by Clare Clark
‘A pot of tea?’ Mrs Johns would say, brandishing Phyllis’s coat and hat at the maid to take away, and Phyllis would shake her head and wonder why it was that Mrs Johns never remembered that she did not like tea and she would turn to Jessica and kiss her cheek and say that she was sorry it had taken her so long and how soon before she could see their father, and Jessica would nudge her and say, ‘Look who’s here,’ and she would turn, a tiny frown between her eyebrows, and her pale eyes would meet his and it would be like Rutherford’s experiment with the alpha particles, a glance that should pass straight through him would strike him instead at the centre of himself, full strength, like a cannonball.
The doctor’s shoes rang against the flags as Mrs Johns hurried him across the Great Hall and Oscar thought of Rhyl with its cobbled training square, the Welsh air echoing with the metalled clatter of men who would never come back, and then of Phyllis on the cold grey platform at Cambridge station, her heels brisk against the granite as she walked away from him into another life, and it was as though a door inside him had been thrown open. He sat up, his hands clasping the arms of his chair.
Phyllis did not want to marry him. So what? What did marriage matter? Marriage was not love. It was nothing more than paperwork, the cataloguing of a collaboration by curates and clerks, for love perhaps, sometimes, but often for profit or advancement or to appease polite society. Marriage is not a guarantee of happiness, Phyllis had protested to him once, but neither was it love’s hallmark, its royal warrant. Marriage proved nothing. It changed nothing. It was not an honour to be bestowed on those who loved best. It was its consolation prize, a public ultimatum in lieu of a private pledge, an insurance policy for those who did not love enough, who called for vows witnessed before God and safeguarded in law because they did not trust one another enough to keep them otherwise. Phyllis was right. If their love was true, what need did they have of insurance, of the comfort of ceremony? She was his dearly beloved and he hers, witness to each other’s troth, to the promises they made and made again each time they held each other in their arms. What choice did he have but to forsake all others? She was in him and of him, the breath in his mouth and the lift in his heart. She was his second self.
‘As our friends the theoreticians say . . .’
His appointment was for five o’clock but it was nearly half-past by the time Oscar was shown into Mr Pettigrew’s office. The solicitor waved at Oscar to sit and turned a page, tapping the papers with his fountain pen. He wrote something, then something else, and set the papers to one side. There were weary circles under his eyes.
‘Oscar,’ he said. ‘And what can we do for you today?’
Oscar explained.
‘I see,’ the solicitor said, frowning faintly. ‘Just the rings, you are sure? None of the rest of your mother’s jewellery?’
‘Not for now.’
Still frowning, Mr Pettigrew rummaged in a pile of bulging files and drew one out. It was very thin compared to some of the others. He untied the canvas tapes and opened it. The typed envelope with Oscar’s name on it was still clipped to the cardboard cover.
‘Would you consider it an impertinence if I asked why you want them?’
Oscar hesitated. Half of him wanted to tell Mr Pettigrew about Phyllis, her tenderness and her fierceness and her cool clear scruples, her obstinate refusal to be anything other than herself. The other half was seized with a superstitious terror of saying anything out loud. He did not want to jinx it.
‘It’s a personal matter,’ he said.
‘I see.’ Mr Pettigrew tapped the envelope thoughtfully. Then, sliding it out from its paper clip, he closed the file and retied the tapes. The file had GRUNEWALD printed in black ink on the front and underneath, in slightly smaller letters, GREENWOOD. Mr Pettigrew put it back on the pile. He looked at the envelope, nudging it slightly so that it lined up with the edge of his leather blotter. ‘I assume you wish to take the rings with you?’
‘Please.’
Mr Pettigrew nodded. Unlocking the top drawer of his desk, he took out a small bundle of keys. He closed the drawer. Then, opening it again, he put the envelope inside and turned the key. ‘I’ll just be a moment,’ he said.
Oscar waited. He could hear the clatter of a typewriter, the buzz and thud of a bluebottle against the window pane. He tapped his fingers restlessly on the desk, impatient to get back to the station. It was nearly two hours until the train but he was already afraid he would miss it, just as he was afraid that the hours would never pass, that time, already sluggish, would stick and set like glue, trapping him in a permanent paralysed present where tomorrow never came. He looked at his file on top of the pile and wondered what was written in it and if the contents were his to read or if Mr Pettigrew would consider them confidential. The dusty office air was sour with ink and damp carpet.
When Mr Pettigrew returned he held what Oscar recognised as his mother’s silk pouch in one hand. He half-rose from his chair but the solicitor sat down again behind his desk. Unlocking his drawer he replaced the bunch of keys and took out the envelope. He tapped it on the desk. Then he put it on the blotter and placed the pouch on top. He rubbed his jawbone, his fingers rasping faintly against his late afternoon beard. Then, sitting up a little straighter, he cleared his throat.
‘It is, of course, no business of mine what you do with your mother’s rings,’ he said. ‘They are your property to dispose of as you will. However, the terms of your mother’s will place me in an awkward situation. I have here a letter from your mother. She left instructions for it to be given to you in the event of your marriage. I thought to inform you of this part of her bequest at our last meeting but there was at that time a great deal for you to take in, you were distressed, quite naturally, and I deemed it more politic to wait until the occasion of our next meeting, at which time I assumed the estate would formally be wound up. I had not anticipated, had never frankly dreamed, that there was any possibility that a situation of this nature would arise while you were still at the University. And perhaps I am indeed mistaken, perhaps your interest in these rings does not in fact signify an intention to embark on an engagement, and given the particulars of your circumstances I must confess to hoping that it does not, I would be remiss in my responsibilities to you as a minor if I did not urge you towards caution, to look before you leap, as it were, you are young still and in no position to support a wife, but if it is indeed your intention to marry, and you are of course within your rights to do so, the trust as it stands will continue to yield an income for some thirty months to come, albeit hardly one on which one might contrive to meet one’s obligations as a husband, and I can only suppose that if you are decided upon such a course of action you have given the matter a great deal of thought and carefully considered the consequences, then I would be remiss too if I failed to act on your mother’s instruction.’
He paused for breath. Then, leaning forward, he placed both hands on the envelope. ‘So, you see, I am afraid I am obliged to ask you. Do you mean to propose marriage?’
Oscar looked at Mr Pettigrew and then at his lap. He wished his mother was with him now so that he could explain. She would have been glad about Phyllis, he thought. She had always liked her. She would have understood, too, why Phyllis did not wish to get married. Perhaps she would have understood better than Oscar. There was a poem by one of the Brontë sisters, he could not remember which one, that his mother had always loved, something about not walking in paths of high morality but where my own nature would be leading, where the grey flocks in ferny glens are feeding, where the wild wind blows on the mountainside. His mother was steadfast and brave and ashamed of the lies she had told, the hypocrisy of her post-dated respectability. She believed in honour but in instinct too, in impulsiveness and defiance and throwing caution to the wind. She would never have wanted him to choose convention over the call of his own heart.
He missed her. He had forgotten how much. He thought of her propped up in her chair in the window of her bedr
oom in Clapham, her shawl around her shoulders, writing him a letter about love. He looked at Mr Pettigrew and nodded.
‘I do,’ he said.
The train was late and almost empty. Oscar had the third-class carriage to himself. The nervous waves of agitation that had buffeted him all day had finally given way to a still and shining calm. As the train sped through the darkness he took the silk pouch from his pocket and shook the rings out into his hand. They gleamed in the shaded light, spilling gold onto his palm. His mother had told him once that the ivy leaves represented fidelity, eternity. As a plant, she said, ivy was tenacious and strong. It advanced slowly but its binds were unyielding, it could not be stopped. Its leaves were always green.
When Mr Pettigrew had unclipped the letter with Oscar’s name typed on it from Oscar’s file he had proceeded to open the envelope. For a bewildered moment Oscar thought that the solicitor intended to read it to him. Instead, he shook out another envelope which he gave to Oscar. The second envelope was cream. Oscar took it, the grain of the paper familiar against his fingertips. For as long as he could remember his mother had always used the same writing paper, which she bought from a tiny shop near Battersea Bridge where the proprietor was Italian and kept a jar of almond biscotti for children on the polished counter. On the front she had written, To my dearest Oscar, on this happiest of days. Her hand was still bold, despite the shake in her fingers.
He put the envelope in his pocket. He did not open it. It was not just the lingering shadow of superstition that stopped him, the old terror of the jinx. It was the recollection of his mother’s quizzical eyebrows raised above her spectacles, the warning hand on his shoulder as he reached for a biscotti that had yet to be offered. She had trusted him to wait. He did not mind misleading Mr Pettigrew but his mother was a different matter. For all her playfulness and laughter, her standards had always been exacting, her scruples strict.
He picked up the smaller ring, his mother’s, running his thumb lightly over its surface. In places, where the leaves were raised, their tips were blunt, worn soft. Unlike ivy, gold was soft and malleable. It acceded easily to those who worked it, as ornament, as currency, as medicine, as symbol of love. As the ring caught the light he thought of the dappled green patterns made by sunlight dispersed through the leaves of a willow tree by a river, the dazzling glitter of reflected water falling in bright lozenges on bare skin, the dark red gleam of a bent head. Sometimes when she roused herself to sit, her mouth swollen and blurred with kisses, her rumpled hair stood up from the back of her head, charged with static and the evening sun, and sometimes, when the clouds were low and bruised with rain, the red was almost brown and her grey eyes had a greenish tinge, like lichened stone. What colour would they be in Egypt, beneath the harsh Egyptian sun, or among the fallen grey tombs of a thyme-scented Mediterranean hillside?
He closed his hand around the rings, feeling them press twin circles into his palms. Tomorrow he would take her to the top of the tower, all 385 steps up, and there, where the winter wind whipped in from the sea to howl in the glassless windows, he would ask her to not marry him, to live together with him after her own ordinance in whatever unholy estate she desired for as long as they both should live. She would say yes—wouldn’t she? Then he would slide his mother’s poesy ring onto the finger of her left hand and hold out his hand so that she could put his father’s ring on his. When his parents married they had moved the rings to their right hands according to German tradition. He and Phyllis would wear them always on their left. They would symbolise a promise of a different kind, the promise to go on promising, to live together forever in a state of beginning, their vows to each other accepted and unspoken.
He raised his hand to his lips, kissing the rings like a cardinal through the flesh and bone of his fingers. There were lights in the darkness now, a lorry’s sweeping headlights, then the slitted eyes of curtained houses, smeared street lamps, the illumnated face of a municipal clock. The train slowed, its brakes screeching. It was nearly ten o’clock. Tomorrow. It was only two hours until it was today.
37
Jessica glanced at herself in the long mirror. She had changed for lunch into a dress she had bought in Bond Street when Gerald had first told her about the job, a breathtakingly expensive sheath of russet jersey by a French couturier whom the saleslady had declared le dernier cri. The dress was simple and elegant, cut on the bias. It had long sleeves and a demure neckline but the jersey moved against her when she walked, clinging to her hips, and the colour emphasised her creamy skin, the golden gleam of her hair.
Dr Wilcox had come again that morning. Her father was still feverish but his breathing was less laboured and he no longer coughed blood.
‘Take heart, my dear,’ the doctor had said, squeezing Jessica’s elbow. ‘Sir Aubrey has always been strong as an ox.’ She had smelled his sour breath, the doggy whiff of his tweed suit. His ears were hairy and there were white flecks of loose skin like dandruff caught in the slack folds of his chin.
‘If you don’t mind, Dr Wilcox,’ she had said icily, extracting her arm. ‘I am not a pet to be pawed at.’
The doctor had left soon after that, his wattled neck a satisfactorily livid shade of purple. It made Jessica wonder why she had never said anything before. Peering at her reflection, she reached for her scarlet lipstick and unscrewed it. Then, hesitating, she put it back and picked up a second, a satiny pale pink. She smoothed it over her lips, then pressed them together, setting the colour.
The letter from Joan lay unfolded on her dressing table. It had come in the morning post. It turned out that Gerald had talked to someone at Perspective after all, that the editor had agreed to see Joan on the strength of his personal recommendation. Three interviews later they had offered her a job on the permanent staff. She was to start in the New Year.
How can I ever thank you? I would offer to stand you lunch at the Busy Bee when you are next in London, if that were not more punishment than reward. I have a terrible feeling I may actually miss the place once I’m gone. Peggy tells me that’s Perspective for you. Well, of course she does. There really is no help for her.
Jessica was glad for Joan. She did not let herself think about Gerald. That time was over, in the past. There was comfort, all the same, in knowing that he had done as she had asked him, that he was not so very angry with her after all. Perhaps he wondered about her sometimes, just as she sometimes wondered about him. She thought of Joan, her pencil scoring indignantly through another article about how to catch a man.
‘Don’t you ever want to marry?’ Jessica had asked her once but Joan had only shrugged.
‘You have to work really hard to find a husband these days. It’s not the kind of work I’m interested in.’
Oscar was sitting in the Great Hall when she came downstairs, his fingers drumming his knees. When he saw her he stood hurriedly, almost knocking over the low table in front of him. ‘How’s your father?’ he asked.
‘A little better, I think. No worse, at any rate.’
‘I’m glad.’
Jessica nodded. To her surprise she realised she was nervous. ‘Why don’t we go through to the drawing room? Phyllis will be here soon. I don’t know about you but I could do with a drink.’
Oscar glanced again towards the front door. ‘Not for me, thank you.’
‘Well, keep me company at least. It’s nicer in there. Sunnier. And no grimacing ancestors or medieval instruments of death.’
Oscar looked up at the halberds and lances and crossed pikes, at Jeremiah Melville who glowered at him furiously, clutching his stick. ‘He doesn’t seem to hold out much hope for the pair of us, does he?’ He smiled, twisting his hands together nervously, stretching his fingers back from his palms. The pair of us. The words gave her courage.
‘I do hope you’ll stay,’ she said. ‘Just for a few more days. Having you here, it’s been such a comfort for Father. For me, too. To have someone here to talk to, to share the anxiety . . .
I know you�
�re afraid that with Phyllis back you’d be in the way but you wouldn’t, not a bit. The opposite, in fact. Phyllis is so pig-headed when it comes to Ellinghurst, pig-headed and unkind, she doesn’t care if she upsets anyone, she just says exactly what comes into her head, and I’m not sure Father is in any state . . . well, there’s no changing her, she’s beyond hope, but at least if you’re here she’ll behave. People always behave better when it’s not just family, don’t they?’
He did not answer. Jessica heard the low growl of an automobile engine, the crunch of the gravel as it drew up under the carriage porch. Mrs Johns bustled through the Great Hall, tugging briskly at her cuffs.
‘I’d be so grateful,’ Jessica said but he was not listening. He watched, a lump like a half-swallowed mouthful in his throat, as Mrs Johns opened the door and said something and then suddenly there she was, framed in the stone arch of the door in her scarlet coat, almost exactly as he had imagined her, only slightly, startlingly different, as though it were her face that were wrong and not his recollection. Jessica crossed the hall.
‘Thank God you cabled,’ she said. ‘We had time to replenish the whisky supplies.’ And Phyllis laughed and kissed her sister’s cheek and began to unbutton her coat and Oscar stepped forward and her hands dropped away to her sides and she looked at him and her lips parted and her grey eyes were dark around the edges, like clouds. ‘Oscar.’
‘Phyllis,’ he said and it was like a word repeated too often, its shape strange and senseless in his mouth.
‘I didn’t know you were here.’
‘Father asked for him,’ Jessica said defensively. ‘He came immediately. And thank God he did. You have no idea . . . the last few days. I’m not sure I could have borne them on my own.’
