The Malcontents (24 page)

The café closed at half past five, and Stephen, as they walked through the market place, stalls bare, waiting for Saturday, vestigial smells of fruit in the frigid night, told Tess what had just been said.

‘All fixed,’ she said with acquiescence.

‘All fixed. Except going through with it.’

It was a strange mood for her, after the proposal, this mixture of joy and dread. The joy was deeper, reached nearer the springs of life, than the dread, and yet, at some moments, it wasn’t written on her face, and a passer-by would have thought her anxious. Her nerves were firm, when she was herself concerned, but now they were attuned to his.

They had threaded through the market place, and came out, without any aim (there was nowhere to go yet) into a side street, oddly old-fashioned, like the market place itself, in the glossy town. They passed a shop giving out the smell of cheese. Stephen said: ‘I shall have to tell my parents about us.’

‘They won’t like it much, will they?’ But a passer-by would have seen the anxious expression vanish and joy take over.

‘I have other things to tell them.’ He meant, as Tess took for granted, his resolve about Neil and the trial. ‘They’ll like those less.’ In a moment, he said: ‘I’d better go and see them: I may as well finish it off.’

Looking up as they walked, quite slowly, together, fingers interlaced, Tess said: ‘No, darling. Not tonight.’

‘Why not?’

‘No, don’t do any more tonight. You’ve made enough efforts for one day. Haven’t you?’

‘It’s nice to get things done.’

‘It can wait till tomorrow. Nothing more tonight.’ She smiled at him and hugged him. ‘Now be said.’

She was mimicking her mother, using a homely old idiom that Stephen hadn’t heard until he met her. He smiled back, not arguing any further. He was willing to be guided by Tess that night.

Nevertheless, though it was a respite, the two of them together, there was nowhere for them to go. As soon as six o’clock struck, they turned into a pub, small, obscure, unknown to them: there they sat in the quiet chintz-curtained saloon. Without breaking the news they couldn’t return to either of their homes. Quite unexpectedly, time was going slow. Glasses in front of them, they were talking, but thoughts, marriage blended with the events not far away, trial and shame, would not leave them free for long.

If they had had a place of their own, they would have gone to bed. But Tess, reposefully happy under all the rest, might have admitted that she wasn’t sorry they were prevented. Examining herself, she would have felt a sense, perhaps a primitive survival, perhaps more profound, that it was somehow fitting that evening to stay chaste. Solemn, superstitious even, but she didn’t mind that. Not even when it meant hours stretching ahead, nowhere to go, nothing to do.

At one stage, she told Stephen that she might speak to her father later on. ‘He’ll be very glad,’ she said. Stephen replied: ‘Of course. Do that.’ But she hadn’t asked whether she should, she had simply told him. There was no more tentativeness or touching wood. They were each of them learning what trust was like.

They had a snack at a sandwich bar, but neither was hungry. Then, not only time going slow, but words also, they went – it was the opposite of a climax to a decisive day, the most decisive they had known – to a cinema. The film had no suspense. They sat with arms round each other, and Tess felt so sleepy that her eyelids drooped. Shaking herself awake, she noticed that he was sleepy too. They left before the film was over. It was not yet ten o’clock.

In the street, she said: ‘Now you’ll have an early night.’

‘I’ll take you home.’

‘You won’t. I love you very much. It’s much too far.’

‘This doesn’t happen every day, does it?’ She saw the trace of his sarcastic smile.

‘That’s why’, she said. ‘Not a time to drag yourself about.’

When she hadn’t been certain of him, she had been uneasy because he was dutiful and polite. He understood, and kissed her, standing still while the crowd on the pavement pushed by.

‘You can see me to the bus,’ she said.

After she had left him, Stephen walked home. Near the cathedral, the streets were as quiet as they had been on Saturday night. In Thomas Freer’s house, the drawing-room lights were shining over the lane. Stephen took care to make no noise as he unlocked the door and as he went upstairs. He passed the drawing-room door, the sound of Bach came from within, no one had heard him.

He reached his room. As Tess had said, it would be an early night for him.

He woke, as he used to wake in placid times, to the clang of the cathedral bell. The prospects of the next hours swam into mind: he felt, or began to act as though he felt, that he had them mastered now. He telephoned Tess. That early morning call was going to become ritual until they married. Yes, she would see him at the inquest. Remember to put on a black tie.

As on the previous day, he arrived down at breakfast with his father. Outside, the morning was slate-grey, but the wall-lights shut it out, islanded the room. As on the previous day, there were good mornings, inquiries about sleep. On the hot plate this morning stood poached eggs on haddock.

After a while Thomas Freer said: ‘I’ve been thinking, I suppose it’s just possible that you might consider attending this inquest today–?’

He already knew, Stephen was certain.

‘Yes. I think I have to go.’

Thomas Freer glanced at him, surreptitiously, with his eyes half-veiled. His expression was melancholy but inquisitive. He brought out one of his random questions: ‘Have you ever met the coroner?’

‘I don’t believe so.’

‘He’s a
nice
little man.’

Stephen’s attention was elsewhere, but on other occasions he had observed that his father’s use of the diminutive often referred less to physical size than to social standing.

‘It is rather convenient, don’t you agree, that his office is just across the way. It is rather convenient, you’ll only have to slip along, won’t you?’

Thomas Freer spoke with obscure satisfaction, as though he had had some part in contriving it himself. As it happened, the coroner’s office was in the street opposite the cathedral, along which Stephen and the others had walked up and down so many times, probing the first news, the Saturday night before.

‘Of course, in my opinion, for what it’s worth, nothing will happen this morning.
Nothing
will happen. It will be adjourned after five minutes.’

For an instant, his lids were raised.

‘Or perhaps you are better informed?’

‘No. That’s what I am told.’

It was also what his father had been told, Stephen was more certain still. He also suspected, more than suspected, that his father had been told more than that. He had been warned – had the other lawyer done it ‘in terms’ as Thomas Freer would say, or wrapped it up? – that Stephen would give evidence at the trial. Thomas Freer already knew that a decision had been made, that there was a conflict coming inside that house as well as publicity ahead. Which he hated more, it would have been impossible for Stephen, hard for himself, even in his introspective moods (more naked than Stephen imagined) to disentangle. That morning at breakfast he was half inviting Stephen to declare it all, half making defences against hearing what he didn’t want to hear.

In fact, Stephen had no intention of speaking yet awhile. The invitations, if that was what they were, he was – quite gently – opaque about. With ambiguous relief, Thomas Freer went into a disquisition about
Humanae Vitae
and world-conservation in Stephen’s lifetime. Before they got up from the table, Stephen announced that he would be at home that evening. It was understood by both to be a promise to speak: but Thomas Freer scarcely seemed to listen, in a hurry talked of something else, as though not wishing to regard it so or for Stephen to be bound.

The inquest was down for eleven o’clock. Before he left the house, Stephen – as though casually, though it was part of his programme for the day – called in at the drawing-room. As he expected, his mother was sitting there, spectacles on nose, holding the newspaper right down on her lap, doing the crossword puzzle.

‘Hallo,’ she said. There was no lift in her voice.

Seating himself in a chair close by, Stephen said that in five minutes he was going over to the inquest. ‘Really,’ she answered. Then Stephen, still trying to sound matter-of-fact, gave her the same message as he had given his father. He would be at home that evening. Like Thomas Freer, she must have understood. She didn’t attempt any sidetrack of conversation, to pretend that they were both at ease or postpone disquiet. All she said was: ‘Oh, we shall expect you in for dinner, shall we?’

For an instant, as the door shut behind him, the strain slackened, despite where he was going. He went out without a coat, not noticing the bitter air. The matins bell followed him all along the three or four hundred yards: it hadn’t finished as he reached the office, just audible, no longer palpable, as he went upstairs.

The coroner’s office, one floor up, was smaller than the drawing-room Stephen had come from. It had probably itself once been the drawing-room of an eighteenth-century house, though one slightly less spacious than Thomas Freer’s. Even now, in spite of the desk, books, paperasserie, jury’s chairs, if one looked at the wainscot and the shape of the fireplace there was a ghostly domesticity: which wasn’t reduced because of the couple of dozen people present, some standing apart as though at a party where they hadn’t been introduced. The Kelshalls, she all in black, he with an armband, were sitting in two chairs by themselves. A secretary, already in place behind the table, faced them: jurors took their seats already knowing that nothing was required of them that morning. Someone from Hotchkinson’s office was standing up, so were a solitary press man, Constable Shipman, and a superintendent in plain clothes. There was, although Stephen didn’t identify him, a doctor from the infirmary. The Bishop, having escorted Tess, was talking quietly to the coroner; he lifted up a hand as he saw Stephen, who brought a chair by Tess’ side. Although they had expected him, Mark had not come.

Two minutes past eleven. The coroner, a doctor called Evans, rapped on the desk. He was shining-faced, heavily muscled, in no language except Freerese a little man. He had the kind of presence which simmered with high spirits, impatience not far from the surface, and rapid shifting moods.

Thomas Freer’s physical designation might have been inaccurate, but his prophecy about time wasn’t far out. Shipman gave formal evidence about being called to the body on the pavement. The doctor, reading from a script with the curious air of insincerity that reading aloud produced, as though these weren’t the facts but had been composed by a committee, reported the arrival at the infirmary.

‘Yes. He was dead on arrival,’ said the coroner, hurrying the young doctor up. ‘You examined him–’

More reading aloud. ‘Extensive laceration of the skull. Extensive fracture of the vault of the skull. Depression of the bone into the brain matter. Laceration of the brain forcing the brain down into the skull casing. Cone compression of the brain stem, pressing on the respiratory cortex: thus causing death.’

To Stephen, the mechanical words were more ominous than the sight had been.

‘This is exactly what you might expect from a fall from a fifth storey window,’ said Dr Evans, quick and uninflected.

‘Yes, if he fell in a certain position.’

‘If he fell in the position which he obviously did.’ Dr Evans glanced towards the superintendent. ‘We haven’t established, though, how he came to fall. I understand that there are inquiries still proceeding in this matter.’

‘Yes, sir. I am instructed to ask for an adjournment.’

‘You’re conducting a post-mortem?’ That question to the infirmary doctor puzzled those who had heard nothing about drugs: there had been no mention that morning.

‘To be exact, a post-mortem is being conducted.’

‘Yes, yes, yes. Adjourned for seven days. This day week.’ Then the coroner, tone suddenly deepened, leaned forwards towards the Kelshalls. ‘Before you go I want to say a few words to you. Strictly speaking, I ought to wait until we’re finished, but I’m not going to. This young man has died, and it’s terrible for you. It’s terrible for any parents when a young man dies before his time, however it happens. It’s specially sad when we hear that your son possessed most brilliant promise. My whole heart goes out to you in sympathy.’

He added: ‘I wanted to tell you that.’

He stood up, and immediately began conferring with his secretary. Emotion, or emotional words, had compelled emotion, and Mrs Kelshall, who had listened to the doctor’s evidence with her features like a blank sheet, covered her eyes. The others had risen, and Stephen and Tess, the Bishop close to them, moved hesitatingly towards her. Stephen hankered to pass out unnoticed behind her, could have done so, stood with Tess hand on his arm, at last was impelled to speak. He took a couple of steps in front of the Kelshalls’ chairs, looked down. neck inclined, and said, quiet but staccato: ‘Mrs Kelshall. I’m sorry again.’

Her hands dropping into her lap, she gazed ahead. Her face had gone stiff.

‘I do not understand.’

‘I’m sorry. I can’t say any more than I did that night.’

‘I do not understand. They do not tell us what happened to Bernard.’

Just for an instant her eyes fixed on his, then gazed ahead again.

‘You have said nothing, Mr Freer.’

She went on: ‘I hoped you were a friend.’

She spoke with pride, and that Stephen had confronted in her before, but also with hate. He had no reply, and as he returned the yard or two to Tess, not only his cheeks were pale, but his lips too. He was flinching too much to imagine any of the pictures she had constructed since the Tuesday evening, the people utterly mysterious to her, the wild parties in houses such as she had never been inside, the lies, even the conspiracies against her son. Stephen was the only one she had known by sight. When she saw him now, she could imagine anything of him, the sight was hateful. But really, since she was so mystified, felt so ignorant about these people round her son, her only recourse was her pride.