The Jewel Box (32 page)

“Where’s the fire?” asked Tilly.

“They light the fire tonight, darling.” Grace’s voice was weary. She’d already explained this a number of times. “And there’ll be a firework display and baked potatoes and—”

“I want the fire now!” Tilly folded her arms and put out her sulky lip.

“Don’t worry, sweetie.” Dickie patted her on the shoulder. “We’ll all come up here tonight to join in and watch them burn Guy Fawkes.” When Tilly abruptly burst into tears and
ran away across the grass, he appeared stunned. “What did I say? Should I run after her?”

“Don’t worry.” Grace put her arm through his. “She won’t go far. Thing is, I’m not sure she’s properly understood the Guy Fawkes story. She might have thought you were saying they were going to burn a real person.”

“Sorry, Gracie. I suppose I’m just not used to children. What a clot.”

“Rubbish. You’re lovely with her. Poor little thing’s not herself at the moment.”

Tilly had darted closer to the men now, drawn to the great pile of wood. She’d stopped crying, had picked up a small branch and was trailing it along the ground behind her.

The wood stack was already nine feet high. Tonight’s fire would be a huge, roaring, leaping one. The thought of it—the very notion of something that was all energy, all hunger, all heat—made Grace shudder and cling closer to Dickie. Thank God she had Dickie. Her rock.

“When the time comes, George wants to be cremated,” she said quietly.

“Really? How peculiar. I thought you said there was a family mausoleum in Highgate Cemetery?”

“Yes.” She was still staring at that huge wood stack and at the child who was now circling it. Running round and round with her arms outstretched, pretending to be an airplane. “But he doesn’t want to be put in it. He has nightmares about being shut inside coffins and trapped under cold stone. He’s asked me to help Nancy explain it all to his parents.”

“Poor chap. Poor parents, come to that.”

“Dickie.” Grace was fighting tears. “Could we go away somewhere? Afterward, I mean? I couldn’t leave Nancy for longer than a few days. But I do think I’m going to want a few
days away from it all. I’d like some breathing space so that I can rally myself a bit. Come back stronger and be more of a help to her. Would that be all right?”

“Of course, my darling. Whatever you want.” He took her in his arms and she let her head rest against his shoulder.

“The doctor says it might only be a matter of days.” The wind sent the dead leaves scattering all around and about them. And then, “Nancy’s pregnant again. Almost three months. She’s sick as a dog.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “You’ve already told me.”

“What will we do without him?” She stood there in Dickie’s arms, knowing that he was holding her together. Holding her up. If he let go of her right now, she might just fall.

Later that afternoon, Grace took a seat beside George’s bed as she always did at this time. Nancy was downstairs with Tilly. The day nurse had gone home and the night nurse hadn’t yet arrived.

George, rake-thin and hollow in the face, was propped up on his pillows. He couldn’t get out of bed on his own now.

“Mind if I open a window?” Grace got up without waiting for a reply and fumbled with the catch. The room smelled very bad. As if the cancer was rotting him from the inside. Perhaps it was.

The doctors didn’t seem to know where the cancer had started or when. It had crept its way through him, spreading fast while he remained oblivious. He likened it to a silent, stealthy and utterly deadly army. By the time he’d been diagnosed, it had conquered his lymphatic system and invaded his lungs.

Inevitably, George blamed the war. Claimed he’d been poisoned by gas in the trenches. They’d been sent gas mask after
gas mask, all different designs, but none of them had proved effective against the foul stuff the Germans wafted at them. They’d even succeeded in gassing themselves a few times, when the wind happened to be blowing the wrong way.

“You look awful.” George’s voice was thin and breathless, transparent in quality. “When did you last see your hairdresser?”

“Cheeky!” She came back over and patted his knees through the blankets. He looked so small. As if he’d shrunk in length as well as breadth. “Haven’t exactly had a lot of time for that kind of thing lately.”

“Now, now.” He wagged a finger. “Don’t you let yourself go, young lady. You’ll never catch a husband that way.” As he said this, he reached for her hand. His hand was surprisingly warm and firm.

“Who says I want one?” She wanted to sit there forever, her hand in his. They hadn’t held hands like this in more than three years. “There’s only one man I’ve ever wanted to marry. I was waiting for him to ask me but he went and married someone else.”

“Rubbish. You’d never have said yes. You’re one of those infuriating women who’s only interested in the things they can’t have.”

“Think that if you like. You didn’t ask so you’ll never know.”

His eyes seemed to roam across her face. “I know all there is to know about you, Grace.”

For three years they’d been courteous and considerate to each other. She had stuck to her decision that their relationship had to end, and he had respected that. Neither had made any reference to their affair in all that time. But just lately, this last week or so, they’d become playful and sentimental around
each other. Now that he’d been robbed of a future, George was choosing to live in the past. And Grace was allowing herself to go there with him, just a little.

“What about Dickie?” His words broke the magic.

“I don’t want to talk about Dickie.”

“Has he proposed to you?”

She pulled her hand from his.

“He
has,
hasn’t he? What was your answer?”

“George, please. I said I don’t want to talk about him.”

“Ha!” His eyes glittered. “I knew it! Same old Grace. Like I said, you’re only interested in what you can’t have.”

“If you must know, I told him it was the wrong time to ask me. I can’t think about getting married at the moment. Surely you of all people should understand that. I don’t think I’ll ever get married, actually.”

“I see,” he said, flatly. “Perhaps that’s just as well.”

“What exactly do you mean by that?” She was looking at his hair. Still thick and coppery, streaked through with gold. She was looking at his sad, hazel eyes.

“I’m going to ask something of you, Grace.”

“No.” She knew what was coming. “Don’t say it. Please. The answer is yes, but please don’t speak it. I can’t bear to hear it.”

“You irritating baggage! How could you possibly know what I’m going to say?”

“I know all there is to know about you too, George.” The smallest of smiles which slipped quickly away. A sigh. “Of course I’ll look after Nancy and Tilly. And the baby when it comes. You know I will.”

His face became serious. “Promise me they’ll always come first, Grace. You’re the only person who can do that for me. You’re the only one I can ask. I want you there with
her when she has the baby. I want you always to be there because I can’t be.”

“Oh George,
please
stop.” Tears clouded her eyes.

“It’s been the three of us for a long time, hasn’t it? Since Steven died. I wonder what would have happened if he’d lived?”

“Everything would have been different. Four is such a different number.”

“So is two,” he said. “Two is what you’ll be soon, you and Nancy. Two is a good number.”

“There’s Mummy too, don’t forget.”

He waved a dismissive hand. Catherine didn’t count. Not in this calculation. And nor did Dickie, apparently.

“Promise me, Grace.”

“Yes, yes. I’ve already said it, haven’t I?” She batted his hand away. Her best impression of bright and breezy. “Now do shut up about it. How about I give you a shave? Get you all smartened up for Nancy when she comes up to see you. Would you like that?”

“Oh, not now.” He sank back against his pillows. “I’m too tired.” His face, with the eyes shut, was barely more than a skull.

She took his hand again and held it and they sat silently for a while. Eventually, he seemed to have fallen asleep and she laid his hand gently down and got up to leave.

“What a lovely dream.” His eyes were still closed but a smile played around the corners of his mouth.

She patted his knee. “See you later, petal.”

It would be the last time they’d speak to each other.

The following is a farewell message from a toiling scribe to his Muse, a message which the scribe has, for reasons unknown to himself (but perhaps to do with his ingrained tendency to live his private life in public), decided to put in a newspaper. Indulge me if you will. My darling lady, on our first encounter I thought you couldn’t be more exhilarating, varied, elegant or unpredictable. I was wrong. With each day that passes you become more exciting. I see you before me all decked out in vivid red. Red, the color of blood and of danger, is your true color. It becomes you. You’re so changeable. I have only to blink, and everything is different. You’re more hectic than you used to be, my love. You pulse with a nervous, restless energy that approaches madness. Indeed, you’re famous for it. Yet there is an order underlying your chaotic surface. And your best features have about them a permanence and grandeur. You will endure, my love. You will live forever.

In the mornings you’re fresh and sparkling. Enlivened by the new day. In the ripe golden afternoons you’re languid and relaxed. You’re at your most exotic at night, glittering through those long summer evenings, dazzling in the dark. Your music is stirring, your dance divine. It has to be said, though: you can be a little dirty.

In a few days I am due to return to my wife. Yes, it’s true. I belong somewhere else. My wife is more straitlaced than you, more bogged down in rules and regulations, more religious. Perhaps that’s why I stay away from her for long stretches of time. She’s younger than you, yet she’s obsessed with history and traditions and is all caught up in the most snobbish of social codes. Maybe that’s
because
she’s young. Still, there’s more fun to be had behind her closed doors than is at first apparent. And after all, she belongs to me and I to her. I’ll always return.

I have other lovers dotted around the globe. This won’t make anyone like me better, but I’m just not the kind to hang around too long. At least I’m honest about it. People may tut and wag their fingers, but would they be able to resist the lure of that little French thing any better than I? She’s so chic, bohemian, artistic and—well—frisky. Yes, all right, she’s snotty too, but nobody’s perfect.

But forget Paris. Forget my own New York. You, lovely London, are the biggest and the best city in the world. This has been my first visit in seven years, and boy, did you have some surprises up your sleeve. The shock of Piccadilly Circus without Eros, a face without a nose, while somewhere under the ground, an enormous subterranean station is being birthed from rock. Perhaps it will be the biggest in the bewildering network that is tunneling its way beneath you. Up above there’s so much more traffic than there used to be, but you’re taming it with all your rules and regulations, your spangly new traffic lights. This is what characterizes London, to me: the conflict between crackling craziness
and tightly ordered control. The buildings have been growing year on year, like children. Look at all those big department stores and banks that have sprung up with their Greco-Egyptian pillars and classical Italianate statues; their modern black granite, geometrical lines and smooth curves. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re trying to thumb your noses at us upstart Yanks. Well, we’ll see who laughs last.

What a pleasure it’s been to relax in your pubs with a pint of beer or sip champagne in your swanky nightspots. “Greetings, Constable. Fancy a tipple?” No padlocks here, no drinking dens, no flask in the jacket pocket, no climbing out the back window when the cops come in through the front door. Other things make less sense, such as your worship of the game of “football” (though, yes, the new Wembley Stadium is something to behold). Also cricket, clearly an ancient forebear of baseball struggling against the imperative of Darwinian evolution. Do yourselves a favor and give it up. Then there’s the way you cook a steak—is this in fact a side product of your leather-tanning process? Then there’s the rain…

Enough quibbling. One can always find fault if that’s the lens through which one chooses to view the world. This is my leave-taking declaration. My darling, you have been my inspiration. You’re a wonderfully crazy set of contradictions. You took a cold, dead heart and made it beat again. Perhaps I have been afraid of my own throbbing heart. Perhaps I am simply not a good man. Whatever the reason, I have wronged you and I apologize. You’re not the only one I’ve wronged, but you’re the only one I love. There’s another good heart out there, and it’s beating the same natty jazz rhythm as yours. I hope you’ll find each other. And now, with the blood running hot through his arteries, this Devil is heading home to write his Great Novel. I’m ready to do it, at long last. It will be dedicated to you.

(
Diamond Sharp returns next week
.)

Grace
had been staying at Sheridan’s for almost a week when her mother turned up. It was a hot morning, and she was alone in the pocket-handkerchief back garden, sipping lemonade under a parasol. She heard Catherine before she saw her. A scuffling of shoes on the tiled floor inside and sounds of muffled protest, before the French windows were flung open, revealing Mother, flushed in the face, a carpet bag over one arm and the latest issue of
Time and Tide
under the other—with a tight-mouthed Jenkins following.

“Ah, there you are, Grace. This fellow is determined to take my things!”

“I beg your pardon, madam, I was only—”

Catherine dropped the carpet bag. “I know what you were doing. Indeed, I’m well aware of what you’re
for
. But it doesn’t interest me and I’m quite capable of carrying my own bag. Let
me make the most of my remaining years as an able-bodied woman, if you please.”