We That Are Left

by Clare Clark

  Jessica supposed she should be glad that her future was finally to be settled. She was glad. The Season might have its longueurs, all those grisly girls’ lunches and tedious tea parties, but what other way was there really of meeting anybody? By the following spring the War would be almost forgotten. All the men would finally be demobbed and the world would go back to normal. As for the ghastly Mrs Maxwell Brooke, she had to admire her father’s tactics. He knew as well as Jessica that Eleanor would never permit Mrs Maxwell Brooke to get her hands on her daughters. It was no more than a threat, a warning shot to bring her mother back to her senses. She had not reckoned her father so cunning.

  She would have to give up Woman’s Friend, of course. It had been fun but it had only ever been a temporary arrangement. Like Gerald. They had served their purpose. She had got what she wanted. Everything was just exactly as she had planned it. She could not understand why victory did not feel more triumphant.

  She told Nanny that one of the girls from the office was throwing a dinner to celebrate her birthday. Gerald insisted on sending an invitation, Mrs John Roylance, At Home, with Jessica’s name inscribed in careful copperplate. He sent his car for her. His chauffeur would not tell her where they were going.

  They drove to the Savoy. Gerald was waiting in the American Bar. He was thinner than she remembered, his face burned brown from the sun. It made the hair at his temples look very white. He kissed her cheek and ordered champagne cocktails. He jiggled his leg restlessly as he waited, his fingers drumming the table. When the waiter brought the drinks Gerald took them from the tray before the man could place them on the table. He handed one to Jessica.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ he said.

  Jessica touched her glass to his and sighed happily, watching the sugar cube fizz in the bottom of the glass. The cocktail was the colour of old gold. ‘I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you,’ she said.

  Gerald drained his glass. ‘You know what they say about absence.’

  ‘Not you, silly. I was talking to the champagne.’

  She had barely drunk half of hers when he ordered two more. Then, reaching into his pocket, he produced a long thin box of scarlet leather, tooled in gold. Jessica eyed it excitedly, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.

  ‘Open it,’ he said.

  She glanced around the crowded bar. It was a very public place to receive an expensive present. ‘Do you think we should wait till dinner?’

  ‘Open it.’

  She hesitated. No one was paying them the least attention. Turning a little so that her face was in shadow she undid the gold latch and gasped.

  ‘Do you like it?’ he asked, lifting the diamond bracelet from its silk nest. She held out her hand so that he could fasten the clasp around her wrist.

  ‘Oh, Gerald,’ she sighed and she leaned forward to kiss him, admiring the bracelet over his shoulder. ‘It’s divine.’

  ‘Diamonds suit you.’

  ‘They do, they really do.’ She frowned, puzzled, as he stood. His second drink was already gone. ‘Are we going?’

  ‘Not just yet. There’s just something I have to do. I won’t be a moment. Oh, and this is for you too.’ He reached into his pocket and brought out another scarlet box. It was smaller than the other and square. He put it on the table. ‘Open it while I’m gone.’

  She sipped at her drink as he squeezed through the crush towards the lobby, her eyes sliding back again and again to admire the new bracelet. The diamonds glittered, bright flashes of fire. The box on the table was the right size for a ring. Could it possibly be that he meant to propose? The idea was absurd, they neither of them had the least interest in marriage, they were supposed to be having fun, but at the same time the thought sent a tremor of excitement through her. She could never marry Gerald, could she? She looked once more at the bracelet, turning her wrist from side to side. Then, biting her lip, she opened the second box. Inside, folded very small, was a piece of paper. She took it out. There was something inside the paper, something round, hard. Her heart stopped.

  Her fingers trembling, she unfolded the paper. She felt nothing, only the dizzy sense of a hole opening inside her, ready for whatever it was she was about to feel to rush into.

  The ring was a plain gold band. She stared at it and then at the piece of paper. Gerald’s handwriting was cramped and spiky, a few words huddled in the middle of the page.

  His Excellency

  At Home

  Room 116

  Dinner 9 p.m.

  She put the ring back in its box and put the box in her evening bag. She waited but he did not come back. At a quarter past nine she took the ring out of her bag. Slipping it onto her wedding finger, she went into the lobby.

  ‘Perhaps you could telephone up to my husband in room 116,’ she said to the concierge, ‘and ask him to come down?’

  The concierge eyed her left hand as he spoke. The ring was yellow and very shiny, like a curtain ring. Then he replaced the receiver. ‘Your husband asks if you would join him upstairs, madam. Do you have any additional luggage?’

  Jessica waited for another five minutes. She watched the elaborate doors of the elevators open and close. There was no sign of Gerald. Several of the hotel guests glanced at her quizzically as they passed. Jessica knew quite well that a well-dressed young girl alone in a hotel lobby at this time of night attracted attention. She knew that Gerald knew it too.

  ‘At last,’ he said when he opened the door.

  ‘You deserted me,’ Jessica said.

  ‘In a very good cause, I assure you. Come in.’

  ‘I don’t know—’

  ‘Dinner is ready.’ When she still hesitated he took her hands and pulled her inside. The room was a drawing room with oil paintings and watered-silk walls and a marble-topped table crowded with orchids. There were doors on either side of the room, both of them closed. At least one of them, she supposed, was a bedroom. Long windows led out onto a balcony where a table had been laid with candles in silver candelabra. A waiter in white gloves stood beside a trolley laden with silver dishes. The candles guttered a little in the evening breeze.

  ‘Happy birthday, darling,’ Gerald said. Jessica hesitated. She could feel the throb of the unseen bedroom like a pulse from behind its panelled door. She looked at the waiter and then at Gerald. ‘Ambassador,’ she said.

  The balcony looked out over the river. Beyond the trees the black water was brilliant with moonlight. They ate oysters, the first of the season, plump and silky and heady with the scent of the sea, and drank champagne. The waiter moved around them unobtrusively, disappearing into the drawing room between courses, but his presence reassured Jessica. Slowly she allowed herself to relax. Gerald was in ebullient spirits. He had purchased an aeroplane, he told her, and begun flying lessons. His stories were hair-raising and entirely preposterous. He told her his teacher was a Russian émigré, an aristocrat who had fled the revolution with only the diamonds in his pockets. He was also teaching Gerald to speak Russian. Gerald said that there was no point in reading Pushkin unless you could read him in Russian.

  ‘When will you have time to sleep?’ Jessica joked but he only shook his head and said that he had wasted enough time already. They ate scallops and lobster and tiny paupiettes of sole in a sauce of cream and dry vermouth. When the waiter prepared crêpes Suzette, the blue and gold flames leaping and dancing against the dark sky, she clapped her hands together in delight and the diamonds on her wrist flashed. Gerald watched as she ate slowly, luxuriously, licking the rich syrup from her spoon. She smiled at him as the waiter slid her plate away, folding her hands under her chin. She could feel the hard circle of the ring against her jawbone. One day, she thought, when she was married she would live like this, in a suite with orchids and a telephone beside the bath.

  ‘Where next?’ she said. ‘We don’t want to waste time.’

  ‘You don’t like it here?’

  ‘I love it. But I want to go dancing.’

  ‘Haven’t you had
enough of dancing?’

  ‘I’m twenty. No one has had enough of dancing when they’re twenty.’

  The waiter cleared the last of the dishes. Gerald nodded at him and slipped a note into his gloved hand. The trolley rattled softly as he pushed it across the drawing room, closing the door to the suite behind him.

  ‘So,’ Gerald said, leaning over the table. He slid his fingers between hers. Jessica bit her lip. She felt giddy with wine and apprehension. It was like a carousel whirling too fast. She could not think how to make it stop.

  ‘Gerald . . .’

  He smiled, dipping his free hand into his pocket. ‘Another present.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t want any more presents. I want to dance.’

  ‘Too bad. Sit.’ She hesitated, half out of her chair. ‘Sit,’ he said again and he put a small silver snuff box on the table between them. It was oval with a clasp shaped like a hand. Inside, instead of snuff, there was a little heap of white powder and, tucked inside the lid, a tiny silver spoon. Gerald dipped the spoon in the powder. Putting it to one nostril he shut the other with the ball of his thumb and inhaled sharply. He tipped his head back, his fingers pressing either side of his nose, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again he smiled at her. His eyes glittered. He held the spoon out to Jessica.

  ‘Your turn,’ he said.

  She knew what it was. Since the scandal of the chorus girl who died, the newspapers had worked themselves into a frenzy about the drug mania gripping London, a murky underworld of Chinamen and opium dens, of needle dancers and snow snuffers. They muttered darkly about dope fiends, an epidemic of depravity and vice. The chorus girl had died in a room at the Savoy. Jessica shook her head.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said.

  ‘Trust me, you’ll adore it. It’s like champagne without the hangover.’

  ‘Isn’t it against the law?’

  ‘Only if you get caught. Don’t be a bore, darling. It’s your birthday. Everyone should break the law on their birthday.’

  He was smiling but she recognised the notch between his eyebrows, the challenge in his eyes. He meant to make her do it. She thought of the Allenburys cocaine pastilles Nanny had given them when they had sore throats, the pretty blue-and-gold tin decorated with flowers. Eleanor had sent morphine and cocaine lozenges to Theo at the Front. The chemist in Mount Street advertised them in The Times. They were said to be good for the nerves.

  ‘If I do it do you promise we can go dancing?’

  ‘We can do anything you want to. It’s your birthday.’

  She hesitated. Then she took the spoon. The hit was sharp, corrosive, as though she had snuffed scouring powder. Her eyes watered. She swallowed, tasting bitterness at the back of her throat. The inside of her nostril felt numb.

  ‘It doesn’t taste as nice as champagne,’ she said, wrinkling her nose. Gerald smiled. He scooped another tiny spoonful and held it out to her.

  ‘Now the other side,’ he said. As she snorted he licked his finger and, dipping it into the powder, rubbed it against his gums. He closed his eyes, pressing his lips together. Then, opening them, he held out his hands. ‘Shall we dance?’

  ‘Without music?’

  ‘I’ll sing. It’ll be marvellous.’ Throwing back his head, he began a falsetto warbling so tuneless Jessica could not help but laugh. When he seized her around the waist, she did not resist him. Singing at the top of his voice, he spun her round the room until she was dizzy and breathless with laughter and filled with a sudden reckless exhilaration that fizzed in her toes and the roots of her hair. She kicked off her shoes, feeling the thick plush of the carpet under her stockinged feet.

  ‘Another,’ she commanded but Gerald pulled her close and pressed his mouth to hers. She pushed him away.

  ‘Another,’ she insisted. ‘I’m dancing and so are you.’

  ‘Let’s dance in here,’ he said and, catching her by the hand, he pushed open one of the drawing-room doors. The lamps were lit, the curtains drawn. The bed was enormous, the corner of the sheet turned back invitingly, like a hitched-up skirt. She turned, the elation shrivelling inside her, pulling her hand from his. He caught her from behind, his hands encircling her waist.

  ‘Darling,’ he murmured, his breath hot against her neck. She tried to pull free but he did not let go.

  ‘You said we’d go dancing,’ she protested.

  ‘You’ll like this kind of dancing better.’ He slid his hands upwards, his fingertips finding her breasts, his mouth moving over the nape of her neck. The press of his tongue made her shiver, despite herself. ‘Do you know how long I’ve waited to do this? My God, you adorable creature, you’ve been driving me mad.’

  ‘I . . . I can’t.’

  ‘But you want to, don’t you? You want to.’ And she did not answer because she did want to, not in her head but in the nerves that crackled and flashed like fireworks through her body, electrified by his fingers, the warm insistence of his tongue. Her heart was racing. She could hear the voice in her head telling her to stop but it was so faint and far away and her body so thrilling and present and alive, and anyway what did it matter, she was in a hotel room alone with Gerald, whatever the damage it was already done, and she could not stop him now, not even if she wanted to, not without a terrible scene, and the evening had been perfect, with the exquisite dinner and the diamond bracelet, oh God, the bracelet, and after all wasn’t life for living, and . . .

  And then she was lying on her back on the silk counterpane and her dress was pushed up around her waist and Gerald’s mouth was on her stomach and his fingers were sliding up between her thighs and under the silk of her French knickers.

  ‘Oh,’ he murmured, tugging at the buttons of his trousers. ‘Oh God.’

  When he thrust himself inside her the pain was like a punch, sending her reeling back to herself. She stared at the ceiling as he strained on top of her, bracing herself against the bruising ram of him, over and over. It seemed to take him a long time. Then, with a cry, he pulled out of her, his shrivelling erection pulsing pale slime onto her thigh. The sight was disgusting. She turned her head, the weight of him sprawled across her like a big game trophy, and wondered if she looked different, now that she was no longer a virgin.

  29

  Some day, Oscar supposed, summer would end but, as he drifted dreamily through that sun-drunk August, it did not seem that way. Phyllis came to Cambridge every Sunday. She said it was too hot to be in London. They lay together on a blanket beneath the shaded canopy of a weeping willow, watching the patterns the sun made on the feathery leaves above them. The shimmer of the river pierced the low branches, casting trembling stripes of light across their bare feet. The tree was ancient, its trunk several feet across. Bent low, the tips of its leaves trailing in the water, it formed a green curtain that concealed them completely. Sometimes they heard laughter from the water, the dip and splash of other rowers passing by, though few made it so far upriver. They left their own boat a little downstream, tied to a post slippery with moss. They had no desire to attract attention.

  Beneath the willow the grass was sparse. They brought a picnic rug and the cushions from the boat and a wicker basket unwieldy with books. Oscar rigged up a contraption made of string so that they could trail bottles of beer in the water to keep them cool. Phyllis liked beer. She drank it from the bottle, the foam sometimes spilling over her chin. They ate sandwiches, feeding the crumbs to the curious moorhens who peered at them from beneath the willow’s fringed hem, their scarlet beaks pulled up over their faces like Venetians at a masked ball. Phyllis told Oscar about the Egyptian gods, about Osiris and Isis and their jealous brother Set. He tried unsuccessfully to explain Einstein.

  She always brought her books. She read them under the tree, her head resting on his stomach. She did not stop when he protested. She kissed him and said she had lost too much time already. She told Oscar to bring books of his own but he read hers instead. It made him feel closer to her. Once he read that the ancient
Egyptians had been the first to wear rings on the third fingers of their left hands as a symbol of love because they believed that particular finger contained the vena amoris, a vein or nerve that ran directly to the heart. The idea charmed him but when he showed it to Phyllis she only laughed.

  ‘A rumour started by a seventeenth-century English lawyer,’ she said. ‘Citing unidentified ancient sources never since substantiated. The Egyptians knew nothing of the circulation of the blood and their rings were intended to appease the gods, not their husbands. But then isn’t that what lawyers do, take something magical and reduce it to matrimony?’

  She brought him little presents too, things he had not seen since before the War: bananas from Jamaica, French nectarines, a bar of melting Belgian chocolate. They ate it slowly, luxuriously, licking the sweetness from their fingers. He was not surprised then when, on the third Sunday in August, she produced a brown paper package from her bag. It was the size of a short, very fat cigar. He smiled. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Happy birthday.’ He looked at her, then at the package. He felt sick. He had never told her about his mother’s lie. He had never told anyone. ‘Open it.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have—’

  ‘Open it.’

  Reluctantly he tore open the brown paper to reveal another layer of wrapping, newspaper, slightly yellowed. The newspaper was in Arabic.

  ‘Like Pass the Parcel,’ he joked and he tried to hand it back to her but she only raised an eyebrow and shook her head. He hesitated. Then he pulled away the newspaper. Inside was a small clay figure, shaped like a mummy. Though its body was crudely formed, beneath its grey headdress its face had been painstakingly shaped and painted in ochre. Its chipped clay lips were pursed and its heavily kohled eyes gazed out at Oscar with undisguised suspicion. On its whitewashed chest it bore a column of hieroglyphics painted in black, at the top an eye, then below that an upended T and finally a shallow curve with a dot at its centre. The curve was thicker at one end than the other where the paint had been smudged. A black line topped with a half-circle was painted along one side of its body.