Snow Angels (14 page)

*

Abby was surprised to walk into her father’s house one cold day after Christmas and find Gil and Rhoda there. She had
not seen Gil happy before and he was almost like somebody different.

‘I thought you didn’t like him,’ she said to her father afterwards.

‘I can talk to him,’ Henderson said.

‘You mean he talks about work.’

‘If you like, and Rhoda’s a good lass. I think they make a very nice couple.’

Abby thought they did too and was astonished. Rhoda was well dressed now as she had not been and was wearing sable against the weather. She wore a jaunty little hat and a big smile and she looked at Gil from time to time as though to make sure he was still there. If they were not in love, which Rhoda had assured her they were not, they certainly looked as if they were. Their families both approved, Abby knew, and they knew one another well and were comfortable together.

‘You are coming to the wedding?’ Rhoda said.

‘When is it?’

‘In April. Gil’s mother wanted it sooner, but the arrangements couldn’t be made in time.’

‘I’m not certain that we can. We’re going away.’

‘Do try and come. It won’t be the same without you.’

‘She’s got too grand for us,’ Gil teased, looking at his bride to be. That was when Abby thought that he was no longer in love with Helen, which was not surprising. Babies were hardly conducive to romance.

*

Helen’s baby was born in a snowstorm, so she endured several uncomfortable hours before the doctor arrived. They called him Matthew. The christening was delayed until after the bad weather and Helen took a long time to recover from the birth. Edward continued to go out every night. He did not seem interested in the baby or in her. Gil was glad of Rhoda then because she was a big help. She loved the baby, spent hours with
him and, when Helen wasn’t well, sat with her, cheered her, even encouraged her to go out from time to time to distract her.

Helen did attend the wedding but looked as though she should have been home in bed. It was a mild day, the first week in April, and Rhoda was married from the little stone parish church in Allendale. Her stepfather gave her away and was doing his best to look pleased about it, Gil thought. The wedding breakfast was at their house on the edge of the town and he could not but think of how unhappy she had been there and of how pleased he was to be taking her away for good.

They were to spend the first night at a hotel in Hexham and then to make the journey south to meet the Marlowes in Liverpool to join the ship which would take them to America. They were waved away from the house. It wouldn’t take long to reach Hexham, but Rhoda said more than once on the journey that she was tired. She had been so bright until then. Now she was pale. She said little during the journey and even less when they reached the hotel. Shown to their bedroom, Rhoda looked at the big double bed and turned away.

She ate nothing that evening, pushing the food around on her plate, and when it was time to go to bed and Gil asked if she would like to go on ahead, she nodded and escaped.

He stayed downstairs worrying and had a glass of brandy. He could not help thinking of Helen, of being in bed with her, of her beautiful body. Rhoda had not let him touch her; she was afraid. He didn’t know why, but he had an idea that Jos Allsop had tried to put his hands on her. Gil had not done so; he had been careful and was prepared to be patient now. He made his way slowly upstairs and opened the door of the room. The bed was empty. She was not there. Gil wandered about upstairs for a few minutes and then went downstairs, trying not to look obvious, but she was nowhere that he could see. Finally he ventured outside, doubting that even Rhoda would have gone outside in such cold windy weather. It was difficult to see anything in the dark, shadowed streets though the abbey stood
out against the sky and the houses around the little green in front of the hotel had street lamps. He could see a small figure some way off. He paused for a moment or two. What was she doing out here? Was she so afraid? He hadn’t understood. He wondered whether to go back into the hotel and wait, then decided against it and began to walk slowly towards her so that she might see or hear him and would not be shocked. She was not wearing a coat and the wind was whipping down from Hexhamshire Common. Was she imagining herself there, wishing herself beyond his reach? Her folded arms were thin and her hair blew about. He didn’t go too close in case she ran.

‘Rhoda?’ he said softly.

It was several moments before she turned, as though she had been in some other place. He went to her and took off his jacket and tried to put it around her shoulders, but she backed away, shivering.

‘I used to stand up on the fell and watch the lights on in our house when I was little, knowing I could go in out of the cold any time.’

Gil searched for the right thing to say. He had heard of animals caught in traps who chewed off their own limbs to be free. Was that what she had done, limping to him, damaged? She drew further away and turned in the direction of the open country as though she might run into it and away from him.

‘You don’t have to be afraid of me. Come back inside. You’ll take cold.’

She didn’t say anything. Gil had known that she had not the feeling for him that Helen had had, but he had not thought things as bad as this.

‘Have I done something?’ he asked.

She shook her head.

‘Do you think I’m going to hurt you, because—’

‘No. No.’ Her head was down. When she looked up Gil was horrified by the bleakness in her face. ‘I’ve deceived you,’ she said.

The only thing Gil could think of was that she had given her body to somebody else and, if she had, it was considered a very grave sin, that she should have done so without marriage, that she should have married him regardless. She had a good right to be afraid.

‘Tell me,’ he said.

‘I don’t know how to.’

‘You must.’

‘I’m unchaste.’

Unchaste. What a strange word and what huge significance it carried. He was uncomfortably aware of the double standard: that she was meant to be totally inexperienced but that he would not have been censured for such behaviour, except that he had done something much graver and was in no position to condemn anybody.

‘I don’t care,’ he said recklessly. ‘Do you love him? Was it that you couldn’t marry him? Was he married? Tell me before we freeze.’

She looked clearly at him.

‘It was my stepfather,’ she said.

Something in Gil signalled recognition, as though some tiny part of him had known and that was why he had tried to protect her, but most of him was revolted. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Fascinated horror gripped him.

‘You went to bed with Allsop?’

Her face filled with anger.

‘I didn’t!’ she said.

Coldness took a hold on Gil inside as well as out.

‘He took you against your will?’

‘You didn’t really think I would have gone with a disgusting, awful person like that.’

‘Why didn’t you tell somebody?’

‘Who was I supposed to tell?’

‘Me, for a start.’

‘You wouldn’t have married me! I had to get out.’

‘There are other ways.’

‘Nobody would have believed me. You can still send me back! You haven’t had me yet!’

She ran. Gil cursed himself and ran after her. When he caught her, she thumped and kicked him. He shook her.

‘Stop it! Nobody’s going to send you back!’

‘I’m second-hand goods, that’s what they call it. I’ll go. I’ll just go.’

‘You’re not going anywhere. Come inside. I’m bloody well nithered.’

He dragged her back into the hotel and marched her upstairs and into the bedroom. Luckily the fire was blazing nicely and the room was warm. Gil’s feelings were so mixed up. He was rather inclined to smack her round the ear for deceiving him, but the idea of Allsop raping a vulnerable person like Rhoda was beyond belief. In any case, he had sworn to himself that he would hit no one except in self-defence. Part of him also wondered whether perhaps she was lying because she didn’t want to go to bed with him. Rhoda wouldn’t even come to the fire. She sat in the shadows, curled up in a chair.

‘Come over here, for goodness sake.’

‘You’re going to hit me.’

‘I am not. I’d have done it before now. Did you really like me so little?’

‘I like you very well considering you’re a man.’

‘Then come to the fire.’

There was brandy and glasses. It seemed a sight more appropriate than the champagne which sat like a reminder of what they might have been doing. He poured brandy, gave her a good measure and she sank down onto the rug by the fire. Gil sat down in an armchair nearby and drank his brandy gratefully.

‘Did you tell your mother?’

‘I tried to. She called me a whore and took a stick to me, as though it was my fault.’

‘But she believed you?’

‘Does that mean you don’t?’

‘I haven’t made up my mind.’

‘Why would I lie to you?’

‘So that you don’t have to go to bed with me.’

‘All you have to do is force me and then you’d find out anyhow.’

‘I’m not in the habit of forcing women.’ He thought that sounded arrogant, somehow, but he needed a refuge. This was not how he had envisaged his wedding night. He had imagined it happy, difficult perhaps, but he had liked Rhoda, liked the wild person in her, been confident that they would deal well in bed together. He had desired her, not like he had wanted Helen or loved her as he had loved Abby even, but he had thought that he could have her as his wife. To his shame, there was also a distaste that another man had had her first, either willingly or unwillingly. He had wanted her to be completely his so that he could try and remake himself into entirely hers and it was not possible, he could see that. If she was lying then she cared nothing for him and if she was not, then she wouldn’t go to bed with him. Either way, there was no chance that he would be saved or could save himself from the slavery that his love for Helen had turned into. He was too shocked to be tired and too miserable to sleep.

Rhoda sat on the floor beside his feet with her legs tucked under her, making herself very small, both hands clutched around the glass as she stared into the fire.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Yes, I imagine you might be.’

She turned her head and looked at him.

‘You don’t know what it’s like! It was vile!’ Her voice shook.

‘Why don’t you go to bed?’

‘No!’

‘Well at least get up off the floor. You must be in a draught.’

She sat in the chair across the fire for a while and then, without saying a word, got up and undressed without showing
her body and got into bed. She lay down with her face turned towards the wall. Gil got up, went and stood by the window and sipped at his brandy and watched the storm throw itself at the little town with its abbey and stone houses and shops, solid black shadows in the night.

Eventually she fell asleep and Gil’s mind gave him Helen and the nights that they had spent together. He ached for her, longed for her. The loneliness was intensified because of the girl who slept in the bed. He drank some more brandy. It was strange how you could fill up the loneliness with alcohol. You shouldn’t have been able to, but you could. If you hadn’t been able to, you would have gone mad.

He thought of the men in the shipyards. They were like Helen, some of them, they had been trapped by sex or circumstances, by disappointment, pain or betrayal. He and Rhoda were like that now, for she had trapped them both. Beer filled the emptiness because there was nothing else, no love, no comfort, no education, no opportunities. They could not even get away. Religion was like beer for some of them. They found God and swallowed Him in great gulps.

The brandy took a good hold on his mind and body and soothed and comforted, but he did not stop thinking about Helen. Edward would be out and she would be lying in bed alone and he was married and could not go to her again. Would it be worse now that he was married, or had it been as bad a sin before? He thought it had. It had always been as bad as it was going to get, a betrayal of his brother and his family and Helen’s marriage, whatever that was. It was done and couldn’t be made right. Nothing would change it.

It was almost morning and he was sweetly drunk when he went to bed. It was just as well, he thought, it really was all that was left beside the work. He could feel sleep coming at him just beyond, stealing past the brandy, covering him up, cuddling him, holding him. If he tried very hard he could remember Helen’s caresses, feel them, taste her mouth and her body. He could
remember the warm land with its blue sea and the white villa and the mountains, the garden with its orange trees, the breeze gently disturbing the curtains in the bedroom. She was smiling at him, kissing him. They were together and nothing else mattered.

The ship was not nearly as big as the kind of liner that John Marlowe wanted, but it was comfortable; indeed, to most people it would have appeared sumptuous. Gil interpreted how important his presence was to John by the suite of rooms they were given. Just yesterday, Rhoda would have run about exclaiming excitedly at the pretty furniture, the view from the portholes; now, she merely looked at the big double bed and said nothing. Gil had awoken beside a reluctant woman for the first time and he didn’t like it. Neither did he like the hangover which sat on his brow. It was not a good start. She lay, silently turned away, so he turned over towards her.

‘Rhoda? Rhoda, look at me.’

She turned to him. Her eyes were swollen with crying, though he hadn’t heard her.

‘Let’s make a bargain, shall we? I won’t touch you so give me back the Rhoda I knew yesterday morning. We’re going to New York.’ When this produced no response he said, ‘I’m not going to do anything to you.’

‘It isn’t that! It’s just that … I shouldn’t have married you.’

‘What alternative was there?’

‘Somebody else, not you.’

‘You mean there’s somebody you like even less?’

‘I do like you. I like you very much.’