Page 8 of The Heir Apparent
When I went into the kitchen, she was looking into the open fridge, its buttery light casting a glow in the dark room.
“I’m not hungry, Granny—they fed me on the plane. But I can make us tea if you’d like?”
She turned around and nodded. “Yes, alright, I suppose.”
She sat at the kitchen table and watched as I briskly moved around the room, turning on lights, filling the kettle and laying out tea the way I had been taught by one of Granny’s ladies-in-waiting.
“I don’t take sugar anymore,” she said. I stopped, the gold-trimmed Sèvres sugar bowl in my hands. She managed a small smile. “Doctor’s orders.”
I put the sugar bowl back and sat in the chair opposite her.
“Why don’t we talk about everything tomorrow?” I said. “Tonight we just drink our tea and then go to bed.”
She gazed at me, and I couldn’t read her eyes. But then, I’d never been able to read her. I imagine the moment she saw the horse’s hooves on her uncle’s neck, everything inside her had been sealed off forever.
“Yes, alright, tomorrow.”
We were silent while we waited for the pot to steep. It was strange to be in her presence again. No matter how far I moved away, I still saw her face everywhere I went. Her profile on coins, her slightly dispassionate wave on television, her smile on the cover of a magazine by a patient’s bedside. But that woman was mostly a different person to my grandmother. Granny complained about people leaving the heater on if they weren’t using it and insisted no Christmas present cost more than £20—and while the daily stack of papers on her desk received careful scrutiny, it was the health and breeding of her dogs and horses that consumed her.
The only time her two halves intersected was in her command of every room she entered, whether it was parliament or the dining room for family brunch. I didn’t know how older women were really treated in this world until I went out and joined it. I was aghast to see my friends’ grandmothers edged out, sat in the corner with a glass of wine and ignored. Out of habit, I was always deferential to older women, the way deep reverence for a white man in a suit is ingrained in everyone else. Needless to say, I was a hit when I did my geriatric medicine rotation.
I was never sure whether the crown turned her into a leader the moment it touched her head, or whether it just gave her the necessary armour to overcome her gender. She sat with her perfect posture, sipping her tea, unperturbed by the silence.
Finally I broke.
“Did no one come to stay with you, Granny?” I asked, for something to say.
“Amira is here. I think she might be asleep already.”
I started a little. “Oh, I didn’t know she was here. I thought she’d be with her parents.”
“The Shankars are in India. They’re coming in the next day or so, I believe.”
She finished her tea and got up to set the cup in the sink for her chambermaid to deal with in the morning. I drained mine as well and propped it on top of hers. She had never stacked a dishwasher in her life, but she required her family to put their crockery in tidy piles for her staff if they ate in her apartment. A water glass on a sidetable would not be tolerated.
She smoothed the front of her kilt as she looked at me. “I’m glad you’ve come.”
“Of course, Granny.”
“I know you did not part on good terms with your father and your brother, but they cared for you, and I know you cared for them.”
I nodded and tried to keep the hot tears pricking my eyes from spilling over. I didn’t want to think about the last time I saw them.
“We have much to discuss, but now you should rest,” she said. “They’ve set up your old room for you.”
I kissed her cheek again. She smelled like L’Heure Bleue and Earl Grey, as she always had.
“Goodnight, Granny,” I whispered and gave her the smallest of curtsies.
She smiled sadly and shook her head. “The men in this family die too young. They always have.”
She drifted down the hallway towards the bedroom where she’d slept alone for twenty years. A jetlag-induced headache was firing up in my temple and I suddenly felt like I could lie down and sleep for days. Usually, I dreaded sleep. I feared it. I couldn’t fathom how people simply lay down and succumbed to the darkness. The best part of being a doctor was that I worked endlessly, trudging up and down the wards, past the black windows and sleeping patients. I could go longer and harder than anyone else. But now my old bed was waiting for me with clean sheets, ironed with lavender water and warmedwith an electric blanket. There would be a pitcher of water by the bed. Heavy drapes. Newspapers by the door in the morning.
It occurred to me with a jolt that I didn’t have my passport. The customs officer had boarded the jet when we landed and processed us all then and there. Stewart had taken my passport from him and slipped it into his jacket pocket. I had been so careful to hold on to everything else, but I’d been distracted by the armfuls of black fit-and-flare dresses being unfurled in front of me.
I was too tired to deal with it then. It would have to wait until morning. I walked down the hallway, turned left at Granny’s door and headed towards the old room that used to be mine.
Granny and Grandfather had converted two offices into bedrooms for us when we were children. Louis’s was on the other side of the hall from mine, decorated in a gloomy Tweedside tartan. My room had a canopy bed with frilly white curtains. In the corner stood a huge dollhouse hand-built by Grandfather, an odd but sweet man who had spent his days constructing replicas of palaces and estates that belonged to the family. His wedding gift to Mum was a dollhouse that looked exactly like the Scottish estate where she had grown up. In one of the turrets, he had placed a porcelain Isla doll. After Louis and I were born, Grandfather added to the dollhouse two porcelain babies, both with black hair and storm-coloured eyes. Louis’s doll was lost years ago, but mine was still there, forever in Isla’s porcelain arms.
