A Spell of Winter (28 page)

‘She’s no family,’ Kate hissed in my ear. ‘He wants you to drop the first clod.’

‘No. No, I don’t want to.’

Rob stepped forward quickly and took the ornate little shovel the gravedigger handed him. He held it high and let drop pieces of earth on Miss Gallagher’s coffin.

‘You ought to have done it. It was you she loved,’ Kate said.

Rob’s hair was dark with rain. He had taken off his hat and was holding it in front of him. His head was bowed. The wind was getting up, sighing in the big elms at the corner of the churchyard where rooks nested. No one wept but there were coughs and sniffs which did for the sounds of sorrow. A group of boys kept jumping up to look over the churchyard wall. Sometimes the tops of their heads appeared, and their eyes, then they must have got together to hoist one boy high, because the top half of his body came clear of the wall and he stared across at us, collecting every look and word. When we’d gone they’d come in and look at the new grave, and one of them might be bold enough to stand for a second on top of its heaped earth and say to himself that he was standing on top of her. She’d never liked any boy, though it was Rob she’d hated.

As we turned from the grave and walked along the path towards the lych-gate Kate fell back from where she’d been at my side. Grandfather was giving directions about the grave. He was to pay for her headstone, because she’d had no money and the relations she’d spoken of couldn’t be drummed up. Besides, she’d died on his land. She should have been left there, I thought. She would have sunk back into the earth quietly, without this show and the thud of soil on to wood. It was like Grandfather to order a coffin with brass fittings and a white satin lining. She’d had nothing as beautiful when she was alive.

Now Rob was walking beside Kate. They looked serious, calm and oddly alike, as if the same thoughts ran in their minds. I stood and waited for them, watching Kate’s skirt sweep drops of rain off the long grass by the edge of the path, and Rob’s boots walking in step with hers.

‘Are you all right, Cathy? You look pale,’ said Rob. Everything he said to me sounded false and unnecessary.

‘I’m all right.’

‘Well, it’s over,’ said Kate, ‘and at least she’s decently buried.’ Then she looked at me quickly.

‘When do they fill in the grave over her?’ I asked.

‘Once we’ve gone, they’ll begin.’

‘It makes it seem so strange, doesn’t it, the noise of the earth on the coffin? As if she’s really dead.’

‘She
is
really dead,’ said Rob.

‘It’s the rain,’ I said. ‘She didn’t like it. That’s why she wore her mackintosh. And now we go home and take off our wet things and she stays here and it doesn’t matter because she can’t feel the cold or the rain.’

‘She’s snug enough, anyway,’ said Kate. ‘That was a fine coffin your grandfather bought.’ Rob laughed suddenly, a quick, unseemly explosion. The rain fell harder and it parted his hair and ran over his forehead like drops of sweat. Kate took a handkerchief out of her pocket, reached up and wiped his face, but as soon as she did it more rain ran down. I looked back across the churchyard but Miss Gallagher’s grave was hidden in a fine mist.

‘Let’s go back to the house,’ said Rob. ‘There’s some food.’

‘Tea and sandwiches!’ said Kate scornfully. ‘Oh well, let her die as she lived.’ Then she laughed. ‘Would you look at that!’ A fat squat duck was waddling down the muddy lane outside the church. Seeing us it stood still, then turned in purposefully and came up the church path towards us.

‘You’d make a fine dinner, wouldn’t you? I’ll have you if you don’t watch out,’ said Kate to the duck.

‘Break its neck and hide it under your skirt,’ suggested Rob.

‘I would, too. But not now, there’s too many people about. We’ll come back after dark.’

‘I’ll help you. I’ll wring its neck for you,’ said Rob, and he laughed.

‘That’s the best promise I’ve had from a man for a long time,’ she said, and she laughed back at him while the duck shovelled about in the verges. Damp had curled her hair up under her bonnet, and brightened her colour, and for a second I saw her as Rob did, fresh and vigorous, the funeral rolling off her and forgotten. She always loved the rain and liked to be out in it, striding miles with her skirts kilted up above her ankles. Was it then she first thought of going, when she saw the fine fat duck waddle through the column of mourners? I stood stupidly beside them, disliking my own presence. My mourning was shabby and it smelled of dye and old sweat. My body had been thin and then fat and now it was thin again. Whatever it looked like I didn’t feel as if I lived in it any more. I might have left myself there in the mist on her grave without knowing, like a caul in the rain.

‘It’s over,’ I said, and they both looked at me as if they’d forgotten I was there. I can shut my eyes and see their two faces now, while I hear rooks and a hammer beating somewhere, and people’s mourning voices starting to lighten as they moved away from the funeral and down the lane. Less than a month later Kate was packing her box.

Nineteen

‘You can’t stay in your room all the time. You must go out.’

‘I don’t want to. I like it here.’

‘Come on, Cathy, we’ll go shooting. You like that. We’ll have pigeon-pie tomorrow.’

‘No. I can’t go out, not today.’

I hadn’t been out since the funeral. I saw the outside world in slices from one window or another. Out there was a white, swallowing silence; in here, if I concentrated, I could wake up, dress myself, move about. Time moved oddly. Sometimes I’d be in a room and not know how I’d got there, or I’d be in the middle of washing, stroking the water over my arms again and again, and I’d know from the gooseflesh on my arms that I’d been there a long time. Here was my hand, with a fork in it, raising a brown bundle of fibres to my mouth. It was braised beef and I was eating my dinner. I must not look too long at anything or Grandfather would notice. Outside the window the arm of a bush tapped steadily at the glass, like a signal.

‘Time I asked George Bullivant over to play chess. Should you like that, Cathy? Should you like a game?’ Grandfather reached over and poured some wine into my glass. It was the colour of straw and it smelled of sweat. After the first sip I put down my glass.

‘Take a glass of wine, Cathy. It will do you good.’

His dark eyes fixed me, attentive as a hawk’s. He thought I was missing Miss Gallagher. He had the idea that women wanted other women about.

‘Let me peel you an apple.’ He picked through the fruit bowl to find me the best one. There were russets, beginning to wrinkle now, but still firm-fleshed. When Grandfather peeled an apple he turned the fruit into the knife-blade and brought off the peel in one long curling piece. I picked up the peel and shaped it back into a globe, empty inside. My apple had gone brown and I couldn’t eat it.

Opposite me Rob swallowed off his port and reached for more.

‘Haven’t you had enough?’ asked my grandfather.

‘No, not yet,’ said Rob, and he poured a deliberate stream of the wine, holding the decanter slightly too high so that we could see that his hands were perfectly steady and the port fell clear into the centre of the glass.

‘It’s hideous stuff, anyway,’ Rob went on. ‘You have to drink it fast if you don’t want to taste it.’

‘It’s the last I’m buying. You’ll pay for the next yourself.’

Grandfather’s hand with the fruit knife in it drummed at the tablecloth, marking the linen where Eileen had webbed it with neat darns, years back. My hand jumped slightly with the drumming of the knife.

Upstairs Kate was walking about. These nights she sat up late, I knew, because I saw the yellowness of her candlelight seeping down the stairs. I didn’t know it but she was already packing in her mind.

My grandfather touched my shoulder where the blades made wings. If I looked over my shoulder in candlelight I could see the wings pointing out of my skin. When they grew a little more I would be flying. Eileen used to say if a newborn baby could speak it would tell us what it was like to fly with the angels, but by the time the baby had learned to talk it had forgotten. Grandfather’s hand stayed on my shoulder. He ought not to touch me, it might hurt him. Everything in me was sharp and burning. I twisted away, and he sat back heavily in his chair. Later I heard him talking to Rob over my head. Everyone was talking at me and over me and through me.

‘Grapes. What about grapes?’

‘She likes grapes.’

‘The sun’s quite warm enough if she wraps herself in a rug and sits in a sheltered spot. The fresh air would give her an appetite. Get some colour in her cheeks.’

‘She hasn’t been out since I don’t know when.’

‘It’s the shock.’

‘Seeing it happen.’

‘I never realized she was so fond of the woman.’

‘Still waters run deep.’

‘Why doesn’t she go out?’

‘Kidneys. No, liver, that’s the thing to give her.’

‘Ought to have it raw.’

‘Squeeze lemon juice on it and chop it fine and you don’t taste it.’

‘It’s for her own good.’

‘My mother swore by sarsaparilla. It cleanses the blood.’

‘Who’d have thought she’d pine for her like this?’

‘She looked very bad at the funeral.’

‘Course, it’s no life for a young girl. You’ve got to feel sorry for her.’

‘And her colour – it’s terrible.’

‘Her skin’s like candle wax.’

‘You’ve got to get the blood moving.’

They weren’t real voices, they were just the blood moving. If I turned my head too quickly it sizzled in my ears and made words.

‘If you don’t try, Cathy, I can’t help you,’ said Rob. But who was he to tell me when he’d been drinking again? I could smell it on him, not fresh drink but the smell of last night coming out through his skin. He didn’t smell like my Rob any more.

‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ I said.

‘You should eat. Why don’t you go out? I’ll go for a walk with you, just round the garden. We needn’t go far.’

‘I’ve had enough of walking. And I am eating. Look.’ I picked up a knife and cut my tea cake into tiny squares. One by one I put them into my mouth and swallowed them. There was a salt slither of butter on my tongue, then the dryness of the cake. I had to think about each chew and swallow, but if I concentrated I could still do it. ‘There.’ I looked at Rob triumphantly.

‘You can’t have tasted it. Why do you eat like that?’

‘I can’t do everything for you!’ I spat out. ‘Haven’t I done enough?’

But I could still be calm. For an hour or two I could stitch time together and keep my fear on the fringes of my mind. When Kate told me she was going the first thing I said was to ask her whether she had found a place yet. I told her she could be sure of an excellent reference. The day we sat in the attic and talked while Kate packed there was a little space between what happened and the reality of it. That day everything was easy. I sat and watched her pack and I gave her the opal ring. It was more than she expected, and she was ill at ease, not me. Kate didn’t steal my mother’s dress, so someone must have given it to her and I knew who. Sunlight blew in through the window and there was the kindness of its warmth on our skins, the first real warmth after the winter. I was kind with the ring. I looked at the shapes of the roof slanting away and thought I wouldn’t be afraid to step out on to them, but I said nothing to Kate. I’ve always had a great sense of balance and I never minded the drop at my feet, no matter how high I was, as long as I had a foothold. When she’d finished packing and the lid of the box was down she went away to make some last visits in the village.

I said to Rob, ‘I ought to go away, not Kate,’ and he didn’t tell me not to go. Instead he said, ‘But where would you go?’ and I looked at him, longing for him to tell me I must always stay, I was as much part of him as the blood running round his body. But he said nothing more, and only looked at me with the quiet wariness that pushed me even farther away from him.

Once I did go out. I walked as far as the top of the drive, where we had waited for Miss Gallagher to collect us in the trap to go and see Father in The Sanctuary. At first I was quite safe because I made a tunnel in my mind and walked in its safety, and whenever the sides wavered I plastered them together so nothing could come through. But when I was at the top of the drive I thought I was stronger than I was and I let myself slip into knowing how far I was from the house. The trees changed from themselves and became unreal as paintings. I put out my hands as if I was swimming. I looked round quickly, jerkily, at the trees, the wall, the gate, the sky. I could not see the house. Even if I ran I could never run in one breath. Gaps came in my tunnel faster than I could patch them together, and the world began to pour through. My heart was beating faster and faster and I could not breathe. The noise in my ears hurt me.

‘You’re all right,’ I said to myself loudly and angrily, dragging in the breath for it. ‘Don’t be so stupid. Don’t be such a fool. You’re as safe here as you are in the house,’ but this time it didn’t work. I could not run, so I shrank into myself and curled up there on the drive and lay in a ball where nothing could get into me and then the world broke on me like a rough sea.

Rob found me. He had to talk for a long time before I knew it was him. I thought he was something happening inside my head. I don’t remember what I said but I was crying and shaking. I’d never cried before although two people had died. I wanted him to stay with me and hold me but he was frightened and he tried to pull me up and get me back to the house.

‘It’s not far,’ he kept saying. ‘Come on Cathy. Another step.’

He should have left me there. Nothing worse would have happened, and perhaps after a while I’d have uncurled and looked up at the branches tangling the sky and everything would have been back in its place: the wet oak leaves plastering my knees, the rustle of sparrows which had come out to look at me, the cool wind sifting my hair. I would have watched the sparrows bounce closer and heard nothing but their cheeping. I would never have been frightened again.