It was Colin who opened the door to Sylvia and the boys. In his arms was his daughter and Sophie’s, Celia, an enchanting infant, with black curls, black flirty eyes, dimples, all set off by a little red dress. She took one look at the black faces, and howled.
‘Nonsense,’ said her father, and firmly shook the boys’ hands, which he noted were cold and trembling. It was a bitter November day. ‘She’s never seen black faces so close,’ explained Sylvia to them. ‘Don’t mind her.’
They were in the kitchen, then at the faithful table. The boys were evidently in a state of shock, or something like it. If black faces can be pale, then theirs were. They had a greyish look, and they were shivering, though each had a new thick jersey. They felt themselves to be in the wrong place, Sylvia knew, because she did: too fast a transition from the grass huts, the drifts of dust, the new graves, at the Mission.
A pretty young woman in jeans and a jolly striped T-shirt came in and said, ‘Hi, I’m Marusha,’ and stood by the kettle while it boiled. The au pair. Soon big mugs of tea stood before Sylvia and the boys, and Marusha set biscuits on a plate which she pushed toward them, smiling politely. She was a Pole, and absorbed in mind and imagination in the disintegration of the Soviet Union, which was in energetic process. Having gathered Celia on to her hip, she said, ‘I want to see the News on the telly,’ and went up the stairs singing. The boys watched Sylvia putting biscuits on to her plate, and how she added milk to her tea, and then sugar. They copied her exactly, their eyes on her face, her movements, just as they had watched her for the years at the hospital.
‘Clever and Zebedee,’ said Sylvia. ‘They have been helping me at the hospital. I shall get them into school the moment I can. They are going to be doctors. They are sad because their father has just died. They have no family left.’
‘Ah,’ said Colin, and nodded welcome to the boys, whose sad scared grins seemed permanently fixed. ‘I’m sorry. I do see that all this must be terribly difficult for you. You’ll get used to it.’
‘Is Sophie at the theatre?’
‘Sophie is intermittently with Roland–no, she hasn’t actually left me. I would say she is living with both of us.’
‘I see.’
‘Yes, that’s how things are.’
‘Poor Colin.’
‘He sends her four dozen red roses at the slightest excuse or meaningful messages of pansies or forget-me-nots. I never think of things like that. It serves me right.’
‘Oh, poor Colin.’
‘And from the look of you, poor Sylvia.’
‘She is sick. Sylvia is very sick,’ the boys came in. Last night on the plane they had been frightened, not only of the unfamiliar plane, but Sylvia kept vomiting, going off to sleep, and coming awake with a cry and tears. As for them, she had shown them how the toilets worked, and they thought they had understood, but Clever had pushed what must have been the wrong button, because next time he made his way there the door had Out of Order on it. They both felt the stewardesses were looking at them critically, and that if they did something stupid the plane might crash because of them.
Now, when Sylvia put her arms around them, as she sat between them, they could feel that she was cold, through her clothes, and was shivering. They were not surprised. The view out of the window coming from the airport, all oozing grey skies and endless buildings and so many people bundled up like parcels made them both want to put their heads under a blanket.
‘I take it none of you slept a wink on the plane?’ asked Colin.
‘Not much,’ said Sylvia. ‘And the boys were too overcome with everything. They are from a village, you see. All this is new to them.’
‘I understand,’ said Colin, and did, as far as anyone can who has not seen for himself.
‘Is there anyone in Andrew’s old room?’
‘I work in it.’
‘And in your old room,’
‘William is in it.’
‘And in the little room on that floor? We can get two beds in there.’
‘Bit crammed, surely, with two beds?’
Zebedee said, ‘There were five people living in our hut until my sister died.’
‘She wasn’t really our sister,’ said Clever. ‘She was our cousin, if you reckon by your ideas. We have a different kinship system.’ He added, ‘She died. She got very sick and died.’
‘I know they are not the same. I look forward to your explaining it to me.’ Colin was just beginning to distinguish the boys from each other. Clever was the thin, eager one with enormous appealing eyes; Zebedee was bulkier, with big shoulders and a smile that reminded him of Franklin’s.
‘Can we look at that fridge? We have never seen a fridge as big as that before.’
Colin showed them the fridge, with its many shelves, its interior lighting, its freezing compartments. They exclaimed, and admired and shook their heads, and then stood yawning.
‘Come on,’ said Colin, and he went up the stairs, with his arms on their shoulders, Sylvia behind them. Stairs, stairs–the boys had not seen stairs until the Selous Hotel. Up they went, past the living-room floor, past Frances’s and Rupert’s, and the little room where once Sylvia had had her being, to the floor that had housed Colin’s and Andrew’s growing up. In the little room was already a big bed, and just as Colin was saying, ‘We’ll fix you up with something better,’ the two flung themselves down on it and were asleep, just like that.
‘Poor kids,’ said Colin.
‘When they wake they’ll be in a panic.’
‘I’ll tell Marusha to keep her eyes open . . . and where are you sleeping, have you thought of that?’
‘I can doss down in the sitting-room until . . .’
‘Sylvia, you aren’t thinking of dumping the boys on us and taking off to–where did you say?’
‘Somalia.’
Sylvia had not been thinking. She had been carried along on a tide of accomplishment since her promise to Joshua, and had not allowed herself to think, or to fit together the two facts, that she was responsible for the boys, and that she had promised to be in Somalia in three weeks’ time.
They went back down the stairs, sat at the table and smiled at each other.
‘Sylvia, you had remembered that Frances is getting on a bit, she is past seventy? We gave her a big party. Not that she looks it or acts it.’
‘And she has Margaret and William already.’
‘Only William.’ And now, at his leisure–they had all the time in the world–he told her the story. Margaret had decided, without discussing it with them, that she would live with her mother. She had not asked her either, but had turned up at Phyllida’s and said to Meriel, ‘I’m coming to live with you.’
‘There’s no room,’ said Meriel promptly. ‘Not until I get a place.’
‘Then you must get a place,’ ordered her daughter. ‘We’ve got enough money, haven’t we?’
The trouble was this: Meriel had decided to go to university and take a degree in psychology. Frances was furious: she had expected Meriel to start earning some money, but Rupert was unsurprised. ‘I always said she had no intention of ever earning a living for herself, didn’t I?’ ‘Yes, you did.’ ‘No one would believe it, looking at her, but she’s a very dependent woman.’ ‘Are we going to have to keep her in perpetuity?’ ‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’
This was why Meriel did not really want to leave Phyllida: she did not want to be by herself. Phyllida meanwhile wanted Meriel to go. There had been some dark satisfaction, never really analysed, in having Rupert’s former wife, here, with her, like an extension of the Lennox household, but enough was enough. She did not actively dislike Meriel, but her sharp cutting ways could depress. When Margaret moved in, Phyllida felt she was reliving an old nightmare, seeing herself in Meriel, with the girl, mother and daughter, snapping and snarling and kissing and making up and noisy, so noisy, tears and rows and shouts and the long silences of reconciliation.
Then Meriel had a relapse and was in hospital. Phyl
lida and Margaret were together. Phyllida suggested that now her mother was not there Margaret might go back to the Lennox house, but Margaret said she liked it better with Phyllida. ‘Frances is an old cow,’ she said. ‘She doesn’t really care about anything but Rupert. I think it’s disgusting, old people like that, holding hands. And I really do like being with you.’ She said this last shyly, tentative, afraid of a rebuff, offering herself as it were to this mother surrogate: ‘I want to be with you.’
Phyllida was in fact moved by this, hearing that the girl liked her. How unlike sly and deceiving Sylvia, who couldn’t wait to get away from her.
‘All right, but when your mother is better, I think you should have your own place.’
Meriel showed no signs of being better. Margaret would not go and see her, she said it upset her too much, but William went nearly every evening, and sat by the woman curled on her bed, in the grey absence that is depression, and he told her, in the careful, guarded thoughtful way that was his, about his day, about what he had been doing. But she did not reply nor move nor look at him.
And when Colin had finished telling about Meriel, there was Sophie, and Frances, who was writing books, part history and part sociology, that did very well. And about Rupert, whom Colin said was the best thing that had happened in this house. ‘Just imagine, somebody really sane, at last.’
The two talked the afternoon away, while the little girl made charming appearances in the arms of Marusha, who grew more exultant every moment with new instalments of the News, of the thorough humiliation of Poland’s old enemy, and then Frances arrived, with arms full of food, just like the old days. The three pulled the table out to its former length, as if setting the stage for past festivals.
While Frances cooked, in came William, just as the two black boys came down the stairs. They were introduced. ‘Clever and Zebedee are going to stay here for a bit,’ said Colin. Frances said nothing, but began laying the table for nine people. Sophie would join them later.
Frances took her place at the head of the table, with Colin at the foot, and a place beside him for Sophie, then Marusha’s place and next to her the baby’s high chair. Ten, if you counted Celia. Rupert was next to Frances on one side, William on the other. Sylvia and the two boys were in the middle. Sylvia told about the big dinner at Butler’s Hotel, and all the expensive people, some of them who had once been around this table, and then about Andrew’s bride, saying flatly that it couldn’t last. She was speaking in an empty voice, giving information, none of the relish of gossip, of life’s improbable workings. The boys kept looking at her to see what she was feeling since her voice seemed determined not to say: it was their uneasiness that alerted the others that they should be worried about Sylvia. In fact she felt that she was floating off somewhere, and this was not just lack of sleep. She was tired, yes, so tired, and it was hard to keep her attention here, and yet she knew she had to, because the boys were depending on her, and she was the only person who could understand how hard it was for them. Rupert put questions, like a good journalist, but it was because he knew she was needing to be held down, like a too buoyant kite: he was sensitive to her distress, because of his long attention to William, who suffered so much and who depended on him, Rupert, to understand him. And through it all the little child prattled and babbled and made flirtatious eyes at them all, the black boys too, now that she was used to them.
Sophie came rushing in, in a wave of scent. She was fatter than she had been and ‘more Madame Bovary than the Lady of the Camellias’, as she said herself. She wore elegant voluminous white, and her hair was in a chignon. She gave Colin passionately guilty looks until he kissed her and said, ‘Now, just shut up, Sophie. You can’t be the centre of attention tonight.’
‘What’s wrong with you, Sylvia, for God’s sake?’ cried Sophie. ‘You look like death.’
The words struck a chill, but Sophie could not know the boys’ father was just dead, and that their Saturday afternoons for months now had been spent at the funerals of people they had known all their lives.
‘I think I’ll have a little sleep,’ said Sylvia, and pushed herself up out of her chair. ‘I feel . . .’ She kissed Frances. ‘Darling Frances, to be back here with you, if you only knew . . . dear Sophie . . .’ She smiled vaguely at everyone, then put her hand shakily on Clever’s shoulder and then on Zebedee’s. ‘I’ll see you later,’ she said. She went out, holding on to the door’s edge and then the door frame.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Frances to the boys. ‘We’ll look after you. Just tell us what you need, because we don’t understand the way Sylvia does.’ But they were staring after Sylvia, and it was easy to see it was all too much for them. They wanted to go back up to bed, and went, Marusha accompanying them, with Celia. Then, Sophie followed: it seemed she intended to stay the night.
Frances, Colin and Rupert faced William, knowing what was coming.
He was now a tall slender fair youth, handsome, but the pale skin was tight over his face, and often there was strain around his eyes. He loved his father, was always as near to him as he could get, though Rupert told Frances he did not dare put his arms around him, hug him: William did not seem to like it. And he was secretive, Rupert said, did not share his thoughts. ‘Perhaps it is just as well we don’t know them,’ said Frances. She experienced William, who would consult her about small difficulties, as a controlled anguish which she did not believe a hug or a kiss could reach. And he worked so hard, had to do well at school, seemed always to be wrestling with invisible angels.
‘Are they coming to live here?’
‘It seems that they are,’ said Colin.
‘Why should they?’
‘Come on, old chap, don’t be like that,’ said his father.
William’s smile at Colin, whom they had to deduce he loved, was like a wail.
‘They have no parents,’ said Colin. ‘Their father has just died.’ He was afraid to say, of AIDS, because of the terror of the word, even though in this house AIDS was as distant as the Black Death. ‘They are orphans. And they are very poor . . . I don’t think it’s possible for people like us to understand. And they’ve had no school except for Sylvia’s lessons.’ In all their minds briefly appeared an image of a room with desks, a blackboard, a teacher holding forth.
‘But why here? Why does it have to be us?’ This routine reaction–But why me?–cannot be answered except with appeals to the majestic injustices of the universe.
‘Someone has to take them in,’ said Frances.
‘Besides, Sylvia will be here. She’ll understand what to do. I agree that we’re not up to it,’ said Colin.
‘But how can she be here? Where’s she going to stay? Where’s she going to sleep?’
If Sylvia’s mind was a blur of panic because of the impossibility of being in Somalia and London at the same time, then these three adults were in a similar state: William was right.
‘Oh, we’ll manage somehow,’ said Frances.
‘And we’ll all have to help them,’ said Colin.
This meant, as William knew very well, We expect you to help them. They were younger than him, but that made it even more likely they would depend on him. ‘If they don’t get on here, will they go away?’
Colin said, ‘We could send them back. But I understand everyone in their village has died of AIDS or is going to.’
William went white. ‘AIDS! Have they got AIDS?’
‘No. Nor can they have it, Sylvia says.’
‘How does she know? Well, all right, she’s a doctor but why does she look so sick, then? She looks ghastly.’
‘She’ll be all right. And the boys’ll have to be tutored first, to catch up, but I am sure they will.’
‘They can’t be called Clever and Zebedee, not here. They’ll be killed, with names like that. I hope they aren’t going to my school.’
‘We can’t just take their real names away from them.’
‘Well, I’m not going to fight their battles for them.’
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He said he had to go up: he had homework. He left: before homework, they knew, he would play a little with the baby, if she was awake. He adored her.
Sylvia did not reappear. She had flung herself down into the bosom of the old red sofa, her arms outstretched: she was at once asleep. She sank deep into her past, into arms that were waiting for her.
Rupert and Frances were in their rooms undressing when Colin came in to say he had checked on Sylvia, who was sleeping like the dead. Later, about four in the morning, uneasiness woke Frances, and she crept down and returned to tell Rupert, who had been awakened by her going, that Sylvia was dead asleep. She was about to slide into bed, but now heard what she had said and, retrospectively, what Colin had said. ‘I don’t like it,’ she said. ‘There’s something wrong.’ Rupert and Frances went down and into the sitting-room where on the sofa Sylvia was indeed dead asleep: she was dead.
• • •
The boys lay weeping on their beds. Frances’s instinct, which was to put her arms around them, was stopped by that oldest of inhibitions: hers were not the arms they wanted. As the day wore on and the weeping did not cease, she and Colin went to the little room, and she with Clever and he with Zebedee, made them sit up and were close, arms around them, rocking them, saying that they should stop crying, they would be ill, they must come down and have a hot drink, and no one would mind if they were sad.
The first bad days were got through, and then the funeral, with Zebedee and Clever in prominent positions as mourners. Attempts were made to telephone the Mission, but a voice the boys did not know said that Father McGuire had taken all his things away and the new headmaster was not here yet. Messages were left. Sister Molly, left a message, at once rang back, loud and clear though she was miles from anywhere. She said at once, ‘Are you thinking what to do about the boys?’ She believed that probably work could be found for them at the Old Mission, looking after the AIDS orphans. When the priest rang back the line was so bad that only intermittently could be made out his concern over Sylvia, ‘Poor soul, she did have to work herself into the grave.’ And, ‘If you could see your way to keep the boys it would be best.’ And, ‘It is a sad business here.’
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