All My Sins Remembered (43 page)

Cressida was sitting on the other side of the room, doggedly eating trifle. Grace thought back to her own wedding, and her anxiety to become Mrs Brock as quickly as possible while all the time lamenting the loss of her precious Bohemian freedom. What would that freedom have amounted to, she wondered now? The chance to drink in pubs and go to bed with characters like Miles Lennox’s friends?

A wash of love for Anthony poured through her.
Lucky
, she thought.
So lucky
.

Would Clio be as fortunate? It was just possible that she was pregnant, but somehow Grace did not think so.

‘Why don’t you talk to Miles yourself?’ Jake was saying.

‘I will.’

The room was overheated and the noise level rose steadily. Ruth’s own efforts and her chivvying of Dorcas seemed to have no effect on the rising tide of dirty plates and filled ashtrays and clouded glasses. Grace picked her way through the detritus to the corner where Miles and his friends were talking. They were beginning to be tired of drinking without a congenial bar to lean on, and were wondering how soon they might slip away. Miles stood up when he saw Grace coming and cut off the rest of the group with a hitch of his shoulder.

‘
Lady
Grace.’

‘Anthony is very sorry not to be here. He wanted to wish you both well. Clio’s a great favourite of his.’

‘Is she?’

The sneer in his voice was unmistakable. Miles picked a shred of tobacco from his lower lip. Grace determined that he would not rebuff her.

‘How is your novel?’

‘Quite well, thank you.’

The careless insolence almost took her breath away. She thought, There is so much
hate
in him. Which of us does he hate, and why? Is it all women, or only women like me?

Clio can’t be going to marry this man …

He was waiting, one eyebrow lifted, for her to say something else. But in the middle of the room Nathaniel had risen to his feet.

‘Friends, family,’ Nathaniel called. He spread his hands, enjoining them all to make a circle around him. Miles strolled away from Grace with his hands in his pockets and took his place at Clio’s side.

Nathaniel made a graceful little speech. He welcomed Miles and wished the engaged couple every happiness, and paid a generous tribute to Ruth for her food and hospitality. He thanked all the guests for coming, and the natural warmth and affection that radiated from him made them feel that they had indeed been part of a convivial and successful evening.

Nathaniel raised his glass. ‘Miles and Clio,’ he proposed.

‘Miles and Clio,’ they answered, and drank from the glasses that Ruth had not managed to clear away. Clio blushed, and Miles turned his head and touched his lips to her face.

Grace watched, feeling cold in the hot room.

An over-enthusiastic nurse from the clinic began to sing, ‘For they are jolly good fellows’, and a thin chorus of voices joined in. When the cheering was over Grace looked away in relief, and found Cressida beside her.

‘I think we should go home to see how Daddy is,’ Cressida said.

‘I think we should too,’ Grace agreed. ‘Let me first have a quick talk to Clio.’

Clio had left the room. She had seen Ruth shouldering her way downstairs with a tray of leftovers.

Grace found them in the basement kitchen. They were standing side by side at the sink, and Clio’s arm was around Ruth’s shoulders.

‘It’s your wedding. I don’t
want
you to help,’ Ruth was insisting. She looked as if she might be about to cry. They both turned to stare at Grace.

‘Lovely party, Ruth,’ Grace said.

Ruth picked up the empty tray and pushed past Grace. They heard her feet clumping up the stairs behind them.

Clio turned her back again. She slowly rolled up her sleeves and plunged her arms into the sink.

Grace was suddenly exasperated by the smell of fish, the harsh shadows thrown by the single lightbulb under its glass coolie shade, and the grease-filmed water that left a scaly tidemark around Clio’s elbows.

She asked, ‘Clio, are you really going to marry that little queer?’

Clio stood very still. Then she raised her head. Above her, through the dark window, she could just see the basement area and the railings above. Feet and legs shuffled beyond the railings. Some people were leaving, and she had not said goodbye to them.

Almost absently, she said, ‘Miles isn’t a queer. And even if he were, I would still be in love with him.’

Grace opened her beaded bag with a snap. She took out a cigarette and clicked her lighter, then inhaled sharply. ‘Clio.’

Clio spun round. Water splashed on the bodice of her dress. She had to make an effort not to shout. ‘Go home, will you, please, Grace? You don’t belong here. We don’t want you here.’

They confronted each other. Grace wanted to go back, to begin again, softly this time, but Clio gave her no chance. Her eyes were like stones. It was Grace who looked away first.

She shrugged, waving her cigarette in its own smoke, then butting it out amongst the dirty dishes on the table.

‘You know where I am if you need me,’ she said. As she climbed the stairs she was surprised to find that her legs were shaking.

The door to Anthony’s dressing room stood ajar and the light was on. Grace let her fur wrap drop over the back of a chair and stooped briefly to glance at her face and her hair in the triple mirror. The cut-glass bottles and silver accessories on her dressing table caught the light and glittered back at her. It was reassuring to come home.

She crossed quickly to the dressing room. The door leading to Anthony’s bedroom was also open, and she could see the shaded lamp burning beside his bed. He must be still awake, waiting for her to come in.

‘Darling, I’m back at last,’ she called. She would sit beside him and talk for a few minutes, and forget the evening.

She reached the bedside before she saw for sure that he was asleep. He was lying on his back with his mouth open, one arm crooked over his eyes. His skin was flushed and damp, and his cheek when she put her hand to it was burning hot. As soon as she touched him he flung out his arm, muttered something, and rolled away as if her touch had hurt him. Grace saw that there was a darker patch on the pillow where his head had rested. A single wheezing snore escaped from deep in his chest.

She hesitated, and then told herself that sleep was the best thing for him. She drew the covers up around his shoulders and turned off the bedside lamp, then tiptoed back to her own bedroom.

‘It’s seven-forty-five, Lady Grace.’

The housemaid brought in Grace’s tea early the next morning, as she had been instructed to do. Grace had a nine o’clock fitting, followed by a charity committee meeting. As soon as the maid had put the tray down Grace got up and pulled on her silk robe. She went through to Anthony’s bedroom and found him still asleep. Only she saw that he must have been up in the night, because some books and papers had been moved off his table and the little shaded lamp had been knocked over. She set it upright again, frowning.

She watched him for a moment and saw that at least he seemed to breathe more easily. If he was not much better by the afternoon, she decided, she would call in Dr Boothe.

Grace gave instructions that Mr Brock’s tray was to be taken up at nine-thirty, if he did not ring for it before, and left the house.

Cressida stood in the drawing-room window, looking into the street. She held a fold of the dove-grey curtain in her fingers, pleating and repleating it into a series of concertina creases that would have earned a sharp rebuke from Grace if she had been there to see. But in her anxiety Cressida did not even think of that.

Please come
, she breathed.

At last, at midday, a taxi drew up. Grace stepped out with a milliner’s box and some other packages. Cressida ran.

She reached the foot of the stairs as the front door opened. ‘Mummy, where’ve you been? You’ve got to ring the doctor. Daddy looks strange. Nanny says the doctor should see him.’

Standing with her arms full of parcels Grace stared at Cressida. Her daughter’s round black eyes were accusing. The sight of her was an irritation until the words sank in.

‘What is all this, Cressida? Where’s Nanny?’

There was the sound of running feet and Cressida’s nanny appeared at the head of the stairs.

‘It’s Mr Brock, my lady. His temperature is very high. I think the doctor …’

‘Mummy, oh quickly, Mummy …’ There was panicky fear in Cressida’s voice.

‘Calm down, Nanny, for goodness sake.’ Grace dropped her packages and hurried to the stairs. Cressida wriggled in front of her and would have darted up ahead but Grace seized her arm. ‘Go downstairs and sit with Cook, please, Cressida.’

For a moment it seemed that the child might refuse to do as she was told, but then she bent her head and melted away. Grace followed the nanny, keeping her eyes on the white starched triangle of her headdress as it receded ahead of her.

Anthony was lying on his side with his eyes open. Grace stooped beside him. His face looked congested and he was breathing noisily through his mouth. At first he stared without seeming to see her, but then he licked his cracked lips and muttered, ‘Hello, old thing. We must look at the portfolio.’

Grace stood up. Anxiety tightened in her throat. ‘Stay here with him, Nanny. I’ll go and telephone.’

Cressida hovered as silent as a shadow in the passage outside the drawing room. She heard her mother talking to the doctor’s receptionist in a high, tight voice.

‘… I don’t care who he is seeing. This is an emergency, do you understand? Put me through to him at once.’

Usually her mother’s imperious ways made Cressida shrink with embarrassment, but now she dipped her head in two sharp nods of encouragement. The palms of her hands felt cold and clammy spread against the beige-painted dado of the corridor wall. Grace talked briskly to the doctor. Cressida shrank out of sight again when her mother came out of the drawing room, then listened to the door of her father’s room opening and closing, and the low murmur of voices.

Cressida closed her eyes and resigned herself to waiting. The house felt quite different from normal. It was unnaturally still and the air seemed heavy, she had felt it as soon as she woke up. Before she had even looked into her father’s room. She tried a prayer but could only manage
Please God, please God
, over and over.

The doctor came quite quickly. He was a pink man in a pinstriped suit with a watch-chain. Grace had been sitting in a chair beside Anthony’s bed, holding one of his hands between both of hers, but she jumped up as soon as he was shown in.

‘Dr Boothe …’

‘If I might just look at the patient first, Lady Grace.’

She felt herself dismissed. She wrapped her arms around herself and stood at the window, willing herself to be calm as the doctor made his examination. Anthony was quiet at first, but then he began to talk in a low, hoarse voice about stocks and dividends. He wanted to get up and sort out some papers. That was what he must have been trying to do in the night, Grace realized.

‘That’s right, old chap, but not to worry about that now,’ the doctor soothed him. ‘The thing is to get over this little bout before you do anything else.’

The doctor’s face was sombre when he finally motioned Grace to one side. ‘Do you have someone you can send out to have this prescription made up?’

‘Of course.’

Anthony’s man was dispatched and the nanny was recalled to watch by the bed. The doctor washed his hands, rinsed and dried them with meticulous care.

‘Please tell me what it is, Dr Boothe.’ Grace was even meek in her fear now.

The doctor led her into the next room. Grace allowed herself to be stationed on her own day-bed to receive the news. ‘I believe he has a form of influenza. That in itself would not be threatening to a healthy man of his age, but there is now a secondary, pulmonary infection. An infection of the lung, that is. His temperature is high, there is some delirium, and some cardiac irregularity. How long has he been unwell, Lady Grace?’

‘A day. No, two days. He, we thought it was a feverish cold.’

‘I understand. Is he worried, in any way out of the normal?’

‘He gave a major speech to the House, just last week. His father’s business, he is a stockbroker, and there was the Hatry crash last month, of course. I believe there were … clients who suffered losses. I don’t think it damaged Anthony personally, financially, that is.’

‘I see. It doesn’t help that he has political or business anxieties, naturally.’

‘What will happen?’

‘I can’t say, yet.’

Grace stared at him. His pink face seemed to hang in front of her like some jack-o’-lantern.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The infection must run its course. But it is a virulent one, threatening, to have taken hold so quickly. The question is if his system can hold up against it.’

Grace did not move. If, he had said,
if
. An hour, two hours ago she had been concerned about the fit of a winter costume. Now this man was saying there was a chance that Anthony might die. She knew he was saying that, although the words were fuzzy, the darkness of them inadequately bleached by euphemism.

Sudden fear drained the blood and heat out of her, and she felt that she could not raise her arm, or move her fingers, to save Anthony or herself. She sat on the day-bed looking towards the dressing-room door. She could see his face, distorted with the pain of drawing breath, as if the walls were glass. The life they had constructed together had seemed invincible, like a stone tower, and now the difference of a few hours threatened to bring it down.

‘If you had called me in earlier …’

‘He was asleep when I came in last night, and this morning. He was feverish, but I saw no reason to call.’

‘I see, of course …’

Grace realized that the doctor was watching her. He was judging her, and her capacity to deal with the crisis. Her back stiffened at once. She could move her fingers, all of her body now. She would not let Anthony die.

‘Anthony is very strong, very determined. He will recover.’