Simon Tolkien - The Inheritance

And the jury had believed her. She felt sure of it. Stephen’s clever barrister had certainly done his best, taking her through her first statement to the police line by line, but she had been ready with an explanation for her change of story that-try as he might-he couldn’t shoot down. Because no one knew her mother like Sasha did. The old bitch was more Roman Catholic than the pope. Sex was a bad thing that could just about be tolerated if it was for the purpose of manufacturing Catholic babies, but pursued for pleasure outside the confines of marriage it was a mortal sin. It led to ruin, just like what had happened to Sasha’s father when he chose to fornicate with his students rather than teach them medieval art history. Sasha had had no difficulty describing to the jury how her mother would have reacted to hearing about her affair with Silas, because that is exactly how she had reacted when Sasha phoned her the day before to tell her what she was planning to say in court. Sasha had held the receiver away from her ear for at least a minute while the old woman shouted herself hoarse. She’d obviously not told the jury that her mother had long since ceased to have any hold on her.

Sasha didn’t want to admit it to herself, but part of her had almost enjoyed her sparring match with the defence barrister, at least while it was happening. The point about lying was that it took practice, and God knows she’d had enough of that. She’d worked with John Cade eight hours a day, five days a week, for more than eighteen months, and he’d never once guessed who she really was. Perhaps it was because he needed to trust her. There was, after all, nobody else at the manor house who understood the significance or the value of what he owned. And she was his lifeline to the outside world. He never went outside the gates himself, and so he had to rely on her to go to libraries and visit the auction houses. At the end, she was all he had to rely on in his long, hopeless search for the jewelled cross of St. Peter, and so he had had no choice but to trust her. It was as if he had been taken in by all Ritter’s boasts about his state-of-the-art security system. Cade viewed everything and everybody outside his gates with a distrust bordering on paranoia, but once someone had got inside the enclosure, his suspicions seemed to vanish. Ritter and his wife had been quite right when they testified that Cade never locked the internal door of his study.

Once or twice Sasha had come close to exposing herself, although it was Ritter, not Cade, whose watchfulness she feared. The worst time had been only a month or two before Cade’s death. They had been sitting at dinner in the big dark dining room. It was a dismal place with shadowy portraits on the walls and heavy mahogany furniture that had long since lost its shine. The lights in the half chandeliers overhead were always too dim, and conversation was a struggle against the silence. Except for Ritter. The dining room was where he was at his most animated. Because it was the one room from which Silas could not escape. It guaranteed Ritter a victim and an audience for at least half an hour every day.

But on this particular evening Ritter went too far. Perhaps he had drunk too much, but his insinuations about Silas’s sexuality turned to outright accusation, and Cade pulled the sergeant up short.

“You’re out of line, Reg,” he said. “Silas may not have the balls to say ‘boo’ to a goose, let alone a girl, but that doesn’t make him queer. If he was, I’d kick him out of here without thinking twice about it.”

Ritter was silenced. He couldn’t respond, not even when Silas shot him a look of triumphant hatred across the table. And meanwhile, Cade was warming to his theme. He was usually silent in the evenings, letting Ritter run the conversation, but to night was different. He’d got two bottles of vintage red wine up from the cellar, and the food had been less heavy and stodgy than usual.

“Queers are all the same, you know,” said Cade, sitting back in his chair at the end of the table and twirling his glass of wine in his hand. “They’ve all got one thing in common.”

“They can’t be trusted,” said Ritter, trying to recover his employer’s approval.

“That too. But what they really can’t do is control themselves. I had first-hand experience of this before the war, you know.”

“Where?” asked Ritter.

“Here in Oxford. There was a fellow over at Worcester College. Blayne, he was called. Taught medieval art just like me and put himself forward for the university professorship when old Spencer died in thirty-seven.”

“At the same time as you?” asked Silas.

“That’s right. Anyway, we were both being considered by the selection panel when one of Blayne’s students came forward and said that Blayne had been having relations with him.”

“You’re joking,” said Ritter, laughing.

“No, I’m not. At three o’clock every Tuesday. Once a week for three months. During their one-on-one tutorials. That was the end of Blayne’s candidacy, of course.”

“I should hope so,” said Ritter.

“Yes. But my point is the man couldn’t control himself. He knew how important it was to stay out of trouble when he was applying for the professorship, but he just couldn’t keep his hands off the first pretty boy that came along. And why not? Because he was queer. That’s why.”

Cade smiled complacently and poured himself another glass of wine, and it was all that Sasha could do to stop herself reaching over and throwing it in his mottled corrupt old face. Instead she bit her lip until the blood flowed inside her mouth, and, unseen, she stabbed her nails into the palms of her hands under the table. But, when she looked up, she saw Ritter staring at her and felt for a moment entirely naked under his gaze, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.

“Are you all right, Sasha?” he asked. “You look very pale all of a sudden.”

“I’m fine,” she replied, answering a shade too quickly. “It must have been quite convenient for you, Professor,” she said, turning to Cade.

“What?”

“This Blayne man turning out to be a homosexual. Didn’t it get rid of your rival for the professorship?”

“I suppose so,” said Cade languidly. “But he wasn’t really a rival, you know. He’d published very little and what he had was rather second-rate. He didn’t have the same reputation as me.”

“I’m sure he hadn’t,” said Ritter, laughing. “He was a nancy boy, wasn’t he?”

“Yes. But he had a wife and daughter too, you know, although whether that was for cover or because he couldn’t acknowledge the truth about himself, I don’t know.”

“What happened to them?” asked Sasha, unable to resist asking the question, although it cost her an almost superhuman effort to keep her voice steady.

“The wife left him. And he lost everything. His fellowship too. The last I heard he was lecturing miners’ sons in South Wales.”

“Well, he’d better watch himself if he tries molesting them,” said Ritter. “Or he’ll end up underground for good.”

Sasha couldn’t stand it anymore. While Cade and the sergeant were still laughing, she got up, pushing her chair back against the wall behind her.

“I think maybe the sergeant’s right. I’m not feeling so well after all,” she said, holding her napkin up to her face to hide the tears that were starting in her eyes. “I think I’ll go and lie down for a while.”

“You do that, my dear. And I hope you feel better soon,” said Cade benevolently. “We’ve got important work to do tomorrow.”

Sasha hated Cade more than ever after that evening. She could not look at him without thinking of her father shambling around Oxford in his old unmended clothes. In the evenings, Cade would sometimes lean on her shoulder as they came down the stairs from the manuscript gallery, and she would think how easy it would be to push him forward and watch him break up like an old doll as he turned and turned, bouncing off the bannisters until he hit the ground at the bottom with a final thud.