We That Are Left (55 page)

‘Different how?'

‘He used to be such a fearful drip.'

‘Was he? I don't remember.'

‘That's because you were a drip too.' She laughed, ducking away from Phyllis's mock swipe. ‘Actually, that's not quite true. You were mostly just a swot. Oscar was a drip and a swot.'

‘And now?'

‘Now, I don't know, he's . . . interesting. Funny even. Funny ha-ha, not funny peculiar the way he used to be. Father thinks the world of him.'

‘Is that so?'

‘The thing is, Father . . .' She shook her head. She longed to confide in someone but there was no point in trying to explain it to Phyllis. She would only tell Jessica that it was
ignoble and shallow and selfish to choose a husband to safeguard a house when Jessica knew it was exactly the opposite. Phyllis claimed to be so principled but she would never understand that it was possible to love someone not exactly for themselves but for the good they could help you to do, that a large part of loving someone came from knowing that by loving them you were doing the right thing.

‘He might be awake,' she said instead, picking a camellia petal and shredding it with her thumbnail. ‘You should go up.'

Phyllis nodded but she did not go. She pressed her lips together, looking at Jessica as though she meant to say something.

‘What?' Jessica asked.

‘Nothing. I'm just glad . . . never mind. You might want to ask Mrs Johns to check on Oscar. Just in case it is the flu after all.'

Oscar came downstairs a little after midday. Phyllis was not yet back from her walk.

‘I've never known anyone go for so many walks,' Jessica said. ‘It's as though she's afraid of being indoors.'

Oscar smiled vaguely. Mrs Johns had said briskly that there was nothing wrong with him that fresh air and aspirin could not cure but his face was the colour of candle wax. It had a candle's waxy sheen.

‘Are you sure you shouldn't be in bed?' she said but Oscar only shook his head and fiddled with something in his pocket. He seemed stupefied, only half there, but his face twitched and his leg jiggled ferociously up and down. The restlessness leaked from his skin, making the air prickle. It was as if he had snorted cocaine, Jessica thought, and pushed the thought away. The last person she wanted to think about was Gerald.

‘Father wants to see you,' she said. The words seemed to startle him. ‘Are you sure you're all right?'

‘Yes. Sorry. Of course.'

Sir Aubrey's room was warm and stuffy. It made Oscar's head ache.

‘I'm very glad to hear you're feeling better, sir,' he said and Sir Aubrey made a jerking motion with his head.

‘Jes'ca,' he said and Jessica came closer. Shakily Sir Aubrey reached out and took Oscar's hand. He jerked his head again. Smiling awkwardly at Oscar Jessica put her hand on both of theirs, like the Pat-A-Cake games Oscar had played with his mother as a child.

‘Look after her,' Sir Aubrey said or at least that was what Oscar thought he said. He nodded and tried to smile. The muscles beneath his ears ached. He rubbed at them surreptitiously with his spare hand. He supposed he must have clenched his jaw in his sleep. Sir Aubrey said something else but Oscar could not make it out. The only word he was sure of was Melville. He leaned forward. His head pounded.

‘I'm sorry, sir?' he said but Sir Aubrey did not answer. He leaned back against the pillows and closed his eyes.

The air on the landing was cool, sweet with burning apple wood, but it was not any easier to breathe.

He was improving. Dr Wilcox said so. Talking tired him and the tiredness made him confused, but he ate, mashed-up baby foods fed with a spoon, and his head no longer seemed too heavy for his neck. He slept a good deal of the time. Jessica cabled her mother and told her there was no longer any need for her to come home. She wrote too to Mrs Maxwell Brooke who sent a breezy letter by return saying how glad she was and how relieved dear Eleanor must be and murmuring vaguely about a visit some time in the New Year. It was nearly Christmas. Jessica spoke to Mrs Johns about bringing the boxes of decorations down from the attic. She asked Phyllis and Oscar if they thought they should have a tree but Phyllis only shrugged and said it was not for her to decide. It was too late for her to rejoin the dig in Malta but there was work she needed to do. She would leave for London the next day.

Jessica lost her temper. She shouted at Phyllis. She told her she was selfish and heartless and that it might be their father's last Christmas and what the hell was wrong with her anyway?

‘What's wrong with working here?' she raged. ‘If you need books have them sent. You have to stay, don't you see that? For once in your life you have to bloody stay.'

‘The library won't send books.'

‘Then fetch them. Fetch them and come back. Be here. Eleanor may never be coming back but you . . . you're going to bloody stay, do you hear me? This could be our last ever Christmas in this house. Doesn't that mean anything to you at all?'

‘All right, all right. Fine. One night in London, then I'll come straight back.'

Later in bed Oscar held her against him. ‘I could come to London with you,' he said but Phyllis shook her head, her nose rubbing his cheek.

‘You should stay.' He could see the gleam of her eyes in the darkness. ‘Jessica's not a fool. We can't risk her putting two and two together.'

She kissed him and he kissed her back, shutting his eyes. He did not want to see anything. It was him who insisted on turning off the lights, he said it was safer, that they would be less likely to be discovered, but the truth was that it was only in the dark that he could bear it. In the dark when he touched her, there were no thoughts, only sensations. His body led and, for a time, drowned out by the white noise of sensation, the voices in his head were quieted. They came back. In the porridgy grey dawns they came back, redoubled by their brief reverse. Outside his window, as night ended, a robin sang. Robins were aggressively territorial, quick to attack intruders. They killed their own kind.

He burned the letter but he could not burn the image of it, branded in his brain. The words returned to him randomly, shards of glass piercing his attempts at self-possession. Each time Jessica or Phyllis referred to Sir Aubrey as Father he felt the shock of it. Father. A single word like a kick in the gut.

‘What is it about scientists and fire?' Jessica laughed one evening as he bent down to put a spill of paper in the flames. ‘Uncle Henry was always lighting those things too,' and he dropped the paper on the rug and stared stupidly as Jessica stamped it out with her foot.

No one was hurt . . .

There would be worse fathers to have than Aubrey Melville
.

He knew there was something wrong with him. A normal man would have excised those feelings the moment he read the letter, gouged out the love and the longing like a cancer, and stitched it back up with whatever it was that brothers and sisters felt for each other, affection and exasperation and a half-baked sense of belonging. Not Oscar. His tumour only metastasised, seeding itself frenziedly in his liver, his kidneys, his stomach, his bones. His whole body ached for her. It made him feel dizzy, nauseous. And yet sometimes, when she passed close to him, brushing the backs of his fingers with hers, the brutality of his repugnance stopped his throat. He wanted to kiss her, to crush his mouth against his, and at the same time to pound her with his fists, to take her white throat between his hands and squeeze.

He was sane enough to be frightened that he might be going mad.

The next day was Sunday. Phyllis left for London after breakfast. Oscar had dreaded her absence but it was easier with her gone. He thought of Kit and the other men she had nursed during the War who cried out in the ward at night, begging in their narcotic dreams to have their mangled limbs cut off all over again. The pain of an amputation was cleaner, the wound cauterised. When Phyllis was gone he and Jessica walked together down to the park. They talked about Ellinghurst and she showed him the ancient oak tree in which, as a child, she had pretended to set sail for America. Afterwards they drank tea together in the morning room and he read the newspaper while she turned the pages of a magazine. From time to time he looked up and she smiled and he smiled back, without speaking. He could love Jessica like a sister whether she was his sister or not.

After lunch, she took him to the library. She wanted to show him some of the photographs Sir Aubrey had collected for his book. The library was crowded with tables, each one stacked
with books. An upended chest was spread with plans and blueprints and photographs of the tower. Jessica touched one with the tip of her finger.

‘Our first kiss,' she said. ‘Do you remember?'

Oscar tried to laugh. He did not want to remember.

‘It was the only thing about that whole terrible day that was pure and simple and good. I told you you'd always love me, do you remember? Because I was your first.' She bit her lip, glancing up at him. ‘I was pretty pleased with myself back then.'

Oscar shrugged uneasily. ‘Look at that,' he said, bending over the blueprints. ‘These must the original drawings. For the tower. See here, you can see the elevator your great-grandfather designed for it, where the staircase is now.'

‘Oscar—'

‘But, see, by the second plan it's gone and you have the spiral staircase instead. Your father said that even his grandfather was not as confident of unreinforced concrete as all that.'

‘Oscar, listen to me. I know after all I've said to you you probably think . . . that is, I never imagined . . .' She screwed up her face, shaking her head. ‘Oh God. I don't suppose you could kiss me and put us both out of our misery?' She smiled helplessly at Oscar who, flustered, took a step backwards and knocked the table behind him, tipping one of its folding legs underneath it in a curtsey. Papers scattered across the floor.

‘I'm sorry. Here, let me . . .' He squatted, fumbling for the papers, but she was not listening because the door was open and Mrs Johns was standing there, one hand at her throat, and suddenly Jessica was running, her feet echoing along the stone flags of the corridor, and he was running behind her, taking the stairs three at a time.

The third stroke was sudden and severe. The doctor was sent for but Sir Aubrey never recovered consciousness. Jessica held his hand as his breath slowed. Afterwards she said that she thought she had seen it, the moment when the life left his
body, that it shimmered above him like one of those mirages that grease the air on a hot summer's day.

‘His spirit, I suppose,' she said and she put her hands over her face and Oscar put his hand on her shoulder to comfort her and she reached out for it blindly, clasping it tight.

They cabled for Phyllis to come home, and Eleanor. Jessica supposed she should send word to Mrs Maxwell Brooke too but she did not. The undertaker came to lay the body out. Dr Wilcox went away and came back. Doris brought tea. Amidst all the busyness of death Jessica sat in the drawing room, her arms wrapped around herself and her shoulders hunched as though she was afraid that the roof would fall in on top of her.

‘I should telephone Cousin Evelyn,' she said to Oscar. When she began to cry he took his handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. She pressed it to her nose.

‘Do you want me to do it?' he asked.

‘It should be one of us. I'll ask Mr Rawlinson. He'll be here in the morning.' Mr Rawlinson was the Melville family lawyer.

‘You don't think they should know today?'

‘What difference will that make?' Jessica said bitterly. ‘It's Sunday. Land agents don't work on Sundays.'

There were no late trains from London on Sundays. Phyllis caught the milk train the next morning. Pritchard collected her from the station. When Mrs Johns opened the door Phyllis hugged her quickly, tightly. Jessica was standing beside the table. Phyllis kissed Mrs Johns' cheek, and held out her hands to her sister. They looked at each other, then clasped one another close. They were both crying. Jessica had put on a black dress but Phyllis wore her scarlet coat. It was the only splash of colour in the room. Under his dark suit Oscar's chest prickled, tiny bubbles rising and bursting between his ribs. Sir Aubrey was dead and Oscar was no one's son, not any more. He was just Oscar.

He kissed Phyllis on the cheek. ‘I'm so sorry,' he said. Her skin was blotched with tears. She went upstairs with Jessica.
Oscar did not go with them. It was not his place. Soon afterwards Mr Rawlinson arrived. He brought a clerk with him.

‘Shall I let Miss Melville and Miss Jessica know you are here?' Mrs Johns asked but Mr Rawlinson shook his head.

‘We'll wait,' he said, jingling the change in his pockets. Mrs Johns showed them into the morning room. Oscar remained in the Great Hall, unsure of where to be or what he should be doing. He stood, then sat, then walked to the bottom of the stairs and back to the fireplace. His self-consciousness was stronger than his sadness, he thought, and the realisation shamed him. His mother was right. Sir Aubrey had always been very kind.

When Phyllis and Jessica came back downstairs they were red-eyed but composed. Phyllis glanced back at Oscar as she followed Jessica to the morning room and he touched his fingertips to his lips. Jessica hesitated.

‘What about Oscar?' she asked. ‘Shouldn't he be there too?'

Oscar shook his head. ‘I don't think so. This is a family matter.'

‘Please. We want you there. Don't we, Phyll? We need someone to get us out if Mr Rawlinson goes on and on.'

Mr Rawlinson was less enthusiastic. ‘I must be candid, Miss Melville,' he said. ‘I had hoped to speak to you and your sister privately.'

‘Oscar is one of us,' Jessica said. ‘Anything you have to say you can say with him present.'