We That Are Left (11 page)

Phyllis laughed. She was very thin, almost gaunt, her pale
eyes purple-lidded and smudged with exhaustion, but it was the way that she stared out of the window as they crossed the humpbacked bridge that struck Jessica most. She knew how it felt to come back from a term away at school, that fierce mix of yearning and reprieve at every indelible twist in the lane, each achingly familiar field and fencepost lining up with their pair inside her, returning her to herself piece by piece. It made her feel closer to Phyllis, to think that she felt the same way too.

‘It's hard to believe anyone that fat has bones, let alone feels things in them, but there you are, apparently they're infallible,' she said. ‘The very moment she set eyes on Cousin Evelyn off they went, marrow positively writhing with certainty. I wonder if they also happened to mention that one day, if she sat very tight, she'd wake up to find herself Lady Melville.'

A flicker of something crossed Phyllis's face. Jessica wondered if she would ask first about Eleanor or Cousin Evelyn. She had rehearsed her answers to both. Instead, Phyllis leaned forward. ‘Would you stop the car please, Pritchard? Just here would be fine.'

‘Oh God, you're not going to be sick, are you?' Jessica asked but Phyllis did not answer. She did not wait for Pritchard to come round. As soon as he fixed the brake she opened the door and climbed out. Jessica followed her. They were nearly home. Ahead of them the lane cut a channel through sloping green fields dotted with sheep, and the sky stretched milky-blue towards the sea. In the woods the trees were coming into leaf, latticed branches hazed with green. Phyllis held her face up towards the pale spring sun, listening to the birds, the faint throaty call of the ewes to their young.

‘If you say anything about how lovely and quiet it is after London I swear I'll scream,' Jessica said.

Phyllis smiled. Then, fumbling in the pockets of her coat, she took out a packet of cigarettes and a box of matches. ‘Want one?'

Jessica shook her head, staring as Phyllis put a cigarette between her lips and lit it. She did not know which part provoked her more, the smoking or the fact that Phyllis was
not wearing gloves. It was just the kind of thing Phyllis would do to annoy Eleanor, unless of course she had just lost them. Phyllis had always lost things, all her life. It had driven Eleanor to distraction.

‘When did you start smoking?' Jessica asked.

Phyllis did not answer. ‘We could always have Pritchard take us back to the station,' she said instead, blowing out smoke. Her hands were red and rough-looking. ‘There's a fast train to London at half past.'

‘You looked up the return trains already?'

‘It's one of the things they drum into you during VAD training.' She smiled wryly. ‘Always know the exits in case of emergency.'

‘Tempting though it is, I'm not sure Cousin Lettice's bones could manage the disappointment.'

‘And Eleanor?'

Jessica hesitated. Then she shrugged. ‘You know,' she said. The sisters exchanged a look. ‘But Mrs Moore has made plum cake.'

‘She hasn't?'

‘This morning. Especially for you.'

Phyllis groaned. ‘Damn that woman. All right, then, it'll have to be the six o'clock. It's a stopping train but what choice do we have? Mrs Moore's plum cake.' She shook her head. ‘I dream about it, you know. All the time.'

‘You're twenty years old and living in one of the great cities of the world, and you dream about plum cake? Tell me it's not true.'

‘I'm twenty years old and living in a hostel in Roehampton with eighty other girls and I don't dream about any old plum cake. I dream about Mrs Moore's plum cake with its soft moist middle warm from the oven and bursting with fat sultanas and walnuts and bits of dried fig like perfect little pieces of heaven . . .'

Jessica put her head in her hands. ‘You break my heart, Phyllis Melville, do you know that? You break my bloody heart.'

At tea Phyllis ate two slices of plum cake and held Cousin Lettice's grub baby. It was quiet for her, gazing up at her
solemnly as she drank her tea and stared into the fire. When Lettice asked her about her work she replied as though her answers were cables, paid for by the word. The new post was in Roehampton. A convalescent hospital. Yes, Queen Mary was the patron and had visited several times. A private house, requisitioned by the War Office. Yes, specifically for officers and men who had lost limbs. Prosthetics, thousands of them. Legs, arms, sometimes both. Yes, wonderful what the doctors could do these days. One hundred new cases a week and a long waiting list. Longer all the time, yes. Of course, very brave. An inspiration, all of them.

‘You too,' Lettice said. ‘I do admire you. It must be a terrible strain.' She leaned forward, her face creased with sympathy, her hands lifting and fluttering in her lap like fat birds, but Phyllis only sat more upright in her chair, her jaw set and her eyes fixed on the fire. ‘There is a Home for men like that in Harrogate. You see them sometimes being led along the front, blind, half of them, their faces all smashed up. I tell the boys not to look but of course they do. They can't help it. I mean, one feels for the poor creatures, of course one does, it's too dreadful, but I'm not sure they should let them out like that. You know, in public. Teddy's had nightmares.'

‘They should lock them up,' Phyllis said. ‘Or drown them. In a sack like kittens.'

‘No, well, obviously I'm not suggesting . . . like kittens, goodness!' Lettice said, flustered. ‘I suppose that's the famous hospital humour everyone talks about. Nothing so ghastly it can't be joked about, isn't that right?'

Phyllis opened her mouth. Then she closed it again. ‘I don't know,' she said wearily. ‘You'd have to ask the boys on my ward.' Reaching out she took a cigarette from the box on the table and lit it. Lettice looked distressed.

‘Gosh, I don't think . . . I mean, if you don't mind?' she said, scooping the grub from Phyllis's lap. ‘I'm sure you understand, the risk of a burn . . .'

The baby started to cry. Phyllis looked at Lettice, her cigarette
quivering between her lips. For a moment Jessica thought she might hit her. Instead she gave a strange strangled gulp of laughter. Then, sucking so hard at the cigarette that the tip crackled red, she threw it into the fire and stood up. Behind her on the table their mother had spread the plans for the memorial.

‘I wanted you to see these,' Eleanor said to Phyllis, smoothing the paper, but Phyllis turned her head away and said she was going for a walk.

‘I'll come with you,' Jessica offered. Phyllis shook her head.

‘Do you mind if you don't?' she said. ‘I'd like to be on my own.'

There was a silence after she left. A little later Cousin Evelyn came back with Sir Aubrey. He admired the plans for the memorial. Then he sat down next to Jessica. He told her that he found Ellinghurst delightful but when she said it was just as well, given that he would soon be living there, he smiled and said that he was sure that Sir Aubrey would outlive them all.

‘Hampshire has its charms, of course,' he said, ‘but it can't hold a candle to Yorkshire.' He said that Harrogate was lovelier than Buxton, lovelier even than Bath, and that, if Jessica wanted a complexion like Letty, who had had four children and was still the prettiest woman in Yorkshire, then she should visit them and take the sulphur baths at Harlow Carr.

‘Sulphur?' Jessica said, making a face. ‘Don't they absolutely reek?' But Cousin Evelyn only went on smiling and said that Harrogate was the most advanced centre for hydropathy in the world. As for the Kursaal, the concerts there surpassed anything in London or Vienna, even before the War.

‘The Royal Hall, Evie dearest,' Lettice corrected him, leaning over to brush an imaginary speck from his sleeve. ‘We call it the Royal Hall now.'

She was always touching him, and he her. The next day, in the morning room after church, Cousin Evelyn rubbed his nose against Lettice's and behind their backs Phyllis made a sick face at Jessica, two fingers pointing down her throat, and
walked out of the room. Jessica started to go after her but her father put a hand on her arm. He said quietly that nursing was a wretched business, that Phyllis had seen things no girl of her age should ever have to see.

‘Did she tell you?' Jessica asked, surprised.

‘She didn't have to. Just leave her be.'

Jessica did as he asked, though it did not seem fair. What was the point of making Phyllis come home if she just went off all the time on her own? She trailed resentfully after Lettice as she pushed the grub in its perambulator out for its morning walk. The lawn was too soft for the wheels so they went up the drive and along the path to the old Dutch garden where labourers had begun to sink the foundations for Theo's memorial. Where the path sheared into mud Lettice stopped, one hand on Jessica's arm.

‘I hope you don't think it presumptuous,' she said, ‘but I get a very strong sense of Theo's presence here. Like being in a baby's room when he's sleeping. That feeling of peace, the hush after the hurly-burly of the day.'

Jessica shrugged. ‘Wait till the workmen come back on Monday. There won't be a lot of hush then.'

‘Well, no. But that isn't quite what I meant.'

‘Besides, I'm not sure hush is what Eleanor's after. She prefers the dead jabbering nineteen to the dozen.'

‘Heavens, dear, what a thing to say.'

‘Why? It's true. I suppose you believe in all that stuff too? In crossing over and table tilting and voices from the Other Side?'

‘If you're asking if I believe that the dead reach out to us, then most certainly I do. Don't you?'

‘Of course I don't. It's mumbo-jumbo.'

‘Oh, no, dear,' Lettice said firmly. ‘There's scientific proof.'

‘What proof?'

‘You should ask Evie really, he understands it all much better than I do, but a cousin of my mother's is a very renowned scientist, Sir Oliver Lodge, perhaps you've heard of him? He's quite brilliant. He invented the wireless before
Mr Marconi, though Mr Marconi being an Italian was very quick to take the credit.'

‘What has that to do with the Other Side?'

‘Raymond Lodge, Sir Oliver's youngest, was killed in Flanders two years ago. Since then, Sir Oliver has proved scientifically that, even though Raymond is gone, his spirit remains with us. He wrote a book about it,
Raymond
. You don't know it? It sold in mountains.'

Jessica shook her head. She heard the clatter of hoofs on the drive behind the rhododendrons, saw, as the trap rounded the bend, the crown of Jim Pugh's familiar weather-beaten hat. She frowned. She did not think they were expecting anyone.

‘We ought to go back,' she said.

The visitor was in uniform. Jessica felt the old sick rush of terror as she saw him disembarking in the carriage porch, even though she knew there was no one else left to lose. On the box of the trap Jim Pugh's white dog leaned stiffly against Jim Pugh, its brown eyes milky with age.

‘Shall I stay?' Lettice murmured but Jessica shook her head. She waited until Lettice had jounced the perambulator into the Great Hall. Then, smiling politely, she held out her hand.

The officer's name was Cockayne. He said that he had written to Lady Melville, that she was expecting him. Jessica pretended that she already knew. She told Jim to take the trap round to the stables and showed the captain into the morning room. She rang for tea. Enid brought it. She told Jessica that Lady Melville sent her apologies, she would be there directly.

‘It's my fault,' Cockayne said. ‘I caught the earlier train.'

Jessica poured tea. ‘Milk, Captain Cockayne?'

‘Guy. Lemon, thank you.'

He was in the Royal Hampshires, Theo's regiment. Jessica recognised the tigers on his buttons. He told her that the two of them had enlisted in the same week, that they had served together ever since. After Theo was killed Guy had gone on for another half year before he too was wounded.
A sniper bullet, he said. Not a good enough shot to kill him. After several months of convalescence, the doctors had declared him fit. In a week he would return to his battalion. He told her all this in a flat voice, like a railway announcement, and all the time he was talking he stared around him, as though he was trying to remember something. It occurred to Jessica that he might not be a soldier at all but a confidence trickster, looking for things to steal. She fiddled with the spoons on the tea tray and wondered how much longer her mother would be.

Then he took some photographs from his pockets. The photographs were of Theo, sometimes alone, sometimes with some of the other men. Jessica took one and stared at it. Theo was sitting in a trench, his back against a wall of sandbags. There was a gun propped up beside him. He looked tired and dirty, his puttees caked with mud, but he leaned towards the camera, a smile creasing his eyes, as though he was confiding a secret. Jessica's heart turned over.

‘Who took this?' she asked.

‘I did.'

‘I thought you weren't allowed cameras at the Front.'

‘We weren't. It was Theo's. Theo never cared much for the rules.' He smiled faintly. Jessica looked at the photograph of Theo and then again at Guy Cockayne. His hair was brown, falling forward slightly over his high forehead, but his eyes were a clean clear blue, darker at the outside than in the middle as though someone had circled the irises with ink. The thinness of his face exaggerated his full mouth, the sharp slope of his cheekbones. He did not look like a soldier. He looked like a poet or a medieval saint. He turned his head, catching her staring. She buried her face in her teacup.

‘You look so like him,' he said.

‘Do I?' The words were bristly. They stuck in her throat.

‘You have the same eyes.'