We That Are Left (50 page)

She shivered, suddenly chilled. It was much too cold to be out without a coat. Chafing her arms briskly with the palms of her hands, she crunched back across the gravel towards the house. She felt jolted, disoriented, as though she had tried to walk up a step that was not there. In her head she heard her father's voice.
Perhaps you're just looking in the wrong place
. Was that what he had meant her to see, monosyllabic little Oskar Grunewald with his skinny arms and his expression of wary trepidation, as though disaster was always just around the corner? The idea would have made Theo snort with contempt. But Theo was not here and Oscar was not Oskar any more. That day in the tower, the day the parcel had arrived with Theo's uniform and she had thought she would choke from the blackness inside her, she had put her arms around his neck and she had known, she had absolutely known, that he was the only thing at that moment that kept her from drowning.

Oscar Greenwood. It was ridiculous. There were, she told herself in Nanny's voice, plenty more fish in the sea. And yet, as she pushed open the door to the Great Hall, there was a stirring inside her like the first tentative beginnings of a fire, a lick of flame that could have been embarrassment or a long time since breakfast but which felt to her, at that moment, like hopefulness.

He had hoped to slip away unnoticed but when he went downstairs Jessica was in the Great Hall, standing in front of the fire. Outside in the driveway Jim Pugh waited on the trap. His dog had been dead nearly a year but he still sat on the right-hand side of the box. Old habits were hard to break.

‘I have to go to London,' Oscar said. ‘I'll be back on the last train.'

Jessica looked disconcerted. ‘What is it? Has something happened?'

‘Not exactly. But there's something I have to do. Family business. You know.'

‘Today?'

‘I should have done it before. I'm sorry.' He buttoned his coat, then picked up his canvas rucksack, slinging it over his shoulder. ‘I should go. I'll miss the train.'

‘Pritchard would have taken you, you know,' she said.

She came out into the carriage porch to see him off. When the trap turned she walked out onto the gravel, watching them as they clattered down the drive. He was glad when the drive curved and she was out of sight. It made London feel less far away. He wished Jim Pugh would whip up his pony. His leg jiggled up and down and on his knees his
fingers tapped out a restless rhythm, like the rattle of a train.

That morning, when Jessica had gone up to her father, he had read the newspaper in the morning room. Captain Sir John Alcock KBE DSC, who in June had piloted the world's first non-stop transatlantic flight from Newfoundland to Connemara in Ireland, was dead. En route to Paris to demonstrate a new amphibian plane at an aeronautical show, he had crashed in heavy fog in a field twenty-five miles from Rouen. The newspaper declared his death an irreparable loss to aviation. He was twenty-six years old. Oscar stared at the grainy grey photograph of Alcock in his Royal Naval Air Service uniform. He did not look like a national hero, a celebrated knight of the realm. He looked like someone's brother, his gaze steady beneath the brim of his cap, a faint smile curving his lips.

Oscar let the newspaper drop to his lap. The house was very quiet. In the grate the fire shifted and sighed and the rain pattered gently against the window panes. It was only three days since the converted Vimy bomber in which Alcock and Brown had made their historic flight had been presented to the nation for exhibition at the Science Museum. Outside the gravel crunched as a car pulled across the sweep of the drive. The doctor, he supposed. He heard Mrs Johns calling out to someone, the brisk tap of her footsteps as she hurried across the Great Hall. Singing softly to itself, the grandfather clock counted out the hour.

A car door slammed. The front door was open. You could hear it if you listened, the shift in pitch as the outside came in. Tomorrow, he thought, another car would come. The gravel would crunch and the cold wind would rush through the open door, only this time it would be Phyllis who stood on the threshold, Phyllis who stepped into the hall, foreign with the city smells of coal smoke and trains.

‘A pot of tea?' Mrs Johns would say, brandishing Phyllis's coat and hat at the maid to take away, and Phyllis would shake her head and wonder why it was that Mrs Johns never
remembered that she did not like tea and she would turn to Jessica and kiss her cheek and say that she was sorry it had taken her so long and how soon before she could see their father, and Jessica would nudge her and say, ‘Look who's here,' and she would turn, a tiny frown between her eyebrows, and her pale eyes would meet his and it would be like Rutherford's experiment with the alpha particles, a glance that should pass straight through him would strike him instead at the centre of himself, full strength, like a cannonball.

The doctor's shoes rang against the flags as Mrs Johns hurried him across the Great Hall and Oscar thought of Rhyl with its cobbled training square, the Welsh air echoing with the metalled clatter of men who would never come back, and then of Phyllis on the cold grey platform at Cambridge station, her heels brisk against the granite as she walked away from him into another life, and it was as though a door inside him had been thrown open. He sat up, his hands clasping the arms of his chair.

Phyllis did not want to marry him. So what? What did marriage matter? Marriage was not love. It was nothing more than paperwork, the cataloguing of a collaboration by curates and clerks, for love perhaps, sometimes, but often for profit or advancement or to appease polite society. Marriage is not a guarantee of happiness, Phyllis had protested to him once, but neither was it love's hallmark, its royal warrant. Marriage proved nothing. It changed nothing. It was not an honour to be bestowed on those who loved best. It was its consolation prize, a public ultimatum in lieu of a private pledge, an insurance policy for those who did not love enough, who called for vows witnessed before God and safeguarded in law because they did not trust one another enough to keep them otherwise. Phyllis was right. If their love was true, what need did they have of insurance, of the comfort of ceremony? She was his dearly beloved and he hers, witness to each other's troth, to the promises they made and made again each time they held each other in their arms. What choice did he have
but to forsake all others? She was in him and of him, the breath in his mouth and the lift in his heart. She was his second self.

‘As our friends the theoreticians say . . .'

His appointment was for five o'clock but it was nearly half-past by the time Oscar was shown into Mr Pettigrew's office. The solicitor waved at Oscar to sit and turned a page, tapping the papers with his fountain pen. He wrote something, then something else, and set the papers to one side. There were weary circles under his eyes.

‘Oscar,' he said. ‘And what can we do for you today?'

Oscar explained.

‘I see,' the solicitor said, frowning faintly. ‘Just the rings, you are sure? None of the rest of your mother's jewellery?'

‘Not for now.'

Still frowning, Mr Pettigrew rummaged in a pile of bulging files and drew one out. It was very thin compared to some of the others. He untied the canvas tapes and opened it. The typed envelope with Oscar's name on it was still clipped to the cardboard cover.

‘Would you consider it an impertinence if I asked why you want them?'

Oscar hesitated. Half of him wanted to tell Mr Pettigrew about Phyllis, her tenderness and her fierceness and her cool clear scruples, her obstinate refusal to be anything other than herself. The other half was seized with a superstitious terror of saying anything out loud. He did not want to jinx it.

‘It's a personal matter,' he said.

‘I see.' Mr Pettigrew tapped the envelope thoughtfully. Then, sliding it out from its paper clip, he closed the file and retied the tapes. The file had GRUNEWALD printed in black ink on the front and underneath, in slightly smaller letters, GREENWOOD. Mr Pettigrew put it back on the pile. He looked at the envelope, nudging it slightly so that it lined up
with the edge of his leather blotter. ‘I assume you wish to take the rings with you?'

‘Please.'

Mr Pettigrew nodded. Unlocking the top drawer of his desk, he took out a small bundle of keys. He closed the drawer. Then, opening it again, he put the envelope inside and turned the key. ‘I'll just be a moment,' he said.

Oscar waited. He could hear the clatter of a typewriter, the buzz and thud of a bluebottle against the window pane. He tapped his fingers restlessly on the desk, impatient to get back to the station. It was nearly two hours until the train but he was already afraid he would miss it, just as he was afraid that the hours would never pass, that time, already sluggish, would stick and set like glue, trapping him in a permanent paralysed present where tomorrow never came. He looked at his file on top of the pile and wondered what was written in it and if the contents were his to read or if Mr Pettigrew would consider them confidential. The dusty office air was sour with ink and damp carpet.

When Mr Pettigrew returned he held what Oscar recognised as his mother's silk pouch in one hand. He half-rose from his chair but the solicitor sat down again behind his desk. Unlocking his drawer he replaced the bunch of keys and took out the envelope. He tapped it on the desk. Then he put it on the blotter and placed the pouch on top. He rubbed his jawbone, his fingers rasping faintly against his late afternoon beard. Then, sitting up a little straighter, he cleared his throat.

‘It is, of course, no business of mine what you do with your mother's rings,' he said. ‘They are your property to dispose of as you will. However, the terms of your mother's will place me in an awkward situation. I have here a letter from your mother. She left instructions for it to be given to you in the event of your marriage. I thought to inform you of this part of her bequest at our last meeting but there was at that time a great deal for you to take in, you were distressed, quite naturally, and I deemed it more politic to wait until the
occasion of our next meeting, at which time I assumed the estate would formally be wound up. I had not anticipated, had never frankly dreamed, that there was any possibility that a situation of this nature would arise while you were still at the University. And perhaps I am indeed mistaken, perhaps your interest in these rings does not in fact signify an intention to embark on an engagement, and given the particulars of your circumstances I must confess to hoping that it does not, I would be remiss in my responsibilities to you as a minor if I did not urge you towards caution, to look before you leap, as it were, you are young still and in no position to support a wife, but if it is indeed your intention to marry, and you are of course within your rights to do so, the trust as it stands will continue to yield an income for some thirty months to come, albeit hardly one on which one might contrive to meet one's obligations as a husband, and I can only suppose that if you are decided upon such a course of action you have given the matter a great deal of thought and carefully considered the consequences, then I would be remiss too if I failed to act on your mother's instruction.'

He paused for breath. Then, leaning forward, he placed both hands on the envelope. ‘So, you see, I am afraid I am obliged to ask you. Do you mean to propose marriage?'

Oscar looked at Mr Pettigrew and then at his lap. He wished his mother was with him now so that he could explain. She would have been glad about Phyllis, he thought. She had always liked her. She would have understood, too, why Phyllis did not wish to get married. Perhaps she would have understood better than Oscar. There was a poem by one of the Brontë sisters, he could not remember which one, that his mother had always loved, something about not walking in paths of high morality but where my own nature would be leading, where the grey flocks in ferny glens are feeding, where the wild wind blows on the mountainside. His mother was steadfast and brave and ashamed of the lies she had told, the hypocrisy of her post-dated respectability. She believed in
honour but in instinct too, in impulsiveness and defiance and throwing caution to the wind. She would never have wanted him to choose convention over the call of his own heart.

He missed her. He had forgotten how much. He thought of her propped up in her chair in the window of her bedroom in Clapham, her shawl around her shoulders, writing him a letter about love. He looked at Mr Pettigrew and nodded.

‘I do,' he said.

The train was late and almost empty. Oscar had the third-class carriage to himself. The nervous waves of agitation that had buffeted him all day had finally given way to a still and shining calm. As the train sped through the darkness he took the silk pouch from his pocket and shook the rings out into his hand. They gleamed in the shaded light, spilling gold onto his palm. His mother had told him once that the ivy leaves represented fidelity, eternity. As a plant, she said, ivy was tenacious and strong. It advanced slowly but its binds were unyielding, it could not be stopped. Its leaves were always green.

When Mr Pettigrew had unclipped the letter with Oscar's name typed on it from Oscar's file he had proceeded to open the envelope. For a bewildered moment Oscar thought that the solicitor intended to read it to him. Instead, he shook out another envelope which he gave to Oscar. The second envelope was cream. Oscar took it, the grain of the paper familiar against his fingertips. For as long as he could remember his mother had always used the same writing paper, which she bought from a tiny shop near Battersea Bridge where the proprietor was Italian and kept a jar of almond biscotti for children on the polished counter. On the front she had written,
To my dearest Oscar, on this happiest of days
. Her hand was still bold, despite the shake in her fingers.

He put the envelope in his pocket. He did not open it. It was not just the lingering shadow of superstition that stopped him, the old terror of the jinx. It was the recollection of his mother's quizzical eyebrows raised above her spectacles, the
warning hand on his shoulder as he reached for a biscotti that had yet to be offered. She had trusted him to wait. He did not mind misleading Mr Pettigrew but his mother was a different matter. For all her playfulness and laughter, her standards had always been exacting, her scruples strict.