absolutely quiet, and I realised… it was awful, dear. I realised Valentine had stopped breathing… and he’d died while I was asleep, and I hadn’t been there beside him to hold his hand or anything…’ Her voice wavered into a sob and she wiped her eyes with her fist.
I put an arm round her shoulders as we stood beside Valentine’s bed. I thought it lucky on the whole that she hadn’t seen the jolt of her brother’s heart stopping, nor heard the last rattle of his breath. I’d watched my own mother die, and would never forget it.
‘What time did your son get here?’
‘Oh, it must have been getting on for three. He lives in Surrey, you see, dear. It’s quite a long drive, and he’d been ready for bed, he said. I told him not to come… I only wanted someone to talk to, really, when I rang him, but he insisted on coming… very good of him, dear, really.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘He closed the curtains, of course, and switched on all the lights. He was quite cross with me for sitting in the dark, and for not getting Robbie Gill out. I mean, Robbie could only say officially that Valentine was dead. Paul didn’t understand that I wanted just to be in the dark with Valentine. It was a sort of comfort, you see, dear. A sort of goodbye. Just the two of us, like when we were children.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Paul means well,’ she insisted, ‘but I do find him tiring. I’m sorry to wake you up so early. But Paul was so cross with me… so I phoned you when he went to the bathroom because he might have stopped me, otherwise. I’m not myself somehow, I feel so weak.’
‘I’m happy to be here,’ I assured her. ‘What you need is to go to bed.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t. I’ll have to be awake for Robbie. I’m so afraid Paul will be rude to him.’
A certainty, I thought.
The great Paul himself came into the room, switching on the overhead light again.
‘What are you two doing in here?’ he demanded. ‘Mother, do come away and stop distressing yourself. The old man’s had a merciful release, as we all know. What we’ve got to talk about now is your future, and I’ve got plans made for that.’
Dorothea’s frame stiffened under my embracing arm. I let it fall away from her shoulders and went with her out of Valentine’s room and back to the kitchen, flicking the harsh light off again as I went and looking back to the quiet old face in its semi-shadow. Permanent timeless shadow.
‘Of course, you must leave here,’ Paul was saying to his mother in the kitchen. ‘You’re almost eighty. I can’t look after you properly when you live so far away from me. I’ve already arranged with a retirement home that when Valentine died you would rent a room there. I’ll tell them you’ll be coming within a week. It’s less than a mile from my house so Janet will be able to drop in every day.’
Dorothea looked almost frightened. ‘I’m not going, Paul,’ she contradicted. ‘I’m staying here.’
Ignoring her, Paul said, ‘You may as well start packing your things at once. Why waste time? I’ll put this house on the market tomorrow and I’ll move you immediately after the funeral.’
‘No,’ Dorothea said.
‘I’ll help you while I’m here,’ her son said grandly. ‘All Valentine’s things will need sorting and disposing of, of course. In fact, I may as well clear some of the books away at once. I brought two or three empty boxes.’
‘Not the books,’ I said positively. ‘He left his books to me.’
‘What?’ Paul’s mouth unattractively dropped open. ‘He can’t have done,’ he said fiercely. ‘He left everything to Mother. We all know that.’
‘Everything to your mother except his books.’
Dorothea nodded. ‘Valentine added a codicil to his will about two months ago, leaving his books to Thomas.’
‘The old man was ga-ga. I’ll contest it.’
‘You can’t contest it,’ I pointed out reasonably. ‘Valentine left everything but the books to your mother, not to you.’
‘Then Mother will contest it!’
‘No, I won’t, dear,’ Dorothea said gently. ‘When Valentine asked me what I thought about him leaving his books and papers to Thomas, I told him it was a very nice idea. I would never read them or ever look at them much, and Valentine knew Thomas would treasure them, so he got a solicitor to draw up the codicil, and Betty, a friend of mine, and Robbie Gill,