Grievous

by H. S. Cross

  —What do you call removing a boy from my House and leaving me to hear it from Henri?

  —A mistake.

  John absorbed the apology, but it didn’t calm him.

  —How am I to explain to Riding’s mother why I said nothing to her?

  —She received my letter at the tea.

  —What?

  Jamie touched John’s elbow, feeling the wool’s scars, the darning that had kept that pullover together since Marlborough:

  —I thought it would be best for everyone.

  John wrenched away.

  —Don’t be this way, Jamie pleaded. I can’t bear it.

  —You can’t bear it?

  —You know how much we’ve wanted a child. And you know perfectly well I’ll never be able to get along without you.

  —But that’s nothing to do with—

  —Can’t you be happy for it? Or at least for me?

  John was seized by sneezes, and his eyes were running. Jamie watched his body have its way with him, but as the sneezing abated and John blew his nose, Jamie wished they could stay there—this pullover, this Advent—forever before the turn of the year.

  * * *

  A god-awful hammering, and John jolted upright at his desk, neck cramped, arm tingling. His fingers righted the vial. He didn’t remember finishing it, but could it have spilled? Drapes glowed, clock claimed morning, letters lay unfinished on the blotter. An almighty crash in the corridor. He emerged to find Fardley, hurling oaths at a collapsed … wall?

  —What on earth? John croaked.

  The dust was clearing. It wasn’t a wall, but—

  —New one January, Fardley declared. This’n cleared today.

  The pigeonholes. John remembered that they were to be replaced before they fell again on some boy and killed him. He tried to inquire why now?, but Fardley honked about some papers in a basket, and then the front door opened with a gust of December.

  —There you are!

  And with Jamie, too, speaking louder than necessary.

  —Cab in ten minutes. Where’re your things?

  John began to gabble. He hadn’t packed, and his letters—

  —Oh, don’t! Jamie admonished.

  Before John could assert himself, Jamie had dragged him to his rooms and was throwing things carelessly into a case.

  —You can finish later, Jamie said of the letters, and post them on.

  —Don’t crush that!

  —If you ever try this nonsense again, I’ll—

  —What?

  Jamie smiled, golden, golden …

  —You, he said, are impossible. Thoroughly, brilliantly impossible.

  * * *

  Marion clung to Jamie on the train. She looked at moments like a child unwilling to give up its bear and at others like a mistress of the hounds who did not trust this dog’s untethered conduct. When Jamie stood to get something down from his case, her hand lingered on the crease of his trousers until it could possess his elbow again.

  Everything was too bright and too loud. John was sure he felt just as queasy as Marion, though he did not demand windows be opened and then closed for him, or that Jamie dash down the passage with him so he could be sick between the carriages. The tragedy of it all seemed to squeeze the place around his heart—that Jamie should have made himself one flesh with such an invalid. He closed his eyes and tried to pass out, if only to escape their insufferably shallow conversation.

  Owain and Cordelia would meet him in Cambridge, his own people to take him home. It wouldn’t be the home he knew, but there would be three bedrooms, one for him, one for Cordelia, one for …

  What if life was on the edge of revolution, and against all reason she was waiting, kept secret by the other two as the most sensational Christmas present? Ah, now, here’s a thing … and there she would be, her hair twisted on her head as she’d worn it when they met, reduced perhaps but breathing, having only been away, having only got lost, and even if it didn’t seem so, the year had turned, the time had turned, and he wouldn’t even wish for her to run away with him, he wouldn’t think of her kiss or look for another, he would be elated to the point of breaking simply to be the member of the family he had always been, never realizing how good it was, how many gifts had snowed down on him, but now, when they took him home and showed him their surprise, he would fall on his face and worship the one who had given him this second chance, the last chance, the chance where he could get it right—even at the last minute, you could write the answer down and turn your exam to treasure from loss—and if he had that chance, what other chances could he not find and take? He’d got it right with Halton; could he not turn the corner with Riding somehow? Then Morgan would come, perhaps even come back, and he could say, See? See! and Morgan would grin, and they would know how precious their work had always been, and he could show Morgan everything he had learned, and even if Jamie cleaved to this creature who was unwrapping a peppermint and sucking it like a child with its thumb, even then he could stand it because of what they’d had before, and even though he couldn’t go back and change the things he’d done, he could be as he was in the dream last night, a passenger in a motorcar, watching the streets of London full of color and beauty, as the man beside him steered through traffic to the white walls where they were going; if he had been driving, he’d have feared the narrow streets, but the man was driving as one who knew the map like his own creation—

  —Here’s Peterborough, Jamie said.

  —Is this where John leaves us? Marion replied.

  There was an obnoxiously cheerful note to her voice. John’s back and arms ached, and putting on his overcoat showed how feeble he’d become. When the train slowed, he fell into Marion’s lap, and her head slammed against his lip. She yelped, and he apologized even though his mouth was the injured party, and Jamie pulled him into the passage where steam clouded the windows, and Jamie’s hand was at his chest, slipping a card into his breast pocket and resting there.

  —Telephone, won’t you?

  John could smell him to taste. Jamie tapped his chest where the card now lay:

  —This evening, so we know you arrived?

  His feet were on the platform, and the whistle blew. Soot bit the back of his throat, the train ripped away with its jesses, shards began to wet his face, and things that looked like people moved around him.

  He’d seen her dead himself. When he’d touched her body, it was cold and firm, the wrong color, but real. There were no rehearsals, no second chances. Time flowed one way, and it never ever turned.

  54

  The recent past flavored his dreams. His mother consigned him to bed until the fever diminished, but the rest of him wandered like Odysseus … Euboea, Libya, Trebizond … Church bells recalled him to the chill room, the oddly lumped bed … Xanadu, Leningrad, Buenos Aires, Guam … the strong-smelling plasters she laid across his chest … Lasswade, Darwin, Ceylon, Marrakech … my dear Mrs. Riding … Ogygia, Ismaros … I regret the necessity … Lichtenstein, Thrace … she made him drink broth and then brandy with hot water … Orinoco, Amazon, Volga, Ouse … his mouth hit the frame and the floor came up … Budapest, Cyprus … lemon in her mouth … Los Angeles, Peking, Tristan da Cunha … how do you suppose Mr. Grieves has taken it?… his mouth throbbed but when he touched it there was nothing … Witchell’s Gate, Sledmere, Ithaca, Nostos …

  * * *

  Trains were good at going back where they’d started. From York he had issued, to York he returned. He was hot and cold and his nose was running, but Micklegate Bar took him in like a woman. Lamps were light and the sky was dark and still he was a person who remembered his way. Snicket, stairs, cave beneath the street, the one-eyed doctor asked his need. Rule of hell: say it yourself. Cot, ticket, price. He could have charged anything! But that was the way these things became real, a price like a price you could find in a shop, coins you used for stationery, air that smelled of chicken. The man was missing teeth. He tied his arm with a strap and rubbed iodine in his elbow. A f
lea crossed the pillow. Like an aid post, but quieter.

  * * *

  Breakfast, his mother always said, should be the best meal of the day. She had every nurse’s excuse for frying up a nauseous mixture of eggs, fish, and last night’s vegetables. She plainly thought him neglected at school, and the more he tried to convince her of the contrary—that he was in fact controlled and interfered with beyond human endurance—the more she undertook to restore him. He felt he’d reached the age where nothing in the holidays ought be compulsory; to have to eat in the manner she expected was enough to drive him back to bed if not for the fact that he was desperate to get up.

  She’d let him get dressed, so that was something. The things she’d brought from home didn’t fit, so he had to resort to pieces of his uniform. His Sunday clothes had vanished, but he found the tailcoat hanging in the airing cupboard. He felt the tails, and then the other pockets. Panic broadside—he mastered it. He must have put the Head’s item in his trouser pockets instead, but the tailcoat hung alone, and the bedroom cupboard was bare. Bedside table, only a vase with holly sprigs, but ahoy, avast! Bureau tray, Captain! Fountain pen (hers), clean handkerchief (his), envelope! Riding? Memory a wave, Pearce acting as though he had dropped it, his name in her script but no time to open. Now, he popped the seal on a page from an exercise book. Seven Ferry Path, Cambridge.

  He unearthed the book for his holiday task. You alphas and epsilons, guard this with your lives, these e’s, these r’s, fold the page like—Hark! On the back, Look in your pigeonhole.

  —Found your things, have you?

  His mother stood in the door and gave him a clinical look. He put the book in his trunk. He didn’t know where to stand.

  —Would you go across the street for me and fetch the milk? she said.

  He found his coat and fled. The cold outside made him cough, and so did the air in the shop, thick with the cigarettes the postmistress was smoking. She knew who he was even though they’d never met. She was glad to see him about, she said. He looked peaked, but that was it for you. He managed interjections as his mind raced. Head’s item, missing or delivered? Look in your pigeonhole?

  * * *

  He awoke under a foul rug. Above him, the one-eyed man, like a cyclops but smaller. The man was touching his head … something at his mouth … back of the ambulance smell …

  * * *

  —The fresh air suits you, she said.

  He was making an effort with the breakfast.

  —Can I take the bicycle out today?

  —If that temperature stays down, and if you eat—

  He stuffed toast into his mouth.

  —properly, she scolded. Then tomorrow, we’ll see.

  The Academy was only a few miles away. He and Morgan had run it in the rain. He’d no idea whether anyone would be there, but surely he could find a way inside? And surely, surely, the pigeons still guarded…?

  * * *

  Sharps. Tights. Poppy drops. The one-eyed man spoke a language of childhood in which everything sounded benign. Fastest through sharps. Never sharps without tights. Only one sleep a day, but come back again. Ticket, price, poppy drops. He thought they should be small and red, nestled in a Christmas stocking. Poppy drops see you through, take before need, everything smooth. Door, stair, street, day! Why could his eyes not be reduced to one? Thunder, Harpies, cast onto the platform without a log to hold. Ye shivering carriage, ye Sledmere ye Fimber, cab to the gates of what hell he knew.

  Aren’t you being a teensy bit overdramatic, darling? He could hear her now, jollying him through the first morning of holidays; he’d think he had influenza, but once she’d gone through two pots of tea with him, it would turn out to be only fatigue. The gates were chained, no soul to be hailed, but the cab had disappeared and wind knifed across the Commons. If everything was hell, then he supposed that nothing was. This stranding, though disagreeable, was not the final word. He could scale the gates or go around.

  Grass in flood, shoes ruined, but lo, his window latch had not yet been mended. Three thwacks, heigh presto, welcome to his cave. All right, not cave, but could everyone agree there would be no studying today? No coal for the grate, but—tactician!—pigeonholes, ex-pigeonholes, piled in the corridor. Man makes fire before savage Laestrygonians. Wine in cups of gold, poured out before the hearth, sláinte! So sang the bard illustrious, sing of the past and its luscious pastness. He was captive’d on this island, no logs in the fire to show the one who waited, fending off suitors, and weaving. Romantic stuff, darling. But nonsense, of course. That was the problem with life: it was never as beautiful or well-wrought as art. And even if it reached perfection at the Last Day, a fat lot of good it did at Christmastime in their year. He had poppy drops, but even though they stopped the torture, to be brutally honest—when was honesty not brutal?—they did nothing to take him to a better meanwhile. He didn’t want to feel better, he wanted things to be better. Feeling better had ground him to powder because every morning he woke up and knew the better wasn’t so; instead, the hollow man, the shame, the fraud of him was so. Every morning it was harder to stand, and this morning in the cave had been so harrowing, though he’d pretended it wasn’t, that he wasn’t sure he could stand up again. He was bored, more bored than he could remember ever being, and satisfying as it was to turn pigeonholes into heat, the varnish was giving off an odor, though if he died from poison gas in his own study, it would be nothing if not humorous! Nevertheless, Fainting Fannie, he cracked the windows and cast about for other fuel, such as boxes in his cupboard full of papers obsolete. The boys they concerned were men, their foolscap and cotton rag such food for fire! More! More and more. Was this the allure of arson? Each a blaze, bright freedom, all too soon to ash.

  More food from the cupboard, from the box he dragged across the floor, the pages he used to called manuscript. A History of Disease; or, The Disease of History. Fatuous was the only word for such a title. He fed a page to the maw and the maw despised it not. Each leaf he perused begged also for its end. The world was getting better leaf by leaf! Hot work, thirsty work, cups of gold in crystal cut, do this in remembrance …

  God, was he really as maudlin as he seemed? Stop larking about, he’d told Jamie, but ought he not cast the beam from his own eye? You, yes you, stop moping like a boy who’s never known grief. Your mother died when you were small? Welcome to the human race. The girl you loved chose another? How long have you spent pretending otherwise? The war didn’t get you and the flu didn’t get you and even the one-eyed man didn’t get you, yet here you are choking on self-pity? Read a book. Your shelves are heaving. Pick up a newspaper, and if you’re too bored by the world, at least have the decency to pretend for form’s sake.

  The paper hadn’t come in days, of course, but there on the table was the basket Fardley honked about, things left behind in the pigeonholes. There was a magazine, Man and His Clothes. There were others, Shooting Times, Yachting Monthly, The Cricketer. There were letters, not to be opened—though it would certainly provide a few minutes’ diversion—but there was a paper folded sans envelope, as public as a post on the notice boards: Hyde minor, parcel. The boy had gone home early with mumps, parcel likely collected when he was. Football Chronicle, Cycling Today, and another public note, torn from an exercise book: Look in our place.

  A hand he knew, oh did he know it. Oh heart, oh blood, oh place, that place? Addressed to no one, but to whom else? He could feed it to the maw, but he put on his jacket. The age of overreacting was past. He would think before acting.

  Finish sorting through the basket, more mail chastely sealed, a paper six days old, and beneath it something wadded, no, folded, puzzle, papyrus, amulet? The larks these boys larked, pretending to be men! Unwrapping easier said than done, but once accomplished, map. Drawn in pencil, star with legend majuscule, FRIST PANEL ON R. He knew of only one who spelled that way. The star went with an inset, cryptic symbols save X-marks-the-spot. The back was blank except for three words, written hard and violently und
erscored: DESTROY IT YOURSLEF.

  * * *

  She didn’t despise him. Quite the opposite. The new note revived every hope he’d grieved the past week. What was she doing this hour where she was? Had she used his fountain pen as he was using hers? This very pen had written him from abroad, and now at last ink could flow in her direction! The most obvious ideas took the longest to see. He could write her today, this hour even, explain about Valarious, its makeshift status, how unfinished, unreviewed, how half-baked it was. As for whatever she’d left in his pigeonhole, couldn’t he simply present this letter as a prelude? More later! Howzat? There was no wireless in his exile, but did she dance still, at Seven Ferry Path, to songs whose words she knew by heart? How was it possible for her to be so irresistible when no one watched her?

  * * *

  A cloud began to cover the sun, not enough to stop his eyes from watering, but enough to shade the cloisters until he reached the stone stairs. First on the right was indeed the place he knew. He never thought a panel could feel so dire.

  His goddaughter had seen him possessed by wrath. She’d seen him mishandle the boy, haul him off, throw him in a pit. She hadn’t seen the blow, but everyone could see his lip the next day. Behind the panel, nothing now but broken chairs and planks that teetered. The inset showed X in a corner. He tried to shift the clutter, but dust got up his nose. He wasn’t cut out for archaeology. Was the notch in that plank like the shape on the map? Perhaps if turned … Plank up, hand in. Snakes? Mummies? Only dust as thick as fur, a farce from A to Z.

  Except, there, beneath the joists, a corner, four corners, some weight but not too much, no latch, nameplate, tarnished but …

  * * *