'What do you mean by love?'

“

An Unsuitable Job for A Woman

written in 1972

by PD James

is still

so actual.

An unsuitable,

young

Cordelia Gray

with a failing

detective agency

inherited

from her last lover

and no money

takes her first case

and learns

everything

she needs to know

about

LOVE.

“I shouldn't think,

your mother would approve

what you do.”

An older lady

passed her drink

avoiding her eyes.

Cordelia

could see

her own reflection

in the mirror

above the bar.

A cat's face,

a gentle mouth,

despite its look of deceptive youth,

it concealed a secret

of a childhood deprivation,

evolving into

a philosophy of compensation.

“I only had a mother for the first hour

of my life,

so I don't have to worry about that.”

She finally replied

and saw at once,

a deep shock in the bar lady's eyes.

She wondered again

at the capacity

of older people

to be outraged by simple facts

and yet

capable of accepting

any amount of perverse.

His arrogant head

was held high

and the eyes

were keen

wary

under the heavy lids.

Cordelia had seen it

before

from the back

of crowds

watching the famous

pass,

that almost physical glow

of men

who knew

and enjoyed

the realities of power.

“Eighteen days ago my son hanged himself.

I hired you to find out why.”

She saw the picture

of a laughing boy

of her age,

his head half turned

towards the camera,

wearing jeans,

half lying on the lawn,

a pile of books beside him,

and behind

a thick hedge,

and a cottage

at first

difficult to see.

Cordelia liked to drive

through the flat countryside,

the openness and freedom

of the far horizons

and wide skies,

with the euphoria of hope

she approached the orchard,

where Mark

took a summer job

before his death,

far away as possible

from the city

and Sir Ronald's residence.

She followed a farmer

into the rear garden

where the thick bramble hedge,

dark and impenetrable,

grew wild for a generation.

There it was,

a low building

under a slate roof.

“ I don't like your generation, Miss Gray,”

She said opening its bare, rain scoured door:

“I don't like your arrogance,

your selfishness,

your violence,

the curious selectivity

of your compassion,

the men I knew were not like that.”

“I don't think Mark was like that either.”

Cordelia replied entering the gloomy sitting room.

“Perhaps not.

At least

the violence

he practised

was on himself.”

“..so nothing had changed here,”

Cordelia examined a washed up cup

and one unwashed,

an untouched

half cooked

vegetable stew

decaying slowly

on a stove.

“ The police had taken away

the body

and anything

they required

but no one,

neither the boy's family

or friends,

had bothered to come back,

to clean up

the pathetic leavings after his death.”

The un curtained window

gave a view

of the garden,

Cordelia opened it

and watched

the old widow walking slowly

down the path

towards her own homestead.

She turned back,

only once:

“It's unwise to become

too personally involved

with another human being.

When that person it dead,

it can be dangerous as well.”

A good advice from her old friend

suddenly came to her mind:

“When you are examining a building,

look at it as you would look

at a country church,

walk around it first,

look at the whole scene inside

and out.

Then make your deduction,

ask yourself what you saw,

not what you expected to see

or what you hoped to see,

just what you saw

and you will be right.”

A mysterious place,

heavy with atmosphere,

showing two distinct faces

to the world,

the north with its dead-thorns,

barred windows,

its encroaching weeds,

a stage for horror and tragedy.

Yet the rear,

where he had lived,

and worked

and opened the windows

to the sun

was as peaceful as a sanctuary.

“It was an unexpected visitor,”

She muttered to herself:

“The visitor wouldn't have washed up

the mug

if Mark were still there

and alive.

He would only have

obliterated the evidence

of his visit

if Mark were already dead.”

She was seeing Cambridge

at its loveliest,

the sun shone in unclouded

but gentle radiance.

How could the heart be indifferent

to such a city,

where stone and stained glass,

green lawns, trees and flowers

arranged in such ordered beauty

for the service of learning.

Here is an young man,

who gave up his university course,

for no apparent reason,

and went to live on his own

some discomfort,

an introspective,

rather solitary life,

one, who doesn't confide

in his family or friends.

He took trouble to destroy

all his diaries in the cottage

and yet

left the work in the garden

half completed.

He bothered to cook

himself

a supper,

which he didn't eat.

“Mark was a very private

person,

quiet, gentle, self-contained,”

His student buddy,

Sophie said to her:

“We were lovers

for almost a year,

it ended,

when I met someone else.”

“Were you in love?'

Cordelia Gray asked.

“Mark needed to believe

himself

in love,

I'm not sure,

what the word means.”

Sophie shrugged her shoulders

and left.

Cordelia closed her eyes,

thinking about insecurity,

vulnerability

of being young.

Before her first lover,

she had been lonely

and inexperienced.

Afterwards,

she had been

lonely

and a little less

inexperienced,

neither had

inconveniently

touched her heart

but for the last of them,

she had felt tenderness.

“Someone,

whom he knew

and trusted,

had pulled a strap

tight

round his neck.”

A handsome confident voice

ringed in her ear.

She opened her eyes

to see

a group of young students

resting on a perfect lawn.

“Intelligent without being clever,

but very kind,”

One of the students said jovially

and another added:

“Little self-esteem,

but it never seems to worry him.”

“Someone had listened to

and watched his agonised chocking,”

a student with handsome face

said again,

gloomily:

“Someone had strung his body on a hook

like the carcass of an animal.

“But who and why?”

Cordelia looked him in the eye:

“His Father believes it is suicide.”

“Sir Ronald took no particular interest

in his son

when he was alive,

why begin now?”

Back in the cottage,

fire was dying,

pushing in

the few remaining sticks

from the hearth,

she blew on them

to kindle the flame.

For the first time,

Cordelia knew

she was afraid.

Evil existed,

it had been

present

in this house

Something here

had been stronger

than wickedness,

ruthlessness,

cruelty

or expedience.

She armed herself with a gun

and drove to Sir Ronald's residence.

Before she entered his office,

his old secretary,

gently,

took the gun,

out of her shaking hands.

His Father,

his murderer

greeted her

with these words:

“Mark's death was necessary,

and unlike more deaths

it served a purpose.”

“I can't believe

that a human being

could be so evil.”

Cordelia Gray

spat in his face.

“Human beings, Miss Gray,

have an irresistible urge

towards self-sacrifice,

they die for any reason

or none at all,

for meaningless abstractions,

patriotism, justice, peace,

for other men's ideals,

for other men's power,

for a few feet of earth,

you,

no doubt,

would give your life

to save a child.”

“What about you, Sir Ronald,

what do you love?”

“If one doesn't love,

there is no power on earth,

which can compel him to.”

“What is the use of making the world more beautiful

if the people who live in it can't love one another?”

Cordelia Gray suddenly cried out.

“What do you mean by love?

That human beings must learn

to live together

with a decent concern for each other's

welfare,

the law enforces that.

Read history, Miss Gray,

see to what horrors,

violence, hatred and repression

your religion of love

has led us....”

“I mean love as a parent loves a child,

a passionate commitment to another...”

“Intense personal commitment,

dear Miss Gray,

always ends in jealousy and enslavement.”

A good advice from her old friend

suddenly came to her mind:

“When you are examining a person,

look at it as you would look

at a group of people,

let them open their hearts first,

do not judge,

look at the whole person inside

and out.

Then make your deduction,

ask yourself what you saw,

not what you expected to see

or what you hoped to see,

just what you saw

and you will be right.”

A mysterious person,

heavy with murderous thoughts,

showing two distinct faces

to the world,

two facets of a human personality.

He suddenly

touched

gently

a beautiful rose from his garden,

his devoted secretary

arranged for him

every day.

“My home has everything,

what I need,”

he quietly said.

She was seeing Sir Ronald's residence

at its loveliest,

the sky was an infinity of blue,

water flew.

How could the heart be indifferent

to such a place,

looking out of the window on his properties,

she realised

in her wanderings she had seen lovelier places,

but none in which

she had been happier or more at peace.

“ Why did you pay me to reveal your secret to the world?”

“ You are a woman, young and beautiful,

just like my wife had been before she died.”

He smiled sadly,

suddenly looking so pitiful:

“And about your job,

maybe it was just the scientific urge to confirm,

that some jobs are

for women

unsuitable.”

“Did you love Mark's Mum?

Was she beautiful?”

“ Beauty is intellectually confusing,

it sabotages common sense,

I could never quite accept

that she was

what she had been.

I thought that any woman,

so beautiful

must have an instinct about life,

access to some secret wisdom,

which is beyond cleverness.

I could have spent all my life

just looking at her

and waiting for the oracle

and all she could talk about

were clothes,

anyway,

I came to love this residence,

I came to own by marrying her.”

“And Mark was going it inherit it,

this year,

by reaching his required age,”

Cordelia added triumphantly.

“He was not even her son,

but he kept accusing me of killing her,

which I never did.”

Sir Ronald's voice was full of resentments

and hate.

“He was my son!”

His secretary appeared in a doorway holding Cordelia's gun.

Sir Ronald watched her coming repeating calmly:

“ I was not unhappy.

The secret of contentment is never

to allow yourself to want anything

which reason tells you,

you haven't a chance of getting,

but you kept dreaming

to own this property

through your son,

it is a pity.”

Before Cordelia could stop her,

she fired.

“I only loved one man in my life,”

she said putting the gun into his lifeless hand:

“and he is the one I have just killed.”

“Love is more destructive than hate,”

Cordelia whispered avoiding her stare.

“Maybe, but I only care that the truth of his death

should never be known.”

His secretary followed her out

covering her face with wrinkled,

shaky hands:

“I lived here whole my life.”

“By killing him,

you have no right to live here,

anymore,

you will be kicked out.”

Cordelia supported her down the stairs

feeling under her satin dress

her fragile and brittle bones.

“There is no reason for me

to live here,

anymore,

two men I loved are gone.”

They looked at each other.

They had nothing in common,

except their sex-

the strength of female allegiance.

They didn't even like each other,

yet,

each held the other's safety

in her hands.

Cordelia accepted

once and for all

that sometimes

there is a thin line

between innocence and crime.

She accepted

the enormity,

the justification

of what she had done

and was never

afterwards

to feel the least tinge

of regret or remorse.

What is the use of making the world more beautiful

if the people who live in it can't love one another?

Is it loving one another enough?