We That Are Left (21 page)

‘Lunch? I don't even know your name, Mr . . . ?'

‘Cardoza. Gerald Cardoza.'

She hesitated. He smiled at her, his eyes on hers as though he could read every thought in her head. To her mortification Jessica could feel herself blushing.

‘Jessica Melville,' she said.

‘Jessica. “And fair she is, if that mine eyes be true.”'

‘What?'

‘Never mind. So, Miss Jessica Melville, do you absolutely loathe the Savoy?'

The teapots were empty, the plates of sandwiches mostly crumbs, and still people lingered. Oscar ached for them to be gone. All afternoon he had shaken people's hands and repeated the same phrases, over and over: thank you and you're very kind and it was good of you to come, until the words were nothing but blobs of sound without any meaning. He gazed blankly at Godmother Eleanor as she bore down on him, the emerald in her lapel glaring at him with its cold green eye.

‘Help me find Jessica, won't you?' she said. ‘I told her quite plainly we were to leave by half past at the latest.'

Sighing impatiently she flung open the door to the back parlour. Two figures were outlined in the window. One was a man, the other his mother. She was laughing, her head thrown back, and something inside Oscar turned over and then she turned and it was not his mother at all but Jessica who had never resembled her in the least. Oscar pressed his fingers against his temples. He could not understand why it kept happening, why he kept making the same mistake.

‘Eleanor,' Jessica said smoothly. ‘Do you know Mr Cardoza?'

‘What on earth are you doing, hiding away in here?' her mother demanded.

‘I was looking for a book. Ah, here it is.' Jessica snatched a volume from the arm of the sofa. ‘Mr Cardoza is an old
friend of Mrs Carey's. From her Suffragette days. Mr Cardoza, this is my mother, Lady Melville.'

Mr Cardoza smiled and held out his hand. ‘How do you do?'

Eleanor considered him. Then, placing her hand in his as though it was something unpleasant she meant him to dispose of, she turned to Jessica. ‘Find your father. Now. Tell him we leave in five minutes.'

‘Eleanor, please,' Jessica admonished. ‘Mr Cardoza, have you met Oscar Greenwood, Mrs Carey's son?'

‘My deepest sympathy,' Mr Cardoza said. ‘I was very fond of your mother.'

‘Thank you.' Mechanically Oscar shook his hand.

‘Your father,' Eleanor said icily.

‘It's time I was going,' Mr Cardoza said. ‘Lady Melville. Mr Greenwood, thank you. It was a beautiful service.' Then, with a private smile at Jessica, he gestured towards the door. ‘Miss Melville?'

Smiling, Jessica swept out of the room, Mr Cardoza in her wake. Eleanor folded down the corners of her mouth like an envelope. Then, without a word, she followed them.

People stood in the hall in their coats, saying their last farewells.

‘You're so kind,' Oscar said, again and again. ‘Thank you. Thank you for coming.'

Sir Aubrey shook Oscar's hand. He looked very old and weary, the skin pouched beneath his eyes. ‘I only wish I could persuade you to come with us.'

‘Don't worry, Father,' Phyllis said. ‘Mrs Mulley will take care of everything.'

Mrs Mulley was the local woman that Mrs Doyle from next door had suggested to take care of the funeral tea. A widow, she lived with her sister in a flat in Balham. When Phyllis had asked if she might be able to stay she had agreed on the condition that she could go home and fetch some things.

‘If she comes back,' Sir Aubrey said.

‘Of course she'll come back.'

‘I'd rather we waited to be sure. Then we can give you a run back to Roehampton on our way.'

‘Don't be silly, Father. You're late enough as it is.'

‘Then at least let me give you the money for a taxi.'

‘I don't want a taxi. There's a bus that goes almost all the way.'

‘A bus? Phyllis, darling—'

‘Aubrey, for the love of God,' Eleanor snapped. ‘Can we just go?'

Jessica stood on tiptoes and pressed her cheek to Oscar's, kissing the air by his ear. Her skin was soft and very warm. Then they were gone. Phyllis and Oscar stood alone in the hall, side by side. Someone had left a plate on the hall table. Phyllis picked it up. Then, gently, she put her other hand on Oscar's arm.

‘Well done,' she said. ‘You did it.'

The tears massed in his throat, behind his nose and eyes, a force like a fist against the back of his face. He turned his head away.

‘Come here,' she said and she put her arms around him, holding him like a child. The top of her head barely reached his chin. He put his hands over his face. He was not crying but somehow the tears slid between his fingers and down into his cuffs, and his body shook.

‘I know,' Phyllis said softly. ‘I know.'

They stood there together for a long time. Then Oscar took a deep breath and pressed the tips of his fingers hard against his eyeballs.

‘I'm sorry,' he said.

‘Don't be.'

‘You don't have to stay, you know. I'll be quite all right.'

‘I know. Shall I make some tea?'

Oscar shook his head. ‘Where will she sleep?'

‘Mrs Mulley? She says there's a bed in the box room, is that right?'

‘It's hardly more than a cot. She should have my mother's room.'

‘Absolutely not.'

‘She won't catch anything, if that's what you're worried about. They even sprayed the mattress.'

‘That's not what I meant. I just thought . . .'

‘What did you think?'

‘That it's too soon. Her room, all her things . . .'

‘They burned her clothes. They took them away and burned them.'

‘Oh, Oscar.'

‘It's not as though she's going to need them.'

Phyllis put a hand to her forehead. ‘Let's have some tea,' she said.

He could not look at her. The thought of sitting down, of drinking tea, it made the blackness surge up in him, an uncontrollable force like the force pulling on the edges of the universe. He twisted round, his hand finding the handle of the cupboard under the stairs. He threw it open, ripping coats frenziedly from their pegs and hangers.

‘What does any of it matter? Let's just get rid of all of it.' He thrust his mother's mackintosh cape at Phyllis, then her astrakhan coat with the fur collar. The coat had been expensive but she had said it would last her a lifetime. It turned out a lifetime was not so very long after all.

‘Here,' he said. ‘Take them. I've no use for them. Or these.' He pulled familiar items from shelves and cubbyholes: a travelling rug, a Chinese parasol, a pair of worn leather gardening gloves, stiffened into hands, shoving them at Phyllis. She stared helplessly at the pile in her arms.

‘Oscar,' she said.

‘And these.' He swept a pile from the upper shelf—a rabbit fur stole, a fringed shawl, a gauzy scarf patterned with peacock feathers—and bundled them into a ball. ‘Take them. Take all of them.' Bending down he rummaged wildly in the bottom of the wardrobe, pulling out an umbrella, galoshes, a tennis
racquet in a wooden press, a pair of walking boots encrusted with mud. When he dropped them chips of earth skittered across the tiled floor.

‘Oscar, stop.'

‘Why? She's dead, isn't she? What possible use does she have for them now?'

‘Don't put yourself through this, not today. Please. Maybe in a few weeks . . .'

‘She won't be any less dead then.'

Reaching up he swept his hand roughly across the top shelf of the wardrobe. Something fell out. He bent down and picked it up. His mother's Best Straw. He held it in his hands, the brim sharp against his palms. He could feel his knees shaking. A tear slid down his cheek.

‘Oh, Oscar,' Phyllis said. Cupping the side of his face with her hand, she wiped the tear away very gently with her thumb. Oscar closed his eyes. He put his hand over hers, pressing it to his cheek. Then, standing on tiptoes, Phyllis kissed him lightly on his other cheek. He could feel the warmth of her breath against his skin.

‘I'm so sorry,' she murmured.

Oscar inhaled the clean smell of her hair. Somewhere in the house he could hear his mother clattering dishes and singing to herself.

As I walk along the Bois Boolong, with an independent air,

You can hear the girls declare, ‘He must be a millionaire.'

You can hear them sigh and wish to die,

You can see them wink the other eye,

At the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.

Oscar let go of Phyllis's hand. Instead, he gently cupped the back of her skull, feeling the smallness of it, the way the curve of it fitted into his hand. Her eyes were palest grey but very bright, like water reflecting the sky. She did not say
anything. She did not need to. She just looked up at him, all of her and all of himself held like water in her clear light eyes. Her hands crept up to encircle his neck, her thumbs smoothing the hair above his ears. Oscar thought of perfect numbers, which are the same whichever way you look at them, because they are the sum of all the whole numbers that divide them, and all the time in the kitchen his mother sang ‘The Man Who Broke The Bank at Monte Carlo'.

Closing his eyes, he kissed her.

The peal of the doorbell startled them both. They pulled apart like two people waking up, blinking at each other in the half-light. Without her in his arms Oscar felt unbalanced, unsteady on his feet. Phyllis started towards the door but he caught her hand. Her mouth was like a crushed flower, the edges blurred from kissing. He pulled her towards him again. There was another long ring on the doorbell, then the round shape of Mrs Mulley's face sliding into focus in blue and red as she pressed her nose against the etched stained glass of the front door.

‘We have to let her in,' Phyllis murmured.

‘Not yet,' he implored, but she had already slipped from his arms. She opened the door. Mrs Mulley bustled in, a grip in one hand and a basket with a cloth over it in the other. Her hat was dark with rain.

‘I was wondering if you was even in, what with the hall light off and all.' She took off her hat and shook it. ‘If you'd've told me straight off it'd take me that long there and back I'd never've bothered. Half an hour I must've waited for the bus, and others in front of me twice that to judge by the queue of them, and when it finally came it was that crowded I wasn't sure the conductor'd even let us on.' And she sighed, subsiding inside her wet coat like a punctured tyre.

‘Well, you're here now,' Phyllis said and she took the old woman's basket from her and led her down the corridor towards the kitchen. Oscar leaned against the wall, closing
his eyes. He was so tired. Without Phyllis's arms around him he could feel himself dissolving, the particulars of skin and bone and hair evaporating into a veil of dust no more substantial than his own shadow.

‘I'm going to go.' Oscar opened his eyes. Phyllis was already wearing her coat. In one hand she carried her upside-down hat, her gloves curled up in the crown like nestlings.

‘No,' he said and he wrapped his arms around her so tightly that she dropped her hat. The gloves fell out. She pressed her face against his chest. He held her closer, his fingers finding the shallow dents between her ribs, crushing her against him, pressing his lips to the smooth red cap of her hair. He could feel the warmth of her, the angle of her chin against his chest. Bending his head, he groped for her mouth like a blind man but she turned her face away.

‘I have to.' Ducking out of the circle of his arms, she picked up her hat from the floor. She turned it in her hands, brushing imaginary dust from the brim.

‘I don't understand.'

‘I know. That's just it, don't you see?' She looked up at him abruptly, her gaze helpless and fierce at the same time. ‘Oscar, you've just lost your mother. You want someone to cling to, a lifebelt to keep you from going under. I understand that, of course I do. It's just that . . . it can't be me. Not this time. I'm sorry.'

Jamming on her hat she fumbled with her gloves. He reached out, catching her sleeve, but she pulled her arm away. She tugged at the wrists of her gloves, interlacing her fingers to push them down over her hands.

‘It's my fault,' she said. ‘I don't know what I was . . . I mean, God, you're so young, barely more than a child. I should never have . . .' She pressed her gloved fingers against her mouth, her face stricken. Then she shook her head. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘Don't say that. And don't go. Please.'

‘I have to. I'm sorry. This . . . it was a mistake.'

‘Not for me.'

Phyllis squeezed her eyes tight shut. ‘It doesn't work, you know. Using other people like morphine or aspirin or something. It might feel like it helps, for a bit anyway, but it doesn't. It only makes things worse.' She hesitated, her hand on the latch of the front door. ‘I'm sorry,' she said again, very quietly.

The door closed behind her with a neat click. Oscar stood in the hall and let the emptiness fill him like a bottle.

In the kitchen doorway Mrs Mulley cleared her throat. ‘Miss Melville won't be long, will she? Only I've supper almost done.'

‘She's gone.'

‘Gone? Gone out, you mean? Well, what time's she coming back?'

‘She's not.'

Above his head the house creaked, the timbers stretching, and water gurgled in the pipes. If he listened hard enough, he thought, perhaps he would hear his mother coming down the stairs.

Mrs Mulley sighed. ‘I just wish she'd said, that's all,' she said, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘I'd not've gone and done her a potato.'