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

faded paper fluttered out.
    She said: “What’s that?”
    “Some kind of old woodcut by the look of it. I shouldn’t think it has any value.”
    “We could ask Ambrose Gorringe when we get to Courcy Island. He knows about these things even if they aren’t his period.”
    They peered at it together. It was certainly old, early seventeenth-century she guessed from the antiquated spelling, and it was in remarkably good condition. The paper was headed with a crude woodcut of a skeleton holding in its right hand an arrow and in its left an hourglass. Beneath was the title, “The Gt Meffenger of Mortality,” followed by the verse. She read the first four lines aloud:
    Fair lady lay your costly robe aside,
No longer may you glory in your pride,
Take leave of all your carnal vain delight,
I’m come to summon you away tonight.
    The undated subscription gave the printer’s name as John Evans of Long Lane, London.
    Roma said: “It reminds me of Clarissa.”
    “Of Clarissa? Why?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t know why.”
    He pressed her, sounding irritably insistent, as if it mattered, as if she had intended something.
    “It’s just something I said, something that came into my mind. It didn’t mean anything. Put the paper by the sink, on the draining board. We’ll show it to Ambrose Gorringe.” He did so and returned moodily to his box. He said: “It was a mistake, buying this junk. We should have stuck to the new stock. London seems to have a surfeit of bookshops. And God knows why I let you talk me into buying all that left-wing stuff upstairs. No one wants it. The left wing already have enough cosy haunts in this neighbourhood and it only repels the other buyers. Those pamphlets are just gathering dust. I must have been mad.” She knew that he wasn’t referring only to the left-wing literature. The injustice stung her into anger. She knew even as she spoke that it was folly. He needed to be cajoled, humoured, comforted. The quarrels which he seemed increasingly to provoke only left him sulky and resentful and herself exhausted. But she had had enough.
    “Look, you didn’t take on this place to oblige me. You were just as keen to get out of Pottergate. You loathed teaching. Remember? I was fed up with it, I admit, but I wouldn’t have resigned if you hadn’t made the first move.”
    “You mean, it’s all my fault.”
    “All! What all? It isn’t anyone’s fault. We both did what we wanted.”
    “Then what are you complaining about?”
    “It’s just that I’m tired of being made to feel as if I’m some kind of encumbrance, worse than a wife, as if you’re only keeping on the shop because of me.”
    “I’m keeping it—we’re keeping it on—because there’s no alternative. Pottergate wouldn’t take us back even if we applied.”
    And where else could they apply? He didn’t need her to tell him about the unemployment in the teaching profession, the expenditure cuts, the desperate search for jobs even by the best qualified. She said, knowing even as she spoke that argument was folly, that it would only fuel his irritation: “If you do chuck it, it’ll please Stella. I suppose that’s what she’s been waiting for. She can say ‘I told you so’ and hand you over, neatly trussed, a sacrificial victim to dear Daddy and the family business. My God, she must be praying for our bankruptcy! It’s a wonder she doesn’t lurk outside counting the customers.”
    His protest was sulky rather than vehement. It was, after all, an argument they had had before. “She knows I’m worried, obviously. She’s worried herself. She has a right to be. Half of the money I put in here was hers.”
    As if that needed saying. As if she didn’t know exactly how much cash from Daddy’s generous allowance Stella had graciously handed over. And that was generous of her, generous or stupid or cunning. Or all three. Because she must have known that Colin was going into partnership with his mistress, she wasn’t that