Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection

by Rosie Thomas

  ‘Mummy, oh quickly, Mummy …’ There was panicky fear in Cressida’s voice.

  ‘Calm down, Nanny, for goodness sake.’ Grace dropped her packages and hurried to the stairs. Cressida wriggled in front of her and would have darted up ahead but Grace seized her arm. ‘Go downstairs and sit with Cook, please, Cressida.’

  For a moment it seemed that the child might refuse to do as she was told, but then she bent her head and melted away. Grace followed the nanny, keeping her eyes on the white starched triangle of her headdress as it receded ahead of her.

  Anthony was lying on his side with his eyes open. Grace stooped beside him. His face looked congested and he was breathing noisily through his mouth. At first he stared without seeming to see her, but then he licked his cracked lips and muttered, ‘Hello, old thing. We must look at the portfolio.’

  Grace stood up. Anxiety tightened in her throat. ‘Stay here with him, Nanny. I’ll go and telephone.’

  Cressida hovered as silent as a shadow in the passage outside the drawing room. She heard her mother talking to the doctor’s receptionist in a high, tight voice.

  ‘… I don’t care who he is seeing. This is an emergency, do you understand? Put me through to him at once.’

  Usually her mother’s imperious ways made Cressida shrink with embarrassment, but now she dipped her head in two sharp nods of encouragement. The palms of her hands felt cold and clammy spread against the beige-painted dado of the corridor wall. Grace talked briskly to the doctor. Cressida shrank out of sight again when her mother came out of the drawing room, then listened to the door of her father’s room opening and closing, and the low murmur of voices.

  Cressida closed her eyes and resigned herself to waiting. The house felt quite different from normal. It was unnaturally still and the air seemed heavy, she had felt it as soon as she woke up. Before she had even looked into her father’s room. She tried a prayer but could only manage Please God, please God, over and over.

  The doctor came quite quickly. He was a pink man in a pinstriped suit with a watch-chain. Grace had been sitting in a chair beside Anthony’s bed, holding one of his hands between both of hers, but she jumped up as soon as he was shown in.

  ‘Dr Boothe …’

  ‘If I might just look at the patient first, Lady Grace.’

  She felt herself dismissed. She wrapped her arms around herself and stood at the window, willing herself to be calm as the doctor made his examination. Anthony was quiet at first, but then he began to talk in a low, hoarse voice about stocks and dividends. He wanted to get up and sort out some papers. That was what he must have been trying to do in the night, Grace realized.

  ‘That’s right, old chap, but not to worry about that now,’ the doctor soothed him. ‘The thing is to get over this little bout before you do anything else.’

  The doctor’s face was sombre when he finally motioned Grace to one side. ‘Do you have someone you can send out to have this prescription made up?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Anthony’s man was dispatched and the nanny was recalled to watch by the bed. The doctor washed his hands, rinsed and dried them with meticulous care.

  ‘Please tell me what it is, Dr Boothe.’ Grace was even meek in her fear now.

  The doctor led her into the next room. Grace allowed herself to be stationed on her own day-bed to receive the news. ‘I believe he has a form of influenza. That in itself would not be threatening to a healthy man of his age, but there is now a secondary, pulmonary infection. An infection of the lung, that is. His temperature is high, there is some delirium, and some cardiac irregularity. How long has he been unwell, Lady Grace?’

  ‘A day. No, two days. He, we thought it was a feverish cold.’

  ‘I understand. Is he worried, in any way out of the normal?’

  ‘He gave a major speech to the House, just last week. His father’s business, he is a stockbroker, and there was the Hatry crash last month, of course. I believe there were … clients who suffered losses. I don’t think it damaged Anthony personally, financially, that is.’

  ‘I see. It doesn’t help that he has political or business anxieties, naturally.’

  ‘What will happen?’

  ‘I can’t say, yet.’

  Grace stared at him. His pink face seemed to hang in front of her like some jack-o’-lantern.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The infection must run its course. But it is a virulent one, threatening, to have taken hold so quickly. The question is if his system can hold up against it.’

  Grace did not move. If, he had said, if. An hour, two hours ago she had been concerned about the fit of a winter costume. Now this man was saying there was a chance that Anthony might die. She knew he was saying that, although the words were fuzzy, the darkness of them inadequately bleached by euphemism.

  Sudden fear drained the blood and heat out of her, and she felt that she could not raise her arm, or move her fingers, to save Anthony or herself. She sat on the day-bed looking towards the dressing-room door. She could see his face, distorted with the pain of drawing breath, as if the walls were glass. The life they had constructed together had seemed invincible, like a stone tower, and now the difference of a few hours threatened to bring it down.

  ‘If you had called me in earlier …’

  ‘He was asleep when I came in last night, and this morning. He was feverish, but I saw no reason to call.’

  ‘I see, of course …’

  Grace realized that the doctor was watching her. He was judging her, and her capacity to deal with the crisis. Her back stiffened at once. She could move her fingers, all of her body now. She would not let Anthony die.

  ‘Anthony is very strong, very determined. He will recover.’

  ‘There is a good chance.’ The doctor was relieved. They would work as a team, at least.

  ‘What must be done for him? Will you remove him to hospital?’

  ‘I would not like to take the risk of moving him now. He will need professional nursing: I can arrange that for you. He must be given the medication I have prescribed; we will do what we can to bring his temperature down.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Grace said. She stood up, wanting to get away from the man’s amorphous predictions, back to Anthony.

  He was lying as they had left him, his eyes half closed. Occasionally his lips moved, forming words they could not hear. Cressida’s nanny looked frightened.

  Dr Boothe said, ‘The nurses will do everything that needs to be done for him, Lady Grace. It would be better for you to have some company. Your mother, or a sister, perhaps?’

  Grace was thinking of the tower of her marriage, square blocks of stone years, defying its shaky foundation. The ground beneath it had begun to ripple as if in an earthquake, mocking the jaunty little structure. She didn’t want anyone here now.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Grace said.

  ‘I will be back at five,’ the doctor told her.

  Cressida drew back into the shadows at the end of the corridor as he passed by. She waited with her anxiety for Grace to come out and tell her what the doctor had said, but Grace did not emerge.

  The house became possessed by a kind of grim bustle. From her vantage point next to the drawing-room curtains Cressida saw two nurses arriving. They had white caps tied with strings under their chins, and dark capes that made her think of the folded wings of birds of prey. Footsteps passed up and down the stairs, and voices murmured urgently.

  After the nurses came a van, and two men with a railway porter’s upright trolley. The trolley was painted cream with big chips knocked out of the paint to show the bare metal ribs beneath. There was a tall grey cylinder mounted on it, with a sinister apparatus of silver taps and black rubbery tubes on the top. The men dragged the trolley and its cargo backwards into the house, and Cressida heard it bumping up the stairs.

  The telephone began to ring. Someone answered it, not Grace, and almost at once it rang again. There was the sound of opening and closing doors, but
beneath it all there was the same ominous silence of the day that crept into Cressida’s head and hammered with the dull pulse of her blood.

  She waited, willing Grace to come and find her, until she could bear it no longer. She slipped up the stairs and saw one of the nurses hurrying with a covered bowl. The door to her father’s room opened and closed again, shutting her out. She tiptoed to the door and pressed her ear against it. The door was heavy and she could hear nothing.

  If he … he mustn’t. She could not bear that. But they must not keep her here on the outside any longer. She should be with him too, as well as Grace.

  Cressida lifted her chin. She was about to give a timid knock, but then changed her mind. She twisted the handle and the door swung open.

  She saw the bed and the high white pillows. The porter’s trolley had been wheeled up close to the bed and the rubber tubes snaked over the covers. There was a black mask covering her father’s face. One of the nurses held it there.

  Cressida ran forward, with some thought of snatching it away.

  ‘Cressida.’

  Grace jumped up from the chair beside the bed. The nurse lifted the mask and Cressida saw her father’s face. He was white, and his lips were blue. His eyelashes seemed very dark. He opened his eyes and looked at her.

  Grace caught her, pulled her back from the bed. ‘What are you doing in here? Where’s Nanny?’

  The arm round Cressida’s shoulder seemed a restraint, not offering any comfort. She said in a slow voice, ‘I want to see Daddy. I need to. Daddy, I …’

  The other nurse, the one without the suffocation mask, came to her other side. ‘Not now, dear. Best not now. Come and see your daddy tomorrow.’

  They were dragging her away, Grace and the nurse between them. They were almost at the door when she heard it. Anthony said distinctly, ‘Cressida.’

  ‘I’m here,’ she shouted, twisting and trying to duck out of their hands. She could hear him gasping and then the mask descended again. She was out in the corridor once more, with Grace. The door closed on them. Cressida saw that her mother did not look like herself. Her face seemed to have been peeled and left raw. It frightened Cressida to realize that for once Grace did not have the time or the strength to be angry with her.

  ‘I want you to stay with Nanny. Just stay downstairs with Nanny and Cook.’

  Cressida found the courage to confront her. ‘Is Daddy going to die?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Why are they putting that thing on his face?’

  ‘It’s an oxygen mask. They are giving him oxygen to help him to breathe.’

  Nanny appeared on the landing. ‘There you are. Where have you been? I’ve searched everywhere. Your tea is ready, Cressida. Come on with me, now, there’s a good girl.’ Nanny didn’t scold, either.

  Cressida thought of refusing, of making some effort to cling on to the door handle, so that they would have to prise away her fingers one by one. But then if she went and ate her tea and seemed to be good and normal as on any other day, then everything might somehow become normal again, and the ordinary, dull, blessed routines of everyday would descend. Cressida bent her head. ‘I’m coming,’ she said.

  She allowed Nanny to lead her away. Grace went back into the bedroom and Cressida plodded downstairs. She sat at the kitchen table and ate a boiled egg and bread and butter. After the bread and butter Cook gave her some iced biscuits, as if in some way she deserved a special treat. Cressida ate them in silence, staring at the black-leaded range and the line of polished pans suspended above it.

  ‘All right, ducky?’ Cook asked, exchanging glances with Nanny over her head.

  ‘Yes.’ Cressida contained her anxiety with weary economy.

  ‘That’s a good girl,’ Nanny said.

  A tray was laid for Grace, linen cloth and napkin, china and silver and tiny morsels of food, but it was sent back almost untouched. The doctor came back again, and this time he stayed. The telephone rang and was answered. More food was prepared, and sent up for the bird-of-prey nurses.

  Cressida’s neck and shoulders began to ache with the effort of sitting still, listening to muffled sounds and trying to decipher them. There was no sign of ordinariness descending again. She felt rather than saw the semaphoring of the servants above her head.

  ‘I want to see Daddy,’ Cressida said, when Nanny told her that it was bedtime. ‘Just to kiss him goodnight.’

  ‘No,’ they answered, ‘you can’t see him tonight, dear. Perhaps in the morning.’

  ‘Do you promise?’

  ‘We’ll see. Time for bed now, Cressida.’

  She went, and lay in her bedroom with the night-light burning. Grace did not come. The same disturbed silence weighted the house, a heavy and monotonous silence only broken on its surface by hurrying feet and opening doors. Once, before she fell asleep, Cressida heard Jake’s booming voice, cut short as yet another door closed. She dreamed of her father’s blue-lipped face and the black mask, grown huge and soft and shapeless, descending on it.

  Anthony lay in the ramparts of pillows. His mother and father came, tiptoeing beside the bed, but he did not know them. He did not know Jake either when Jake bent his dark head over him. His eyes were turned inwards, beneath closed lids, to a restless landscape of burning rocks and seething water pictured in the hot coals banked around his heart.

  Grace sat in the chair next to the bed, listening to the battles he fought for his breath. Sometimes the forces were regrouped and the attack remounted, and it seemed that they might win. She leant forward in her seat to look at his face, willing her own strength into him. But each time the attacks were beaten back and dispersed, and the gasps grew shallower, and wider spaced.

  For the last hour each breath that he took was a shudder, a sigh of pain. At the end Grace was praying that it would finish. Jake’s face was a black mask.

  Anthony died at twenty to four in the morning.

  It was October 28, 1929, the day before Wall Street crashed.

  ‘Leave me now,’ Grace said to them.

  Her voice was clear and high. There had been no tears yet. Jake made as if to stay behind, but she motioned him away with the others. When they had gone she sat down again, in the chair she had occupied all night, and took hold of Anthony’s hand. She felt as if their square tower had been reduced by some cruel alchemy to powder, dust, and now the tower slowly collapsed, falling inwards within itself, the dust whispering, until only a cold and meaningless heap of it was left.

  She looked at his face. It had closed up to her so quickly. He had been there and now he had gone, and she was left behind.

  She let her head fall forward so that it rested against his cold hand. She wanted to cry, to rail and moan and howl, but she could not.

  Cressida was screaming.

  ‘You wouldn’t let me. I wanted to see him. He called me, I heard him. I never said goodbye, and now I can’t because he’s dead. I only wanted to see him.’

  ‘I couldn’t let you into that room, Cressida. It was no place for a child.’

  Cressida’s face contorted. The terrible, obvious pressure of her grief threatened to crack it open. ‘I hate you. I loved Daddy.’

  The rage and venom were the more shocking because she had been such a silent, biddable child. Grace tried to hold her, but Cressida tore herself away. Grace did not know what to do, could think of nothing but removing her so that she could be alone again. She murmured to Jake, ‘Perhaps a sedative …?’

  ‘Let her grieve,’ Jake said.

  Nanny came and led her away, still sobbing and howling out her misery.

  Clio had come at once, but Grace would only see her briefly. They spoke on the telephone, when Grace finally accepted one of her calls.

  ‘We are postponing the wedding, of course.’

  ‘Why?’ Grace asked, with detached curiosity. ‘Anthony wouldn’t want you to do that. What difference could it possibly make, if you marry next week or next month?’

  ‘I just thought �
� with the funeral only two days before …’

  ‘Go ahead with your wedding, Clio. I don’t want you to postpone it.’

  Clio was embarrassed, and disconcerted to find that the square face of death was hung about with the little veils of her own social anxiety.

  ‘If that is what you want,’ she said, a little harshly.

  Grace seemed not to hear her. ‘It’s an odd irony, don’t you think, that I should lose my husband in the very week that you gain yours? We are like a pair of scales, perpetually unbalanced. A heavy weight in one pan, mysterious air in the other. Up and down, forever flying past each other.’

  ‘It is a cruel coincidence, yes,’ Clio said, unable to offer anything more.

  Grace was sitting in her grey and rose-pink drawing room. She had been intending to write letters, the first replies to the flood of condolences, but she had not even picked up her pen. She stared down at the morocco edge of the blotter, at her wrist emerging from the cuff of her black dress. The physical world was unchanged. It was lewdly overfull of rustling and clattering things, of photographs in silver frames and crystal decanters and fur coats and sugar tongs, and yet in the face of such overpopulation she had to learn to take account of a vacancy so complete that it defied nature.

  She could not measure the emptiness. When she tried to define it for herself the space ahead of her was trackless, unbroken by even a point of light. But yet it had to be measured, day by day. She had to travel through it because she was still alive. There was no objective, and no motive for travelling on except that she could not stop. Anthony had stopped. He had simply gone away, silently in the night, and this was the terrifying void in which he had left her.

  The old world, the real world, was equally fearsome. It was the crowded detail of it that frightened her. The trays of food and the engraved cards and the jewellery in velvet boxes had once been familiar, but were now hideously distorted by her sudden recognition of their irrelevance.

  Grace ran her fingers over the leather blotter, picked up her gold-nibbed pen and stared at it, then squared a sheet of her headed writing paper in front of her. None of these objects seemed related. Their pointless solidity was chilling.