9.

The Hour Chimes

October, 1939

Stephen took a deep breath, tipping his head back and looking up into the branches of the cedar above the bench. He couldn't breathe in the house; in every room he felt the weight of the confrontation with his parents, anxious that one of them should appear at any moment and begin the entire discussion again. His mother had wept, as he knew she would, and his father had thought the decision contained more than a little of Alexander's influence, and it had made Stephen furious. He rarely raged, and seldom disagreed with his parents.

He had watched in awe, and some horror, over the years as Alexander and Beatrice had fought with their parents over issues small and large. His relationship with his parents was entirely different, and Stephen supposed that, in part, it was because he didn't have to compete with anyone else; he had their undivided attention - and surveillance. This time they would not change his mind, and he wasn't sure his father entirely wanted to. He had seen the flicker of pride on his face but it had been tempered by the distress of his mother, the anguished way her face crumpled.

It was done, and he would not change his mind. He wouldn't return to Oxford, and Alexander wouldn't go back to his office, feet up on the desk, smoking the Melachrino cigarettes that had been his father's preferred brand. He wondered how Alexander's mother had taken the news and found that he could not imagine it.

He tilted his chin back down and saw Beatrice walking up the path. The sight of her pushed at the centre of his chest, the breeze disturbing the hem of her dress so it fanned out to reveal a flash of knee. He thought of her knee, the sharp corner of it that dug in the soft point above his hip as he hoisted her up into his arms against the wall. She didn't see him at once, and he took the opportunity to observe her in a moment of unguarded grace as she tucked her hair away from her face, her gaze sweeping up to the house. Why is she here? Stephen didn't think he imagined the tension in her hands, the way her fingers pressed together at her sides, and when she turned and saw him her expression seemed to close, and she looked just like her mother.

"Hello," Stephen said, standing up to greet her.

"Are you hiding?"

"Even I could come up with a better hiding place than this."

"You were terrible at Hide and Seek," she said, sitting down beside him on the bench, crossing her legs and leaning back so the sun hit her pale cheek as it emerged from behind a cloud. "Or maybe you always wanted to be found."

Stephen felt his breath stop somewhere halfway up his throat, and he thought of her falling into the cupboard on top of him, sharp elbows and lips that kissed his ear. He knew he had flushed, but when Beatrice looked at him she did not smirk, even as the heat in his cheeks refused to die.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

This time Beatrice did smirk, that familiar quirk in the bow of her upper lip. "I don't feel, Stephen, you know that. Only when I'm jazzed."

"And your mama?"

"Mama will brave anything, except losing Alex."

"Or any of you."

Beatrice shrugged, looking away. "And what of your parents, are they quite furious?"

"Not furious, no. They will come round. Papa understands."

"He knows you," she said. "He knows you only want to do the right thing."

"I can be wrong. I have been wrong." He squinted, looking ahead of him, feeling her eyes flick to the side of his face.

What we did was wrong, but I would do it again.

"Will you miss us all?"

"Oh, yes," he mumbled, looking down at his hands where they spread on his knees, braced there. "Will you write?"

"I don't expect so."

"You did write to me," Stephen replied, and he could feel her tense beside him, even though they were not touching; she seemed to stiffen and straighten until she felt too far away to reach.

"I wouldn't call four lines a letter, Stephen, would you?"

"What did it mean?"

"I thought you liked Yeats," Beatrice said, vaguely, and he felt as he often did with her, that he was alone and she had left, her fingers still at his wrist, pushing until he couldn't feel his pulse.

"The Lover Mourns For The Loss Of Love," he said, and the words choked him, a strangled whisper as his face burned.

"Pale brows, still hands, and dim hair, I had a beautiful friend, And I dreamed that the old despair, Would end in love in the end." Her voice did not waver, as if she was reciting poetry under the watchful eye of a governess, dispassionate and cold. Stephen heard Beatrice's aunt, the way her voice lowered and her blue eyes shone as she intoned each word so it sent a shiver down his spine as he glanced to Beatrice. He was fourteen, and Beatrice was impossible at seventeen, a face too beautiful, and a body he saw every time he closed his eyes at night. They listened as Sybil read them Yeats, her unruly dark hair coming adrift as the sun shone from behind her on the steps of the folly.

"Things fall apart."

"The centre cannot hold," Beatrice completed. "Who will write poetry after this war? What will be left? I sometimes wonder what the point is, in any of it. We're born and then we die. How do we make something last in between, and live with what is lost?"

"It must be very difficult," he said, moistening his lips and sneaking a look at her, the crease between her eyebrows. "Without your father?"

Beatrice closed her eyes tightly. "Everything is difficult without him."

Stephen reached and took her hand where it was clenched in her lap. For a moment she made to pull away, and then, suddenly, like a rush of air, she fell against his chest, twisted against him. He pressed his palms to her back and he closed his eyes, her perfume and the smell of her hair close to his nose. For a moment she opened out against him, something soft and feathered beneath his hands.

The sweat ran in a rivulet down Alexander's back and he drew back his fist to smack against the punch bag, the muscles tense from his forearm to the defined triangle of his shoulder blade. He returned his gloves to his face so that they touched his cheekbones as he circled the swinging bag, aiming a jab and an upper cut at his imaginary opponent. He missed Oliver, whose speed and size made him a sometimes challenging and wily match. He glanced at the boxing ring in the centre of the room, the incongruous way it rose on its platform in what had once been an upstairs sitting room, the walls now papered in green damask. Alexander threw a final punch and the bag creaked on the chains that anchored it to the ceiling. He tugged off the boxing gloves and tossed them to the floor, and grabbed the towel that hung over the lower rope of the ring.

"Can you teach me?"

Alexander jumped, turning to see Christopher standing just inside the door. He rubbed the towel over his face and muscular chest, and shrugged. "I suppose so. Find your gloves, then." He gestured at the sideboard. "Head and mouth guard, too."

As Christopher undressed to his undershorts Alexander picked up the jug from the floor and poured himself a glass of water, gulping it so that it spilt down his chin and he wiped it away like blood. He had hated wearing a mouth guard at Christopher's age, the way it dug into his gums, but his father had always insisted he did, along with the uncomfortable and cumbersome head guard, the sweat of leather on his hairline. He climbed up into the ring, picking up his gloves as he did so, and waited as Christopher followed. Alexander jumped on the balls of his feet and beckoned Christopher closer with his glove curled inward.

"Keep moving, come on."

I don't want to hurt you. Alexander could hear the higher pitched voice of his youth followed by his father's chuckle. You won't hurt me, but you need to punch as if you want to. Papa would tap him on the shoulder or the arm, move easily away from clumsy jabs, pushing him a little in the chest, drawing him forwards to fight back. He had been younger than Christopher, before he went away to school, a preparation of sorts he suspected at the time, and it had indeed come in handy, a lesson in survival. Of course, later, they had been evenly matched, and the advantage of Alexander's youth had meant that the fierier edge of his technique did not hinder him, as it perhaps should have. He did not have his father's control; in fact he had yet to learn it, how to hold back, how to douse the fire with something cold and calculating, one thought ahead of the opponent, one punch rehearsed in advance.

"Hit me, Christopher."

Christopher fired a vague punch to his older brother's arm, struggling to close his mouth over the gum shield.

"Come on!" Alexander reached easily and gave the boy a gentle push in the chest. "Hit me!"

Christopher darted forward and swung harder, catching Alexander on the hip. "Better! Come on, be angry!"

The boy pulled back his fist and caught his brother off guard, punching him hard in the stomach, so that he spluttered for a moment and doubled over.

"I'm sorry!" Christopher said barely comprehensibly, spitting the gum shield out onto the canvas. "I'm sorry!"

Alexander braced his hands on his knees and took a breath. "It's all right," he managed, rubbing his torso. "I let my guard down. I should have known better, even around you." He reached and gave Christopher a little knock on the shoulder with his glove. "And, maybe I deserved it."

Christopher looked down, pulling off his gloves and turning away to slip under the ropes. He sat on the edge of the ring so the rope pressed against his back. Taking another shaky breath Alexander ducked down to join him. Christopher's blond hair hung into his face and he looked down at his hands in his lap, his shoulders hunched. His brother removed his own gloves and extended his arm, pulling Christopher gently against him. "You shouldn't let me push you around," Alexander said. "You should stand up to me a bit more."

"With my fists?" Christopher sniffed.

"If I won't listen, then, yes."

"I just want you to be here, with us." He shrugged. "I know I'm annoying."

Alexander winced. "That is your prerogative as littlest brother."

"I won't be able to look after everyone if something happens to you."

"You know how to load a printing press, don't you?" Alexander nudged him, eliciting a small smile.

"Yes."

"Well, then. That's all you need to know."

"No it isn't. I don't know about anything, really, do I?" Christopher bit his lip. "I haven't even been away to school, yet."

"You will next year, it'll be here before you know it."

"I don't want to go, though. Don't you see?"

"Do you think that makes you different? Do you think anyone wants to go?" Alexander shook his head, passing a hand through his hair. "Christopher, let me tell you now, when it comes to it, none of those boys will want to leave their mamas."

Mary watched across the table as Alexander inclined his head to listen to his grandmother. He caught her looking and smiled slightly, his charming best. A conspiratorial smile and everything was all right; but he is not Richard, and he needed her in a different way. Mary discarded her pudding spoon beside the bowl, pressing a tight smile to her lips as she turned to Matthew at her side. How often had she sat in this position, not saying what she wanted to? And not hearing, not really listening to what was going on around her.

"I've never been keen on Eton Mess, either," Matthew said.

"It turned my stomach when I was pregnant with Florence, and I've never been able to eat it since."

"It sounds trite, but it really doesn't seem so very long ago that they were all turning the nursery upside down."

"Mm, being both seen and heard, much to my grandmother's horror."

Matthew chuckled. "Rambunctious."

"They were certainly that," Mary replied, raising an eyebrow. "I'm afraid my children always seemed to take over."

"Stephen has always enjoyed their company."

"And they his."

"I think he has always been rather envious," Matthew said, lifting the wine glass to his lips and glancing away from her across the table, to where Lavinia also appeared to have lost her appetite for pudding. "When I was a boy I don't think I ever wished for siblings, not that I recall, but I know that Stephen would have been lonely without your children to run around with."

"I'm sure in return he prevented some of the more outlandish stunts they might have dreamt up."

"I don't think Stephen could say no to Alex," Matthew replied, and there was a hardness around his eyes as he looked back to her. "Do you?"

The muscles in Mary's neck tensed, and she swallowed before replying. "I think that Stephen has a mind of his own, and that any influence Alex may have once had, has ceased to matter. They are adults, they are not children in the nursery."

"Lavinia is very upset."

"Is she?" Mary snapped. "We are all upset. She isn't the only one saying goodbye to her son tomorrow."

"Stephen is everything to her." Matthew lowered his eyes uncomfortably, moistening his lips and checking that the conversations around the rest of the table were continuing unabated.

A flush burned on Mary's cheekbone. "I see, so I can afford to lose a child? After all, I have two spare sons should anything happen to Alex."

"Mary, I didn't…" Matthew blustered.

"No, I can see that I've been quite greedy. I'm sure I'll hardly notice dropping from five to four." Her voice trembled, but only a little, and she regarded him without blinking.

"I think you know that isn't what I meant."

It might not be what Matthew thought, but Mary had long considered that Lavinia felt that way and felt guilty. She thought of the other woman's face, pale and hollow as five-year-old Florence piped up in the middle of an interminable Sunday lunch at Downton – Mama is going to have a baby! The timing could hardly have been worse, and the weight of Lavinia's recent miscarriage hung over the table. Oliver had broken the silence by shrieking, loudly and randomly, before missing his mouth and pouring orange juice down the front of his shirt. Oliver was not here to interrupt, and there was no Richard to reassure her that they deserved everything they had. Now, she could not help feeling that her luck had run out.

"It doesn't matter." She shook her head, dismissing any possibility of apology. "Perhaps you could make a toast to our boys. This is their farewell dinner after all."

"Indeed." Matthew cleared his throat and raised his glass, looking to Mary once more but she refused to return his glance. "A toast, to Alexander and Stephen. We prayed this day would not come, but it has, so we must love you, and let you go." He raised his glass and a murmur of agreement went around the table. "Alexander and Stephen."

"Alexander and Stephen," Mary said, and as Alexander caught her eye her chest contracted.

"Our heroes!" Beatrice added, swilling the dregs of red wine in her glass, and pointedly refusing to take a sip as the rest of the table did. She ignored Florence's hand on hers. "Lo, for us the void."

"If you're fishing in the pool of quotations, Beatrice, perhaps you should look to a different quotation." Alexander said, as Cora's eyes widened, her hand moving to his arm. "A time to keep silence, and a time to speak?"

"It is not for you to moderate my speech, Your Lordship."

Alexander smirked, a line of shadow under his cheekbone, his eyes hooded, as the rest of the table descended into uncomfortable silence, glasses slowly lowered back into place. "No it isn't. I would have thought by now you would have learnt the art of making a measured response, or, indeed, saying nothing at all."

"Oh, like Mama, you mean?"

Mouths dropped open around the table and Alexander's eyes flashed. "Think very carefully before you continue."

"The staunch defender!" Beatrice laughed. "Oh Alex, even Papa didn't think Mama the soul of virtue. I could tell you things about our mother that would make your hair curl!" Her voice rose, shrill and cutting, as the colour drained from Mary's face.

Alexander banged his fist on the table, and Lavinia jumped visibly in her seat, her hand white around her glass. "Enough!" he shouted.

The colour rose in Beatrice's cheeks and she jerked her hand away from Florence. "Oh, I agree, it is more than enough." She looked to Mary, unblinking. "I do apologise, Mama, but you know all about the shame a daughter can bring on her mother, and how it plagues the conscience and disorders the mind."

"I am not ashamed of you." Mary replied, quietly, blinking back tears.

"Really? Like Grandmamma wasn't ashamed of you when a man died in your bed?" Her voice crackled through the room, momentarily contorting the faces of everyone present, even the footmen stationed in the corners; their faces trembling against schooled composure as Christopher openly goggled at his mother and sister.

Mary shut her eyes, and Cora appeared to shiver in her seat, her lips trembling as she looked at her granddaughter. "Beatrice," she hissed. "Stop it at once!" Cora looked at Mary and saw her neck tense, before her face fell completely blank, and her eyes glazed into what a casual observer would regard as composure, but that Cora knew was not. "Christopher, darling, go and find a book to read in the library." Cora said.

Christopher's brow furrowed and he opened his mouth to object.

"Go, now," Alex said, his eyes never leaving Beatrice's as Christopher got up and pushed his chair under the table, his gaze lingering on his mother's bowed head.

Beatrice waited until their youngest brother had left the room. "I suppose this is only a shock to us children," she said with a laugh. "It seems it's rather an open secret!"

"Stop it, Beatrice!" Florence said, her voice shaking.

"Oh, it's hard, I know, Flossie. Realising that both your mother and your sister are sluts!"

The table shook as Alexander lurched to his feet, striding over and grabbing Beatrice under her arm. "Not another word," he spat through gritted teeth.

"Get off me!"

"Get up!" He yanked her out of the seat.

"Alex…" Matthew started; half rising from his chair but Alexander had already pulled his sister to her feet, his large hand encircling her upper arm. Mary the only one not watching them.

"You disgust me!" he said. "How dare you?"

Beatrice jerked her chin so she could meet his eyes, her neck long and white, vulnerable, as she trembled slightly in his grip. Stephen watched from beside his mother, he did not consider intervening as he saw Beatrice's lips twist once more into a rictus smile. "You don't think I'm lying, do you? Oh, Alex! Mama fucked a man to death!"

The air seemed to whistle into a hole somewhere in the centre of the table before gathering in force behind the slap Alexander dealt to Beatrice's cheek. She did not gasp. She hardly flinched, wilting in her brother's hold, not pulling away, not resisting, until he released her, pushing her away from him. Mary heard the sound of the blow, the flick and strike, but she felt nothing as Beatrice's words sought to enter her chest, poke their way beneath her collarbones, sicken her stomach. It did not work, it meant nothing, it was the wild drama of a four-year-old tantrum. All Mary could think in that moment was of Beatrice, less than a year ago, crumpled in the centre of Florence's bed, curled so her white forehead almost touched her bare knees. Mary recalled being unable to remember how they had got her home from the hospital, how between them they had supported her on unsteady legs, a thin hand gripping Mary's own but with a hold that seemed to imply there was no strength in the grasp, at all.

How could I not have known?

Mary looked up. She heard the door of the dining room slam after Beatrice, she heard the movement of Alexander behind her chair and although she didn't turn, she could see him straightening, adjusting his cuffs, his hand moving to turn the signet ring – the sadness and shame in his eyes. She did not look at Matthew – gripping the back of his chair - but to Florence, the tears familiar and bright on her cheeks. Mary saw Florence's face, white cheekbones, the polished brightness of a hospital corridor, and the momentary, piercing thought reflected back to her, that, once more, a child had been snatched away. And in a way, they had. Beatrice was the one she'd come closest to losing, in every sense that mattered. Oliver the sickly baby had still nuzzled against her breast, and Christopher, seemingly fading, the words of severe doctors ringing in her ears, had continued to hold her hand. They had been returned, determinedly and gently. There was nothing gentle about what happened to Beatrice, and the girl did not understand, did not realize, that the look on her mother's face was relief when she saw her in that hospital room.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

An apology from Beatrice had to be drawn, pulled as a thread from a gown, carefully and delicately so as not to ladder the exquisite fabric. She had repeated the words over and over again, and Mary did not know if they were addressed to her, who they were for. She called the doctor, twice, that night, and she and Florence sat awake either side of Beatrice on the bed, not speaking, hardly moving, as the rain prickled lightly against the window pane. So many long nights. In the hours before dawn Beatrice had woken, and a nauseous pressure had pulsed against Mary's chest through the blouse she still wore from the day before. I'm sorry. The words drawn from a place in her daughter she did not recognize. Beatrice cried, heaving dry sobs, until the tears streamed silently down Mary's own cheeks.

And then, she had done the one thing her daughter had asked her not to do. She had told Richard.

The table emptied, her mother's hand whispering past on her shoulder, but Mary knew that only Alexander would remain behind, waiting for her to stand. She stood, and let herself fall against his starched shirt, his arms around her back, his cheek against her hair, and she wondered when this had happened, when he had become this man, her little boy. He would not ask her to explain. She knew that, then. She would tell him, about Kemal Pamuk, she would tell him… she could not tell him everything. He is not Richard, and for a moment she seemed to suffocate against his chest under the weight of a past half lived, half shared.

Alexander slung the leather valise onto the backseat, the morning pink and red on the horizon, changing and mixing before his eyes, casting an eerie hue across the cream stonework. A bloody sunrise. He would go now, before they woke, the previous evening still indented in the lines of the sheets on their cheeks. Alexander took a deep breath and leaned back against the bonnet of the car for a moment, his arms folded, his gaze to the ground. Hurry home. He wondered at the goodbye he would have received from Papa, once he had accepted that Alexander intended to go, once he had realized that no amount of threatening, or 'string-pulling' would prevent it. No doubt he would have cautioned against playing the hero, of making the mistake of thinking any war would favour the righteous and good. He would have said that war does not care for you, or I, or anyone, and it will cost the world nothing to remove you from it, but it will cost me everything. The words were so clear, almost as if they had been spoken.

Alexander found when he thought of the previous night he saw nothing but Beatrice's face after he had slapped her, the words she had spoken cracking at their feet. Oh, he knew Mama was not the soul of virtue. She did not explain, and he did not wish her to, not about that, an old story, a forgotten scandal. It meant nothing. His eyes had found Matthew's as he left the room, and it was him that Alexander found he wanted to take by the collar and shake. I see you.

He had watched these last months, and everything he had known seemed to shift, the scenery disturbed, the characters displaced but the setting the same. They dined at Downton, they had dinners in London at St James Place, and Matthew was there, kind, gently austere in a dead man's home, his wife at his side, impeccable in their tolerance of grief. But then, he dared to challenge Alexander's own behaviour, and that was incomprehensible until Alexander remembered that Matthew did not know, did not realize that he had been seen. It was laughable, then.

"You planned to slip away at dawn?"

Alexander turned to see his mother on the raised step outside the front door, her dressing gown pulled around her. He shrugged.

"I'm hardly going to the front line. I imagine we'll be marching up and down the sea front and attending lectures on deportment. No doubt they will say my hair is too long."

"Then they should know that as a small boy you resembled Little Lord Fauntleroy."

"I think Nanny Simmonds had a great deal to do with my dislike of haircuts."

"I wonder if she ever held a pair of scissors again," Mary said, an eyebrow raised.

"Well, not to cut a toffee out of a charge's hair that's for sure, if the references Papa gave her were anything to go by."

"Poor Beatrice," Mary said, blinking quickly and setting a tight-lipped smile on her face.

"Indeed," Alexander replied, thinking of the blood on Beatrice's fingers as she'd covered her nicked ear. "Well, I should go and collect Stephen."

"I should like a photograph of you in uniform, as soon as possible, for bragging purposes."

He grinned. "I shall set my cap at an especially jaunty angle, should I make it into uniform. Who's to say I'll even pass the exams?"

Mary stepped down, reaching to rest the palm of her hand against his cheek. "You will."

"I'll hurry home."

"Oh, Alex." Mary swallowed, closing her eyes for a moment, her fingertips still pressing his cheekbone.

"And, I will need to get away to London next week, to meet with Masters about the terms of his editorial control in my absence. You'll come?"

"Yes, of course," Mary replied, letting her hand fall to adjust his collar. He could not bear a painful goodbye; she knew that. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. "Good luck, my darling boy."

"Thank you, Mama."

Alexander climbed into the drivers seat, looking back at her once and raising his hand in farewell.