Big Little Man

The curtains were drawn against the mid-June light. The heat it brought to this London afternoon was uncomfortable, within and without. A woman in a nursing uniform sat near the window, knitting a baby’s layette and marking the rows on a cylindrical counter at the end of her needle.

The other woman, on the other side of the bed which divided them, was reading a newspaper and tutting at its content.

‘I swear there’s going to be another war,’ she said to the nurse opposite. ‘And then there’s our erstwhile king living abroad with his American woman. The world never improves, does it?’

‘I don’t know if it’s meant to,’ said the nurse, who had made a mistake in her last row and was busy taking the yarn back, stitch by stitch. There was sweat on her brow which conspired to look healthy on her young skin. Cynthia admired and envied it in equal measure.

‘How long have you been his private secretary?’ the nurse enquired, stowing the knitting away in an embroidered bag on the floor at her feet.

Cynthia didn’t have to think about it. ‘Almost twenty-five years,’ she said. ‘It has been one of the great privileges of my life ..’

The nurse raised an eyebrow. ‘Not being the daughter-in-law of a Prime Minister?’ she said.

Cynthia Asquith tinkled a butterfly laugh. ’Oh! He was a dear enough man, I suppose. A heavy drinker, of course, and he never did get over losing office in ’16. Not the sort of leader the country needed in the thick of it.’

‘I doubt any PM would have survived it,’ the nurse said, equably. And then a change of direction. ‘Do you have children?’

Cynthia raised a pale hand and patted her hair, a habitual gesture of distress. ‘A whole clutch of them,’ she said. ‘But my, em, my eldest passed away. Just last month, as it happens.’

The nurse was shocked and offered her profuse apologies. The other woman looked through her with a degree of vacancy, and shook her head.

‘Really, it’s not necessary. He was .. he was not quite right, you know? He was in an institution … thingy.’

A silence settled between them, and both pairs of eyes settled on the man in the bed. His eyes were closed, and the bags beneath them seemed to have increased in an unlikely display of horizontal gravity. His walrus moustache was in need of a trim, and his flesh held the pallor of death. The bedsheets, light in this hot weather, showed the outline of his feet, his toes occasionally wriggling, as if dancing to unheard music. The feet stopped long before the footboard.

‘Such a dear little dot,’ said Cynthia. ‘Just 5ft 4 inches, you know. They say he didn’t grow much after his eldest brother died.’

‘Tell me about his childhood,’ the nurse said, rising briefly to check the patient’s pulse.

Cynthia settled in the wingback, and immediately drew her body forward again, her back perspiring in the heat. This was a fireside chair, not designed for the comprehensive heat of summer.

‘Will he be alright?’ she asked, gesturing towards the man, ‘If we take some tea into the garden? I noticed there’s a tree with a table and chairs beneath it. Wouldn’t it be nice to sit in the shade?’

‘Of course,’ said the nurse, straightening her skirts. ‘Although I doubt it’s cooler outside.’

‘Perhaps I need to stretch my legs,’ said the older woman. ‘I have always disliked hot weather. Some women glow. Others … don’t.’

They passed a mirror in the hallway of the nursing home. Cynthia briefly glanced at her red-faced reflection, before following the nurse into the basement kitchen.

‘It’s just ordinary tea, I’m afraid,’ said the younger woman, her movements brisk and practised.

‘I don’t care for fancy teas,’ Cynthia said. ‘I’d rather drink the leaves than the flowers.’

‘I know what you mean,’ the nurse agreed. ‘Some of them try too hard.’

One of the many tributaries of the Thames must have flowed beneath the gardens in Manchester Street. Although the weeping willow might have looked incongruous in this gentile cityscape, it was clearly deriving its water from somewhere. The two women swept the branches aside and found themselves in dappled shade, enclosed on all sides and with only fleeting glimpses of the rare blue London sky above.

Separately, both women felt a wave of nostalgia for a childhood more imagined than recalled. Within the drooping branches of the tree lay sticky, feral children with bows and rubber arrows, their features streaked with redskin dirt. Elfin faces peered through the stipules and fairies flitted like dandelion docks through the funnels of quiet air.

‘Oh! I feel —’

‘I know,’ said the other. ‘It’s hard to describe.’

‘Arthur Rackham,’ said Cynthia. ‘The illustrator of James’ books, amongst so many others. Those shades of brown and green, the sharp application of a bright red cloak, the yellow gleam of a wolf’s eyes ..’

The nurse giggled. ‘We’ve been Rackhamed,’ she said, glorying in the shade.

‘Adults bought those books for themselves,’ Cynthia went on. ‘Just for the artwork.’

‘ … And for this feeling,’ the nurse finished.

They sipped the tea. Plenty more in the pot.

‘You asked about his childhood,’ Cynthia said. ‘I’m not sure it was so much different from many others. Not poverty, of course, but not wealth either. An industrious, conservative family. His father was a successful weaver. They had nine children, most of whom survived. All but three, two in infancy and the eldest, Davey, in an accident.’

‘How so?’

‘Well, he was at boarding school, and it was the eve of his fourteenth birthday. In fact, when he died at 2am that January morning, he was already fourteen. Not his mammie’s little boy anymore.’

‘Was this in Scotland?’ asked the nurse.

Cynthia nodded. ‘They lived in a town called Kirriemuir, which the locals called the Wee Red Toon. I’ve been there countless times with him since. It’s where he wishes to be laid to rest.’

‘And Davey?’

‘Well, the story is that he was ice skating with a schoolfriend and he slipped and banged his head. However, there is a suggestion that he was ill before that. They said he had swelling on the brain, and that’s what made him fall, not the ice. Either way,’ Cynthia sighed, ‘James’ mother was distraught. Davey was her favourite, and so little James, just six at the time, tried to console her by wearing Davey’s clothes and adopting a whistle his older brother was in the habit of. His mother laid for weeks on Davey’s bed, ignoring her younger son who was clearly so desperate for her attention.’

‘That makes so many things clear,’ said the nurse. ‘The nature of his stories. It all seems so connected, somehow, to the little boy he once was.’

‘Oh yes,’ Cynthia agreed. ‘And he was always interested in children. Of course, one has to be careful how one says these things. There are those who insist on thinking the worst of a person. The truth is, poor James had no ‘stirring in the undergrowth’ for anyone, female, male and especially not children. I think his early childhood experience petrified his emotional mind into that of an eternal six-year-old boy.’

‘Did he ever marry?’

‘Oh yes, and she was a delightful woman. But you see, the marriage was unconsummated and she wasn’t satisfied with the way things were. James still pays her an annuity, even though she's married to someone else now.’

They slipped into an easy silence until the tea was drained and Cynthia’s complexion had restored itself. ‘We must venture into the big bad world again,’ she whispered, like a schoolgirl. She clasped her hand around the nurse’s. ‘Do you think he will live another night?’

The nurse shook her head in a manner that could not be questioned. ‘He is not in any pain,’ she reassured Cynthia. ‘They will say he died of pneumonia on his death certificate, but that generally appears on most people’s. He has merely come to the end of things, and when that happens, the pneumonia sets in. It is old age and nothing more than that.’

Cynthia giggled as they walked across the lawn. ‘Do you know he used to play cricket? They used to ask him if he’d come to play or was he one of the stumps?’

‘Wasn’t that with other writers?’ the nurse asked.

‘Yes. Two teams of no-hopers; the writers v the artists. Arthur Conan Doyle used to play on James’ side.’

‘I thought the Scot’s didn’t like cricket …’

‘They do when they live in England.’

The room felt warmer than when they had left it, the afternoon sun growing fiercer by the hour. The nurse fanned the patient’s face with Cynthia’s newspaper, but there was no discernible reaction beyond a slight rippling of his moustache.

Cynthia preoccupied herself by sifting through a drawer in the bedside cabinet.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘A letter. Ah! Here it is. He carried it with him absolutely everywhere.’

‘Who is it from?

‘Robert Falcon Scott. Captain Scott. Scott of the Antarctic. Another of James’ great friends. In fact, he is Godfather to Robert’s son.’

She waved the letter towards the nurse. ‘Scott wrote this just hours before he died. A search party found it in his tent a year or so later, alongside his frozen body. I will let you read it after he’s gone. It seems disrespectful to do so just now.’

The nurse agreed, although questioned the unlikeliness of their friendship. ‘Scott was a great, strapping man,’ she mused.

‘Yes, but Scott always wanted to be a writer and James always wanted to be an explorer - so there you have it.’

A tear rolled down Cynthias cheek. She wiped it away angrily, perhaps having shed so many the month before. ‘Primarily the letter addresses the issue of his wife and child. He wanted to ensure they were looked after when he was gone. Do you know, I shall never understand people like that! The do-or-die types. What a godless place Antarctica is! Such a strange place to plant your flag.’

‘And yet I can’t help feeling that someone must do it,’ said the nurse, rearranging the sheets. ‘Please don’t ask me why I think that.’

‘I’m sure you’re right. We can’t all be precious ..’

‘He was a guardian to other children, too,’ Cynthia continued a little later. ‘The Llewelyn-Davies tribe of boys when their parents died. They were the prototypes, the little savages.’

‘Are they still in touch?’

‘Most, yes. His two favourites are both dead, the ones he was closest to. One died in the war and the other just before he reached twenty-one. He accidentally drowned in a lock whilst at Oxford. The youngest, Peter, is a bit of a sorry mess. I don’t think he ever got used to being …’

‘Yes, I can imagine,’ said the nurse.

Another cup of tea was made and drunk. Motor cars and occasional hoofbeat could be heard outside. The nurse periodically left to deal with other patients, leaving Cynthia alone with her thoughts. She held James’ pale, spotted hand, delicate as a woman’s. She thought that when this was over, today or the next day, she would take herself to Kensington Gardens and stand before the statue. She thought it was utterly beautiful, but James had been curiously dismissive of it. He said it didn’t catch the evil of the boy. The bad spirit of him.

There were times when she clearly preferred Rackham’s version to that which existed in the mind of his creator.

The nurse returned at six with a tray. More tea and a pile of thick ham sandwiches which they ate at a side table beneath a portrait of the old queen.

‘Do you know,’ said the nurse, leaning slightly forward and wiping her lips with a handkerchief, ‘when my mother was carrying me, she took my brother to the theatre. This was 1904 and it was The Duke of York’s—’

‘She went to see it?’ asked Cynthia.

‘The very first week! I don’t know how she afforded it, but she never stopped talking about it and nor did my brother, as I recall. Soon as I got old enough he used to taunt me endlessly about how I missed it all, although of course I was there in body, if not yet in spirit. They both said it was the most magical thing they’d ever seen.’

They were interrupted by a low rattle. The nurse, used to it, urged Cynthia to take his hand whilst she took the other. ‘Not long now,’ she said. ‘Not long at all. Would you like to say a prayer?’

‘Not really,’ Cynthia admitted. ‘I’m not much of a one for it.’

Seconds latter the rattle was replaced with an unearthly silence, as if the prone body of the dying man had been producing noise all along, but had gone unnoticed until then.

‘He is surely in heaven now,’ the nurse reassured her.

‘No. He is in Neverland now,’ said Cynthia.

They made their farewells at the door, two hands pressing together and then an awkward hug. ‘Everything is arranged,’ Cynthia said. ‘They will be here soon to take him away.’

As she walked down the steps, into the busy street, she turned round and walked back up them. Kissed her on the cheek. ‘You’ve done so well by him, my darling,’ she murmured. ‘Please - I have been calling you Nurse Robinson all this time. What is your Christian name?’

The nurse smiled and kissed the older woman’s cheek, whispering in her ear as she did so.

‘Wendy,’ she said. ‘My name’s Wendy.’

‘My, my,’ said Cynthia. ‘Look at you! You’re all grown up.’