“My God.”
“I’ve already talked to Terence Cuff about a memorial service Friday at St. Stephen’s Church. You’ll be part of that. All of Elena’s friends will be there.”
“And that’s it? That’s all? That’s your judgement of everything? Of our marriage? Of our life? Of my relationship with Elena?”
“This isn’t about you. You can’t take it to heart.”
“You didn’t even argue with her. You could have protested.”
He fi nally looked at her. “It’s the way it has to be.”
She said nothing more. She merely felt the hard core of her resentment take on added weight. Still, she held her tongue. Be sweet, Justine, she could hear her mother say over her need to rail like a shrew against her husband. Be a nice girl.
She put the sixth piece of toast into the rack and the rack itself along with boiled eggs and sausage onto a white wicker tray. Nice girls muster up compassion, she thought. Sweet girls forgive and forgive and forgive. Don’t think of the self. Go beyond the self. Find a need greater than your own and fill it. That’s the Christian way to live.
But she couldn’t do it. Into the scales upon which she weighed her behaviour, she put the useless hours that she’d given over to trying to forge a bond with Elena, the mornings on which she’d run at her side, the evenings she’d spent helping her write her essays, the endless Sunday afternoons she’d waited for father and daughter to return from a jaunt which Anthony had declared essential to his recapturing of Elena’s love and trust.
She carried the tray into the glassed-in morning room where her husband and his former wife were sitting at the wicker table. They had been picking at grapefruit wedges and corn flakes for nearly half an hour, and now, she supposed, they would do the same with the eggs, the sausage, and the toast.
She knew she ought to say, “You need to eat. Both of you,” and another Justine might have managed the seven words and made them sound sincere. Instead, she said nothing. She sat in her accustomed place, with her back to the drive, across the table from her husband. She poured him coffee. He raised his head. He looked ten years older than he had two days ago.
Glyn said, “All this food. I can’t eat. It’s such a waste really,” and she didn’t lift her eyes from watching Justine tap off the top of her boiled egg. “Did you run this morning?” she asked, and when Justine didn’t reply, “I imagine you’ll want to start that up again soon. It’s important for a woman to keep working at her figure. Not a stretch-mark anywhere on you, is there?”
Justine stared down at the spoonful of tender white that she’d scooped from her egg. Every admonition from her past rose up to confront her, but they formed an insubstantial barrier that the previous night made easy to surmount. She said, “Elena was pregnant.” And then she looked up. “Eight weeks pregnant.”
Anthony’s face, she saw, went from drained to stricken. Glyn’s face offered a curiously satisfi ed smile.
“That Scotland Yard man was here yesterday afternoon,” Justine said. “He told me.”
“Pregnant?” Anthony repeated the word in a deadened voice.
“That’s what the autopsy showed.”
“But who…how…?” Anthony fumbled with a teaspoon. It slipped from his fingers and clattered on the fl oor.
“How?” Glyn gave a tittering laugh. “Oh, I’d think it was how babies usually get made.” She nodded at Justine. “What a moment of triumph for you, my dear.”
Anthony turned his head. The movement seemed sluggish, as if he were pulling against a great weight. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You think she doesn’t savour this moment? Just ask her if she already knew. Ask her if the information surprised her at all. In fact, you might ask her how she encouraged your daughter to have a man whenever she felt itchy.” Glyn leaned forward. “Because Elena told me all about it, Justine. About those heart-toheart chats, about how she was supposed to take care of herself.”
Anthony said, “Justine, you encouraged her? You knew?”
“Of course she knew.”
“That isn’t true,” Justine said.
“Don’t think for a moment that she didn’t want Elena to get pregnant, Anthony. She was willing to settle for anything to drive you away from her. Because if she did that, she’d get what she wanted. You. Alone. With no more distractions.”
“No,” Justine said.
“She hated Elena. She wanted her dead. I wouldn’t be surprised if she killed her herself.”
And for a moment-just the fraction of an instant-Justine saw the doubt on his face. She recognised the working of knowledge: she’d been alone in the house when the Ceephone call came, she’d gone out running alone in the morning, she hadn’t taken the dog, she could have beaten and strangled his daughter.
She said, “My God, Anthony.”
“You knew,” he replied.
“That she had a lover. Yes. But that’s all. And I spoke to her. Yes. About cleaning… about hygiene. About taking care that she didn’t-”
“Who was it?”
“Anthony.”
“God damn you, who was it?”
“She knows,” Glyn said. “You can see that she knows.”
“How long?” Anthony asked. “How long had this been going on?”
“Did they do it here, Justine? In the house? While you were home? Did you let them? Did you watch? Did you listen at the door?”
Justine pushed herself away from the table. She got to her feet. Her head felt empty.
“I want answers, Justine.” Anthony’s voice rose. “Who did this to my daughter?”
Justine fought to find the words. “She did it to herself.”
“Oh yes,” Glyn said, her eyes bright and knowing. “Let’s have at the truth.”
“You’re a viper.”
Anthony stood. “I want the facts, Justine.”
“Then take yourself off to Trinity Lane to fi nd them.”
“Trinity…” He turned from her to the wall of windows beyond which his Citroën stood on the drive. “No.” He was out of the room without another word, leaving the house without a coat, the sleeves of his striped shirt snapping in the wind. He got into the car.
Glyn reached for an egg. “It didn’t quite play out as you planned it,” she said.
Adam Jenn stared at the neat lines of his handwriting and tried to make sense out of his notes. The Peasants’ Revolt. The council of regency. A new query: Was the composition of the council of regency, rather than the imposition of new poll taxes, largely instrumental in the circumstances that led to the revolt of 1381?
He read a few phrases about John Ball and Wat Tyler, about the Statute of Labourers, and about the King. Richard II, well-intentioned but ineffectual, had lacked the skills and the backbone necessary for a man to be a leader. He had tried to please everyone but had succeeded only in destroying himself. He was historical proof of the contention that success requires more than merely a coincidental birthright. Political acumen is the key to arriving unscathed at a personal and professional goal.
Adam himself had been living his academic life according to that precept. He’d made his choice of advisor carefully, spending hours of his time scoping out the candidates for the Penford Chair. He finally made his move in Anthony Weaver’s direction only when he felt relatively assured that the St. Stephen’s medievalist would be the selection of the University search committee. To have the holder of the Penford Chair as his advisor would virtually guarantee him the benefits he found essential to labelling himself an eventual success-the initial position of academic supervisor to undergraduates, the consequent attainment of a research fellowship, the future movement to lecturer, and finally a professorship before his forty-fifth birthday. All of it seemed within the bounds of reasonable expectation when Anthony Weaver had taken him on as a graduate advisee. So cooperating with Weaver’s request that he take the professor’s daughter under his wing in order to make her second year at the University a smoother and more pleasant experience than her fi rst had appeared to be yet another fortuitous opportunity for him to demonstrate-if only to himself-that he possessed the requisite amount of political perspicacity to flourish in this environment. What he had not counted on when fi rst told about the professor’s handicapped daughter and first envisaging Dr. Weaver’s gratitude for the time he expended on smoothing the troubled waters of his daughter’s life was Elena herself.