Grievous

by H. S. Cross

  —Non, non, et non! the Frenchman cried.

  Meg had fallen from her chair at breakfast and shuddered on the floor. John had carried her to the bedroom, and she’d made him draw the curtains against the splitting pain in her head. M. Chose had been sent for, but only now, three hours later, had the man arrived and examined her. Evidently she’d revealed that John had been questioning his diagnosis, for the Frenchman stomped downstairs and assailed John in the parlor.

  —C’est incroyable! the man was exclaiming. Incroyable!

  —Mais, John stammered, I only said that an incorrect diagnosis risked—

  —Incroyable!

  —Sir, it’s … c’est le vérité.

  —Monsieur, la vérité n’importe pas if you will insist upon indisposing my patient.

  —But if you let her carry on thinking …

  —If Madame Lumière is pleased with our discours, she will follow the orders I suggest for her. The médicaments she is employing she thinks to be a course for la spasmophilie, but naturally it is the treatment moderne for her … affection.

  The room turned hot and the air pressed his skin. Monsieur Chose picked lint from his jacket.

  —Et pourvue que Madame Lumière concedes with my instructions, le Salvarsan is, I can assure you, the very best there is to provide her.

  —So you know her … affection?

  —Monsieur, I do not know what the kind of médecins you have in your nation, mais en France nous connaissons nos affaires. Madame suffers from le mal de Naples.

  Seeing John’s bewilderment, the man relented:

  —You can know it as le mal français, but this is not a true name.

  There was heat inside his eyes, but his mind reached for—

  —Monsieur Chose, you.… you say this medicine—

  —Le Salvarsan.

  —Salvarsan … is … will cure it?

  —I must warn you, Monsieur, of two things. Premier, Madame must continue to follow the course to my instructions, and she has a certain habit to désobéir. Second, if you insist upon indisposing her as you have, you will simply cause more les crises and she will be having even more la résistance.

  He wasn’t her husband. He couldn’t control her. And when her husband returned, the crises would explode to another continent entirely.

  —Finalement, Monsieur, you must know that her affection is already advanced.

  He deserved so much punishment, more than he knew, but God, God! Grind me to dust, but leave her, leave her …

  He went to the travel agent’s after lunch and changed his ticket to stay for the remainder of their holiday. In another week, they’d make the crossing together, and he’d see them home to Saffron Walden and ensure her physician was apprised of her treatment. Mrs. K would also require briefing, in confidence, for it would be up to her to intercept Owain whenever he returned and convince him of the mortal need for calm.

  John took charge of his goddaughter, escorting her three times to the Louvre while Meg rested. She had a penchant for nudes, and he tried to strike a balance between speaking objectively of them and moving along before she became entranced. How the Bishop had raised four daughters on his own (not to mention Jamie), John could not fathom. If it had been possible, John would have liked to visit the man, to ask him any number of things about girls. The task before him was far more advanced than telling her stories of sea fairies, as he had done when she was small. She’d developed a habit of assailing him with questions he couldn’t easily answer. Did he not consider Mrs. Vandam the height of chic? Was he not burning to see her next talking picture? Did he know when her father would return? Did he trust her mother’s physician?

  There was the night she came to his room after midnight, as if it were natural, to ask where her father was. John, not knowing what to tell her, embraced her as he used to, but she wriggled from his arms and scowled:

  —I’m not a child. She’s my mother. I deserve to know.

  He wasn’t sure anymore what she was asking, but before he could protest, she ducked away to put on the light, surveying in its glare his room’s disarray.

  —You’re always together, she said, the two of you, telling secrets or talking to that horrible Monsieur Chose.

  As if in continuation of her argument, she began to tidy his things. Socks paired, dirty shirts folded, drawers emptied and refilled. He stood in his pajamas as if in a dream.

  —Did you tell the Vandams it was your birthday? he asked.

  She plumped his pillows and arranged them on the bed:

  —Yes.

  —Did you say I was your uncle?

  She met his gaze:

  —I’ve seen things. I’m not naive.

  Her voice quavered, but she was nowhere near tears.

  —Don’t protect me.

  There was no splinter in her hand.

  —Your father is in America, he said.

  She took in his statement, looking sobered but not surprised.

  —I know, she said at last.

  —You what?

  She began to arrange his museum leaflets by color.

  —Have you been snooping? he demanded.

  Her silence gave the answer, and John realized that they were now united in their crimes. She as well as he had discovered the letters from Owain hidden in the lining of her mother’s case. The previous day when John had been waiting in Meg’s room for her return from the bath, he had … well, the boys would have said nosed. He’d rifled her drawers, her cases and handbag. He’d pulled back the curiously loose lining and seen the airmail letters. He’d know Owain’s script anywhere, as unruly as the man himself. The stamps were American, the frank from New York City. Meg hadn’t opened them, but neither had she thrown them away.

  —Why did he go to America?

  Her bold tone of voice rankled.

  —He came to her in hospital, John replied. She wouldn’t see him.

  He was sorry as soon as he’d said it, but the girl took it without flinching and then straightened his hairbrush and comb.

  The next morning, their last full day in Paris, he let her tour the catacombs with the Vandams (as recompense for his words or simply to ensure her silence?), and he took Meg for coffee at their favorite place, lingering over Le Figaro as a shower swept through. John had just ordered more coffee when Meg set down the paper and sighed:

  —You know, darling, Monsieur Chose says I mustn’t think of returning to England now.

  He wasn’t sure what she was saying. Their passage was booked for the following afternoon.

  —The damp and the cold, she said. You understand, don’t you, darling?

  He tried to order his thoughts and ward off the feeling of panic. She wanted to stay longer. He was due at the Academy in three days, but if his matron and JCR could—

  —Monsieur Chose has got us into a spa in Vichy.

  —I’ll wire Sebastian.

  She put her hand on his wrist. The air was heavy.

  —Darling. The arrangements aren’t for you.

  She spoke as if she were already gone. The spa was well regarded. Its staff included three specialists in spasmophilia.

  —How long will you be there?

  —Cures can’t be rushed, darling!

  Her sudden larkiness made him frantic.

  —What about Cordelia? Her school?

  All, apparently, arranged. Letter written, reply received. Travel broadened the mind, her Headmaster agreed, and she was learning so much on the continent that she’d likely return ahead of her class.

  John, with effort, set aside his pedagogical protest. He flagged the garçon and bought a packet of Gauloises. Meg laughed at first, but when he lit one, she frowned:

  —Stop it at once. You don’t even smoke.

  He inhaled, gazing through the open windows at the boulevard. She’d made her plans, had been making them for days. She’d rebooked tickets. There would be no changing her mind.

  The street was wet and brightening. He did not extinguish the cig
arette, but he put his hand back beneath hers. She wasn’t dead. Le Salvarsan was the treatment modern, and a stay in Vichy under the supervision of doctors (even French ones) was probably better than Saffron Walden with Owain.

  Back at the pension, John found his goddaughter in the parlor. She sprang up guiltily when he called her name, looking as though she’d been crying; when he asked if anything was the matter, she denied it with so much vigor that he knew the opposite was true. He told her he was sorry not to be coming to Vichy, and when she began to quote Baedeker at him, he announced that he wanted her to write and tell him everything.

  —Every day, darling. You must keep me entirely abreast.

  —Like a foreign correspondent?

  —Exactly.

  He suggested they go to the stationers directly so he could buy her airmail paper and stamps.

  —You know I won’t get a night’s sleep, he said, unless I hear from you every single day.

  The idea cheered her and seemed to wipe out memory of his bluntness in the night. She began to prattle about foreign postage, and he suggested they buy as many kinds of stamps as they could find. She put on her coat, took his arm, and sang him a song as they walked, something about rainbows and coffee and pieces of pie. When they entered the park with the statue of Balzac, she switched to something violently upbeat. If you have nine sons in a row. It had a dance routine. Baseball teams make money, you know!

  * * *

  He proposed an early supper at a place near the pension they’d made their endroit préferé. Meg and Cordelia were leaving demain dès l’aube—before l’aube actually. A cab was called for 5:00 a.m. Why it was necessary to depart so early for a simple train to Vichy, John could not ascertain. His own train didn’t leave until eleven, and Meg insisted that he not get up to see them off. He promised not to, but he didn’t mean it.

  At the start of the meal, Cordelia was subdued, but once the conversation flagged, and then sagged, she sprang to questioning John’s recollections. Did he remember the time she had the mumps? Did he remember her chicken pox? Did he remember her grandparents’ dog? The tooth she swallowed? The hut they made? Did he remember the Christmas she had German measles? (John remembered vividly; her parents had rowed and broken three plates.) Did he remember the story of Speckle? Did he remember—to stanch the flow of her chatter, John feigned ignorance. He’d never heard such a story, but perhaps she would tell it to them now.

  —But it’s your story.

  —You tell it, darling, Meg said. You’re so good at telling.

  Meg had eaten little, but the girl had finished her plat and salade. John urged her again, and she relented, clearing her throat and adopting a tone:

  —George Fox wasn’t looking for a wife.

  She invoked the setting, making Lancaster sound curiously like the fens.

  —The tide came in faster than a galloping horse.

  He’d told her many stories about George Fox, and now she threaded them together, heedless of facts but responsive to her audience. She gave her characters absurd accents and voices, but they amused her mother, particularly the girl who owned the horse called Speckle, which had carried Fox over Lancaster Sands to the home of Margaret Fell, his future wife. His goddaughter was a born performer, and the more her mother smiled, the bolder she grew, embroidering details, pursuing tangents, returning abruptly to where she’d left off, all the while insisting this was the real and true history of Quakers, untold to this day. And as she chronicled the love between Fox and Fell, Meg’s face glowed, and John felt the truth of it. This girl, not yet thirteen, had conjured two people who would never have met but through grace. Two by mercy joined, truth served across a table: in jail, under sword, through the years, secretly upon the face of the waters, love moved.

  TRINITY

  21

  Marion’s curse had come again. Despite rigorous calendar keeping and even more rigorous effort, Jamie had not been able to give his wife the thing she wanted. The thing they both wanted. At first neither of them had admitted to worry. They weren’t in a hurry (though his sisters thought they’d already left it too long). But she was turning thirty, so last year he arranged for her to see a man in Harley Street, someone Beth found while promising not to tell Jamie’s other sisters or their father. After a thorough examination, the man had declared there was nothing wrong with Marion; later, he declared there was nothing wrong with Jamie. No reason whatsoever they couldn’t conceive. It was simply bad luck. They were to keep trying. She was to eat a healthful diet. They were both of them to be calm.

  Still, every month blood, relentless as the Furies. They’d spent Easter at the Rectory with the horde and not one person asked them about it, leaving Jamie with the impression that his father had ordered them not to. Their silence had the perverse effect of making Marion despair; obviously, she said, they’d realized she was incapable. They’d always despised her, and now they knew she couldn’t do what every other woman could. Jamie responded with increased ardor in his childhood bedroom. She wasn’t incapable, neither of them was, they simply needed to persevere.

  This time—the hope of Easter?—Marion had felt different. Something had stuck, she said. Her appetites changed, and her mood. But then his father had cornered him in the summerhouse:

  —Everything waits on him, the man began.

  Jamie had tensed but made no verbal reply.

  —You can’t make a child by your own will.

  —I know that!

  His temper had risen, his mind a tangle of unvoiced accusations.

  —What about John Grieves? his father said.

  Jamie had to ask him to repeat himself.

  —Why have you never had him down in the holidays?

  Jamie hurled his pipe across the lawn:

  —I don’t see what he has to do with anything!

  —It’s been wrong to leave it so long, his father said.

  If Jamie had been younger, he would have stormed up to his room and packed his things. Instead, he took himself for a stiff walk.

  When he first took the post at St. Stephen’s, his father had agreed not to press him about John. The school needed John in good order, Jamie had insisted, more than anyone in the Sebastian family needed rapprochement about whatever-you-wanted-to-call-it. Since then, the Bishop had confined himself to the occasional query after John’s health, which Jamie always reported as excellent. But that was the thing with his father: he might seem reasonable, he might even behave reasonably for years on end, but one day, when you were least defended, the old devil would pounce. The very last thing Jamie intended to do was invite John to the Rectory. Even if John and Marion got on, which they never would, John didn’t deserve the Bishop uncut, not to mention Jamie’s sisters. The very suggestion, Jamie decided halfway through his walk, could only be a maneuver to undermine his marriage and recall him to the time of childhood.

  He and Marion were due to leave the next day, so he was spared the fight with his urge to flee. They had a weekend in London, went to the theater, organized a new suit for him (Marion claimed the right to approve his wardrobe), and then returned to a spell of mild weather, a true breath of spring, new things rising unstoppably from the earth.

  When her curse started again, Jamie did his best to act as though it didn’t matter. He wrote twelve letters pleading for funds for the school library, but what they really needed was a new organ. The recent patch job wouldn’t last long.

  * * *

  Gray’s relief at escaping Swan Cottage was soon eclipsed. There were the usual nerves on returning to school, but now he had to confront the problem of the holiday task, which he had forgotten in the macabre commotion at the end of last term. Arriving without one’s holiday task was the quickest way to a docket, but he had reckoned that he could seclude himself in the form room that first evening if the train arrived to schedule. The bigger if was Trevor, who would not easily allow him to swot on a night without prep. Add to that the elaborate exchange of information Trevor would demand, and
the chances of completing the hol tak decreased; however, Gray thought it possible, at least as a backup plan, that he might escape a docket given his mother’s late and unwelcome interference. According to her, he was to sit for his Remove at the start of term rather than the end. Evidently his Housemaster had suggested it and she had consented, all without consulting him. Was the whole thing a plot to separate him from Trevor, who would stay behind in the Remove? Sickeningly, he realized such a plot could succeed.

  JCR—Trinity Term, 1931

  Carter

  Head of House

  Swinton

  Captain of Games

  Moss

  Prefect of Chapel

  Pearce

  Prefect of Hall

  Halton checked the notice board personally to make sure the rumors were true. Pearce’s appointment to full prefect didn’t make his plan any more or less necessary, but it did increase the chances of success. Fags weren’t required to report for duty the first night, but after Pearce’s studymate decamped, Halton came to the study. Pearce informed him that he did not belong there; he belonged in the dorm. When Halton reclined on the window seat, Pearce asked if he thought he was clever.

  —I was only wondering, Halton replied, if you’ll be keeping football boots in the drawer this term.

  Pearce froze. He begged Halton’s pardon.

  —For late-night excursions.

  Pearce began to stutter:

  —I’ve n-no idea what you’re on about, but as they s-say in Scotland nemo me impune lacessit.

  —They s-say that in Scotland, do they?

  —And in case your Cicero’s gone rusty, it means no one messes me about and gets away with it!

  Pearce wrenched open a desk drawer and produced a slipper, which he slammed across the desk in demonstration.

  —I was wondering, though, Halton continued.

  —You, Pearce said, are on my last nerve.

  —Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. That means—

  —I know what it means.

  Pearce was still, like he got before snapping. If he hauled off and hit him, it would hurt, but he’d still win.