An Inquiry into Love and Death

One

My uncle Toby died of a broken neck in the autumn of 1924, just as I was starting the Michaelmas term at Oxford. I was pulled from the back of the lecture hall by a pimpled assistant in thick Mary Janes and an ill-fitting skirt who hissed that I had a confidential summons and must go to the administrative office at once. She even led me there, though it was just across the quad, so agog was she at the mystery of it.

When I learned what had happened, it was a mystery to me as well, for my uncle had not been spoken of in my family in nearly eight years.

I was shown into an unused office where the solicitor from London gave me the news. He was a compact man in a neat vest, out of place against the scored and mismatched furniture and stacks of books. Still, he bade me sit and spoke to me with quiet courtesy, as if we were not in a damp, borrowed room whose drafty windows barely kept out the mist from the commons outside.

"I'm sorry," he said, after he had told me. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a clean handkerchief. "Do you need a moment before we proceed?"

I looked at the handkerchief, apparently a spare, and the only thought I could muster was that he had come terribly well prepared. "You must give news like this often," I said.

Surprise flickered across his face, and he folded the handkerchief again.

"I'm sorry," I said, realizing how I sounded. "It's just that I don't know what to say. I really don't. I didn't know Toby very well. And I don't- That is, I've never dealt with . . ." I trailed off. How stupid for a philosophy student, who had safely debated the concept of death and the immortality of the soul with her fellows, to admit she had never known anyone to actually die.

"It will take some time," the solicitor, who was called Mr. Reed, said kindly. "And yes, I do give such news from time to time. Usually in situations in which the deceased does not have much family."

I nearly opened my mouth to protest: But Toby has family. He had his brother, my father. But perhaps Mr. Reed meant a wife, children. Toby had never had those. And why count family one didn't speak to? "Does my father know?" I asked.

"Yes. I cabled him yesterday." Mr. Reed gave me a calm, lawyerly regard, stern but not without gentleness. It was well perfected for a man under forty. "I've come, Miss Leigh, to tell you there is a great deal to be done. Do you understand?"

I nodded, awash with relief. "Yes, yes, of course I understand. My parents will come home."

There was an awkward silence as he straightened the papers in front of him, running his finger along the edges. "I'm afraid that's not quite what I mean. I received the reply by cable this morning. It's why I came up here from London on the first train directly. Your parents are not coming home. They have sent me to you."

"To me? What can I do?"

"His personal effects will require taking care of. But as your uncle carried no identification on him, no legal issues can be addressed before someone identifies the body."

I stared at him for a long moment, aghast. "You must be joking."

He shook his head. "I wish I were."

"I can't do that. Identify a body. Are you mad? I simply can't."

Again he ran his finger along the edge of his papers. "Miss Leigh, I realize the idea is unpleasant. I admit these aren't the exact circumstances I would have chosen. But it seems these are the circumstances we've been given. Your uncle's body is currently housed in a magistrate's office in Devonshire. The coroner has not yet submitted his ruling, but I expect it will be classified an accident. In any case, we can't move forward with Toby's final wishes until the identification is done."

I tried to picture it-my uncle lying on a table in a shabby room somewhere, under a sheet-and failed. Toby had always been kind to me, bringing me sweets when I was a child, even though he was shy and unused to children. I pressed my hands to my temples. I felt ill, but I tried to buck myself up. I'd go to Devonshire, get this hideous experience over with, and come straight back to school. That was all.

Then Mr. Reed continued on about wills, and finances, and cremation arrangements-it seemed my uncle did not want a funeral or a burial plot-and I felt a sickening twist in my stomach as everything suddenly got worse. A headache began to form beneath my temples.

I was twenty-two, and a college student; a worse candidate for these tasks could hardly be found. I interrupted him midsentence. "Are you certain this is what my parents instructed? I'd think it is something they would want to handle themselves."

"It's unorthodox," he admitted. "But I don't know your parents, Miss Leigh. I only knew your uncle, and, well"-he smiled, as if he had gathered I wouldn't take offense at the implication-"some families are less orthodox than others."

I nearly groaned. Unorthodox only began to describe my parents-or Uncle Toby, for that matter. I possessed only enough courage to tell the girls at school a much-edited version of the truth. "What did you mean about his belongings?"

"Yes, that. Miss Leigh, I gather you are aware of what your uncle did for a living."

I forced my lips to move. Mention of Toby's occupation always gave me a chill of fear, mixed with bewilderment I had never untangled. "Yes."

"He was staying in a small town called Rothewell. In Devonshire, as I say. I believe he was on one of his unusual projects. He had taken rooms, which need to be emptied, and his things sorted and packed."

One of his unusual projects. Oh, God. "Travel to Devonshire? It's the start of the term. Can't it wait?"

"According to the landlady, I'm afraid not."

I stared down into my tweed-skirted lap. Somerville was the most prestigious women's college in the country. Girls prepared for years to get in. As it was, I worked day and night to keep up with the workload; I was, quite simply, expected to succeed. To leave at the beginning of term was ludicrous. And yet, it seemed my unorthodox family would conspire to have me do just that.

He was on one of his unusual projects.

Perhaps someone could be hired. . . . But no. Even at my most selfish, I wouldn't hire a stranger to go through my uncle's things.

"Miss Leigh," Mr. Reed said, as if reading my mind. "I would not be here if there were another option."

My glance caught his hands, resting on the desk. He wore a wedding ring. He would take the London train home tonight to his wife, and possibly his children, in a warm, happy home. He had family; so, in a fashion, did I. Toby had no one.

I sighed and raised my head.

Mr. Reed looked into my eyes and smiled. "Let me get the map," he said.


h


"That's simply horrible," my flatmate, Caroline, said when I told her the news. She leaned back against the dusty radiator and watched as I put the valise on my bed and opened it. "Did he really fall from a cliff?"

"Yes, in the town where he'd been staying."

"But what happened to the poor man?"

"I don't know."

"Didn't they say? Do you think he . . ." Her eyes widened.

I kept my voice calm. "They think it was an accident."

"But you don't know," she said as I tossed dresses into the valise. She was blond, rounded, pretty behind the glasses she wore. "It's utterly gothic, like a novel. Perhaps he was a millionaire and has left you everything. Perhaps he was a spy on a secret mission."

I was glad she didn't know the truth. "Caro, he was none of those things."

"Well, you needn't be sensitive. You said you hardly knew him. You're the only person I've met who has had a mysterious uncle die. It's the most excitement we'll see here for weeks."

She wasn't entirely wrong. To the outside world, Somerville girls-females with the gall to want an actual Oxford education-were a novelty, an insult, a threat, or sometimes a laughingstock. We were wild, marauding womanhood, making off with civilization and traditional values with our thoughtless modern ways. In reality we were well-bred, well-behaved girls who spent all our evenings studying and trying not to think about the male students we weren't allowed anywhere near.

Somerville didn't have housing, so I stayed in an all-girls' boardinghouse, overseen by a landlady who strictly regulated every girl's comings and goings, as well as everything we ate and wore. The house had but one radio, placed in the main sitting room for better supervision; lights went out at exactly ten thirty, and any girl who disobeyed was promptly told to leave. My father's international reputation as a chemist, as well as his money, had gained my admittance. It was my good behavior-as well as my failure to mention my eccentric, disreputable uncle to anyone I knew-that kept me there.

"We'll see," I said. "Is that my telegram?"

"Oh, God-yes, I forgot." Caroline took the paper I'd seen on the dressing table and handed it to me. "It just came. I'm sorry."

I tore it open. It was from my mother.

Mr. Reed will be contacting you, Mother wrote, belatedly. Please do as he asks. Toby likely left his affairs a mess. I don't think there's any money. Your father and I cannot leave Paris. The work here is too important. It's only for a few days, darling, I promise. Please do this for us. We simply cannot handle it. Toby should be laid to rest by family.

Family meant, in this case, me.

I had a sudden memory of a seaside vacation we'd all taken when I was a small child. A hotel with a wooden veranda painted white, a hot summer sky, a dark sand beach. My parents lazing late into the morning, mixing cocktails in the afternoon, talking through the night. And Toby taking me out to the water's edge as the sun came up, before anyone else awoke, crouching down and smiling at me from under the brim of his straw boater. He had shown me the shells in the sand, naming each of them for me, explaining where they had come from and what creatures had owned them, answering my endless questions until the sun was high and we had gone in to breakfast.

"Jillian, are you all right?"

I folded the paper, tossed it in my valise, and resumed packing. "Mother says they're not coming home. I already knew that from the solicitor."

"So you really must go yourself." Caroline took a cigarette case from her pocket and extracted one. "I don't know whether to be sorry for you or horribly jealous."

"Jealous? I have to see a body, Caro. Then I have to pack up his dusty old things. I'll be working nights for weeks after to make up for it, if I make it up at all. This will practically ruin my term. What is there to be jealous of?"

"But you get to go do something," she said, as she watched me stuff in yet another pair of stockings. "I get to stay in a girls-only boardinghouse and listen to Mary Spatsby complain for the hundredth time that she's homesick for her old nanny, while I try to study twelfth-century ethics." She lit her cigarette and inhaled shallowly, arranging it between two fingers for best effect.

"Mary Spatsby is everyone's burden to bear," I said. "You must try to be noble about it."

"What was your uncle doing by the seaside?"

I shut the valise, closed the latches, and quickly thought up an answer. "He was researching some sort of project."

"Mysterious." She righted her tilting cigarette in her fingers and took another careful drag. She seemed to accept the scenario without question. Like me, Caroline came from a long line of academics, and everyone was always researching something. "You must tell me everything when you get back. Will there be men?"

I sighed. "There won't be men."

"There must be men. There are men everywhere in England, or so I hear, except here at Somerville. If you even spot a milkman or a vicar, I want every detail."

I shook my head. I said friendly good-byes to Caro and the other girls, my voice casual-oh, just an uncle I barely knew, that's all. But as I sat on the omnibus that ran to the outskirts of town, my shoulders sagged. I had not allowed myself to think too much about Toby, dying alone in a strange place, falling from a cliff.

Or jumping.

I stared out the window as Oxford receded, until I could see only the roofs of the chapels and libraries punctuated with spires, and the green squares filled with undergraduates chatting in the cold autumn sunshine were gone from view.

I thought of that man in the straw boater, his kind, attentive gaze. What had happened?

I got off the omnibus at the edge of town and walked half a mile to a small coaching inn. The landlord here, seeing an opportunity, had dismantled the stalls in half his barn and cleared it out. For a fee, the empty half now housed motorcars-including mine.

The remaining horses whickered curiously as I pulled the canvas storage sheet from the motor and folded it. An aged groom smoked a cigarette and leaned against the wall, staring at me through pouched eyes with a look that dared me to ask him for help. I gave him a look back and said nothing.

The car was called an Alvis, though I knew nothing about motorcars and did not know what that meant. It had been a gift from my father; he'd taught me to drive it one warm morning in early summer, the two of us jolting over the roads, my mother watching from the front stoop, declaring herself fit for a nervous breakdown, though she'd laughed and sipped a gin as she said it.

I knew no other girls who had been taught how to drive. Even among the unconventional set at Oxford, it was a rather dashing skill for a girl to have. The car-and the lessons-had been a reward for gaining admission to Somerville, with disregard for the fact that motorcars were not allowed within Oxford proper, and therefore I'd have no place to use it. That was typical thinking of my parents. The world conformed to them, not the other way 'round. I now wondered whether there had been guilt in the extravagant gesture, as they'd gone to Paris a month later.