Chapter Four
He realised, some six or seven minutes into his explanation, that real animation had crept into his voice. He was gesturing with his hands, and his face - so drearily accustomed to its mask of sombre indifference - had come to muscle-twitching life. He had been this way when he taught the choristers, once upon a time – almost falling over the words in his desire to communicate the wonderful truth about music.
It was her eyes upon him that had wrought this change, her undivided, breathless attention to his lecture. And now he wanted to go to the music shop and buy a pile of new scores; get his piano tuned; curate a concert of the best recent compositions.
How ridiculous. He was going to die tomorrow.
He stopped talking in mid-sentence and frowned down at his fingers, bony where they used to be slender, lying at rest on the second keyboard. What had he done to himself?
"Are you quite well?" Rosa put a hand on his forearm.
Her little, light touch brought a broiling broth of mixed emotions to the surface and he had to put his other hand to his face so that she might not see the tears. She could not, however, mistake the involuntary shudder of his shoulders.
Quite well? She asked if he was quite well? The answer to that seemed bottomless, encompassing fury, agony, self-loathing and despair. And then there was relief at not being Edwin's murderer, and shock, and, and…oh God. Love. Stupid, hopeless, ridiculous love.
"Do not concern yourself," he said, whilst still clutching at his face. "Mere self-pity. That is all." He coughed and made a heroic effort to pull himself together.
Her face was pale, her blue eyes huge with worry. He looked down at her hand, which still lay upon his sleeve. As if embarrassed, she pulled it away.
"Why don't you…take a turn?" he suggested, his voice a little shaky, gesturing at the keyboard.
"Oh, no, I cannot. I haven't been near a piano keyboard since…" She bit her lip.
"You never played again?"
She shook her head.
"Piano music always called you to my mind," she said quietly. "I cannot hear one played without thinking about…those days."
"You hate me so much," he sighed. "When all I did was love you."
"Now you are truly feeling sorry for yourself," she said. "You know you did a great deal more than that."
"You have always had everything you wanted, Rosa. You have never wanted something – desperately wanted something, until you thought you might die without it – that you could never have. I wish you knew how it felt."
"I wish you did not."
He tipped his head back, breathing deep, following the vertiginous swoop of the stone arches above.
"So do I, Rosa."
There was a brief, awkward silence and then she spoke again.
"I am going to tell you something now, John Jasper, and you must not take my intention as anything other than the wish for you to know that…that…you were not always…oh, I don't know how to put it."
He turned swiftly to her, his heart pierced at something in her tone, something that seemed a cause for slight hope.
"Rosa?"
"You said earlier than Edwin was the only soul who ever loved you."
"It is so."
"You can't go to your grave thinking…" She broke off again, twisting her hands.
"Thinking what? Tell me."
"Do not misunderstand me if I say that…yes, I feared you and I avoided you but those fears and that avoidance…"
His gaze was fixed on her, on her troubled eyes and her heaving bosom beneath the over-large clothes. He wanted to seize her, shake the words from her by the shoulders, but he kept his breath held and his urges in check.
"I did not hate you as much as…I didn't really hate you at all. Until that day in the garden. I did then. But before that, when you taught me, I only feared you. And the fear was not a simple thing. It was made of many different ingredients, and one of those was…I have to admit…attraction."
He released his breath, feeling faint all of a sudden, and moved closer to her, but she held up a hand.
"Don't…I'm only telling you this because I don't want you to go to your grave thinking that nobody ever loved you. I want you to know that there was a time when I thought of you almost constantly. It was a terrible time, full of guilt and shame, because I was supposed to be thinking of Eddy and…I did not want to think of you. But somehow I could not stop myself. Something about you compelled me. It is what made you so terrifying to me. I lived in fear that one day I might forget myself. You might force my hand and I would be powerless to resist."
Jasper was silent, his heart too full to allow speech.
"I want to tell you, too, that my confusion over you was what made me end my engagement. And that, even after Eddy disappeared, I might have considered you, in time. But you didn't give me time. And your awful behaviour in the garden, and the threats you made against Neville Landless made me see that I had had a lucky escape from you."
He shut his eyes, shut out her face, almost deranged with the enormity of what she had told him.
His wits returned slowly, a cloud thinning in his mind.
"Is this true?" he asked hoarsely.
"Yes. It means nothing now, but I loved you. The worst and least pleasurable kind of love – but love it was. And you will always know it now."
"I scarcely know what to say."
"Say nothing. My love is not worth much, anyway. My angel knows as much."
"Do not say so. Your love is worth…everything."
"He would not do as I wanted, so I made his life a daily hell. He had refused all offers of a commission on the Mighty until I pushed him too far and he accepted at last. And I told him then – oh, it wasn't even true! – I told him that I had kissed his brother. He went to sea thinking I had played him false. I only said it to make him stay…but…oh, what a misguided, foolish, wicked girl I am. So you see, my love is quite worthless."
He saw the tears on her cheek and this time he thought she would not turn away his offer of comfort. He put an arm around her shoulder and drew her close. As he had hoped, she did not put up any resistance at all but fell instead, her damp face on his shirt front, into his protective embrace.
"My unlucky Rosebud," he whispered as she wept. "You blame yourself for his death."
She nodded, her nose pressing against his chest, just where his heart beat.
"But you did not kill him, my love."
She looked up, about to answer, her woebegone face making him want to cup it in his hands and kiss away the tears, but a clanking from the west entrance caused them to freeze in their positions and hold their combined breaths.
"Who's there?" A querulous voice in the dark was followed by heavy footsteps in the nave.
"Tope," whispered Jasper. "Don't fret." He looked over at Rosa's lamp, wondering if he could pick it up and extinguish the low candle soundlessly.
"Come on, let's have you," called the verger. "Someone reported hearing organ music. Are you in the loft?"
"Deuce take him," muttered Jasper between gritted teeth. "Keep still, don't make a sound. I'll send him away."
He stood and leant over the loft balcony.
"Don't excite yourself, Tope, it is only me, John Jasper."
"Mr Jasper?" He raised his own lamp and squinted upwards. "You don't work here no more."
"I know that. I have come to pay my respects to the building that has fed and clothed me on the night before I leave it forever. Would you condemn a man for that?"
"Well, it's irregular. I don't know as the Dean would see it right."
"I am simply playing the organ. I shall leave directly. You have no need to be here on such a night – go home, do."
Tope hesitated, a shifty, uncomfortable look coming over his face.
"I don't like to mention it, Mr Jasper, but I'm afraid I can't leave you in here, knowing as I do the rumours that have been abroad regarding…well, suffice to say that the cathedral has many treasures…"
Jasper sighed.
"I understand. Very well. I shall leave."
He turned back to Rosa who stared up at him with whey-faced dismay.
"I mustn't be seen," she hissed.
"You will be all right. Come down with me and wait in the quire until he and I have left. Then you can meet me in the Close."
"I don't want to be alone in here."
"Then you will have to come with me. Pull your hat low on your head. He won't recognise you."
"I can't!"
But already he was pulling her down the loft stairs after him, taking care with the footing so that she did not stumble.
Tope stood at the bottom, lantern held high.
"Who's the young gentleman?" he asked in confusion.
"Nobody, just a friend. An admirer of our fine organ. Good evening, Tope."
"Wait, wait, wait. Turn out your pockets, Jasper."
Exasperated at the indignity and sensing Rosa's skittish dread, he enjoined her to leave the cathedral and wait for him on the steps.
"I know that when a man is brought low there are many crowding around to put their boot into him. I did not think you such a person, Tope. But then, I know very little, it seems."
Jasper showed Tope that his trouser pockets contained no more than the gatehouse key and a pair of farthings. In his waistcoat, a ragged handkerchief, his fob watch having been long sold.
"Begging your pardon, Jasper," muttered Tope. "I had my duty to the cathedral to think of. Better go and find your…friend."
Striding swiftly down the nave, Jasper realised ruefully that a fresh and quite unfounded rumour would probably now be added to the total that hung about his name. It was of no import what gossip Cloisterham tongues spread, though. He would not be there to suffer it.
He pushed his way out to the steps and looked around for Rosa.
There was no sign of her.
"Rosa!" He hastened down and peered around the sides of the cathedral, but no dark figure revealed itself. He shouted again, over the howl of the wind. "Rosa!"
He ran over the green, looking out for her. At the foot of the path that led to the gatehouse, he thought he saw her, a little way ahead – a small, shambling figure with an improbable hat.
He took to his heels again, calling to her, his suspicions confirmed when she began to run away. She would never outpace him, he knew, yet all the same his heart hammered and his throat was tight with fear. He knew where she was heading. He would get to her long before she made it to the marshes, but nonetheless, her desolate intent both harrowed and enraged him.
She would not do this. He would see that she lived to a ripe old age if it meant locking her up and sitting outside her room with a key for the next sixty years.
He gained on her rapidly, not surprising given her bare feet and baggy, constricting clothes. Her hat blew off her head and bowled past him at speed. It was a dreadful old relic anyway, thought Jasper, looking up to see her blonde curls streaming out behind her.
"Rosa, stop!" he cried, once she was within earshot.
"I cannot stop. I must go," she gasped, but the gap between them narrowed rapidly now and she must have known that she stood no chance for she pulled up short and dropped to a crouch, burying her head between her knees while Jasper drew level.
"Why are you running from me?" he demanded, panting, putting a hand on her neck.
She released a sob. "I have always been running from you," she said. "Always."
"No longer," he said firmly, raising her to her feet with a hand beneath her elbow. "Come on. You should rest. Get some sleep. You are overwrought."
She staggered brokenly into a standing position and leant against him, as if too exhausted to move forward, but he marched her on the short distance to the gatehouse lodge.
Up the stairs and into the living room he walked her, then through to the bedroom.
"Try to take a few hours, at least," he said, helping her on to the bed in the dark.
He returned to the main room and sat on the edge of the armchair, leaning forward, hands clasped to his forehead, prepared to stand guard for the rest of the night while the last tatters of his living thoughts wound through his brain.
He had not expected to be alive this night, still less to be sharing his living quarters with that most precious of his fellow creatures. Did it have a meaning? Should he be questioning the forces of the universe, or the God he had supposed to have abandoned him in disgust?
The bedroom door creaked and he looked over his shoulder to see Rosa standing in the doorway.
"I do not want to be alone," she said haltingly.
"You must sleep."
"Will you…would you…if you came to lie beside me…I might sleep."
No, he was dead after all, and this was paradise.
A rum kind of paradise, overflowing with trash and broken furniture, but…what else could it be?
"You are sure?"
She nodded and stepped back into the darkness.
He almost strained a thigh muscle springing up from the chair and put a hand to it, wincing.
When he entered the bedroom, she was lying down again. He took off his boots and found the space beside her, sitting down on the side of the bed and looking down at her shadowy face.
"Don't take off your clothes," she said, a little panic-stricken.
He shook his head.
"Just lie beside me. I need to know there is a human presence with me. And so do you. You need that so much more than I do."
He lay flat on his back, his shoulder against hers. Perhaps she merely wanted to know when he was asleep, so she could creep back out and make her escape. But she could forget that plot, for he had locked the postern stair door and hidden the key.
Whatever her motive might be, there was no need to question it too deeply. He wanted nothing to tarnish this last, best night of his life.
He heard her yawn, felt her move against him, turning to the wall. He let his arm drop over the side of the bed and listened to her breathe. She held herself rigid, perhaps afraid that he might make some kind of unwanted advance, but he tried to keep that thought from his mind and focus instead on the blissful warmth and softness of her at his side. Her spine, the back of her neck, the hollows of her knees, the pale thighs and…no. No, Jasper, no.
Her breathing deepened and she snuffled a little. She was asleep.
He turned towards her and propped himself on an elbow, gazing down at her. There was no way he was going to waste a second of this night on such an unnecessary thing as sleep. Time enough for sleep when he was under the sea. For now, he would venerate and luxuriate in every second of her nearness.
Once he was sure she was deep inside her dreams, he ventured to touch her hair, stroking it lightly and slowly. He wanted to sing her a lullaby. He whispered a few opening words but found he could not continue.
A tear fell on to her curls. What foolishness is this, Jasper? Has she not had enough salt water on her this day? It was you who saved her from it.
He passed a hand across his eyes, but all he could think of was what she had said to him in the cathedral. That she could have been his. If only he'd given her time. If only he'd considered her feelings. If only he hadn't been mad with opium and obsession… He could have lain beside her like this every night of his life.
The idiot tears fell faster. He wiped his eyes on his shirt sleeve, then Rosa stirred and, by the time he had dried his face, she was awake and looking up at him.
"Oh, you are crying," she said, in a tone of dismayed wonder. "Oh dear."
"I am not."
"Hush. Come to me."
She put out her arms, clasped her fingers around his neck and pulled him close, laying his head upon her chest. He wept helplessly for some minutes more, his heart so full of a confusion of happiness and despair that he could hardly think, let alone regulate his emotions.
"We motherless children must take care of each other," she whispered.
Lord, if she continued with this mawkishness, he would drown her anyway, in his tears, and all his lifesaving efforts would have been in vain. Somehow he mastered himself and drew deep breaths, listening to her heartbeat beneath his old shirt.
"Do not worry about me," he said, his voice still cracked.
"Somebody should have done," she said. "A long time ago."
They lay there, in each others arms, Rosa drifting in and out of sleep, Jasper clinging to consciousness, until light trickled through the broken shutter and draped them in a layer of grey gloom.
Jasper hated and cursed the rising sun. Why must the day come and take Rosa from his arms, take her matted curls and her salty sea smell and her sleeping peacefulness away from him.
But he must remember to be thankful for having had this, at least – this tiny glimpse of happiness, right at the last. If he had gone last night, it would never have been.
He shut his eyes and he must have been overtaken by slumber, for the next thing he knew there was a hammering at the door.
Rosa started out of her sleep at the same time he did, sitting bolt upright.
"Who is being murdered?" she cried, looking wildly about her.
"Nobody," said Jasper grimly. "It is the bailiff. I am to be evicted."
