We That Are Left Read online

‘Of course it’s important. Before him nobody knew it was true.’

  ‘But does it matter? I mean, does it make a difference, knowing?’

  Oscar frowned. ‘If you mean what will it change, I’m not exactly sure. There’s a lot I don’t understand, and we don’t exactly do it in school. But knowing always makes a difference, doesn’t it? I mean, surely it’s the point. Of everything.’

  She smiled. Her face was sharp, all points and angles, but her eyes were soft. She did not look as though she was laughing at him on the inside.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing. It’s nice to hear you talking, I suppose. You don’t talk much.’

  ‘I don’t usually have anything important to say.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem to stop most people.’

  ‘My mother says it is because I got muddled with German and English when I was small so I decided it was better not to speak at all.’ It was an old joke, one he had forgotten he remembered. Then he saw the way Phyllis looked at him and something inside him shrivelled. ‘I don’t speak it any more,’ he blurted. ‘I was never any good anyway.’

  Phyllis did not answer. The silence made Oscar’s throat ache. ‘My father used to get so angry with me,’ he gabbled. ‘He said that German was the language of science and high culture. Even though he hated Germany and never went back. He said that next to the Germans the English would only ever be enthusiastic amateurs.’ He hung his head. ‘I’m glad he’s dead.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Phyllis said fiercely.

  ‘But it’s true.’

  ‘I don’t care. You’re not allowed to be glad anyone’s dead, not anyone at all. Not any more.’

  The afternoon was darkening. In the grey light Phyllis’s face looked very white. Outside the wind was getting up. Oscar could hear the whistle of it in the top of the tower, the sea shush of the rustling trees. Neither of them spoke. Oscar thought of Nanny who did not live in the house any more but in a damp cottage in the village, crowded with feathers and stones and splotchy drawings and samplers with the stitches pulled too tight. The day before his mother had made him visit her and, when it was time to leave, she had cried, the tears clotting in the powdery creases of her cheeks, and said that she hoped Oscar would be a brother to the girls now, with Theo gone.

  Phyllis reached out and put her hand on Oscar’s arm. The tips of her fingers were yellow with cold. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For telling me about Uncle Henry. For not being like most boys of fifteen.’

  Oscar looked at her hand on his sleeve. Then awkwardly, like a game of Pat-a-Cake, he put his on top of it. ‘I’m good at that,’ he said.

  The door banged open.

  ‘Phyllis?’ Jessica called out, clattering up the shallow steps into the Tiled Room. Immediately Phyllis slipped her hand out from under Oscar’s. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Am I interrupting something?’

  ‘Don’t be pathetic,’ Phyllis said. ‘What are you doing here, anyway?’

  ‘Looking for you, if you must know. You’re to go back to the house. The men from Theo’s regiment are here.’

  ‘I thought Eleanor—’

  ‘Yes, well, she didn’t. Won’t. Whichever. Father says you’ll have to do.’

  The sisters looked at each other. Then Phyllis nodded. She stood up, unwinding Oscar’s scarf from around her neck.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘You can give it back to me later,’ but Phyllis balled it up and held it out to him. Oscar took it. It was warm, like something alive.

  ‘Hold on.’ Jessica brushed away the bits of dead leaf that clung to her sister’s jersey. ‘That’s better. You should brush your hair before you go in, though. And put some lipstick on. You look terrible.’

  ‘Jesus, Jess, they’re here to pay their respects, not go to a bloody dance.’

  Jessica watched, her crossed arms hugging her chest, as Phyllis hurried through the gloom towards the Great Gate. At the edge of the lawn a white dog was barking at the grass.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Oscar asked.

  ‘Of course I’m bloody all right,’ she snapped. ‘It would just be nice if for once everyone in this house didn’t take their misery out on me.’

  Since Theo’s death the other Melvilles had grown older, greyer, huddled inside their skins like hand-me-down overcoats, but not Jessica. It was impossible not to look at her. She was so new-looking, so extravagantly, insistently shiny. Even in the murky light of the Tiled Room she glowed as though there was sunshine inside her. Her honey-coloured hair reminded Oscar of the gleam on the smooth underside of his mother’s chin when he held up a buttercup to see if she liked butter.

  ‘Eleanor says there’s no point to anything any more.’ She talked without turning round, as though she were talking to the trees outside the window. ‘Not now, not with Theo gone. She told your mother that the darkness was like drowning. That she could not remember how to breathe. Your mother said to remember that she still has Phyllis and me. And Father, of course.’ She exhaled a tight little laugh. ‘It didn’t seem to be much consolation.’

  Oscar did not know what to say. He looked at the floor. Inside his head, like a gramophone record going round and round, he heard the words his mother always used to sing when he went to sleep: Guten Abend, gute Nacht, mit Rosen bedacht.

  ‘She can hardly bear to look at us,’ Jessica said. ‘It’s like our being alive makes Theo being dead even worse.’

  Morgen früh, wenn Gott will, wirst du wieder geweckt. Oscar bit his lip, squeezing the song out of his brain. Tomorrow morning, if God wills, you’ll wake up again. He thought of his mother in the library, Sir Aubrey like a broken toy in her arms, the sadness leaking out of him like sawdust.

  ‘It’s the shock,’ he said helplessly. Jessica shrugged. She kicked at the leg of the bench.

  ‘You and Phyllis looked pretty thick,’ she said.

  ‘We were just talking.’

  ‘Just talking.’ She looked at Oscar. Then she sat down next to him on the bench. It was dark enough for her face to be fuzzy round the edges, even close up. Sir Crawford had wanted electrical lights all the way up the tower but Trinity House had forbade it. They said that the tower was too close to the sea, that ships might mistake it for a lighthouse. ‘You were holding hands. I saw you.’

  Oscar made himself think about modular arithmetic, which his teacher called clock arithmetic because it was like telling the time, with one coming after twelve and not thirteen. Like everything, modular arithmetic was better with prime numbers. Jessica reached out and took the scarf from his lap. She did not ask him if she could. She wound it round her neck. Then she cocked her head on one side, considering him. Oscar made himself compute powers going up from one for modulo 5. 24 = 1, 25 = 2. He could feel his ears going red.

  ‘Did you want to kiss her?’ she said. ‘I bet you did. Boys always want to kiss girls, even the not very pretty ones. But then I shouldn’t think you notice if someone’s pretty or not. She could look like Mary Pickford and you’d still prefer the encyclopaedia. Unless she was made of sums. Think of that. A girl with long division for arms and hair all curly with quadratic equations. Two times signs for eyes and an equals for a mouth. Look at you, just thinking of her makes you blush.’

  She thought it would make her feel better, watching Oscar squirm, but the hole inside her kept opening, wider and wider like a huge black mouth. ‘You’d eat pi for every meal,’ she said. The important thing was not to stop talking. ‘Pi and circumference, with slide rules for knives. You do know it’s rude, don’t you? To sit there like a codfish saying nothing at all. It’s bloody freezing out here. If you were a gentleman you’d offer me your coat.’

  ‘We should go in.’

  ‘Not yet. Those men haven’t gone yet.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Jim Pugh’s dog.’

  Outside the dog was a smear of white against the grey grass of the mown path. It rolled over, its mouth
wide open as though it was laughing. Jim Pugh drove the trap that served, among other things, as the station taxi. His dog rode with him everywhere, sitting up very straight with its eyes bulging and its tongue lolling out of its mouth. No one complained because Jim was not all there. Theo had called them the Village Idiots. He once gave Jim Pugh a bag of bird seed and told him if he planted it it would grow birds.

  The hole was not a hole any more but a fat black snake, thickening inside her. Jessica tugged at the ends of Oscar’s scarf, wrapping the fringes as tightly as she could around her fingers. ‘I suppose you’re in love with Phyllis, then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You make it sound like there’s something wrong with her.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  She thought about arguing with him but the snake was too heavy. It made it difficult to breathe. ‘Do you ever think about it?’ she asked instead. ‘About what it would be like to fight?’

  Oscar looked at her. Guten Abend, guten Nacht. The tune went round and round, round and round. ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘It’s the only way to make people believe you’re not German, you know. To kill some Germans yourself.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Then what are you waiting for?’

  ‘To be eighteen.’

  ‘You could lie. Lots of boys do, it was in the newspaper. Or are you a coward?’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably. Are you?’ He glared at Jessica. The snake in her chest coiled around her heart, squeezing it tight. Tears burned behind her eyes.

  ‘Why does war have to be so absolutely bloody?’ she whispered. Closing her eyes, she slid along the bench and laid her head against his chest. He did not put his arm around her. Beyond the woods the garden with its trees and statues looked grey and grainy, like a picture in the newspaper.

  ‘It’s not really Phyllis you like best, is it, Oscar?’ she asked softly.

  Oscar did not answer. At the end of the path, where the gate led into the park, a man was smoking a cigarette. Though the light was poor and he was some distance off, there was no mistaking him. He leaned against a beech tree, one hand cupping his elbow. He was wearing his uniform, the khaki jacket and breeches that Oscar had seen laid out on the bed, only this time they were clean and pressed. When he exhaled the smoke made a stripe in the air.

  On the path Jim Pugh’s dog stopped rolling. Scrambling to its feet, its hackles raised, it barked frenziedly at the soldier. Theo Melville did not turn around. Dropping the butt of his cigarette, he ground it out with the heel of his boot. Then slowly, he walked away out of sight. Oscar let his breath go.

  Jessica turned her face, looking up at him. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I . . . I’m not sure.’

  In the twilight her eyes were the colour of new pennies. He blinked at her, dazed. He felt like he had somehow stepped out of his body and did not know how to get back inside. Reaching up, she put her arms around his neck. ‘Kiss me,’ she said.

  Kiss me. Two words, a single fixed point in a swirling sea of flashing dust. Giddily Oscar looked down at her, at the bow of her parted mouth, the smudges of her closed eyes with their thick eyelashes curling up at the ends. She looked just like a film star.

  ‘Well?’ she said impatiently, opening one eye.

  Squeezing his eyes shut, he pressed his lips to hers.

  5

  In the dormitories at Oscar’s school, boys were allowed a single photograph on their chests of drawers. In Oscar’s first few terms most of the boys had photographs of dogs, except for Brigstocke who had a lady in a silver frame who he insisted to Matron was his aunt but who was actually a dancer called Hilda Lewis. By the second year of the War the photographs were almost all of men in uniform.

  Oscar told the other boys that Theo was his cousin. In the picture he was standing on the sloping lawn at the front of Ellinghurst, with the castellated turret and arched windows of the east wing of the castle visible behind him. Oscar had taken it himself with Theo’s old Brownie, which he had unearthed in a box of discarded clothes and cricket bats. Theo had a newer grander camera by then but Oscar had still been half-afraid to take it back to Ellinghurst in case he decided he wanted it back. There was a pale circle just visible on one of the windows that might have been a face looking out but which Oscar knew was just the reflection of the sun on the glass. Beneath the stiff peak of his cap Theo was squinting.

  He kept the photograph there, even after Theo was killed. The other boys did the same. On clear nights, when the moon silvered the linoleum, the faces of all the dead uncles and brothers gleamed pale as ghosts in the darkness. One evening after supper Oscar came back to the dormitory to find Tuckwell and Jamieson standing by his bed. Jamieson was holding Theo’s photograph. Someone had drawn a Prussian spike onto Theo’s cap and extended his moustache, curling the ends around his ears. A speech bubble extending from his mouth said DEUTSCH SCHWEIN in capital letters. Oscar held his breath and waited to see what the boys would do to him, but Jamieson only spat on his handkerchief and scrubbed furiously at the glass, smearing the ink. Then, without a word, he put the photograph back where he had found it.

  After that there was always a black smear on Theo’s face and a shadow across the turret wall, as though a Zeppelin was blocking out the sun. Oscar touched the shadow before he went to bed, not for good luck so much as to keep the bad luck from getting any worse. He did not think it worked but he went on doing it anyway, the same way his mother whistled when she saw a magpie and said, ‘Good morning, Mr Magpie, where’s your brother?’ The trouble with luck, she said, was that you never knew if without it things would have been any different.

  It was the term after Theo was killed that Oscar was put into Mr Leach’s Mathematics division. By then the only teachers left were either ancient or cripples. Mr Leach had thin hair pasted in careful stripes over his skull and a flat round face with a sharp nose in the centre like the gnomon of a sundial, which was the sharp part that cast the shadow. It was because of Mr Leach that Oscar knew the word gnomon in the first place. According to the dictionary it came from the Ancient Greek for ‘that which reveals’.

  The only thing Mr Leach revealed was his dislike for Oscar. In one of his first lessons, Oscar made the mistake of pointing out a mistake in the equation Mr Leach had written on the blackboard. Mr Leach rubbed out the equation and wrote ‘Insolence, if unpunished, increases’ ARISTOTLE across the top instead. Then he gave Oscar a thrashing in front of the class.

  After that he called Oscar the Prince of Mathematics with a sneer that made his long nostrils flare, exposing the hair inside. Everyone knew that the Prince of Mathematics was the nickname for Carl Friedrich Gauss and that Gauss was German. It enraged Mr Leach that Oscar did not follow his prescribed working methods but only wrote down the solutions that rose like bubbles in his head when he looked at the questions. Mr Leach said that answers alone made a mockery of mathematics. Instead, he insisted on strings and strings of gobbledegook he called ‘workings’. If Oscar forgot any of it Mr Leach thrashed him. The effort made his eyes bulge and dislodged the pasted strands of his hair.

  Oscar could tolerate the thrashings. It was the equations that made him wretched. For one whole term and then another, Mr Leach set Oscar the same pointless problems, over and over again. The workings were like lead weights tied to the numbers’ feet. With nowhere to go and nothing to entertain them, they started to jabber and thrash in Oscar’s head. At night, in the darkness, he could feel them writhing in the lobes of his brain, as though they were looking for a way out. They did not dance for him any more, or hardly ever. They were dull, their eyes glazed over, their old suppleness fattened with tedium and frustration. Sometimes, when he tried to fit them together they would not go, even though they had gone that way before, and then they grew angry and shouted in his ears. For the first time in his life he was afraid of them.

  His mother wrote to him. She sent him a postcard on which she had printed a quotation from Galileo.

  The universe
cannot be read until we have learned the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word. Without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.

  On the other side of the postcard she drew a picture of a confused-looking Oscar, surrounded by mathematical symbols. Underneath the picture she wrote, Chin up, my darling, and keep at it. You’re all that stands between me and the Minotaur.

  The following term they began Officer Cadet Corps. The Sergeant Major who ran the Corps at Oscar’s school said that, if the War kept on dragging on the way it was, they would be the next officers to lead the Allied troops into battle. Once a term, at final assembly, the headmaster read out the names of the school alumni who had been killed. There was a board in the hall with their names on. When it was full they put up another one. Oscar would not be eighteen for two more years but twice a week he learned to crawl through mud and shoot a gun and to plunge a bayonet into a sack of sand. The Sergeant Major told the Corps that there was no difference between a bad soldier and a traitor. At night Oscar dreamed of numbers lining up, soldiers to the power of 10, of 10,000, and his bayonet plunging into them over and over again. The bayonet made a sickening liquid noise as it went in but the numbers did not die. They just kept swarming up at him, more and more of them rising out of the ground as though they were made of muscle and mud.

  The only thing that helped was to think about Jessica. Jessica was the only thing in his head that had nothing whatsoever to do with numbers. In his mind he ran one finger over the curve of her forehead, following the arch of her eyebrow, touching very lightly the soft fringe of her eyelashes. Her cheekbone was high and hard beneath the white softness of her skin, and on her neck a strand of her honey-coloured hair lay in a loose curl, like a three.

  She was his own personal film, over and over, silent and perfect. He slid his fingers along the curl of her hair, feeling its silkiness, before continuing on down the slope of her cheek. When her lips parted he could see the pink tip of her tongue between her teeth. Very slowly he traced the precise bow of her upper lip, the plumpness of the lower. Their softness made him shudder. Turning onto his front, burying his face in the pillow, he lifted her chin up towards him and leaned down to press his lips against hers. The tip of her nose was cold against his cheek. When the climax came he pressed himself against the mattress to keep it from squeaking on its iron springs and, for a moment, there was nothing, no numbers and no clamour and writhing in his head, only the darkness and the sweet cut-grass smell of her hair.