We That Are Left Read online

  Grandfather was Father’s grandfather, not Jessica’s, but they called the tower Grandfather’s Tower because that was what Father had always called it. Jessica’s real grandfather had died when Father was young, which was a long time ago because Father was old, much older than other people’s fathers. Jessica kept her eyes on the top of the tower as she walked. She liked the way that the closer you got to it the more it looked like it was falling over. It was because it was so tall. Father said the style was Italianate, which meant that it belonged in Venice and not in the New Forest. Eleanor detested it, she called it an eyesore, but it was still one of her favourite stories, how Grandfather Melville had come back from India concrete-mad and been introduced to a lady called Mrs Gleeson who was a Spiritualist, which meant she could talk to dead people. Grandfather Melville and Mrs Gleeson had become very, very good friends, Eleanor said, making her mouth and her eyes go round so that everyone laughed. It was because of Mrs Gleeson that Grandfather Melville had been able to speak to Sir Christopher Wren who had been dead a long time and get his help with the tower’s design. Sir Christopher Wren, it turned out, was quite as excited about unreinforced concrete as Grandfather Melville.

  ‘A wiser man might have worried that Wren was a good two hundred years too early for concrete,’ Eleanor liked to say, ‘but what’s a detail or two when you’re holding hands in a darkened room?’

  Jessica’s father hated it when she told that story. Sometimes when she was in the middle of telling it he just got up and went out of the room. Then Eleanor would laugh and tell the other story he did not like, about Grandfather Melville pushing footmen off the top of the tower to test his flying machines. She had always forbidden the children to go up there, she said it might fall down any minute, but they still went. There was a room on every one of the thirteen floors but the top one was Theo’s. He said that thirteen was his lucky number. No one was allowed up there but him. Jessica wondered if he would live up there when Father was dead and the whole castle belonged to him.

  Slowly she walked up the steps towards the house. Usually she liked to walk along the ramparts because it was fun to jump the gaps in the battlements but she did not feel like it today. The stings smarted on her arms and legs and her bruised shoulder throbbed. She could not believe that the others had deserted her. Somehow in her mind she had imagined them all gathered in triumph on the terrace, Theo raising a glass of lemonade to toast her pluck. Instead, as usual, he had vanished into thin air and she was left all alone, wriggling like a fish inside her sore raw skin. She looked back at the tower. Phyllis was probably there right now, curled up in the Tiled Room, hunched over some book or other. The Tiled Room was octagonal and had painted tiles not just all over the floor but on the walls too. Father said that in India they used tiles because they kept rooms cool. Grandfather Melville must have forgotten about English weather because the Tiled Room was cold as an icehouse but Phyllis did not seem to mind. Jessica wondered if she even noticed. Of all the infuriating things about Phyllis perhaps the most infuriating was the way she always behaved as though books were real and real life just a story somebody had made up without thinking.

  The Great Hall was deserted, the doors to the drawing room and the long gallery both closed. Jessica kissed the carved eagle that topped the newel post on the beak and looked up at Jeremiah Melville who glared down at her from his frame above the chimneypiece. All around him on the walls were clubs and shields and crossed pikes and bits of old armour. Jeremiah Melville’s ancestors had been farmers, not medieval knights, but he had made pots of money from Indian cotton and decided he did not want to live in a boring manor house but in a castle with a minstrels’ gallery and towers with arrow slits, even though by then there were no minstrels any more and everyone just shot one other with guns. Jeremiah Melville had been Grandfather Melville’s grandfather.

  ‘Where is everybody, Rexy boy?’ Jessica asked, stroking the stone lion that sprawled over the huge fireplace. One day, she hoped, she might persuade Eleanor to let her have a dog. Behind her a sudden shaft of sunlight flooded the stained-glass windows, splashing pools of colour across the stone flags. Jessica put her toe into a lozenge of yellow. She supposed Mrs Maxwell Brooke and Mrs Connolly were still traipsing round Salworth House with Mrs Grunewald, unless they had already died of boredom. As for Eleanor and Mr Connolly, who knew how far away they were by now? Mr Connolly’s new motor car was white with red leather seats and shiny silver wheels with the spokes all criss-crossed like a game of pick-up sticks. It only had room in it for two people. When Mr Connolly had taken them all out to look at it Eleanor had stroked its glossy flank and told Mr Connolly that a girl could die happy in an automobile like that, and Mr Connolly had smiled at her like the witch smiled at Hansel and Gretel when she was getting ready to eat them up.

  Jessica despised Mr Connolly even more than she despised Terence. Partly it was because he opened his mouth too wide when he laughed and wore oil in his hair and ugly coats with patterns and too many pockets. Mostly she did not like him because he was too stupid to realise that Eleanor did not care for him any more than she cared for any of the others. He was always staring at her when he thought no one was looking. The day before, when Jessica was lying beside the gallery banisters pretending to be a tiger in a cage, she had heard the door to the drawing room open underneath her and Mr Connolly say ‘My God, look at you,’ in his American voice that was shouty even when he was whispering, and she had wanted to drop something heavy on his head. She thought that Mr Connolly would be a terrible driver with Eleanor in the car, that he would spend the whole time looking at her and not at the road he was driving on.

  A girl could die happy in an automobile like that.

  ‘But of course I’ll die, you silly,’ Eleanor had said with a gay laugh when Jessica was little. ‘We’ll all die. But you mustn’t worry. I shall be sure to do it very beautifully,’ and Jessica had a sudden violent picture of Mr Connolly’s white automobile crumpled like a paper bag and Eleanor sprawled with her head thrown back, a shiny line of blood like scarlet nail polish running from her mouth.

  She shook her head like a kaleidoscope to make the picture change and scrubbed at her nose. She thought about going up to the nursery but Oskar was probably in the nursery and Oskar was worse than nobody at all. Oskar was Mrs Grunewald’s son and the same age as Jessica, which meant that everyone expected Jessica to play with him. She tried to tell Nanny it was impossible but Nanny only put on her stern face and said it was Jessica’s job to make sure her visitors had a nice time.

  Jessica could not see why Oskar had to be her visitor when it was not her who had invited him, and she did not have the foggiest idea how anyone could tell if he was having a nice time. Oskar could go through a whole day saying nothing at all, just staring into space or reading a maths book, and, when you finally lost your temper with him and demanded to know if he was actually still alive, he only blinked at you in that startled way of his, his eyes like sucked aniseed balls, as though it was perfectly normal for a boy who was not ill to sit quietly all day long and never once yawn or complain or want to run somewhere and break something. He was always writing down numbers, rows and rows of them so tightly packed together there was hardly any white left on the page, and when he talked it was just the same, strings of facts so unspeakably boring you could not imagine ever wanting to know them, let alone learn them by heart. Theo said Oskar was like the Engine in Gulliver’s Travels, that if you could only work out where to crank him up, he would spool out pointless information for the rest of his life in seventeen languages at once.

  In the middle of the hall table there was a big silver bowl full of pale pink roses. Jessica took one out and, holding it up in front of her, glided across the hall towards one of the suits of armour that guarded the bottom of the stairs. The armour held a pike in one hinged metal hand. The other hand was empty, the arm slightly outstretched. Clasping the cold fingers, she bowed her head.

  Will you, Jessica Margaret Crompton
Melville, take this man to be your awfully wedded husband? He loves you to the ends of the earth and he wants more than anything else in the world to buy you an Alfonso motor car.

  Why, in that case, I will.

  Tearing the petals from the rose and throwing them above her head, she processed triumphantly back towards the front door. She had only ever been to one wedding, last year when Uncle Henry married Aunt Violet. It had not been in the least romantic. Uncle Henry was twenty-five years younger than Father but he was still ancient. When he made his speech he did not kiss Aunt Violet or say they would live happily ever after or anything. When Jessica asked Eleanor why not, her mother had made a funny face and said surely she knew by now that the Melvilles were the coldest fishes in the sea?

  Jessica caught sight of Theo and Terence through the window as they crossed the gravel drive. They were laughing. They had changed into white flannels and Terence was wearing a panama hat. The hat made Terence’s face look redder than ever. Jessica stood four-square in the entrance of the Great Hall, her fists on her hips, so that when they pushed open the door, still laughing, they almost knocked her over.

  ‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’ she demanded. The swearing made her feel better. She eyed the tennis racquets in Theo’s arms. ‘You’re not going to play bloody tennis, are you?’

  ‘Bloody tennis?’ Theo said. ‘Where on earth did you get that idea?’

  ‘The racquets.’

  ‘Racquets?’ Theo looked down at the racquets and gaped. ‘Good Lord. Where the devil did those spring from?’ Terence laughed as Theo pushed the racquets into his arms and, whisking Terence’s panama from his head, sent it skimming towards the eagle on the newel post. The brim clipped the eagle’s beak and skittered upside down along the floor.

  ‘You missed,’ Jessica said.

  ‘That depends on what I was aiming for,’ Theo said and Terence laughed again, his red mouth wide open. Jessica glared at him.

  ‘You shouldn’t leave people out,’ she said to Theo. ‘It’s rude.’

  ‘What’s rude?’ Marjorie skipped down the stairs. She was wearing a tightly belted tennis dress and shoes so white they made Jessica blink. Behind her, dressed in her ordinary blouse and skirt, Phyllis scuffed her feet, a book dangling from one hand. She kept her thumb tucked between the pages, marking her place.

  ‘Miss Messy here, that’s who,’ Theo said and, reclaiming a racquet from Terence, he bounced the strings on Jessica’s head. ‘You should hear the swear words Nanny’s been teaching her. The two of them would put a navvy to shame.’

  Marjorie sniggered. Jessica glowered at her. She hated it when Theo called her Mess and Messy. Miss Messica Jelville, he would say, as though his tongue had got it muddled up, and Eleanor would laugh and laugh. But at the same time she could not help being glad just a little that he had a special name for her he had made up all by himself. He never called Phyllis anything but Phyll.

  ‘Ready?’ Theo said as Terence retrieved his hat. Then he frowned. ‘Come on, Phyll. You haven’t even changed your shoes.’

  ‘What difference does that make?’ Phyllis said. ‘I won’t be any less hopeless with different shoes.’

  ‘There’s no point in playing if you refuse to try.’

  ‘Well, in that case . . .’ Baring her teeth in a smile, she turned to go back upstairs, her eyes already on her book. Marjorie caught her arm.

  ‘Please, Phyllis,’ she wheedled, glancing at Theo. ‘We need you. Don’t we need her, Theo? It’s much more fun with four.’

  ‘Or you could let them play singles,’ Phyllis said. ‘You know they’d rather.’

  ‘Would you?’ Marjorie asked Theo. ‘Would you really?’ And she bit her lip and made her eyes go round at him in a way that made Jessica want to be sick on her snowy white shoes.

  ‘For God’s sake, Phyll,’ Theo snapped. ‘Just play, won’t you?’

  ‘I can play,’ Jessica offered quickly. ‘I’ve been taking lessons.’

  ‘I don’t even know why you want me,’ Phyllis said. ‘You’ll only growl at me every time I hit it into the net.’

  ‘Miss Whitfield says I have a natural eye for the ball,’ Jessica added.

  ‘He won’t,’ Marjorie said. ‘You won’t, will you, Theo?’

  Theo’s mouth twitched, his eyes sliding sideways towards Terence. ‘Well, I suppose if she were on the other side I mightn’t. Then I might even enjoy it.’

  ‘Is that what we on the East Coast call a challenge, Melville?’ Terence said.

  ‘For you, most certainly. Have you seen Phyllis on a tennis court?’

  ‘That’s it,’ Phyllis said. ‘I’m not playing.’

  ‘Come on now,’ Terence said. The way he looked at Theo suggested some kind of private joke. ‘Wouldn’t it be a little bit fun to knock that self-satisfied smirk off your brother’s face?’

  ‘It’d be a joy and a pleasure. Unfortunately, though, he has a point. My tennis is execrable.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Terence said, still looking at Theo. ‘Trust me. It will be a cinch. A snap. A picnic. A breeze. A piece of cake. A walk, my friend, in the park.’

  ‘Extraordinary,’ Theo said. ‘In the old country only a matter of weeks and already so fluent in hubris.’

  ‘Just wait till you see me serve.’

  ‘I’ve heard Terence is fearfully good,’ Marjorie confided to Phyllis. ‘You’ll hardly have to hit a stroke. You can just stand there looking pretty.’

  Phyllis rolled her eyes. ‘If only Miss Pankhurst could hear you, Marjorie. She’d be so proud.’

  ‘What about me?’ Jessica demanded. ‘Why can’t I play?’

  ‘Are you still here?’ Theo asked. Then, putting one hand on the top of her head and another around her chin, he tipped back her face, twisting it from side to side. ‘Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Royal Society. Today we will be studying the sadly not-so-rare species, the Spoiled Child.’

  ‘Let go of me,’ Jessica protested, trying to wriggle free, but Theo only tightened his grip, his fingers digging uncomfortably into her jaw.

  ‘Mark,’ he said, ‘the distinctive pout, the ill-tempered frown between the eyebrows. Not uncommonly this will be accompanied by the protruding tongue—’

  ‘Let her go, Theo,’ Phyllis said as Marjorie giggled, her hand over her mouth. ‘We can let her pick up the balls or something, can’t we?’

  ‘And be your slave?’ Jessica said. ‘No fear.’

  ‘Fine.’ Phyllis shrugged. ‘We’ll see you later, then.’

  ‘You can’t just leave me all alone.’

  ‘Oskar’s around, isn’t he? And anyway, I thought you were putting on a concert?’

  ‘It’s not a concert, it’s an Extravaganza. And I can’t do anything with you gone because you’re all in it.’

  Theo looked at Terence and snorted. ‘When hell freezes over.’

  ‘It isn’t for you, actually, Theodore Melville. It’s for Eleanor.’ She rolled the name on her tongue like an elocution teacher. Her mother was always telling her to pronounce it properly and not like a maid who dropped her ‘h’s.

  ‘For Eleanor?’ Theo said, copying her enunciation. ‘Would that be the Eleanor who prizes children’s shows above all other entertainments?’

  ‘She’d like it if you were in it,’ Jessica said sulkily. Theo did not try to deny it. However short-tempered Eleanor was, however restless or peevish or bored half to death buried in the back of beyond, she was never impatient with Theo. Sometimes she even kissed him for no reason or smoothed the hair away from his forehead. When Jessica’s hair escaped her ribbons, Eleanor just winced and sent her up to Nanny.

  ‘Do it with Oskar,’ Theo suggested. ‘I mean, the boy’s pure music hall.’ He strummed his tennis racquet like a Spanish guitar. ‘Zey call me Oskar Grunewald, ja, zey do. Some days I zay one word, some days even two.’

  ‘Don’t, Theo,’ Phyllis said. ‘That’s unkind.’

  ‘It’s not unkind if it’s true,’ Jessica said.
/>   ‘Actually, it’s more unkind if it’s true,’ Phyllis said. ‘And why are you backing him up? I’m the one on your side.’

  ‘No you’re not. You’re ruining my Extravaganza just as much as Theo, only you won’t come straight out and say so. Which makes you worse.’

  Terence grinned, showing white teeth. ‘Well, ain’t you a pistol, little sister?’

  Jessica considered the American boy, her eyes narrow. Then slowly she raised her hands, the first two fingers pointing at his head.

  ‘Bang, bang, you’re dead,’ she said. Blowing the smoke from her fingertips, she stuck out her chin and stalked through the servants’ door towards the kitchen.

  2

  Oskar had not seen the Children’s Encyclopaedia in the library before. It came in eight thick volumes, a two-foot stretch of blue leather that took up almost a whole shelf of the bookcase. He stood on tiptoes to inspect it. At school the encyclopaedias had letters on their spines to mark out which part of the alphabet they were for, but these ones just had numbers, one to eight. Under the number, there was another, much bigger number showing the page numbers for that book, surrounded by a pattern of gold leaves and a scabbard. Oskar knew what a scabbard was because of the Roman exhibition at the British Museum but it was the numbers that caught his attention.

  Oskar could not explain how he felt about numbers except to say that they were his friends. His mother smiled when he said that and said she knew what he meant but that it might be better not to tell the other boys at school. She said that, unlike numbers, schoolboys were unpredictable, that they did not always behave the way you expected them to. She did not seem to understand that numbers did not either, or not all the time. Sometimes, when you were ill in bed, they got all agitated in your head, and it was like the day they went together to see the men riding their bicycles in the Olympic Games and he thought he had lost her, primes and squares and cubes pushing and shoving and squashing out the light; except that numbers matted themselves into thick ropes that kept getting bigger and more twisty until you thought your head would burst. But most of the time numbers were smooth and cool and fitted together so you could make buildings out of them. The number buildings were beautiful.