The Skull Beneath the Skin by P. D. James Read Free Book Online

body from which the spirit had already seeped away, worn out by pain, by weariness and by a malaise which went deeper than physical weakness, some brittle-armed traitor of the heart who had never mustered the will to fight.
    As he made his way down Wimpole Street through the mellow autumn sunlight he thought of the great performances he had seen and reviewed and mentally spoke the names like a roll call: Olivier’s Richard the Third, Wolfit playing Malvolio, Gielgud’s Hamlet, Richardson’s Falstaff, Peggy Ashcroft’s Portia. He could recall them, could remember the theatres, the directors, even some of the most quoted extracts from his reviews. It was interesting that, after thirty years of play-going, it was the classics which had lasted longest for him. But he knew that, even if he were this night to take his accustomed seat in the third row of the stalls, formally dressed as he always was for a first night, listening to that anticipatory hum which is unlike any other sound in the world, nothing that happened when the curtain rose would move or excite him beyond a mild, detached interest. The glory and the wonder had departed. Never again would he feel that tingle between the shoulder blades, that almost physical surge of the blood which, for all his youth, had been his response to great acting. It was ironic that now, all passion spent, he was about to review his last play, and that an amateur production. But somehow he would find the energy for what he had to do on Courcy Island.
    The island was reputed to be beautiful and the castle an interesting example of high Victorian panache. Seeing them would probably be worth the effort of the journey, which was asclose as he could now get to enthusiasm. But he was less sure about the company. Clarissa had mentioned that her cousin, Roma Lisle, was to be there with a friend. He hadn’t met Roma, but had had to listen to Clarissa’s caustic disparagement of her for too many years to relish being under the same roof as them both, while the careful omission of the friend’s name hadn’t been reassuring. And the boy was to be with them, apparently. Clarissa’s decision to take on the son of her drowned husband, Martin Lessing, had been one of her more spectacular impulses; he wondered who was regretting it more, benefactress or victim. On the three occasions on which he had met Simon Lessing, two at the theatre and one at a party at Clarissa’s Bayswater flat, he had been struck by the boy’s
gaucherie
and by a sense of deep personal wretchedness which he thought had less to do with adolescence than with Clarissa. There had been something dog-like in his servility, a desperate need to win her approval without the least idea what it was she wanted of him. Whittingham had seen that same look in his father’s eyes; the prick of memory hadn’t been comfortable. Simon was supposed to be a talented pianist. Probably Clarissa had seen herself splendidly cantilevered in one of the front boxes at the Royal Festival Hall while her prodigy, adoring eyes glancing upwards, took his triumphant bow. It must be disconcerting for her to be faced instead with the moodiness and the physical gracelessness of adolescence. He found himself possessed of a slight interest in seeing how the two of them were making out. And there would be other minor satisfactions; not the least would be watching how Clarissa Lisle was coping with her own neurosis. If this were to be his last performance there was some satisfaction in knowing that it might well be hers. She would know that he was dying. She had the use of her eyes. But he wouldn’t grudge her any pleasureshe could get from observing the process of his physical disintegration. There were subtler pleasures than that; watching mental disintegration might, he suspected, be among them. He was discovering that even hatred died a little at the end. But it still lasted longer than desire, longer even than love. Walking slowly in the sunshine and