The Reckoning (36 page)

He died just before the doctor arrived, without regaining
consciousness. Between one faint breath drawn, and the place
where the next should have been, lay death, unseen, unmea
surable, inexplicable. How can it be like that? Héloïse
wondered, as she had wondered before. For the whole human
space and solidness and reality of a person simply to cease to be, in so little a time — and irreversibly — was incomprehen
sible, and unfair, oh unfair!
Exhaustion and shock, in a strange way, enabled them to
go on. There was so much to be done, so much clearing up to
do, massive repairs to be made to the fabric, real and spir
itual, of their lives. They would feel it later, Héloïse thought.
For now they were numbed to the pain, all of them, even
James, who when the physician confirmed that Edward was dead, simply got up without a word and went away to carry
on with what had to be done.

The wind had died down completely, leaving a grey, cold
day with a steady rain falling out of a sky as blank as a white
eye. First the animals must be seen to — always the animals
first — and then the damage inspected. With Durban by his
side, James stood out in the rain by the orchard wall and
looked at the ruin of his home. He could see how the towering
kitchen chimney had gone, collapsing outwards and ripping a
bottle-shaped section of wall away. It had fallen almost in one
piece, and the upper section lay like a red snake across the
grass, the flaunching and pots lying shattered in the debris of
part of the orchard wall.

But in its falling it had also torn away the side of the North
Bedroom, and the floor beams which were so solidly set into
the thickness of the wall. The kitchen had originally, in medi
aeval times, reached all the way up to the roof: the other
floors had been put in later, when people had ceased to sleep
in communal rooms and wanted separate chambers.
Edward's room had once been part of the great kitchen. It
was as if the chimney had tried to claim back its own.

Oh, but the damage was so terrible, the mess so unspeak
able, that he did not know where to begin. The exposed
innards of the house — the bedroom and the kitchen — were
pathetic and horrible; pieces of furniture seen from where
they should never have been seen cried mutely for decent
burial. There were bricks and rubble and tiles and wood scat
tered over such a vast area, half-filling the moat, whose
waters were beginning to spread outwards over the bank in default of their usual channel; between the orchard and the
moat what had been a smooth grassy walk was a trampled,
muddy morass. They would never be able to clear it up,
never. Weary and frightened, he thought they should just go
away, all of them, evacuate the house and leave it as it was, go
and live somewhere else and forget about Morland Place. It could never be the same again. Let it stand ruined as a mute
memorial to Ned.

The thought caught him unawares, and despair filled him.
He couldn't be dead, not old Ned, reliable, hard-working,
always-there Edward; his mother's 'best of sons'; the quiet
one, the eldest. They couldn't manage without him.
He
couldn't manage without him. Inside he cried out, like a child
wanting things to be put right. Give him back! It isn't fair! Oh
God, he wanted Ned back! He wanted to tell him how much
he had always loved him, and relied on him, and how little he
could contemplate coping with the future without him.

Durban was there beside him, did not quite touch his arm,
but the gesture was implicit in his stance. 'What was made
can be mended, sir,' he said quietly. He had understood
James's despair at the enormity of the ruin, but not what the
loss of Edward was already meaning.

‘
You'd better go and fetch John Skelwith here,' James
heard himself say. His voice surprised him by its steadiness.
‘He can advise us whether it's safe. I dare say there'll be some
shoring-up to do. And he can start making arrangements for
the repair and rebuilding. Ask him to come at once, if you
please.'

‘
Yes, sir.' Durban went, leaving James standing alone in the rain. The sound, at least, was comforting, as it pattered
and dripped. It had a mesmeric quality. How easy it would
be, he thought, to lie down here on the wet grass and never
get up again, just close his eyes and wait for death to come.
But he couldn't. Always before there had been Edward to
leave things to, Edward to see things got done. Papa had died,
and Mama had died, but there had still been Edward, and all
the responsibilities James had shirked all his life had devolved
onto those sturdy, uncomplaining shoulders. Ned would never
neglect a duty, however tiresome, never put his own comfort
first. He had accused Ned in his heart before now of not really
loving Morland Place as he, James, loved it. But who was it
who had kept and cared for and defended it? Who had
performed the full and thankless tasks, who had carried the
final burden of responsibility?

‘
Oh Ned,' he said aloud, 'I never thanked you. I'm so
sorry.' And he turned his face up to the rain and cried —
humble tears, for the brother he had never appreciated, until
it was too late.

*

John Skelwith arrived without Durban. He rode over to James
and slid weakly from his horse's back, and stared at the
ruined house, stunned and disbelieving.

‘
It's incredible. The chimney — the whole wall. It ought to
have stood for ever. God, I can't believe it! How did it
happen?’

James blinked at him through the rain. 'Didn't Durban tell
you?'

‘Durban? I haven't seen Durban. What happened, sir?'

‘
If you didn't see Durban, what are you doing here?' James
asked, bewildered in his turn.

Skelwith shook his head as if to clear his senses. 'I came to
ask her ladyship to come back with me. Mathilde went into
labour this morning. Isn't it wonderful, sir? I'm frightened almost to death about it, but the midwife says she'll be all
right, and that nothing will happen for hours yet, so I took
the chance to slip out, but I daren't stay long. I wanted to let
you know myself, and I know Mathilde would like her lady
ship to be there. I thought she would want to — but of course,
I never expected this! I suppose she won't want to leave at a
time like this.’

It had to be done, though perhaps not as brutally as James
did it. 'My brother is dead,' he said.

Skelwith didn't take it in. 'Dead? Who —? How —?'

‘
That,' James said, nodding towards the disembowelled
chamber, 'was his bedroom.’

Skelwith's face screwed up with pain. 'Oh dear God!' he
whimpered. 'Oh no, it can't be true!'

‘
It's true,' James said flatly. 'We found him under the
rubble.' He tried and failed to elaborate, and then made a
casting-away gesture with his hand. 'I sent Durban for you in
your professional capacity. The house needs to be made safe, and then of course it must be rebuilt. I want you to send your
men along as soon as possible to begin repairs.’

Skelwith stared at him as if he could not believe what he
was hearing. 'How can you —' he began; but he was not a
stupid man, and he quickly saw how it was that James could.
He pulled himself together. 'Yes, of course,' he said. 'You'll want tarpaulins over the gaps, and everything shored up. I'll send my men out straight away, with my best foreman. And
now, if you'll forgive me, I must get back to my wife. Will
you —' He swallowed. Will you say what's proper to her ladyship? And tell her about Mathilde? I'll call again as soon as I
can, and —’

He stopped again. James's white, blank face was so hard to
address. 'Sir,' he said, 'I am so shocked, and so sorry. I wish
there were anything to be said at such a moment.' He hesi
tated, and then held out his hand. James looked at it as
though he did not know what it was; and then he looked at
Skelwith's face, and a bewildered look came into his eyes, and
a living pain instead of the blankness. His mouth quivered,
and then with a blind, clumsy movement they put their arms
round each other. Skelwith was the taller man. His arms were
round James's shoulders, and he stared over his bent head
towards the gaping, wounded house.

His throat tightened and his eyes filled with tears. 'Oh
Father,' he said.

 
Edward's funeral took place a week later. In that time, the
builders had done a great deal: fixed tarpaulins, shored up the outer walls, and tidied the rubble into heaps. With its wounds
decently bandaged, the house did not look quite so bad.
Inside, the door to the North Bedroom had been nailed up, to
prevent anyone from wandering in there by accident. Every
thing rescuable had been brought out of the rubble of the
kitchen, and a temporary theatre of operations had been set
up for Barnard in the servants' hall, including a cooking-
stove, whose fumes were conducted away by an ingenious
series of flues which emptied into the Red Room's chimney.

Life could go on; life did go on, and the shock of losing
Edward was in some ways blunted by the disruption to
routine caused by the storm-damage. They had not yet had
time fully to miss him in their normal daily round, since
everything was topsy-turvey, and no-one was in his accus
tomed place anyway.

‘
I keep thinking my uncle's just stepped out of the room for
a moment,' Sophie said once during that week. 'I expect him
to come back in at any moment.'

‘
Yes, I know,' Héloïse said. She felt just the same. It was
different when Fanny died, though she had been ripped out of life just as violently. But there had never been any doubt that
Fanny was missing — the silence told you so. Quiet Edward,
camouflaged against his background so that he seemed like
part of the house, was different. It felt as though he
must
be
there, somewhere — if not in the drawing-room, in the
steward's room; if not in the house, then somewhere about
the fields.

They knew — James in particular knew — that they had so
far come across only the tip of the mountain of tasks he used
to do, the decisions he used to make, the questions he used to
answer; but already things were piling up. There would have
to be a reckoning, Héloïse thought, and a redivision of his
responsibilities. But for the moment they were all simply
struggling from day to day through the unfamiliar landscape
of shock. After the funeral, she thought, then they would
have to come to terms with it all.