She sensed his withdrawal and then slowly was aware that he questioned his own reaction and was trying to reach out to her again.
He said brusquely, "It's the last thing I have belonging to him."
"But not the last thing he'd want you to have. You have his essays – his books."
"It's a cry for help."
"Is that how you want to remember him? Crying for help? He laughed, too, you know. For most of the time things were good for him."
"For most of the time. And the rest of the time-? By Christ, you're not asking me to ignore the rest of the time – the last few days? I've got to find out why."
"Agonising over that sketch won't make the rinding out any easier. You may never find out. What are you going to do – carry that sketch around for the rest of your life saying, My twelve-year-old son drew this -?"
Anger burst in him like a deep subterranean explosion. "Who are you doing this for-Hammond – Brannigan? Which of them set you up?"
Her astonishment was obvious and then her anger rose as bitterly as his. "I'm not asking you on anyone's behalf. Keep the bloody thing. Sleep with it under your pillow. Go quietly mad over it. Set David up in some sort of lunatic shrine. I knew him as he was. I remember him as an ordinary nice kid. If I were his mother I'd say – okay, I've heard you, I'll do what I can. Point made – and now let's get rid of it." Her voice shook. "But then, don't take any notice of me. I'm not his mother. I'm the school matron who entices you here to persuade you to tear up your puny bit of evidence. Evidence of what – for God's sake? Look, Your Honour – Mr. Coroner or whatever you're called – this is proof beyond any doubt that David killed himself."
She paused to draw breath.
His own anger -was spent. He didn't know how to heal her hurt. He could feel her pain in his own throat as she struggled with the words. "I was protecting you."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"Keep your sorrow. I'm tired of it." She was lashing out, saying anything, not meaning it.
"That I understand."
"Do you? Can you look outside yourself long enough to understand anything? We're the enemy, don't forget."
"Not you."
"Oh yes – a few minutes ago you'd lumped me with the rest of them. Hammond. Brannigan. The school. David's killers. What do you think we are – a mob of murderers?"
"Someone…"
"Oh yes, someone – perhaps. And then again – perhaps not. Don't you want to believe in an accident? It could have been, you know. He could have been careless, kids are -they fall. What's wrong with that explanation? Not dramatic enough? Someone has to pay – is that it? What sort of cash value do you put on David?"
She got up before he could answer and left the room. The hot tears of rage and hurt were spilling over and running into the corners of her mouth. Shame was no small part of her emotions, it had been an appalling thing to say. She went into the bedroom and sprawled face-down on the bed pressing her face into the pillow.
She didn't hear him following her. The way she was lying reminded him of David in the hold of the ship and he put his hand on her shoulder to break the image. And then the image was gone and he saw and felt only her. Until now he had believed his sexual drive dead or anaesthetised. The explosion of anger had been like the bursting apart of a carapace. The protective conventions had gone. He had come to apologise anew, to try to make up for the hurt he had caused her. But now that was forgotten.
His hands tightened on her shoulders and he drew her to him.
She tried to push him from her. "I'm not a bloody whore!"
And then she stopped struggling – wanting it, too. Neither hatred nor love had any part of this.
There was no gentleness in their lovemaking, but there was gentleness afterwards as they lay together. He touched her breasts and then took his hands down in long caressing movements over her thighs.
She answered him, "Yes," meaning "Again."
She had slept with others before, but it had meant nothing. This time, in an aura of rage and pain, her initiation into a full awakening had been superb.
The second time, he took her slowly and tenderly and then leaned up on his elbow and looked down at her. With Ruth, and all the women before and after Ruth, the sexual preliminaries had been civilised. He had never forced himself on anyone before. He wondered if he would have drawn back if her resistance had lasted more than a moment or two. He should, he knew, be dismayed – not euphoric – and tried to frame some sort of an apology.
She put her fingers across his lips. "Don't."
"When I followed you in here I never intended…"
"I know."
He lay down beside her again and held her to him. Physically he felt eased- and pleasurably tired, David, truly dead, had passed into temporary oblivion. They lay for a long while in total contentment.
He didn't think about David again until he drove her back to the school later that evening. It had been a wholly satisfying and healing limbo of forgetfulness and he emerged from it reluctantly and with an irrational sense of betrayal. That he could forget David in an act of love with a girl he hardly knew showed a facet of his nature he hadn't been aware of. He backtracked in his mind everything that had led up to it and remembered the sketch.
"I'd like to give it to you – and let you tear it up. A present of peace to David. But I can't. It may be worthless evidence – or it may not. I can't risk destroying it. Not even for you."
She accepted that his mood was in a downward swing again. The sketch had triggered an emotional reaction that had kicked down barriers – what he did with it now was up to him. She deplored its existence, but she was grateful for it, too.
She said with surprise, "I've never before slept with a man and not known his Christian name."
After being briefly startled, he felt the sudden sanity of humour bubbling up into surprised laughter.
"John."
She said dryly, "Well – thanks for the introduction." He told her he would be going up to London to contact his solicitor the following day. "I'll be back tomorrow night, but probably too late to get in touch with you. I'll see you the day after tomorrow."
"I'll be on duty at the school."
"Whenever you're free." He went and opened the car door for her. "That is if you wish… if tonight…" He fumbled clumsily with the words, not sure how to put it to her.
She said calmly, "Tonight was… unexpected… and…"
"And?"
"Good and natural and I'm glad it happened. You've just dropped me off at Marristone Grange, not at a nunnery." She reached up and kissed him. "Maybe, I even love you a little."
She walked swiftly up the drive before he could answer.
Entering London, after the days in Marristone, was like entering an orchestra pit with an atonal orchestra in full swing. The noise assailed Fleming as he drove and the traffic forced his concentration.
Thirza, in partnership with two others, had an office off Regent Street. It was a semi-basement and uninviting on the outside. Inside, it spelt money. Thirza's own room off the small reception area was furnished with antiques. Her desk, he remembered her telling Ruth with some pride, had cost just under a thousand pounds. She had always tended to talk money – which was surprising as she had never lacked it. Crayshaw, Bradley and Corsham had been a family firm for nearly half a century. Her father, Reginald Crayshaw, had made her a junior partner immediately after she got her law degree. Now, fifteen years later at thirty-eight, she had inherited his share and took a third of the profits, which were considerable.
When Fleming was shown in she was reading a copy of the account of David's death which her secretary had typed for her after phoning the Marristone Herald that morning. She hastily slipped it into a drawer and rose to greet him. "I was most awfully shocked. I didn't know until you phoned. It might have been in the dailies – I didn't see."
Her embarrassment and her concern paradoxically made the meeting easier than he had expected. Here was a case of meeting someone halfway – of making things easier for someone else. She had never been a demonstrative woman. Her two husbands had "come and gone without leaving an emotional ripple and she had reverted to her maiden name. Ruth's assessment of her: introspective, work-orientated, but a kind and true friend, was probably based on the fact that Thirza kept her marital problems to herself and never poached on Ruth's territory. Any other woman at this sort of meeting would have given him if not a quick sympathetic peck on the cheek then a warm sympathetic squeeze of the hand.