Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012

Time for a Change by Robert Barnard

A Cartier Diamond Dagger Award winner for lifetime achievement, Robert Barnard has a devoted following on both sides of the Atlantic. In the U. S., he has been honored with the Nero Wolfe, Agatha, and Macavity awards, and he is a seven-time nominee for the Edgar (three times for stories in EQMM). Fans will be glad to see that his latest novel, A Mansion and Its Murder (Allison & Busby), became available in paperback this year.

“It’s so damned unfair,” protested Les, sounding as if he were a lawyer, in court, conducting his own case. “They look at your address and put you in the appropriate school for that area. No appeal worth bothering about against the judgment: The kids from a good area get a good school, and the ones from a not-so-nice area get a not-so-nice school.”

“You don’t have to talk to the gallery,” said his father-in-law. “I spent my life teaching in a good school, as you very well know, but if I tried to get my grandchildren there on the strength of it they’d snigger at me. I only wish I could help, but you know that I—”

“We know, Dad,” said Miriam. “We understand.”

Ten years before, her father might have helped his daughter to finance a move to a prosperous area, with well-thought-of schools — his own school, for example, where he had finished up as Deputy Head of English. Now the credit crunch and some crass investments recommended by a friend who knew even less about the stock market than Ernest Craven meant that help to make that longed-for step up the social ladder was out of the question.

“We can’t help finance a move,” said Win, Miriam’s mother, “but we could go in for a swap.”

There was a sudden silence. Miriam was sure this had come spontaneously out, was not something that her parents had thought of before. Nor Les, come to that. If he’d thought of it, they’d have discussed it. Now she saw his blue eyes, underneath the floppy lock of blond hair, were sparkling.

“If only,” he said, hesitatingly, his voice breaking.

“I don’t see that there’s any ‘if only,’” said Win. “We always liked your house, and there’d be much less housework for me than I have in this old barn.”

“We’ll think about it,” said Ernest, sounding as if he was summing up the respective merits of Keats and Shelley at the end of a lesson with 4A. “Come round on Friday. We’ll give you all your teas and we’ll talk it over.”

“I really did think of it as ‘if only,’” said Les on the drive home. “I didn’t think of it as a serious proposition.”

“I know, I know,” said Miriam, “But Dad would have slapped you down if he’d been totally against it. You get on well enough now for him to be perfectly honest with you.”

Yes, Les thought: At least that had been put behind them. Ten years ago, the engagement and the months after it had been punctuated by a typical schoolmaster’s cry: “He’s not good enough for you.” Modified later by: “I don’t mean socially, not class. I mean intellectually. He’ll never get anywhere with a second-rate brain like that.”

Miriam had remained silent, only on one fraught occasion saying that there were many different sorts of brain, and therefore many different sorts of first-rate brains. She battled valiantly for her side of the argument, and eventually Ernest came to see that for once he had to give in. He had been faithful to a silent vow he had made, and had never mentioned Les’s brain since giving them his blessing.

When the younger generation came round for their high teas, Les and Miriam found the matter was virtually settled. They were not a bit surprised: Jumping the gun when a decision was in the offing and making it all on his own was one of Ernest’s ways of keeping in charge. Now he asked the children first, and got an enthusiastic endorsement of the idea that every child should have a bedroom to itself. Ricky added that he knew the boys in the area, and they were rotten at football, something he seemed to see as a plus rather than a minus. Cathy said that her grandparents’ house was like a palace and she was going to study Fine Arts at St. Andrew’s University, where, she clearly thought, some shade of Prince William would inspire her.

Win said she wouldn’t bat an eyelid at the fall in social status — only silly people gave it a second thought, she said. Ernest said that as far as he was concerned, education was in the top three considerations in life, and if he could help his grandchildren get a better life through better and wiser teaching, that would be worth any sacrifice on his and Win’s part.

Les and Miriam didn’t need to say anything. The swap was voted on and passed nem con, as Ernest roundly pronounced.

The next problem was understanding the system, and making it work to their advantage. Here Ernest’s experience as a teacher — and a teacher at one of the schools concerned — was immensely valuable. It was too late in the school year to apply for a place in the normal way. Ricky was ten, and would be eleven by the beginning of the school year in September. Places were filled at Saint Ethelinda’s School, apart from a few places kept back to cover emergencies or exceptional late applications.

The committee sitting on the applications consisted of the school’s headmaster (new since Ernest’s time as English teacher there), a local councillor, and a prominent parent. They interviewed the boy’s father first, and Les was sure he was not going to distinguish himself. In all his jobs he had impressed by his work ethic and his happy-go-lucky attitude to life and its challenges, so he knew what he said would be vacuous and very little to the point.

“Oh, Ricky’s just crazy to go to the school his grandfather taught at. And quite right too. He knows his grandfather was head of English, and English is very much one of his subjects. He knows my father-in-law was Deputy Head by the time he retired, and he’s proud of that. They make a wonderful pair, and he’ll be devastated if he doesn’t get a place. In fact, they both will.”

“That’s as may be,” said the headmaster, a punctilious man, “but at the moment you are not residents of the catchment area of Saint Ethelinda’s.”

“Will be by Saturday,” said Les, grinning attractively and pushing back his fair lock of hair.

“By exchanging houses with your in-laws, I believe.”

“Yes. Nothing wrong with that, is there? We’ve been thinking about it for years.”

“Could I ask who the boy’s grandfather is?” said the local councillor.

“Ernest Craven. Ernie C to the boys in my time.”

If a thaw could be visible, this one would proclaim itself with all the self-congratulation of a washing-powder ad.

“Oh, a wonderful teacher,” said the parent. “Couldn’t be better. The name is its own guarantee.”

Les agreed, and sat back contentedly in his chair, unusually pleased with himself. The work was done even before Ernest was called.

He came in, hand outstretched, to shake the headmaster’s hand first.

“Glad to meet you at last. Congratulations. You’re doing a fine job. Going fast, but not too fast. Boys don’t like wholesale changes. Still, I expect they all like the opening of the sixth form to girls. Or do we say young ladies?”

He turned to the councillor.

“Frank. Good to see you again. I’ve followed your local successes with interest. Westminster next, I believe? Good show. A firm local base is what an MP needs. And Charlie.” He turned to the parent. “Producing sprigs for your old school. Good show. I hope your present sprig reads English verse better than his old dad used to.”

Charlie’s smile of “welcome back” was as warm as the councillor’s had been. People like to have their weak spots remembered almost as much as their 75 runs against Chelmsford Grammar in 1973. The headmaster gave up his predilection for following the rules to the letter. He smiled almost nonstop during the brief interview, and as Ernest was going out said: “We look forward to welcoming young Ricky to Saint Ethelinda.” The whole family drank a toast to the headmaster that evening.

The days between the interview and the move were jam-packed with activity. A mover had been hired for Saturday at eight a.m. and he was just taking the larger things: the dining table, the double bed, the piano that was an historical monument to Ernest’s efforts to make the young Miriam musical. After these things had been removed from one house to another, each family had hired a smaller van and had lined up friends — Ernest’s bowls mate Kieran, Les’s friend Harry from the insurance firm they both worked for — to take the smaller things: the chests of drawers, the occasional tables, the armchairs. When they had been taken, the ordinary detritus of family living was moved from one house to another and the move was complete.

“Whoops!” said Ernest as they settled down to an enormous urn of tea in the Victorian terrace house they’d taken over from his daughter and son-in-law. “Forgot the attic.”

“Oh, Dad!” said Miriam. “Forget the attic. It’s only rubbish and you won’t have looked at some of it for years.”

“Not all of it,” said her father. “There’s... a novel. Or the material for a novel. They say everyone has a novel inside them, don’t they? Something they long to get down on paper. I’ll just down this cuppa, then I’ll take the van and go and get it.”

“Well, I’m coming with you,” said Miriam, taking a swift swig at her mug.

“If you must,” said Ernest, grimly. “I thought you wanted a rest.”

“I want to see our new house,” she replied. “Ours because of your and Mum’s generosity. I want to see how my old furniture fits into it.”

“Take him away, for goodness’ sake,” said Win. “And don’t talk about generosity: This house will be a rest cure after it.”

Father and daughter went to the front door, and got into the two seats of the van. As they sped on the twenty-minute drive Miriam could discern — or thought she could — an excitement in her father: a tensed-up yet happy ebullience. You old goat, she thought, giggling to herself. It was bound to be a novel about his teenage sex with someone or other.

Then suddenly she felt a change to sadness for the poor old man who had always been the object of love and respect for her: a novel, written years ago, by a man now well into retirement. It didn’t seem as if it was a piece of fiction that had any sort of future. Even if it wasn’t an old goat’s memories, even if it was a dour memory-play about habits and attitudes in postwar Leeds, its future, if it had any, was as a treasure-trove of provincial mores. Miriam hoped against hope he never asked her to read it and tell him what she thought of it.

Miriam put the thoughts from her as they arrived at the house. She jumped out of the van and ran up to put the key of the door for the first time in the lock. She went straight into the living room and looked, enchanted, around. She turned to her father. “Oh look, Dad. I know it’s just chance, but they’ve put that armchair, my armchair, just where I want it.”

“You might change your mind come next winter,” said Ernest, still slightly grumpy. “It’ll be too far away from the gas fire.”

“Oh, and the piano. I thought we could slip it into that alcove. I just hope neither of the kids will want to take it up, with all that awful practicing. Put away over there they won’t even think of it.”

“You’ll have fun getting the place how you like it,” her father said, relaxing from his negative thoughts. “Now, I’ll just go and get the box and I’ll be off back to Kieran, Win, and Les.”

“Dad, let me go up and get it. That attic is—”

“No, no. I know exactly where it is. I’ll recognise it. You amuse yourself with your new doll’s house.”

And Miriam turned back to look at the room, only slightly worried, because her father had always been a very fit man.

The attic was reached through a square hatch, and Miriam heard her father bringing down the attic’s rickety old ladder of rope and wood, secured to the floor inside the hatch. Then she heard him go up step by step, carefully. She went over to the window, thoughts going through her mind about some kind of marriage between the trees in the parkland opposite and the wall in the house’s largest room that looked directly out onto it. “Got it,” she heard her father say triumphantly. It never occurred to her to wonder how large the box was, and whether he would still have an arm left to steady himself with when he came down the ladder.

She was brought up suddenly by a shout — not a scream, but the sort of shout a schoolmaster inevitably had to use at times. She threw open the living-room door, then dashed up the stairs and onto the landing where the hatch was. Ernest was lying still on the floor, his left ankle still trapped in one of the lower steps of the ladder. Miriam rushed over and released it, then knelt and felt her father’s pulse. She had been a schoolteacher before her own children came along, and she knew all the basics of first aid.

“Oh, Dad. You silly old fool. Why wouldn’t you let me fetch your precious box? I’m ringing for an ambulance now. Love you, Dad... Always.”

The ambulance took only ten minutes, but it was the longest ten minutes of her life. She wanted to ring Les and tell him, but she thought he would be taking Kieran home, so she waited until she and her father were in the ambulance, she on a little tip-up seat, her father lying flat out, attached to various dials and indicators.

“Les, darling. Dad has had some kind of stroke or heart attack. I’ll be at the hospital when you’re free. Could you get your mum to take the children for a bit? And ring my mother and tell her. She’ll want to be at the hospital with him. Ring for a taxi for her, or bring her yourself... of course I trust you. Love you too.”

The next two hours were almost unbearable, especially after they were told by the specialist that things didn’t look good. Her mother arrived with Les, though the latter stayed only twenty minutes then decided he ought to be with the children. Les’s one weakness was a fit person’s horror of illness. Win said all the things people do say at such times, and did all the useless things people do except worrying about the state of her husband’s underclothes. When the inevitable had happened and the nurse had tenderly shut his eyes, Win demanded to go home to her new home, and asked to be left alone.

“I’ve got things I want to say to him,” she said. “I’ll be all right in the morning.”

Miriam went to her new home after she had seen her mother safely into her old one. The space in the new house now seemed less of an attraction, more of a disorientating threat. She went up to the landing and looked around. The specialist had said it seemed unlikely there would need to be an inquest. Ernest had had a couple of minor heart scares soon after retirement. Apart from the rickety old ladder, the landing was tidy. The box, the container of all that youthful attempt at fiction, had skidded over to the doorway of the main bedroom, but it had remained intact, the box being secured by a liberal application of freezer tape. The neat package looked faintly pathetic.

Poor Dad, thought Miriam. He’d never have completed it. The Dad of today was probably a quite different person to the Dad who wrote this.

She rummaged in her handbag and found a pair of nail scissors which, with protest, allowed her to attack the sticky tape and open the box. There, in four neat little piles, were the handwritten pages of what looked like a series of letters. Miriam went into the main bedroom, where the light was better. She took what seemed to be the first letter — the opening to the novel, she supposed: It had no date on it, nor even any name for the fictional recipient of the letter. “My dear boy,” it began:

Miriam frowned. This was not quite what she had expected. She flicked ahead through the first pile of letters. “My dearest boy,” “Dear lad,” “My best love,” “My own one” — these were the superscriptions. The events did not seem to progress in the orderly manner of a novel. “I love your bright eyes, the sight of your delicious, unruly fair hair.” Why should her father be writing a homosexual novel? She had never for a moment suspected her father of nourishing such thoughts. Was it some kind of crime novel, where the reader is offered information but in a way calculated to mislead?

Eventually the awful, inevitable thought struck her. This was not a novel. This was her father, writing himself, writing personally. It was a correspondence of which he had kept only the one side — his own. These were his own real, deeply felt thoughts. She began to sweat with embarrassment. She took up the second pile. The tone of the top letter was very much that of the earlier ones.

Miriam’s eyes were awash. She could not rid herself of the feeling that only in this relationship had her father had real joy and fulfilment. It made her feel that his had been a life misused, only half satisfying. The combination of love and schoolmasterliness in the tone of the letters only added to this feeling.

She wiped her eyes and burrowed for the very last letter.

Miriam found she could read no more. Now it all became clear: why her father had opposed so vigorously her marriage, why he and Leslie (Ernest was the only man who used his full name) had never, in spite of having so much in common, come fully to trust each other. She understood the pain he must have felt, seeing his lover as the lover of his daughter, but felt painfully that her father had not done himself justice in that last letter, while Les had had to take hard decisions for his father-in-law’s sake, and had loyally stuck to them, however painful his silence must have been for him.

She went into the kitchen, into the muddle of cupboards and drawers, and found her own roll of freezer tape. The box must be the basis of the first garden bonfire in the new house. It would represent for her a thorough and complete destruction of the most important relationship in her father’s life. But it was what he would have wanted.

Copyright © 2012 by Robert Barnard