'No, I mean why?' At once he had the anguished notion that she'd hoped he would deny her state. 'Is it being out of work?' he babbled. 'I mean, you aren't, of course, you're writing. Is that it, the writing, the stress? Or Rory, is it him?'
His cousins gazed at him for at least a mute second after he ran out of suggestions. 'Oh, Hugh, we love you,' said Ellen. 'Don't ever change.'
Of course he had, but he mustn't bring up his problem if he could keep it to himself; she and Charlotte had enough to worry about. Ellen's words had come close to a phrase he wouldn't have dared to admit yearning to hear from her, but he couldn't take advantage of that now. 'Thanks,' he said. 'Really, thanks. So which –'
'One of those, I expect. All of them if you like.'
'Then what do you think you should –'
'That's all now, Hugh. No more or I'm leaving. Like Charlotte said, we're here for Rory, not for me. Show us where we're sleeping.'
Charlotte was giving him a private frown, presumably for leaving her no chance to question Ellen. 'Upstairs,' he mumbled.
'We'll find our own way, shall we?' said Charlotte.
'I shouldn't think it takes much finding,' Ellen said.
He could have imagined they were making light of his condition, but surely he'd managed to hide it. While he was able to follow them he knew which way to go. 'I'll bring the cases,' he said.
Ellen was first up the stairs, fast enough to suggest she was seeking a refuge. As Hugh brought up the rear with a case Charlotte said in some haste 'That's Hugh's room.'
He thought she was trying to head her cousin off from being troubled by its state. Ellen pushed the next door open, only to wonder 'Isn't this?'
It was more like a museum of his boyhood. As Ellen gazed wistfully at the misshapen scale models and puerile books, Charlotte said 'It's all his house.'
Hugh could have taken this as a rebuke for forcing Rory out, and did. If he'd still been living here, Rory wouldn't be in hospital. Ellen opened the third door, beyond which there was hardly any furniture except an infirm wardrobe and a single bed, not even a mirror. 'This'll do for me,' she said at once.
Charlotte gazed around the landing as if she wished it were larger or less shadowy, and Hugh came close to wondering if one shadow too many was lurking in a corner. He wheeled the dwarfish case ahead of her into his old room and had to assume she wanted him to emerge before she went in. She made him feel like a jailer for lingering outside, but he was growing nervous of letting his cousins out of his sight in case they were his only means of orientation. In a moment she said 'Wasn't there some talk of a cup of tea? You'd like one, wouldn't you, Ellen?'
Was she trying to send him downstairs so that he wouldn't inhibit any female conversation? 'I'd better phone the hospital,' he countered. 'We need to find out when we can go.'
As the number rang Charlotte came to the doorway, and he heard the bed creak in Rory's old room. The switchboard operator transferred the call to the ward, and as the bed amplified Ellen's restlessness Hugh wondered unhappily if his brother could move even that much. Charlotte was raising her eyebrows at him by the time the ward sister spoke. 'Intensive Care.'
'How's Rory Lucas? It's his brother.'
'The same as when you called this morning, Mr Lucas, and this afternoon. No change, but that's no worse.'
'I've got our cousins here now. When can we come and see him?'
'We're having a few problems on the ward just at the moment,' the sister said, and Hugh was disconcerted to overhear a laugh that sounded anything but pleasant, not merely muffled but clogged. He could only suppose it was somewhere other than the ward, since she didn't react to it, instead saying 'Do you mind if I put you off for a while?'
'If you've got to. Till when?'
'Tomorrow would be best.'
'It won't make any difference to him, or will it?'
'Not at the minute, sadly, I'm afraid. I'll contact you if there's any significant development.'
'Thanks. That's kind,' Hugh said, but as soon as he pocketed the mobile he thought he'd been too eager to accommodate her – worse, that he was glad to have a reason to delay travelling all the labyrinthine way to Leeds. 'The ward's shut to visitors till tomorrow,' he announced, and Ellen let out a groan that vibrated her bed. He had to dodge as Charlotte darted out of her room. 'I'll make it,' she informed him, at which point he grasped that she was thinking of the tea, not proposing to escape from the house. He might have been grateful if he hadn't needed to choose which cousin to stay with, which direction to take. As he hurried downstairs, terrified of losing sight of Charlotte, he began to dread that the reunion would turn into the longest night of his life.
TWENTY-TWO
As the smell of breakfast drifted through the house, Ellen tramped out of the bathroom. 'None for me.'
'It's only toast,' Charlotte called up the stairs. 'That's all there is.'
'I know that. I said none, thanks.'
'You ought to have something,' Hugh protested before turning back to the grill more hastily than Charlotte understood.
'I did last night.'
'You didn't have much,' Charlotte said.
'I had all I wanted. Don't start another argument or I won't be going to the hospital.'
'You wouldn't not see Rory,' Hugh cried, twisting around as if she'd unbalanced him.
'Then don't either of you make me. I'll stay up here until it's time to leave,' Ellen declared and shut herself in her room.
Charlotte would have expected her to spend longer in the bathroom. In a moment Hugh voiced her own feelings, if barely audibly. 'What's wrong with her?'
She might have asked the same about him. This morning he'd stayed in his room until Charlotte headed for the bathroom, and on emerging she'd discovered him outside. Had she sensed him lurking out there? Certainly her impression that someone unseen was uncomfortably near had rendered the confined space yet more claustrophobic. She could only assume that Hugh didn't want to be left alone with his anxiety, for Ellen now as well as for his brother. 'I expect it's like you were saying yesterday,' she murmured. 'She's under a lot of stress.'
How much of it was Charlotte's doing? She might blame Glen and the new regime at the publishers, but this hardly absolved her of responsibility. She didn't need Hugh to remind her by pleading 'What can we do?'
'Leave her alone for a while if that's what she wants. Maybe seeing Rory will help.'
How thoughtless was that? Hugh seemed less than persuaded. He was silent while he brought four piebald slices of toast on a cracked plate to the bare stained table, and produced a battered carton of Frugerine from the battered refrigerator, and lifted the plump ragged cover from the clay teapot to fill two mugs, after which the kitchen grew oppressive with his and Charlotte's painfully polite crunching. Last night's Indian meal, which Hugh had arranged to have delivered even though the takeaway was only in the next street, had soon turned wordless too, and afterwards the cousins had applied themselves to trying to enjoy a string of comedy shows on television. Charlotte had kept wondering if she alone could hear an unpleasant snicker as dry as an insect's stridulation amid the mirth of the various studio audiences. The sound had followed her to bed, inside her skull at any rate, along with a sense of so much left unspoken that it had felt more like a presence in the dark. Whenever she'd managed to doze she had wakened either afraid to learn where she might be or convinced that the pent-up darkness was more crowded than she'd left it. Once if not more often she'd heard a model aeroplane suspended on threads stir as if fingers – no less flimsy and jerry-built, she'd thought for some reason – were toying with it in preparation for doing so to her. The prospect of mentioning this made the kitchen seem smaller and darker, as if she were in danger of reviving the night. She finished her toast as fast as she civilly could in order to call 'I think we're ready, Ellen.'
The narrow hall flattened her voice, reminding her of the size of the house – the lack of it, rather. 'I'll be down,' Ellen responded but wasn't while Hugh picked up the plates and looked uncertain where to put them. Was
