We That Are Left Page 10

  Or so he claimed.

  The faster an object moves, the vaster it becomes. Where was it the War was hurtling, as it grew bigger and bigger and blotted out the sun? Oscar no longer cared. He no longer cared whether he was German or English or Mandarin Chinese. In Berlin at this very moment there was a boy just like him, his eyes raw from reading, his stomach tipped upside down by the monstrous prospect of war, and in a matter of months one of them would kill the other, and why? Because he happened to be there.

  He closed his eyes, leaning his head against the upholstered seat, and reached out for Jessica. Kiss me, he said. Kiss me and let me live.

  Two days before the school was due to break up for the Easter holidays a water tank burst in the attic of Oscar’s boarding house. The torrent of water flooded the building and brought down several ceilings on the upper floors. The boys had to be evacuated. It was not safe for them to stay. Camp beds were hastily put up for the younger boys in other houses but, with lessons all but finished for the term, the Sixth Form boys were asked to go home.

  The boys sent telegrams, summoning mothers and chauffeurs. Oscar did not bother. The sight of the telegraph boy with an envelope would only mean agonies for every mother in his street. Besides he always went home by train.

  It was a little before seven when he reached Clapham. The unlit sky was bright with stars and, beyond the black ramparts of the chimney pots, the moon was a sliver of phosphorus. The house was dark, the blackout curtains drawn, but when he pushed open the front door he saw that the lamps in the back parlour were lit. After months of daylight raids the Gotha bombers now flew at night. He shut the front door quickly behind him.

  ‘Mother?’ Dropping his suitcases he opened the parlour door. His mother rose from her chair by the fire, knocking a book from its arm. Flustered, she bent to pick it up. Her cheeks were pink. On the other side of the fireplace, in Oscar’s chair, sat Sir Aubrey Melville.

  ‘Oscar, darling, whatever are you doing home?’ she said, embracing him. ‘Tell me you haven’t been expelled?’

  ‘There was a flood. They sent us home early. Sir Aubrey. Please, don’t get up.’

  ‘Oscar, old chap. What a pleasant surprise.’

  Sir Aubrey’s grip was firm but Oscar still could not quite bring himself to believe that he was real. Sir Aubrey did not belong in their cramped parlour in Clapham. He belonged with all the other Melvilles in their gilt frames at Ellinghurst, with its stone shields and vaulted ceilings and the suit of armour that the Black Prince had worn at Poitiers. It shamed Oscar that Sir Aubrey would know that they did not have servants or a billiard room or stained-glass windows with their family crests, and the realisation that it shamed him shamed him more. On the cabinet behind the door there was a bottle of whisky, another of ginger wine. He supposed Sir Aubrey had brought them. There had never been any sign of rationing at Ellinghurst.

  ‘Look at you,’ Sir Aubrey said. ‘It’s been a long time.’

  ‘Aubrey has very kindly been advising me on some business matters,’ Oscar’s mother explained. She smiled blandly at Sir Aubrey who nodded and glanced at the clock.

  ‘I should be off,’ he said. ‘I’m late already.’ He shook Oscar’s hand once more. ‘Good to see you again, old chap.’

  ‘You too, sir.’

  They waited as his mother fetched Sir Aubrey’s coat and hat. When he had put them on she touched her cheek to his.

  ‘I’ll write,’ she said. ‘Love to Eleanor and the girls.’

  The door clicked shut. Oscar’s mother leaned against it, closing her eyes. Then she opened them again and looked at Oscar.

  ‘We have to talk,’ she said.

  She had meant to tell him, she said. She had never intended it to be a secret. But the War had come and then conscription and she had not wanted to frighten him any more than he was frightened already. For all of the last long year she had hoped against hope that something would happen, that somehow there would be an end to it and she would be able to confess it, not easily but without this sickening dread, when it no longer mattered any more. Except that there had been no end. The War went on and on, grimly, bloodily, the lines moving neither forwards nor back but only down, deeper and deeper into the shattered earth. It would not be over in six weeks.

  She was so very sorry.

  He shook his head. It was too much to take in. She poured him a glass of whisky which he did not drink. She drank some herself. It had been her decision, she told him. She had done it to protect Joachim. Then she shook her head. She had done it to appease her parents. They were already unhappy enough that she meant to marry a penniless composer, and if they had suspected impropriety they would have refused to have anything further to do with them. She would not have minded, only without their help they could not afford to live. They had married quickly and very quietly, against her father’s wishes, and gone away to France. When they returned they were a family of three.

  She opened a cardboard file and handed him a thin piece of paper. His birth certificate, issued by the British Consul in Paris. Oskar Julius Grunewald, born to Joachim Otto Grunewald and Sylvia Margaret Grunewald née Carey on 23 April 1900. His call-up papers would arrive in four weeks. She had asked for Sir Aubrey’s help because she remembered him talking once about a lawyer friend of his whose work these days was all in tribunals. Sir Aubrey had already been in touch with him. The examinations were close, only a couple of months away, but Sir Aubrey was sure that a deferment might be obtained until they were over. He had promised to write personally to the tribunal to plead Oscar’s case.

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Because he can. Because he’s fond of you and you’re Eleanor’s godson and I asked him and like all of us he’s had enough of this bloody awful War. Oh, darling, what does it matter why? He wants to help. He will help.’

  Oscar went upstairs. He did not draw the blackout. He lay on his bed in the darkness. Beyond the window the sky was alive with stars, the moon so sharp that the intersecting spars of the window frame threw a shadow like a black cross across his stomach. A marked man, he thought. He did not move. Above the chest of drawers, the glass on the wall gleamed like oil, spilling a shimmering smear of light over the polished wood. Light is not a continuous wave but exists in lumps known as quanta. The aether is just another word for nothing. And Oscar Greenwood? A boy with the wrong name and the wrong age and seventeen sunny August birthdays that were not his to have.

  9

  On 23 April Oscar’s mother sent him a card. It came in a plain brown envelope. On the last night of the holidays she had told him that she did not expect him to keep it a secret, that it was all right to tell people the truth if he wanted to, and he had lost his temper and asked her if she thought he was stupid. He had said that the only thing that could possibly be worse than being German at his school was being a German’s bastard. His mother had folded herself up then and nodded and said that she was sorry, and he had wanted to say that he was sorry too, only he wasn’t. He was the angriest he had ever been. The card was a cardboard frame with curly edges into which she had put a picture of the two of them in the garden at Clapham. There was no funny poem, no sketches of Oscar as an old man or setting himself on fire with his birthday candles. It did not even say happy birthday, just, Thinking of you, my darling, today and always, Mother. Oscar put it in his drawer, under his socks.

  The next day he received his call-up papers and a letter from Sir Aubrey enclosing the application form for a temporary exemption.

  The tribunal took place on a Wednesday in May. Oscar was summoned to attend. By then he had already undergone an Army medical and been declared fit. He told the school there was a family emergency.

  Sir Aubrey’s lawyer, Mr Rawlinson, had a magnificent stomach and the air of a man with somewhere more important to be. He sailed with implacable calm past the waiting clusters of jittery-legged boys, Oscar trailing in his wake. In court he looked at his watch and read out the letter from Sir Aubrey as if he were recit
ing a shopping list. When the colonel acting on behalf of the Military Representative asked Oscar to clarify the precise reason for his application Mr Rawlinson’s sigh was audible.

  The tribunal took less than five minutes to dismiss Oscar’s application. The colonel stated firmly that if men of mature age had been required to give up occupations there could be no reason to exempt a man who was yet to earn a living. Glaring at Oscar he instructed him to report for duty without further delay. Mr Rawlinson appeared unperturbed. He told Oscar it was to be expected, that the South London Military Representative took a notoriously hard line, and he told Oscar to go back to school. That afternoon he lodged an appeal.

  For nearly three weeks Oscar studied for his examinations, not sure whether he would be at school to sit them. He returned to London to attend his appeal. The case was scheduled for first thing in the morning so he was obliged to travel up the night before. At Charing Cross a train had just arrived from Southampton and the station was crowded with army vehicles and ambulances and wounded servicemen hunched over their kitbags. The Germans had reached the Marne. They were closer to Paris than they had been at any time since the start of the War. On a wall outside the station a tattered poster read: THE WOMEN OF BRITAIN SAY ‘GO!’

  He arrived at the house in Clapham just as his mother walked up the street. He knew there had been shortages, even with the rationing, but it was still a shock to see how thin she was. There were shadows like bruises under her eyes. He asked her if she was ill, if she had seen a doctor, but she only rolled her eyes at him and told him even doctors could not help people getting older. She did not take off her coat and hat. Instead, she held an envelope up in front of her face. The paper was the same colour as her skin.

  ‘It’s here,’ she said and she coughed, the pain twitching at her face.

  ‘Are you really all right?’

  ‘Of course I am. It came yesterday so I thought it safer not to send it on. Go on, you goose, open it. I’m dying of suspense.’ Awkwardly, her arms stiff, she tried to shrug her coat from her shoulders. As she twisted she gasped, her face suddenly ashen.

  ‘Mother, what is it?’

  ‘What will it take to have you put me out of my misery?’ she said with a shaky laugh. ‘For the love of peace, Oscar. Are you going to Cambridge or aren’t you?’

  Oscar tore open the envelope and drew out the letter.

  ‘An exhibition,’ he said flatly. So that was that.

  ‘But that’s marvellous, dearest. Congratulations.’ Smiling, she held her arms out. Oscar shook his head.

  ‘What good is an exhibition?’ he said. ‘I mean, I probably won’t even be able to take Matric.’

  ‘That’s not true. Sir Aubrey says you have a good chance. A very good chance.’

  ‘And even if I do? Then what? It’s an exhibition, not a scholarship.’

  ‘So it’s not their highest award. It’s still wonderful.’

  ‘But it’s not enough, don’t you see? It had to be a scholarship, otherwise how can it be managed? An exhibition, it’s nothing but prestige. The money . . . we can’t afford it. You know we can’t.’

  ‘Except we can.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s taken care of. It won’t stretch to a valet and your own private motor car but you’ll have enough to manage.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘I’m a part-time highwayman. Your money or your life. I’ve saved it, you silly.’

  Oscar shook his head. ‘Mother, no. I couldn’t—’

  ‘You could and you will and that’s the end of it. Congratulations, darling. I’m so terribly proud of you.’ She put her arms out again.

  ‘And what about you? What will you live on?’

  ‘I shall depend on you in my dotage. That’s all right, isn’t it? You’ll just have to be disgustingly successful.’ She smiled at Oscar and this time he embraced her, the brim of her hat pressed against his cheek.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’ He could feel her bones through the wool of her cardigan.

  ‘Careful or you’ll crush me Best Straw.’

  Oscar smiled. Me Best Straw was an old joke between them from the days when Ruby had charred for them. Ruby had considered Mrs Carey a proper lady and had shown her respect by wearing only her best hats to work, in the winter the brown hat she referred to as her Felt, in summer the navy blue Best Straw. It was the highest compliment Ruby Patch could pay a person, that they were worth me Best Straw.

  ‘Stuff your Best Straw and all who sail in her,’ he said and he hugged her tighter, lifting her off her feet. She gasped, stiffening in his arms.

  ‘Goodness, you’ll crush me too,’ she said. The pain sharpened her voice and made her cheekbones stand out like elbows.

  ‘Mother, what is it?’

  She shook her head, lowering herself tentatively into a chair. ‘It’s nothing, a little backache, that’s all. Trinity, Oscar, how wonderful.’

  ‘You need to see a doctor.’

  ‘And I will. Oh, Oscar, you clever, clever boy. Now go and have a rummage in the kitchen cupboard. Behind the flour tin. There’s a rather special bottle there I’ve been saving for just a moment like this.’

  The South London Appeals Tribunal sat in Wandsworth Town Hall. Oscar took the trolleybus. The Chair of the Tribunal, a Mr Dunlop, addressed Oscar only once, to ask him to confirm his name and age. Mr Rawlinson asked if Oscar’s letter from Cambridge might be submitted to the bench. There was a brief consultation between the members of the Tribunal before Mr Dunlop informed Oscar briskly that the decision of the Local Tribunal was to be overturned. Oscar would be granted a two-month exemption to allow him to sit his examinations, after which time he would join his battalion for training.

  Before Oscar could thank him they were once more in the dingy corridor outside the tribunal room. On a wooden bench like a church pew a woman was crying, her head bent over her battered handbag.

  ‘That’s it?’ Oscar asked, stunned.

  ‘That’s it,’ Rawlinson said and shook Oscar’s hand. The Military Representative in Clapham would very likely appeal in his turn, he said, but the verdict would stand. Penrose Dunlop was an old friend and a thoroughly decent chap. A Cambridge man. He would not roll over just because the MR made a stink. Besides, they were growing weary of the MR at Appeals. His belligerence clogged the court and generated piles of extra paperwork.

  ‘And they wonder why we’ve still not won the War,’ Rawlinson said drily. ‘We lawyers would have wrapped it up years ago.’

  Oscar did not tell anyone at school about the exemption. There was no need. His birthday had only ever been in August. He wrote to Sir Aubrey to thank him for his help and received a reply by the next post.

  I was glad to be able to help, glad and frankly grateful. So often these days it seems as though there is nothing to be done about any of it. Do you know those words of the great Leonardo da Vinci: ‘iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen: even so does inaction sap the vigour of the mind’? A man of my age, it seems, must endure a heavy burden of inaction: it was no less a gift to me, then, than to you to be permitted to act and, better, see that action yield some small reward. I only wish I could do more. Your mother tells me you have several days between the conclusion of your examinations and the date you are expected with your unit. Come to Ellinghurst for a day or two, won’t you, if you can spare the time? We can feed you up before you are reduced to Army rations.

  Oscar wrote back to say thank you and that he would have to talk to his mother. Love to Godmother Eleanor and to Phyllis and Jessica, he wrote at the bottom of the letter. The J curved out like the swell of a breast. After all this time he would see Jessica. He tried to imagine what she looked like now, set her up like a doll in a chair in the library or walking on the lawn, but the picture kept slipping, her arms reaching round his neck, the silky fabric of her blouse slithering over her creamy skin. He did not know how
he would be able to meet her eyes, not after what he had done to her, what they had done together. She would take one look at him and she would know. The thought was mortifying. But at the same time he could not stop thinking it. If he was to be blown to smithereens, he would do it having kissed Jessica Melville one more time.

  The thought was a consolation, even though he did not believe it for a minute.

  Oscar and a boy called Hamilton-Russell took the Matriculation examinations alone, two boys in a hall built for one hundred. The footfalls of the pacing invigilator echoed as they wrote. When they were over and his trunks packed, the headmaster shook Oscar’s hand and told him to be sure to come back. Oscar did not even trust himself to nod.

  His mother was not yet well. Despite her assurances that she was on the mend it was plain that she was tired, even though she had reduced her hours in the insurance company. Her eyes were very big in her face and she had a persistent cough that made her go quite still, as though she meant to fool the pain into going away. Oscar wanted to stay with her but she insisted.

  ‘Go,’ she said. ‘And be grateful to Sir Aubrey.’

  Oscar took his camera. When he alighted at the station Pugh was waiting for him in his old trap. His white dog squatted by his heels, its tail brushing the dusty ground, its coat worn away in patches to show the pink skin underneath. It was too old and stiff to jump onto the box. Pugh had to lift it. The dog leaned against its master’s side, its head resting on his sleeve. Oscar took a photograph. He thought of the white stretch of Jessica’s neck, the sudden electrical shock of her tongue against his, and the burst in his stomach was as reliable as a chemical reaction.