A Spell of Winter (22 page)

‘Why is it nonsense? It wasn’t nonsense before.’

I stared at her. Oddly it made me bolder to be lying down and helpless. I could outface her with my illness. She made a sudden, awkward dab at the bedclothes over my legs, and gave me a pat on my knee like one you’d give to a dog with an uncertain temper.

‘We’ve always been good friends, Catherine, haven’t we? Why, when you were a little girl you wouldn’t let me go home without saying good night to you in bed.’

I couldn’t remember. It might have happened once.

‘My Miss Gaily, you used to call me.’ Her voice dripped a fond treacle. ‘You were such a dear little sprite, Catherine.’ I watched her hands crisping as if they held a small paper doll called Catherine. For a little while it would dance its papery dance, then those hands that made it would tear it to pieces. ‘Of course you were a motherless child,’ she went on, ‘that made us closer. A boy hasn’t got the same feelings. I never heard Robert mention your mother’s name from the day she went. Not from that day to this.’

‘Don’t talk about Rob like that,’ I said. My power was swelling. I was going to meet her head-on. We were going to fight again and this time I was going to win. She was not going to hang over my life breathing her threats like sugar.

‘Very well,’ she said, ‘the less said about
him
the better. To anyone. Don’t you agree, Catherine?’

‘I do,’ I said.

‘When you’re well, you’ll see things more clearly. We can have such happy times.’

‘Happy times,’ I said. ‘I’ll take you for a walk when I’m better. We’ll go in the woods and I’ll show you my secret places. The weather will change soon and it’ll be spring. I know a clearing where there’s a bank of wood anemones, just where the sun strikes down. There’s a fallen tree and they grow beside it. They flower each year but no one else sees them. You know what they look like, don’t you? White and tender, with tiny mauve veins in them when you look close. People call them windflowers because they’re never still. Even when we can’t feel the breeze the flowers are moving to it. The leaves aren’t so pretty, though. I always think they’re like claws if you look close. I’ll take you there.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh, Catherine. I’d never hurt you. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Because you love me,’ I said.

‘Yes.’

I shut my eyes again. ‘I’m very tired. My head aches so.’ I knew she would go now. I did not have to open my eyes to see her timid, joyous face as she tiptoed towards the door. I’d silenced her for a while. Long enough for me to think about what I had to do next.

Suddenly I was putting on weight again. I could eat like a wolf. I woke hungry in the mornings, longing for eggs with dark yellow yolks which spurted when I dug in my spoon, new bread and salted butter. I poured cream on to my porridge and drizzled golden syrup over it. I ate all this and then I was still hungry for crisp, slightly burnt slices of toast with Gentleman’s Relish. I dug my knife deep into the paste, already tasting the smokiness of anchovies. I came down to breakfast early and sat over it late, drinking fresh tea, shutting my eyes and basking in the pale flood of winter light through the windows.

‘Good girl. You’re looking better,’ said my grandfather one morning as he passed me in the hall, but he didn’t touch me.

Rob could walk again. I lay in bed each night waiting for his slightly irregular footfall. The first night he came again he hurt me when he lay on top of me and drove into me. My breasts were tender and all I wanted was for us to lie still and close. He knew it straight away. I never had to explain things to Rob. There were other things I could do for him. He showed me and I showed him. It never mattered who knew first how to touch and where to touch.

In the middle of the night I was always hungry. He crept downstairs to the kitchen and brought back a wedge of cold apple pie or a rice pudding. I broke its stretchy skin with my tongue and lapped up the delicious cold creaminess of it. It was cool because it had been kept on a marble slab in the larder.

‘You’ll get fat,’ said Rob. ‘Look, you’re getting fat already. We needn’t have worried about you. Did you know Miss Gallagher told Grandfather she thought you had consumption? Of course he didn’t take a blind bit of notice. What a perfect fool that woman is.’

‘I feel better than I’ve ever felt in my life,’ I said. ‘I like being fat. And I don’t feel sick all the time any more.’

‘That was just nerves. It was her fault: I believe she really frightened you.’

‘She won’t give us any more trouble.’

‘No, she’s eating out of your hand these days, isn’t she? I’ve noticed. What have you done to her?’

‘Oh nothing. She’s rather pathetic, really. Anyway she isn’t important.’

‘You’ll need to be letting that skirt out,’ said Kate. ‘Look at the way the darts are pulling. It’ll ruin the cloth.’

‘It’s all the food you’ve made me eat. I’m getting fat.’

‘Yes,’ she said. I was standing in the window, against the light. I looked down at the white points around the stitching of my skirt, where the cloth strained away from it. The seams creaked as I moved.

‘Turn sideways,’ said Kate, and I turned.

‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘How long is it since you’ve had your visitor, Catherine?’

I had to think. I never liked to think about it since it first came and made me different from Rob for ever. It had stopped because I was thin.

‘Not long,’ I said.

‘Are you sure now?’

‘I’m perfectly well, Kate. Look at me!’ I spread out my arms and felt the cloth tighten around my waist. She was right, it ought to be let out.

‘Catherine, do you know how you look now? But no, of course it couldn’t be.’ I had never known Kate hesitate in anything she wanted to say. It irritated me. Why was she looking at me like that?

‘What, Kate?’

‘It couldn’t be that you were going to have a child,’ she said in a rush. Her colour was high and fierce, the way it was when she was angry, but this wasn’t anger.

‘Going to have a child? Oh no. It couldn’t be that. He made sure of it,’ I said, the words falling out of me like eggs. She stared at me.

‘What did you say?’

‘What did I say? Of course I’m not going to have a child. I can’t. It might be a monster.’

She took hold of the top of my arms and shook me. ‘You’re not well yet, you don’t know what you’re saying. Have you been going over there, Catherine?’

I saw what she was thinking of. It was as clear as if it were written, like the sky explaining things to me.

‘You mean to Ash Court?’

‘Yes.’

I just looked at her and saw her believing it. Why had I said that about monsters? But she wouldn’t guess, because that was too bad to be true. Kate was on her own trail and it led to Mr Bullivant.

‘I’ll kill him,’ said Kate. ‘Couldn’t he see you don’t know anything? Why did you let him? Did you know what you were doing?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘don’t say anything. Nobody must know.’

‘Everybody’s going to know soon enough. Look at you. It’s only because they’re not looking that they don’t see it. It’s in your face too. My mother could tell when a girl was pregnant just from looking at her face. It’s in the eyes. Look at you, look at those brown marks under them. You’ll be feeling it move yourself, it must be about that time.’

I felt a snake coil in my belly. It had a flat, inhuman face. Nobody had seen it yet, but soon I would feel it. It would rustle, then stir in its basket inside me where it now lay sleeping. At last it would emerge and everybody would see it. But what kind of creature would it be? How was it possible that it could live? A monster, Rob said. He had made sure this would never happen, but it had happened.

‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘Help me, Kate. You’ve got to help me.’

It was moving. Now I thought about it I had been feeling it for days. It was blind inside me. I must not think of a snake or I would want to tear at myself until I had gouged it out. It was like a clothes moth fluttering in a cupboard. That was better. But that night I saw snakes. I felt the tiny stir of its tail and I knew that Rob was right. We had made something that ought never to have been made.

‘It’s a baby,’ said Kate, ‘a little baby.’

‘You’ve got to help me. If you don’t I’ll do it myself. I’ll find out how, you can’t stop me. I don’t care what I do to myself. I don’t care if it kills me.’

She would help me, I knew she would. She knew things like that.

‘I’ll help you,’ said Kate. Her face looked strange in the light, as if she was frightened of someone. But there was no one in the room to make her afraid.

The woman had been a nurse, Kate said. She knew what she was doing. She would meet us at the empty cottage at eight o’clock the next night. She had given Kate a list of what to bring. Kate kept it folded in her hand and did not let me see it.

‘But it’s not safe in the empty cottage,’ I said. ‘The ceiling’s coming down.’

‘We shan’t be staying,’ said Kate. ‘It doesn’t work right away. There’ll be time to get you back here. It’s just we can’t bring the old woman into the house.’

‘Someone’ll see us.’

‘They won’t. Anyway, you’ve been ill. You had a fancy to go out for air and then you were tired and we sheltered in the cottage. Sick people have fancies.’

‘You must keep Rob away from me. Don’t let him come in to me.’

‘I’ll say I’m sleeping with you while you’re ill.’

‘Yes, that’s good. And Kate –’

‘Yes?’

‘Will there be much blood?’

‘There was with –’ she stopped and I knew she had been going to say a name. I wondered if it was Eileen’s, but I knew she wouldn’t tell me.

‘Then put old sheets on my bed. We can burn them.’

She looked at me.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t that a good idea?’

‘It is. Only I’d never have thought you’d be so practical.’

Her words hung over us.

‘This time next week, it’ll all be over,’ I said.

‘Don’t wear that skirt again,’ said Kate. ‘Anyone can tell if they look.’

‘They won’t be looking. People only see what they expect to see.’

‘That’s true enough. Now get some sleep.’

‘You’ll help me.’

‘I promise.’

I will tell you what the woman did. It was a crime. She made me lie down on the splintery floor of the empty cottage. Kate had brought a blanket to put under me. The woman made me open my legs. She had a rubber bag with liquid in it, and a syringe. It went up inside me and she squirted hard until there was flashing pain in my side and she stopped. Kate had gone to the door to look out. I must have screamed but there was nobody coming.

‘It doesn’t hurt,’ the woman said, looking at me hard. We had made an owl hoot. The silence of the night rearranged itself.

‘No,’ I said. ‘It was the shock, that’s all.’ Kate helped me up. I was shaking because of the cold in the cottage and the smell of dirt. I felt as if my insides had washed loose.

‘If it doesn’t work, send for me again,’ said the woman. ‘It’s all in the price.’ Kate counted the money into her hand. It was my money. The woman dipped her hand into the folds of her skirt and the coins were gone. I thought of her money-dirty hands entering my body.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Kate. ‘Can you walk? We should be going.’

She was on edge, wanting to get us away from the empty cottage and the woman, but I didn’t care. I might as well lie here and bleed in the dirt and make the owls hoot. I was all right. I was nothing. I could not even tell how I felt. If I hadn’t been holding Kate’s arm I wouldn’t have known I had a body.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ said Kate. ‘This happens to lots of girls and you’d never know. They go on and get married. It was his fault, not yours.’

‘I’m not frightened,’ I said. I thought of my father, piling the stones into heaps on the drive, two piles, the saved and the damned. We picked our way back home over the snapping twigs, and I climbed the staircase to my room alone. I was not ill and nothing hurt me, but my feet felt heavy and it was an effort to keep climbing. To go up those stairs was as hard as to climb into a tower, but I knew I must. Kate had been clever, she had made my grandfather believe that another doctor should see how Rob’s leg had healed. She had done it as if reluctantly, sorry for the money it would cost, and he had believed her. So my grandfather had taken Rob to see a surgeon in town, although he wouldn’t be half as good as Dr Milmain, Kate said.

‘Never mind, it’s money well spent. We’ll have the house empty,’ she said, and she laughed.

I heard it in my head as I went up the stairs. Money well spent. Money well spent. I had only to get to my room and later Kate would come. I was at the top of the stairs now, and the darkness around me was beginning to sway, but nothing hurt. I would get there. I forced myself through a narrow tunnel of lights which sparked and fizzed in front of my eyes. I fumbled for the door handle and there it was, and although I could see almost nothing now I knew the way to my bed.

It began to work in my dreams. My dreams were hurting. I rolled over and there was Kate.

‘Hush,’ she said. ‘You’re making a noise.’

‘It’s started,’ I said. There were big hands working at my stomach, squeezing it. It hurt but it was not too bad. I could get through this, I thought. Then a sharp white pain jerked into me. Kate put her hand over my mouth. I tasted the sweat on it.

‘Keep quiet. They’ll hear you,’ she said.

I turned my face into the pillow. The pain snapped at me, then shrank away. The pain was the old woman’s hands still in me, her dirty hands. It was coming again.

A long time later Kate was pushing at me. ‘Lie still. Lie still. I’ve got to have a look at you.’

I felt myself bleeding. It was warm and wet and it came out whether I wanted it to or not. I tried to close myself up with my muscles but there was another helpless gush of blood.

‘It’s stuck,’ said Kate. ‘That’s what’s making you bleed. Try to push. If we get it out you’ll be all right.’

She was pulling at me and my legs were shaking so much I could not keep still. My body thumped against the bed as if it was a fish someone else had landed. I was in my body but I could make myself go out and watch it. Kate had washed her hands with yellow soap and they were clean. I saw the pale half-moons of her nails, with blood on them. I sat up and felt the blood slide into a pool under me.