God Save the Queen! (16 page)

“You look as though you could do with a stiff drink. Hold on a minute and I’ll fix you right up.” Vivian’s voice wrapped itself around Flora like a warm woolly blanket, and it didn’t matter a bit that he was talking to Edna. He was here, forming a bridge between the present and the past; and that was every bit as necessary as the glass he put in the other woman’s hand.

“Orange juice,” he was saying cheerfully. “Nothing like it for putting a smile on your lips and a song in your heart.”

“You’re a bit of a lad, aren’t you?” The sparkle that appeared in Edna’s eyes was of the determined sort, but still managed to offset the mascara in the hollows above her cheeks. “Not nearly so toffee-nosed as I thought you’d be, from Mabel’s letters. Ever so hoity-toity is the way I’ve been picturing everyone at Gossinger Hall. Not just Sir Henry and that dotty old auntie of his, but even that butler bloke going in one door and out the other with the silver tea tray. Well, talk about silence landing with a thud!” Edna looked as though she wished the floor would open up and she’d reappear in China. “Trust me to say something tactless!”

“It’s all right,” said Flora. “I’d hate it if no one dared say Grandpa’s name. It would make him seem more out of reach than ever.”

“You poor little love, left all alone in the world. My heart goes out to you, dearie. And if there is anything at all I can do to make you feel less defenseless as you try to make your way, just remember old Edna is just a holler away. You’ll have to come over for a proper tea, lots of nice bread and butter—none of that stuff with the crusts cut off. And that means you, too.” She looked hopefully at Vivian. “That would tickle Mabel’s funny bone, wouldn’t it? You sitting in my council flat with a cup of char on your knee.”

“I’d enjoy that no end, coming to see you, I mean, Mrs. Smith.” Vivian’s smile had a slightly thoughtful
edge. “How about the day after tomorrow, if that suits?”

“Oh, yes, please!” It was quite ridiculous, but Flora, meeting his eyes, felt like Alice being invited down the rabbit hole into a land where wonders never ceased.

“I oughtn’t to have made that crack about Mabel,” Edna continued, sounding remorseful. “Say what you like, she did remember my birthday this year for the first time in God knows how long. Sent a present back, she did, with Boris that day.” She tilted back her head and raised the glass of orange juice to her lips. “Oh, well! Bottoms up, as the actress said to the bishop.”

“What day was that?” asked Vivian.

“There, I’ve done it again, haven’t I? Gone running off at the mouth.” Edna took another gulp perhaps in hope of steadying her nerves, and drained the glass. “I’d made up my mind, true as I’m standing here, that I wouldn’t say a word about Boris being at Gossinger Hall the day your grandfather met with that horrible accident. And yes, it was that day Mabel sent him home with my birthday present.” Her eyes sorrowfully met Flora’s.

“You mean,” Flora gently removed the glass before Edna could drop it, “you mean Boris was one of the boys on the school outing? I was glad, when I got round to thinking about it, that the coach had left or was just leaving when Grandpa was found. But of course they had to be questioned afterward. Oh, poor Boris! Do you think that’s why he’s been acting up?”

“It’s a puzzle,” Edna rubbed her eyes, “because I’d never have said Boris is what you’d call a sensitive child.”

“Most eleven-year-olds are horrid little ghouls,” Vivian offered encouragingly. “At that age I would have considered being in any way connected to Sudden Death a great adventure and would have wanted to crow about it to anyone who would listen.” He reached
for Flora’s hand but let his arm fall to his side. Now he wished she hadn’t cut her hair. She looked so cold without it—like an urchin child abandoned on a wintry street corner by a neglectful adult.

“But that’s the funny thing,” murmured Edna.

“What is?” asked Vivian.

“That Boris hasn’t been his usual show-off self about being in the thick of things, so to speak. He won’t say a word about that day, other than he saw his Aunt Mabel. And I only got that out of him because I found her birthday present to me in his coat pocket. Don’t ask me what’s eating him because I haven’t no idea. But one thing I can tell you, I’d do anything in the world for that lad of mine ... well, grandparents are like that, aren’t I right, dearie?”

Flora woke up the next morning to hear someone coming up the stairs. Still blurry from sleep, she thought it was her grandfather and that his death was all a terrible dream. But when she sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes, she saw that she was in the larger of the bedrooms in the flat and that it wasn’t her grandfather but Vivian Gossinger who stood in the doorway with his hands full.

“Breakfast,” he announced. “How do you like bagels? I picked some up from the shop a couple of doors down along with a cup of coffee for each of us.”

“That was nice of you.” Flora knew she sounded and looked stupid with the blanket she had found in the airing cupboard pulled up to her chin, and what was left of her hair sticking up on end. But to have smiled at him might have given him the idea that she was making the most of the situation. Strangely, she didn’t focus on the upside-down nature of things that had Vivian serving her breakfast in bed.

“Just a small token of appreciation for letting me stay the night on the spare bedroom floor. I was extremely comfortable with the traveling rug I brought in from the car.” Vivian set the tray on the floor and handed her a paper cup.

“You couldn’t help your car not starting.”

“That’s kind of you to say,” Vivian handed her a bagel, “but if Uncle Henry were here he’d point out I’ve always been the worst kind of slacker when it comes to anything mechanical, which would include remembering to fill up at the petrol pump. And as you can see I’m no better when it comes to putting a meal on the table, or I should say the floor? Look, I’ve forgotten to bring you a serviette.” He crossed to the door. “Won’t be a minute. There’s bound to be one of the paper ones left in the picnic basket.”

“I’ll come down.” Flora flung off the blanket as the door closed behind him. It wasn’t just a matter of the incongruity of lying there like the Lady of Shalott afloat in her barge while Vivian raced around on her behalf that got her going. There was enough light creeping in through the gap in the tattered curtains to let her know that the day had been up and about its business way ahead of her. She hadn’t taken off her watch last night and the hands pointed to nine o’clock. Opening the door, she called down: “I’ll have a quick bath and get dressed, so if you want to go and get a tin of petrol, Mr. Gossinger ...”

“Splendid!” His voice floated up to her. “No need to rush, because I may be a while. I’ll go home to shower and shave.”

“Be careful.”

“Not to spill the petrol?”

“I meant crossing the street; there’s so much traffic.”

Flora felt a blush fire up her cheeks and she ducked back into the room and unpacked a towel from her suitcase. She must have imagined Vivian’s laugh, because the sound of traffic was a permanent hum within the flat, sometimes interrupting its even flow with a louder rumble or explosion of tooting horns or the screeching of brakes.
I
must stop this,
she thought while raiding her suitcase for something to wear.
I have to remember that he’s here as a representative of the Gossinger Family. Doing his duty as he sees it, because that’s how men of breeding behave toward those who have served them.

When she was standing in the bath, which was not much bigger than an egg carton, getting sprayed with lukewarm water from a makeshift showerhead, the feeling crept back—the one that explained why she hadn’t been thrown into a tizzy when Vivian Gossinger had brought her breakfast in bed. She felt somehow as though the two of them had been shipwrecked together and after clinging to a piece of the wreckage, scarcely big enough for one let alone two, they had been cast up on a desert island where there was no one but them. Contact with the outside world was reduced to the occasional glimpse of a ship’s silhouette skimming the blue horizon.

“You’re deliberately escaping from reality,” she scolded herself as she toweled herself dry and poked her hair. “I suppose lots of people would find that understandable, considering the shock of Grandpa’s death. But I’m not going to let you make a complete fool of yourself. You’ll go downstairs and thank Mr. Gossinger very nicely for stepping into the breach and then let him go back to his own life. And no wistful glances as he heads out the door, do you understand me?”

But when Flora entered the poky little kitchen at the back of the shop Vivian seemed so at home it was hard to imagine he lived anywhere else. He was sitting on a
stool by the sink looking exactly like the model of Rodin’s famous sculpture. “I found this outside the back door,” he tapped the wooden seat, “the dustman’s loss is our gain. I’ve been thinking,” he added, “about Aunt Mabel’s poor mother, having to cart every meal she cooked down here up to the flat. If you ask me, the woman had to die in order to give herself a rest.”

“I expect they ate down here quite a lot,” said Flora.

“What?” Vivian lifted his head. “Standing around the cooker with spoons in their hands?”

“It needn’t have been as bad as all that. They could have squeezed in a table.”

“Where?”

“Against that wall.” Flora pointed to the space between the draining board and the staircase doorway. “There’s enough room for a little drop-leaf table, and if they used folding chairs that wouldn’t get in the way when not in use, I am sure it would have been possible to manage.”

“Would it?”

Flora guessed what he was thinking and spoke more sharply than she intended. “There’s no point in feeling guilty because you were born into a life where you had more than most. That’s just the way it is and it’s a waste of time to hit yourself over the head for it. Other people—my sort, you could say—get used to squeezing in together. Sometimes it makes for a special sort of closeness. I remember ...” her voice went a bit wobbly, “that when I was little, I loved the bigness of Gossinger during the daytime, but it was always wonderful to be tucked in with Grandpa in our little rooms at night, with the curtains shut tight against the darkness and the clock ticking on the mantelpiece. That clock was like a member of our family, always chiming in without being spoken to ... that’s what Grandpa used to say.”

Vivian sat still on the kitchen stool, wanting to speak but realizing Flora hadn’t finished.

“Sometimes,” she said, “on Sundays, we’d have tea together in our sitting room, Grandpa and me, Mr. Tipp and Mrs. Bellows—she was the housekeeper I liked best. She used to tell me stories about the Queen. She went to live in some place called Ilford ...”

“I remember her.”

“Yes, of course you would.” Flora stood at the cooker, her concentration now on a
chip in the enamel between the front burners. “Mrs. Bellows fixed up the cut in your head the night you drove into a lamppost coming to Gossinger.”

“And you made me a cup of tea.”

“Most of it went in the saucer, I was only about seven and I was so afraid you were going to die. Your face was white as the sink ... is the way Mrs. Bellows put it. Anyway,” Flora turned resolutely away from the cooker and looked at Vivian with a smile in her eyes, “back to Sunday afternoons. It was always a bit of a squeeze, the four of us, Mrs. Bellows, Mr. Tipp, Grandpa and me, getting around the tea table that wasn’t much bigger than a lady’s writing desk, but we managed to have some really jolly times. Sometimes Mr. Tipp even cracked a smile and Mrs. Bellows would say she’d mark that down on the calendar. Poor Mr. Tipp! I hope he won’t have to be gone too long from Gossinger looking after his cousin who’s poorly. He never went away before, not so as I can remember, and I’m afraid he’ll be like a fish out of water.”

Vivian wasn’t at that moment particularly interested in Mr. Tipp. “What about that table?” he asked.

“The one in our sitting room?”

“That’s right. Did you arrange to have it sent here?”

“It didn’t belong to us,” said Flora. “None of the furnishings did, not the clock or the corner cupboard or Grandpa’s fireside chair. All that was there before he came. Leftovers from the butler before him perhaps, or it could be that some of the stuff was brought down
from the trunk room; it always amazed me what was up there when I went exploring. Once, when Miss Doffit was with me, we found a pretty brooch made of different colored stones stuck down the side of an old brocade sofa. It wasn’t valuable—just glass I expect— but it was fun to pretend it had belonged to Sir Rowland Gossinger’s wife and that he had kept her a prisoner on bread and water in the trunk room because she wouldn’t agree to give him a divorce so he could marry his true love.”

“Were you sorry to leave it behind?” Vivian still had not budged from his stool.

“The brooch?” Flora brushed her hand across her face as if cobwebs from the trunk room still had her in their filmy hold. “I don’t know what happened to it.”

“I meant the table, the one in your sitting room.”

“Leaving it behind was rather like saying good-bye to another old friend; but never mind, it still has the clock and Grandpa’s chair for company.” Flora smiled. “And maybe when Mr. Tipp comes home, Sir Henry will reward him for all his long years of service by making him butler. And there will be more Sunday teas and other happy times in that room. You’re looking sorry for me, Mr. Gossinger, and that’s because I’ve given you entirely the wrong impression. It’s true all the major stuff—the furniture and so on—didn’t belong to Grandpa. But when I got older and interested in flea markets, I’d bring home my astonishing finds. All sorts of things—a cushion with a cup and saucer embroidered on it, barley-sugar twist candlesticks for the mantelpiece, and once an early Victorian photograph frame so Grandpa could put my mother’s picture on the tallboy in his bedroom. That way those rooms really got to be ours, even though we couldn’t change the furniture or the wallpaper. And when I came away I brought most of those bits and pieces of memory with me in my
bigger suitcase, along with those bottles of Grandpa’s silver polish.”