A Spell of Winter (21 page)

‘Rob? D’you want some barley water?’

‘No. But Cathy –’

‘Mmm?’

‘You were here in the night, weren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought so.’

It was a small kingdom but it was strong. Kate serviced it, bringing up coals and hot water and jugs of barley water, taking away Rob’s bed-bottles and bed-pans. No one else was allowed in. Of course Grandfather came, but he was a stranger and I think he felt himself one. The talk snagged, the rhythm of our life was lost when he tapped at the door. Once I heard Miss Gallagher’s voice somewhere far off in the house, talking loudly. I would not think of her. She was out of the way and powerless. The things that were important were Rob’s beef-tea and the daily glass of port he was allowed, the way his skin itched inside the splint and wadding, the punctuation of Dr Milmain’s visits, the building and dying down of the fire. Kate was with us when she could be, and it was better when she was there, as if the presence of a third person were not an impediment but a shaping force. We were more ourselves when she was there.

There were a couple of long, raw grey afternoons when we were just the two of us. We played two-handed bridge, and chess, and I read aloud to Rob from
The Prisoner of Zenda
. We didn’t touch. Livvy had sent messages and a basket of cold russet apples, but she hadn’t visited. Russets were his favourite apples and we ate them together, six in an afternoon, biting away the sweet, nutty flesh and leaving the cores lying on the bedclothes. He was sitting up now. Tomorrow he would be allowed out of bed for the first time. Everything would change. He flipped the cards down, dealing our hands.

‘Let’s not play any more.’

‘All right. What d’you want to do?’

‘I don’t know.’ I stood up and walked to the window. It was the blank, lifeless end of a January afternoon. There was no frost.

‘Can you see the snowdrops?’ asked Rob.

‘No, there aren’t any.’

‘You’re not looking. Under the acacia. There,’ he said, as if he could see them, as if he were pointing at them. And there they were, white tiny stains in the gloom that grew sharper as I looked at them.

‘It hardly seems worth having flowers now, does it?’ I said.

‘It’ll be spring soon,’ said Rob. I felt a pang of anxiety. I was safe here, with everything banked down and predictable. Rob’s illness was like a second winter. We had our rituals, our drawing of curtains and lighting of fires. Spring would be too strong a light, showing up the dust everywhere.

‘I’ll be out of here long before the spring,’ he went on.

‘You might not be.’

‘Of course I shall.’ He looked at me. ‘It’s not so bad being shut away like this in winter, but once the spring comes …’

Not so bad
. ‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s not so bad.’

‘I mean, I’m very grateful and all that,’ he said quickly. ‘You and Kate have been marvellous, don’t think I don’t know that.’

‘But,’ I said.

‘Oh well, there are always buts. Aren’t there?’

‘I don’t know. Not for me,’ I said slowly. My jaws ached as if I were getting a cold. My chin hurt. Something was wrong. It was hurting the way it did when I was going to be sick –

I slammed up the sash and leaned out. The air was cold and tasteless, like water. It was all I wanted. Sweat had come out on my forehead and I shivered as it dried.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Rob. ‘You look awful.’

‘I’ll be all right in a minute.’

There was a thick, hazy thudding in my head. I folded up and sat on the floor by the window, leaning my cheek against the wall. Cold air washed deliciously around my head.

‘I’ll ring for Kate,’ said Rob’s voice through the clamour in my head.

‘No, don’t.’

I was coming back to myself. I felt him watching me.

‘It’s all right now,’ I said. ‘I’ll get up in a minute.’

‘You’ve spent too long in this fug with me,’ said Rob, ‘and aren’t you eating? You don’t look right.’

I thought back. ‘I did eat something this morning. Porridge.’

‘It’s four o’clock, Cath. Here. Have some of these grapes of Livvy’s.’

‘No, I’ll get some tea in a minute.’ I got up carefully and crossed the floor to Rob’s bed. He took my wrist in his hand.

‘You’re cold. You aren’t well. Stand up a minute, Cathy.’

I stood up.

‘Pull your dress tight round you. There, I thought so. You’ve got thin.’

‘Thin? Of course I’m not.’ I’d never been thin.

‘Have you looked at yourself in the glass lately?’

No. For the past two weeks I’d been scrambling my clothes on and off by candlelight. If my face looked different, I thought, it was from tiredness.

‘I ought to have seen it before,’ he said.

‘I’m all right,’ I said. If I wasn’t careful I was going to cry. Now he told me, I could feel my own weakness. I couldn’t even begin to want to eat.

‘Go on,’ he said, ‘have a grape. Open your mouth.’

He held the purple grape against my lips, but I shut them tight.

‘I don’t like them.’

‘You do. You like grapes. And they’re such good ones. Open your mouth.’ I shook my head, but he rubbed the grape against my lips, first gently, then harder, until the skin of the grape burst and I felt the wet, sticky juice sliding down my chin.

‘You’ve got to eat it. I’ll make you.’

I was sealed against him, like a cell closed with wax.

‘It’s running down your dress. I shan’t stop.’ He held the bunch of fat, bloomy grapes in front of my eyes. I closed my eyes and felt thick, burning tears gather behind them. But I wouldn’t cry and I wouldn’t open my mouth.

‘Cath. Cathy. Cathy darling, what’s the matter? Are you ill?’

I twisted sideways, pulled my wrist out of his grip and stood back from the bed.

‘I don’t want to eat her grapes. And don’t call me Cathy darling. What if someone hears? What’ll they think?’

‘They won’t think anything,’ he said. ‘You’re my sister. That’s how I think of you.’ He said it simply, as if it were the truth.

‘We’ve still got her to think of. Miss Gallagher.’

‘Oh, she’s forgotten the whole thing already,’ he said easily.

‘You can’t possibly believe that.’

‘As soon as I’m back on my feet I’ll deal with her.’

He would be back on his feet any day now. He’d be as strong as ever in a week or two, with only the pale chip of a scar under his hairline.

‘I feel like John the Baptist,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘He must increase, and I must decline
.’

‘Rubbish. You must eat. Then you’ll increase, too.’

But I knew that the engine of sickness in me was like a fire, banked down so as to spring up stronger the next day. I felt it, but I didn’t understand it. I’d always been at home in my own body and now there seemed to be no room for me in it. It had been taken over by something more powerful than I was, with a mind of its own. My sickness swept back over me and I shut my eyes.

‘I want Kate,’ I said. The meagreness of my voice in my own ears frightened me. I was shrinking everywhere, dwindling until I could not find myself. Soon there would be nothing left. Through the turbulence in my head I heard Rob ring the bell, once and then again and again, more urgently.

Fifteen

The room was dark and quiet. Kate had gone. I was sleeping in Rob’s bed.

‘It’s happening at last,’ I thought, ‘we’re turning into one another.’

His bed smelled different from mine. The sheets were slightly dirty, and smooth. Kate had not bothered to change the bed since Rob had had his fall. There were his heap of pennies and his little tin of lead shot on the bedside table. I was alone for almost the first time in two weeks.

I lay and looked down my body. He was right, I’d become thin. I needed looking after. My legs were long and white and useless looking, and my hipbones jutted. But my stomach was still soft and round, and my breasts were even bigger than they had been. Blue veins wriggled across them. I wondered what Rob would think of them when he touched them. I touched them. They felt hot and taut. My heart was beating fast as if I’d been running, but I’d been lying still for hours. Kate said I was to stay in bed for the rest of the day and she’d bring me a glass of port with an egg beaten into it. I couldn’t eat it, I said, it was disgusting to think of strands of egg floating in dark red wine. All right then, she would bring me the port on its own.

‘A glass of port is good for you. It builds up your blood.’

My blood needed building. It needed to be thickened and slowed. It was running too quickly around me and burning me up. At night when I wanted to sleep I was kept awake by the bumping of my heart.

Say you’ll believe, O say you’ll be true
to a heart which beats only for you.

That was love. It was what everyone wanted. But I didn’t want the beating of my heart inside me, like an animal padding up and down, up and down. I lay awake staring into the hours between midnight and morning, and when the morning came I was too tired to eat. Even the smell of Rob’s coffee nauseated me.

Kate came in with the glass in her hand.

‘Shall I light the lamp?’

‘No. My head aches. I only want a candle.’

She put it on Rob’s bedside table, and the glass of port next to it so that a thin red rim shone around the dark liquid. It looked exactly like blood.

‘Mind and drink it,’ said Kate. ‘Oh, and she’s here. Euniss. She wants to come up and see you.’

‘Tell her no. Tell her I’m ill.’

‘I told her that but she’s still here waiting. She’s been talking to your grandfather, telling him you need looking after. She’ll be digging your grave for you if you aren’t careful.’

I had a brief vision of Miss Gallagher spading clods of earth out of a raw clay grave. The earth was as greasy as her mackintosh, and the sky so wet it squeaked.
Talking to your grandfather
. ‘Did you hear what she said?’

‘Why would I want to listen to her?’

‘But did you?’

‘It was only the usual old nonsense. Lie down now. You won’t get well if you don’t rest, and I can’t have the both of you on my hands.’

‘Help me drink the port. I get dizzy when I sit up,’ I said, to keep her there. As long as Kate was with me Miss Gallagher could say nothing, even if she came in, and I didn’t think she would unless I was alone.

‘Let’s get you up then. Dig in with your heels and push yourself up the bed. That’s it. I’ve got you.’

I felt her strong hand knuckling my back. She wedged me in with pillows until I was half-sitting and then lifted the glass of port. But as the smell of it came close to me my lips puckered with nausea.

‘Take it away. I can’t drink it.’

‘Course you can drink it.’ But she didn’t insist. Kate had the kind of tact in her body that would never let her force anything on anyone. Already she had put the glass down on the table.

‘What’s the matter with you? Tell me now.’

‘It makes me feel sick. Everything makes me feel sick.’

She sat back, rimmed by the candle. I couldn’t see her face. Then there was her voice with a laugh in it. ‘If it was another girl and not you I’d be worried by now.’

‘What?’

‘Sick. Dizzy. Thin as a stick except for those big buzzies. There could be a bad reason for all of it.’

Her meaning struck me and I almost laughed back. Then it hit me again. She was still talking.

‘But I can’t have the pair of you taking to your beds, and me running between you. Should we put you in the one bedroom the way we used to do?’

I stretched my face into a smile. ‘No need for that. I’ll be better by tomorrow. I’m not really ill.’

‘Oh God, and here’s Euniss coming. Lie down, shut your eyes and I’ll get rid of her for you.’ We listened to the flat slap of Miss Gallagher’s footsteps. I slitted my eyes and saw her poke her head around the door. There was a frill of light round her big shape.

‘Only me!’ she trilled. ‘How’s our invalid?’

‘She’s asleep,’ said Kate.

‘Is that so? And I could have sworn I heard voices as I came along the corridor. Never mind. I’ll sit with her for a bit, Kate, and you can go and attend to Robert.’

‘She’s best left quiet, after going off like that.’

‘Of course. Quiet company, that’s what she needs. She’s been too much with her brother. It isn’t good for her.’

‘What could be better for anyone than their own flesh and blood? Though of course you’ve no family yourself.’

‘Allow me to know best, Kate. I think I may claim to understand Catherine.’

It was hopeless. I opened my eyes as if waking. ‘It’s all right, Kate. She can stay.’

‘And who’s
she
, I should like to know,’ bridled Miss Gallagher automatically, plumping herself down in the chair where Kate had been. Her buttocks spread out sideways, straining against their harness of scratchy cloth. Her scarab pin winked at me, and the candle flame blew sideways, elongated itself then shrank down. She was here and there was no getting away from her. But it was time. I’d been tensed, waiting for this.

‘It seems so long since we’ve had a chat,’ said Miss Gallagher, ‘just the two of us. It’s quite cosy with the candle, isn’t it? Of course, you’ve been very taken up with him, haven’t you? Robert. Since he had that nasty fall. But it’s the horse I feel sorry for. Why should a dumb beast suffer? Not that I expect you to see it as I do, Catherine.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘What do you want?’

‘Good gracious, as if I ever wanted anything. My wants are
very
few, Catherine. I’ve just come to keep you company.’

Most of her face was in shadow but I saw the shine of her teeth. She kept them spotlessly clean, she told me. Ten minutes’ brushing, morning and evening. They had never been white, she’d told me: yellow was the natural, healthy colour of the enamel. Her lips were parted over something like a smile, but behind it there was the hungry acreage of her face, sucking at me.

‘You know what I mean,’ I said. ‘I haven’t forgotten, if you have. What do you want now?’

‘What nonsense you talk, Catherine. But of course you’re not well.’