by Siân James
He shot out his hand. ‘Goodbye, Great-Aunt. Thank you for the coffee.’
‘Mrs Gilchrist is not seriously ill, is she?’ Rosamund asked.
Lorna Drew shrugged her large capable shoulders. ‘Who knows! She certainly doesn’t like losing a battle.’
* * *
‘Shall we open our letters?’ Joss asked his mother some time later when they were sitting in the tube. They’d hardly spoken on their long walk to the station.
‘Yes, I suppose we’d better. Though I don’t think mine is going to be very pleasant.’
‘What’s this?’ Joss asked, handing her a large sheet of thick paper.
‘It’s a family tree. Look, Anthony Gilchrist m. Marjorie Spencer at the top. That means Anthony married Marjorie, your grandmother, who’s called Molly. And the vertical line from them leads to Alexander, who is Alex, their son and your father. And he married Selena Jennings and on the next line are their children, Jeremy and Harriet, who are your half-brother and sister. And the broken line from Alexander leads to you, Joshua.’
‘What a lot of new relations. A grandmother, a great-aunt, a father and a half-brother and sister.’ He had another look inside the envelope. ‘No fiver, though. I was expecting at least a fiver. Mum, what would we do if Grandmother left us a million pounds?’
Rosamund opened her letter. A thick white envelope lined with green tissue, one large sheet of paper. A message which looked as though it was written in Indian ink. ‘For Joshua’s sake, I forgive you. M.J. Gilchrist.’ She stared at it for a long time.
* * *
They had lunch with her father and Dora. A lovely summer lunch; cold salmon with avocado mousse and a salad of oranges, watercress and black olives. (‘Please may I have some tomato ketchup?’ Joss asked.)
In the afternoon Paul and Dora had volunteered to take Joss to see the fire-eaters in Covent Garden while Rosamund visited Erica.
‘I’m still sorry you opted out of the book,’ Dora said. ‘You’d have had such sympathy. You’d have done it marvellously, darling.’
‘All the same, I think Ingrid’s getting on very well. Erica has found all the details she needs, dates and so on, and her memory is wonderful. She could have been a writer herself, she brings scenes to life so vividly. When I was with her last she told me about a country wedding she and Anthony had been to forty years ago. And I’ve thought about it ever since.’
‘Oh, darling,’ Dora said when Joss had gone to watch television. ‘I do hope you’ll find Daniel improved. Apparently there’s a very good success rate. Once a person is determined to give it up, a cure is definitely on the cards.’
‘All the same, forty per cent of those cured have a relapse,’ Paul said. ‘Let’s not get carried away.’
‘Paul, you’re such a pessimist.’
‘Anyway, people aren’t getting married these days. And Rosamund’s surely old enough to be over wedding fever.’
‘She’s exactly the same age as I was when I married you. And I don’t remember hearing you say that to me. You certainly seemed as feverish as I was.’
‘I can’t help thinking that you were very, very lucky,’ Paul said.
* * *
Erica looked almost as old and ill as Molly. Ingrid had talked of her being happy and in high spirits, so that Rosamund had expected to find her rejuvenated, but she was melancholy and in pain.
‘It’s come too late,’ she said, ‘my little share of fame and fortune. If I make it to next winter, I’ll be in a nursing home, not a hotel in Florida.’
‘Everybody is entitled to bad days,’ Rosamund replied. ‘I was terribly depressed a few days ago, but now I’m ready for more. You’ll be better again when Ingrid’s back.’
‘She’s a good, cheerful girl, but she can’t work miracles. I’ve got a weak heart and crippling arthritis, and today I’m suffering from both.’
‘Don’t you have anything to take?’
‘Of course I have something to take. Like all healthy people you think pills and potions cure you. But all they do is confuse you and postpone your suffering.’ She sat up straighter in her chair. ‘Tell me about Anthony’s death,’ she said.
Rosamund swallowed hard. It was the last thing she’d expected. She struggled to keep her voice steady. ‘He was ill for almost six months. Joss was still a baby and my mother came to look after him so that I could nurse Anthony at home. He hated hospitals, as you probably remember.’
‘Did he talk about me?’ Erica’s voice trembled.
Rosamund paused, but decided on the truth. ‘Often when he was well, but not during his illness. At the end he talked only about his childhood, about his parents and his nanny. Sometimes he didn’t seem to know who I was. He’d smile very sweetly at me from time to time, but I don’t think he recognised me. I’d hold his hand and stroke it and he’d look at me kindly but quite blankly.’
‘I’ve been thinking so much about him lately.’
Rosamund thought about him too; the bony, intelligent face, sharp blue eyes, slow sensuous smile, his kindness. And some other characteristic too; something childlike and dangerous. ‘Writing the book has brought him back to you,’ she said.
‘Yes. And I’ve been wondering again whether these poems he wrote for me will harm his reputation.’
‘They won’t, Erica. He wanted them published after twenty years. All we’re doing is bringing that forward. Even Molly seems reconciled to it by this time.’
‘All the same, I’ve decided to postpone publication until the date he suggested. I’ve had my say, recalled my small part in his life, even mentioning that terrible abortion that shattered both of us. And in due course you can have it published. Ingrid and Ben will be disappointed by the delay; they’ve worked hard on it, but I’ve been able to leave their baby a little something in my will. Anyway, that’s my decision. The book – and his poems – will remain in the publishers’ hands until the time he mentioned.’
Rosamund realised that her mind was quite made up, that she intended to forgo the ready money and the longed-for luxuries which she’d surely deserved. ‘What will survive of us is love,’ she said softly.
* * *
On the way back in the tube, she still felt awed by Erica’s love and forgiveness. Anthony’s love had wavered after the trauma of the abortion, Molly’s had never been much more than pride and possessiveness, but Erica seemed to have asked nothing and given everything. In the crush of people around her, Rosamund felt she was celebrating something rich and rare.
* * *
‘You’ll never guess what happened at Erica’s,’ she said when she got back to Dora and Paul’s flat.
‘You’ll never guess what happened here,’ countered Dora.
‘Alex,’ Joss said. ‘Alex came.’
Rosamund and Dora stared at each other carefully, their eyes expressionless. ‘My father,’ Joss explained, disappointed at Rosamund’s lack of response. ‘He was very nice, a bit old, but very nice. He’s coming again when I’m sixteen, but till then he’s not too sure about visiting because he’s got to be in France a lot of the time. He said to give you his best wishes.’
Rosamund remained silent, so Joss turned back to his chess game with Paul, casting off a father as readily as he’d taken on a grandmother and a great-aunt.
Dora led Rosamund into the kitchen. ‘He phoned to ask if he could call. I told him you wouldn’t be here and he said that might be for the best.’
‘Lorna asked for your telephone number this morning. I wondered why she wanted it.’
‘He was very apologetic about letting his mother blackmail you, but says he’s completely in her power. He looked really old and sad; told us he’d had a nervous breakdown and lost his job. Nicely dressed, but with that sort of sloping figure you see on shuffling old men. There was something about him which made me feel very uneasy, perhaps because of what you’d told me about him. Oh Rosamund, I hope you don’t mind that I let him come here without consulting you. He didn’t have any time alone with
Joss – in fact, didn’t seem to want it. I chatted to him for a while, babbled on about nothing, you know how I do, and then gave him a cup of tea and a piece of chocolate cake. But Paul was rather rude to him, I’m afraid.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
Afterwards Rosamund remembered how apprehensive she’d felt before seeing Daniel that morning. She’d phoned the clinic the previous night but the nurse on duty had failed to bring him to the phone, which had often happened at the beginning of his stay, but not during the last two or three weeks. In itself that seemed a small thing; it was indeed possible that he’d gone for a stroll in the grounds as the nurse had suggested, but without the reassurance that he was coping with the treatment, that he was looking forward to seeing her, she felt a surge of unease which led to a restless night full of short, tormented dreams in which both Joss and Daniel seemed lost to her. By six o’clock she was sitting up in bed, determined not to fall asleep again and longing to hear the first sounds of Dora getting up for work.
She hadn’t seen Daniel for almost six weeks. The doctor in charge had advised her not to visit him nor to phone more than once a week, insisting that he had to go through it on his own, that she could do nothing for him – indeed, might hinder his progress. But she was now afraid he might think she’d purposely neglected him during those long, painful, empty days.
She got up as soon as she heard Dora leave the flat. By that time the heat was already intense, the sky a blinding blue. She had a shower and washed her hair, and after much indecision, wore a new white dress, short and simple, and white sandals.
‘You look like a bride,’ Joss told her when she came into the kitchen where he was already having breakfast.
‘No, you don’t,’ Paul said, seeing the startled look in her eyes. ‘You look quite ordinary. Someone off to play tennis or to the gymnasium.’
She smiled at both of them, hurried over her scalding coffee and left the flat before either of them could think of any other pleasantries.
Buses and tubes were stufty and crowded, and the half-mile walk to the clinic seemed endless; walking on hot, dusty city streets was very different from walking along tree-shaded country roads. Her head ached from tension and lack of sleep and the back of her eyes smarted. Two months ago she’d been eager to move to London, but now, whatever came of the meeting with Daniel, she realised she’d be very reluctant to leave the schoolhouse. She found herself sighing. What was the matter with her? Was it some premonition of disaster? Was she going to find that Daniel had had a relapse? Some serious illness? She sighed again; she couldn’t seem to pull herself together.
She tried to turn her thoughts to Erica; her unwavering loyalty to a man who had been unable to respond to her when she’d really needed him. ‘My valiant heart’ he’d called her in one of his last poems. And Erica was still valiant. The image of her disordered kitchen came to her; she was clearly not capable of managing alone any longer, but when she’d suggested that someone might come to live with her, she’d been adamantly against the idea, preferring discomfort, pain, danger, to the loss of dignity. Courage, it seemed to Rosamund, was the chiefest virtue. Courage, she told herself. She had the strongest feeling that she was going to need it.
The Cedars had once been a stately Edwardian residence, set in splendid isolation, but overlooking the main road to London. She could imagine a rich city gentleman with his family and retainers moving into the newly-built mansion with all its most modern features. Now though, it was very definitely a clinic or nursing home, far too big and impractical for even the richest family. It had white walls and a green-tiled roof, large curving windows, a round conservatory on one side and a turret on the other. Rosamund walked up the drive, her heart beating painfully against her ribs. She certainly wasn’t expecting any fairy-tale ending. ‘If he’s well, or even fairly well, I won’t ask anything more,’ she told herself. The black and white tiles of the porch were suddenly making a kaleidoscope of patterns in her head. It was the hottest day of the hot summer. She hoped she wasn’t going to faint.
The nurse who answered the bell was the one she’d met when she and Daniel had arrived. ‘He’s doing very well,’ she said, smiling carefully. ‘I’ll take you to his room. He’s with the psychologist at the moment but he’ll be finished by eleven.’ She opened the door of a light, pleasant room on the first floor, a large semi-circular window in one corner, a tiny kitchen annexe in the other. ‘Help yourself to tea or coffee. There’s milk in the fridge and possibly some biscuits in that tin.’
‘Thank you.’
‘He’s doing very well,’ the nurse repeated with the same closed expression.
Rosamund went to stand by the window and opened it wide, looking out at the large sloping garden and further away the sprawl of Richmond and Sheen. Had she imagined the embarrassed edge to the nurse’s words? ‘He’s doing very well, but…’
‘I’m not expecting a miracle,’ she told herself.
As she turned from the window, she caught sight of some drawings on the table. He’s drawing again, she thought. That’s wonderful. He’d told her he’d done no work for almost a year. And now he’d started drawing again. Just as she had.
She moved over to the table. The drawings were exquisite, that was her first reaction. The second was surprise, even shock; they were all nude studies of Marie. Not a titillating Venus, though, but a sad little Magdalene. Beautiful. She looked at them with awe.
* * *
‘Darling,’ Daniel said a few minutes later. ‘How lovely to see you.’ He came over and hugged her, holding her close for a moment or two.
‘Lovely to see you. You look marvellous, much younger. How do you feel?’
‘Pretty grim, to tell you the truth. It’s awful not to be able to shut things off. To have to face everything again. All of it. Life.’
‘Is it so bad?’
‘It’s hell. But I’m sticking it out now. And so grateful to you that I’m able to. She needs me so much, Rosie.’
Rosamund felt as though she was tapping about her with a white stick. ‘Marie?’ she asked.
‘Edmund didn’t even turn up for the funeral. He must have known about it. Everyone knew. Everyone was on the lookout for him.’
‘The funeral?’ But even before she’d asked the question she knew the answer. ‘Theodore,’ she said, her voice trembling.
She sat on a chair, putting her hands over her heart to steady it. She felt a pain spreading through her chest. Some weeks before she’d dreamed she was being shot by a firing squad; it seemed the same sensation of burning heat.
‘I wrote to you,’ Daniel said. ‘I thought you might have come. I was hoping you’d come. There was only her and me and her mother.’
It was then she started to cry; huge painful sobs raking through her chest. ‘Theodore,’ she said again, remembering too vividly his blue-veined eyelids, his careworn face, his little clawing hands.
‘I didn’t get a letter. I haven’t had any letter from you. I would have come, of course. Oh God. Oh poor, poor Marie. Oh God.’
‘You mustn’t take it quite so badly, Rosamund. They discovered he had a congenital heart disease and it got worse very rapidly. He was in hospital for two days and then just stopped breathing. He had every care.’
Rosamund cried until she was weak from crying, her eyes red and swollen, her throat burning. ‘Were you with her?’ she asked at last.
‘No, but she came here afterwards and they let her stay with me till the funeral. And she’s got no one else, Rosamund, no one to look after her, so I’ll have to be with her for a while. You understand, don’t you?’
‘Of course.’ Rosamund struggled to accept the implication of what he was telling her; the full implication.
‘And not just to be kind to her. But because I’m … because I’m … I’m very fond of her, Rosamund, feel right with her somehow, feel we belong together.’
‘Yes. Yes, I see. I understand … Where will you live?’
‘At Eversley Place until I
can find something better. I’m going to start painting again. I think I’ll be able to now.’
‘I’m sure you will.’ Rosamund dragged air into her lungs like someone rescued from drowning. ‘I’m sure you will. You have enormous talent, Daniel.’ Talking about work seemed strangely comforting. ‘I’ve been doing some figure-drawing myself, a new direction for me, and I thought mine were pretty good till I saw yours. Yours are superb. No, I’m not just being kind. If someone had shown me this and told me it was a Modigliani, I’d have been quite ready to believe it. It’s so delicate, the line so precise, so true.’
‘That’s the best I’ve done for a long time. I’d like you to have that one, Rosamund.’
‘I’d love it. Thank you. I’ll treasure it. And now, I’m sure you know what I’m going to say. Please go on working, Daniel. Please try to face life now, however hard it is.’
‘I’ll try. After all, you may not be around to rescue me a second time.’
They were silent for a moment or two, each aware of the other’s pain.
‘You and Marie must visit me,’ Rosamund said at last.
‘I’d like that. I’d like to see your work.’
‘I’ve got nothing worth showing you at the moment. All the same, I’ve restarted after a long sterile period, and that’s something. But I suppose I only carry on because I’ve got no other talent, no other commitment. Oh, I’ll probably manage to exhibit here and there, sell a few things and become, you know, a jobbing artist.’
‘That’s all any of us can hope for.’
Rosamund turned on him angrily. ‘Don’t patronise me. You and I are not in the same league, never have been, and you know it. You’ll become an important artist, Daniel Hawkins, and I’ll boast about having known you.’
‘In six months’ time I may be a junkie again.’
‘No, you won’t. You’ll have Marie to think about now. A life to build.’
‘If I ever do make anything of my life, I’ll owe it to you.’
‘What I did was for my own rotten ends. Because I wanted you.’