Peter Dickinson - Some Deaths Before Dying

“Please, Ray,” Leila had said again, so Rachel had done her best to communicate the nature of her pleasure and the means of it, and Leila had thanked her, telling her later that some of what she’d said had been very useful. Strange, at the time, and in hindsight differently strange.

For the rest of their time in India her pleasure and Jocelyn’s in each other had been barely interrupted by the birth of children and by the jerky slither of the nations into war, continuing through the scramble of departure, and his brief leaves from various camps and barracks right up until his eventual sailing for what had seemed the comparative safety of Singapore.

In the years of his absence Rachel had woken night after night aching with longing for him. Occasionally she had felt physically attracted by other men but had not for an instant thought, or even fantasised, about carrying it any further. She was wholly Jocelyn’s. She felt that for her any other man would have been, literally, impossible.

Then he had returned, and she had once again slept curled in his arms, though it had been months before he had been well enough for anything beyond caresses. At this point, slowly, she had started to realise that she had not got all of him back. He could, and did, satisfy her physical need. He would initiate the performance and carry it through. But it was a performance. Not that he actively disliked what he was doing. He made the sounds and motions of enjoyment. But after a while she had to accept that what they had had before the war, what they had been so completely and passionately to each other, was now gone.

She had tried to tell herself that it was only natural, that they were older now, and such passion is the province of the young. Her own body gave her the lie. The loss was hers, but it was in him and it had nothing to do with age. It was the result of what had been done to him on the Cambi Road. For his sake, then, she learnt to suppress and control the need, telling herself that if this was the price she must pay for having him home she would pay it ungrudgingly, heavy though it was, because it was worth it, worth it a hundred times over.

She succeeded too. The ache came less often and when it did she was able to order it back to its lair. Sometimes they still made love, gently, without any fuss, like going for a walk together on a fine autumn morning. Thus all was fundamentally well and she loved him as deeply and strongly as ever, and was confident he did her. She had never in these years wept for her loss.

She did now, acid little droplets that were all the withered ducts could wring out beneath the wincing eyelids. They had not ceased when Dilys crept in to see if she’d woken.

“Awake at last? My, we’ve slept, haven’t we? Why, what’s up dearie? We’ve been crying.”

“Nothing. Stupid dream. Pad needs changing. Sorry.”

“Bound to after this time. Never mind, I’ll have you comfortable in a couple of minutes. Let’s just dry our poor face off first. Tsk, tsk, naughty girl, getting herself into such a state. Nice happy patients, that’s what I like. There. That’s better. Now let’s see to you.”

With her usual sturdy deftness she did what was necessary, chatting away as she worked, a kind of professional tact on her part, a way of making it seem that this was a pleasant social occasion, and the indignities to which she was subjecting her patient were subsidiary and irrelevant.

“Did I say, I got a letter from my niece yesterday? She’s the one who married a Yank, took her out to live somewhere in the middle where there isn’t much of anything except more of the same, and after a bit she couldn’t stand it any longer so she walked out on him, which wasn’t very nice of her, I’m afraid, but she always was headstrong. And then she went to live up in the top left corner—you can see the Pacific Ocean from her bathroom, she says—that’s when you can see anything because mostly it rains and rains like Scotland, she says, but without the bagpipes, though there’s a lot of wet sheep. Well I sent her a snap I’d taken of this house in the snow—just after I came, it was, if you remember, we had that snow—so she could see where I was living. But she didn’t answer and she didn’t answer and then, like I say, yesterday, I got this letter, fourteen whole pages on a typewriter, which is why I’ve only just finished reading it. I’m going to have to read it again, mind you, because it’s a muddle to sort out what she’s saying. She’s always flying off at an angle and going on to something else, and then, no warning, you’re back where you were before only you’ve forgotten where that was. Anyway, like I was telling you, I’d sent her this snap of the house and now she’s wanting to know all about it and how old it is, and everything. Victorian, I was going to tell her, and didn’t Mrs. Thomas say it was Colonel Matson’s grandfather that built it, him having done well out of his cotton mills, and with all these children to house, like families used to be those days—getting on a dozen, wasn’t it? Poor women, you can’t help thinking. I remember my mum telling me about some old aunt of hers who was a farmer’s wife, and her saying how she always loved the springtime, when the evenings were longer and the fields greener and there was milk in the cows and the baby was born. Almost done, dearie. There now, that’s better, isn’t it?”

“Thank you. Albums.”

“Out in the passage? Right you are. Which one? Look in the card index, shall I?”

“No. Different from others. Top left. Blue ring binder. Show me. Something I want to see.”

“Righty-oh, I’ll just get rid of this wet stuff and put a kettle on for our cup of tea, and then we’ll settle down and have a good look.”

The folder was one Anne had put together for a Social History project. She was in the Sixth at the time, so it would have been 1952—a good year, Flora in her first job, in a tiny flat just behind Harrods; Anne in her last school year, intelligent, pretty, already a little tending to detach herself from the family, but not yet into the desperate withdrawal that came later; Dick at Eton, and according to his tutor showing signs of pulling himself together.

“Would you like me to take a few photographs?” Rachel had suggested.

“That would be super, Ma. Only if you want to, you know? You don’t have to go to town.”

“Nonsense. It’ll give me a chance to play with the half-plate.”

Not the least of Dilys’s virtues was her enjoyment of looking at photograph albums. She slid the reading desk across the bed, laid the folder in place and opened it at the beginning.

“My, what a big picture! And doesn’t it look handsome like that.”

Yes, the clear summer light and the motionless subject had suited the half-plate very well. There, on the first spread, opposite a page of Anne’s neat italic handwriting (still then showing the self-consciousness of a newly acquired skill) was the view of Forde Place from the main gate, with the monkey puzzle to the right and the stable block to the left. Almost nothing had changed since the afternoon when Rachel had first seen it.

Jocelyn had stopped the car at the top of the drive.

“Oh dear,” she had said.

“I told you it was an eyesore,” he’d answered, and driven her on down to meet his parents.

Anne’s researchers had tended to confirm the family legend that old Eli Matson hadn’t employed an architect, but had told his mill foreman to build him a house. The man, after all, was responsible for a couple of perfectly adequate mills. Certainly the house had that look. There was a vernacular style, still to be seen along these valleys: severe facades of brickwork, undecorated apart from a change of colour for the surrounds of the ranked, flat-arched windows; sweeps of narrow-eaved slate roof, soaring stacks; proportions, achieved by eye and instinct rather than theory, that were often strongly satisfying. When Rachel had realised how many demolitions were likely to come she had spent eighteen months systematically recording what still stood, and years later had given her collection to the local record office.