The Lady Tennant

by Cate Morgan

CHAPTER SIX

  Too late.

  Tamsin sat in a hospital waiting room that tried too hard to be cheery. Floral sofas and plastic chairs in a variety of sickly pastels only accentuated the smell of alcohol and formaldehyde, the stark white of gleaming floors and pristine walls.

  The coat of the kind doctor, who told them, in practiced, soothing tones and many impressive medical terms, that her brother was dead.

  So she sat, staring at the doctor’s sensible brown loafers and focused on her breathing. To do anything else would bring the world crashing down. Her phone described a dull weight in her jacket pocket. She’d promised Robert she’d call, but she’d forgotten in her haste to get to the hospital.

  He'd wanted to come, of course. But she'd known, deep down, this was something she needed to do on her own. She'd known instinctively this was the day she'd dreaded for so long, though she'd desperately hoped otherwise.

  She’d missed Charlie by a matter of hours. He had died, she calculated, as she been crossing the Irish channel.

  She took a deep, shaking breath, and went on staring.

  “And you, Miss Hayes? Have you any questions?”

  Tamsin dragged her eyes up neutral hospital blues and white coat, past a name she instantly forgot, to a kindly smile in a tanned face and compassionate eyes. “So he’s gone, then.”

  Aunt Mary scowled at this obviously ridiculous question. Aunt Jane wept harder than ever. Her father…couldn’t look her in the face. She understood. Horses were straight forward. This was unfathomable.

  The doctor knelt to her level. “Would you like to see him?”

  She realized she did, that she’d been waiting to be asked. That this was what was supposed to happen next. She nodded.

  He kept a low level hum of conversation going to distract her from the reality of the hushed, antiseptic hall beyond the waiting room. “I saw your mother once, in London. I’d been at Cambridge at the time.”

  She didn’t want to think about Cambridge. Happiness had been short and sweet there, like a dream she could nearly taste.

  “What a remarkable experience it was. The Faerie Queen.” He shook his head.

  She didn’t want to think about music. She wasn’t certain she had any left. She was numb, and wanted to stay that way. To feel now would destroy her.

  She took another deep breath. That last thought had been dangerously close to anger.

  He continued in this vein for some time, as he held open a door for her. “The nurse just finished with him a little while ago. We anticipated you’d want to see him before we took him downstairs.”

  Charlie still lay on a hospital gurney, a white sheet pulled up to his neck. She felt separate from him for the first time in their lives, a million miles away. “Most children would have been jealous, knowing another baby was coming,” she observed, to no one in particular. “I just felt complete.” She pressed closer, to get a better look. “His hair’s electric blue.”

  “Yes. We wondered about that.”

  “It was for a special occasion.”

  “Speaking of...the funeral home will need to be given something for him to wear.”

  “There’s a suit.” She really should call Robert. “I’ll send it along.”

  “As you wish.”

  She smoothed his hair back, kissed his forehead. “Oh, Charlie,” she whispered. “Couldn’t you have waited a little while longer?”

  “It was very fast, Miss Hayes. After the initial collapse, he never regained consciousness. He would have been aware of nothing.”

  “So there’s that, at least.” Damn the disease that had taken him from her, inch by inch, day by day. She turned away. “I’m ready to go.”

  Robert stopped his orchestra mid-crescendo when he saw Julien race down the aisle, arms waving. “Take a break everyone,” he told them, leaving the pit.

  “It’s Vivien,” Julien said, covering his phone with one hand. “She’s cancelling the event.”

  Rage and shock coursed through him. He’d known something like this would be coming, but the severity of her retaliation, weeks after its cause, was something else.

  He snatched the phone from his friend’s hand. “What is all this, Vivien?”

  “Necessity,” she replied. “Hasn’t your violinist told you? There’s no longer a guest of honor, I’m afraid. No guest, no cause. No cause, no event.”

  Robert struggled to wrap his mind around the meaning of her words. “Charlie’s gone?” His poor Tamsin. No wonder she hadn’t called. She must be mindless with grief.

  “And since she’s indisposed—no doubt she’ll remain so for some time—you’ve also lost your duet partner.”

  He heard quite well what she hadn’t said. “She’ll be back,” he growled.

  “I highly doubt it.”

  He could have slapped her. “What are you talking about?”

  “Miss Hayes is on indefinite leave. Due to unforeseen circumstances, of course. But there is no possible way she’ll be able to catch up the time she’s lost.”

  "She can play circles around those other violinists, and you damned well know it.”

  “And had she been any other violinist, the board would have agreed, regardless. We are sympathetic for her loss, Robert, but practicalities must be considered.”

  “Fuck business!” He hung up.

  “What are we going to do Rob?” Julien asked, eyes round.

  Robert sagged into the nearest seat. “I don’t know.”

  “We’ll have to move you out of Vivien’s, that’s for certain.”

  “Yes.”

  “Should I tell them?” Julien indicated the milling, gossiping orchestra.

  Robert shook his head.

  “We’ll have to say something eventually.”

  “Not yet.” Robert gripped the seat in front of him, fingers digging into the thick green plush in agitation. “I won’t believe it’s over. Not now. Not when I’ve just found her.”

  Tamsin accepted Director Samuels’ regrets via phone in the back of the car on the way to Charlie’s funeral. Sandwiched as she was between the Agony Aunts, she responded to the news of her being sent down with mild aplomb. After all, the reason for her attendance in the program was gone. Numbness had its uses.

  “Yes, of course, Director,” her mouth responded automatically. “No, it’s all right. I quite understand. Thank you for everything.” She hung up.

  “What was that about?” Aunt Jane wanted to know, fumbling for the half-empty pack of smokes in her handbag.

  “I’ve been let go,” she said dully, gazing out the window. Despite the somber occasion the sun insisted on shining clear and bright.

  “Perhaps it’s for the best,” Jane said, patting her hand. “Now you can come home.”

  Mary grunted. She still wasn’t speaking to her.

  At the small church, Tamsin endured a funeral mass she would remember later as being entirely too long, without nearly enough music. Instead the incessant sniffing of her aunts on either side bore into her consciousness, while still seeming to come from a long way away. She sat stiffly upright, noticing little else but the lack of music.

  She counted down each part of the funeral proceedings as an achievement to be gained, one less torture to be got through. Next came the gravesite, and the closed coffin. At least here there was music here to find distraction in.

  Tamsin studied the gleam of sun of on wood. The bagpipes weren’t bad, if a little discordant for her sensibilities. She had never cared for them, though Charlie had, so that was all right. Then some of his friends got up and played some of his music, which he would have appreciated.

  She looked around. She noted there were a lot of people here she didn’t know. Come to think on it, the church had been full, too. Who were they all?

  Musicians, it seemed.

  Before she knew it, an unfamiliar instrument was stuffed in her hands, and she was being hustled to the fore. She glanced around for support, feeling lost.

  “Go on, Tom
my,” her father said, tears filling his eyes.

  Everyone watched her, and waited. While her brother lay beside her, waiting to be buried. After a while she tucked the violin beneath her chin. This, she knew. And thus she could cope for a little longer.

  She played her grief, her sorrow, her regret. She played the slow breaking of her heart, piece by piece, each one spinning to the lonely black void where Charlie had been. Before she knew it a long, keening note led her into Robert’s duet. What was left of her heart ached for him as much as it did for Charlie. In her hands, his music became a heart-rending solo of need.

  She stopped, abruptly.

  Charlie wouldn’t want this. He would want a celebration—of life, of laughter. Of, above all, music.

  She tapped her foot, finding the appropriate rhythm. One, two, three, four—

  And let go, bow sawing over the strings in a wild reel. The kind their mother used to play on an old family fiddle, while they danced like gypsies, screaming with laughter. Throughout it all--his illness, their mother’s disappearing act, their father’s subsequent emotional distance. Charlie had never lost that joy, which made her wonder when she had.

  She didn’t notice when they began to clap and stomp. She didn’t notice when others got up and joined her. She simply played, and let them all run to keep up.

  Charlie would have loved it.