THE VERY DEAD OF WINTER Read online

  Now that her interest was withdrawn from him, it was as if a light had been switched off. Her face was sullen, absorbed in some grief of her own. He found himself impelled by the curiosity he had felt when he first saw her, a need not so much to find the answer to a riddle as to touch something in her. Perhaps, just to touch. ‘How did you get yourself into this housekeeping situation?’ he asked.

  She looked at him, gravely considering whether to answer or not, and then looked away. Intimacy came of that pause.

  ‘I developed a passion for Jonathan, my sister’s husband – it’s something younger sisters are prone to.’ She told him this as though presenting him with a small confidence. He was aware that she was warmed by his interest. ‘He was sensitive and artistic, you know the sort of thing, a combination of Keats and Rupert Brooke, with the look of not being long for this harsh world. I thought that quite proper. I was into CND and thought the nuclear winter was just round the corner and that anyone who looked fit and played rugby was beyond bearing.’ She was discovering that it was possible to laugh at herself. Nicholas wondered how it had come about that he had behaved in this intrusive fashion, he who had a horror of inviting confidences. ‘Then, when it all fell apart – you know that my sister left him? – I desperately wanted to help. I saw quite a lot of Jonathan. He and Andrew were staying down here with Thomas and Margery. It was a happy time for me. We used to go for long walks and talk about the pointlessness of existence. I didn’t realise he really meant it.’ Nicholas, by now acutely uncomfortable, was seeking a means of retreat. Frances said, ‘After he shot himself, I felt terribly guilty – not just because of my sister, but because I had known how he felt and hadn’t understood. For a time, I believed it was I who had killed him. I stayed with Thomas and Margery most weekends. They were marvellous. When Margery died I felt I had to do all I could to help.’

  She looked at him and smiled. ‘So, now you know.’ The room had begun to darken. Beyond the window the sky looked sick against the whiteness of snow. Nicholas said curtly, ‘A bit over-dramatic, surely, and a very rash decision.’

  As if his hand had smashed the smile from her face, she jerked her head to one side. No conventional words of sympathy could so have strengthened the feeling between them. ‘There was nothing to decide.’ She dismissed his questioning of her motives with scorn. ‘Thomas and Margery treated me as a daughter; when Margery died I took the daughter’s role.’

  ‘A little unusual nowadays – I doubt that Anita would see it as her role to give up her way of life in order to care for my mother.’

  ‘I don’t know about your sister.’ She reacted with a flash of resentment. ‘I didn’t have a way of life to give up. My father died when I was five and my mother when I was twelve. My sister and I were sent to boarding school and farmed out for the holidays. It didn’t make sense to me when people talked about the need to break away from the family – I was desperate for a family.’

  ‘Even so, it’s not a very satisfactory situation to have got yourself into.’ He tried to sound indifferent but it was too late; the tension between them increased with each word spoken. ‘Isn’t it time you gave some thought to it?’

  ‘Why have I been talking to you about this? You don’t begin . . .’ She pounded fist on breastbone. ‘I don’t think, I feel. Can you understand that? I feel how it would be for Andrew were he to go to boarding school. I feel Thomas’s humiliation, unable to care for his grandson. No amount of thinking can cancel out their pain.’

  ‘All very worthy, no doubt, but some thought—’

  ‘Where has thinking got you?’ She flushed crimson and turned away. ‘I’m sorry. But you’re not a very good example, are you?’ She got up and went to the window.

  ‘Example of what?’ He was on his feet, shouting at her. The room was almost dark now and snow was massing against the window-ledge. She said, ‘It’s snowing again. It’s time we were on our way.’ An authoritative young person once more.

  He took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. ‘Answer me.’

  ‘I can’t. I don’t know why I said that. You remind me of Andrew. He needs a shield, so he has glasses he can hide behind.’

  ‘Is this supposed to make sense?’

  ‘You have an invisible shield, haven’t you? You have these wonderful experiences, but when you write or talk about them you never actually tell anything important about yourself.’

  ‘There is nothing to tell. I happen to be one of those people who feel most fully alive when life is stripped of all the trappings.’ He had said this before and it seemed to state his position well enough; the only concern the statement afforded him was his willingness to repeat it.

  ‘So what happens?’ she asked eagerly. ‘That’s what I’ve wanted to ask you ever since I heard you on the radio. You have this great experience of coming fully alive, but what does it lead to?’

  ‘It doesn’t have to lead anywhere. I’m not a missionary, I’m a natural nomad.’

  ‘But no one undergoes the kind of hardship you’ve experienced if there isn’t anything in it for themselves.’ She moved closer to him, her eyes intent on reading his face. ‘There must be something you hope to find. That’s what I wanted – to know what your hope is.’

  There was just enough light to see the ivory oval of her face blur as he bent to kiss her. She gave a little gasp and he felt a tremor run down her body. Her lips, cheek, the tip of her nose and hollow of her throat, were stingingly cold to his lips. She must have stepped back against something – a stool, perhaps, it was too dark to see. She stumbled. When he steadied her she stood before him, immobile. He found her anorak and held it out for her, but she was unable to get her stiff arms into it without his help.

  ‘You’re a block of ice,’ he said, and drawing her down on to the window-seat he began to chafe the helpless hands. Her face, in the snow light, was bloodless, but he saw that a single tear glistened on her cheek like a pearl on wax.

  Once they were outside the house, the snow fully occupied their attention. Conditions had deteriorated considerably during the time they had been talking. Nicholas, who had experienced a few life and death situations, had never felt so apprehensive as now, faced with the possibility that he might have to explain to his mother how it came about that the provisions she needed must be fetched by sled (always supposing Sophia had such a thing) from a car which was stranded outside a house where it had had no reason to stand for any longer than it took to adjust a central heating switch. In the twenty minutes it took to dig the car free he lost more energy due to sheer panic than physical effort.

  After he had dropped Frances at her house, he was not sorry that his progress to Sophia’s cottage was necessarily slow. He needed time to think. He had for many years been without that kind of anxiety which springs from close involvement in the lives of others. He had always made sure that he could slide gently out of relationships whenever it suited him. He had been free to avoid demands and to turn from questions he did not wish to consider and thoughts he did not wish to entertain. To some extent, this freedom had depended on the few fixtures in his life remaining constant. His father’s illness had disturbed this stability. There were questions it might not be possible to avoid, such as what was to become of his mother. It was hardly to be hoped that she would fail to raise the matter. He felt threatened, aware that impending change might necessitate a re-examination of his life.

  Florence stood staring out of the sitting-room window, eyes wide and unblinking as if hypnotised. She wore a red tartan kilt and waistcoat and a frilly white blouse.

  Anita said, ‘You look like a Scottish noblewoman who has been forced to take refuge in a croft.’

  Florence patted her bosom, not dissatisfied with this description. ‘When does a snowstorm become a blizzard?’

  ‘It’s a blizzard when there is a high wind and the snow goes racing past the window slantwise and builds up into huge drifts in which cars have to be abandoned and farmers have to go out digging up sheep a
nd villages are cut off and food supplies run out and . . .’

  ‘I get the idea, thank you.’

  ‘And, worst of all, telly goes off the air.’

  The wind howled in the chimney and one of the logs spat and crackled. Tobias, who had been conducting an exhaustive examination of his claws, started back, hissing.

  ‘You don’t think Nicholas has gone off to help some farmer dig up sheep?’ Florence asked uneasily.

  Anita kicked at a spark which was singeing the rug. ‘There aren’t many farms hereabouts. I expect he’s building a neat little igloo for himself and Frances.’

  Florence frowned, finding this image displeasing. She rubbed at the window-pane with a tissue, but it was clotted with snow from the outside and the visibility remained poor. Another cause of displeasure came to her mind. ‘And what can have happened to Terence? You don’t seem very concerned about him.’

  ‘If Terence were caught in a blizzard in the middle of the Steppes he would happen across the only shelter available in a thousand miles.’

  ‘It’s half-past eleven. Where can Nicholas be?’

  ‘More to the point, where is Sophia? She should be here ready to greet all the eager early arrivals.’

  ‘She’s out fetching more logs.’

  ‘I’ll go and help her.’

  ‘You will do what?’ Florence transferred her attention from the snow to her daughter. ‘Since when have you become one of the hewers of wood and drawers of water?’

  ‘I’m going to carry, not hew.’

  ‘It won’t do much for that dress.’

  ‘There’s a dreadful old duffel coat hanging up in the scullery; I’ll put that on.’

  ‘You should have worn something more flouncy; that dress makes you look all skin and bone.’ She was speaking to herself, Anita had gone. Another gust of wind sent the candles on the mantelshelf flickering wildly and two Christmas cards fell from the window-ledge. ‘I don’t know about you,’ Florence was driven to conversing with Tobias, ‘but I hate anything taken to excess. This is definitely too much.’ He opened his mouth wide, revealing pink roof vaulting and a number of sharp white teeth.

  Anita, wrapped in the duffel coat and stumbling in boots too large for her, had difficulty orientating herself once out of the back door. The snow was blinding and the wind nearly pulled her off her feet; twigs and branches whirled past her and while she stood clutching at the drainpipe a cloth torn from a clothes line wrapped itself round her face. She fought her way along the side of the house, recalling stories of people who had died in snow only a few hundred yards from a cottage door. Fortunately, once away from the cottage, a low hedge and a line of straggling bushes provided hand-holds as well as marking the way.

  The wood was stored in a compartment at the far end of the long shed where Sophia slept. When she reached the building Anita peered through a crack at the side of the window, hoping to get a glimpse of the interior. The curtains were still drawn and she was convinced the room contained a secret; but there was nothing to be seen, and even had there been her eyes were watering so much it was doubtful whether she would have obtained a very clear picture. As she clawed her way along the side of the building she wondered what Sophia used the place for normally; it was quite large and would have made a good workroom, but her mother had said that Sophia now worked at a craft centre on the outskirts of the town.

  In the wood store logs were piled almost to the roof and Sophia was perched on a pair of steps.

  ‘I keep a small pile for immediate use,’ she said as Anita joined her, ‘but it’s dwindled to nothing.’ She began to hand down logs. ‘We can put them on that sled and a sack of coal as well. I love pulling a sled, don’t you?’

  ‘I prefer being pulled.’

  A hurricane lamp swayed wildly from a rafter and Anita could barely distinguish the sled among the leaping shadows. She began to stack the logs in the wicker baskets which Sophia had brought with her, ‘Where’s the coal?’ She could imagine her dress being filthy before the party started. It was Terence’s favourite – a shimmering emerald sheath – and she had worn it in the hope of appeasing him when he eventually arrived.

  ‘In the lean-to at the back of this store. We shall have to do a little digging, I’m afraid; the snow has blocked the entrance.’

  In the event, it was Sophia who did the digging while Anita hauled out the sled and began to stack the laden wicker baskets on it, tipping one and scrabbling after the logs in the snow, Anita worked moodily, Sophia with zest, Sophia, black-velvet trousers and brocaded jacket muffled by an old trench coat, and wearing a black beret, was a different and decidedly more rakish person than the Sophia of yesterday. A witch with carnal attributes, Anita thought, imagining that playful jester’s smile directed at a man. She was suddenly quite sure that once there had been a man in her place, helping to heft logs, and that he and Sophia would have laughed quite a lot as they worked. Almost, she caught the sound of his laughter.

  ‘You’re like my mother,’ she said, surprised.

  ‘We are sisters.’

  ‘You both have an appetite for pleasure.’

  Sophia rested from her spadework to look in Anita’s direction, more as an aid to hearing than sight. ‘What happened to the daughter, then?’

  ‘My mother is too big for me. She dwarfs everyone around her – except my father,’ Anita shouted into the wind. ‘There’s never any peace where she is, nowhere that I can feel I am me. All my childhood I had to stay clenched tight, ready to parry thrusts from my mother.’

  Even now, in order to talk to Sophia alone, she had been driven to making a goodwill gesture in a blizzard. Sophia seemed to understand something of this, for when they had heaved the sack of coal on to the sled, she covered it with an old tarpaulin sheet. ‘This can wait for a few moments. Come back into the wood shed.’

  Anita, huddled in the duffel coat, teeth chattering, was determined to take her opportunity.

  ‘You say Florence dwarfed everyone except your father,’ Sophia said. ‘So what about him?’

  ‘I adored him when I was very young. His stories were stranger and more exciting than any in my books.’ Since she arrived here those stories had been coming back to her and now, in spite of physical misery, she recalled what an adventure a snowstorm had been in his company. ‘My sled became a troika and I heard the jingle of harness; I was hurled down great slopes, past tall, pointed trees with stars in their branches, towards a silver sheen of frozen water. And such a race of blood in the veins I nearly burst with expectancy! He never had to make an effort to get on my level, the childhood world seemed real to him. God was real, too – more real than some of His human creatures. He used to say Christ stood the world on its head. I think my father was at home with the upside-down view.’

  The shed door swung open, buffeted by the wind, and Anita clutched Sophia’s arm, afraid she might be distracted and move away while there were things yet to be said. ‘Then, when I got older, I saw that he was quite different from my friends’ fathers, who all had faces smooth as putty and used their features sparingly, while my daddy popped his eyes and showed his back teeth when he talked, and laughed from his belly. I could see some of my friends were quite alarmed by him. First of all this confused me and then it embarrassed me. I wanted a daddy who was bland like all the others. I left him behind like a child I had grown too old to play with. It never seemed possible to find him again, later, when I wanted to. There wasn’t the space. If you left any space in our house my mother occupied it, just as she fills any gap in conversation.’

  ‘Yet you found the space when you were young.’

  ‘But I can’t find my way back to where I was then.’ She clutched Sophia’s arm more tightly, shouting above the noise of the wind. ‘He’s going to die, Sophia; I’m so afraid he’s going to die now when I’m beginning to discover how much I need him.’ She had lost all restraint.

  ‘Help me, Sophia; I need someone to help me so much.’ She flung the words out like a prayer and S
ophia put her arms around her.

  ‘Anita, my love, your father is dying.’

  ‘I know, that’s what I said.’

  ‘Not quite.’

  But Anita had exhausted herself and was not listening. She was comforted by Sophia’s embrace and felt her prayer had been answered.

  As they were hauling the sled down the garden, Nicholas arrived. ‘Just what I need,’ he said. ‘I’ll see to this for you and then I’ll load it with Mother’s comestibles.’ He hoped that by performing this double service he would restore himself to his mother’s favour. Florence, who had become increasingly agitated while left on her own, took his arrival as a good omen and was not disposed to criticise.

  When she arrived, Florence had thought the forest denuded of people; looking from her bedroom window that night and seeing the garden bathed in cold blue light, the white, hooded trees standing around, she had felt she had come to one of those secret places to which bad fairies lure innocent travellers. It was possible to believe in wolves and bears, witches and wizards, more easily than in other human beings. This was not the place she had loved as a child.

  Today, as the blizzard raged, she had even been visited by the notion that there were no other people anywhere. Some great catastrophe had struck England, if not Planet Earth, and of humankind only a remnant survived here in this cottage.

  It was surprising, therefore, to discover that so many forest creatures had tunnelled out of burrows, setts or forms. Watching their arrival from the cottage doorway, it was indeed difficult to tell what manner of thing was emerging from the shadow of the trees; and even as they made their way down the path, badgers, beavers and rabbits came as readily to mind as any other creature. It was only when woolly hats and scarves, blankets, sheepskin coats, ponchos and parkas, boots and Wellingtons had been stripped away and deposited in a mountainous heap in the scullery, that they were revealed as more or less human, though there were one or two goblins and gnomes among them and one satyr. It was apparent to Florence that Sophia’s invitations had been sent without tact or discrimination to near neighbours, some of whom might well be living in charcoal burners’ huts.