I felt numb. I felt as though I was floating six feet above everything in a daze. I didn’t cry for twenty-four hours. I was lost.
I didn’t hug my parents, and they didn’t hug me, or each other, from what I could tell. I’m ashamed to say I was polite to them. Polite! What was I thinking? What were we doing?
Papa crumpled. Everything about him sagged: his face, his shoulders, his spirit.
My mother was immediately angry. Her eyes were aflame. Every interaction with my father or me seemed to consume her with irritation, irritation which she could barely restrain with politeness. Whereas my politeness was a hazy indifference, hers was a fiery cold.
We needed Sarah to unlock our grief. We took too long to track her down and tell her, but when we eventually found her, at a friend’s house in Northamptonshire, she came at once. She hugged us all. She made us all cry. She made us talk about Hugh. I was so relieved to see her; we all were.
The other person who was a help was Roland Meeke. He helped my father with the practicalities. He helped my mother with her frustration. He helped me talk about my brother, explain him, remember him. There was no foxhunting for Roland, but he and I did go for a couple of long rides together.
Sarah and he organized the funeral, which was a major event. Hugh had had lots of friends, from school, from Cambridge, from all sorts of unlikely places. As did my parents from London, and then there were all the county people, and relatives young and old, some of whom I couldn’t remember ever meeting. Hugh’s death touched a multitude.
St Mary’s Chaddington was overflowing — barely a third of those present could fit in the church. The churchyard was heaving; I was glad that I had a place in the procession directly behind the coffin.
My family stood together, together really for the first time since his death, as we watched him go into the ground, dust to dust.
I was standing in the crowd in a daze, waiting for my parents to lead everyone back to the Hall, when I heard my name.
‘Emma?’
I turned to see a tall man with a slight stoop and fair hair brushed back from a high forehead.
‘Dick?’
‘That’s right. I had no trouble recognizing you. Though you must have been eleven when I last saw you.’ Dick Loxton had come to stay with us a couple of times during school half-terms.
‘Oh, I remember. You put up with me manfully.’ I recalled I had interrogated him about the hypocrisy of the Church of England. Dick’s father was a vicar.
He grinned. ‘You took me aback a bit.’
‘I warn you, I haven’t changed much.’
‘I know. Hugh talked about you a lot.’
‘Did he?’ For the first time in over a week, I could feel myself smiling. ‘Thank you for telling me that,’ I said.
Dick’s blue eyes looked on me kindly. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘And I’m sorry for you. You were friends for a long time.’
‘Yes.’ Dick took a deep breath. ‘He was my best friend. He made me see the world differently. Understand the world differently.’
‘I know what you mean.’
The crowd began to shift as Mama and Papa made their way stiffly along the path back to the Hall, Papa’s shoulders drooping, Mama standing erect, a good two feet distance between them.
Dick gave me his arm and we followed.
‘I must ask you something, Dick,’ I said. ‘Did Hugh say anything to you about renouncing communism?’
‘No,’ said Dick. ‘Mind you, I haven’t seen him for ages. Not since last summer. I’ve been stuck teaching history and scripture in a school in Leeds. But we have corresponded.’
‘Did he write to you about politics? The thing is, he was always so enthusiastic about Marxism. And after he came back from the Soviet Union, he seemed all the more excited about it. But then he said that you had persuaded him he was wrong. That the kulaks deserved to be let off.’
‘It wasn’t that, exactly. It was odd. Hugh, Freddie Pelham-Walsh and I all went on the same trip. We all saw the same things. But they thought they were experiencing a socialist paradise where everyone was equal and the government had worked out how to provide good jobs for all the workers.’
‘And you didn’t see that?’
‘I saw a massive prison, where everyone was being spied upon, everyone had to do what they were told, and people were starving in the streets.’
‘It sounds like you won him round. The other day he told me he had given up on communism completely. I thought it might have something to do with trying to get into the Foreign Office. I must admit, it upset me.’
‘Why?’ said Dick.
‘Because I am just as much a communist as Hugh is. Was. And because I was afraid he was giving up on his principles because they were inconvenient to his new career.’
‘That sounds very unlike Hugh.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ I sighed. ‘I wish I could talk to him about it now.’ I swallowed. ‘The last time we spoke I shouted at him. And then I ignored him the next morning. The morning he died.’
Dick touched my arm. His kind blue eyes studied me. ‘Hugh was always so fond of you. Incredibly proud of you, actually. He was always a man of principle and he loved you. That’s all you need to remember.’
His words were immensely comforting. The tears I could feel coming receded.
Drinks were being served in the Halclass="underline" cups of tea, sherry or something stronger for those who needed it.
A very tall woman and a slightly shorter man made their way towards Dick and me, clutching glasses of what looked like brandy and soda.
‘Freddie!’ Dick pumped the hand of his old school friend, whom I had met briefly once or twice before. Freddie’s suit was much better cut than Dick’s, and a gold watch chain sneaked across the beginnings of a tiny bulge in his tummy. I noticed he was wearing pink socks. He shook Dick’s hand with a sad smile, the two red spots on his round cheeks glowing dully.
‘Hello, Kay,’ said Dick. ‘I am so sorry.’
Kay was the tall woman, slim, dark, aloof, a few years older than Freddie and Dick. ‘Thank you, Dick,’ she said.
I was puzzled. Why was Dick, Hugh’s oldest friend, proffering condolences to this strange woman and not the other way around?
‘Have you met Kay, Emma?’ Dick said.
Emma shook her head.
‘This is Kay Lesser. Kay, this is Emma, Hugh’s sister.’ Dick looked at me, seeming to understand something. ‘Kay was a... good friend of Hugh’s. We met her in Russia, but she is living in London now.’
What!
‘Hugh told me a lot about you,’ said Kay. Her accent was American. Rough American. There was a touch of haughtiness in the way she drew from her cigarette, looking down on me as she did so. I was taller than average myself; not many women looked down on me.
‘Well, he hasn’t told me anything about you,’ I said coldly. Who on earth was this woman, and what had she been doing with my brother?
Kay assessed me under thick eyebrows, taking in the hostility which I was making no attempt to hide. There was something odd about her, a dark unconventional beauty based upon intriguing imperfections of her features, imperfections that would have rendered her ugly if she had carried herself differently. I could see what Hugh might have seen in her — if indeed he had seen anything in her.
‘I’m not surprised. He told me his family wouldn’t like me.’
‘Why ever not? We are perfectly hospitable.’
‘I’m sure you are,’ said Kay. ‘Because I am a communist. And because of my race.’
‘Your race?’
‘I’m Jewish. And I’m American.’
‘So what?’ I said.
‘So Hugh thought your family would have difficulty with that.’