Original Sin by P. D. James Page A

- but he had asked her about her journey and had said: 'We have a launch which brings some of the staff to work. It can pick you up at Charing Cross pier and bring you to work by the Thames - that is unless you're afraid of water.'
    And she had known that this was the test question, that she wouldn't get the job if she disliked the river. 'No,' she said, 'I'm not afraid of water.'
    After that she had spoken little, almost incoherent with the thought of coming each day to this glittering palace. At the end of the interview he had said, 'If you think you can be happy here, suppose we both give each other a month's trial.'
    At the end of the month he had said nothing, but she knew there was nothing he need say. She had been with him until the day he died.
    She remembered the morning of his heart attack. Was it really only eight months ago? The door between their offices had been ajar as it
    always was, as he liked it to be. The velvet snake with its intricately marked back, its red forked flannel tongue, had been curled at the foot. He had given one call, but in a'vOice so harsh and strangled that it was hardly recognizable as human and she thought she was hearing some waterman shouting from the river. It had taken her a couple of seconds to realize that this disembodied, allen voice was calling her name. She had leapt from her chair, hearing it skid across the floor, and was at his desk, staring down at him. He was still in his chair, rigid, as if seized by rigor, not daring to move, grasping the arms with white knuckles, his eyes bulging beneath a forehead on which the sweat had started in glistening globules thick as pus. He gasped, q'he pain, the pain! Get a doctor!'
    Ignoring the telephone on his desk, she had fled to her own office as if only in that familiar place could she cope. She fumbled with the telephone book, then remembered that his doctor's name and number was in the small black reference book in her desk. She yanked open the drawer and plunged in her hand to find it, trying to remember the name, wanting desperately to return to that horror in the chair yet afraid of what she might find, knowing that she must get help and get it quickly. Then she remembered. Of course, the ambulance. She must call an ambulance. She punched at the telephone keys and heard a voice, call, authoritative, and gave her message. The urgency, the terror in her voice must have convinced them. The ambulance would be on its way.
    She recalled what happened afterwards, not in sequence but in a series of disconnected but vivid pictures. At the door of his office she had just time to glimpse Frances Peverell standing impotently at his side before Gerard Etienne came towards her and, firmly closing the door, said: 'We don't want anyone else in here. He needs air.'
    It was to be the first of all the rejections that followed. She remembered the noises as the paramedics worked on him; his head turned from her as they bore him past covered in a red blanket; the sound of someone sobbing, someone who could have been herself; the emptiness of the office, empty, as it was in the morning when she arrived before him, or as it was at night when he left first, but now everlastingly, permanently empty of everything that had given it meaning. She had never seen him again. She had wanted to visit him in hospital and had asked Frances Peverell what time would be convenient, only to be told: 'He's still in intensive care. Onl
    family and the partners are allowed to visit. I'm sorry, Blackie.'
    The news had at first been reassuring. He was better, much better. They hoped he would soon be out of the intensive care unit. And then, four days after the first, he had suffered a second, massive, heart attack and had died. At the cremation she had sat in the chapel three pews back, among other members of the staff. No one had consoled her; why should they? She wasn't one of the officially bereaved, not one of the family. When, outside the chapel, inspecting the wreaths