Daniel Martin (37 page)

‘I am concerned only with that evening. May I take it your meeting was essentially one of reconciliation?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the mood was as one would expect?’

‘Very much so.’

‘Did you discuss other matters?’

‘What had become of us over the years. That kind of thing.’

‘Was suicide mentioned, however obliquely?’

‘Not at all. He even made fun of me at one point for having rather pessimistic views on the state of the world.’

‘Was any other anxiety or unhappiness other than the obvious one caused by his medical condition mentioned?’

‘He was a little sceptical of the value of his academic work. But a certain amount of self-denigration there had always been a trait in his character. Ever since I first knew him.’

The coroner permitted himself an austere smile.

‘And in your opinion of no significance to this inquiry?’

‘I am sure not.’

‘As you left, did you have any hint given you of what he intended to do?’

‘None whatever. I said I would visit him again the next day. He showed every sign of looking forward to that.’

‘In retrospect, is it your impression that he had formed his resolve before you met him? Or for some reason, after?’ He stopped me answering. ‘In other words, do you think it was premeditated or done on the spur of the moment?’

‘So far as our meeting indicated, the latter. But I think it was more in his nature and his profession perhaps to act in a premeditated way.’

‘You are suggesting, hypothesizing, that his mind was made up before this meeting of family reconciliation and that in effect, once the meeting was happily concluded, nothing remained to hinder a previous decision?’

‘I find that more plausible.’

‘To the extent that he had been to blame for the rift between you, he felt atonement had been made? I believe you came from America at his request?’

‘The answer is yes. To both your questions.’

‘But he did not put it to you that some last debt on his conscience perhaps more considerable than anyone realized had been honoured?’

‘He was sorry it had taken so long. So was I.’

‘But it was not said explicitly now I can go in peace?’

‘Definitely not.’

‘Or implicitly in any manner?’

‘If I had had the least suspicion, I should have warned Mrs Mallory before we left the hospital.’

He hesitated. ‘I am not clear why this meeting was not arranged sooner.’

‘I presume it was because I was in America.’ I jumped in before he could pursue this line. ‘I did mention when we met that I wished we hadn’t left it so late… in the course of his illness. I can’t recall his exact words, but I think this very kind but quite unnecessary desire not to trouble me with his personal tragedy was not overcome until recently.’

‘By which time it had evidently gained considerable importance in his mind?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he seem to take an undue portion of the blame for this unhappy relationship between you?’

‘I was not only legally but morally the guilty party in the divorce action. The real cause of war was a play I based on the circumstances of the divorce, but which travestied the true parts played in it by all concerned.’

The coroner smiled.

‘Your frankness does you credit. But it doesn’t answer my question.’

‘I’m sorry. I thought he was being over-scrupulous in taking any blame at all for what had happened.’

‘May I inquire where he considered himself at fault?’

‘In not having forgiven me my sins?’

‘A deficiency in the quality of mercy?’

‘He felt he had strained it.’

‘And though unjustly, condemned himself? How severely?’

‘I mustn’t give a false impression. All this was discussed quite lightly. Not without humour. Rather as two people smile at past mistakes.’

‘But may he not, especially in view of his religious convictions, have viewed the matter more seriously than his outward manner suggested?’

‘I find it hard to believe that his suicide represented some form of penance or self-awarded punishment. His behaviour throughout our conversation was perfectly rational. He even told a couple of amusing stories. I found him emotionally and psychologically very little changed from the man I remembered.’

‘You are saying in effect that although this guilt he felt for not having healed the rift earlier may have been a minor factor, it cannot have been the prime cause?’

‘In my judgment. And I know Mrs Mallory shares my view. We have, of course, discussed the possibility.’

He looked at his notes again. Dan had an idea that he knew he was not getting the whole truth and was half inclined to dig further. But in the end the coroner nodded. Dan could stand down. Very soon after that, it was all over.

He went back and had lunch with them all, and met Jane’s other two children, Anne and Paul. Anne turned out to be rather like her elder sister; but he got nowhere with Paul, his only consolation being that Andrew’s attempts to jolly the boy along did not succeed much better. There was something oddly withdrawn and sullen about him, determined not to join in; as if he was part Orestes determined to avenge his father’s death and part didn’t want to belong to this family at all. He too was rather tall for his age, Anthony’s child again, but totally without his directness. He seemed prepared to look at anything but other people’s faces. Jane tried to cover for him, but Dan could sense her inner trouble.

He had no chance of speaking with her alone, but Andrew had come determined to organize the family weekend at Compton, and suggested the next but one, in a week’s time, since it was then a Friday. Anne was returning to Florence, Roz wasn’t sure she could come, but Dan said it would suit him and, he hoped, Caro. Then it emerged that Jane wanted to take Paul on back down to Dartington for the Monday following and Dan joined in the organizing. Caro and he would drive up to Oxford and take them on to Compton; and then he’d go down with the two of them to Devon. Jane and her son could spend the Sunday night at the farm, then she could catch the train home when she wanted. He could see she was inclined to refuse, she turned for tacit support to Paul he shrugged, ‘I don’t mind,’ as if he did but Dan had a better ally in Rosamund. He had begun to take to her even more during that lunch: there was something positive about her, where Jane stayed veiled, oblique. Andrew had started ribbing her about Germaine Greer and Dan liked her forthrightness. She lacked Jenny’s looks, but she had similar qualities elsewhere. She drove him to the station again and this time he made her promise to have dinner one day soon in London.

The day after the inquest saw the arrival of Jenny’s ‘first contribution’. It gave Dan a shock: less at the side of it that was critical of him, but at its distancing; a certain sharp, too sharp objectivity, the ‘you-and-me’ made ‘them’. That she could write so candidly was less of a shock, since he had once, without her knowledge, read one of her letters home before she had sent it off. That had been about Los Angeles and the film, written to amuse, to an actress friend, but even there he had felt a tiny alienation, a revelation of someone he did not know.

Love is so strange, so conducted, since time began, under the illusion that it brings the lovers closer together; which it does, of course, in all sorts of physical and psychological ways. But it is also based on some profoundly blind assumptions, the prime fantasy being that the nature of the loved one during the first passionate phase is the everlasting true nature. But that phase is an infinitely delicate balance of reciprocal illusion, a meshing of wheels so finely cogged that the slightest atom of dust—the intrusion of hitherto unrecognized desires, tastes, twists of character, any new information thrust into the idyll can wreck the movement. I knew this, I had learnt to watch for it as one learns to watch for signs of familiar disease in certain plants; I had even seen it happen over other smaller incidents earlier in my relationship with Jenny. When she discovered my father had been a vicar, time stopped for ten minutes; but that made me faintly comic, and she forgave me. Assimilated, these threatened obstacles join. I am simply saying that her writing stopped a morning for me; as some reviews do. By the time we spoke again, by chance that evening, since she rang me during her Californian lunch-break, I was recovered, though not quite prepared to admit it.

‘Has it come?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are we on speaking terms?’

‘Just about.’

‘Dan.’

‘Yes, Jenny.’

‘Well, say something.’

‘I can hardly say I didn’t know you had it in you.’

‘You are offended.’

‘Just slightly stunned you can be so honest.’

‘Its not you. Just an idea for a character.’

‘Liar.’

‘I cried twice today. Thinking about you. Wishing I hadn’t sent it.’

‘You write very well.’

‘I wish you’d burn it. Pretend it never happened.’

‘No chance.’

There was a silence.

‘It’s because I miss you so much. It’s talking to paper instead of you. That’s all.’

‘But more frankly.’

‘You don’t ask why I miss you so much.’

‘Tell me.’

‘I’ve decided to take that part. I’ve said yes.’

‘Good. I told you you should.’

‘Now I feel I’ve burnt my boats. Done your dirty work for you.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

She said nothing for a moment. ‘You know who I learnt more frankness off.’

‘Then the teacher feels taught. Professional jealousy.’ There was another pause, I could almost hear her breathe out in frustration. ‘And scared stiff that if he doesn’t sound hurt you won’t send him any more.’ Still she said nothing. ‘You can’t leave it just there.’

‘It was trying to tell you how it felt. In the beginning.’

‘I’m interested in how it feels.’

‘It feels you may soon be the first man to be strangled via satellite.’

We went on like that for another five minutes, though I let her know by the end that she was being more teased than resented, just as her determination ‘if I have written anything more’ never to let me see it was maintained in the same spirit. By the end of the call I had become the one to be forgiven… or not forgiven. I was reminded that while I was going through a jolly evening in ‘my book-lined study’ she would be spending her afternoon naked in bed with the Prick. She was not as squeamish as some actresses about that kind of scene, and the one I’d written (of course long before she got the part) was post-coital, more comic than passionate. I knew she hadn’t been looking forward to it, but she had rung off before I realized that her call had been as much about this, to get a little courage, as about what she had written. I woke myself up early the next morning to ring her in the Cabin when she got home. The scene had gone not too badly, not too many takes, and we made up: I had been pretending, I wasn’t really hurt, and I wanted to read more.

I have never much liked funerals, perhaps because one of my father’s peculiarities was expecting Aunt Millie and myself to be present when he officiated at those of anyone who had the smallest standing in the village, and I had sat through so many of the accursed things. Anthony’s gave me no reason to change my mind. The Catholic version of the ritual provided one slight variation, and there was a nice little donnish speech in praise of the defunct from one of his faculty colleagues. The event attracted a rather sparser assembly than I had expected. But Jane told me later that she had encouraged people to cry off. There were still more than enough to crowd her living-room for the middleclass attempt at a wake-party that followed the committal.

I hardly spoke to her that day, but I watched her. She seemed more under strain than at the inquest, perhaps because she had to play the kind of role she claimed was now beyond her; so many polite questions, smiles at condolences, educated chatter. She had worn a black coat throughout the service and the burial, but had rebelled enough to wear a peasantly yet chic brown-and-white dress underneath, with a choker of jet beads; and somehow this, together with a sort of vivacity she put on with her less intimate guests when we returned, made her seem brittle and remote. The dress was only a minimal flouting of convention, but it was there.

I had glanced at her in the cemetery when ashes to ashes, dust to dust, the coffin was lowered. She had been noticeably dry-eyed, holding Paul’s hand. The two girls, and Caro between Nell and myself, even Nell, were obviously moved; but Jane had, for a few seconds before she bowed her head, an almost indifferent face, a shadow of that same buried resentfulness of our first evening in Oxford. I suppose everyone unconsciously glances towards the widow on such occasions, and I was not the only one. There, too, something was being announced. I wondered about the man at Harvard, whether he knew how to deal with the difficult woman she had now become. I knew he was not there, having managed a word with Roz before we assembled at the graveside, I tried to probe her mother’s mask at the wake, when she came up to refill our glasses. I was standing with Caro and some aged aunt of Anthony’s.

‘Are you all right, Jane?’