We That Are Left (38 page)

‘Tell me about her,' she asked him once but he only shook his head and said that it was not something that he talked about. He did not seem angry with her for asking. That night he danced as wildly as ever but, when he kissed her goodnight, there was something hungry in his kisses that was deeper
than desire. It touched her and frightened her, to sense the need in him. He was not supposed to need her nor she him, or not like that.

He told her he would be back for her birthday.

‘Twenty years old,' he said. ‘I thought maybe a bath chair?'

At weekends she went home. There was nothing else to do. Phyllis never came. She said she was busy with her work and that she could not spare the time. She did not seem very sorry about it. For the first time Jessica wondered if Phyllis had met someone and if she had if she would marry him after all. She was not sure if the thought of Phyllis being the one to inherit Ellinghurst made her mostly glad or mostly sorry, but the thought of her in love made Jessica feel hollow inside. She told herself the man was very likely a professor or some other dusty exhibit from a museum, shrouded in tweed and ink stains and with a near-sighted squint, but it did not cheer her. Sometimes in her lunch break she walked up to the Park where Phyllis's college was or down Gower Street towards the British Museum, hoping to catch a glimpse of her, of the two of them together. She never did. The walks left her hollower than ever, angry with herself and angrier still with Phyllis who had so callously abandoned her.

Her mother was as bad. In August Eleanor cabled to say that she had decided to remain in France another month. Without her there was no one to occupy the downstairs rooms. The new housemaid, a thick-ankled girl with a thick local accent, scurried around every morning dusting and plumping the undented cushions but the air still felt stale and disused. Jessica walked through them, fingering things, adjusting ornaments on shelves as though her touch might bring them back to life. The evenings were too warm for a fire and the huge grates were empty, neatly blacked. Even the flowers looked stagey, as though they were made of silk. The rooms reminded Jessica of Hampton Court where Nanny had taken them during holidays in London when they were small.

‘Imagine it,' Phyllis had said wide-eyed to Jessica. ‘Henry
VIII actually walked on these floors and sat in these chairs and slept in that bed.'

‘And did big jobs in that chamber pot,' Theo added, making Jessica giggle, but it had not made it any easier to picture Henry VIII. To her the rooms with their rotting upholstery had felt as dead as the Tudors.

Her father kept erratic hours, often working through the night and retiring to bed just as Jessica came down for breakfast. He ate on trays in the library, scattering crumbs amidst his papers. He refused to let anyone in to clean. He had purchased a camera and each week he sent rolls and rolls of film to be developed in Bournemouth. The photographs were returned in brown paper packages that piled up unopened on the library floor. Her father said that they were for the book. One Saturday morning when a delivery arrived, Jessica asked if she might look. She thought it might be rather nice to have some pictures of Ellinghurst at the flat in London but when she opened one of the envelopes she frowned.

‘Like this,' Sir Aubrey said, turning the photograph round in her hand and she saw that it was a tassel, carved in wood.

‘Do you know where that is?' he asked and when she shook her head he insisted that she came with him, there and then, to the Great Hall where he showed her the festoons of ropes and flowers carved into the back of the two great chairs that flanked the doorway. At the base, behind the tapestry seat, was the tassel.

‘You see?' he said, visibly distressed. ‘No one sees.'

He said he meant to photograph everything, that he owed it to the house to be meticulous. He showed her several other pictures and demanded that she identify them: a hinge with a three-pronged design from the inner door of the gatehouse, a leaf carved into the gallery balustrade, a six-petalled flower which she swore she had never seen before but which her father said was the repeating pattern in the ironwork of the vent under the billiard table. She grew accustomed to walking into a room to find him there, his lens pressed up against a
cornice or the catch of a window like a child outside a toy shop.

He no longer quizzed her about London or the people she had met during the week, not since the time she lost her temper and said that she did not know how she was supposed to meet people when he and Eleanor had never made the least effort to introduce her to anyone proper.

‘I told you from the beginning you had to let me come out,' she cried. ‘I told you but you wouldn't listen.'

Her father had not rebuked her for raising her voice. Jessica wondered if he had even heard her. He had a way of vanishing into himself in the middle of conversations these days, his expression softening to blankness until a sharp word recalled him and he blinked at her, his neck stretching out like a tortoise waking from hibernation. Sometimes she wondered if he might be going senile.

He must have heard her, though, because after that he stopped asking. At first she was relieved, but as the weekends passed it frightened her, that he too might have given up. Then, on the last weekend of August, he told her that he had asked the Maxwell Brookes to lunch. When Jessica asked why, he said that she must be tired of the two of them rattling about in the house alone.

‘Honestly, Father,' she protested. ‘I'd rather solitary confinement than the Maxwell Brookes. Can't you put them off?' But he only shrugged and said that the arrangements had already been made. The prospect of having to talk about Marjorie's ghastly party, to dredge up something flattering to say about it, made Jessica cringe. She had done her best to push the recollections of that evening out of her head but now she found them insinuating themselves back into her head, the girl in the cloakroom, Leonard Fairbanks and his unconcealed disgust, the shock of walking in to that beautiful ballroom and seeing nothing but girls, crowds of desperate girls where the wonderful young men she had yet to meet should all have been. If Marjorie tried to talk about it, she thought, she would
simply walk out and leave them to Father. It was him who had asked them, after all. It was his responsibility to entertain them both.

It was something of a relief, then, when Mrs Maxwell Brooke came alone. Marjorie, she said, settling herself like a hen on an egg, was at a weekend house party. ‘We met Lady Sarah in London during the Season. A dear girl and such a good family. I only hope Marjorie is making the most of it.'

They talked during lunch of Ellinghurst and the arrogance of English publishers. Mrs Maxwell Brooke was sympathetic. She seemed to know a good deal about it. She asked Jessica about her job, wrinkling her nose girlishly as if the subject was not only outlandish but faintly obscene and, provoked into defensiveness, Jessica declared that in her opinion all girls ought to work, at least for a bit; that everyone should know what it was like, out there in the real world.

‘Oh my,' Mrs Maxwell Brooke said, glancing meaningfully at Sir Aubrey.

It was a beautiful day. Sir Aubrey told the maid to serve coffee on the terrace.

‘I'll leave you ladies to it,' he said and Mrs Maxwell Brooke nodded at him and tucked Jessica's arm into hers. Her upholstered bosom nudged the back of Jessica's wrist.

‘Don't look so alarmed, dear,' she said as she marched Jessica briskly outside. ‘Your father thought it might be a good idea if you and I had a little chat. He's anxious about you. Of course he is. This job of yours and the flat. Maida Vale. I mean, really. It is quite clear that your mother has been most . . . distracted.'

‘My mother has had a very difficult time.'

‘Of course she has. You all have. It's been perfectly horrid. But one must think of the future. Of your future. There is a great deal at stake.'

Jessica frowned. ‘What are you talking about?'

The coffee was already set out on one of the tiled tables Eleanor had had brought back from Italy. Mrs Maxwell Brooke
lifted the silver coffee pot and poured out two cups. ‘My dear, your father has taken me into his confidence. He is anxious and not without reason. You are a Melville and that privilege brings responsibilities. If your mother refuses to meet those responsibilities then someone else must do so on her behalf. Cream and sugar?'

‘Just cream.'

‘A girl in your position must be brought out. How else can she possibly make a suitable match? I only wish I could help Phyllis also, poor child, but your father says the damage there is already done and I'm afraid he might be right.' She sighed theatrically, shaking her head. ‘The War may be won but we have paid a very high price for victory.'

‘So I'm to come out after all?'

‘It is a little unorthodox, I know, but something must be done. The prospect of another gruelling Season again next year, well, it is hardly something I relish, but I cannot stand by. I will not let your father down after all he has endured. Besides, it might be rather fun for you and Marjorie to attend some parties together, if she should find herself at a loose end. She could show you the ropes.'

‘So you would act as my . . . my mother?'

‘It might be rather jolly, don't you think?'

‘And what about Eleanor?'

‘Your mother has made her bed, my dear. Now she must lie in it.'

Jessica supposed she should be glad that her future was finally to be settled. She was glad. The Season might have its longueurs, all those grisly girls' lunches and tedious tea parties, but what other way was there really of meeting anybody? By the following spring the War would be almost forgotten. All the men would finally be demobbed and the world would go back to normal. As for the ghastly Mrs Maxwell Brooke, she had to admire her father's tactics. He knew as well as Jessica that Eleanor would never permit Mrs
Maxwell Brooke to get her hands on her daughters. It was no more than a threat, a warning shot to bring her mother back to her senses. She had not reckoned her father so cunning.

She would have to give up
Woman's Friend
, of course. It had been fun but it had only ever been a temporary arrangement. Like Gerald. They had served their purpose. She had got what she wanted. Everything was just exactly as she had planned it. She could not understand why victory did not feel more triumphant.

She told Nanny that one of the girls from the office was throwing a dinner to celebrate her birthday. Gerald insisted on sending an invitation,
Mrs John Roylance, At Home
, with Jessica's name inscribed in careful copperplate. He sent his car for her. His chauffeur would not tell her where they were going.

They drove to the Savoy. Gerald was waiting in the American Bar. He was thinner than she remembered, his face burned brown from the sun. It made the hair at his temples look very white. He kissed her cheek and ordered champagne cocktails. He jiggled his leg restlessly as he waited, his fingers drumming the table. When the waiter brought the drinks Gerald took them from the tray before the man could place them on the table. He handed one to Jessica.

‘Happy birthday,' he said.

Jessica touched her glass to his and sighed happily, watching the sugar cube fizz in the bottom of the glass. The cocktail was the colour of old gold. ‘I can't tell you how much I've missed you,' she said.

Gerald drained his glass. ‘You know what they say about absence.'

‘Not you, silly. I was talking to the champagne.'

She had barely drunk half of hers when he ordered two more. Then, reaching into his pocket, he produced a long thin box of scarlet leather, tooled in gold. Jessica eyed it excitedly, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.

‘Open it,' he said.

She glanced around the crowded bar. It was a very public place to receive an expensive present. ‘Do you think we should wait till dinner?'

‘Open it.'

She hesitated. No one was paying them the least attention. Turning a little so that her face was in shadow she undid the gold latch and gasped.

‘Do you like it?' he asked, lifting the diamond bracelet from its silk nest. She held out her hand so that he could fasten the clasp around her wrist.

‘Oh, Gerald,' she sighed and she leaned forward to kiss him, admiring the bracelet over his shoulder. ‘It's divine.'

‘Diamonds suit you.'

‘They do, they really do.' She frowned, puzzled, as he stood. His second drink was already gone. ‘Are we going?'

‘Not just yet. There's just something I have to do. I won't be a moment. Oh, and this is for you too.' He reached into his pocket and brought out another scarlet box. It was smaller than the other and square. He put it on the table. ‘Open it while I'm gone.'

She sipped at her drink as he squeezed through the crush towards the lobby, her eyes sliding back again and again to admire the new bracelet. The diamonds glittered, bright flashes of fire. The box on the table was the right size for a ring. Could it possibly be that he meant to propose? The idea was absurd, they neither of them had the least interest in marriage, they were supposed to be having fun, but at the same time the thought sent a tremor of excitement through her. She could never marry Gerald, could she? She looked once more at the bracelet, turning her wrist from side to side. Then, biting her lip, she opened the second box. Inside, folded very small, was a piece of paper. She took it out. There was something inside the paper, something round, hard. Her heart stopped.

Her fingers trembling, she unfolded the paper. She felt nothing, only the dizzy sense of a hole opening inside her, ready for whatever it was she was about to feel to rush into.

The ring was a plain gold band. She stared at it and then at the piece of paper. Gerald's handwriting was cramped and spiky, a few words huddled in the middle of the page.