The Green Remains (5 page)

Chapter Nine

“Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted.”

— Saint Matthew (Matthew 5:4)

3:15
PM

“The beige stone building called Clarendon Hall was built by an early Clarendon landowner in the Tudor period. Although a massive fire destroyed parts of the interior, later generations of the family rebuilt it, using parts of the existing stone outer walls and retaining the massive fireplaces and the remaining linenfold paneling. This wide staircase splits the marble-floored entry hall, and our tour today will take in the rooms on the left side of the house: the formal drawing room, an elegant dining room that seats twenty and the ballroom with its musicians’ gallery. I’ll point out many interesting features and valued antiques. Balls and dinner parties were regularly held here, and Saint Margaret’s Hospital still uses the facility for its annual charity gala … ”

  The docent was a good one, and Sommer had regretted having to interrupt her talk earlier to cancel the tour. It couldn’t be helped, and the woman’s eyes widened when he’d discreetly explained his reasons. After speaking with the tour director, the guide hurriedly shepherded the surprised people through the dining room to exit a door on the far side of that room without pointing out any interesting features.

  That had been right after DCI Clarke left. The hours from then until now had been some of the toughest he’d endured. Sommer waited while his nurse, Gillian Cole, opened the door to the private family library. All of the doorsills had been removed years ago after Sommer’s accident, which allowed him to glide effortlessly from room to room in his wheelchair. He used his toggle switch to move past Gillian and manipulated himself next to his wife, who sat in her usual chair. Early on he’d christened the motorized chair “My Carriage,” and the name had stuck as he continued to update the models.

  Behind them, the window-filled wall let in the light his prized rare plants craved. Sommer checked his collection daily, misting some, snipping away at others, the flowers  arranged on low, slatted shelves he could reach. Sommer raised rare orchids, South American lilies and several African species unseen in England. He had been the subject of several magazine articles and was known in Cumbria as an authority on rare plants. Other than doctor’s appointments, the infrequent outings he and Antonia took were usually to area garden shows. It was one of the few activities he could enjoy with his incapacitation.

  Today, he avoided his precious plants, his attention focused on his wife. As Gillian bent over and adjusted his lap rug, strings of her wiry grey and black hair fell over her bony shoulder. She squeezed his hand in comfort.

  “Can I get either of you anything?” Gillian’s voice was raspy but kind. She had been taking care of Sommer since just after his accident and was a fixture at Clarendon Hall.

  Sommer glanced at his wife as he consulted his watch. Antonia sat woodenly in the exact middle of the chair, her back doing penance by not relaxing against the worn cushion. He looked into the earnest gaze of the nurse who had kept his body moving and healthy all these years.

  “No, thank you, Gillian. But perhaps we could do with a sherry. Would you ask Cook to bring us the Croft?”

  Gillian nodded and left the room, her flat nurse oxfords squishing on the wooden floor. The library was one of the rooms off limits to the public tours Sommer had been forced to initiate to make ends meet. After he’d suspended the rest of the day’s tours, he’d also cancelled those set for the next week. It would be an added financial burden, but he didn’t see how any of them could cope just now with groups of strangers clumping around their home. It was bad enough they only had the use of half of the family residence.

  Sommer sighed and looked around the familiar room, eyes scanning books read and loved—not seeing the shabbiness of the room but only its tall windows and thick moldings. He soaked up the comfort the books usually provided him. Reading thrust him out of his wheelchair and into a different time or place, an essential solace.

  Silence haunted the long room. A fire crackled in the grate, spreading its warmth, creating a circle of heat and golden light in the autumn afternoon. He had a sudden image of himself as a newlywed standing in front of this fireplace. His back had always been cooler than the front that faced the warmth. Nothing in those halcyon days had suggested or prepared him for the tragedies he and his wife would face, but they had managed to survive—until this unspeakable event.

  After thirty-three years of marriage, he didn’t know how to initiate a conversation with his wife. What was there to say that would soften the blow they’d had? Antonia’s hazel eyes were red rimmed and dulled with anguish, her sweet mouth set in a grimace of pain. Her impeccable blonde curls, usually neat and close to her head, stood up wildly around her closed face, as though she had been pulling at her hair. A visceral tremor ran through him. She had aged ten years in a matter of hours.

  After breaking her precious figurines, Antonia had rushed about, upstairs and down, crying in frantic waves of hysteria that had echoed throughout the stone halls. Unable to soothe her, Sommer had eventually allowed Gillian to take him upstairs for his whirlpool while Cook had taken over trying to calm Antonia. The elevator door in the kitchen had blunted the frenzied cries of his wife, the sound receding as the lift rose.

  Gillian had set him in the bath and tactfully left him for a few minutes. He’d wept alone there, the warm water swirling over and around his withered legs. When he was spent, he’d firmed up his resolve for both of them. Gillian had driven him in his van to the mortuary for the formal identification. He was glad Antonia had been spared the sight of their son’s distorted face.

  Antonia finally met his look. He’d persuaded her to take one of the pills Doc Lattimore had left, and thankfully the sedative was taking hold. As her gaze softened, Sommer reached his calloused hand out to grasp hers and was shocked to feel its coolness in the warm room. He leaned over as far as the confines of his chair would allow and warmed first one of Antonia’s hands and then the other between his own, rubbing them briskly.

  “Blast this bloody chair. I want to sit with you and hold you and comfort you as best I can, my darling.” Sommer looked down in disgust at his wasted legs, sensing movement as Antonia rose and cautiously, carefully arranged herself across his lap. She leaned against him, resting her head under his chin, and his shoulders had never felt stronger as he wrapped his arms protectively around her.

*

Sommer was continually surprised at how delicately Cook carried the small silver tray by its ornate handles, despite her rotund frame. She set the tray down carefully, sherry glasses clinking softly, on a barley twist side table that been his great-grandmother’s. Sommer leafed through a poetry anthology, trying to find words for Keith’s eventual funeral service. Antonia was back in her chair, paging through a photograph album, composed except for her blotched face and reddened eyes. She smoothed her hair down and motioned Cook over, pointing to one snapshot in particular.

  “Look, Cook. Here’s the day we went down to the pier, and Keith first swam in the lake without his water wings. Remember how proud he was?”

  Cook raised her eyes from the picture of the sturdy boy waving to those gathered on the dock, ready to record his every move, and Sommer saw the question in her eyes. He dipped his head in confirmation that the sedative was working.

  “Yes, a right fearless boy he is.” Unable to use the past tense, Cook stifled a sob, then cleared her throat as Antonia looked into the distance, lost in the memory.

  “I thought a bowl of thick soup tonight for supper, dear, unless you had other ideas,” Sommer said.

  Antonia continued her stare, caught up in the memory spurred by the photo.

  Sommer continued. “That sounds just the ticket, doesn’t it? Warm and filling, just what the doctor ordered. I don’t think we’ll want any heavy meals for the next few days. Use your judgment, Cook.”

  Cook brightened, evidently pleased at the opportunity Sommer gave her to help in a concrete way. She poured their sherry and, after refusing the glass Sommer offered her, bustled off to start the soup.

  Sommer watched his wife replace the photo and flip to the next page. Sommer sipped his sherry and bent his head over
The Oxford Book of English Verse
, contemplating two things: how they would endure these next few days and what hell they had brought on themselves so many years ago.

Chapter Ten

“All my life I have had an awareness of other times and places.”

— Jack London,
The Star Rover

3:20
PM

The lift let nurse Gillian Cole out at the center of the two upper wings of Clarendon Hall. The left wing, with its bedchambers still furnished as though Henry VIII slept there nightly, was used on the tours. On the right were Antonia and Sommer’s suites, Keith’s room and the playroom at the end of the hall that Keith had turned into his library. Edmunde Clarendon, Sommer’s older brother, occupied a former guest suite, and Gillian headed there to check on him. The area just to the right of the central hallway was kitted out with the hydro tub and exercise equipment both brothers used.

  As Gillian rounded the corner from the elevator, she stopped to gather a stack of fresh linens. Her routine today had been severely disrupted, and while she felt callous for thinking that, she was always honest in her own thoughts. The scent of cool, clean sheets never failed to steady her. She stuck her nose deeply into a pile and inhaled, then chose a washcloth and towel and carried them into Edmunde’s room.

  Gillian had always been slender, but lately her uniform hung from her shoulders as though her frame had diminished. Her skin had a pallor associated with a lack of sunshine, but over the years she’d grown used to being indoors most of the day. She was extremely proud of her nursing services to first one and then both of the Clarendon brothers.

  The door banged as she opened it, startling the tall, broad
man dozing in a mechanical wheelchair. His left side faced the door, and for a moment Gillian felt a prick of longing as she surveyed the strong profile. Edmunde’s dark hair swirled over his high forehead; white streaks like frosting lent him an elegant look from this angle. The hand that gripped the armrest appeared solid and strong.

  As the nurse moved around the bed, the man’s shriveled right side came into view. His mouth drooped grotesquely; a thread of spittle oozed from the gaping lip. His gnarled right hand curled around the rolled facecloth Gillian always left there to prevent further contractions or skin breakdown, a practice the physical therapist had taught her. The muscles on the entire right side of Edmunde’s large frame displayed atrophy from the debilitating stroke that had reduced the once-powerful man to a monstrous mountain of rubbish. Gillian had learned early on to rein in her reaction to his appearance.

  She opened the window to let the crisp autumn air rush into the chamber. “There now, let’s get some of the fusty smell out of here. Antonia is calmer, and the timbers have stopped rattling.”

  Edmunde grunted an acknowledgment.

  Gillian flipped the pillows that propped Edmunde’s right side up when he sat in his chair. His motorized wheelchair had an attached table that covered his lap and kept him from sliding down to the floor. He could use his left arm when he wanted to, and she thought there was real progress with the strength in his left leg when the physiotherapist worked with him—when he felt like cooperating.

  Gillian pried the facecloth out of the grip of Edmunde’s right claw, wet it with warm water from the bathroom and then used it to wash inside the hand. Drying his palm and fingers carefully, Gillian rolled up the fresh cloth she’d brought in, powdered it with the cornstarch she kept in Edmunde’s bedside table and adeptly reinserted it.

  “You could do this yourself, you know. You do have a good side,” she complained, but her smile softened the statement.

  He grunted again, his aphasia nearly complete. She remembered the day he’d given up on speech therapy. She thought he would have thrown the therapist bodily out of the room if he’d been capable of it. After that, even though the therapist had still insisted on coming, Edmunde refused to make eye contact and sat mutely in his chair. Finally, the therapist got the message and terminated treatment. Now, Edmunde chose to communicate with nods and grumbles.

  Edmunde pointed to a cabinet near the door and nodded, waiting for Gillian’s response.

  She considered his request. “I suppose a nip today is deserved.” She took a pint bottle of his favorite Islay Lagavulin Malt and opened it. The pungent peat scent made her eyes tear as she poured him a dram. “I never could understand how you can drink this stuff,” she pronounced, holding the glass out to him.

  Edmunde took the glass in his good hand and held it near his nose. He sucked in a deep breath, eyes closed. Then he knocked back the entire dram at once, his face reddening as his eyes watered. He held out the glass for a refill of the single malt scotch.

  “Enough,” she said, rinsing the glass in his bathroom and stowing it away with the bottle. “You’ll stink of it the rest of the day as it is.”

  Gillian combed Edmunde’s hair off his face. She took a lemon-glycerin swab from a packet on the nightstand and ran it around the interior of Edmunde’s mouth. “That should help with the fumes.” She put her hands on nonexistent hips and considered him. “Want to sit near the window a bit? I love the light at this time of day.” She moved him to the window, with its view of Clarendon Chapel. Behind it to the right, she could just make out the edge of the cottage she shared with her son.

  When he was settled, she bent down to his eye level and spoke directly to him. His deep-brown eyes met hers, the right lid drooping over the iris, clouding the thoughts behind it. His left one stared back at her without blinking. Although she had no idea how much he absorbed, Gillian always spoke to him clearly.

  “There will be questions, you know,” she said. “Someone will come around, but they’ll go away eventually. Now, do you want me to put the disc on? You were just getting to the good part yesterday.”

  Edmunde nodded, and Gillian hit play on his CD player. As she tidied his bed, the voice of Colin Buchanan narrating Reginald Hill’s mystery
A Cure for All Diseases
filled the room.