We That Are Left (14 page)

The thought was a consolation, even though he did not believe it for a minute.

Oscar and a boy called Hamilton-Russell took the Matriculation examinations alone, two boys in a hall built for one hundred. The footfalls of the pacing invigilator echoed as they wrote. When they were over and his trunks packed, the headmaster shook Oscar's hand and told him to be sure to come back. Oscar did not even trust himself to nod.

His mother was not yet well. Despite her assurances that she was on the mend it was plain that she was tired, even though she had reduced her hours in the insurance company.
Her eyes were very big in her face and she had a persistent cough that made her go quite still, as though she meant to fool the pain into going away. Oscar wanted to stay with her but she insisted.

‘Go,' she said. ‘And be grateful to Sir Aubrey.'

Oscar took his camera. When he alighted at the station Pugh was waiting for him in his old trap. His white dog squatted by his heels, its tail brushing the dusty ground, its coat worn away in patches to show the pink skin underneath. It was too old and stiff to jump onto the box. Pugh had to lift it. The dog leaned against its master's side, its head resting on his sleeve. Oscar took a photograph. He thought of the white stretch of Jessica's neck, the sudden electrical shock of her tongue against his, and the burst in his stomach was as reliable as a chemical reaction.

Even after so many years the War had not reached Ellinghurst. In the soft pale pink of evening, pigeons cooed and the trees were fat with green. Beyond the humped stone bridge the lane narrowed, the hedgerows foamy with cow parsley. Above the woods he could see the turrets of the castle and the vertiginous mast of Grandfather's Tower. It seemed to twist as they approached, the unglazed windows of the belvedere opening like mouths.

Then abruptly they were there, turning in beneath the Gothic arch of the gatehouse with its arrow slits and round turrets and the stone lions with their flowing angel hair and their faces like the faces of bad-tempered babies. Oscar had Jim Pugh stop so that he could get a picture. He tipped the camera against his belly so that the coat of arms was in the centre of the photograph, the evening sun picking out the letters of the family motto,
DENIQUE COELEM
.

‘Heaven at last,' his mother always translated with a twist of her mouth as they passed under the teeth of the portcullis, and he never quite knew if it was meant to be a joke. A trailing snatch of goose grass turned in the wheels of the trap. It sighed gently to itself as they trotted past the rhododendrons and up towards the house:
Jessica, Jessica, Jessica
.

Mrs Johns had grown fatter since Oscar had last seen her, her cheeks slack like uncooked pastry. Sir Aubrey and Lady Melville and Miss Jessica were changing for dinner, she told him. Miss Phyllis was in London. Her hospital worked her much too hard, Mrs Johns confided as she led Oscar upstairs. Twelve hours a day, with only a short break for lunch and a weekly half-day off. They were supposed to have leave but Miss Phyllis never seemed to. Still, that was the War, wasn't it, and no one would have chosen it. On the landing she paused, leaning on the banister to catch her breath.

‘Look at you,' she said to Oscar. ‘When did you get all grown up?'

When Oscar had changed, he took some photographs out of his bedroom window. Then he lay on his bed, trying to swallow the butterflies in his stomach. He supposed there were things eighteen-year-old girls talked about but he did not know what they were. He thought of Theo, the way girls had always clustered around him, trying to attract his attention. Theo had always known what to say. The first gong sounded. He lay a little longer, then made himself get up. On the landing he hesitated, leaning over the banister to see if he could see anyone in the hall below.

‘Hello.'

Oscar turned round. Jessica stood on the stairs behind him. The flesh-and-blood reality of her was startlingly unfamiliar, as though all this time he had been thinking of someone quite different. He stared at her, disoriented, rearranging his imaginings around the facts of her. She was tall, in her evening shoes not much shorter than he was. Her mouth was just the same.

He did not let himself look at her mouth. She wore an evening dress of honey-coloured silk, fastened with a sash around her hips, and a long string of pearls and, in her piled-up honey-coloured hair, a pearl and diamond clip in the shape of a flower. Oscar had never seen her with her hair up before. It showed off the length of her white neck, the delicate whorl of her ear. Between the slope of her shoulder and the slender
rim of her collarbone, the pale skin dipped in two perfectly triangular hollows. There was a freckle in one of them, like a fleck of molten chocolate. Oscar touched his tongue to his lips.

‘Oh,' he said.

Jessica raised an eyebrow. Then, with her hands on her hips, she turned slowly to and fro in front of him like a fashion model. Her mouth gleamed pink.

‘Well?' she said. ‘What do you think?'

He gazed at her. The hair at the nape of her neck was dark, still damp from her bath. ‘You look . . . nice,' he managed.

‘Nice? That's honestly the best you can do?'

Oscar flushed. ‘Very nice, then. You look very nice.'

When she smiled at him something inside him turned upside down. She took a step towards him, close enough for him to smell the scent of honeysuckle. She put her hands on his lapels and, on tiptoes, touched her mouth to his. Her tongue flickered between his lips. Then it was gone.

‘You still think of me, don't you?' she murmured. ‘When you're all alone?'

He stared at her. Smoothing the corners of her mouth with one finger, she smiled and went downstairs.

At dinner he sat next to his godmother and tried not to look at Jessica. Except for the absence of footmen, no one would have guessed there was a War on. The food was plentiful, the table bright with glass and polished silver. The string of pearls around Jessica's neck curved inwards between the swell of her breasts like an eight that did not meet in the middle. There was something on her lips, a faint wet shine. He kept his eyes on his plate as she talked to her father, her nearness like a pulse in his throat. Twice, she caught him looking at her and her mouth twitched, as though she knew exactly what he was thinking, and the look was like a match to gas, sending a jet of flame up his neck and burning his ears.

After dinner the ladies withdrew. Sir Aubrey offered Oscar a cigar.

‘I wanted to thank you,' Oscar said. ‘For all you've done.'

Sir Aubrey shook his head. ‘Please. It was nothing.'

‘It wasn't nothing. Or it won't be. Not if I . . . you know. As long as I make it.'

Sir Aubrey's face stiffened. Oscar knew he was thinking of Theo. Awkwardly, for something to do, he helped himself to port from the decanter, slopping a little on the gleaming white tablecloth. Sir Aubrey smoked his cigar. Oscar did not know what else to say. He thought of his mother, who had always laughed when he said that grown-up parties were the worst torture in the world.

‘Worse even than football?' she had teased.

‘Much worse.'

‘But it's just talking. Isn't it?'

But it was not. It was like chess, only with words which was much more difficult because there were no rules about how words were allowed to move. You had to keep moving them about and hoping it made sense and all the time you had to think about where to go next without making a mistake, without the other person getting impatient and bored with you and working out how to make you lose. But his mother had said you did not have to play it like that.

‘Not all conversations have two talkers,' she had said. ‘If you know what someone likes best in the world all you have to do is ask them about it. Most of the time they'll talk and talk and you won't have to say a word. You just have to listen. And nod. It helps if you nod.'

Oscar put down his glass. ‘I wondered, sir, if you might like to talk about Ellinghurst.'

Sir Aubrey balanced his cigar on the edge of the ashtray. ‘Ellinghurst?'

‘Yes, sir. If you wanted to.'

‘And what exactly is it you hoped I might say?'

‘Nothing,' Oscar said, flustered. The smoke from the cigar curled upwards, smudging the air. ‘That is, I mean, I know
you're writing a book. Or perhaps you've finished it. I just thought you might like to talk about it.'

‘I see. So you are being polite?'

‘No. I mean, I suppose so.' Oscar frowned unhappily at the tablecloth. The port stain was blue and purple, like a bruise. ‘I'm sorry. I'm afraid I've never been much good at conversations.'

Sir Aubrey considered him. Then he shook his head, exhaling a rueful kind of laugh through his nose. ‘I'm afraid that makes two of us.'

‘You probably get tired of telling stories about Ellinghurst anyway.'

‘Not really. Much to your godmother's vexation.'

‘My mother used to tell me some of them on the train,' Oscar said. ‘About the heating pipes with the special spurs for drying shoes that blew up, and the sprung stage on wheels for dances. And the fireworks in the fireplace of the Great Hall.'

‘My grandfather was a great experimenter.'

‘Like your brother.'

‘Like Henry.'

There was a silence.

‘I didn't know you were interested,' Sir Aubrey said. ‘Jessica has always maintained that you hated staying here.'

‘That's not true.'

‘She claimed you were always hiding out on your own.'

Oscar hesitated. ‘That part is a bit true.'

Sir Aubrey smiled.

‘I always loved the house, though,' Oscar said. ‘When I was little what I wanted most of all was to live in the gatehouse.'

‘Really? That was always my favourite too. Like a little castle all of one's own.'

‘Only then I decided that the tower would be better still, right at the very top in the room with the arched windows. We weren't supposed to go up there, were we? I thought it would be the best thing in the world to wake up in the sky
with the whole world spread out beneath you all the way to the sea. Like being a bird. But when I told my mother she said that I'd have to live there by myself. She said she was too forgetful to live somewhere so tall, that she'd always be leaving a book up there or her hat. She said all those stairs would wear her out.'

‘Your mother? I can't imagine that. No one has as much energy as your mother.'

Oscar was silent.

‘My grandfather had hoped to install a safety elevator in the tower, did you know that?' Sir Aubrey said in a different voice. ‘The very first blueprints show a lift shaft on the western façade.'

‘You still have them?'

‘Of course. I can show you if you're interested.'

‘Would you really? It wouldn't be too much trouble?'

‘Of course not. I'll look them out in the morning.'

‘That would be wonderful, sir. Thank you.' It struck Oscar that this was the first time he had ever really properly spoken to Sir Aubrey and that, despite the way Godmother Eleanor treated him, he was actually very nice. ‘So why did your grandfather change his mind? About the lift, I mean.'

‘One has to assume he came to his senses,' Sir Aubrey said. He smiled. ‘Even my grandfather wasn't so confident of unreinforced concrete as all that.'

Sir Aubrey finished his cigar and retired to his study. Oscar went to join the others in the drawing room but, as he crossed the Great Hall, the door opened and Jessica came out. He gazed at her, her goldenness, the gleam and shimmer of her breasts and hips beneath her silk dress. The bow of her perfect pink mouth.

‘Jessica,' he said. He took a step towards her but she held up a reproving finger, tutting softly under her breath.

‘Easy there, boy.' A smile played about her lips as, kissing the tips of her fingers, she blew him a starlet kiss. ‘Goodnight, Oscar. It was nice to see you.'

‘Nice? I thought nice was, you know, not a good enough word.'

Jessica raised an eyebrow. ‘For you, Oscar, nice does very nicely.' He stood in the hall, listening to the tap of her shoes as she climbed the stairs. When she reached the gallery she leaned over the banister, her pearls swinging around her neck. ‘I told you, didn't I?' she whispered. She was laughing, her cheeks sucked in as though the laughter was a lemon drop in her mouth. ‘You'll never forget me, not as long as you live.'

That night, when the moment came, it was with an explosion of such intensity he had to bury his face in the pillow to keep from crying out. At breakfast Sir Aubrey looked up at him from over his newspaper and told him he was the last man in.

‘Jessica already up?' Oscar said casually, poking at scrambled eggs.

‘Didn't she say? She left early, won't be back till Monday. Some sort of house party, apparently.' Draining his coffee cup, Sir Aubrey stood and bid Oscar a good morning. He did not say whether Jessica had said to say goodbye.

Later that morning, Oscar walked across the lawn to the beech trees. He took his camera with him, the strap around his neck. Near the trees he turned, looking back at the house. The hazy sky gave off a filtered light and on both sides of the path that ran up to the terrace the magnolia trees were in full and glorious bloom. He weighed his camera in his hand, running his thumb over its leatherette sides, the worn nickel fittings. In a week he would be in uniform. They said front-line officers were supposed to be eighteen and a half but everyone knew that they did not wait that long, not any more, and especially not if you had been through public school and the OTC and knew the drill.

He let go of the camera, pulling the strap so that it bumped against his back as he walked. Under the beeches he stopped, staring up into the dappled green of the canopy. A breeze
danced among the leaves and ruffled the feathery seed heads of the long grass. He tried to summon Theo's face, the fall of his hair over his eyes, the way he had of leaning languidly against a wall with his hands in his pockets and one foot up behind him, as though his joints were too loose to stand up straight, but it would not come. Instead, he put his arms around the tree and held it. The bark was rough against his cheek. He closed his eyes, inhaling its smell of wind and pencil shavings.