Grievous

by H. S. Cross

  The weather here is splendid. Everything is tidy and correct. We have hopes for a rapid recovery. The San director has a fondness for maxims, but even if il m’agace les dents, it’s a small sacrifice for so great a cure. Until tomorrow, Uncle John, chew your food.

  * * *

  July 13, night—Sometimes I’m afraid that I don’t quite love her. Sometimes I want to strike her, or cut her, though of course I love her, more than myself!

  Script small as a whisper:

  Today I thought what a relief it will be to stay in one place when she dies.

  Large and shouting:

  I can’t believe I even wrote those words. I deserve not to have a mother.

  The yellow Swiss letters seemed too poisonous to keep, but what could be done with them? If he burned them, their ash would drift into the air, and if caught by a wind, return to her. If he buried them like a mummy, protected them with a curse, who could say some enterprising robber wouldn’t dig them up again? What chemistry made dynamite inert?

  July 17, dawn—There’s an American doctor everyone whispers about, a man called Felix Rush, just as notorious as you’d imagine. Dr. Himenflingher once said he’s no better than an exterminator. He has a new treatment called Penicillin, which has cured many things but which Himenflingher said has a 98 percent chance of killing you first. You can see Dr. Rush on the front of this month’s Journal de Médecine. Khaki trousers, wilderness, caption: Aux grands maux les grands remèdes.

  Great ills, great remedies.

  4pm east wing toilet—This morning she had another attack, brought on by her first evaluation. They said she’d made no progress and that it was her fault for resisting the Cure. She made me wire Zoltan Zarday, but there’s been no reply. After lunch, she announced we were leaving, and then, while she was arranging the train, the San director called me into his office and said if she didn’t commit to perfect rest she would be dead in six weeks! She says if she doesn’t hear from Zoltan Zarday by suppertime, we’ll go to Felix Rush in Paris. She’s a young woman!

  * * *

  King’s Lynn, Norfolk, 22 July—My dear Crusoe, The enclosed parcel should address some of your questions. The volumes belong to one of our junior surgeons, but there’s no rush to return. You may be vexed that I’ve taken the liberty, but as my son likes to say, hard cheese. You can pay me back by finishing your book.

  Will you be at the same address during the holidays? Our own will be sadly curtailed this year. We’ve always gone with my family to Norway for the month of August, but this year my father (having retired from work and left the family business in my brother’s unreliable hands) has insisted on taking my mother around the Aegean. Thus, we’ll be spending the holidays at home, the boy no doubt brooding, but I within reach of my husband’s library, which may well contain materials of use. (Don’t bother protesting, I shall send what I see fit.) Perhaps you’d come down and cheer us up for a time, or at least sort the boy out?

  I was sorry not to be able to come north for your Patron’s Day celebrations, and your descriptions of the day have only increased my regret. The Wilberforce you mention, is he the same whose exploits on the cricket pitch are peppering the newspapers? I do recall that my son was very fond of him. He must have written to Wilberforce every day of his first holiday home. I remember thinking how absurd it was that, after all the fuss about wanting to be removed, he then couldn’t seem to tear himself away. Wilberforce wrote to him a good deal as well, if I recall, but by the summer holidays the friendship had faded. I do hope his studies this term have improved him. A repetition of Easter would be more than I could bear. I’ve no idea how you tolerate boys of this age, though I suppose men have their methods unknown to mothers, and rightly so. Whatever the case, and whatever the temper, I await your next and remain, your faithful, Friday.

  John finished his coffee both pleased and uneasy at this first of two morning letters. Her parcel contained three books and several journals, all of which he’d have to skim and return before his departure tomorrow. His term reports lay finished on the desk. Tomorrow night he would board the train and travel to wherever this latest envelope detailed. He’d thought to save it for later, but perhaps before lessons there was just enough time …

  Uncle John, Of course, there was a telephone at the San, but patients weren’t allowed to use it. At any rate, we’ve left Switzerland and are sightseeing on the Continent. We’re quite fed up with doctors, and before you say it, Mum hasn’t resigned herself to anything. We’ve decided to travel “impromptu” for a time, so I can’t give you an address beyond the poste restante below. Sorry we can’t join up with you next week, but Mum is in good hands. Please don’t worry. Cordelia.

  p.s. John, darling, everything is well. Will write in a few weeks. Try to be cheerful and enjoy the summer holidays. Love, Meg.

  He shoved the letter under the blotter as if leather could silence its contents. Could she really slip again from his—a dose was needed, something from the decanter on a spoon to see him through the morning. It wasn’t his practice, but desperate times …

  The day stretched before him, a tiresome, severe suspense. The headache threatened again as John began his last lesson, a presentation with photographs to the Fifth on recent excavations in Minos. He had looked forward to it for some time, but when the hour came, the material felt as dry and irrelevant as Ozymandias. He mentally indexed, as boys asked questions, through his diary in search of someone he could ring, wire, write, some tendril he could send out to retrieve them. After lessons he jostled through the crowds to his study, bargaining with the Almighty if he still existed. If he would deliver them both safely to John’s hands, John would remain forever faithful—to the woman, to the girl. He would break off all other correspondences. He would dedicate himself to their protection, expecting nothing in return. He would embrace the life of an ascetic, if only, if only …

  * * *

  The end-of-term speeches were interminable, so Moss stood with Carter in the narthex, scrounging breeze as it came. Carter and Swinton were leaving, and Moss had been promoted to Head Boy.

  —You’re a natural, Carter said. They’ll follow you. But when you’re Head of House you can’t have grudges.

  Moss knew he was blushing; it never looked good on him.

  —I gave you dorms last night, Carter said, because of your—

  —I’d’ve volunteered anyway—

  —your thing with him.

  —Please.

  Halton had landed himself in hot water on the very last evening of term. Crighton claimed it was deliberate, a transparent plea for the attention Moss had denied him since Patron’s Day.

  —You weren’t there, Carter said. You didn’t see how desperate he—

  —Don’t tell me.

  —Halton’s a good egg. He could do a lot for the House. But if you don’t throw him a bone, I reckon he’ll make your life hell.

  * * *

  —And so I charge you, Jamie was saying, to recall Whitman’s words as you leave us, some for a short while, some for longer, and go the unknown ways, O Pioneers, our Pioneers!

  Hear-hears flooded the chapel as John watched from the alcove. Jamie looked as he always did, radiant and easy. The organ began, and the back of his throat yearned for the drop that would calm it. How was it that love should settle in him so fiercely and unsuitably? To be sure, the life of a monk—bachelor schoolmaster, what difference?—was his only recourse now.

  * * *

  Gray set his tuck box in the quad to await the next fleet of station cabs. All the pulses of the world, all the joyous, all the sorrowing, these are of us, they are with us; we to-day’s procession heading, we the route for travel clearing. He would be clearing no routes. Norway, steamships, midnight sun with the London cousins—canceled. His procession headed only to Swan Cottage and the woman marrying his godfather, the woman whose vapid correspondence was an offense to real letters. Six weeks without one? Six weeks of purgatory, and at such a juncture! It was like reading t
hree-quarters of a Dickens novel and then having it snatched away just as the plot had begun to unwind.

  Fardley emerged from the House—carrying an empty mail tray. Hermes! Good Hermes did not forget his heir, but winged on the last breath with one final gift … Pigeonholes, envelope—France! He ran for the cab, and at the station boarded a carriage with boys he knew lived north. They got off at Selby, and at last he ran his knife beneath the blessed blue flap:

  Paris—TG, If ever you were my friend, you’ll do as I ask and tell no one. The train leaves soon which will take us to Le Havre, and from there to New York, America. Dr. Felix Rush has a clinic in Asheville, North Carolina, where my mother will begin treatment at once. If only Zoltan Zarday had answered our wire! I’d thought, once, that he was different, and for a while he actually seemed it, but when I think of him now with his kavet, his beard, his old-fashioned bowler hat, I almost—oh, forget it, he doesn’t matter anymore.

  Be on the lookout for a parcel I posted through the morning mail. I rescued the contents from a rubbish bin and cannot keep them, for obvious reasons. If I have any favors left with you, I ask this: write to my neighbor Mrs. Kneesworth (The Grange, Museum Street, Saffron Walden, Essex) and tell her what has occurred. In case you are tempted to speak to my godfather, don’t. I will write him once we arrive safely in America. If I had the time, I would write a book to you, my truest, most trusted friend, but as the cab is here, goodbye will have to do. My best wishes and most sincere thanks. With love.

  SUMMER

  29

  Jamie had promised to take Marion away as soon as the boys had gone. Nowhere foreign, she’d said. Surprise me. He longed for something like the holidays they’d had in the beginning, and though he couldn’t exactly take her back to those places, he settled on the Lakes for its scenery and novelty. On Lockett-Egan’s advice, Jamie booked them into the Swan Hotel, Grasmere. They must try the gingerbread, the Eagle said. He himself still longed for it.

  After a first night spent passed out from exhaustion, they woke to a misty July morning, like the kind they’d had on their first holiday years ago, and just as cold. Marion seemed as attuned to it as he was, and later, in the privacy of the room, it almost seemed that they could go back to the start. Once, he thought he saw in the squint of her eye the girl she had been when he first met her, and he had to fight against the urge to call her by the name she had used then. He wondered if it was too much to hope that he would get a second chance, a chance to get right all the things he had got wrong. Seeing that girl clearly now in her eyes across the pillow, he was cold afraid, even as his mouth watered.

  That night he awoke in the dark and she was there, calling him by the name she used to have for him. He put his mouth on her and had her, and she had him, letting out a sound that made him harder even as he wondered if they’d hear across the corridor. She was shuddering still when he’d done, and they lay there, clinging to each other. He didn’t want that girl to vanish, but he couldn’t hold his tongue: They said you were dead. She pulled his arm around her, only he could feel it was Marion now in his arms. He asked her what had happened just then, and she drew him tighter. It was a dream, she whispered, only a dream. He had spoiled it, his words no less destructive than spells that made kingdoms vanish with a breath.

  Still, something in Marion was awake. She laughed and was more daring—the stray remark, the feel-around beneath the counter as they waited for the gingerbread, and then outdoors on the banks of the tarn, she unbuttoned him and teased him until people appeared and they had to arrange themselves. Later, as they lay together on top of the sheets, afternoon sunshine baking the room, she said she wished it could always be this way. It could! he said, running his fingers over her. They should make a pact, he said, never to do it from duty again. If things happened, then they happened, but if they didn’t, what would stop them from adopting? Thousands of children this very day wanted a home. Why should they— She stopped him talking with her mouth and then went to have a bath.

  Later, when he himself returned from the bath, having shaved in anticipation of their dinner in the good restaurant, he found the bedroom empty. A note had been propped on his pillow: Arthur’s Seat, sunset. Ask and I shall answer.

  He rang the restaurant to cancel the booking and asked his landlord for a flask of tea. He got to the top of the fell just before sunset and waited there more than an hour, but she never came. Miraculously he did not turn his ankle descending in the dark, but by the time he’d got back and roused the landlord, his nerves were bad. The landlord seemed to think he was drunk; he said Marion had left with her case not long after Jamie had gone out. She had claimed he’d be joining her at the weekend.

  The next stretch was better forgotten. By the time he arrived at his father’s house two days later, having driven all the way to Oxford and turned the town upside down looking for her, he’d never felt more deranged, at least not in the present era, and had been forced to confide in his father. He couldn’t tell him everything, of course, but the confession was difficult to control once it began. They seemed to sit in the summerhouse an age, and he was on the verge of tears from the start, as much for Marion’s present flight as for the one it resembled. His father seemed to understand his terror, and unlike other times, the man did not scold. He brought Jamie back several times to the subject of adoption, a discussion the Bishop did not disapprove but one he seemed to think germane. When Jamie asked point-blank if he had chased her away with his suggestion, his father insisted he extinguish such thoughts. Her flight had little to do with Jamie, the Bishop thought, and much to do with things he couldn’t understand. He must be patient. It was no good looking for people who didn’t want to be found.

  Jamie didn’t know how long he could carry on, and the cruel part of holidays was their endless leisure. A fortnight passed, but at last the Lord took pity. Jamie was summoned to the study, where his father was mercifully blunt: she was in Oxford, had been there all along. His father—no explanation—had sent flowers to the print shop. Once they’d been accepted, he had rung. She wouldn’t come to the telephone, but on the second call she did. There was nothing physically wrong with her. Her mind was sound enough. She simply couldn’t speak with her husband. No, he hadn’t mistreated her. No, she didn’t mean to leave him. No, he mustn’t come or she would find it imperative to flee. Jamie had sat flabbergasted in his father’s spindle chair: Why should the Bishop have thought to send flowers, and send them there? Jamie’s father deflected every question, handling him gently, as an injured animal, but when Jamie’s temper returned and he made to bolt for Oxford and confront her, his father unwrapped the steel fist: He would not go there. He would not pursue her. He would get into his motorcar and return to Yorkshire. If, after a week, he had heard nothing, he would write her a simple letter. No dramatics. Like an ordinary holiday. That was the Bishop’s word.

  * * *

  The assignment in the girl’s final missive was harder than it had appeared. Write to my neighbor Mrs. Kneesworth and tell her what has occurred. Why, Gray wondered, should this woman need telling? Why, second, could the girl not write herself? Third, how was Gray to introduce himself to the woman? The more he thought of it, the more traps he saw. He intended to write on his first day home, but he’d come down with a cold, and as he reread her letter to the point of memory, he could not escape its essential humiliation. People who went to America never returned; therefore, she considered him finished, a pawn to be disposed in a final maneuver—write this neighbor, say this thing, then adieu, my dearest friend. Once America had its claws in her, she would forget he ever existed, just as she would forget their little island. Poor old England-land! Its pebble shores, its heartsick fields, its Kentish lanes full of holes.

  * * *

  Her son went out on the bicycle rain or shine, packing things for a lunch and not returning until tea. It spared them mutual vexation and left time for the project she determined to conquer that summer. She’d kept the surgery closed all these years, and
although it had taken time to work up the nerve to unlock it, she now adhered to a firm routine for its clearing out. Tom’s library proved useful, and having posted two volumes to her correspondent, she developed an appetite for sending things away. Other items she marked for donation to the hospital in King’s Lynn. Tom’s handwriting, when she encountered it, took the strength from her, and at the end of her shifts, she had to lie down. The weeds in the garden, too, were getting out of hand, but she was only one person.

  * * *

  John smoked out the library window, watching the puddles steam. The shower had only made the heat more oppressive. The trestle tables behind him were littered with his work and with things he’d left off eating. No one tidied the library, and no piece of mess moved unless he moved it, except now—a bang, and a gust—

  —There you are!

  Jamie’s voice echoed down the gallery. He stood in the doorway, suntanned and brimming with vigor. John looked for somewhere to conceal his cigarette.

  —You’re coming with me, Jamie declared. I won’t take no for an answer.

  The weather was perfect for a walking tour, Jamie said, not far, just locally. When John said he’d have to take no for an answer, Jamie bounded down the room: