We That Are Left (47 page)

He went back to Cambridge. He needed boots, a thick coat, books.

‘Can't that wait?' he had said to Phyllis over and over as she read or scribbled in her notebook, his mouth tracing her jaw, her ear, the nape of her neck, his hand sliding wonderingly up her thigh, and she had only smiled and kissed him and moved the book where she could see it.

‘You're next,' she always said. ‘I promise.'

A wooden barrier had been erected across the arched entranceway, a painted sign nailed to its front: No Entry. Along the east side of the court a wide strip of paving stones had been lifted and stacked and several men were digging a trench. A pick sang as it struck rock. Oscar called out but the men only shook their heads and pointed to the sign. The barrier was secured with a heavy iron chain. When Oscar rattled it they shrugged and went on digging.

At the Porter's Lodge Oscar pleaded with the fat porter. ‘I only need ten minutes. Just to fetch some things.'

‘And you are, sir?'

‘Greenwood. M staircase.'

‘Mr Greenwood.' With a grunt the porter prised himself out of his chair and, peering at a rack above his head, extracted an envelope. ‘This came for you yesterday. They said you'd gone down. No forwarding address.'

Phyllis
, Oscar thought. As he fumbled with the envelope his head buzzed with static like a radio set and his fingers seemed to belong to someone else.

FATHER VERY ILL ASKING FOR YOU STOP

PLEASE COME URGENTLY JESSICA

The proper name was cerebrovascular disease, Jessica said. A stroke, or rather two strokes. The first had been mild, though frightening enough at the time. They had been working in the library when suddenly his face had slackened, his eyes widening as though he was trying to focus. He slumped in his chair, his head falling sideways. He managed to tell Jessica that there was a pain in his head. Then the left side of his body seemed to crumple, his arms dropping at his sides, and he collapsed to the floor. By the time Dr Wilcox arrived he was conscious but disoriented and very dazed. It was not clear if he understood what the doctor was saying to him. The whole of the left side of his body was numb.

The next day he was tired and a little shaky on his feet but otherwise apparently recovered. His arm and leg moved normally and his speech was unimpaired. When Dr Wilcox urged him to rest he waved away his concern. He told Jessica that the doctor was an old woman who fussed over nothing. A week passed. Then two days ago he had taken his camera and gone out to the barbican gate. No one knew exactly what had happened or how long he had lain there before the gardener's boy found him sprawled on the path near the moat, one side of his face badly grazed.

It was nearly a day before he recovered consciousness. Even
then he was very confused. The seizure had paralysed his left side. The left side of his face hung loosely on the bone, his eye pulled down to expose the wet red gum beneath, and his tongue lolled in his slack mouth, making his speech unintelligible. A nurse was arranged, a brisk woman with a starched cap and a starched manner. She called Sir Aubrey the Patient with a starched capital letter.

‘I have no wish to agitate your father,' Dr Wilcox confided to Jessica, squeezing her arm, ‘or you, my dear. But his condition is grave. He is weak, susceptible to secondary infections. To another seizure. If he has matters outstanding, affairs to be put in order, it might be advisable . . .'

Jessica glared, pulling her arm away. ‘But you don't wish to agitate him?'

She cabled Eleanor and Phyllis and asked them to come home. She telephoned Mrs Maxwell Brooke who to her great relief received the news calmly and told Jessica that she would come when she could.

‘Today's impossible, my dear. But perhaps tomorrow. I'll telephone.'

When she asked her father if there was anyone else he wished her to write to, he jerked his head and mumbled something she did not hear. The nurse wiped the saliva from his chin with a white cloth.

‘The Patient needs to rest,' she admonished, rearranging his useless left arm on the counterpane, but Sir Aubrey reached out with his good hand and caught Jessica's.

‘Osk,' he managed.

‘Oscar?' She frowned, unsure she had heard him right. ‘Oscar Greenwood?'

His breathing was laboured. He tried to nod. ‘Osk.'

She knew then that he did not expect to get better. She cabled Oscar with a heavy heart and wondered if she should telephone the lawyers. She was afraid her father might not have made the proper arrangements. He had never been practical. Eleanor had always said that for Aubrey meetings with
the estate accountants were like going to sea, long stretches of mind-numbing boredom punctuated with flashes of blinding terror. It was one of the few jokes she made that made him smile. Besides, who knew what he might do for the satisfaction of confounding Cousin Evelyn?

Oscar arrived after lunch the next day. The nurse said that she was sorry but Sir Aubrey was not well enough for visitors. He had developed a temperature, a thick cough. She asked that they leave him to rest. Instead, they went for a walk. It was very cold. Oscar buried his hands in his pockets.

‘You haven't had snow here, then?' he asked and Jessica shook her head.

‘Too close to the sea, Father always says,' she said. They turned to look at the house, grey against the low grey sky. ‘Thank you. For coming.'

‘Of course.' He hesitated. ‘How bad is it, really?'

‘Nobody seems to know. He's very weak. If there was another stroke . . .'

‘So your mother and Phyllis, they're coming home?'

The crack in his voice touched Jessica. ‘I don't know yet. I've cabled them. I'm sure Phyllis will; I mean, she'd better. I don't know about Eleanor. Perhaps she'll turn out to have a conscience after all. Even without the wretched Feda telling her what to do.'

‘Who's Feda?'

‘She isn't anyone. Not any more.'

Oscar did not want to walk in the woods. They made their way down through the garden and across the moat towards the gatehouse. Oscar walked fast with a long stride. He was taller than she remembered, and more substantial. In her walking shoes her head barely reached his shoulder. It was hard to recollect the cringing little drip he had been as a boy, so painfully easy to cow that he might as well have worn a sandwich board begging you to torment him. He had a quiet confidence, a thoughtfulness that made him seem older than
his years. At lunch, he had listened as she talked about her father, properly listened as though he meant to memorise the words, and the knot that had tied itself tightly inside her had eased because Oscar was there too, and whatever it was that happened next she would no longer have to do it all on her own.

When they reached the gatehouse they stopped. Oscar touched the scowling face of one of the stone lions. Then he looked up at the coat of arms carved into the stone lintel of the archway.

‘Heaven at last,' Jessica said.

‘My mother used to say that every time we drove in.'

‘Did she? I can't imagine you did. We weren't very nice to you back then.'

‘You weren't very nice. The others were all right.'

Jessica smiled faintly. ‘The others didn't know you existed.'

He was silent, gazing up at the lintel. She wondered if he was thinking of that afternoon in the tower, the afternoon that she put her arms around his neck and told him to kiss her. They had been barely more than children then but he had held her as though she was the only girl on earth. She wondered if she was still the only girl he had ever kissed.

They walked back along the edge of the rhododendron plantation towards the East Gate. Oscar was silent, lost in thought. The wind had sharpened and the clouds were dark and bruised-looking. Above the inky scrawl of the winter trees Grandfather's Tower swayed like the mast of a giant ship.

‘They'll knock it down, I suppose,' she said. ‘They won't risk small boys throwing themselves out of the windows. Or lunatics, for that matter.' Oscar did not answer. ‘Oscar?'

He blinked at her, confused. ‘I'm sorry, what?'

‘Grandfather's Tower. They'll demolish it, I suppose.'

‘Who will?'

‘Whoever buys the place.'

‘The house is for sale?' His shock was unfeigned. Jessica shrugged.

‘Not yet. But Cousin Evelyn thinks that houses like this are white elephants. And anyway he prefers Yorkshire. He's told Father he'll definitely sell. Poor Father, he couldn't bear it, he was trying everything he could, but he never thought . . .' She swallowed, trying to keep her voice matter-of-fact. ‘If he dies, I mean, if he dies now, before Phyllis or I . . . well, then it will be a school or a hotel or a madhouse. A madhouse would be best, don't you think? At least there's a tradition of that. Grandfather Melville was mad as a March hare.'

‘Jessica, I'm so—'

‘Don't. I'm not sure I could bear it if you said anything kind.' She turned away from him, pressing her fingers to the bridge of her nose. ‘Sorry.'

He put a tentative hand on her shoulder. She closed her eyes. It had been as cold as this that afternoon in the tower, the tip of his nose icy against her cheek. Four years ago, almost to the day. She could still remember the way he looked at her when he finally stopped kissing her, his dark eyes wide with astonishment.

She turned back towards him, stepping closer, and leaned her forehead against his chest. The wool of his coat prickled her skin. He patted her awkwardly, like a dog, and she thought of Jim Pugh's old terrier, turning in ghostly circles on the dusk-clogged lawn.

‘Hold me,' she whispered.

‘Jessica—'

‘Please,' she said and she closed her eyes, waiting for his arms to encircle her, for the ground to stop pitching, just for a moment, beneath her feet.

The motor car's engine coughed as it turned in under the arch of the gatehouse. Abruptly Oscar dropped his arms. Burying his hands deep in his pockets, he set off briskly towards the house.

‘Oscar, wait,' she called but he only walked faster, his shoulders hunched against the cold. The car was getting closer. As
it rounded the bend its headlamps illuminated the leathery leaves of the rhododendron. She turned, one hand raised against the glare of the lights, and stepped onto the verge to let it pass. It slowed. Mrs Maxwell Brooke wound down the window. In the car beside her was Marjorie, her pointed face framed by a close-fitting hat.

‘Jessica, my dear, you're not off somewhere, are you? Don't tell me Mrs Johns forgot to say I had telephoned? We're here to see the poor patient.'

There was no sign of Oscar as Jessica showed the Maxwell Brookes into the Great Hall and rang for tea.

‘None for me, dear,' Mrs Maxwell Brooke said briskly. ‘We can't really stop. We absolutely have to be in London by seven at the very latest, but of course we couldn't bear to go without popping in. I suppose he's well enough for visitors?'

Brushing aside Jessica's demurrals she bustled upstairs, Mrs Johns in her wake. Jessica and Marjorie stayed by the fire. The thick-ankled maid brought tea and walnut cake. It was only when Marjorie lifted her cup that Jessica noticed the sapphire on her left hand. ‘You're engaged,' she said.

Marjorie smiled awkwardly, holding her hand out. ‘So it would seem.'

‘Your mother never said anything.'

‘It only happened the day before yesterday. It's why we're going to London, actually. We're lunching with his mother tomorrow.'

His name was Lionel Wilbraham. He was the older brother of a girl with whom Marjorie had come out, the much older brother, she admitted with a self-conscious laugh. He was thirty-five, an old man. He had been in the War until a gas attack left him with pulmonary tuberculosis; now he worked for the Ministry of Health. They had met at a weekend house party in Kent. He had arrived with another girl, she had assumed they were together. It had come as a complete surprise, at the end of the weekend, when he asked if he might telephone her. She had not thought he had noticed her at all.

‘Your mother must be thrilled,' Jessica said.

Marjorie made a face. ‘You know Mother. She'd have preferred a grouse moor. But she's relieved. She was starting to worry I'd be left on the shelf.'

‘And at least he's English. He is English, isn't he?'

‘Of course.'

‘Poor Terence Connolly,' Jessica said and Marjorie flushed, her neck mottling pink as she took a slice of walnut cake.

Mrs Maxwell Brooke hurried back down the stairs. ‘Marjorie, are you ready?' She looked at Jessica, one hand pressed to her chest. ‘My dear girl, why didn't you say? I thought it was another of his attacks but he looks perfectly ghastly. His face! And he couldn't speak, couldn't get one word out.'

‘He's better than he was.'

‘The nurse would only let me stay a moment. She didn't want me in there at all, only I absolutely insisted. She says it's unlikely he will ever regain the use of his left side. That he'll be paralysed, confined to a bath chair.'

Jessica nodded numbly. Mrs Maxwell Brooke sighed, shaking her head as Mrs Johns helped her on with her coat. ‘Jessica, dear, I wish I could do more but I'm sure Marjorie's told you her news? So you see, we absolutely have to be in London. You will promise to write and let me know how your father is, won't you? And of course, if there's anything I can do, anything at all. Your parents were both such a strength to me when Robert went. I don't know what I'd have done without them, truly I don't. Your mother is coming home, I presume?'

‘I'm not sure. I've not yet heard.'

Mrs Maxwell Brooke pursed her lips as Mrs Johns opened the front door. The car was waiting under the carriage porch. ‘And your handbag?' she chided Marjorie. ‘Goodness, dear, I hope you don't mean to be so giddy when you're married. You'll drive that poor husband of yours to distraction.'