We That Are Left (33 page)

‘Kit? Well, I think. I've hardly seen him.'

‘I thought he might be away.'

‘Just busy, I think. Examinations and May Week and everything.'

‘Yes. Yes, of course.' She forced another smile. ‘I should let you get on. Those rock buns won't eat themselves.'

‘It was nice to see you.'

‘You too.'

‘Should I send Kit your . . . ?'

‘Regards? Yes, of course. Send him my regards.'

Kit's room was bare, the emptied shelves patterned with dust. Most of his belongings had been packed away in tea chests. He had to rummage in one to find a teacup for Oscar.

‘I just bumped into Frances,' Oscar said.

‘Who?' Kit unwrapped the cup from its newspaper, wiping it on his sleeve.

‘The girl you introduced me to outside Magdalene that time. Newnham. English Literature. Surely you remember. She remembers you. She sent her regards.'

‘Oh God, her. The one with the hair. I took her to the Quinquaginta. Only once, mind. It was like dancing with a malfunctioning marionette.'

‘I liked her.'

‘Bad luck, old chap,' Kit said, sloshing tea. ‘I don't think you're her type.'

‘Actually, that's not—'

‘Don't blame yourself. There's a particular sort of girl that throws herself at cripples. The grislier the better. We saw them
in the hospital all the time and not just the nurses either. Complete strangers sometimes who'd written to Matron asking if they could visit, and always with this look in their eyes, this voracious pity as though there could never be enough wretchedness to go round.'

‘And Frances was like that?'

‘One of the worst I've ever seen. Every time she fixed me with those moony bloodhound eyes another little bit of me died.'

The next day Kit went down and Oscar had Cambridge to himself. It was very warm. Without the hectic spill of undergraduates shouting and stirring up the air the creamy courts and cloisters of Trinity lapsed into a kind of drowsing reverie, a half-waking dream in which time did not flow forward steadily like a river but progressed in lazy whirls and eddies, turning back on itself. Then, in the shadows and the squinting glare of light, it was Isaac Newton who stood there still, the echo of his stamped foot quivering between the sun-warmed colonnades, or Francis Bacon in his doublet and lace ruff, while Oscar passed unseen like a faint breath of wind, as insubstantial as a ghost.

The Cavendish was closed, at least to undergraduates. Sometimes he saw Rutherford walking in the street, alone or deep in conversation with one of his research students. In fourteen weeks Oscar would be attending his lectures. It felt like a very long time to wait. He walked through the hot afternoons, to Grantchester and Madingley and St Ives, but it did not stop the restlessness, the itch in the soles of his feet. He took out the guidebook he had bought to the Alps and turned the pages, imagining walking in the mountains, measuring out the grandeur of the great peaks footstep by footstep, the clear mountain air easing his rusted brain like engine oil. He investigated trains, modest
pensiones
. He told himself that it was the greatest luxury of all, to travel alone.

Then, returning from his walk in a world at last at peace,
he found a letter from London. He recognised the handwriting. He tore it open reluctantly, wondering when Mrs Maxwell Brooke would finally accept defeat. She had already written three times to ask if he might accompany her daughter to dances in London and, undeterred by his refusals, sent him an invitation to her coming-out dance. It was so long since they had seen him at Ellinghurst, she had written each time, and they were dying to hear what he was up to. She hoped he remembered Marjorie with as much fondness as Marjorie remembered him. Oscar did not remember Marjorie at all. Each time he had politely but firmly declined. It was becoming a tiresome waste of stamps.

‘Anything nice?' Mrs Piggott asked, pretending to busy herself with the vase of dried flowers on the hall table. Oscar did not answer. He glanced to the bottom of the letter.

Do think of coming if you can. We received your reply but I know how plans change, particularly for a young man of your age, and I wanted to write and say again how delighted we would be to see you if you could come. It would mean a great deal to Marjorie. The Melville girls will both be there, of course, and Terence Connolly. You remember Terence, don't you? It will be like old times
.

Phyllis was home.

The Melvilles' flat was on the third floor of a mansion block with green turrets. When he rang the electric bell there was a pause. Then a voice trumpeted through the brass speaker with such volume he stepped backwards.

‘Well, you found it then,' Nanny shouted. ‘Are you going to stay down there?'

‘I thought—'

‘Wait in the lobby. You've a taxi cab, haven't you? It's not right, of course, a respectable girl doesn't go to her first—'

The line crackled and went dead. A moment later the glass
door buzzed. Oscar pushed it open. The lobby had a low ceiling and a thick carpet that muffled sound. Oscar sat down to wait on a flimsy chaise near the stairs. His legs did not want to stay still. He jiggled his knees and watched the gilt hand above the elevator door tick as it lumbered upwards. On the third floor it stopped. Oscar heard the door clank open. His stiff collar pinched. He put a finger inside it, turning his head from side to side to ease the pressure of the stud against his throat. The gilt hand shivered and began to count back down.

There was a grinding of cogs and then a soft clunk as the lift reached the ground floor. Oscar stood. The doors opened but the woman who stepped out was not Phyllis. She wore a silver dress covered all over with shiny silver beads and a feather in her startlingly blonde hair. Her lips were scarlet. She looked Oscar up and down, her head on one side. With a sigh the lift began grudgingly to grind back upstairs. Then slowly she touched the tip of her tongue to her scarlet lips and smiled.

‘Please tell me you're my birthday present,' she said.

Oscar reddened. ‘I'm sorry, there must be some—'

‘I'm teasing you, darling. I haven't been nearly good enough this year for a present like you.' She laughed, wrinkling her nose. ‘Still, you can wish me a happy birthday if you like.'

‘Happy birthday.'

‘You're not going to give me a birthday kiss?'

Oscar hesitated. Then reluctantly he stepped forward and touched his lips to her cheek. She smelled of something powerful and expensive that made him want to sneeze.

‘Twenty-one again,' she said. ‘One might almost consider it a miracle.'

She sauntered across the lobby towards the front door. When she walked her hips shimmered and the beads on her dress hummed quietly together, like bees. At the door she waited expectantly. It was a moment before Oscar realised she was waiting for him. He hurried across the lobby and opened the
door. She smiled up at him, touching his cheek with one scarlet-nailed hand. Behind Oscar's taxi cab a chauffeur in a peaked cap waited beside a shiny black car.

On the other side of the lobby the lift clunked noisily to a stop. Oscar turned, dropping the door behind him. The metal cage slid open.

‘Hello, Oscar,' Jessica said.

She stood in the mouth of the lift, one hand on her hip. Her dress was a draped swathe of rose silk-satin that clung to her bosom and hips and curved upwards at the front to reveal an underskirt of pale rose chiffon. The sleeves of the dress were made from the same chiffon, pale cobwebs that clung to her bare shoulders. Her lips and cheeks glowed, flushed with pink, and in her honey-coloured hair she wore a diamond tiara. Behind her Nanny stood four-square in a dress of black bombazine.

There was no Phyllis.

‘Out,' Nanny said to Jessica impatiently, flapping her hands. ‘Before this thing crushes us both half to death.'

Oscar tried to smile as Jessica pecked him lightly on the cheek. She wore the coquettish expression of a film star on a cigarette card.

‘Phyllis isn't coming?' he asked. The disappointment was like hands pressing down on his throat. It made his face feel stiff. He tugged roughly at his too-tight collar. He could not think why he had come.

‘She's meeting us there. Why soak in delicious French bath oil when you can shiver in three inches of tepid water for threepence? I truly think Phyllis believes that if she enjoys herself even a little bit she'll explode or turn to dust or something. I can't imagine why she's bothering to come at all.' Jessica turned slowly, showing off her shimmering silk ankles, the white smoothness of her startlingly exposed back. ‘So. What do you think?'

Relief made Oscar generous. ‘You look lovely.'

She did look lovely. He could see it quite plainly, just as
he could see that a painting was beautiful or a flower, but it did not touch him in the least. He stepped forward and kissed her cheek. On her chin, powdered over but still distinctly visible, there was a tiny pimple. It was red with a yellow centre, as though a tiny yellow worm was burrowing upwards from beneath the skin.

‘Lovely is as lovely does,' Nanny said briskly. She smelled exactly as Oscar remembered her, of boiled milk and talcum powder. ‘Now, where's this taxi of yours?'

As they drove Jessica pressed her lips together, touching her palms together in silent applause, the excitement rippling over her like water. For all her loveliness there was something childish about her, as though the dress and the face and the hair were just an elaborate dressing-up costume. When Oscar thought of how he had ached for her, the intensity of his infatuation, he felt only bafflement and a faint smudge of shame.

‘What?' Jessica said.

‘Nothing. I didn't say anything.'

She smirked, smoothing her dress over her hips. ‘I suppose you've been to heaps of these dances now, haven't you? Now that you're Marjorie's beau. Don't look so innocent. We know you've been escorting her to balls all summer.'

Is that what Phyllis thought? Not that it mattered what Phyllis thought. Oscar frowned, shaking his head. ‘But I haven't been to one.'

‘Her mother didn't ask you?'

‘She asked me. Several times. I don't know why. I never went.'

Jessica laughed. ‘Poor Mrs Maxwell Brooke. I did warn her.'

‘I hardly even remember Marjorie.'

‘But you're here tonight.'

Oscar shrugged awkwardly. ‘I wasn't going to. But there was nothing much going on in Cambridge and I just thought . . . you know.'

‘I know.'

The evening sun was bright. Jessica put a hand up to shield her eyes as she looked out of the window. In the Park people strolled arm in arm beneath the trees. It was hard to believe that she and Phyllis were sisters. Everything about her was on the outside, Oscar thought, lit up loud and bright as a funfair ride. He wondered what it felt like to be her, inside her head. The spot on her chin seemed to be getting bigger.

She turned her head, catching him looking. A tiny frown puckered her brow.

‘One thing, Oscar,' she said. ‘It's nice to see you and everything but you have to promise not to be a bore and trail after me all evening. It's not my job to look after you, all right?'

‘All right.'

‘All right.' She nodded. Then she glanced at him sideways, her hand drifting up to cover her chin. ‘Don't be upset. You have to let me be myself, that's all.'

‘I'm not upset.'

‘Of course boys don't like to show their feelings. Not like girls.'

‘I'm not upset, truly.'

‘Good. Well, that's good then.'

They travelled the rest of the way in silence, Jessica gazing out of the window, her cheeks sucked in and her chin thrust out as though she were posing for a photograph, while from beneath its crust of powder her tiny pimple glared at Oscar with its sour yellow eye.

The dance was in a house in Belgravia, rented for the occasion. Oscar climbed the stairs behind Jessica and a wheezing Nanny, taking care not to tread on Jessica's train. When they reached the ballroom a man in a red livery took their cards and announced their names as they entered. The room was beautiful, a jewel box of elaborate gilt-and-white plasterwork with a flower-strewn frescoed ceiling and gilt-framed mirrors reflecting the light of two exquisite crystal chandeliers. Everywhere there were huge gold vases filled with white
flowers. At the end of the room the orchestra sat on a raised stage hung with white silk. They played softly, the music curling like smoke above the chattering guests.

A waiter offered a tray of champagne. Oscar took a glass and moved forward into the room, looking around him. He could not see Phyllis. As the band struck up a foxtrot a girl beside him in a green dress stood on her tiptoes.

‘Which one is your cousin?' she hissed at her friend, large in lavender.

‘Over there. With the glasses.'

‘Oh. All right. You'll introduce me, won't you? You promise?'

The lavender girl sighed. ‘You mustn't bother him to dance, though. He says he wishes he'd never learned, he's such a slave to it these days. He hates it when girls push themselves on him.'

‘Jessica Melville?' A round-faced girl in silvery lace clutched Jessica's arm. Jessica looked at her in confusion.

‘I thought it was you! Lucinda Allingham. From school? What a nice surprise. Are you out? Only I've not seen you all Season.' She smiled at Jessica and then at Oscar. ‘I don't think we've met. Jessica, aren't you going to introduce us?'

Jessica stared past Lucinda at the crowded room. ‘Oscar Greenwood, Lucinda Allingham.'

Lucinda smiled at Oscar and held out her hand. ‘How do you do? And how do you know Marjorie?'

‘I didn't realise we were so early,' Jessica said, craning her neck.