The Lighthouse - P.D. James

Was there, Kate wondered, a hint of irony in the words? Glancing at Mrs Plunkett’s innocent face, Kate thought it unlikely.

Mrs Plunkett went on, ‘And now previous visitors are writing to enquire when we’ll re-open, so I expect that will happen. After all, it wouldn’t be easy to vary the Trust. Jo Staveley says that politicians are so used to sending hundreds of soldiers off to be killed in wars that a couple of dead bodies won’t worry them, and I daresay she’s right. There was talk that we were to prepare for some very important visitors and they’d be on their own, but seemingly that won’t happen now. A relief all round if you ask me. I expect you’ve heard that the Staveleys are going back to the London practice. Well, I’m not surprised. He’s quite a hero now with the papers all saying how clever he was to make that SARS diagnosis so quickly. Thanks to him the whole outbreak was contained. He shouldn’t go on wasting himself here.’

‘And Millie?’

‘Oh we’ll still have Millie. Just as well with Dan Padgett gone. Mrs Burbridge and Jago’s friend are trying to find her somewhere to live on the mainland, but it’ll take time.’

The only visitors who kept themselves apart were Miranda Oliver and Dennis Tremlett. Miranda had announced that she was too busy to join the party for dinner; there were affairs to discuss by telephone with her father’s lawyers and with his publisher, arrangements to be put in hand for the memorial service, her wedding to be arranged. Kate suspected she wasn’t the only one to be glad of Miranda’s absence.

It was only in bed at night before sleep that this strange, almost unnatural peace was broken by thoughts of Dan Padgett lying in his cell and indulging his dangerous fantasies. She would see him again when he was sent for trial and at the Crown Court, but for now she resolutely pushed the murders to the back of her mind. On one of her solitary walks, on impulse she had gone into the chapel and found Dalgliesh there staring down at the stains of blood.

He had said, ‘Mrs Burbridge wonders whether she should ask someone to scrub the floor. In the end she decided to keep the door open and leave it to time and the elements. I wonder if it will ever completely fade.’

2

Three days before he was due to leave Combe, Dr Mark Yelland at last replied to his wife’s letter. He had earlier acknowledged it, saying that he would give it thought, but after that had been silent. He took out his pen and wrote with care.

These weeks on Combe have shown me that I have to take responsibility for the distress I cause, to the animals as well as to you. I can justify my work, at least to myself, and I shall continue at whatever cost. But you married me, not my job, and your decision has as much validity as has mine. I hope our parting can be a separation not a divorce, but the choice is yours. We’ll talk when I come home, and this time I mean that. We will talk. Whatever you decide, I hope that the children will still feel that they have a father, and you a friend.

The letter had been sent, the decision made. Now he looked for the last time round the sitting room which, in its emptiness, had become suddenly unfamiliar. He would face what he had to face but he would be back. Shouldering his bags he set off vigorously for the harbour.

3

In Peregrine Cottage Dennis Tremlett had taken no more than ten minutes to take from their hangers the few clothes he had brought with him and meticulously fold them into his canvas holdall. He left it, zipped, in his room ready to be taken down to the harbour with the other luggage. Miranda, after a calculation of the relevant cost of train fares and taxis, had ordered a car and driver to meet them at Pentworthy.

In the sitting room Miranda was still fitting Oliver’s books into the small cardboard boxes in which they had come. Silently he began removing the last of them from the shelf and bringing them over. She said, ‘We won’t be coming back.’

‘No. You wouldn’t want to. It would be too painful. Too many memories.’ He added, ‘But darling, they weren’t all bad.’

‘They were for me. We’ll holiday in hotels that I went to with Father. Five stars. I’d like to see San Francisco again. It’ll be different in future. Next time they’ll know who’s paying the bill.’

He doubted whether they would care provided it were paid, but he knew what was in her mind. Now she would be the rich bereaved daughter of a famous man, not the resented hanger-on. Kneeling beside her, he said on impulse, ‘I wish we hadn’t lied to the police.’

She swayed back on her heels and stared at him. ‘We didn’t lie. Not really. I told them what Father would have wanted me to say. He’d have come round in the end. He was upset when he first knew, but it was just the shock. He’d have wanted me to be happy.’

And shall you be? Shall I? The questions were unasked, the response not given. But there was something else he needed to know, whatever the risk of asking. He said, ‘When we got the news, when you realised that he was actually dead, was there a moment, no more than a second or two, when you were glad?’

She turned on him a look in which he could identify each fleeting emotion with a horrible clarity: surprise, outrage, incomprehension, obstinacy. ‘What a terrible thing to say! Of course there wasn’t. He was my father. He loved me; I loved him. I devoted my life to him. What made you say something so hurtful, so awful?’

‘It was the kind of thing that interested your father, the difference between what we feel and what we think we ought to feel.’

She slapped the lid of the box down and got to her feet. ‘I don’t know what you mean. Get the sellotape and scissors, will you. I put them in the top of that small grip. I suppose we ought to seal these down.’

He said, ‘I shall miss him.’

‘Well, we both will. After all, you were just his employee; I’m his daughter. But it’s not as if he was young. He was sixty-eight. He’d made his reputation. And there’s no point in your getting another job. There’ll be plenty for you to do with the house to arrange, the wedding, and all the mail we’ll have to reply to. You’d better ring the office and tell them the cases are almost ready. We’ll need the buggy, of course. I was going to say that Padgett could bring it. Funny to think that he’s gone. I’ll never forgive him. Never.’

There was one last question which he dared not ask and didn’t need to; he already knew the answer. He thought of the galleys, the margins crowded with Oliver’s precise almost illegible handwriting, the careful revisions which could have made his final work a great novel, and wondered if he would ever be able to forgive her.

He stared at the denuded shelves, their emptiness reinforcing his own sense of loss. He wondered how Oliver had seen him. As the son he never had? That was an arrogant presumption which only now, with Oliver dead, had he allowed to lodge in his mind. Oliver had never treated him as a son. He had never been more than a servant. But did it matter? Together they had engaged in the profound and mysterious adventure of language. In Oliver’s company he had come alive.

Following Miranda to the door he stood in silence, taking a last long look at the room, and knew that

here he had been happy.

4

The day came when they were at last able to leave Combe Island. Dalgliesh was ready early, but waited in Seal Cottage until the helicopter was in sight. Then he placed the key on the table where it lay like a talisman promising that he would return. But he knew he would never see Combe again. Closing the door, he made his way across the scrubland to the house. He walked in a confusion of emotions – longing, hope and dread. Emma and he had spoken only rarely during the last two weeks. He who loved language had lost confidence in all words, particularly those spoken by telephone. Truth between lovers should be written, to be weighed at leisure and in solitude or – better – spoken face to face. He had written once proposing marriage, not a protracted affair, and thought he’d had his answer. To write again now with the same request would be to badger her like a petulant child, while to have done so while he was still sick would have been too like inviting pity. And then there was her friend Clara who didn’t like him and who would have spoken against him. Emma was her own woman, but what if Clara was only echoing her own halfacknowledged misgivings? He knew that when they met Emma would say that she loved him. That at least he could be sure of. But what then? Phrases from the past spoken by other women, heard without pain and sometimes with relief, came into his mind like a litany of failure.

Darling, it’s been the best ever, but we always knewit wasn’t meant to last. We don’t even live in the same city. And with this newjob I can’t keep mucking up my free evenings.

What we’ve had has been marvellous, but your job always comes first, doesn’t it? Either that or the poetry. Why don’t we face the truth and make an end before one of us gets hurt? And if there is hurt you can always write a poem about it.

I’ll always love you, Adam, but you’re not capable of commitment, are you? You’re always holding something back and it’s probably the best of you. So this has to be goodbye.

Emma would find her own words and he braced himself to hear the destruction of hope with dignity and without whining.

The helicopter seemed to hover interminably before finally setting down precisely in the middle of the marked cross. There was another wait until the blades finally stopped spinning. Then the door opened and Emma appeared and, after a few tentative steps, ran into his arms. He could feel the beating of her heart, could hear her whispered ‘I love you, I love you, I love you’, and when he bent his head the tears were warm against his cheek. But when she looked up into his eyes her voice was firm.

‘Darling, if we want Father Martin to marry us – and if you’re happy, I’d rather like that – we’d better set a date quickly or he may say he’s too old to travel. Will you write to him or shall I?’

He held her close and bent his dark head to hers. ‘Neither. We’ll go to see him together. Tomorrow.’ Waiting at the rear entrance to the house, bag at her feet, Kate heard his exultant laugh ring out over

the headland.

And now she and Benton were ready to leave. Benton lugged his bag on to his shoulder and said, ‘Back to real life.’

Miranda and Tremlett had left by boat with Yelland the previous day but Dalgliesh had had final arrangements to discuss with Maycroft and the team had been glad of these few hours to themselves. Suddenly the rest of the little group was with them. Everyone had come to see them off. Their private goodbyes had been said earlier and Rupert Maycroft’s to Kate had been surprising.

He had been alone in his office and, holding out his hand, had said, ‘I wish I could invite you to come back and visit us, but that isn’t allowed. I have to abide by the rules if I expect the staff to. But it would be good to see you here again.’

Kate had laughed. ‘I’m not a VIP. But I shan’t forget Combe. The memories won’t all be bad. I’ve been happy here.’

There was a pause, then he had said, ‘Not so much two ships passing in the night as two ships sailing

together for a time but always bound for different ports.’

Dalgliesh and Emma were waiting for them, standing side by side. Kate knew that, for her, something had finally ended, the vestige of a hope which, even as she indulged it, she had known was almost as unrealistic as her childhood imaginings that her parents were not dead, that any day they would arrive, her handsome father driving the shining car which would take her away from Ellison Fairweather Buildings for ever. That illusion, cherished in childhood for her comfort, had faded with the years, with her job, her flat, the satisfaction of achievement, and had been replaced by a more rational but still fragile hope. Now she let that go, with regret but without pain.

There was a low cloud base; the brief St Martin’s summer had long since passed. The helicopter lifted as if reluctantly and made a final circuit of the island. The waving figures became manikins and one by one turned away. Kate gazed down at the familiar buildings which looked as compact as models or children’s toys: the great curved windows of Combe House, the stable block where she had lodged, Seal Cottage with its memories of their late-night conferences, the square chapel, still with that stain of blood, and the brightly coloured lighthouse with its red cupola, the most charming toy of all. Combe Island had changed her in ways which she couldn’t yet understand, but she knew she would never see it again.

For Dalgliesh and Emma, sitting behind her, this day was a new beginning. Perhaps for her, too, the future could be rich with infinite possibilities. Resolutely she turned her face to the east, to her job, to London, as the helicopter soared above a white tumble of clouds into the shining air.

About biography

P. D. James was born in Oxford in 1920 and educated at Cambridge High School for Girls. From 1949 to 1968 she worked in the National Health Service and subsequently in the Home Office, first in the Police Department and later in the Criminal Policy Department. All that experience has been used in her novels. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Society of Arts and has served as a Governor of the BBC, a member of the Arts Council, where she was Chairman of the Literary Advisory Panel, on the Board of the British Council and as a magistrate in Middlesex and London. She has won awards for crime writing in Britain, America, Italy and Scandinavia, including the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award and the National Arts Club Medal of Honor for Literature (US). She has received honorary degrees from seven British universities, was awarded an OBE in 1983 and was created a life peer in 1991. In 1997 she was elected President of the Society of Authors.

She lives in London and Oxford and has two daughters, five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

also by P. D. James

COVER HER FACE

AMIND TO MURDER

UNNATURAL CAUSES

SHROUD FOR ANIGHTINGALE AN UNSUITABLE JOB FOR AWOMAN

THE BLACK TOWER

DEATH OF AN EXPERT WITNESS

INNOCENT BLOOD

THE SKULL BENEATH THE SKIN

ATASTE FOR DEATH

DEVICES AND DESIRES

THE CHILDREN OF MEN

ORIGINAL SIN

ACERTAIN JUSTICE

DEATH IN HOLYORDERS

THE MURDER ROOM

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TIME TO BE IN EARNEST

AFRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY

THE MAUL AND THE PEAR TREE

The Ratcliffe Highway Murders 1811 (by P.D. James and T.A. Critchely)

Copyright

First published in the United Kingdom in 2005 byFaber and Faber Limited

BloomsburyHouse

74–77 Great Russell Street London WC1B 3DA

This ebook edition first published in 2008

All rights reserved

© P. D. James, 2005

The right of P.D. James to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

ISBN 978—0—571—24704—2 [epub edition]