Jasper detached his ruff and passed a hand across his sweat-slick throat. The thing had been too tight for months, but now it mattered no more, for he had worn it for the last time. He put it on top of his neatly folded cassock and surplice and went to stow them all in the robe cupboard, wondering vaguely who would wear them next.
"Some of the chaps weep after singing their last Evensong," said Riddings, catching up with Jasper in the corridor outside. "Aren't you sorry to be leaving?"
"Not much," he said, but he slowed down to accommodate Riddings' shorter stride.
"You're always so inscrutable, Jasper," said Riddings, half-admiring and half-censuring. "There must be some things you'll miss. Such as Yours Truly."
Jasper gave him a side-eyed smirk.
"You're at least tolerable," he said. "But as for missing sitting in that hard wooden choir stall freezing till my toes are numb three times a day – no."
"Plenty of boys would give their eye teeth to come to school here."
"Plenty of boys are idiots." He softened. "I will admit that Dr Cross has been a good teacher and has set me on a future path I hope to tread with honour."
They stopped outside the precentor's office.
"He will miss you," said Riddings. "Bet he's blubbing away in there."
Jasper gave his companion a rare smile. "At least he still has you. You'll get all the solos now."
"That's true. In that case, don't come back." Riddings laughed. "Seriously, though, Jasper, you will write, won't you? I want to know about London life."
"As do I." He knocked on Dr Cross's door. "I must see the doctor before I go. Have good hols, won't you?"
"Of course." Riddings hung around awkwardly, as if trying to decide whether a manly pat on the back or an affectionate hug would be rebuffed. Clearly he thought this a strong possibility for, after a second or two of this dithering, he hurried up the corridor with a wave of farewell as his only gesture.
Dr Cross bade Jasper enter and he opened the door to find his mentor busy at his desk, scratching directions into a new music score.
"Ah, Jasper," he said with a rather sad smile. "Take a seat."
Jasper sat down, a little gingerly, for he had rather outgrown the breeches he wore. The St Paul's Jaspers would be paying for some new clothes this summer, he thought.
"What a beautiful swan song you gave us," said Dr Cross. "Palestrina might have written it with you in mind. I wish you'd stay with us just a little longer…"
"My father wrote to you, I suppose? Telling you I have been enrolled at a school in London?"
"Dr Medford's Academy for Young Gentlemen." He sighed. "Yes. Could it not be postponed until your voice has broken?"
Jasper felt a stab of regret at having to disappoint this man - his only friend, it sometimes seemed, in all the world. But escape from Cloisterham was so close now that another minute in its suffocating embrace seemed unendurable.
"I will be fourteen in the autumn," he pointed out. "It cannot now be long."
"No, no, you are right. And you grow taller by the day."
Jasper looked down at his jacket cuff, his bare wrist shamefully exposed by it.
"Will you recommend a good piano teacher, sir?" he asked. "I had thought of that man you introduced me to at the Hanover Rooms – Mr Rawlings?"
"Yes, yes, Rawlings would be delighted to teach you, I am sure. I will write to him."
Jasper nodded, his mind wandering again to thoughts of his real father, Lepair. Where was he? Why had he not replied to any of his letters, bar the first one?
He would soon be in a position to find out. And then, perhaps, he could take music lessons from him.
"It is heartening to know that you intend to maintain your musical studies," said Dr Cross into the silence. "You must not let them lapse. Remember the parable of the talents."
"Of course, sir," said Jasper.
"Or I shall come to visit you when next I am in London and hold you to account. I trust you might keep in touch?"
"Of course," Jasper repeated, no longer present in the room except in the corporeal aspect, his mind abroad on a fantasy sea of London church bells and salons and coffee houses.
Dr Cross, perhaps seeing this, picked up his quill again and resumed his annotations.
"Well, I won't keep you longer. You have your goodbyes to say. I know one young lady who might miss you almost as much as I will."
Jasper blinked rapidly, wondering whom Dr Cross could mean, before realising that it must be Diana Linney.
"Oh…yes. Thank you, sir. For all you have done for me. I shall write, I promise."
Cross nodded, smiling, as Jasper rose and made his escape.
Once the door had shut, his smile faded and he held his quill suspended in mid-air, pondering his protegé's future. If only he would stay in Cloisterham. He had the feeling that a spirit of Jasper's fragility might not prosper in the teeming cosmopolis.
Jasper checked the clock in the lobby, wishing its hands might make haste towards seven o'clock, when the Buds' carriage was to collect him.
Half an hour yet remained, and he had still not said goodbye to Diana. In truth, he had been avoiding her. Ever since she had learned he was going to London, she had been furious with him.
He decided to ease the passage of time in the music room at the piano. But no sooner had he turned the handle than an avenging angel leapt at him from the room's interior, eyes ablaze.
"Did you really mean to leave without saying goodbye, you beast?" she demanded.
He said nothing, so she consolidated her point by beating her fists against his chest, forcing him to take hold of her wrists before she battered a dent in it.
"Are you trying to kill me?" he demanded.
"Yes," she hissed before turning away to try and hide the tears in her eyes.
"You're worse than your father. Heaven knows he tried his best to beat me into submission. You might succeed where he has failed."
She turned back to him, her face no longer that mask of childish rage but stricken by something like grief.
"I detest him for the way he treats you," she said. "Please don't speak of me in the same breath with him. I thought we were friends."
"We are, Diana. At least, when you leave off breaking my ribs."
"But why must you leave Cloisterham? You could go to the King's Grammar if you can't stay at the choir school."
"We have rehearsed this conversation too many times. I have told you. It is the wish of my family in London." He spoke the false words calmly, looking Diana in the eye throughout.
"You will never come back," she accused.
"I might," he said, adding a mental not to the statement. "Who can tell the future?"
"You will miss Phoebe's wedding."
"I doubt she would have invited me."
"She is having the choir, blockhead, to sing at it. Of course you would be there."
"Phoebe and I are not friends. Your parents are delighted that I am leaving. And you will not miss me, not for long."
She let out a muted shriek and kicked his shin.
"Don't presume to tell me how I shall feel! You had better write to me or I'll…I'll…"
"I will write," he promised, rather startled by the number of promises of correspondence that had been extracted from him in such a short time. He had presumed that he would be entirely unmissed and unregretted within moments of leaving the cathedral precincts.
"Tell me about London. I won't go back down to the crypt again. It won't be the same without you."
"Are you afraid to?" he teased.
"Not in the least. But it is our place. Our special place away from everything dreary and horrible."
He laughed at that, to think that the dark, dusty tomb of the Cloisterham dead held such a romantic fascination for this passionate eleven year old.
"Perhaps we will visit it again one day," he said.
The clop of hooves and creak of wheels from the forecourt outside interrupted their moment of sober contemplation.
"The Buds have sent the carriage early," he said, backing away through the open door. "I must go."
"I hope it overturns and you get all your bones broken in a ditch," Diana called after him. "I hate you, John Jasper."
"Goodbye, Diana."
He picked up the handle end of his trunk and began to lug it across the floor.
And so it ended, more than six years of his life spent in this building and its environs. He watched it shrink from the window of the Buds' carriage, the cathedral spire melting into the heat haze of the July afternoon. A face at the music room window was probably Diana's but he could not tell if it was tearful or serene.
For his own part, he sat back against the buttoned plush and smiled.
At the Bud residence, nobody came to the door to meet him.
He left the footman to carry his trunk upstairs and wandered through the house, soon becoming aware of the reason for his absent welcome.
In the back garden, bunting fluttered from trees and hedges and a dozen or so children screamed and stumbled about, engaged in a game of Blind Man's Buff.
It was Ned's seventh birthday. He had forgotten.
He kept himself concealed behind the French doors, watching the festivities. At a white-painted wrought-iron table, Rosa Bud assisted a maid in the pouring of lemonade into small glasses. She was flushed and hot-looking but none the less angelic for it. When she bent to pick up the jug, he looked at her decolletage, at the way her bodice curved downwards from the frilled hem. It made him feel a little faint. Perhaps he ought to sit down. But on the whole he preferred to watch Rosa, so he tried to steel himself.
Her husband ran among the children, propelling the blindfolded Edwin this way and that in an attempt to draw the game out for longer. Edwin was complaining, rather loudly, about not being left alone to work things out for himself.
His voice was high and imperious and Jasper felt a flare of dislike. It was unlucky that he would have to spend the summer in the child's company, his father being detained in Egypt by urgent mining business and thus unable to take his usual summer holiday with his young son. They were all marooned at the Buds' until September, when Jasper would leave for his new school and Edwin would take a late seaside vacation with Captain Drood.
"Who are you?"
The voice was that of a child, perhaps one of the party guests. Without urgency, Jasper turned to scan the room for his interlocutor. She stood in the doorway, her face sticky and crumbed with jammy cake. There was no mistaking this little girl's antecedents, although her expression was rather more belligerent than one might expect from close knowledge of her mother's temperament.
"You don't remember me, I suppose," he said.
"No. Are you a robber?"
"Of course not. I am Ned's uncle."
"Who is Ned?"
He was thrown off course by her confusion, but she was only four years old and perhaps the heat and noise of the party had taken its toll.
"You know Ned," he said gently. "He lives here with you."
"Oh, you mean Eddy?"
"Eddy, Ned. Edwin Drood."
"You are his uncle?" She sounded doubtful, taking a step or two nearer. "You are only a boy. A big boy, but not a man."
"I am old enough. I know you. You are Rosa."
She looked appalled to be unmasked thus by this comparative stranger.
"How do you know me?" she demanded.
"I sang at your christening."
"Did you?"
"You won't recall." He smirked. "You were a baby. Well, you still are."
"I am not a baby," she asserted, stamping her foot. "I am four years old."
"Rosy!" Mr Bud appeared on the threshold of the French window, holding out his hands to his daughter. "And – who is this – oh! Jack. We were expecting you. Do come out and have some lemonade, won't you. Has Robbins seen to your baggage?"
Jasper followed Bud and Rosy out into the back garden.
"Look, Eddy, who has come to visit you. None other than your uncle Jack."
Edwin could not be said to look impressed. He barely paused from the mock fight he was engaged in with another boy on the grass.
"Have you brought me a present?" he asked.
"Eddy." Rosa the elder's tone was remonstrative, but he was oblivious, shrieking as his wrestling partner managed to overturn him and lay him flat on the lawn.
"I'm afraid I did not realise it was your birthday," said Jasper, taking a glass of lemonade from the lovely Rosa and giving her a smile of gratitude.
"What sort of uncle are you?" A disgruntled Edwin stood and brushed himself off. "Is there any more trifle, Aunty Rosa?"
"It is still on the dining room table. You may help yourself to some. Sorry," she said, turning to Jasper as the boy raced towards the house. "He is in very high spirits today. I'm afraid he has forgotten his manners."
"I am surprised at myself, forgetting the date, for I recall the night of his birth so well."
"Do you?" Her smile became sympathetic, tender even, and he revelled in it, wanting to draw it out and feel its beneficent sweetness upon him forever.
"I thought Meg would not survive it."
"Poor dear Meg. I miss her so. I am sure you miss her even more."
"Does he?"
"Eddy? Why, of course, he does."
"Does he speak of her?"
"No, but I would not expect him to. The young mind adjusts to loss so much more quickly. She is a treasured memory, but I do not think he suffers over much. At least, I hope he does not. I try my best to keep him happy."
"He is so very lucky to have you." Jasper caught himself, appalled by the excess of emotion that threatened to spill from his voice.
Her smile wavered a little and she looked momentarily anxious.
"It is very kind of you to say so," she said at length.
"I mean…in the absence of his father…who remains in Egypt…as I believe." He managed to catch his breath and calm the heaving of his chest.
"Yes, Captain Drood will return in September and take Eddy off for some weeks by the sea. I hope you'll agree, though, that there are worse places to spend the summer than here."
"Much worse."
"I was surprised, Jack, to hear that you were going to school in London," said Rosa after a delicate pause.
"Were you?"
"I think it was always Meg's hope that you would be educated as a gentleman but, to my mind, her idea was that you might stay in Cloisterham."
"How can you possibly know that?"
"We spoke on the subject more than once."
He levelled an intense gaze on the object of his infatuation.
"You discussed me?"
"Jack, do not look so horrified. It is natural that your sister might talk with her bosom companion about all the minutiae of her life. The education of her own brother is a near concern of hers, would you not say?"
"No, you misunderstand me. I do not reproach her for it."
But I wish I could have heard these conversations. Heard my name fall from your lips, my welfare the focus of your attention.
"Good, because she does not deserve it."
"You believe that she was a good person."
"Jack, what an odd thing to say. Of course I do."
"A good sister."
"An excellent sister."
"Why did she want me to abide here in Cloisterham?"
"I suppose she intended that you should always be close enough for her to visit. She wished very much for you to be involved with your nephew's day to day life and care."
"Did she? I suppose that is not…surprising. Did she mention her parents…our parents…a good deal?"
"I believe, though perhaps I should not say, that there was some form of, of, well, of rift between them. They dote on Eddy, of course. But now you will re-establish your connexion, when you go to live in London. I hope they mean to compensate you for their many years of neglect."
"Oh, I don't know about that," said Jasper vaguely. His mind and heart were too full to consider the frozen natures of his grandparents. Meg had wished for him to stay in Cloisterham, to be close to her and to Edwin. For, of course, she knew their true connexion. Not that of uncle and nephew, but of half brothers.
Captain Drood's monstrous behaviour had taken on a different cast. He had guessed her secret and knew Jasper to be her illegitimate son. His antipathy towards him was hardly astonishing in the light of such a discovery – but he was still unable to forgive it.
He owed it now, to her memory, to remain a presence in Edwin's life. He would come back from London for the school holidays, to lay flowers on her grave and call upon her son. And if he could get a glimpse or two of the angelic Rosa Bud into the bargain, well, such a chance was not to be passed up.