CHAPTER EIGHT

KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON

Cassandra

Victory managed to get Bard out of his jacket and onto the sofa while Bridget rang the surgery. Cassandra could hear her, though Bridget turned toward the wall as she spoke. She was pleading for a house call, saying she didn’t know if it was safe to move him.

Cassandra sat on the floor next to the sofa, and the room seemed to spin as she watched Victory lean over Bard, whispering his name to rouse him. His eyelashes were pale against his skin, and when they fluttered, Cassandra had never been so happy for anything in her life. 

He opened his eyes, and they stayed fixed on the ceiling as he took in deep breaths, and then he slowly put his hands to his temples. He winced as he touched the right side of his head. When he moved as if to sit up, Victory put her hands on his shoulders.

“Stay put, Bard.”

“Where’s Cass?” he asked. “Where’s Mum?”

“I’m here, Bardie,” Cassandra said. “Mum’s just over there. We’re fine. Do you want anything?”

“Water,” he said. “A pillow.”

Cassandra stood immediately and went upstairs for his pillow while Victory went for water. Bard was sitting up and sipping when she came back down. She settled the pillow on the sofa and when he lay back down, she sat on the floor next to him.

“You’re such a great sodding bastard,” Cassandra said, sniffling.

“Cassandra. Language,” Bridget said, her hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone.

“You wound me, sister,” Bard said, his voice soft, his eyes closed.

“Why did you have to cross him? I was so scared.”

“I don’t have your talents of deception, Cass. I’m an open book. The General knows what I am, and he’ll torment me with it whether I hide it or not. Best to live in the open.”

“I hope you see now, though, Bard,” Victory said, “what losing you would do to Cass, would do to your Mum.”

Bard threw his arm over his eyes. “Can you turn down the lights, please? And what are you talking about?”

“Your stupid bloody writing, Bard!” Cassandra cried. “The darkness, sinking—what are you thinking, why can’t you tell me if you feel like that?”

“Cassandra,” Bard said, shifting his arm so he could look at her, “you’re lucky I’m too shattered to throttle you. Those were song lyrics, you hysterical girl.”

“Don’t call me hysterical. It’s misogynistic. And how was I meant to know?”

“You weren’t meant to be nicking papers from my room, but that didn’t stop you doing that.”

Cassandra frowned and rested her forehead on the pillow next to Bard. “I’m sorry. I just was so worried. Also, I hate you.”

The doctor arrived an hour later. 

“Well aren’t you lucky,” she said to Bard, “all these women fussing over you.” 

She was sturdy and solid, with the air of a woman who had been a girl who kept calm and carried on during the war. A girl who had ridden a bicycle and bought butter with ration cards and listened to the BBC Home Service as she sat in darkness during blackouts. Cassandra, seven years old, used to pretend she was living through a momentous time during the miners’ strike, when the power cuts left Milton in darkness and Bard read by candlelight. In forty years would she be like this—amiably brusque, unostentatiously competent? Cassandra almost laughed, in spite of everything. Competent at what practical, exactly?

The doctor asked if it was all right with Bard for everyone to be in the room when she examined him, and getting his consent, got on with her business. Without saying much, she peered into Bard’s eyes with a penlight, tested his reflexes, examined the bruise that was spreading from his temple outward. She asked him who the prime minister was, and laughed when he grimaced as he answered.

“Well it seems you have your wits about you,” she said. “Now, is there something you should tell the police about how this happened?” 

Bard didn’t answer.

“It’s not my place to tell you what to do. But keep the question in mind. All right if I give the womenfolk your care instructions?” When Bard nodded, she turned to Cassandra, Bridget, and Victory. “Mildly concussed. Ice on the bruising. No aspirin. He’s fine to sleep, just wake him every four hours for the next two days. He can go upstairs to rest if he’s up to it, but he has to stay there if he does. Keep him from talking much or reading, writing, watching the telly, and listening to music for the next three days, and then he has to ease back into it. Complete rest for the brain.”

Bard groaned. “No words or music? Give me a death sentence why don’t you.”

“You’ll follow directions if you want to keep enjoying those things, young man,” the doctor said. “It’s a good job there are three of them watching you.” She gave Bridget her card. “Call me if he has any trouble waking or a worsening headache. But rest and time is what will heal him.”

While Bridget saw the doctor to the door, Cassandra installed herself on the old green armchair.

“I’m staying with you tonight, Bard,” she said.

“No need,” he said. “I just want several hours of oblivion. You can trust me.”

“I don’t though.”

“I’ll stay with him,” said Victory. “You’ve been ill, Cass. You need rest. You too, Bridget.”

“Thank you so much, Victory,” Bridget said. “Bard’s never had a better friend.”

Cassandra nodded. She was honestly too tired to argue, for once. But she didn’t want to sleep. She was sure that every time she closed her eyes, she would see it—Roger, his fist clenching, his face contorted with disgusted rage. She fought the tears that threatened to begin spilling onto her cheeks again. Fought for strength—for Bard’s sake. She pictured the bicycle with a basket in front, the ration book, the blackout curtains.

“Let me help you get him upstairs, then,” she said to Victory.

“I’ll help her,” Bridget said. Her face was weary as she kneeled on the floor and put her head against her son’s, but there was something of the Madonna of a Pietá in it as well, a transcendent kind of grief. “My boy,” Cass heard her whisper. “My dear brave boy.”

“Don’t worry, Mum,” he whispered back. “We’ll all get what we deserve in the end.”

He eased himself up to sit, and Victory and Bridget helped him stand, hands under his elbows. He winced each time he took a stair. Cass waited two steps below him.

“You’re going to milk this for all the drama you can, aren’t you?” she said to him.

“One cannot change one’s nature, Cassandra.”

Once he was in bed and Bridget had given him the lightest of kisses on the top of his head and gone to her room, Bard turned to his sister.

“Cass, I need you to do something for me. Do you have Kai’s number?”

She shook her head.

“Then first thing tomorrow, will you find him and warn him about what the General knows about him?”

Victory looked between them. “Do you think what your father said about him is true? Maybe Cassandra shouldn’t be around him.”

“Victory, you don’t know Kai. He wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Cassandra said. “What our father said was all bluff and bluster and… and… xenophobia. Would Bard send me to talk to him if he thought he was dangerous?”

“I wouldn’t think so, but if I know Bard there may be... other considerations clouding his judgment.”

“Victory,” Bard said, cringing, “this is common decency. And Cass is right. He’s not going to hurt her—or anyone.”

“Let me go with you then,” Victory said to Cassandra.

Bard shook his head, then hissed in pain. “No, he doesn’t know you. It’ll be better if it was just Cass.”

Victory looked dubious. “All right, Fitzfoxes. I trust you. Who the bloody hell knows why, but I do.”