A Certain Justice by P. D. James

toast and bacon. Here again was that solid oak table with the drop leaf, which could be lifted to increase its length, pressing uncomfortably against her knees, the mullioned windows which excluded rather than admitted light, the sideboard with its ornate back and bulbous legs, the hot-plates and covered dishes. Her father had once seen a play in which the upper classes helped themselves to breakfast from a side table. It had seemed to him the epitome of gracious living, and he had introduced it at Danesford, although the choice was never more than bacon and egg or bacon and sausage. How odd that she should still be able to feel a prick of resentment at the silliness of the pretension and the extra work it had made for her mother.
    She helped herself to bacon, sat down and forced herself to look at her father. He was eating solidly, his eyes moving from the heaped plate to
The Times
neatly folded beside it. His mouth, beneath the small scrubby moustache, was pinkly moist. He would cut off small squares of toast, spread them with butter and marmalade, and then cast them into that raw pulsating gap which seemed to have a voracious life of its own. His hands were square and strong, the backs of the fingers spiked with black hair. She was sick with fear of him. She had always been frightened of him and had known that she couldn’t look to her mother for support; her mother’s fear was greater than her own. He had beaten her as a child for every infraction of his petty household rules, his laid-down standard of behaviour and achievement. The beatings hadn’t been severe but they had been unbearably humiliating. Each time she would resolve not to cry out, terrified that the boys might hear. But the attempt at courage was futile; he would continue the punishment until she did. Worst of all, she knew that he enjoyed it. When she reached puberty he did stop. It was a small sacrifice on his part. After all, he still had the boys.
    Now, sitting in silence in the library, she could see his face again, the cheekbones broad and mottled under eyes from which she could never recall receiving a look of tenderness or kindness. One of the mistresses at school, after she had received her speech-day prizes, had told her that her father was very proud of her. It had seemed an extraordinary statement at the time and it still did so now.
    She had tried to keep her voice calm, unfrightened. “Mr. Froggett says he’s leaving.”
    Still her father didn’t look up. He said, with his mouth chomping, “You were not meant to see him before he left. I trust you have made no promise to write or get in touch.”
    “Of course not, Daddy. But why is he leaving? He said it was something to do with me.”
    Her mother had stopped eating. She cast one frightened, imploring glance at Venetia, then began breaking her toast into crumbs. Her father still didn’t look up. He turned a page of his paper.
    “I’m surprised that you need to ask. Mr. Mitchell thought it right to inform me that my daughter was spending literally every evening until late in the bedroom of a junior master. If you had no sense of your own position in this school, you might at least have considered mine.”
    “But we weren’t doing anything, just talking. We talked about books, about the law. And it isn’t a bedroom, it’s his sitting-room.”
    “I don’t wish to discuss it. I’m not even asking what went on between you. If you have anything to confide I suggest that you speak to your mother. As far as I’m concerned the affair is now closed. I don’t wish to hear Edmund Froggett’s name mentioned in this house again, and from now on you will do your homework here on this table, not in your room.”
    Was it that day, she wondered, or later that she first realized what it had all been about? Her father had been looking for an excuse to get rid of the Frog. He worked hard, but he was a poor disciplinarian, unpopular with the boys, an embarrassment at school events. He was cheap,