went in search of the boy. Harry was in the housekeeper’s room, having his tea with old Mrs. Brewer. On the plate before him lay a slice of bread and butter with a hole picked in the middle. He looked up wildly as Joe came in and something which might have been hope changed to something that was unmistakably fear.
Fear now, of me, thought Joe. He sat down wearily and Mrs. Brewer went with a tray to the kitchen to fetch tea for him.
As soon as she had gone, Harry said, ‘My father’s going away.’
‘Yes.’
‘Tomorrow – ’
Joe nodded.
‘I shall never see him again!’
‘Hadn’t you thought of that before?’
‘Thought of it?’ The absurdity of that bewildered him, but he was in too great a trouble to consider it. ‘Does he have to go? I shall be gone so soon! Only a day or two – that’s all I have, isn’t it? Isn’t it?’ In a passion of grief he flung himself on Joe and beat at him with closed fists. ‘I shall be hung in a day or two!’
Joe held him by the wrists, firmly but gently. ‘No, Harry, whatever happens, or has happened, you will not be hanged.’ The boy was ducking his head like a colt to knock away his tears, the first Joe had known him shed. Joe had great hopes that they would ease the intolerable emotional strain. ‘You will see your father many, many times yet, Harry.’
Harry became very still. Then calmly, coldly, he moved his wrists out of Joe’s grasp. He lifted his head. Joe, appalled, met his hard pitiless stare.
‘There is such a thing as justice,’ he said.
Joe was alone when Mrs. Brewer came back with his tea. He had his steel foot up on his other knee and was absently kneading the stump bone above the ankle.
‘Where’s Master Harry, sir?’
‘Gone up to his room.’
She set down the tray and poured him a cup of tea. ‘You look very tired.’
‘Can you tell me why Harry is so fond of his father? He gets no encouragement.’
‘A boy is always fond of his father.’
‘He has no one else, has he – apart from you? The loneliest child I ever knew.’
She pushed her sewing aside impatiently. ‘What is to do? There’s not a ray of happiness in him. He sat here as if he would tell me something and then he shut his mouth and wouldn’t even eat. Look what a tea he made. Of course he never likes his father to go away, but this time you would think it was death to him.’
‘And Mr. Steen has time only for the dead.’
She stiffened, sensing a reflection which was not permissible from an outsider. ‘What do you mean, sir?’
‘I mean,’ said Joe bitterly, ‘that if anyone is to blame for Harry’s state of mind it is his own father. He has denied Harry everything – love, understanding, companionship, help – it went to the one who needed it least and now doesn’t need it at all. It isn’t grief to idolise the dead and despise the living.’
‘If he could idolise the dead he would be a happy man.’
‘If he could? He does.’
She shook her head with the patient sorrow of the old. ‘Not now.’
‘Why not now? There’s been no change of heart.’
She stood up, smoothed her glossy apron as a reminder to them both. ‘You are mistaken.’
‘I’m not asking you for gossip, Mrs. Brewer, I appreciate your reticence. But if anything is to be done for Harry, I am the one who must do it, and if there is any straw I must catch at it.’
Gathering the teacups and stacking them, she did not need to look at him. Her voice was harsh and unwilling.
‘When Mr. Romney died, things came to light which Mr. Steen knew nothing of. Then he knew – what we all knew. No one could save him that. He said, “He is better dead”.’ She turned on Joe her hard direct gaze. ‘That is real grief.’
Opening his window to the dusk, Joe had a sense of respite for the second time that day. Just as, when he went through the Priory gates he seemed to lose a load, so now he looked across the shrouded park into a blessed timelessness. Not even the high maidish chime of the clock could impose a measure on that. Our time’s our own; we made it and limited it to flesh and blood. The tides and the phases of the moon and the passage of the sun have nothing to do with it. Nothing, thank God, thought Joe, who, like all those who suspect themselves of failure, felt the tyranny of time.
He turned away and let the moths blow in through the open window and crackle round his lamp. Harry’s days and nights had almost run out. The wonder was that his slight flesh and blood had stretched to so many of them.
Joe saw no chance of help from Mr. Steen. He was, if anything, more broken by his bitterness than by his single-minded grief, a man who had been disillusioned by the dead and could not bring himself to trust the living. Strength to found the relationship between father and son must come from Harry himself. Joe, with a Jewish gesture, threw up his hands and went to end the agony of a singed white beautiful creature thudding between the lamp and the shade. Not that he lacked faith in Harry. Harry was something of a giant-killer in his way; but he already had a giant on his hands. Conscience, a very bloody giant and no less so because it was misinformed.
So it falls to me, thought Joe, shutting the window to stop the martyrdom, to take a hand against it. And I have been afraid of that.
Because here at last is the opportunity to measure up, for once, to what I would like to have been. Easy and unimpressive it looks. To save the child I have only to convince him that he did not do a thing he could not possibly have done. Yet I would rather save him from fire or swim out with my steel foot to keep him from drowning. I would find that easier. And more spectacular. God help him – even I want to cut a dash.
Convincing Harry. Joe heard his own voice explaining endlessly. ‘You see, Harry, you wished him dead that day. He was being cruel, he was threatening to insult your father so that it should appear the insult came from you. You believed he would do it, didn’t you? You wished for anything to stop him, anything – even death. There was an accident and suddenly he was dead. It seemed as if you had wished his life away. It seemed to you that you must be his murderer. But you weren’t, you couldn’t be. Romney killed himself. Why, if all our ill-wishes were granted we should all be murderers. Romney was shot, he himself pressed the trigger as he fell. You do see, Harry, don’t you, that you couldn’t have done it?’
Harry would not see. The small flinty face would not change. In the dark of his own making all that Harry could see was his crime and its punishment.
It’s no use talking. Harry knows he did it. Proof, infallible, irrefutable proof that he didn’t, that he couldn’t have done it is the only hope of shaking him. Hope? When I know neither how nor where to look? Joe flung himself on his bed, lit a cigarette and prepared to search . . .
It was not until Romney himself, in the black tights of a dark angel, came and offered to re-stage the accident of his death for Harry’s benefit, that Joe realised his brain was past being constructive. And by then the great elms had begun to swim out of the broken white mist of morning. Joe turned his back on them and slept.
Wick, bringing his breakfast tray, wakened him at eight. Surprise at sight of Joe lying fully dressed on his bed was superseded by discretion at sight of Joe’s face. Wick shut his mouth and prepared to retire.
‘Has Mr. Steen gone yet?’
‘He leaves in half an hour, sir.’
Pulling at his collar-stud, Joe wondered if Wick suspected him of drunkenness. When he got up he even felt a little drunk as if he were under the quickening influence of good wine.
The trees stood deep in their own cold shadow. An old horse, his shoes covered with sacking, was steadily drawing a great roller to and fro over the lawn, darkening it as he bruised off the dew. Joe watched with a pleasure that seemed out of proportion to the moment until he realised it sprang from that same sense of timelessness which had offered him a dishonourable retreat. And some odd fancy – for a miracle perhaps to solve his problem – made him wish for a sight of Romney in this setting which he had completed and adorned. Joe turned away, wondering at himself.
Harry was not in his room. The sheets were flung back over his bed, the clock on the table had its face turned towards the pillow as if Harry had watched the hands move through the night to the moment when his father would leave.
Joe hurried downstairs. The spurious detachment of tiredness had left him now; Harry was squarely in his mind and he was beginning to be alarmed. As he crossed the hall the car drew up ready for Mr. Steen.
