James Hilton: Collected Novels (94 page)

“I don’t lie, my friends, I can’t help it if the truth doesn’t sound true. Perhaps the truth is always strange. They say my boy Gerald never tells the truth—but he does, sometimes, often, only people don’t believe him. Truth is what is believed—a lie is what is disbelieved—how’s that for a pair of definitions? I don’t much care for them, but the world does. Let me tell the truth just once before I die. I call it love…”

The two warders got up (they had not undressed) when they saw him standing by the window, and George bade him good-morning.

“Good morning, George. Don’t bother. It’s still very early. I’m all right.”

“What would you like, sir? Coffee? Tea?”

“It matters so much, doesn’t it? Let’s say tea.”

So the tea was made, and David drank two cups. He did not eat anything, but he smoked his pipe for a while. He felt—well, not exactly nervous, but a little excited, as when, during student days, he had made his first knife cut into living flesh.

Presently a stranger entered the room and pinioned his arms with a leather strap; he submitted to this without word or murmur. Then he saw the Governor and the Chaplain standing by. “Good morning,” he said, and smiled at them.

Across the graveled yard there was a small building whose use he had not realized before, but it was not far to walk to it, through the rain and in the chilly morning air. Then, obeying the gestures of the stranger, he stood on a little platform with his head under a wooden beam. A white hood was put over his head. Just at that moment he heard George cough, and then (they were his last words) he said, in a voice that came muffled through the hood: “That cold of yours isn’t any better, George.” The noose slipped over his head and he suddenly remembered Leni, and her little crushed smile, and that she too, at the same moment in Midchester…Come with me, go with me, I don’t know where, but there are a few of us, we make a good company already, we carry love in our hearts, we are not alone…

The lever moved, and the little doctor’s body fell into the pit, from which, later in the day, it was retrieved for burial inside the prison precincts.

I WAS IN CALDERBURY
a few weeks ago and as I passed the corner of Shawgate I noticed that workmen were pulling down the old house. One of the inside walls was exposed to view, and on it hung what seemed, at a distance, to be a picture that no one had bothered about. Even while I watched, it was taken down by a workman, and later I saw it handed over to someone in the little crowd which, in days of unemployment, and especially in a place like Calderbury, always collects round any scene of activity.

He was a young man of perhaps thirty, slim and hot at all robust-looking, attractive in an eager, ascetic way, and rather shy in manner as he took the picture, wrapped it in a newspaper he carried, and tried to slip away unobserved. But the crowd turned their slow curious eyes on him and someone called out: “Let’s have a look, mister.” At that he almost bolted, crossing the road at a tangent, and colliding with me on the opposite curb. The picture fell with a tinkle, and I made some apologetic remark, though it was really his own fault. He answered: “Oh, it doesn’t matter—the glass was smashed already.”

With a tidy gesture which I liked in him he began to kick the glass fragments into the gutter, away from danger to passing traffic. I joined him in this usefulness, and while we were both busy I said: “I don’t know what sort of treasure you’ve got, but I suppose you know who used to live in that house they’re pulling down.”

“Oh, yes,” he answered. “The little doctor. Did you know him?”

“Fairly well. I liked him. He cured me of asthma.”

He laughed. “Well, that’s certainly a good reason for liking him. I wonder if mine is as good. He brought me into the world.”

We walked along some way in silence, wondering perhaps whether each was inclined for the other’s company. Presently he said: “I suppose you remember the case?”

“You mean the—the Calderbury case?”

“Is that what you call it? I didn’t realize it was quite so famous. I’ve been abroad a long time.”

“But you’re a native of Calderbury?”

“I left when I was nine. America—journalism—various things. I write poems—occasionally.”

He said that in a nervous and rather truculent way.

“It’s a pleasant diversion,” I replied, “apart from any value in the poems.”

He laughed enough for me to realize that I had said the right thing. “Come into my hotel and have a drink,” he invited.

We went in and stood by the counter in the cool bar of the “Greyhound.” There was no one about except Brierley, the landlord. He served our drinks and disappeared behind the glass screen. “Now that’s the fellow,” I said, “who really
could
tell you something about the Calderbury case. He was foreman of the jury.”

“Don’t ask him, please. I’ve read all the newspaper reports—I’m not specially interested in the police-court angle. I suppose it was a fair trial as trials go.”

“Maybe,” I answered. “There was a lot of circumstantial evidence, and I daresay many men have been hanged on less. And then, of course, there was a certain amount of political feeling about the girl,—German, you remember,—and it was the first autumn of the War. We all believed she was a spy. That didn’t come up at the trial,—naturally,—but people like Brierley couldn’t help but be affected by it. The judge, I thought, was a shade too severe in his summing up—maybe
he
was affected too. War fever is an insidious disease.”

“You take an interest in the case?”

“I suppose I do—though only in a non-technical way. I gather that
you’re
interested too?”

He smiled. “Didn’t I tell you he brought me into the world?”

“He did that to a good many young people you can see around the streets of Calderbury.”

“Yes, of course. But I didn’t mean it in quite that sense. You see…I’m his son.”

I looked at him then, incredulous for the moment, then in sudden silence as I remembered Gerald. The little boy who cried and screamed and told lies and had nervous fits and whom nobody could control. He seemed embarrassed at having had to explain his identity and went on:—

“I suppose you feel now you can’t discuss the case any more with me?”

“Oh, I don’t mind. It’s more a question of whether you’ll want to discuss it with me when you know who I am.” I told him then my name, adding: “I think we met—years ago. At children’s parties.”

He nodded with a heightening of what seemed a purely abstract interest. “Yes, I remember. And after that you were the star witness for the prosecution.”

“Don’t hold that against me. I was too young to know what it was all about.”

“Do you mean you no longer believe he was guilty?”

He shot the question at me so abruptly that its awkwardness came as a challenge.

“Will you take my word if I answer that I really don’t know?”

He smiled. “Why, surely…What about another drink?”

“I think it’s my turn,” I said, calling for Brierley.

When we were left alone again I went on: “The evidence I gave was true enough, as far as it went.”

“Yes, of course. I never doubted it. You saw my mother going into the house at a certain time, and you saw the other two leaving the house at a certain time. Ample opportunity. And a surgery full of poison. Logic. What more could you ask? Especially after the letter he’d written to the girl.”

“Yes, it all pointed one way.”

“And it all pointed wrong.”

“Really?” (What else could one say? Well, there was one thing I could repeat.) “I must admit that if I’d known what use was going to be made of my evidence I’d have kept it to myself.”

“But why?”

“Because I always liked the little doctor.”

“Yet you don’t feel certain that he wasn’t guilty?”

“I don’t feel certain of anything. How can I? Something mysterious and terrible happened over twenty years ago when I was a boy—why expect
me
to fix blame? Maybe the court was right, maybe not. The thing looked possible—more than that—even
probable.
After all, we do know that murder is something that men will commit for love.”

“So you think he was infatuated?”

“Call it that if you like the word.”

“I don’t, particularly. ‘Love’ is better.”

“That’s the word I used.”

“Maybe they mean the same.”

“Maybe.”

“Do you think you understood my father?”

“Well, hardly—how could I? I was only a boy.”

“There was something boyish in him. Childlike, almost. I once wrote a poem about him—perhaps I can remember it.” He paused a moment and then recited, rather well:

“Both youth and age were his

With no more change of scene

Than from the blue of mountains

Down to the level green.

“And in that blue-green land

Where English sons were bred,

He knew the dead were living

And saw the living dead!”

I said: “I rather like that. And I think I understand what you’re driving at.”

“The thing I’m driving at is that he wasn’t guilty.”

“Maybe not.”

“She
wasn’t, either.”

“You think not?”

“My God, I’m not telling you what I think—I’m giving you facts.”

It seemed to me that I couldn’t go on arguing with him. I said nothing, leaving him, if he chose, to continue. After an interval he said: “You see…I was in the house myself that night.”

“Really?”
(Again, what else could one say?) “How was that?”

“Simple enough. I’d been quartered with an aunt and uncle who lived at the other end of the town. I was lonely and miserable with them—or rather, I should say, I was lonely and miserable without my father. Just a prisoner in an enormous shabby vicarage. That evening—you remember it was the evening war was declared—everyone was so excited by the news that I had my first chance to escape. I took it. I ran across the town, aiming for home. I climbed over the garden wall from the side footpath. Nobody saw me or would have cared much if they had. I thought the house was empty. I went to the surgery. It was always fun there, but that afternoon more than usual, because—well, because a cupboard usually kept locked was half open.”

“Ah yes, I remember the evidence about that.”

“So I had a nice game with some bottles, taking the corks out and sniffing. Damn lucky I didn’t poison myself—or perhaps damned unlucky, when you come to think about it. Suddenly I heard footsteps in the hall. I was scared. I shut the cupboard as quick as I could and pushed away the bottles on a shelf where there were other bottles. I didn’t want her to know I’d been touching anything.”

“You knew who it was?”

“Oh yes, her walk was quite unmistakable…Presently she came in and found me. She was very hot—it was a very hot day and she’d been out in the sun. ‘You here?’ she began, but she didn’t grumble as much as I’d expected. I think she was tired. ‘Where’s your father?’ she asked. I said I didn’t know. ‘He’s never here when he’s wanted,’ she said. Then she went to the shelf and took some pills out of a bottle. ‘I’ve got a bad head,’ she said, ‘and I want to lie down. Fetch a glass of water to my bedroom.’ So I did, and that was how it happened…All quite by accident, you see.”

“Yes, I see.”

“Don’t you believe me?”

“May I say again—I don’t really know…At any rate, why didn’t you tell all this to the court?”

“I never had a chance. I was only too glad to get away…I’d always been blamed for everything and I thought I should be again…So I ran back to my uncle’s house. They thought I was ill—one of my ‘attacks’ they called them—I used to have bad nerves when I was a child.”

“And you didn’t tell
anybody
what had happened?”

“Well, they didn’t tell
me
anything, either.”

“What do you mean?”

“They never told me anything was wrong. It was weeks afterwards they said my parents had both gone away and I couldn’t see them. Years later I found out what had really happened. It came—” he hesitated for the understatement—“as a considerable shock to me.”

There was another long pause, during which I recollected as much as I could of Gerald’s reputation as a child. In the little town there had gathered quite a sizable legend of his precocious unreliability. He “romanced,” or, if you cared to use the less flattering word, he told the most astounding lies. He would (in the days when I had met him once or twice at children’s parties) assure people that he had seen an elephant in Shawgate, or a collision between two steam rollers going at full speed, or a man with three noses. And once, I remember, he told a few of us very solemnly that his father had bought a deathbed. How he had picked up the word we could only guess, but it was clear that in his mind a deathbed was a particular kind of bed that one went to a furniture shop to buy; so that was what he told us, as calmly as you please. We thought it amusing that his own childish ignorance should so completely prove him a liar.

Thinking of all this, I said: “Well, it’s a pity you didn’t tell the story when it might have done some good.”

“Yes, but I shouldn’t have been believed. At least, I very much doubt it. Nobody ever believed me. Why,
you
don’t even believe me
now. Do
you? Honestly?”

“May I say—for the third time—I simply don’t know
what
to believe.”

“I don’t blame you. We none of us know much about what really happens. Or has happened. The real truth is often hidden—perhaps because it’s a dark truth…It seems to me that we’re all children of the dead—the dead who shouldn’t have died—the dead who were put to death. …And they wait with us all the time, hoping we’ll understand and learn something, but we don’t, and we can’t do anything about it…Is all that too mystical for you?”

“I don’t quite know what you mean.”

He laughed as he answered: “Why should you? To hell with you, anyway. That’s how you make me feel.”

I smiled, liking him a little. After a short silence I said: “I’m interested in the girl—the German girl.”

“Why?”

“I liked the look of her, I think I saw her once—before I saw her in the court. There used to be a motor bus that made journeys between the foot of Shawgate and Lissington Hill—the seats faced each other and one day I sat opposite someone I couldn’t help staring at. Afterwards, when I described her
to
others, they said she must have been ‘the foreign girl who works at the little doctor’s.’ So maybe she was. She wore a brown coat and a black fur hat like a fez…But you knew her well, of course. Tell me. what she was like.”