We That Are Left (42 page)

Eleanor was home. The day after the Great Silence she came to London to see Mrs Leonard. Afterwards she and Jessica
had supper together at the flat. To Jessica's surprise, she did not immediately launch into an account of the sitting, the things Theo had said to Feda. She asked Jessica about her work and listened to the answer. There was a new quietness about her, a composure Jessica did not recognise. She wondered if it was over at last, if in France Eleanor might finally have put her grief to rest.

‘You look well,' Jessica said.

Eleanor was silent, her eyes on her lap. She picked up her napkin and patted her lips with it. Then, folding it neatly, she laid it beside her plate. She was going back to France. With the help of her French guide, she had found a house close to the village of Fontaine, some miles north of Arras. The village had been badly damaged by German shells but work was being done and the inhabitants had begun to return. Beside the ruins of the village church, piled with rubble and broken pews, there was a small cemetery, a tangled plot of perhaps one hundred graves. Theo was buried there. She had visited his grave every afternoon; as the shadows lengthened she had felt the boys gathering around her, their faces pale in the gloom and their laughter like the distant wind in the trees.

In the mornings she had walked across the devastated landscape where the fighting had been. It was there, among the shattered trees and mounds of mud that marked Theo's last days that she had finally found peace. She was no longer separated from him by not knowing. Once she saw a woman digging wildly with her hands in the mud, scrabbling for something, anything to hold onto. Many of the boys could not be found. She knew she was lucky. There were gangs of Poles clearing the battlefields, rolling away the barbed wire, filling the trenches. The blasted tree stumps were being dug up and new saplings planted in their place. Eleanor had wished she could stop them. The wasteland of cratered mud, devoid of shape, of sense, of the dogged persistence of life, was Theo's true memorial, the horror of loss made manifest.

One day, she said, life would return to those ruined fields.
It was hard to imagine, harder still to bear. But she meant to be there then, too, as the first tentative shoots pushed through the mud. It was Theo's place. Every leaf, every flower and blade of grass that sprang from that earth was a part of him. She belonged there, where he was.

The greed of her grief was gone. In its place was something calmer and more stubborn. She would leave soon, she told Jessica, as soon as things could be arranged. She asked for Jessica's blessing, and hoped some day that she and Phyllis might come and visit her. She did not intend to return to England. Whatever became of Ellinghurst there was no longer a place for her there.

‘You're leaving Father?' Jessica said, stunned.

‘We have agreed to live apart. It is better that way.'

‘I see. Poor Father.'

Eleanor's jaw tightened. ‘Oh, yes, poor Aubrey. I suppose you know he wants a divorce?'

‘A divorce?'

‘Of course I've refused. The scandal . . .'

‘The scandal, of course. You've always worried so terribly about scandal.'

‘It's quite impossible. It would break Theo's heart.'

‘Theo's?'

‘You know why he wants a divorce, don't you? So he can marry that ludicrous Verity Maxwell Brooke. It seems the War was very good to Verity.'

Jessica glared at her mother. ‘And why not, if she makes him happy?'

‘Happy? Oh, please. Don't be naive.'

‘Remember that time in the garden with the revolting Mr Connolly? You said everyone had to have some fun now and then or they forgot they were alive. Or was that rule just for you?'

There were two red spots in the centre of Eleanor's cheeks. ‘You think I'm the one who began this? Your father was never faithful to me, not even at the start.'

‘You didn't exactly suffer in silence.'

‘He broke my heart.'

‘My heart bleeds for you.'

‘God but you're a heartless little bitch, aren't you?'

‘And who do you think I got that from?'

‘You're right. You're your father's daughter. Cold through and through.'

She left the next morning before Eleanor was up. By the time she came home her mother was gone. She bathed and dressed and snapped at Nanny when Nanny said she looked tired and wouldn't it be better if she did not go out for once. It was not just Eleanor. That afternoon Joan had cornered her in the ladies' cloakroom. She hoped Jessica would forgive her presumption, she would not ask, not normally, only there was a job going at
Perspective
, a job that might almost make up for two wretched years of knit-and-purl at
Woman's Friend
, the kind of job that hardly ever came up and then only ever went to men.

‘It's the old boys' club, you see,' Joan said. ‘Members only. But then I thought, you know, since you and Mr Cardoza are friends . . .'

The way she said friends had made Jessica's insides turn over. When Joan pushed an envelope into her hand and said that she understood if it was inappropriate but if there was any way, any way at all, Jessica had muttered something about Mr Cardoza being really a friend of her mother's, and fled. She had spent the rest of the afternoon trying not to think about who else might know.

She did not know any more what she felt about Gerald. Since that night in the Savoy she felt both more tender towards him and more uneasy. She found herself thinking about him at work, wondering what he was doing and if he was thinking of her. Sometimes, at night, she took the diamond bracelet from the sleeve of the folded-up sweater where she had hidden it from Nanny, and put it on and tried to imagine what it would be like, to spend a lifetime with a man like Gerald. It
was not so crazy an idea. Hadn't Ludo confided that she was the first girl since Christabel that Gerald had truly cared for? He was witty and rich and generous and he adored her. Often, it was true, he drank too much or disappeared to the cloakroom with his snuff box. Then his moods grew wilder and, though he grew more wild in his affections too, his vivacity often tipped over into imperiousness and he was cruel to her, mocking her for being prissy, a debutante wet blanket. She tried to lighten her mood to match his but it was not easy to keep up. Sometimes, she thought, there was something almost grim about his feverish pursuit of amusement. It did not seem to make him happy. In the early evenings, before he had begun seriously to drink, he as good as admitted it. He had begun, a little, to talk about the future. The previous Thursday, he had said something about the Riviera in June.

‘Imagine it,' he said. ‘No more filthy foggy London. A shaded terrace overlooking the sea. Pine trees and bare feet and freshly picked figs for breakfast. Wouldn't we be happy?' And she had smiled at him and thought that really they might be. London was not good for him, she could see that. He had had a cold for weeks. His eyes were pouched and bloodshot, his voice hoarse, his nose streaming. He did not seem to be able to shake it off.

That evening they went to the King Club for dinner. They drank a good deal and she tried to be gay but she knew she did not fool him. She feared he might think her dull. Instead, he took her hand and asked her what was wrong.

‘It's nothing,' she said but he only shook his head.

‘Not to me,' he said, so she told him about Eleanor and her father. She thought he might laugh, or turn it into a joke. Instead, he listened gravely, watching her over the rim of his glass. It was easy to talk to someone who listened like that.

‘She doesn't love him,' Jessica said. ‘She never has. But she won't let him go.' And he kissed her fingers and said that it was unbearable, the damage people did to one another in the name of love.

‘But sometimes they save them too,' he said, and the way he looked at her squeezed her heart into a fist. She let him kiss her outside the restaurant where anyone might see, and in the car she put her hand on his leg. He reached down to take it in his, sliding his fingers between hers, and she rested her head on his shoulder, inhaling his expensive leather and cedar wood smell.

‘Where are we going?' she asked.

‘Himeros.' Himeros was the club with the murals. Jessica thought of Guy Cockayne and shook her head.

‘Not there, not tonight,' she pleaded but Gerald was adamant. He said he was meeting someone. Jessica presumed he meant Ludo but when they got to Himeros there was only the man with the plum mouth. He showed them to a corner table where there was already a bottle of whisky and a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice. The band was in full swing and music filled the tiny space, blotting out speech, blotting out thought. Jessica could feel the thump of it like a pulse in the walls, in the floor beneath her feet. The gods with their erect phalluses seemed to be thrusting in time. She sat down reluctantly as the man put his mouth to Gerald's ear and said something she could not hear. On the table next to theirs a girl was performing the splits, her dress hitched up to her thighs. Her legs were bare, her toenails a vivid shiny vermilion.

Gerald slid into the booth beside her, pouring himself a half-tumbler of whisky which he downed in a single swallow. He poured another. Then, taking the snuff box from his pocket, he opened it. He did not bother with the spoon. He pinched some powder between his finger and thumb and, tipping back his head, thrust them into his right nostril. Jessica gaped at him.

‘What are you doing?' she demanded, her mouth close to his ear. ‘People can see.'

He shrugged at her as though he could not hear and took another pinch, his eyes closed against the hit. Jessica pushed the box out of sight behind the whisky bottle. He blinked, his
fingers smoothing out the sides of his nose. ‘Don't you want some?' he shouted.

When she shook her head he shrugged again and gulped his whisky. ‘It might do you good.'

‘I'm fine as I am.'

‘Then God help us both.' The derision in his face was like a slap, only she hardly had time to register it because Ludo was there and a girl Jessica vaguely recognised although she could not remember her name, and they were sitting down and Gerald was pouring drinks and shouting something that made Ludo laugh and then he was pulling her to her feet and into the whirling vortex of the dance floor and the heaviness in her lungs gave way to breathlessness and the music coursed through her head like a river in full spate, bearing the thoughts away, and when at last it exploded to a crescendo Gerald was whooping and kissing her and she kissed him back because she knew he had not meant to hurt her and she was no longer sure if it had even happened the way she thought it had anyway.

Gerald did not bring out his snuff box in front of Ludo. He did, however, pay several visits to the cloakroom. Jessica did her best not to notice. She drank champagne steadily, doggedly, disregarding the headache that pushed up from the nape of her neck and spread like a flower opening over the back of her skull. It was late when they finally left, staggering up the stairs into the dirty black dregs of the night. In the yellow light of the street lamp Gerald's face had the grey pallor of wet clay and his eyes were red, the pupils punched into them like holes. Beside the car he pulled Jessica towards him, crushing his mouth against hers. Kissing him made her tongue feel numb.

‘You're a wicked girl, did you know that?' he mumbled. She tried to pull away but he held her around the waist with one hand, fumbling at the fly of his trousers with the other.

‘Gerald, for God's sake,' she whispered but he only caught her by the wrist, pressing her hand against his crotch. She
recoiled, expecting the insistence of his erection, but instead he was soft.

‘Come on,' he said hoarsely and he closed her fingers around him, palpating them so that she was almost kneading him, his hips grinding against her like a dog, but still he did not harden.

‘Please, Gerald, not here.' She looked over his shoulder, terrified that someone would come out of the club and see them.

‘For fuck's sake!' Abruptly he pulled away, wrenching the car door open. ‘Get in.'

‘Gerald—'

‘Frigid fucking bitch!' he hissed. Behind the wheel he stabbed at the ignition switch on the dashboard and stamped his feet. The engine roared. Wrenching at the hand brake he threw the gear lever and jammed his foot on the accelerator. The car made a sudden leap forward, jerking Jessica back against her seat. She clutched at her arm rests as Gerald accelerated. His fly was still open. She could see the white cotton of his drawers.

‘For God's sake, Gerald, slow down,' she shouted above the scream of the engine, but Gerald only glared through the rain-smeared windscreen and pressed the accelerator. The tyres squealed as he swerved onto Park Crescent, pitching Jessica against the door. The empty-eyed houses stared unblinkingly as he gunned the engine. The car leaped like a horse across Marylebone Road and shot towards the black mass of the Park.

‘Stop!' she cried, her voice shrill with fear.

She was not sure what happened next. She thought perhaps a black car pulled out of a side street. Afterwards, when she closed her eyes, she could see the twin beams of its headlamps, the rain coursing through the rotating tubes of light like streams of silver fish. Certainly the car swerved, its tyres squealing, so that the back half swung out like an opened door, and there was the sound of car horns and screaming,
her own screaming, she thought perhaps, but coming from a long way away, and a pall of smoke slung like a wet sheet across the road.

Then the sheet parted and he was standing there, not smiling but gesturing impatiently, pushing his hair away from his brow with the heel of his other hand just as he always had.

Theo.

‘Come on,' he said. ‘Quickly or we'll miss it.'

She stared at him. ‘It's you,' she said.

‘Who else would it be? Come on, Mess, what are you waiting for?'