by Barbara Vine
But before he told me about that he mentioned how he had been back in Essex, back in his old job by the winter of 1948, the winter that Vera was ill. And he was a fairly frequent visitor to Laurel Cottage. That people suggested he was or had been Vera's lover had never occurred to him, women as sexual partners were too alien to him for him to have thought of it, and when I enlightened him, it was a revelation. No, he hadn't known, it hadn't crossed his mind. If he had liked Vera and been friends with her, it was because she was Francis's mother and the place she lived in was imbued with Francis's presence. He visited her to be in Francis's home and talk about Francis if he got the chance, just as Hadrian, for all I know, might have dropped in on Antinous's mother up there in Bithynia. To be a family friend, he felt then, would be a way of ensuring that he had Francis for ever. In small measure, perhaps, remotely, vicariously, not seeing him for years on end, yet tenuously possessing him still, a better portion, far better, he thought it was, to be sure of those crumbs of news, those casual mentions of a name, even with the inevitable pain, than the alternative with nothing.
‘You wanted to keep a foot in the door,’ I said.
‘That was part of it, yes. Our relationship – what a word! I hate it but what am I to call it? – our whatever-it-was was so thin on the ground, so hazardous, so brittle – well, brittle to him, fragile to me. But this way I could at any rate still see myself twenty years from then growing old with Vera at Vera's fireside, confided in, told where he was and what he was doing, his promotions and his publications. If I couldn't have more than that, at least I could have that, I thought, and I couldn't see what could take it from me if I was determined enough to arrange it. I only had to keep on going to Vera's house. And then, still, there was a chance of Francis being there. In theory, he still lived at home. The time would soon come, he had told me, when he would leave for good, he would never go home again. I didn't altogether believe him and anyway that time hadn't yet come and I lived in the present. That's supposed to be a good thing, you know, an ideal, according to modern psychology. Odd, because the truth is one lives in the present when the past is too bad to remember and the future too dreadful to contemplate.’
One day that winter, a week after Christmas it was, he went round to Laurel Cottage because he expected Francis to be there. Francis wasn't there. He had gone off to stay with some people he knew in Scotland for the New Year and of course he hadn't bothered to tell Chad. Chad said it was such a horrible disappointment, such a bitter shock, to find him gone, to know that he would return to Oxford without coming home first and that he, Chad, would therefore not see him for four months, all this so knocked him sideways that for a while he didn't notice that Vera was ill. He didn't really notice it till Vera asked him to excuse her for not offering him tea for she felt too weak to get out of her chair. Then he saw how pale she was, how heavy-eyed, and when he laid his hand on her forehead, a surge of sweat broke through the skin.
This was the beginning of what Chad told me in Brown's Hotel, going on to say that sometimes he had wondered since how instrumental he had been in stimulating later events. Suppose he had done what Vera asked of him – in the circumstances what a request for the mother of a little son to make to him! – would that terrible converging of human lots never have taken place? Would all have been well? I don't think so. I think Eden would have found a way and Vera would still have lost out. I told him that, I told him not to let it trouble his conscience. For all his knowledge, I knew them better than he did, they were my people. We parted never to meet again, never to hear of each other again until Daniel Stewart entered our lives.
I asked him one more thing. Perhaps it was wrong of me. What business was it of mine?
‘Is the echo faint at last, Chad?’
He pretended not to understand.
And now I have before me, literally lying on the table before me as it has come out of its envelope, Chad's own account of what happened when he called on Vera that New Year's Eve. He has written it for Stewart at Stewart's request because there is no one else alive who knows, who was there, who was a witness. Chad, though in his seventies now, though stigmatized with the earlobes of Hadrian, seems very much alive, very compos mentis, but that style of his, once so lucid, so graceful, so pleasing – what became of it? I suppose it was thrown away and sacrificed for love of my cousin Francis. Stewart wants me to look at this account, to confirm it. That I can't do. I wasn't there. I was in London and Cambridge and sometimes in Stoke-by-Nayland, and all I knew of Vera's illness was contained in one letter which came from her to my father. But I shall read what Chad says just the same. I am curious to know the rest of it, the part he didn't tell me in Brown's Hotel.
I shall try to give you a factual account (Chad writes) without allowing hindsight to intrude and affect my statements. I shall try to write what seemed to me to be true at the time. In 1948, on the last day of 1948, I knew nothing of any mystery surrounding James Ricardo, then Hillyard, whom we called Jamie. As far as I knew he was Gerald Hillyard's son and it had never crossed my mind to question this. The separation that had taken place between Mr and Mrs Hillyard I supposed due to some quite other cause. I was equally in the dark as to any breach between Vera Hillyard and Eden Pearmain. For as long as I had known them, they had been devoted to each other beyond, so to speak, the call of sisterliness. I believed this to be unchanged, and up to a point, even then, it was.
The 31st of December 1948 was a Friday. I had an inquest to cover for my paper in the morning and once I had written it up would have had a free day ahead of me. Some half-formed plan had been made of spending New Year's Eve with the Hillyard family. To confirm this arrangement I drove home from Colchester by way of Great Sindon and called at Vera Hillyard's house, Laurel Cottage.
She never locked the front door by day. Those were safer times. I let myself in, calling her name. The little boy, Jamie, came running out but Vera herself I found sitting in an armchair and she didn't get up when I came in. However, it was a little while before I realized there was anything wrong. I put her despondency down to the fact that her other son, Francis, had changed his mind and wouldn't be with us for the New Year. Then she told me she thought she might have flu, her temperature which she had just taken was 102. I asked her about fetching the doctor and she said he would only tell her to go to bed and how could she do that with Jamie to look after?
I was in a dilemma. Vera looked ill to me and she seemed to be getting worse. I saw the sweat break out on her face and then she was shivering and asking me to fetch her a blanket. It seemed wrong to leave her but on the other hand I could do nothing for her and I had no wish to catch flu myself. There was one thing I could do to help. I said I would take Jamie out for a couple of hours so that she could rest. This she agreed to. So I took the child home with me and made him lunch along with my own and wrote up my story while he played with an old Mah Jong set, and at about four I took him home.
Vera was much worse. She was in bed, or rather, she was lying on the bed still with her clothes on and turning from one side to the other, holding her chest and having difficulty with her breathing. This time I didn't hesitate. I phoned her doctor and asked him to come as soon as he could. In those days you could phone doctors and get to speak to them, not a receptionist or, worse, an answering service. And they would come to see you without the heavens falling. I don't know what this doctor's name was, I can't remember, but he lived in Great Sindon and he came within half an hour.
Vera's temperature might have been 102 when she took it but when the doctor did it was 104. She had flu and he thought she might be getting pleurisy. He told her to keep warm, stay in bed, drink plenty and take aspirin, and he would come back in the morning. She was lucky to have me there to look after her, he said. I believe he thought I was her husband. I quickly disabused his mind but promised I would stay the night. What else could I have done?
When the doctor had gone I asked Vera if she would like me to phone Eden, but this she wouldn't have. I was
on no account to trouble Eden, especially on New Year's Eve. What was bothering me, of course, was Jamie. I could look after Vera for a couple of days but not a child of whatever he was – three going on four? – as well. However, I did manage to put him to bed and when Vera herself was asleep I tried to phone Eden. The housekeeper, a Mrs King, answered and said they were both out. It was New Year's Eve, she reminded me. That night I slept in the room that was Francis Hillyard's, setting the alarm so that I could get up and look in on Vera at two and again at five.
‘Delirium’ is a strong word and I won't say Vera was delirious. But her temperature was very high and she was light-headed. The second time I went in she got hold of my hand and held it and began talking to me in a high rapid voice, a meaningless jumble most of it, as I thought then, and some rather more lucid stuff about life being pointless without children, and then suddenly she recited a verse.
I had never thought of Vera as in the least ‘literary’ but I suppose she remembered this from school where it had made a strong impression on her.
For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands.
I went back to bed and Jamie awoke me about seven. He wanted to be with his mother but I was afraid to let him in case he caught the flu. The doctor came, said she could be left if we could find someone to come in and see her two or three times a day. But she was on no account to be left with the child. Again I tried to phone Eden and again she was out. The housekeeper said she would take a message for Mrs Pearmain to call me when she came back at lunchtime. She was bound to be back by twelve as guests were expected for lunch.
Vera was still breathing unevenly and her voice was strained. I sat on her bed and told her what the doctor had said. I told her that I would have to go but that I had spoken to Josie Cambus and she had promised to come in at lunchtime and again in the evening. However, I said, I would stay at least until Eden phoned back because we should have to make arrangements for someone to look after Jamie.
That had an electrifying effect on her, ill as she was. She seized my hand in both hers. She sat up, clutching my hand. I must take Jamie, I must promise her I would take Jamie and look after him. I can remember her exact words.
‘You take him, Chad, he knows you. He will be all right with you. I should be easy, I should sleep if I knew he was with you.’
She would soon be better, she said, it was unthinkable that she could be ill for more than a day or two. She could not remember a day's illness since that trouble she had in her teens when Eden was a baby, and that had been anaemia, she thought, which would have been cured if anyone had had the sense to give her iron. She rambled on like this, tossing from side to side, gripping my hand. I would promise her, wouldn't I, that I would keep Jamie just till Monday. By Monday she would be better, she would be right as rain. Jamie would be no trouble, he would eat just what I ate, he never woke in the night, all his clean clothes were in the chest of drawers in his room. She would pack them herself if I would bring her a suitcase.
It never occurred to me for a moment to say yes. I thought it a ridiculous request to make of me. I was a single man living in a flat that was little more than a bedsit with a kitchen. What did I know about the needs, the tastes and whims of little children? Next morning, though it would be Sunday, I had an interview booked with our local MP, the only time he could see me. On Monday morning I would be due at work by nine. So I didn't even consider doing what Vera asked. For one thing, I didn't think there was a chance of her being well by Monday. I told her one of the women would have him, Eden would have him.
She reared up in bed as if she had seen a ghost come in the door. She stared at me as if she could see something dreadful behind me, a spectre that had entered and was standing there with arms upheld. In a way she had, though at that time it was invisible to the rest of the world. Clutching my hand, she held on to me as if she wanted to keep me a prisoner.
‘Please keep Jamie, Chad!’
She was imploring me, begging me, and I thought her high temperature had made her mad. That's all I thought it was.
‘I can't,’ I said, ‘be reasonable. You know I can't.’
‘It's the only thing I've ever asked you. I'll never ask you to do a thing for me again. Please, Chad.’
‘It isn't possible, Vera,’ I said.
‘Then will you get Josie to have him. He doesn't know Josie like he knows you but she's a kind woman, she'll be kind to him. Promise me you'll get Josie.’
I said I would ask her. I would do my best. Downstairs the phone was ringing. I went down to answer it and of course it was Eden. The housekeeper had given her the message that Vera was ill and once she had had lunch she was coming straight over, she wouldn't wait for her guests to leave, Tony would be there, she would come straight over and fetch Vera and Jamie and take them back with her to Goodney Hall.
It was a great relief. I felt a load lifted from my mind and that our troubles were over. Josie arrived just as I put the phone down with lunch for Vera which of course she couldn't eat, and being the rare (for those days) possessor of a washing machine, took away a pile of Vera's and Jamie's washing to do. I told Vera Eden was coming and got a very curious reaction.
She looked at me with mad eyes, but she wasn't hysterical, she didn't even sound delirious. She uttered this mad request in a sane, calm, intense voice.
‘Jamie has his sleep in the afternoon. Lock him in his room, Chad, and tell Eden Josie's got him.’
What could I say? What does one say to apparently insane demands of that kind? I humoured her. I said all right. May God forgive me.
*
That was all I read of Chad's statement for the time being. I was finding it curiously upsetting. Of course I knew it had been bad, all of it, I knew about Vera's despair, but I didn't know it had been as bad as that. As for verifying things for Daniel Stewart, I couldn't do that anyway. What I could do was find the letter Vera wrote to my father about a week after that Saturday. It is dated 6 January 1948 and is one of the rare winter letters he kept. The remarkable thing about this letter is not what it says but what it doesn't say.
Dear John,
I should have written before to thank you for the PO you and Vranni kindly sent Jamie for Christmas. Unfortunately I have been laid up with flu for the past week. I have had a really bad go of it with throat and chest complications but everyone has been wonderfully kind and helpful, Josie and Thora Morrell coming in to see to me each day and Helen has been an absolute brick, spending hours with me, reading to me and sending food from Walbrooks.
Jamie is with Eden. I was rather worried she might not be strong enough yet to look after him but she assured me she was feeling quite fit again. It is the best place for him really, to be in that lovely house, and I should be able to have him back with me next week. Eden came over to fetch him the minute she knew I was ill…
This was read aloud, of course, at our breakfast table, my mother listening with her customary expression of wry exasperation.
‘I'm glad the boy is with his aunt,’ said my father. ‘That's a load off my mind. He couldn't be in better hands. Eden will be kindness itself, it'll be the next best thing to his own mother.’
‘I don't suppose it makes much difference,’ my mother said in her neutral voice. By this I took her to mean that in her opinion, Vera and Eden would be equally horrid to any child in their care. My father thought the same, for he threw the letter down and asked her what she meant. She answered him obliquely.
‘You know how I feel. I told you at the time it was all for the best your sister having that miscarriage. She doesn't like children, she's got no patience, you've only got to look at her to see that.’
They argued about this for a while, my father insisting that the maternal instinct had found its fullest expression in b
oth his sisters equally, they got it from his mother. My mother had never forgotten the incident of Eden dusting her bedroom when she stayed with us. She let fly about Eden's selfishness, lack of thought, eye to the main chance and so on. I was remembering Eden's wedding morning when she had flung out her arm to gesture Jamie away and would have struck him if he hadn't dodged her hand. I remembered how she never spoke to him if she could avoid it and in my mind's eye I saw Jamie holding the carved Swiss dog and Eden turning on him.
‘Put it down! It's not a toy!’
My father got up to go off to work. ‘I really think that's the best place for him,’ he said as if none of this argument had taken place. ‘He'll be best off with his aunt.’
‘I would gladly have had him here if I'd known,’ said my mother.
Nobody once suggested the obvious person to look after Jamie and minister to poor Vera. I suppose the fact was that we had all given up Francis as a potentially useful or helpful or ordinary social being years before. We had almost given him up as a member of the family. It seems from what Chad has written that Vera never suggested fetching him home from wherever he was in the Highlands for Hogmanay. My parents had forgotten his existence. And I who, if we had been talking about any other family group, would naturally have asked why the sick woman's son couldn't be called upon, never considered Francis in this role. I looked through Chad's statement again, looked in vain for a mention of Francis in this connection, noting only how Chad had passed two nights in Francis's room, in Francis's bed no doubt, and wondering how that had been for him, ecstatic or painful or perhaps both.