Beneath a Burning Sky

by Jenny Ashcroft

  ‘I’m not playing anything.’ His voice was low, sincere. ‘They need you, and you have to leave. It can’t be with Bertram here…’ He tailed off.

  Olivia turned her wedding band. She could feel Jeremy’s eyes on her, Edward’s. She heard Edward moving, she saw Jeremy step aside and Edward crouch in his place.

  She gave her hands freely to him. She felt the warmth of his fingers, their strong, gentle hold.

  She looked up at him.

  He looked at her.

  Neither of them spoke. There was nothing to say.

  They both knew now how it was going to end.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Jeremy said he wouldn’t come to the docks to see Edward off; he was anxious about leaving the boys alone with Nailah in residence, there’d been enough abductions for one year. Edward didn’t push him. Grateful as he should be for all Jeremy was doing for Olly, he could barely look at him as they bade one another goodbye in the moonlit driveway.

  ‘I shouldn’t have kept so much from you,’ said Jeremy, one hand on his horse’s reins, ‘I realise that.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it.’

  ‘No,’ Jeremy looked at his boots, ‘no. I don’t expect you do.’ He sighed. ‘Good luck, Bertram. I hope you find a better life in India.’

  Edward had little hope of it. The Empire had never seemed more rotten to him; the only thing that could have made working out the remaining years in his commission bearable was having Olly there, and now she’d be nowhere near him.

  His eyes moved to the house. He saw her framed in the candlelight, still on his bed, stare locked on his trunk. He thought of all she had ahead of her: her grief, the long voyage with Clara’s boys, months – possibly longer – in England, with only Ada and the nanny for support.

  He didn’t know how he could bring himself to leave her to it. He wished he could see another way.

  Jeremy held out his hand.

  After a pause, Edward shook it.

  ‘I’m sorry, old man,’ Jeremy said.

  ‘Of course you are,’ said Edward.

  They were all so bloody sorry.

  Tom and Imogen arrived as they were about to leave, Fadil too, back from delivering the Bedouin mother to her sons. He drove them all in the carriage to the harbour. They arrived as the last stragglers were boarding.

  They stood in a cluster on the swarming quayside. Tom made to take Edward’s hand, then, apparently thinking better, pulled him into a brief embrace. ‘Take care,’ he said, with a slap to Edward’s back. ‘I wish you happiness, Bertram, only happiness.’

  Imogen stepped forwards. She stood on tiptoes to kiss Edward, and whispered something in his ear. Olivia had no idea what it was, only that it made Edward smile slowly and say, ‘Thank you.’

  Edward turned to Fadil. He spoke to him in Arabic. Fadil’s eyes glinted beneath his bandages, bright in the darkness. Edward squeezed his shoulder, Fadil nodded. He looked horribly small, withered, and very, very sad.

  He backed away. Everyone did. And Olivia and Edward were alone, silent, only inches from one another in the cool night air.

  ‘Five minutes,’ came a yell, ‘that’s five minutes left to board.’

  Edward looked down at Olivia; she ran her hand around his cheek, her thumb down his jaw. There, still there, real and warm and hers. It seemed impossible that in less than a minute he no longer would be.

  The sirens sounded, whistles blew.

  ‘Go,’ she said, ‘please.’

  More whistles. Final call.

  ‘This is only for now,’ he said. ‘I’ll come for you, I swear it.’

  He kissed her, then he turned. He left.

  By the time he reached the deck, the detail of his face was impossible to make out. Olivia could only imagine the bass of his voice. She raised her fingers, he raised his: a mock salute

  Goodbye.

  Imogen held her tight for the carriage ride home. Tom sat opposite them. They said very little. It was as they were approaching Ramleh that Imogen broke the silence and told Olivia she wanted to go with her to England. ‘I don’t think I can stand to be here, you see. And I watched you go away once, all those years ago…’ She shook her head. ‘I… Well, I can’t let you face anything more alone.’

  ‘We neither of us want you to,’ said Tom.

  Imogen bit her lip. ‘Is it all right, darling? Would you like it?’

  Olivia didn’t answer straight away. She thought of Imogen’s whisper, Edward’s smile. Tears of relief pressed in her throat. She looked from Imogen’s anxious face to Tom’s sad one. ‘Of course I’d like it,’ she said. ‘Of course I would.’

  The next morning, whilst Ada supervised the trunks being loaded into the carriage, Olivia went to the stables. The air was sweet and warm, dusty in the morning sun. She stroked the camel, thinking of Jahi in his hopeless cell, awaiting his hanging, condemned for so much. And she didn’t know, she still couldn’t say, whether she blamed him for any of it or not. She knew only that she didn’t want him to die and that he was going to anyway because she couldn’t save his life as he had saved hers.

  She turned to Bea, pressing her lips to her neck. ‘Goodbye, old friend,’ she said. ‘Fadil’s going to look after you, the camel too. You’re all moving to the Carters’. Tom will keep you safe and happy.’ Dinah twirled around her legs, Olivia scooped her up, holding her warm, purring body tight, and rested her forehead against Bea. She closed her eyes, remembering again that day Edward had brought Bea home, the strength of him as he helped her into the saddle. Her legs, they’d shaken. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he’d said, smiling, ‘it’s such a waste of energy.’

  Olivia took a deep breath.

  There was one more thing she had to do before she left.

  The cemetery was deserted. The mound of Clara’s body was marked by a small wooden cross. Flowers lay all over it, Ralph’s treasured book of Sherlock Holmes stories too, and a single pomegranate. Olivia couldn’t think who would have put it there.

  She cleared a space near the top of the grave, where she assumed Clara’s face, her heart, must be. She placed on that space a cluster of white roses, and some oranges. Try one, Livvy, they’re positively bursting with sunshine. Slowly, Olivia knelt and picked one up. She stared at it, then removed her gloves. Fingers shaking, she peeled the skin. She raised one juicy segment to her lips. The flavour flooded her mouth.

  It transported her to another place, another time. She nearly choked as the force of the images hit her: a ship’s cabin, herself sitting on a bottom bunk, a porthole to her left. She could smell coal, feel the sway of the waves. And there was a gangly girl kneeling before her, all dressed in black. She had yellow hair, round freckled cheeks, and an orange in her hand.

  It was a glimpse, nothing more. But it was of Clara.

  She held the orange out. ‘I’ve taken off all the white bits. Eat, Livvy, please. I can’t let you get sick, we’re all each other’s got now.’ Her child’s eyes widened, so like little Gus’s. ‘You mustn’t be scared, Livvy. I’ll look after you, I promise.’

  Olivia heard her voice. She doubled over at the sound, and the pain of that stolen promise. A sob wrenched through her. Then another. The tears, at last, came very easily. She didn’t even try to fight them.

  They stood out on deck as the ship left dock. It was full of tourists waving goodbye to Pompey’s pillar, the pyramids, and the distant swell of the sands. They pushed through them, Olivia holding Ralph’s hand, Sofia pushing Gus’s perambulator, and Ada and Imogen following, parasols over them all. They reached the back railings just as the ship pulled away.

  ‘Look,’ said Ralph, pointing at Jeremy on the cobbled quayside, ‘Papa.’ His arm pumped.

  Jeremy’s did too.

  Ralph’s chubby cheeks tried for a smile. Olivia pulled him close. She kissed his head. She felt Imogen’s arm come around her own healing waist.

  The ship picked up steam, furry wake forming in the deep, dark Mediterranean. Olivia watched Jeremy become
smaller and smaller, and the shoreline of Alexandria disappear from view. And she realised that she was glad, so very glad, that she was where she was. It broke her in two that Clara wasn’t with them, but it was right that she had come. For Ralph and Gus would always be loved, they would never be alone. And in spite of everything, Olivia thought Clara would be jolly relieved about that.

  You mustn’t be scared, Clara. I’ll look after them, I promise.

  Epilogue

  London, January 1893

  The frigid air struck Olivia’s throat as she let the door of 5 Dunlop Place swing shut behind her. She felt her nose turn red in the instant. She looked to the sky, white with winter, clouds cushioning the horizon.

  She paused by Dinah’s milk bowl on the front step, and looked back through the frosted panes of the drawing room window. A fire burned in the grate; the Christmas tree bowed beneath faux sugarcanes and sledges, wilted and ready to retire. Ada said they should have taken it down days before, that it was unlucky not to, but Ralph had wanted to leave it up.

  Olivia smiled through the window at him, cross-legged beneath the tree, winding a jack-in-the-box for Gus. She never had been able to bring herself to send him off to board, but had enrolled him at a nearby prep school in Maida Vale instead. He looked up, as though sensing her gaze on him, and pulled Gus’s chubby two-year-old arm into a wave, making Gus grin toothily.

  With his round toddler’s cheeks, Gus was looking more and more like Clara.

  It hurt, just a little less with each day, to see that in him.

  Olivia waved back, she turned to go. Her foot crunched on iced paper. It was the day’s broadsheets, front page still dominated by the story that had shocked but not surprised her. That unsolved shooting at point-blank range of the illustrious businessman, Mr Alistair Sheldon, and the long-serving man of law, Commissioner Archibald Wilkins, on the steps of Draycott’s restaurant, Alexandria, back in December. Could it be, pondered Giles Morton, that these seemingly motiveless murders are tied to the yet ill-explained abductions and violence of July ’91, that other Draycott’s incident?

  Olivia thought it more than likely. Imogen, who had returned to Alex just before Christmas, did too. I doubt we’ll ever find out though, she wrote. Wilkins had protégés, there’s many left to keep everything hush-hush, carry on in his image. It’s business as usual here. I’m growing so tired of it. And I miss Clara, very much, I miss all of you. I’ve been talking to Tom about whether we might move too.

  Imogen’s weren’t the only letters Olivia received. Jeremy wrote often, asking to be updated on news of the boys. I’ll come and visit soon, it’s proving much harder than I’d hoped to tie everything up with the business, although it might be easier now Alistair’s share of it all has defaulted to you. Alistair had told me he’d planned to remove you from his will, when you stayed on in England. I suppose he never had the chance. Funny how things work out. Nailah, for her own incomprehensible reasons, sent the occasional missive, words of her new village home, her marriage to Kafele: We’re trying to be happy, to forget, but he’s angry, so angry, the children, healthy and growing, God smiles, her mother, she lives with us now, she tries to help.

  Post came from further east too, from Beatrice, married to a sergeant-major, and more often from Edward. Precious envelopes that took too long to arrive and bore the scent of spices.

  It had been a month since he’d last written. There’d only been a wire since. That wire…

  Olivia tucked her chin into the scarf Ada and Sofia had knitted her for Christmas, smiled into the wool, and set off towards Oxford Street. Her heels clicked on the frozen pavements as she hastened to the restaurant she normally frequented with the eldest of Edward’s five sisters, Danielle. (‘He’s told me to watch over you,’ Danielle had said the first afternoon they’d met, not long after Olivia and the boys had returned nearly eighteen months ago. ‘Make sure you eat enough cake and so on.’)

  Olivia dodged a broken cobble. She stood back as a hansom cab passed, then crossed the road. Wind blew from rooftops, lifting the frost. She picked up her pace. It was as she approached the restaurant that the clouds bowed and the first snowflakes started to fall.

  She looked to the sky, the flakes formed grey whispers in her eyes. She opened her mouth, breathed it in. Life, life. A sense of anticipation tightened in the pit of her stomach.

  Slowly, she dropped her gaze. She turned to the restaurant porch. He was there, at last, right there, gazing directly at her…

  … He could hardly stop himself looking.