Lexie curled herself around him, pressed her ear to the side of his chest, heard the boom-swish-boom of his heart.
‘Checking it’s still going, are you?’ he said.
This she couldn’t bear. She clutched at him and felt tears prick her eyelids. ‘Innes, Innes, Innes,’ she muttered, like an incantation.
‘Hush,’ he whispered and his hand stroked her hair.
‘Mrs Kent,’ the nurse was suddenly there, ‘the only people allowed in these beds are my patients. This is most irregular. I must ask you to get down immediately.’
Innes gripped her tighter. ‘Does she have to, Sister? She’s very slim, as you can see. She doesn’t take up much room.’
‘Her physique is irrelevant, Mr Kent. You are a very sick man and I must ask your wife to leave. And you!’ She regarded Innes with a look of horror. ‘You have taken off your oxygen tube! Mr Kent, you are a very bad man.’
‘It’s been said before.’ Innes sighed.
Lexie slid reluctantly from the bed but Innes kept hold of her hand. ‘Do I really have to go?’
‘Yes.’ The nurse was firm, smoothing the covers, snapping Innes’s mask back into place. ‘You can come back tomorrow, two p.m.’
‘Can’t I come in the morning?’
‘No. Your husband is ill, Mrs Kent. He needs to rest.’
She bent to kiss Innes’s cheek. ‘Goodbye, husband,’ she murmured. Innes seized her, pulled her back down towards him and, removing the mask, kissed her full on the mouth. They drew apart, smiled, then kissed again.
‘Mr Kent!’ the nurse shrieked. ‘Stop! Stop this instant. Do you want to give your wife pleurisy as well? Put that mask back on.’
‘You are such a martinet,’ he said, ‘such a dominatrix. Has anyone ever told you that? You’d have made a wonderful general, had things turned out differently for you.’
‘It’s my job to see you get better.’ She whipped the curtains back. Lexie walked down the ward and waved from the end. Innes waved back. He was still arguing with the nurse.
When Lexie arrived the next day, he wasn’t wearing the mask any more and was propped up on some pillows with some pages in his lap. He snatched off his glasses when he saw her and patted the bed beside him.
‘Quick,’ he said. ‘Draw the curtains. Before the Gorgon sees you.’
Lexie pulled the curtains around the bed, then sat next to Innes. He immediately enveloped her in an enormous, crushing embrace. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I want to look at you.’
‘Too bad,’ he mumbled in her ear. ‘I want to touch you up.’ His hands roved down her leg, searching for the hem of her dress, then, having found it, dived upwards.
‘Innes,’ she murmured, ‘I really think this isn’t the place for—’
He pulled back and gazed at her face. ‘Oh, it’s so good to see you. I passed a foul night. I don’t know how anyone expects you to get well in hospital. You’re kept awake for hours by all the old codgers spluttering and snoring, and the minute you do fall asleep the nurses wake you up again, wanting to shove thermometers into you. It’s unbearable. I have to get out of here. Today. You have to help me persuade them.’
‘I’ll do no such thing.’
‘Why not?’
‘Innes, you’re ill. Pleurisy’s no joke. If they say you have to stay, you have to stay and—’ She broke off to look at him, then laughed. ‘Where did you get those?’ He was wearing a pair of strange striped blue and grey pyjamas. He had never owned such things before and looked extremely peculiar in them, as if he had borrowed someone else’s body.
‘They,’ he gestured towards the nurses’ station, ‘produced them from somewhere. I have to get out of here, Lex. I have to get back to work. The next issue’s going to press on—’
‘You don’t. We’ll manage. Somehow. You have to get well.’
He was about to protest when he was caught by a coughing fit. He hacked and spluttered, trying to draw breath. Lexie put her hands on his shoulders and held them as he struggled. The fit over, he lay back on the pillows, biting his lip. Lexie knew that look. It was one of fury, of thwartedness. He took her hand and folded it between both of his. ‘I love you, Jezebel. You know that, don’t you?’
She leant forward, kissed him, kissed him again. ‘Of course. I love you too.’
He turned his neck back and forth, as if he was trying to get comfortable. ‘We’ve been lucky, haven’t we?’
‘What do you mean?’ His hands, around hers, were hot, she noticed, and damp.
‘To find each other. Some people go their whole lives without finding what you and I have.’
Lexie frowned, then squeezed his hand. ‘You’re right. We are lucky. And we’re going to carry on being lucky.’ She pushed her features into a smile.
‘You haven’t minded too much, have you, about the other thing?’ He was staring at her, intently.
‘What other thing?’
‘The marriage thing.’
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘In all honesty, no.’
He smiled then. ‘Good.’ He fidgeted with the pillows. ‘I was thinking, though . . .’ He trailed away, reaching behind his head again to adjust the pillows.
She stood to help him. ‘What were you thinking?’
‘I’d like to talk to Clifford.’
‘Clifford?’ She had her back to him, pouring him a glass of water from the jug.
‘My lawyer.’
She turned, amazed. ‘Whatever for?’
He shook his head at the water. ‘About you.’
‘Me?’
‘I worry, you see, about what would happen to you if I died.’
‘Innes!’ Lexie slammed down the glass of water. ‘You are not going—’
He held a finger to her lips. ‘Sssh,’ he said, in a whisper. ‘My little firecracker.’ He smiled. ‘Always going off without warning.’ He pulled her to sit down next to him. ‘I don’t necessarily mean now. I just mean at some point. Being in here has made me think about it, that’s all. I haven’t even made a will. Never got round to it. And I should. Especially for you. Otherwise bloody Gloria will get the lot – not that there is much, as you know – and you’ll be out on your ear.’ He pinched her ear gently, then coiled a strand of her hair around his finger. ‘And I couldn’t bear that. I’d be unable to rest in peace. I’d be eternity’s most unhappy ghost. You are my wife and my life. You know that, don’t you?’
She caught his hand and kissed it crossly. ‘You bloody fool,’ she said. ‘Why are you saying all this? You’ve gone and ruined my mascara.’ She flopped down beside him, her body along his, and buried her face in his chest.
‘Will you ring Clifford for me? The number’s in my address book. Clifford Menks.’
She raised herself up on her elbow. ‘Innes, listen to me. You have to stop talking about this. I don’t like it one bit. You are not going to die. Or, at least, not any time soon.’
He smiled a lopsided smile. ‘I know. But ring him anyway, for me, will you? There’s a good girl.’
Innes died that night. His pleurisy developed into pneumonia. He died at around three a.m., of a fever and breathing difficulties. There was no one with him at the time. The nurse on duty had gone to fetch a doctor; when she returned with one, it was too late.
That Innes, the love of her life, had died alone: this, Lexie would never get over. That she had been sleeping, across the city, in their bed, at the time he drew his last breath, at the time his heart stopped its pulsing. That the doctor hadn’t been where he was supposed to be but taking a nap in a different room down the corridor. That they had tried to resuscitate him but failed. That she wasn’t there, that she didn’t know, that she couldn’t be with him and never would be again.
No one told her, of course. She was the illegal, unrecorded mistress in all this. She arrived at the hospital at two p.m. sharp, jaunty, with a bunch of violets, a newspaper, two magazines, his favourite cashmere scarf. Two nurses headed her off and took her into a room; one was the sister she�
�d met on the first night.
‘I’m sorry to tell you, Miss,’ she leant on that word, she wanted Lexie to hear that she knew and perhaps had known all along, ‘that Mr Kent died last night.’
Lexie thought that she was about to drop the magazines. She had to clutch at them, at their slippery covers. She said, ‘He can’t have.’
The sister looked at the ground between them. ‘I’m afraid he did.’
She said, simply, ‘No.’ She said it again. ‘No.’ She put down the violets, very carefully, on a table. The magazines and newspaper she placed next to them. She was aware of thinking that she needed to behave well, that she ought to be polite. On the table, she noticed, there was a glass vial of some kind, a pair of tongs, a lid that didn’t appear to fit the vial.
‘Where is he?’ she heard her voice say.
There was a silence behind her so she turned. Both nurses were looking vaguely embarrassed. ‘His wife . . .’ one of them began, then stopped.
She waited.
‘His wife came,’ the sister said, still avoiding her eye. ‘She has made all the arrangements.’
‘Arrangements?’ Lexie repeated.
‘For the body.’
Lexie could see this scene clearly in her head. Gloria arriving at the ward. Or would he have been moved to another room? Yes, they did that, didn’t they, in hospitals, stripping the bed as soon as possible for the next person? Innes would have been taken, then, to a morgue, she supposed, or a room somewhere. She pictured Gloria arriving at the morgue – which in her mind Lexie placed in the basement – her heels tap-tapping across the floor, her hair swept up, rigid, her hands encased in gloves, her pallid child behind her. She would have examined the body – which was her body, Lexie’s body, the body of her beloved, her darling – with those glacial eyes of hers. Lexie could see her doing this with a handkerchief pressed to her mouth, more for effect than anything else. Would she have worn a hat with a veil? Almost definitely. Would she have lifted the veil to look upon her husband for the last time? Almost definitely not. Would she have touched him, laid a hand upon him? Lexie doubted it. How long had she spent with him? Would she have spoken to him? Would the child? Then Lexie could see her leaving, moving into another room where she would request to use a telephone, where she could begin making her arrangements.
‘May I see him?’ Lexie asked the nurses. She was moving to gather her things, readying herself, when she became aware of their silence. She listened to it. She felt it. She tested its length, its breadth. She could have put out her tongue and tasted it. ‘I want to see him,’ she said, in case they had not understood, in case they had not heard her, in case it was not quite clear. She even said, ‘Please.’
The sister made a movement with her head that was somewhere between a shake and a nod. And something seemed to break in her then because her voice was suddenly kind. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Family members only.’
Lexie had to swallow. Twice. ‘Please,’ she whispered this word, ‘please.’
The nurse shook her head this time. ‘I’m sorry.’
A noise came out of her then, something like a shout or a cry or a sob. Lexie clapped her hand over her mouth to stop it. She knew she had to stay in control because there were things she needed to know and if she cried as she wanted to she would never get to find out these things and somehow she knew this was her only chance. When she was sure the noise within her had been pressed down, for now, she spoke again. ‘Can you tell me this?’ she said. ‘Just this. Is he still here or did she take him away?’
‘I can’t say,’ the sister said, after glancing at the other nurse.
Lexie leant towards her, as if she was able to detect a lie just by smell. ‘You can’t say or you don’t know?’
The other nurse made a slight movement. ‘I believe . . .’ she muttered, then stopped. The sister frowned at her. The nurse shrugged, glanced at Lexie, then drew breath and said, ‘I believe Mr Kent’s body was taken away earlier today. Around lunchtime.’
Lexie nodded. ‘Thank you. I don’t suppose you know where?’
‘I don’t.’
And Lexie believed her. And because there was nothing left for her in the building, she began to leave. She picked up the violets, she transferred them to the hand still holding Innes’s scarf, and how incredible it was to see it still there; it was like an artefact from another age. It seemed impossible that it was only an hour or so ago that she had selected it from their cupboard for him to wear, impossible that there had been a time so recent that she did not know he had died.
He had died.
She looked at the nurses and already her vision was beginning to swim and melt with tears. ‘Thank you,’ she said, because she meant to remain composed, to hold herself together, until she was away from there, and she opened the door and stepped through. She could not look at the door to the ward, she could not look towards the bed where he had lain, where they had lain, only a few hours before, and where he had died, without her. She pushed herself through the hospital air into the corridor, she walked down it and out into the city, alone.
PART TWO
Lexie sails along Piccadilly, bag slung over her arm. Felix finds himself weaving behind her, in her wake, dodging the crowds. Decked out in large sunglasses and a startlingly short coat, Lexie is attracting more than perhaps her fair share of admiring glances. As she reaches the gates to Green Park, Felix catches up with her and takes her by the arm, pulling her to a stop. ‘Well?’ he says.
‘Well what?’
‘Are you coming to Paris or not?’
She rearranges the collar of her coat – really it’s too much, covered with black and white squiggles that make Felix’s eyes ache; wherever does she find these things? – and tosses her hair over her shoulder. ‘I haven’t decided yet,’ she says.
Felix takes a breath. She is, without doubt, the most infuriating woman he has ever known. ‘Hasn’t anything I’ve said made an impression on you?’
‘I’ll let you know,’ she says, and her sunglasses flash as she turns her head away to look down the street.
He is seized with an urge to shake her, slap her. But she would no doubt slap back and his face is becoming more and more recognised: he can tell by the way people look at him, quickly, then away. He really could not be involved in a public brawl on Piccadilly.
‘Darling,’ he says, and he pulls her towards him, trying to ignore the fact that she immediately withdraws her arm, ‘listen to me, the very last place I’d like you to be is in the middle of a riot. But if you came with me you’d be safe. And I could introduce you to people. The right kind of people. Maybe it’s time.’
‘Time for what?’
‘To ...’ Felix circles his hand in the air, wondering where he is going with this ‘. . . to widen your scope a little. Professionally speaking.’
‘I have no desire,’ she snaps, ‘to widen my scope. Whatever that may mean.’
He sighs. ‘Look, the point is, you wouldn’t have to come for work. You could just come.’
Her sunglasses flash again as she looks back at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You could come . . . with me.’
‘In what capacity?’
‘As my . . .’ He realises he is on shaky ground now but something forces him on. ‘Look, I can put you down as my secretary, there won’t be a problem, a lot of people do it and—’
‘Your secretary?’ she repeats. More glances from around them. Do these people know who he is? It’s impossible to tell. ‘You seriously think I might agree to that, to drop everything and just—’
‘All right, all right,’ he says soothingly, but Lexie, as ever, is unsoothable. ‘Not my secretary. That was a bad idea. How about as my—’
‘Felix,’ she says, ‘I’m not coming to Paris as your anything. If I come it will be as a journalist. In my own right.’
‘So you might come?’
‘Perhaps.’ She shrugs. ‘Someone on the news desk this morning was asking me how g
ood my French was. They want civilian stories. Interviews with the ordinary people of Paris. That kind of thing.’ She narrows her eyes. ‘The phrase “a female touch” was mentioned twice, of course.’
‘Really?’ Felix is at once excited and relieved but tries to show neither. ‘So you wouldn’t be out on the barricades?’
She removes her sunglasses with a flick of her wrist and regards him with narrowed lids. Felix, despite himself, despite their argument, which has now lasted an entire lunch, feels a stirring in his groin. ‘I’ll be wherever the ordinary people are. Which I believe, in a state of emergency such as this, is everywhere, barricades included.’
The Hand That First Held Mine Page 19