Authors: Stella Whitelaw
‘This is so lovely,’ said Jessica. ‘A choice of tea, a choice of milk, even a choice of jam. I’d like strawberry jam, please.’
‘Pot of tea for two, Earl Grey, semi-skimmed milk and strawberry jam with our scones, please,’ Lucas ordered. ‘And a plate of your delicious cakes.’ It even came with a pot of hot water for their second cups.
Jessica sat back into her chair, enjoying the atmosphere of the tea rooms. It had been a wonderful afternoon, doing normal things with Lucas.
‘Civilization is rare these days,’ said Lucas. ‘I often used to come here when I was a student. I had to save up.’
‘Was Brighton one of your favourite clubbing places?’
He grinned. ‘You obviously know about students. We were all broke so we used to take food and beer down onto the beach and stay there to watch the dawn come up. What did you do when you were a student nurse?’
‘Nothing so exciting. We were mostly too tired. Sometimes
we’d go to a disco or a party. People drank too much, as they do. It wasn’t always fun.’
Jessica tried not to think how much she was enjoying herself in Lucas’s company. He was sitting close by. They were together. They agreed about most things. He was being amusing and informal, pleasant to get along with. There was no pressure. Jessica relaxed into the warm feeling of togetherness.
‘Have we got time to go on the West Pier?’ Jessica asked.
‘Unfortunately I fear we’re a few years too late,’ said Lucas. ‘The West Pier has collapsed into the sea after two fires, a violent storm, neglect and more neglect. It was once a very elegant Edwardian pier with a concert hall and ballroom. There’s only a gaunt wreck now, standing out to sea. People take photographs and paint pictures of it. But we could go on the Palace Pier, if you like noisy entertainments.’
‘That’s where I meant, the Palace Pier. Yes, I’d like to be very touristy but I draw the line at wearing a funny hat.’
‘Absolutely no funny hats,’ said Lucas, paying the bill for their tea. ‘And I refuse all scary rides. I’ve no head for heights. I might be an embarrassment.’
Palace Pier was non-stop entertainments, both sides crowded with side-shows and kiosks selling candy floss and seaside rock, fortune tellers and bars. Everywhere smelt saccharine sweet. The domed amusement arcade rang with loud music, clinking coins and money squandered on machines in search of instant riches. Jessica won a white rabbit with long ears for Lily after three goes on a crane machine.
‘I suppose we ought to go on something,’ said Lucas
reluctantly
, as they walked round the thrill rides and the roller coaster. ‘But I can’t see anything that my delicate constitution would cope with.’
‘Especially after that big cream tea.’
‘Exactly. Now I wouldn’t mind a go at that rifle shooting range. What about you, Jessica?’
Jessica shook her head. ‘No eye for it.’
Lucas did have an eye and a nonchalant way of shouldering
a rifle. He won a cowboy hat for Daniel. So each child had a present.
It was turning chilly, the sun already sinking. There was no feeling of being at sea on the Palace Pier yet they were a third of a mile out over the water. They watched the seagulls wheeling and diving in formation. The birds were tracking a fishing boat returning, waiting for the gutted bits to be thrown overboard. Jessica pulled on her fleece. Lucas had left his threadbare jersey in the car. He tucked his arm into hers, smiling down.
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to keep me warm,’ he said. ‘A brisk walk to the car and then home to Upton Hall? Is that all right with you?’
Jessica nodded. ‘We don’t want to be too late because of Mrs Harris.’
It struck her that she sounded like a much married wife, showing concern about a baby-sitter. She didn’t want Lucas to think she was getting ideas. One pleasant afternoon did not a marriage make.
‘I hope I haven’t been clamped or towed away,’ said Lucas as they climbed the steep road to the hospital car park. ‘I shouldn’t have parked there today.’
‘Why shouldn’t you? You haven’t done anything really wrong.’
‘It’s not a question of right or wrong: I have the wrong make of car. One look at this beauty and officials go berserk. I’m a target for every fine invented. If I haven’t broken some by-law, they’ll invent one.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘I’m sure, as you will have discovered, a lot of things in life are not fair. I should be driving a clapped-out Volvo. The Porsche is my one indulgence and I’ve earned it. I like the speed. As you’ve probably gathered, I’ve no time for shopping for clothes or CDs or DVDs or any other trappings.’
The cool scent of a crisp autumn heralded the end of the last day of the summer. Evenings would be cooler from now on. It had been a pleasant afternoon, wandering about, but that didn’t
mean Jessica wanted to marry him.
‘I’m going into the hospital a bit later tomorrow morning,’ he said, as they drove through the tortuous back streets of Brighton, searching for the main road out of the town. The tall white Regency houses of Hove sea front were melting into shadows. A sea mist was folding the beach into a shroud. ‘You might like to come with me. I’m sure young Maggie would enjoy your company for half an hour. You could read to her some of your famous bed-time stories.’
‘I’d like that but how would I get home?’
‘You could leave my mother’s car at Eastly station in the morning, and get a train back to there. A bit complicated, but worth the effort. I think you’d have to change trains. Maggie’s grandmother can’t get down to visit her. It’s such a shame.’
‘What about Lady Grace?’
‘I’m sure she could do her exercises on her own for once.’
Jessica was happy to go and read to Maggie but the return journey would be a long one. She remembered that first train journey down to Eastly and shuddered at the thought of
enduring
part of it again. At least there would be a car waiting for her at the station, her current little car. That would be a big improvement.
Was this what it would be like as Lucas’s wife, having to do wifely things like visiting patients or going to see ailing ex-patients? She knew Lucas was a conscientious doctor and surgeon and his wife might find herself acting as a second string. Jessica did not object to this. As a nurse, she knew the importance of visits and family contact. Young Maggie would be feeling strange and lonely by herself, face stitched up, in pain, feeding tube attached.
‘It’s going to rain,’ said Jessica. A mantle of purple light was bruising the sky as rain clouds gathered. ‘Thank goodness you put the roof up.’
‘The holiday brochures call this part of the coast
Sunny
Sussex
. But they always forget to mention the rain. And the wind. It can be ferocious. We get gales of up to seventy miles
per hour. Almost impossible to walk in or cross a road. The twittens become wind tunnels. It can take your breath away.’
‘Thank you for the lovely tea,’ said Jessica, getting the
gratitude
bit over in case she forgot. ‘Wonderful home-made cakes. Very calorific.’
‘The first of many,’ said Lucas politely.
Soon the windscreen was weeping with rain. How could Lucas see to drive? He must have laser eyes to do that intricate surgery, and he used the same laser eyes to pierce the curtains of rain.
It slowed down their return journey, although several madmen overtook them on the M27, despite the fact that they could barely see ahead.
‘The Monopoly game with death,’ said Lucas. ‘Move to Intensive Care,’ he added as another impatient driver swept passed them, his wheels spraying up dirt and water. Lucas switched on the spray washers to clean the windscreen.
Jessica was tense, the bass of her spine aching. His driving was perfect. It was the jolting of the road surface that did not help.
It was a relief when they turned off the busy dual
carriageway
and found the quieter side roads and twisting lanes that would take them to Eastly. It almost felt like coming home when Upton Hall loomed into sight among the dripping trees.
Lily and Daniel came rushing out into the rain carrying big umbrellas. Lily’s face was alight with excitement. Daniel was having trouble keeping his umbrella open. It was threatening to turn itself inside out.
‘You’re back! You’re back,’ she shouted, as if they had gone on an expedition to the Himalayas. ‘Have you brought us presents from Brighton?’
‘What a greedy little girl you are,’ said Lucas, bending himself in half to get under the umbrella she was holding up. ‘Why should we bring you presents?’
‘Because you love us!’
‘Do we? Who said so?’
Jessica dodged under Daniel’s umbrella, helping him to get the mechanism to stay up. ‘This is an awkward one,’ she said. ‘It never works properly.’
He nodded, not meeting her eyes. But she did feel some sort of awareness from him. It was different to his normal indifference.
They stood in the hall, both wet, trying to remember what it was like to be warm, the children clamouring around them, wondering if there were any presents.
Lily loved her floppy-eared rabbit. ‘A wabbit! A wabbit,’ she shrieked. It was going to be a noisy evening.
Daniel was also taken by his cowboy hat. He put it on
immediately
and went to bed wearing it.
Lucas disappeared to his study. Paperwork, he said. It was never ending.
It was late when Jessica came downstairs after putting the children to bed and checking on Lady Grace.
‘No cards this afternoon, then,’ said Lady Grace, sitting up in bed, reading. ‘Better things to do?’
‘We’ll play cards tomorrow afternoon,’ said Jessica, forgetting about her visit to read to Maggie. It was going to be difficult to fit everything in. But she had promised.
Lucas was wandering about downstairs, talking on his mobile phone. He looked apprehensive and Jessica felt an urge to put her arm round him. She watched the changing expression on his face with a sudden chill.
‘OK, I’ll come right away. You were right to call me.’ He switched off his phone. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have supper on your own. It’s young Maggie. She’s running a high temperature. Not good news. I don’t like it. I’ll have to go back.’
‘You’ll need an anorak. It’s still raining,’ said Jessica. ‘I’ll make you a sandwich to take with you. It won’t take a minute.’
‘I haven’t time for a sandwich.’
‘I’m the fastest sandwich maker in the West,’ said Jessica, speeding into the kitchen. Minutes later she was in the porch, standing back from the rain, with a packet of cheese and tomato
sandwiches. She tucked them into his pocket as Lucas shrugged himself into his anorak.
‘You’re going to make somebody a wonderful wife,’ he said, brooding.
Suddenly he moulded her slender body to him. Jessica ached with the warmth of his closeness, his rampant attractiveness. His eyes lingered on hers for a second too long. Neither of them could stop the tidal wave of feeling.
Lucas had no idea what he was doing, being swept along. He could drown in her sweetness. Jessica was so lusciously willowy and slender. It was an agony as his lips touched her mouth briefly. His fierce kiss was burning with undisguised longing and desire.
‘Oh, Jessica, if only you knew,’ he murmured.
‘Drive carefully,’ she said against his cheek.
Then just as suddenly he was gone. Jessica had not had time to respond to his kiss. She stood in the porch, shattered and trembling, and it was not because of the rain. This was the moment that Jessica realized that she loved him.
She had not admitted it before, but now she knew.
It was dark and she was glad that no one could see her face. This was a secret that she had to keep to herself. Even if she loved him, she could not marry a man who did not love her, who wanted only a token wife to care for his mother and his children. It was not a bargain she could accept.
He’d said he wanted nothing else. He would go elsewhere for the pleasures of the body. And that kiss had been telling her that he would go elsewhere. Perhaps to a nurse or a grateful patient.
She shuddered at the thought. As before, he was asking too much. She was a human being with real feelings.
Jessica went back into the kitchen, still trembling. At least she had put the best Stilton in his sandwich. No meanness in her heart.
Jessica took a sandwich and a mug of tea into the library and switched on the television. She did not really want to watch any programme. She wanted to relive every step of the afternoon but knew it would be a dangerous occupation. Lucas was someone she should blot from her mind, and fast.
Poor Maggie. Instead, she should think of that little girl, still not out of the woods from her frightening experience. But Lucas would do all that he could with his skilful hands. The whole team would be there at her side. Jessica had lived through trauma many times in different wards. It was always an
alarming
situation, especially with sick and vulnerable children.
She didn’t take in a word of the programme. It was mindless sound track running through her head and disjointed figures moving across the television screen like puppets. Wallpaper television.
It was pointless staying up any longer. Lucas was not coming home. He would spend the night at the hospital, near Maggie, fighting for her.
Jessica went round locking up the big house, making sure all the windows were closed. She activated the alarm. It was a bit scary and still raining. The gardens were trapped in darkness, rain slicing through the night with relentless obstinacy.
She checked on the children. Lily was asleep with Floppy Ears, as he was now called, cuddled in her arms. Daniel had
placed the cowboy hat on his pillow and Jessica gently removed it, putting it beside his bed, where he would see it first thing when he awoke in the morning.
If only she could get through to him. It would be such an achievement.
‘Goodnight, young man,’ Jessica whispered.
‘I suppose you’re going to bed,’ said Lady Grace, still sitting up in bed, propped up with pillows, reading a new library book. ‘All that gallivanting about. Tired you out, has it? Young people have no stamina these days.’
‘Brighton is so bustling and crowded. Masses of people. It’s hard work finding room to walk on the pavements.’
‘It’s all those gays and lesbians,’ said Lady Grace. ‘They flock there, filling the place up, taking all the accommodation.’
‘They have a right to live somewhere,’ said Jessica, drawing the heavy curtains. ‘Would you like some hot milk?’
‘Yes, please, Jess. And two digestive biscuits. And make sure the milk is hot. I can’t stand lukewarm milk. It’s disgusting. That skin forming on the top.’
Sleep did not come easily. Jessica tossed and turned as if her bed was a ship at sea, making a nest of all her worries and fears. Dawn was filtering eerily through the sky before she fell into a deep sleep. Those few hours were not enough and Jessica awoke at her normal time, groggy and thick enough to spread on toast.
Lily was hopping about on the landing with Floppy Ears. ‘I’m taking him for a walk,’ she told the world. The world wasn’t listening.
‘Take him for a very long walk,’ groaned Jessica, turning her face into the pillow. There was no way of getting out of it. The household was waking up. She could hear Lady Grace’s strident bell. This was a new idea so that her ladyship could command attention at all times.
Jessica stumbled into the big front bedroom, still pulling on her bathrobe.
‘Hello,’ she said, blinking sleep from her eyes. ‘This is a bit early.’
‘I’ve lost Fred.’
‘You don’t need Fred to get out of bed. Fred is for long
journeys
. Do it slowly as I’ve showed you. Swing your legs over the side of the bed and feel the floor firmly first before putting your weight on your legs. Stand still for a few moments before
starting
to walk.’
‘I prefer using Fred,’ she insisted.
Fred was left overnight in the bathroom. Jessica hauled out the walker and took it round to Lady Grace. But she stood it some feet away from the bed.
‘Here’s poor Fred, banished as usual. Now, get out of bed as I showed you and then you can have Fred,’ she promised.
Lady Grace pulled her bed jacket round her. ‘You are a tyrant and a bully, Nurse Jess. I don’t know why I put up with you. You’re supposed to look after me, do what I say. I’m your employer.’
‘I’m supposed to be getting you through your hip replacement. Because you know, even if you won’t admit it, that this is doing you a lot of good,’ said Jessica, her good humour returning with wakefulness. ‘Look who can get downstairs now? Look who has been out into the garden to admire her roses?’
‘I’d have done that anyway, with or without you, young minx.’
‘Of course,’ grinned Jessica. ‘By installing an expensive stair lift. I’m sure you’d rather spend the money on a dozen crates of the best extra dry sherry.’
Lady Grace simply grunted and swung herself out of bed. She could do it quite well. She grabbed hold of Fred as if he was the staff of life. Maybe it was confidence she needed first thing in the morning. Or attention.
‘And stop those noisy children stamping about out there on the landing. You know I can’t stand noise in my delicate state. I shall get a headache. Take them out to play or whatever you’re paid to do.’
‘Sure, they’d love to go out and play, half dressed, at seven o’clock in the morning. Grass damp with dew, trying to rain, before a crumb of breakfast. Anyway, rabbits don’t stamp. They hop.’
But Jessica did take Lily off to the bathroom where it was difficult to stop Lily brushing Floppy Ears’ teeth. ‘He doesn’t need his teeth cleaning,’ said Jessica, rescuing the creature from a watery grave in the washbasin.
‘But look, he’s got big pointed teeth.’
‘He doesn’t eat anything.’
Down in the kitchen Mrs Harris had arrived and was taking off her hat and coat. Jessica escaped into the warmth, still in her bathrobe, to beg for a cup of tea. The kettle was singing on the Aga as she knew it would be. The kitchen was a haven.
‘This is going to be some day,’ Jessica said. ‘I have that gut feeling.’
‘I hope you are wrong,’ said Mrs Harris, wrapping herself in the flowered overall she insisted on wearing. ‘I don’t want one of those days. Lady Grace nearly drove me round the bend yesterday. She was in the worst of moods. Jealous because you had gone out with Lucas, I reckon. I can always tell.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Jessica, contrite. ‘We went shopping for Daniel’s birthday presents.’ She didn’t mention the cream tea or the walk on Palace Pier, or the drive home, or the kiss. Definitely not the kiss.
‘And you both deserved some time off, some time together.’
Jessica wondered about that last comment. Some time together? Surely Mrs Harris was not part of the marriage conspiracy? No, it couldn’t be. She was far too open and honest.
‘I don’t know how you have put up with Lady Grace all these years,’ said Jessica, curling up on a kitchen chair with a cup of hot tea cradled in her hand. ‘You could have got a job anywhere. Maybe housekeeper in one of the big hotels or another big house. You are such a good organizer, so efficient. Great cook.’
‘It’s a long story, miss. I won’t bore you with it. All lost and gone in the past now. Nothing left.’ Her voice was emotionless,
it also said:
don’t ask me.
Mrs Harris sat down, her drink of tea in her own special cup. She always used the same cup, a 1981 Diana and Charles
bone-china
wedding cup, their faces and royal logo entwined. No one knew why she had the cup. It was the finest bone china, almost too good to use. Yet she used it every day. She always washed and dried it carefully by hand. It never went in the dishwasher.
She saw Jessica looking at the cup and smiled.
‘Yes, I know. It’s lovely, isn’t it? I should keep it as an
heirloom
, stand it on a mantelpiece, but I prefer to use it everyday. It reminds me, you see, of someone I used to know very well, someone who gave it to me. So it’s a very special cup.’
Jessica held her breath. Was Mrs Harris going to tell her one of the secrets of Upton Hall? The house was full of secrets. It echoed with secrets, corridors filled with ghosts. She thought of Lily’s mother, Liz, and her strange disappearance. The wife that Lucas lost. The wife who died needlessly on the M25. Lucas had not told her everything. He had been hiding something.
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Jessica, sipping the reviving tea. ‘And how much better to use your cup everyday, rather than leave it on a shelf to be dusted once a week. Theirs was a very sad love story. A sad fairy-tale.’
‘That’s what he said,’ Mrs Harris said. ‘This is going to be a sad love story, he said to me, when the engagement was first splashed all over the newspapers. He was a man of great emotional depth. He knew exactly how people felt. It was an instinct. No one knew how much he suffered, mostly for other people.’
Jessica knew what she had to say. It was obvious. She could not stop herself.
‘Is that why you loved him?’
Mrs Harris nodded. ‘Yes, of course, miss. That’s why I loved him. We had loved each other for years, on and off. Since our schooldays really. He always carried my satchel home from school. Sometimes I had no lunch and he shared his with me. We went dancing together on Saturday nights, then to open air
pop concerts, lived in tents, deep in the mud. He looked after me, then he went away to study medicine. He had the brains, a skill, a talent that he had to use. He had to go.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘I got married. Bloody fool. I was out of my stupid mind. Some foolish romance that meant nothing. Somebody I met at the flicks. I knew as I was walking down the aisle in my white satin wedding dress and veil, all done up to the nines, that it was horrible mistake. I thought: this is the wrong man. But it was too late. I had to go through with it. My mum had paid for everything, you see, the church, the cars, the reception. She would have been livid if I had backed out at the last moment.’
Jessica did not know what to say. This was a story she had heard so many times, patients confiding to her in the still of the night, finding relief, often their last night in this world. People make mistakes. The kitchen was quiet, splinters of light like diamonds. Even the children were quiet, somewhere in their rooms.
‘It didn’t last. He drank, he was useless, clumsy. I left him. It was the only sensible thing I did. Then I got this job at Upton Hall. I was broke and needed the money. It was like heaven opening to me again. He was here, but with a classy aristocratic and demanding wife. I didn’t mind too much. I was near him. I could look after him because she didn’t look after him. Especially after Lucas was born. She didn’t want any more
pregnancies
, couldn’t go through that pain again.’
Mrs Harris was sitting with her hands round her precious cup, staring into the past. Jessica did not move. She knew who Mrs Harris was talking about.
‘Sir Bernard?’
‘Yes, he was knighted for his work and deserved it. He was a great surgeon and he was a wonderful man. I did everything I could for him. He needed a woman to love him and look after him. I always loved him. He remembered those schooldays and gave me this cup and saucer. They are all I have of him.’
‘But you have other memories?’
‘Oh yes, miss. I have many good memories. He made me promise to look after Lady Grace if anything happened to him. It was not an easy promise to make, but I agreed, thinking it would never happen. No one knew that he had worked himself to the bone, that he would collapse and die at the hospital. They brought him home to Upton Hall and I was the one who washed and dressed him and held his cold body in my arms. She wouldn’t even look at him.’
Jessica was shattered, her mouth turned to sawdust. She could imagine the suffering. She could not bear the thought of Lucas working himself to the bone, of him collapsing and dying at the hospital as his father had done.
What could she say? There was no way she could comfort this woman, after years of putting up with Lady Grace, all because of a promise she made to a man she loved. Mrs Harris had devoted her life to that promise.
‘Mrs Harris, you have carried out your promise,’ said Jessica earnestly. ‘Sir Bernard wouldn’t have wanted you to devote your entire life, chained to Lady Grace’s every whim. It’s not fair. There’s still time to find yourself a new life, new friends, even a new happiness.’
Mrs Harris got up and started to rinse her precious cup and saucer.
‘Well, I really appreciate the regular time off that you are giving me now. That’s enough for the moment. It feels like a proper bit of freedom.’
‘You ask for all the freedom you want,’ said Jessica. ‘I think you have fulfilled your promise to Sir Bernard, many times over. He sounds a special man and would understand.’
‘That’s nice of you to say so,’ said Mrs Harris, starting to lay the table for breakfast. Jessica yawned, ready to drop off. ‘Remember, school today, miss.’
Jessica raced upstairs with a second cup of tea. She had a quick shower to wake herself up. As she was dressing in jeans and a warm jersey, her phone rang.
‘Hello?’
‘Jessica?’ It was Lucas. He sounded a long way away, as if he was holding the phone at a distance. ‘I’m afraid your visit here is off for the time being. Maggie is in intensive care.’
‘Oh, that’s bad news. How is she doing?’
‘Not good,’ he said. He sounded as if he had been up all night. ‘I don’t know when I’ll be home. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow.’
‘Take care, Lucas,’ said Jessica. She didn’t know what else to say. She knew Maggie was in good hands. She knew he was doing his best. Any comment would be trite and hackneyed. ‘I’ll look after everyone here.’
He rang off without another word. He would be home when he could. All she could do was wait, trapped at Upton Hall beneath ashen skies. It was going to be a wet day. The clouds were already spilling token droplets.
They had to run through the rain for the school bus. Jessica managed to persuade Daniel that a cowboy hat was not part of the school uniform, and Lily also had to be persuaded that Floppy Ears did not need to learn to read.
‘We can teach him at home,’ she promised. ‘You and me, together.’
Lady Grace was determined to have a difficult day. Jessica was so afraid she would dislocate her new hip. It was one of the major complications following a hip replacement. She kept attempting to bend her hip past a right angle, pointing towards the other leg.