Pictures of Perfection. Reginald Hill
PROLOGUE BEING EXTRACTS FROM THE Journal of Frances Guillemard
August 29 1931. After the school committee meeting this evening Stanley asked me to stay behind to help with some correspondence. As soon as we were alone he made a very stilted and stuttering proposal of marriage! It was so unlike himself that I laughed and asked him if he’d been reading Trollope, upon which he grabbed me in his arms and kissed me so hard I thought I would stifle, but I didn’t want him to stop. After that I would have stayed all night. As it was, I got back very late and expected a scolding (24 and I still get scolded!) but it turned out Selly had done something to draw all the fire and I was able to slip upstairs hardly noticed.
All I wanted was to think about the evening and fill in my journal, but Guy appeared in his dressing-gown, very put out because he’d been sent to bed at nine for asking questions when the row started, which he felt was considerably beneath the dignity of a young gent of 13! He thought it had something to do with Agnes, the undermaid, and said Father was in a tremendous paddy and talking, as he always does when Selly gets in hot water, of sending him off to Uncle Jack’s ‘to grow up’! I got the feeling that, hurt pride apart, Guy wouldn’t be too displeased at the prospect of being left the sole son of the house, with first pick of the horses and everything. But it probably won’t happen.
August 30. Went to Selly’s room this morning and found him packing. This time it’s true. He’s spending a couple of weeks with Great Aunt Meg in Gilbert Street, then it’s off to New Zealand to learn about sheep! As if there wasn’t one thing we had an excess of in Eendale, which is sheep! He was very coy about the reason for his banishment, and in the end he got so pompous we quarrelled. What on earth do they feed them at school and college to make them believe a young idiot who’s spent most of his time shut up with other young idiots knows more about life than any woman who isn’t forty and formidable!
Later I got it out of Mummy. Guy was right (he usually is, the little sneak) and Selly has been ‘misbehaving’ with little Agnes Foote. Agnes has of course been sacked and sent back to her family in Byreford. I said it all seemed a bit extreme to me, Selly off to the Antipodes and Agnes in disgrace all because of a bit of slap and tickle. Sharp intake of breath from Mummy at the expression! Said that the trouble was Selly was taking it too seriously and talking about being in love. Agnes was much more sensible (surprising how sensible servants have to be!) and I needn’t worry about her. Didn’t think it was a good moment to mention me and Stanley, knowing as I do that Father has already got him marked down as ‘modern’ which is only one step above total decadence!
September 24. This has been a dreadful day. I thought that since Selly sailed last week, I had observed a slight softening in Father, as if he relented his harshness to his son and heir, and, though too pigheaded to change his mind, was converted to a gentler, more rational regime in regard to the rest of us. So I told him about me and Stanley. Or rather, coward that I am, I told Mummy and let her pass on the news. I knew when I heard his cry of rage from the stables that I’d made a gross miscalculation! It was all Mummy could do to stop him from locking me in my room and heading down to the vicarage with a horsewhip. But at least it’s done. I feel quite serene. Nothing will stop me from marrying Stanley now. It’s silly but I find the only thing that really worries me is that I can’t see Stanley getting much help from Father in his efforts to rebuild the village school!
October 26. Today Stanley and I were married in St Mark’s at Byreford. It was a disappointment not to have the ceremony in our own church but at least I was spared the threat of interruption from Father, who would have seen this as the ultimate provocation! I slipped up to the Hall this morning to see Mummy. She wept a lot and said that Father was implacable and wouldn’t I change my mind even now? How little she understands. I bumped into Guy who is home for half-term. He had the cheek to lecture me about disgracing the family by marrying an atheist socialist agitator! He really is the most obnoxious little snob. I have written to Selly baldly stating the facts. I hope he may be more sympathetic, though I know he’d never have the strength of will to stand up to Father. I thought of Selly later as I came out of church, and who should I see among the onlookers but little Agnes Foote, now Agnes Creed, for when I spoke to her she told me, blushing, that she’d married an old flame of hers from Byreford and by the look of her, he has not been long in doing his ‘progenitive duty’. The euphemism is Mummy’s. She speaks rarely of such things and always as a necessary pain. I hope I shall not think of it so. Soon I shall know. Stanley, who has stayed downstairs to smoke a pipe, has had time to burn a ton of tobacco by now! Shall I ring a bell to summon him to his ‘progenitive duty’? Then we would see how ‘modern’ he is. But I think I hear him now.
‘Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation and vice, and I begin already to find my morals corrupted.’
Wield usually walked to work. It wasn’t far and the exercise did him good. But these weren’t the only reasons.
He lived his life in compartments and the bike did not belong in the same compartment as the job. There was no hard and fast rule. He’d use it if necessary. But why attract attention? He was ‘out’ if being resolved never to deny his sexuality meant being out, but that didn’t mean he had to wear a Kiss-me-Quick T-shirt, did it? It was all perfectly reasonable.
Yet his mind, which could collate evidence, analyse statements, and parse PACE, with a speed and clarity beyond computer programming, knew that perfect reasoning is a perilous plan for living. Perfection has no safety net. One slip and it shatters.
When the job was going well, when he was fully involved with his work both on and off duty, he could imagine things were OK. Leisure in short bursts he could pack with his martial arts classes, his Gilbert and Sullivan discs, his motorbike maintenance, his Rider Haggard novels.
But when he had a full day off, or, worse, several full days, the truth came rushing up to meet him. These compartments were empty. There was no one to share them with. There had been no one for longer than he cared to remember. There was part of his life he hadn’t just compartmentalized; he’d walled it off and plastered over the bricks.
It wasn’t simply a matter of sex. A man could do without that and still function. Or if he couldn’t, there were outlets of minimal risk.
But companionship, closeness, care; sorrow at parting and joy at reunion; planned trips and surprise treats; accusations, apologies, quibbles, quarrels, and quiet breathing; all the pain and pleasure of shared existence; this was what he’d walled himself off from, raising a dust of desolation which no amount of fresh spring air blasted over his face as he roared through the highways and byways of rural Yorkshire could blow away.
This time he’d been off for almost a week. If he’d made an issue of it he was probably entitled to more like a month. It had felt like a year. But now at last it was over, and precisely on the first stroke of twelve from the town-hall clock, he passed through the imposing portals of Mid-Yorkshire Police HQ. He felt his heart leap, or at least lurch, as he smelt the dusty disinfected odour of the place, but it would have taken an ECG machine to detect the movement.
The last note of the hour was sounding as he reached the CID floor. Simultaneously a bulky figure stepped out of an office and a voice like a sports day tannoy system boomed, ‘My God, someone’s rubbed the bottle and let the genie out! What time of day do you call this, Sergeant?’
And Wield knew he was back home.
‘The time of day my holiday finishes, sir,’ he said.
‘Holiday? I hope you’ve brought me a stick of rock, ’cos I know just the place to stick it!’
Judging the threat to be non-personal, Wield advanced to make his obeisance to the Head of Mid-Yorkshire CID and Master of All He Cared to Survey, Detective-Superintendent Andrew