A Spell of Winter (3 page)

The sky is not going to clear. Mist rises off the ground and mixes with the thickening grains of cold in the air. The sun is fading. Perhaps it is going to snow.

It is winter, my season. Rob’s was summer. He was born in June, and I was born in the middle of the night, on the 21st of December. My winter excitement quickened each year with the approach of darkness. I wanted the thermometer to drop lower and lower until not even a trace of mercury showed against the figures. I wanted us to wake to a kingdom of ice where our breath would turn to icicles as it left our lips, and we would walk through tunnels of snow to the outhouses and find birds fallen dead from the air. I willed the snow to lie for ever, and I turned over and buried my head under the pillow so as not to hear the chuckle and drip of thaw.

I look at the house, still and breathless in the frost. I have got what I wanted. A spell of winter hangs over it, and everyone has gone.

Two

Rob’s season was summer. August. The shade as black as wet walnuts. The birds silent in the heat. Rob was nine, I was seven, and Miss Gallagher was coming at eleven o’clock. We were dressed ready, told to go nowhere until she came. My sleeves were too tight, not enough to hurt but enough so that I couldn’t forget that I was wearing my blue travelling dress and not my everyday pink summer poplin and my white pinafore. And my gloves were crushed and crumpled already. Rob looked cross and scratchy in his Norfolk jacket. Grandfather wasn’t coming. He had come into the nursery very early, and given us sixpence each, and told us that he would send the trap for Miss Gallagher at half-past ten. We must be ready at eleven, and mind not to keep Miss Gallagher waiting.

The stable clock struck the three-quarters. It was hot already. Wisps of straw lay baking between the cobbles, and there was a steady
clang clang
of John’s bucket as he swilled out the stable floor. Then his boots tramped across the yard to the pump. He did not look our way. On a normal day we would have taken the big whisk broom and chased the straw round the yard, or I would have sat on the mounting-block while John lifted Princess’ great tufted hooves to check them for stones. But everyone knew we were going to see Father in the sanatorium.

‘Let’s go and wait for the trap at the top of the drive,’ said Rob.

‘Why?’

‘Kate and Eileen will be looking out of the window.’

I thought about this. They’d been talking this morning while Kate brushed my hair. Eileen had come for the slops. Nanny didn’t get up with us in the mornings any more, because she was too old. She had been our mother’s nurse too, and she was very tired. Soon she was going to live in a cottage by the sea with a girl to do for her. She’d been all right until Mother went away. Now she just looked at us with misty, surprised eyes and called us by the wrong names when we went to say good morning to her. They were the names of children she had looked after years ago. Kate and Eileen were whispering about Father. When I got back I knew they would ask me lots of questions, looking at each other over my head and nodding. Kate’s bright dark eyes would snap messages too quick for me to see.

‘But they won’t know where we’ve gone,’ I said to Rob now.

‘Course they will!’ said Rob scornfully. ‘They all know we’re going in the trap with Miss Gallagher. And she’ll get out and talk to Kate, you know how she is.’

Kate didn’t like Miss Gallagher, nor did Eileen. But they would listen with still, respectful faces, drawing her on to say more than she meant to. The way Miss Gallagher wanted everyone to know she had a secret soon stripped her secrets from her. Kate and Eileen would make mincemeat of Miss Gallagher. Kate was cross anyway, because she had found Rob’s baby field-mouse in a box under his bed. He had been keeping the mouse alive with milk from the rubber inside of a fountain pen, but its eyes were stuck up with yellow stuff and the milk ran out as fast as Rob dropped it in. Kate said it was a nasty thing and she would put it on the fire, though we knew she wouldn’t. It was just her temper.

I thought I heard the horse, but then there was nothing but the empty lane and all the noises we never thought of or counted, because they were always there. Rob had a stick and he swept it along the ditch, slicing off heads of cow-parsley as cleanly as if the stick was a sword. He turned his wrist and a blade flashed in the sun. Rob was teaching me to bat. Before this summer I’d had to bowl all the time so he could practise. Time hung, and stopped. I would be here for ever, I thought, watching the dust spurt under Rob’s boots, hearing the chunk of an axe in the woods, listening for the stable clock to strike eleven, and the sound of the trap.

‘Rob,’ I said, ‘do you think Father knows we’re coming?’

‘Course he does. Grandfather told him in a letter.’

‘But sometimes … when Grandfather goes, Father won’t see him. Eileen said so when she was talking to Kate in the night nursery.’

‘Eileen! What does Eileen know?’ said Rob scornfully, mashing at the broken stems in the ditch. ‘I’d like to see Grandfather tell Eileen anything.’

I looked up, comforted. Rob smiled. His face was like a warm brown speckled egg. I wished I had hair like Rob’s, conker-brown and shiny. He and Father had the same hair, but Father put stuff on his to make it lie still, and Rob only used water. I had rough, springy black hair that crackled when Kate brushed it at night. When there was a storm coming the hairbrush made sparks.

‘Irish hair,’ Kate said.

‘Just like the mother, I’ve brushed it many a time and watched it flare up to the brush like that,’ added Eileen in a low voice over my head. We were in the night nursery and Eileen was beating up the pillows on Rob’s bed. She liked beating pillows. Sometimes she would pretend they were people she was beating.

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘That’s for you to ask and me to know.’

‘Oh,
Eileen
!’

Rob came to bed later, when the nightlight was half burnt down. Eileen stared into the gas lamp as if she saw Mother sitting at her dressing-table, with the heavy silver brush making long sweeps down her wild hair.

Rob and I never talked about Mother downstairs, in case anyone heard. Only when we were in bed and Rob’s legs made a tent which threw huge shadows over the opposite wall, and our voices met and mingled in the darkness, saying anything they liked. Sometimes I got out of bed and pattered across the oilcloth to squeeze in next to Rob. Our beds were so narrow that it was only the tight way Kate tucked in the bedclothes that kept me from falling out. Rob was always warm, and I was always cold. Kate thought it was bad for us to have the nursery fire kept in while we slept, unless we were ill. If we were ill at night she would lean over us and hold her hand on our foreheads to feel if we had a fever, and if we had she would go and fetch a shovelful of red coals and set the kindling to it. It was part of the ache and dazzle of fever to see Kate’s big shadow and the glowing heap of fire she held out at arm’s length in front of her.

‘She’s coming,’ said Rob, ‘I can hear the trap.’

In a minute I heard it too. The clipping of hoofs in warm dust, the squeak of the springs, the clink of the harness. It was Semple driving Miss Gallagher today.

‘Don’t ask her anything about Father,’ hissed Rob. Semple crossed the reins and climbed down to help me up the little step, though I didn’t need him. I remembered when he used to swing me up, holding my waist tight. Close up I saw the crinkling of his burnt brown face, where the lines were deep enough for an ant to walk in. He smiled at me but he didn’t say anything. He never talked to us when there was anyone else there. Miss Gallagher patted a place for me, close beside her.

‘Spread out your skirt, Catherine, we don’t want Father to see you all creased and crumpled, do we?’ she said. She fingered my skirt. She always fussed over my clothes, even though she had on the same things every time we saw her. A hard, prickly, dark navy-blue coat and skirt. In winter, an umbrella with a yellow knob. In summer a dark-blue parasol. Miss Gallagher could make a sunny day look like a funeral.

She darted a glance at Rob and pursed her lips. Her little eyes were shiny under her hat. Miss Gallagher didn’t like Rob, but that was only because she didn’t like boys and never spoke to them if she could help it. If I made her have to say something to him I scored a point, but if Rob did he scored two, because it was harder for him. When I was there it was easy for Miss Gallagher, because she could talk to Rob through me.

‘And have you heard from your dear mother?’ she asked me, leaning close as the trap began to jounce along the lane. On the other side of us Rob scowled, and I knew he was wishing he still had his sword and Miss Gallagher was a dried-up stalk of cow-parsley in the ditch.

She was not supposed to ask us about Mother. No one was. But Miss Gallagher didn’t care.

‘She’s quite well, I hope? Not suffering too much from her hay fever this year?’

There was no hay fever where our mother had gone. Once I asked Nanny and she told me. Mother was in a beautiful country with flowers like yellow feathers which made arches over your head. The country was by the sea, and almonds grew there too, green almonds, not like the ones we had at Christmas. The sea there didn’t go in and out like our sea at Sandgate, and it was dark blue.

‘So warm you’d think you were swimming in milk,’ Nanny said.

‘Did you swim?’ I asked, staring at her.

‘I paddled up to here,’ said Nanny, showing me the place on her leg. ‘Mackintosh bloomers, we all wore.’

Nanny had been there years ago, with her old children. Our mother’s house would be glittering white, she said, so white it hurt your eyes. I thought of the yellow feathers tickling our mother’s face, and the way she would shut her eyes and laugh.

‘Mother doesn’t have hay fever any more,’ I answered. I moved my feet as if my boots hurt.

‘You can take those off in the train, Catherine,’ said Miss Gallagher. She was always wanting me to take things off so she could help me put them on again.

It was two miles to the station. The platform was perfectly still, and the signal was down. The porter came out to look if we had any bags, then he went back to his place in the shade by the wall and screwed up his eyes, staring into the dazzle of rails. Rob put a penny in the chocolate machine on the platform and bent the bar of chocolate backwards and forwards before taking off the silver paper and giving half to me. He didn’t even look at Miss Gallagher. Big stains of chocolate sprang on to my gloves. I wondered if Father would notice them. I thought he would, but perhaps since he was ill he would be lying down and all he would see would be my face leaning over him. I could keep my hands down by my sides.

‘Will Father be able to sit up?’ I whispered to Rob.

‘Course he will, idiot,’ said Rob. I rubbed my gloves together but it made them worse. The chocolate was like mud, growing the more I tried to get it off. The signal jerked and the wires by the line sizzled. The porter peeled himself away from his cool place and put his cap straight. Miss Gallagher seized my hand as our train gave a far-off ‘Whoooo’. We knew from the sound that it was going through the cutting, and in less than a minute we would see first the smoke, then the engine as it rushed out on to open track again and into the station.

A fat lady lurched out of the Ladies compartment and dropped her three brown-paper parcels on to the platform. Miss Gallagher gave Rob a look which meant ‘Pick them up!’ but he took no notice of her. The fat lady scrabbled, catching hold of the strings. Her face was purple and she had white hairs coming out of her chin. They sprouted in a little bunch. I wondered why she didn’t have them pulled out. Perhaps it would hurt her. Those hairs were the kind of thing Miss Gallagher would have on her face, though in fact she did not.

‘Really!’ said Miss Gallagher to the air, pushing me ahead of her into the compartment. It was hot and smelly. First of all there was the smell of train dirt, then under it a smell of violet cachous. Miss Gallagher seized the strap and banged down the windows. The train started and I fell hard against the cushion so that dust flew out.

‘We’ll have something to eat,’ said Miss Gallagher, sitting back against the seat and putting up her veil. We stared as she took a paper out of her big black bag. There were three hard-boiled eggs and a twist of salt, nothing else. I had never eaten eggs without bread. She gave one to Rob and one to me. I held mine tight until brown chocolate from my gloves started to come off on to its white shell. I pressed the egg too hard and tiny cracks rippled out from my fingers, then bits of shell began to break off. Underneath it there was dirty white egg with green-blue marks on it, like bruises. A cloud of smuts flew in at the window as the train began to gallop around the bend. Rob leaned forward and took my egg out of my hand. He looked at Miss Gallagher then he put his arm back the way he had taught me at cricket and threw the egg straight out of the open window. Miss Gallagher stared. A sharp patch of red burnt into her cheeks and she opened her mouth as if she were going to break her rules and speak to Rob.

‘She doesn’t like eggs. They make her sick,’ said Rob. His own egg had vanished. I wondered if he had eaten it while I looked at mine, but I didn’t think so. We were learning conjuring out of a book, but we hadn’t got very far yet, certainly not far enough to vanish an egg. I wondered if the eggs had flown through the air and landed in a nest, a skylark’s perhaps, or a nightingale’s, some bird that nested on the ground. But then it was August –

Miss Gallagher poked her face into mine.

‘Are you feeling sick, Catherine dear?’

I nodded. She pulled down the opposite window and warm air flapped round us, making so much noise no one had to speak. I leaned on the corner cushion and shut my eyes.

Later on there were houses, sprinkled on the country and making it messy.

‘We’re coming into the outskirts,’ said Miss Gallagher. I thought of Miss Gallagher’s hard, prickly skirt, and the way she twitched it tight round her when she walked up steps. Sometimes Miss Gallagher said ‘underskirt’. Or she laughed and said, ‘Queen Anne’s dead, Catherine.’ That meant my petticoat was showing. The train was rattling and shaking. A thick, different smell poured in through the windows and Miss Gallagher banged them up again.