Chapter 25
It wasn’t until he’d sat in silence staring at nothing for a long time, that Tom realized he knew what to do. He’d go to Sevenstones.
His exams were over, and he would be packing up soon anyway. Why not now? Why not this very moment? His time at Oxford was over; what was there to stay for?
It was as though a light had gone on and suddenly he could see.
Groping under the bed he plucked out his kitbag, his head spinning.
He was so tired, not quite sober, could barely see straight, but this was the answer; he knew it, just as he knew that once his father had taken him to Sevenstones when he was at his lowest ebb. The house was waiting for him.
Tom was filled with purpose now. He pulled down the cheap prints of favourite paintings – Samuel Palmer’s The Magic Apple Tree , some Aubrey Beardsley prints, a photograph of his hero Isambard Kingdom Brunel smoking a cigar in front of a wall of heavy black chains, and postcards, stuck to the wall: the Alhambra, and Rajasthan and Marrakech from Celia, from his father in Scotland, from Antoine, and others, all around the world, all the world that he wanted to see, that he would see now.
Yes, he would see it. The future was his again.
Heartbroken though he was, he was, now, in fact, free to do what he wanted for the first time in his life.
He had been so blinkered – literally and figuratively.
Thought he knew everything. Shame rolled off him in waves both at the memory of the evening and as he considered resetting the muscle memory that had formed him for the past few years: how to be Celia’s boyfriend, how to win her, what they would do afterwards.
He was not going to be a stockbroker and live in Dulwich. Christ, no, he wasn’t.
Celia had known. She had understood more than he did – but he could not think of her, could not touch the thought, like a tongue poking around a sore tooth. Celia – no. He listed, instead, the places that he would go, now that it was over.
Tom packed and tidied the room almost methodically – he would ask the porters to send his bags after him to London.
Thirty minutes later he was ready to go.
He slung his kitbag over his shoulder, slid his father’s carved house into his pocket and, pulling the door quietly shut, he left without a backward glance.
He crossed the quad, coming out under the oriel window, the nameless Gothic revival gargoyles of men whose deeds he knew nothing about staring down at him.
Across the way, the huge bell of Christ Church, Great Tom, tolled loudly. It was morning, on the longest day.
Ox-eyed daisies, that was the name of those large, nodding flowers cramming out every other flower in the hedgerow on the lane leading to Sevenstones.
Tom remembered the name. Ox-eyed, he said softly to himself, smiling.
He felt ox-eyed, or, at the very least, most peculiar, due, he was sure, to the circumstances, as well as to the fact that he hadn’t had any sleep.
It was not unpleasant, just a curious feeling, as though he might suddenly float away.
His head ached – but these days he had headaches more frequently than he would have liked.
Celia had told him he should get glasses.
She’d said the good eye was working too hard, and it needed a rest, but he hadn’t wanted it to be true.
He wanted her to forget he was a bit bashed about.
The greengrocer’s on the high street in Tallboys was open, and there he remembered that Jenny loved peonies.
Henry had surprised her with some once, in waxed paper, and she had cried.
He remembered her shining face as she reached up to take them from her brother, far too grateful. ‘Really, Henry? For me?’
Tom plucked out a large bunch of them from a bucket on the ground, recklessly pressing two shillings into the shopkeeper’s hand and dashing back out into the sunshine.
It occurred to him suddenly he should telephone Jenny after he’d settled in, ask her to come down and stay.
He would phone his father too, tell him what had happened, beg him to visit.
Surely he’d come if Tom begged. They could have one more glorious Sevenstones summer.
Perhaps even with Uncle Henry, too. Tom stood on the high street and lifted his face to the sun, breathing in slowly and listening: the old familiar sounds that told him he was here, in this place that felt like home: a horse’s hooves, far away in the distance.
A child calling in a house nearby. The sprinkling sounds of birds in the crab-apple trees behind the shop, and the toll of the church bell, ringing for midday.
He set off through the high street, the warmth of the sun on his head and the back of his neck.
There was a Beginner’s Italian at Sevenstones; rather ancient, the book had been bought for Henry when there was a chance he might have to go to Naples in 1944.
Tom remembered it as he struggled up the last hill.
He’d learn Italian that summer. He’d get Jenny to test him.
By the end of August he’d be fluent. He could go to Rome.
Then he remembered Celia loved Rome, was fluent and might end up there.
No to Rome, to the whole of Italy. Paris, he’d check out the scene in Paris.
Or perhaps Marrakech. Or even further. Then, come September, he’d be ready to find a job. Wherever he ended up, he had a plan.
The curving lane was fringed with a high, dense hedgerow, more ox-eyed daisies and foxgloves and dog roses. And he was there, at the corner, and there was the green gate.
To his surprise the gate was open; someone had finally given it a fresh coat of paint.
‘Hello?’ he called, pushing open the gate and rounding the path. He walked towards the front door.
The front door was open too, as it usually was in summer, before midday, to let in the cold morning air. And there, on the coat rack, was a familiar sight. He stopped, his heart swelling. Jenny’s cotton wrap and her battered straw hat. She was here, and he realized suddenly how glad he was.
‘Jenny!’ he called. ‘It’s me!’ He dumped his kitbag on the wooden floor and stretched, inhaling the old familiar smell of the place. ‘Aunt Jenny! It’s me, Tom – I’ve come to surprise you!’ And he pushed open the sitting-room door.
Her hair was the first thing he saw, streaming gold across the sandy carpet, like a film he’d seen where someone melted and their hair turned into rivulets of gold.
She was lying on the rug by the hearth at a strange angle, crumpled, like a dropped coat, one arm flung out in a grotesque gesture of flamboyance.
Tom breathed in. ‘Oh, no,’ he said very quietly.
Gently, he moved her arm back across her chest. Her hand, when he lifted it, was cold, soft and heavy, the palms smooth and unworn.
The signs of her occupancy were scant, but that was Jenny: she left so little behind. Scarcely anything that was hers; everything in the house had been her father’s, he supposed, and the happiest she had been was when other people were here.
It was only after he had called the police that he found the half-written note, creased and torn, the fountain pen and its lid scattered across the room nearby.
For Tom , it said at the top.
For your eyes only.
He opened it, but then, at the sound of a noise from outside, he turned, folding up the letter immediately.
It was a deer in the garden, staring blankly at him.
Looking for somewhere to put the letter, as though on autopilot, Tom looked down to see what he was wearing, only then remembering he was in a dinner jacket.
He blinked. The events of the previous night were as though from another life, and suddenly they seemed to roll towards him like a wave, and then the enormity of this, which was even greater, broke across that and he started shaking.
Jenny was dead; she was gone. He slid the letter, unread, into his breast pocket, where it nestled next to the ring she had given him.
Then, barely awake, hardly knowing what he was doing, he went to wait outside the open gate for help to arrive, leaving the note unread and utterly forgotten about, and the front door wide open, to let the sunshine in, on Midsummer’s Day.