We That Are Left (58 page)

T
HE ROOM WAS DARK
. In the gloom it was possible to make out a three-legged stool leaning drunkenly against a wall and, on an ancient tea chest, an unlit stub of candle jammed in a ginger beer bottle. Otherwise it was bare, save for a heaped-up pile of sacks and dirty straw on which a small child was sleeping. His elbows poked through the holes in his shirt and the soles of his bare feet were black. Above him the ceiling was criss-crossed with sagging lines of laundry.

The silence was thick, constricted, as though the room held its breath. Then, very slowly, a hand insinuated itself between the tatters on the washing line and a dark figure leaked into the room. His face was obscured by a greasy wide-brimmed hat, its shallow crown dented and scuffed. His shoulders were stooped, his whiskers wild and grey. Instead of a coat, he wore a grimy flannel gown that trailed its frayed hem along the floor. He glanced around him, his eyes flickering from side to side, before, silent as syrup, he slunk across the room, his fingers dancing before his face as though he counted coal smuts in the air.

Beside the tea chest he hesitated, fumbling in his pockets. There was the rattle of a matchbox and then the scrape and flare of a match. Shadows leaped from behind the lines of laundry as he lifted the candle to his face. Beneath the snarl of his eyebrows his sharp eyes flickered like a snake's. As for his nose, it swept from his face like the buttress of a great abbey, the hook arching away from between his eyes before curving in a wide arc towards its tip, a point so sharp it might, if dipped in ink, have done duty for a nib. Although the bridge was narrow, the fleshy parts of the nose around the nostrils appeared almost swollen, rising from his cheeks like tumours, the nostrils beneath slicing the polyps in two thick black lines. His skin was a sickening grey.

The old man reached into the straw and pulled out a small brass-cornered chest. Unlocking it with a key on a string around his neck, he raised the lid. For a moment he simply stared. Then, plunging his hands inside, he drew out handfuls of treasure, bringing them up to his titanic nose as though he might inhale them, the glistening chains of gold, the vivid jewels in scarlet and chartreuse and cerulean, the milky ropes of pearls.

Immediately there was a commotion from behind the washing lines. The sleeping child started up in fright. Scrambling to his feet, he ducked beneath the laundry and was gone. Before the old man could scrabble his treasures back into the chest there emerged from behind the curtain of laundry a strange lopsided beast. Its back was humped, its white face crowned with curled horns. Emitting a strangled bleat the beast raised its hoof and jabbed it towards the old man, who cringed, the backs of his hands pressed to his eyes. The creature wheeled around, the sharpness of the manoeuvre almost breaking its back in two, and buried its face in the laundry.

A footman entered the room. Resplendent in scarlet livery and a white wig, he snapped his fingers at the old man, who grudgingly surrendered his treasure. The fanfare of a lone trumpet sounded as a small round lady made her stately entrance. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun and topped with a large golden crown that threatened to slip over one eye. Pinned to the blue silk sash that she wore over one shoulder was a gold brooch as big as her fist. Though unnaturally small for a lady of her advanced years, her substantial girth coupled with the imperiousness of her expression more than made up for any deficiency of stature and she brandished her sceptre as though it were a bludgeon. The footman bowed. There was no mistaking her. It was without question the Empress of India, Her Majesty Queen Victoria herself.

The old man whispered something to the footman. Hurriedly he stepped forward and presented the treasure chest to the Queen. She received it with stately froideur. Then, unable to contain her glee, she grinned at the villainous old man. He winked at her and blew out the candle.

Abruptly the darkened room was filled with light. The Queen curtsied, her skirts held wide. Then she clapped her hands.

‘Well?' she demanded, jumping up and down. ‘Can you guess?'

Maribel glanced over at Edward as the Charterhouse children began excitedly to shout suggestions. He stood with one elbow propped on the corner of the mantelpiece and one long leg crossed over the other, a faint smile on his lips. Behind him a housemaid quietly drew back the curtains. The weather had not improved. The wind rattled the window sashes, sweeping the rain across the terrace in veils. Beyond the lawn the sodden trees huddled together like cattle.

‘Treasure? Chest? Hide? Steal?'

‘Gold!'

‘No, look, he's pointing at himself. It's him. The first syllable is him.'

‘Old man?'

‘Thief?'

‘Crook?'

‘We're getting warmer. A particular crook, then.'

Charades had been Arthur's idea, of course. Ordinarily, released from the strictures of their London lives, his children behaved at Oakwood like animals returned to the wild, coming into the house only to eat and to sleep, but it had been a miserable Easter, the wettest anyone could remember. Confined indoors, they had relied heavily upon their father's passion for parlour games. In the afternoons, when in other years there might have been croquet or riding or an outing to the beach at Cooden, Arthur gathered the entire party together in the drawing room for frenzied contests of Hunt the Slipper and Blind Man's Buff.

Several of his games were so outlandish that Maribel could only assume that he invented them on the spot. The previous day, the party swelled by several neighbouring families invited for luncheon, he had insisted upon playing something he called Poor Pussy, in which one of the players was required to crawl on all fours among the assembled company, miaowing piteously. The other participants were then obliged to declare ‘Poor Pussy!' with the gravest of expressions. Any player whose mouth so much as twitched was seized upon immediately and set in turn on their hands and knees. The Charterhouse children had demonstrated an alarming aptitude for the sport and had frowned grimly at one grovelling victim after another, until Arthur in a fit of impatience had taken it upon himself to be Pussy and had wound himself around his children's legs, rubbing his head against them and purring with the combustive power of a steam engine until they wept with mirth.

‘So like Fagin but not Fagin.'

‘He's pointing at his nose.'

‘Nose?'

‘Hook?'

‘Jew?'

‘Jew is right!'

‘Jew? That's the word?'

‘Not the whole word, you silly. The first syllable.'

‘How many sybabbles are there?'

‘Three, of course. Don't you ever listen?'

‘Not to you or I'd die of boredom.'

From across the room Edward caught her eye and smiled. Maribel smiled back and straight away she thought again of the letter hidden in her writing box and the smile tightened over her teeth. To distract herself she fumbled in her bag for her cigarette case. Edward had bought it for her in Mexico City just after they were married. The soft silver was scratched now, the initials on the small raised plaque at its centre almost rubbed away.

She struck a match and inhaled, sucking in the shock of the harsh Egyptian tobacco. Beside her on the chesterfield little Matilda wriggled restlessly, pressing her small fingers into the buttoned cavities of the upholstery. Arthur disapproved of Maribel smoking, of course, but then she disapproved of charades, and Arthur had never paid the slightest heed to that. In Arthur's world only fast women smoked.

‘What words begin with Jew?'

‘Juice. Juice begins with Jew.'

‘Juice is only one syllable, silly.'

‘Don't call me silly! Mama, he called me silly.'

‘Sneak.'

‘Now he called me a sneak!'

‘Hush now, both of you,' Charlotte soothed. She held out her hand to Kitty, who glared at her brother before crawling triumphantly into her mother's lap. ‘Let's think. What other words begin with Jew?'

‘Jupiter?'

‘Juvenile delinquent?'

‘Judica.'

‘Jew-what?'

‘Judica,' thirteen-year-old George repeated, rolling his eyes. ‘Passion Sunday to you ignorami.'

George had only been at Eton half a year but already he had learned enough disdain for a lifetime. Bertie, who was to join him the following year, stuck out his tongue behind his brother's back.

‘It's not that, is it, Papa?' Kitty asked.

The old man shook his head firmly. His nose wobbled.

‘Of course not,' he said. ‘It's a word you all know.'

‘Papa!' Queen Victoria hissed, poking a finger into his ribs. ‘You're not supposed to talk.'

The old man gurned guiltily, clamping his lips between thumb and forefinger. The children laughed. Beside Maribel Matilda squirmed. Then she tugged at Maribel's sleeve. There were dimples at the bases of her fingers where the knuckles should have been.

‘I'm four,' the little girl whispered confidingly.

‘Goodness,' Maribel murmured. Her accent was neither French nor Spanish but a husky tangle of the two that a certain type of Englishman found irresistible. ‘Very nearly grown up.'

‘How old are you?'

‘How old do you think I am?'

Matilda looked thoughtful.

‘Are you seven?' she asked.

Maribel smiled distractedly. The letter had come that morning. Alice, their maid, had had the post sent on to Sussex from Cadogan Mansions and, as she had every morning, Maribel had flicked through it idly in the breakfast room, her only thought a faint hope that the milliner had not remembered her bill. The shock of the familiar handwriting on the envelope had caused her to spill her tea on the tablecloth. Arthur had called her a butterfingers and had the maid bring an infant mug with a spout.

‘What came after the Nose Man?' Kitty asked her mother.

‘That animal, wasn't it?'

‘Yes, but what is it?'

‘A horse?'

‘It has horns!'

‘So it does. A cow, then?'

‘A sheep?'

‘Now we're getting warmer.'

‘Like a sheep.'

‘A rabbit?'

‘A rabbit is nothing like a sheep, you clodpoll.'

‘I is not a clodpoll.'

Maribel took a last drag of her cigarette and stubbed it out. Mopping at the spilled tea with her napkin she had apologised to Charlotte for her clumsiness and slipped the letter into her pocket without opening it. Upstairs she had pushed it beneath the envelopes in her writing case and hidden the case at the back of the wardrobe, and still she had not been able to rid herself of the throb of it, the relentless thump of its pulse in the pit of her stomach.

‘You've been very quiet, Maribel dearest,' Charlotte said, smiling at her. ‘Have you already solved the mystery?'

Maribel blinked.

‘The animal,' Charlotte prompted. ‘Can you tell what it is meant to be?'

‘Goodness. I—is it a llama?'

Matilda giggled.

‘Llama,' she said. ‘You say it funny.'

‘Tilly, hush!'

Matilda frowned.

‘Well, she does.'

‘That's because Mrs Campbell Lowe is from Chile where llamas really live and therefore, unlike a little English girl, knows exactly how to say it right. Come on, we must put our thinking caps on. An animal with horns.'

Maribel fiddled with the clasp of her cigarette case. She did not know how Charlotte managed always to sit so placidly amid the commotion, a contented smile upon her lips, her arms open to any child who might skid up to her, breathlessly relating their father's latest escapade. Charlotte was always there to laugh at the childish jokes and kiss better the bumps of those who had been knocked down in the rush, rummaging in her sewing box for foil-bright chocolates. Sometimes she read aloud as the children tumbled like puppies around her, her voice sweet and steady amid the hullabaloo. In all the years Maribel had known her she had never once seen Charlotte lose her temper.

Beside her little Matilda swung her legs sulkily, kicking at the wooden trim of the chaise with the heel of her boot. Thump. Thump. Maribel pressed a hand against her forehead. She was suddenly impatient with herself, with her uneasiness. It was just a letter. As soon as this wretched game was over she would go upstairs and open it.

‘How about a goat?'

‘They're nodding.'

‘That was a goat?' George said. ‘It looked more like an ass to me.'

‘That's quite enough, George.'

‘Not goat. Another word for goat.'

‘Is there one?'

‘How about nanny?'

‘Oh my! Boiling hot!'

‘Billy?'

‘Billy!'

Onstage, the four-legged creature whooped.

‘Billy's right!'

‘Jew-Billy,' Kitty said, puzzled. ‘What's Jew-Billy?'

‘Jubilee!' Bertie shouted triumphantly. ‘That's what Ursie was with the crown. The Queen's Golden Jubilee!'