Bitter Orange

by Bitter Orange (retail) (epub)

  On one of the evenings when we had drunk more than our usual quantity of wine we decided it would be a good idea to bring the stuffed grizzly bear into the house, but didn’t get it any farther than the library. We had danced it around the shelves and it had seemed hilariously funny. In the morning, I found the bear face down on the torn pages of the books, both of its arms ripped from its torso. It was a desecration I hardly believed us capable of, and the grotesque sight of the dismembered bear brought tears to my eyes. I sat on the steps below the main portico and wrote a letter to Mr. Liebermann, telling him that we had discovered some items which belonged to him, in a secret room. And then I thought about the wine I had drunk from Lyntons’ cellar, the food I had eaten which I knew had been bought with money received from the objects Peter was selling. I thought about the steak dinner he had treated me to, and the paper I was writing the letter on. I took the gold cigarette case from my dressing gown pocket and read the inscription, as I did every time I opened it. I lit a cigarette, held the match up to the letter, and set it alight.

  TWENTY

  “Hello?” I heard someone calling from the carriage turn and when I went to see, Victor was there, pushing his bicycle through the weedy gravel. “That’s a lot of potholes and uphill all the way.” He was sweating and I could see an angry rash spreading from under his dog collar.

  “Hello,” I said, surprised to see him.

  “I thought I’d take you up on your invitation since you haven’t been to see me for a while.”

  “Haven’t I? What day is it?”

  “Monday.”

  “I’ve missed two Sundays?”

  “You should see my congregation graph. Dropping by the week.”

  I wasn’t listening, I was thinking about how I could avoid taking him upstairs where he would see the furniture and everything we had pilfered from the Museum, or how I could keep him out of the library where the bear still lay. By chance I had closed the doors and the shutters on the portico side so that I didn’t have to see the poor creature myself. When I didn’t return his smile, Victor added, “That’s if your invitation still stands?”

  “Of course,” I said, finding my manners. “Let me make us a pot of tea.”

  “A glass of water would be nice as well.” He stuck a finger under his collar to scratch and then removed his bicycle clips.

  I led him around to the portico. “Why don’t you sit here and catch your breath, and I’ll go and put the kettle on.”

  When I returned we said various polite things about the good weather and the pleasant view, and he complimented me on my dressing gown. I poured the tea and Victor gulped his water and then he said, “Is your friend or her husband at home today?”

  “No, I think they must have driven into town. At least, the car’s gone.”

  Victor finished his water. “I have something for you.” He took an envelope from his jacket pocket. “I got dragged into sorting through Dorothea Lynton’s belongings. The woman we buried last month? The do-gooders couldn’t agree on what should go to the jumble and what should be thrown away. I was called in to arbitrate. And I found this.”

  I took the envelope from him and pressed the yellowing paper where it bulged. It was addressed to Dorothea at a house in the town and it had been opened. Inside was a folded note and compacted at the bottom were tiny scraps of blue and white, each smaller than my smallest fingernail. I opened the note. A looping hand had written, Sorry, nothing else.

  I took out a few of the pieces and turned them over in my palm. “What are they?”

  “Can’t you guess?” He lifted one from my hand. “I have to admit it took me a while.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Peacocks’ eyes.”

  “From the wallpaper!”

  “Whoever cut them out must have had a guilty conscience and returned them. I thought we could try and put them back. And in case you didn’t have any glue . . .” From his other pocket he produced a small pot with a pink rubber top.

  “You’ve thought of everything,” I said.

  I took him in through the front door. I was hoping for the same effect that Peter had wished for when he’d first shown me around. Victor gazed upward.

  “Can you see?” I said. “One side of the gallery is real.”

  “I think I remember something about this. Something about someone falling. Another of my uncle’s stories.” He shook his head trying to remember. “A dog, or a child. That’s why they boxed it in.”

  We went through to the blue drawing room. The shutters were always open now, and the doors. He was staggered by the room’s beauty just as I had been. He stood with his back to the mirror while I fetched the stepladder from the orangery where Cara had left it.

  I took the glue and Victor the envelope of eyes, and we worked from bird to bird.

  “Is there a word for inserting a new eye?” I said. “The opposite of enucleation?”

  “Not that I know of. They’d be tricky things to put back. I don’t think it’s ever been done, or not successfully. The optic nerve is part of the central nervous system.”

  “Didn’t you say you were a doctor, in the war?”

  “Oh, no. I never got that far. A medical student only.”

  “Where did you study, in London?” My fingers were tacky with glue: I had never been good at craft projects.

  “London, yes.” He paused, a peacock’s eye on the tip of his index finger. “But just for a few years. I never qualified.”

  “Oh, really?” I said, not paying attention to his tone. “Surely you weren’t conscripted? Wasn’t medicine a reserved occupation?”

  “Actually, I withdrew, dropped out; isn’t that the phrase they use these days? A dropout.” He said it with such self-loathing that I stopped my gluing to look at him.

  “I was an impostor. Pathetic. Useless.”

  “Oh, I’m sure not. No. Surely not . . . useless.”

  He slid his back down the wall until he reached the dusty floorboards, and I sat beside him. “I knew I wasn’t cut out for medicine almost as soon as I began my training, but the idea of going to fight was even more horrific.”

  I picked at the glue on my fingers. I could tell he wanted to talk. The way he spoke was different from how Cara told her stories. Victor was hesitant, stumbling over his words but not stopping, as though this was the first time he had said them and once he had started he had to get it all out.

  “I was on the Central Line platform at Bank Underground station when a bomb fell into the booking hall, although I learned that later of course. I remember a woman with a suitcase waiting for a train. I suppose I was staring, wondering where she was going, hoping she was getting out of London. We smiled at each other, just for a moment, you know that connection that you sometimes get with strangers, an instant, and the lights of the oncoming train lit up her face, her smile. And then there was the blast—the force of the air as it came down the tunnels lifted everyone up and flung us against the walls. The lights went out and I think I was unconscious for a minute or so, but I hadn’t broken anything. I found my torch and turned it on. People had been using the platforms as an air raid shelter. Most of the tiles had come off the walls and there was a bit of debris, but oddly the platform wasn’t that damaged. The people around me were though, I could see that, and hear it, hear them begging and crying. I shined my light down onto the track where the train had stopped halfway along the platform, and the woman was down there under the train, I saw her suitcase, and . . . well. An ARP warden put his torch on too and began calling for a doctor or a nurse, shouting it over and over while he tried to do whatever he could. And I . . . I turned off my light, and I crouched by the wall, and I said nothing.”

  I put out my hand to Victor but didn’t touch him.

  “I still wonder, if I’d managed, if I’d been strong enough to speak up, whether more people would have lived.”

  “Not many, by the sound of it.”

  “But one more life would have been worth it. W
ouldn’t it?”

  I looked at him as he stared back and I understood what he needed was the truth. “Yes,” I said.

  We were silent for a while, looking through the open doors at the cloud shadows moving across the garden.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  I offered him a cigarette from the case and we lit them. “You joined the clergy after that?” I asked.

  He exhaled. “After the war. A penance I suppose. I’m not positive it worked though.”

  “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

  With the cigarette in his mouth and his eyes narrowed against the smoke, Victor shook his head. He took the case from me and opened it to read the inscription. “A gift from a suitor?” He sounded sad but gave me a teasing nudge with his elbow and handed it back. As I put it in my pocket, I said shyly, “Yes, something like that.”

  Victor and I were standing in the entrance hall. We had said our goodbyes, I had made a promise to go to church, which I knew I wouldn’t keep, and he had said that he would come back and visit. I held the front door open for him. He glanced up at the trompe l’oeil. “I just remembered the story,” he said. He gave a sharp shake of his head as if he regretted speaking. “Thank you for the tea. What a nice afternoon.”

  “But you have to tell me now.” I half closed the door and moved back into the room, looking up too.

  “No, it’s nothing.” His face was washed-out and I assumed he was demurring for my benefit, that it was a story he thought I shouldn’t hear.

  “Go on. I want to know.”

  He looked up once more, turning his back to me. “It was a young man,” he said. “An only child. He might have been Dorothea’s nephew, Charlie? Charles? I’m not sure. He jumped. He’d just come back from the war, the Great War that is, and the family was simply glad to have him home when there were thousands who didn’t return. He’d been back for a week or two. He stood on the bannister and jumped.” Victor’s voice was breaking.

  We were silent, staring upward, when we heard the car driving fast onto the carriage turn and pulling up at the front door. The engine was turned off and before the car doors were opened we could hear Peter and Cara shouting. Victor and I glanced at each other and looked away.

  “But the desk!” Cara said. They were just outside. “I thought you were going to take it to London.”

  “It was only a thought,” Peter said, using his calming voice. “So she would have something to write on for the time being.”

  “And the cigarette case? I suppose you were going to ask for that back after a week as well, were you?”

  I turned from Victor and looked up at the trompe l’oeil, my face burning.

  “For God’s sake, Cara,” Peter said. “It was a gift. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Oh, Franny,” Cara said, her voice deepening. “It’s just a silly joke I thought you would like.”

  In the entrance hall, Victor and I continued to look anywhere but at each other.

  “Oh, Peter,” Cara continued, her voice a horrible breathy impersonation of mine. “It’s wonderful. Oh, Peter, thank you.”

  I was mortified and wondered whether I could hurry Victor out through the blue drawing room and around the portico, but the front door opened, and Cara and Peter saw us standing there. Peter’s face flushed but Cara’s eyes burned as if it was our fault for eavesdropping.

  “We weren’t talking about you, Frances,” she said. “You aren’t that interesting.”

  For a heartbeat no one spoke and then Victor and I started at once.

  “Miss Jellico was showing me the peacocks in the blue drawing room.”

  “Reverend Wylde stopped by for a cup of tea.”

  “Cara,” Victor said in greeting, a required politeness, and nodding at Peter, he went to the door.

  “Franny—” Peter began and put his hand out but I followed Victor outside and to the gates at the top of the avenue where he had left his bicycle.“I’m sorry you had to hear that,” I said to him as he pushed his clips back over his ankles.

  “And weren’t you sorry to hear it too?” He sounded angry.

  Suddenly I wanted to defend them to Victor, even though I knew Cara’s impersonation was cruel and her words catty. “It was a bit of fun. Cara’s always teasing, and Peter. They like to joke.”

  “Peter who gave you the cigarette case?”

  I resented the moralising tone I thought I heard in Victor’s words. A man who had made his own mistakes and was now contemplating leaving the church.

  “A gift, as he said.”

  “I don’t think Lyntons is good for you, Miss Jellico.” He chose his words more carefully this time.

  “It’s fine,” I said, knowing he meant Cara and Peter, not Lyntons.

  “Is it?”

  “Cara didn’t mean anything by it. She gets jealous sometimes. It’s schoolgirl stuff.”

  “Does she have a reason to be jealous?”

  “No, of course not.” I knew my face was reddening.

  “They are married.” It wasn’t clear whether he meant it as a question or a statement.

  “Well . . .” I started.

  “I just don’t think you should get into something you can’t get out of.” He climbed onto the bicycle. He wanted me to ask what the something might be but I was determined not to.

  “They’re my friends,” I said.

  Victor raised his eyebrows. “Thank you again for the tea,” he said and pushed on the pedals. I watched him negotiating the potholes, his figure shrinking as he cycled down the avenue.

  When I went back indoors, Cara and Peter were waiting for me, sitting side by side on the grand staircase, both looking glum. Cara jumped up when I came around the corner.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It was a silly argument I was having with Peter. I was angry with him, not with you.” She went to take my hands but I folded my arms across my chest. I looked at Peter and he nodded. “Of course you should have a desk,” she continued, talking fast. Behind them on the half landing where the stairs turned was the small French desk that had been in their rooms. “Peter’s going to take it up for you now, aren’t you, Peter?” He stood, awaiting my instruction, and she nudged him with her hip. “It’s a beautiful desk. You deserve it. Please Fran, say you forgive me.” She pulled on my wrists until I released them, and she put her arms around me. “I won’t be able to live with myself otherwise,” she said.

  She sounded so genuine. Over her shoulder, between the strands of her hair, Peter gave me a crooked smile. My eyes slid away from him and I brought my hands up to Cara’s shoulder blades and returned her embrace. She laughed with relief.

  I followed Peter, who was carrying the desk, up to my room, and he set it in front of the window.

  “I’m sorry about that, earlier,” he said. “Cara didn’t mean it.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I know she’s had a difficult time.”

  “I’ll bring you a chair up later.” He began to walk away.

  “She told me about Finn,” I said, and Peter stopped. “That he died.”

  “She told you that, did she?” He still hadn’t turned.

  “I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I misunderstood. That I thought he was given up for adoption. It must have been terrible for you when he drowned.” I waited for him to open up to me.

  “Yes, well,” he said. “I’ll go and see about a chair.”

  It was after we’d eaten, with less wine to accompany the food than before, and I’d gone up to bed, that I examined the desk, opening the drawers and checking the legs, and I realised it wasn’t the one they’d had in their room—which had gone from behind the door—but the second of what must have been a matching pair. There was worm in this one though, dusty holes in the legs, a long scratch in the wood of the back, and the leather was scuffed. They must have known that if I discovered their duplicity I would never confront them.

  I put on my nightdress and as I washed my face I smelled the smell again, the one that ha
d been in the bathroom when I’d arrived and had induced me to remove the carpet: stale urine, old cooking smells, and this time, something too sweet; perfume that had been sprayed in a room to cover up the odour of something rotten. My fingers went to my throat and searched around for the locket before I remembered that I had lost it in the woods. In the bathroom, I got down on my hands and knees and, feeling idiotic, sniffed around the room. The smell was strongest next to the edges of the bath panel. Perhaps an animal—a squirrel or a rat—had become trapped and died under there. A vision of the dead fox came, its neck gaping open as though there were a second mouth below the first.

  The bath panel had three screws along the top and three along the bottom. I fetched a knife from the bedroom—the Lynton coat of arms on the handle—slotted the tip into the groove on one of the heads, and tried to turn it. The knife slipped from the slot, fell from my hand, and knocked against the wooden panel. From the other side, from under the enclosed bath, I heard a muffled cry, not an animal but something human. I scuttled backwards across the floor, jamming myself under the basin, all of me straining to listen but not wanting to hear. When nothing came, I lunged and grabbed the knife, holding it out with my shaking hand as if it might save me from whatever was under the bath. “Plumbing,” I muttered, water draining through the pipes. The timing of the noise a coincidence.

  I stretched forward, the knife out. And twice I knocked its blade on the bath panel. Tap, tap. The sound came back from underneath, someone weak, moaning with effort.