Some Deaths Before Dying (16 page)

“Very well,” he had said at last. “I will say a few words by way of explanation before the service starts.”

“Oh, thank you. Honestly, I don’t think anyone is going to think it peculiar. They’re so used to me and my cameras.”

“That would not have been the problem, Mrs. Matson. You will find that I am not greatly influenced by what people think.”

And yet he’s lasted twenty-three years in the parish, never putting a foot wrong, but still not much liked by anyone. Sad.

“Ready?” said Dilys. “Oh, my goodness, it’s…Sorry, dearie, I didn’t mean to be rude, but…And you can’t have taken this one!
That’s you, there, isn’t it?”

Impossible that she should have been able to recognise Rachel, standing at the foot of the open grave, all in black, her face
hidden by not only the veil, and the shadow from the hideous black hat, but also by the bulk of the camera aimed down at the
descending coffin.

“Tom Dawnay,” croaked Rachel. “Local paper. Old friend.”

So good a friend that he hadn’t submitted the picture for use in the
Inquirer
, who would certainly have printed it. Indeed, it might well have made the national press. It was an image of surreal force,
even when stripped of the layers of personal meaning that it had for Rachel. On the left a dark slab, the backs of the mourners,
corrugated with heads above and fringed with legs below. Then a strip of sunlit grass, with receding gravestones, then the
single black column of the widow, rapt in her rite. The camera that had taken the picture was outside the rite, looking at
it, but the camera in the window’s hands was integral, essential to its completeness. Rachel had almost never included photographs
by anybody else in her albums, but she had put Tom’s here, at the start, because she felt it would resonate through the volume,
so that only the most insensitive peruser wouldn’t sense, looking at the rest of the photographs, that particular presence,
those particular emotions, there behind the viewfinder.

She grunted to tell Dilys to leaf on. Apart from that first picture the album was in chronological order: a line of neighbours,
friends, cousins, crossing the graveyard towards the church, the picture taken with a wide-angle lens and the negative cropped
to produce a frieze-like strip punctuated by verticals, black and grey, people and tombstones; Maxwell in his chauffeur’s
uniform pulling Dinah Tremlett in her old Bath chair; the children lined up at the porch, Flora pregnant with Ferdie and on
the edge of tears, Jack dapper at her elbow and properly solemn, Dick trying to look so and faking it, Anne…It was for the
image of Anne that Rachel had included this otherwise banal funeral group. Physically she took after Rachel, almost pretty
in a fine-boned but still slightly horsy fashion. She had been a lively, amenable child, but around the age of eleven had
begun to withdraw, to conceal her pleasures and troubles, to seem to wish to become less part of the family. That was what
made the picture of her so instantly shocking, the ferocity of dry-eyed grief that was still half rage, though it was almost
two years now since the business about Simon Stadding that had precipitated Jocelyn’s first stroke. She had at first refused
to come to the funeral, but Jack had gone to Bristol of his own accord and persuaded her.

“Mrs. Thomas hasn’t changed that much,” said Dilys. “Nor Mr. Thomas, come to that, given he’s lost a bit of hair. And wasn’t
Mr. Dick a well set up lad? Image of his father too. No wonder you’re fond of him.”

She moved to turn the page. Rachel didn’t stop her. No mention of Anne. She must have noticed. Tact, presumably, not to comment
on such a glimpse of the raw innards of a wounded family.

Inside the church. The other camera, largest aperture, ultrafast film, then delicate development and printing—the results
misty greys, sometimes with focal moments: the jet black of the silhouetted coffin and bearers against the open west door;
the coffin at the altar, with candles; the congregation standing for a hymn, Rachel’s own place empty, a gap in the pattern
of open mouths; Sergeant Fred against the north window (Rachel had almost grovelled to achieve the angle) standing at the
eagle lectern to bark the lesson with toneless precision. (extraordinary—still after almost forty years extraordinary—to think
that if Jocelyn had died two years sooner it might have been Fish Stadding reading that lesson. Had Simon or Leila ever heard
from him? There’s been no way to ask. There was still none. He’d be dead by now, surely.) The last picture she’d taken inside
the church was of the front of the coffin in close-up as it had passed her place on its way down the aisle, with the near-side
bearer also in close-up, a strong, unreadable face.

Then a gap in the sequence, filled only by a cutting from the
Inquirer
, Tom Dawnay’s published picture of the coffin emerging from the porch with Rachel on Dick’s arm behind it. (She had handed
her cameras to Jack to bring out.) The gap continued for the period she had had to stand, barely holding herself together,
accepting the unavoidable condolences. Ten or so blurred awful minutes, the same phrases over and over till they lost all
meaning, and Jocelyn dead, dead, dead. No meaning in anything, ever again. Her only solid memory of that phase was of Leila
Stadding’s face, grief and anger like Anne’s but so differently borne; the mouth working almost as if in epilepsy as she tried
to speak, but then she had turned away and shoved herself past whoever had been waiting behind her. Rachel hadn’t expected
any of the family to come, but had hoped that Simon might. He hadn’t, Leila’s elder son, Bob, had brought her, according to
Flora.

And then at last the saving reality of the camera, the light meter, her fingers composedly setting apertures and exposures
and changing filters, that composure steadying the whole being.

The graveside—family and servants, Jocelyn’s sisters and the Austen cousins, three or four old friends, the Cambi Road Association
representatives. Not good of Sergeant Fred, unfortunately. That must be the top of his head behind Duggie Rawlings. Duggie
had driven the others from London up in his new taxi. Rachel remembered him coming to her before he left and taking her aside
to explain that the reason he hadn’t been able to bring Terry Voss was that Terry was in prison again. Of course she’d want
to know that, the Colonel having been so thick with Terry all along.

“Thank you very much, Duggie,” she’d managed to say. “I’m sure Terry would have come if he could.”

And it was true, just as Jocelyn would have moved heaven and earth to attend Voss’s funeral, Jocelyn, who, for instance, had
refused to shoot again with an old acquaintance whom he’d discovered to be behaving dubiously over the division of an inheritance.
But Voss, of course, had been on the Cambi Road. That changed everything.

Finally, completing the sequence, the picture she had been taking when Tom Dawnay had photographed her, the coffin being lowered
into its slot of earth, the V of the straining tapes that held it, the surrounding, almost regular patterned frame made by
the lower legs and feet of the mourners.

“How sad,” said Dilys, closing the album. “But it’s wonderful what we can get over, isn’t it! Do you want another one, then,
or are we finding it a wee bit tiring? How about a little rest now? A drinkie first, and then a little rest, eh?”

“Thank you, Dilys.”

“My pleasure, dearie.”

H
orizontal again, Rachel lay and watched the rooks, but today without studying them, though it seemed a waste of a crystal
morning, with every twig clear. Absurdly she felt a sense of dereliction at her failure to carry on with her self-imposed
task. It didn’t even help to tell herself that what she was now attempting to do was a continuation of the task, was indeed
the true task, for which the study of nest-building had been a kind of preliminary exercise. Apart from the young man’s visit
she had not herself witnessed, and would never now have direct evidence of, whatever it was that had happened thirty-nine
years ago, any more than she would ever be able to look directly down on a rook’s nest in the process of construction. All
she had to go on in either case were the side effects, the comings and goings, the shudderings of the structure, the occasional
protrusion of objects of events beyond its edge. In one case the distance was in length, in the other in time…

Anne banging in through the front, door, wholly unexpected, while Rachel was stitching up the hem of one of the hall curtains.
No telephone call, no request to be met at the station. No kind of greeting now.

“Where’s Da?”

“Hello, darling. What a surprise!”

“Where’s Da?”

“In the study, I think. But please, darling…”

Anne strode past, blank-faced. When Rachel went to close the door she saw the taxi waiting in the drive. She had guessed it
might be bad, but never as bad as this.

And then, of course…but there is always something worse that could happen. Mercifully you seldom get to the true worst.

Because there was nothing better to do and it was an excuse for staying nearby, she went back to the dreary job of the curtain.
The study was round the corner on the way to the dining room and kitchen, and its door was solid. Jocelyn never raised his
voice, spoke more softly when angry, and Anne was no screecher. The first she heard was a single, dull thud. Perhaps she felt
rather than heard it, juddering up through the floor. But she sensed it, knew at once what it meant, and ran.

The door of the study opened as she reached the corner.

“Quick, Ma, the doctor. Something’s happened to Da.”

Then she was in the room.

He must have been standing behind his desk and then have fallen half sideways, heavily, all of a piece. Now he was lying almost
prone, with his face in the carpet and his right arm twisted beneath him. Rachel knew nothing about medicine. She took one
look, picked up the telephone, dialed 999, was answered almost at once and spoke briefly, keeping her head, to explain the
urgency and give directions. Then she flung herself down beside the body and let the dry sobs shudder through her.

“Oh, Ma, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault, darling…Not your fault.”

“Is he dead? I suppose we’d better not move him.”

“I…don’t know…The ambulance…Go and wait for it please…”

Voices at the door. Yes, of course. Thwaite and Young Jim would be in for their elevenses in the kitchen. They too must have
heard the fall. Her right arm was across his back when she felt the slight spasm. His left hand was beneath her breast on
the carpet. She shifted and clutched it. His fingers moved in answer.

Somebody touched her shoulder.

“Now, Mrs. Matson…”

Ranson.

“No, don’t touch him. Wait for the ambulance men. He’s alive. Is Minnie there?”

“Here, Mum.”

“Get a bag together for him. Pyjamas. His yellow dressing-gown. His shaving kit, hair brushes…”

Things he knew. Things that were his own, part of his being. While she was listing them Rachel eased herself up, never letting
go of his hand, so that she could sit nestled against his side and with her free hand gently stroke the back of his neck and
head, her own touch, all she could give him to let him know she was there, with him in this pit, this darkness…

“They’re here, Ma. They’ve just turned into the drive.”

She stayed where she was, waiting. The men were competent and friendly. They let her keep hold of his hand as they eased him
onto the stretcher, lifted him and carried him out.

“Do you want me to stay, Ma? I wasn’t going to, but…”

“Please. For a bit. Ring Flora. Dick, if you can find him. The aunts. Minnie’s putting a bag together. Bring it to the hospital.
And some stuff for me. I don’t know if they’ll let me stay. Take the Triumph. The keys are in the hall drawer. Look in his
diary and see if he’s got any appointments and cancel them if you can. Numbers in his book on the desk…”

The hospital was stupidly rigid about visitors. Outraged and distressed, Rachel came home to find that Anne, after coping
well with everything within her competence, had worked herself into a pit of her own, in which she was hurled and battered
by misery, rage and self-blame. She allowed herself to be held close on the morning room sofa for a while, but rose abruptly
and moved away.

“I suppose you want me to tell you what happened,” she said.

“Yes, please. Anything. Everything.”

“Simon came and told me he couldn’t marry me. It was because of something Da had told him.”

“Oh, my darling!”

“Did you know he was going to do that?”

“Of course not. Only that Da was going to talk to him about his father.”

“About Uncle Fish? What…? And anyway, what bloody business is it of Dad’s who 1 marry? Of either of yours? I’m twenty-three.
I can marry anyone I bloody well choose!”

“Yes, of course, darling. Simon didn’t tell you what it was about?“

“No. If you want to know there was something shifty…I mean, he was upset all right, but it wasn’t just about us. He had to
get out somehow. I couldn’t understand what he was saying. We’ve always wanted each other. Always. Ever since we were little.
Simon’s mine. I’m his. I don’t want anyone else, and I don’t want anyone else to have him. We’ve been going to bed for ages,
whenever we got the chance. Why do you think I was so sweet as pie about putting the wedding off? Because it doesn’t make
any difference, that’s why. We’re good as married already, and we can go to a Registry Office and get it made official anytime
we want. You can’t stop us, Aunt Leila can’t stop us, however crazy she’s gone. When Simon showed up I thought…Oh, Christ!
he just wanted to get it over.”

“Shall I tell you what Da told him?”

“If you like.”

“Fish has run off with the funds of the Cambi Road Association, as well as any of Leila’s money that’s left. He’s abroad somewhere.”

“Jesus Christ! Is that all?”

“About forty thousand pounds. Everything Da had raised to help with pensions and so on.”