Read The Hand That First Held Mine Online
Authors: Maggie O'farrell
Tags: #Literary, #Psychological, #Family Life, #Historical, #Fiction
The Hand That First Held Mine (25 page)
He straightened up and caught her by the wrist. ‘Where are you off to?’
‘Oxford. Remember?’
He tapped his fountain pen against his teeth. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said, ‘the priapic lecturer. Good luck. Stay on the other side of the desk from him.’
She smiled, kissed him again, on the mouth this time. ‘I will.’ Then she frowned, touched his cheek, his brow. ‘You’re very hot,’ she said. ‘Do you feel feverish?’ She felt his forehead again.
He waved her away, beginning to cough. ‘I’m fine, woman, be off with you.’
‘Innes, are you sure—’
He turned back to his proof. ‘Away to your seat of learning. Come back unscathed.’
Lexie turned to Laurence and Daphne, who were on the other side of the room, leaning over some copy together. ‘Will you keep an eye on him?’ she said. ‘Send him home if he gets any worse.’
Laurence looked up and smiled. ‘We will,’ he said, and she left, satisfied. Innes was lighting a cigarette when she looked back from the door, arranging his jacket about his shoulders, scoring a line through the proof.
There is no need to dwell on the details of Lexie’s trip to Oxford, of the academic’s inflated sense of self, the clumsy passes he made at her, how delayed her train was on the way back, that she was rehearsing in her mind how she would tell Innes all about the passes, that he would relish the details and make her tell him all over again. She was imagining them in bed, the only warm place in the flat that January; she would make him drink hot whisky with honey, tuck the covers about him, make him rest.
Lexie knew he’d still be at the office so, even though it was late when she made it back to London, she went there. The fog was thick that night. Walking from the tube to Bayton Street she almost lost her way several times and her hair was damp about her face. She was wrong, she remembers thinking, when she reached the office. Innes’s desk was empty. She could see only Laurence through the window. She was pleased, thinking Innes must have gone home.
But Laurence stood up as she came in, reaching for his jacket.
‘Oh, what a day I’ve had,’ she was saying. ‘I—’
But Laurence interrupted her: ‘Lexie, Innes has been taken to hospital.’
They had a rapid review of their money situation. She had exactly ninepence in her purse, Laurence even less. Was it enough for a cab to the hospital? No. They rummaged through Innes’s desk for the petty-cash tin, rattled it, were heartened by the sound of coins but couldn’t find the key.
‘Where would he keep it?’ Laurence said to Lexie. ‘Come on, you know him best.’
She thought about it. ‘It’ll be in the desk somewhere,’ she said. ‘Unless he has it with him.’ She opened another drawer and swept aside paperclips, split and broken cigarettes, torn scraps of paper with bits of Innes’s scrawl on them. She found a ha’penny and added it to the pile. All the time, her heart was squeezing painfully, painfully in her chest, and her hands, searching through the mess in Innes’s drawers – was he really this untidy, why did the love of her life need so many paperclips, what did these scraps of paper say – were trembling. Innes in hospital, Laurence had said, and her mind turned over the other words: breathing difficulties, collapsed, called an ambulance.
‘This is ridiculous,’ she said finally. She marched to the back room and returned with a screwdriver. Steadying the petty-cash tin with her foot, she rammed the screwdriver end between the lid and the base. The lock made a grinding noise, then broke. Coins burst out, all over the desk, the chair, the floor. In an instant, she and Laurence were on their knees, gathering them up, filling Laurence’s jacket pockets. Then they were running, through the door, out into the street, up the road, to where the taxis congregated.
At the hospital, they ran again, along the corridors, around the corners, up the stairs. At the ward door, there was a nurse with a clipboard.
‘We’re here for Innes Kent,’ Lexie said breathlessly. ‘Where is he?’
The nurse glanced down at the watch on her chest. ‘Visiting hours ended half an hour ago. I’ve asked his
sister
,’ she pronounced the word with a leaning sarcasm, ‘three times now to leave but she says she won’t until his
wife
gets here. Am I to take it that you are his wife?’
sister
,’ she pronounced the word with a leaning sarcasm, ‘three times now to leave but she says she won’t until his
wife
gets here. Am I to take it that you are his wife?’
Lexie hesitated. Laurence jumped in: ‘Yes, she is.’
The nurse looked at him. ‘And who are you? His grandfather?’ Laurence, a slight, fair-skinned Anglo-Saxon, treated her to a dazzling smile. ‘His brother.’
She regarded them both a moment longer through narrowed eyes. ‘Ten minutes,’ she said, ‘and no more. My patients need their rest. I can’t have this place filling up with the likes of you.’ She pointed with her pen. ‘Fourth bed on the left and no noise.’ She turned away, muttering, ‘Wife, my foot.’
Lexie slipped between the curtains, which had been drawn to make a cubicle, and inside was Daphne, sitting on a chair, and there on the bed was Innes. He had a mask strapped over his face, his hair was plastered back from his forehead and his skin was greyish white.
‘Lexie,’ he mouthed, from behind the mask, and she could see him smile. She immediately climbed on to the bed, put her arms around him, laid her head next to his on the pillow. She was aware of Daphne and Laurence disappearing at this point, of hearing their footsteps recede down the ward.
‘I don’t know,’ she murmured into Innes’s ear. ‘I turn my back for five minutes and you go and get yourself admitted to hospital. That’s the last time I’m going to Oxford.’
His arm came up to grasp her waist. He put his other hand up to her cheek, her hair. ‘How was the academic?’ he said, behind the mask.
‘It couldn’t matter less,’ she replied, ‘and you’re not allowed to speak.’
Innes removed the mask. ‘I’m absolutely fine,’ he rasped. ‘All this is a lot of fuss about nothing.’
‘It didn’t sound like nothing. Laurence said you collapsed.’
He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. ‘I had a moment of . . . of pain but it was nothing at all, really. It’s a touch of pleurisy, they say. I’ll be back on my feet tomorrow.’
Lexie curled herself around him, pressed her ear to the side of his chest, heard the boom-swish-boom of his heart.
‘Checking it’s still going, are you?’ he said.
This she couldn’t bear. She clutched at him and felt tears prick her eyelids. ‘Innes, Innes, Innes,’ she muttered, like an incantation.
‘Hush,’ he whispered and his hand stroked her hair.
‘
Mrs
Kent,’ the nurse was suddenly there, ‘the only people allowed in these beds are my patients. This is most irregular. I must ask you to get down immediately.’
Mrs
Kent,’ the nurse was suddenly there, ‘the only people allowed in these beds are my patients. This is most irregular. I must ask you to get down immediately.’
Innes gripped her tighter. ‘Does she have to, Sister? She’s very slim, as you can see. She doesn’t take up much room.’
‘Her physique is irrelevant, Mr Kent. You are a very sick man and I must ask your wife to leave. And you!’ She regarded Innes with a look of horror. ‘You have taken off your oxygen tube! Mr Kent, you are a very bad man.’
‘It’s been said before.’ Innes sighed.
Lexie slid reluctantly from the bed but Innes kept hold of her hand. ‘Do I really have to go?’
‘Yes.’ The nurse was firm, smoothing the covers, snapping Innes’s mask back into place. ‘You can come back tomorrow, two p.m.’
‘Can’t I come in the morning?’
‘No. Your husband is ill, Mrs Kent. He needs to rest.’
She bent to kiss Innes’s cheek. ‘Goodbye, husband,’ she murmured. Innes seized her, pulled her back down towards him and, removing the mask, kissed her full on the mouth. They drew apart, smiled, then kissed again.
‘Mr Kent!’ the nurse shrieked. ‘Stop! Stop this instant. Do you want to give your wife pleurisy as well? Put that mask back on.’
‘You are such a martinet,’ he said, ‘such a dominatrix. Has anyone ever told you that? You’d have made a wonderful general, had things turned out differently for you.’
‘It’s my job to see you get better.’ She whipped the curtains back. Lexie walked down the ward and waved from the end. Innes waved back. He was still arguing with the nurse.
When Lexie arrived the next day, he wasn’t wearing the mask any more and was propped up on some pillows with some pages in his lap. He snatched off his glasses when he saw her and patted the bed beside him.
‘Quick,’ he said. ‘Draw the curtains. Before the Gorgon sees you.’
Lexie pulled the curtains around the bed, then sat next to Innes. He immediately enveloped her in an enormous, crushing embrace. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I want to look at you.’
‘Too bad,’ he mumbled in her ear. ‘I want to touch you up.’ His hands roved down her leg, searching for the hem of her dress, then, having found it, dived upwards.
‘Innes,’ she murmured, ‘I really think this isn’t the place for—’
He pulled back and gazed at her face. ‘Oh, it’s so good to see you. I passed a foul night. I don’t know how anyone expects you to get well in hospital. You’re kept awake for hours by all the old codgers spluttering and snoring, and the minute you do fall asleep the nurses wake you up again, wanting to shove thermometers into you. It’s unbearable. I have to get out of here. Today. You have to help me persuade them.’
‘I’ll do no such thing.’
‘Why not?’
‘Innes, you’re ill. Pleurisy’s no joke. If they say you have to stay, you have to stay and—’ She broke off to look at him, then laughed. ‘Where did you get those?’ He was wearing a pair of strange striped blue and grey pyjamas. He had never owned such things before and looked extremely peculiar in them, as if he had borrowed someone else’s body.
‘They,’ he gestured towards the nurses’ station, ‘produced them from somewhere. I have to get out of here, Lex. I have to get back to work. The next issue’s going to press on—’
‘You don’t. We’ll manage. Somehow. You have to get well.’
He was about to protest when he was caught by a coughing fit. He hacked and spluttered, trying to draw breath. Lexie put her hands on his shoulders and held them as he struggled. The fit over, he lay back on the pillows, biting his lip. Lexie knew that look. It was one of fury, of thwartedness. He took her hand and folded it between both of his. ‘I love you, Jezebel. You know that, don’t you?’
She leant forward, kissed him, kissed him again. ‘Of course. I love you too.’
He turned his neck back and forth, as if he was trying to get comfortable. ‘We’ve been lucky, haven’t we?’
‘What do you mean?’ His hands, around hers, were hot, she noticed, and damp.
‘To find each other. Some people go their whole lives without finding what you and I have.’
Lexie frowned, then squeezed his hand. ‘You’re right. We are lucky. And we’re going to carry on being lucky.’ She pushed her features into a smile.
‘You haven’t minded too much, have you, about the other thing?’ He was staring at her, intently.
‘What other thing?’
‘The marriage thing.’
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘In all honesty, no.’
He smiled then. ‘Good.’ He fidgeted with the pillows. ‘I was thinking, though . . .’ He trailed away, reaching behind his head again to adjust the pillows.
She stood to help him. ‘What were you thinking?’
‘I’d like to talk to Clifford.’
‘Clifford?’ She had her back to him, pouring him a glass of water from the jug.
‘My lawyer.’
She turned, amazed. ‘Whatever for?’
He shook his head at the water. ‘About you.’
‘Me?’
‘I worry, you see, about what would happen to you if I died.’
‘Innes!’ Lexie slammed down the glass of water. ‘You are not going—’
He held a finger to her lips. ‘Sssh,’ he said, in a whisper. ‘My little firecracker.’ He smiled. ‘Always going off without warning.’ He pulled her to sit down next to him. ‘I don’t necessarily mean now. I just mean at some point. Being in here has made me think about it, that’s all. I haven’t even made a will. Never got round to it. And I should. Especially for you. Otherwise bloody Gloria will get the lot – not that there is much, as you know – and you’ll be out on your ear.’ He pinched her ear gently, then coiled a strand of her hair around his finger. ‘And I couldn’t bear that. I’d be unable to rest in peace. I’d be eternity’s most unhappy ghost. You are my wife and my life. You know that, don’t you?’
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