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.
It would be her only recourse for months, and perhaps years, to come. She was to derive no comfort from one phenomenon about memories of Bernard which no one had foreseen. As a matter of fact, she remained once more in total ignorance. The inquest, in a week’s time, proceeded according to the lawyer’s prediction. The medical evidence about the traces of drugs wasn’t firm and was given with scientific dubiety: Dr Evans wouldn’t take it as proved, and blarneyed the jury into giving a neutral verdict. The presence of Bernard in Lance’s flat, and his death, were mentioned at the trial, as explaining the first police search. That wasn’t allowed to go further, and soon afterwards it seemed likely that Bernard’s name was forgotten. But it didn’t happen quite like that.
The core had organized their network of contacts with professional thoroughness – so much so that the information couldn’t be damped down now. True, the politicians, the public relations men and the journalists could, because of legal dangers, say nothing. That however didn’t prevent gossip seeping round the way-out left in half-a-dozen universities. There was so much secrecy, so many mutters of drugs and double agents, that the gossip became distorted and for a time – not to a mass extent, largely to persons who liked the air of conspiracy and of being in the know – Bernard became a cult hero of some fringe groups. He had killed himself to keep a secret, was one rumour. Another was that the CIA were teaching ‘our people’ how to make away with the real leaders who were going to bring ‘the system’ down. Bernard was one of the real leaders. In one university, photographs of him were on sale. It helped that some of his remarks, pro-Arab, anti-Zionist, were on record; they had been made at a meeting of pro-Arab Jewish students, and were the only ones of his to be preserved.
The curious thing was, Emma came to believe in this apotheosis of Bernard. In order not to compromise Sylvia, Stephen, Tess and Mark hadn’t revealed to the others who had betrayed them, or that they had a source of precise information. Stephen had, on the afternoon before the inquest, given an indication to Neil, but not of how certain he was nor of how he knew.
Although they soon died away, there were one or two mentions of Bernard in newspapers during the months after the inquest. In a demo in the summer term, a small file of students, parading outside the Israeli Embassy, chanted ‘What about Bernie Kelshall? What about Bernie Kelshall?’
Mrs Kelshall did not read any newspaper except the local evening one, and was not to know.
That Friday morning, the Bishop had watched what had taken place between her and Stephen. He patted Stephen’s arm.
‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘It’s only natural. Poor folk, poor folk.’
He went himself and talked to them. His face was open with empathetic sorrow. Stephen heard Mrs Kelshall say ‘Thank you, sir. Thank you.’ She and her husband began to cry, and the Bishop talked on, sustaining a background of brotherly murmuring.
Soon he shook hands with them, taking in turn each of their right hands in both of his. ‘God bless you.’ It was all part brotherly, part paternal, just a shade episcopal, as Stephen and Tess observed him: he had given at least a moment of consolation, altogether beyond their power. And yet, as he walked with them down the office stairs, into the narrow street, it was Stephen who was thinking of the Kelshalls, not the Bishop. The Bishop had seen too much bereavement to carry it away with him: you shared it when you were in its presence, and then you left it behind; it might have seemed like professional callousness, but the Bishop, if he had thought about it, wouldn’t have felt guilty: he, like a doctor, had to live like a war-correspondent of mortality, it was the only way to live.
As they came into the harsh, throat-biting air, he gripped Stephen’s arm.
‘I must say, Stephen,’ he said, with a joyous countenance, ‘this is splendid news!’
He went on: ‘When my girl told me, you could have knocked me down with a feather.’
He glanced lovingly at Tess, who herself was looking up at Stephen, knowing his concentrated moods better than her father did. He gave her a flicker of a smile. He said: ‘I’ve been very lucky.’
‘I hope you’ve both been very lucky,’ said the Bishop. ‘If I say so myself, she is a good girl.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ said Stephen.
‘And I believe that you are a good young man.’
Suddenly, after all the cosiness, he had spoken with surprising sharpness and authority. Stephen replied in an identical tone.
‘I can’t let you think that.’
‘Others have to judge it for you, you know.’
‘I’m not sure what it means,’ said Stephen, ‘or whether it means anything at all.’ (Tess was thinking, indulgent, irritated, that this wasn’t the time for semantic quibbling.) ‘But, in any sense that you could use it, it doesn’t begin to be true.’
‘You’re very honest, arent you?’
‘You always have been,’ put in Tess.
‘Not even always that,’ said Stephen.
‘Do you think any of us are always that?’ the Bishop asked. He was beginning to understand something of what his daughter had told him about Stephen. He was arrogant often, but didn’t like himself much. The Bishop thought that too much self-dislike could splinter a character: and yet, though this young man was accepting no assurance that morning, there was something enduring about him. ‘We shall see! We shall see!’ the Bishop was enunciating cheerfully to himself. They had arrived opposite the cathedral gate, and he said: ‘Come to the office, just for a mo.’ Then, as they walked across the yard, he ruminated, again cheerfully: ‘Marriage is tactically disastrous. But strategically vital.’ That was not the kind of comment he made at marriage services, and until they were sitting down, opposite the crucifix, he was telling them what sounded more like the conventional wisdom.
Then he said: ‘No announcement until it’s all cut-and-dried! We don’t want any leaks.’
He put a finger to the side of his nose, with an air of preposterous cunning. Tess must have told him, Stephen realized, that the news was not yet broken to the Freers.
‘Announcement as soon as possible,’ said Stephen. ‘Monday or Tuesday.’
‘Very good, very good.’ The Bishop regarded them. ‘There’s one thing you might remember. The minute this is public property, it’ll give people round here (he waved a short arm) something else to think about. People aren’t very much use at thinking of two things at once. Perhaps it’s a bit of a bonus to you now.’
To Stephen, that seemed a piece of superficiality, not relevant to the situation, less worth listening to than anything the Bishop had said, either this morning or two days before in that office. But it wasn’t entirely so. The Bishop didn’t approve of the worldliness of the world, but wasn’t unaware of it. Neither Stephen nor Tess had given it a thought, but a respectable marriage might save them both some slander.
‘Well then. Well,’ said the Bishop to his daughter, ‘I think it’s time I took you away.’
That came on Stephen unprepared. Seeing that Tess made no resistance (he had relied on having her to himself) he misunderstood, and thought it was a piece of misplaced tact, leaving him alone before the evening confrontation. But it was nothing like that. The Bishop’s wife cherished strong and dutiful family feelings, and she had a sick sister coming to stay. Before the Bishop and Tess left home that morning – and before Tess had told him of the engagement – Mrs Boltwood had said that she expected them to join her at the station. It hadn’t escaped the Bishop that Tess had chosen to speak to him in her mother’s absence: strong and dutiful family feelings weren’t so harmonious as outsiders took for granted, including Stephen, who still believed they were simpler, warmer, more homely (in the English sense) than his own. The Bishop wasn’t prepared for Tess to let him give the news to her mother at second-hand. So he was making her do her duty at the railway station. Tess, because she was happy, was agreeing to be obedient that day.
Thus, before midday, Stephen was left alone. He had a sandwich at a pub, and then went to the reference library, near to Hotchkinson’s office, to get out of the cold, sitting there with boys from the local grammar schools. He tried to read some of Einstein’s letters, on the unity of all things, on the God (which was an atheist God) expressed in the order of the natural world. What majesty, what repose: but the words wouldn’t stay in his mind, even the grandest of men made existence easier, more conformable with their desire, than it truly was. For a time, he daydreamed. It was not until half past three, when he would expect the house to be empty, that he returned home.
On the telephone pad was a request to ring a number, Mark’s. They hadn’t met since Wednesday night, a day and a half ago.
‘Hallo.’
‘Hallo.’ This was Stephen. ‘I was going to call you anyway.’
‘Any news?’
‘I’ve been settling various things. Tess and I are going to get married.’
‘Oh, I’m delighted.’ Mark’s voice was spontaneous, fresh, generous. ‘It’s the best thing for both of you. Much the best thing.’ Then he went on, still eager: ‘I must see you. Right away.’
‘No, not now.’
‘Yes, I must.’
Stephen explained that he had to speak to his parents: about his decisions, including this one. ‘It won’t be nice.’
‘When are you doing that?’
‘This evening. The sooner I get it over, the better for everyone.’
‘I must see you before that.’
‘Let’s meet tomorrow.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Mark was gentle, inflexible. ‘I’ll be round in half an hour.’