Snow Angels (18 page)

When it was over, Gil wanted her more. It was like having one sip of champagne, one chocolate after years of doing without. Helen had always taken him into her arms but Rhoda didn’t, as though he was a dress she had tried on and decided didn’t suit her. Failing to please was something Gil knew he was good at. He had spent years trying to please Abby, his father, Henderson, Edward. The one person he had not tried to please was Helen. They had started off from the same place and when they went to bed there were no winners and losers, no lovers or beloved. It all balanced and worked and had been right in so many different ways from the beginning, always new but always right, always safe and so dangerous, so deliciously, spectacularly pleasurable. He wanted to crawl away and find her, so that he could not be in this permanent competition with himself where, no matter what he did, how hard he tried, he failed always as though some part of him was standing on a high rock above, saying, ‘no, not quite, just a bit more’ and he was hanging on to the rock by his fingertips and slipping down. One day he would slip altogether and after that there would be no more trying to succeed.

‘Did I hurt you?’

‘No.’

‘Was it like as if it was him?’

‘I don’t remember.’ She got up.

‘You don’t remember?’

She looked at him.

‘I had pushed it from my mind, a lot of it. I just remembered the brutality and the fear, but there was none of that here. I wish it had been the first time, that’s all. I’m your wife. I don’t want to be anything else.’

She reached out and Gil put his arms around her. They went
to bed. He couldn’t sleep for wanting her, but in the morning she kissed him and encouraged him and this time she didn’t turn her face away. She laughed and made rash promises and it was Sunday, so he didn’t have to go to work. They stayed in bed for as long as might be considered decent among people who had been married for so long. They got ready and had breakfast and went to church as usual, but all the way through the service Rhoda made eyes at him so that he could concentrate on nothing but her. There were visitors in the afternoon and many people had stayed, so they had no opportunity to be alone or to sneak away. The evening was endless and the talk was of the great new ship. Gil couldn’t have been less interested. All he wanted was to take his wife to bed. After dinner, they slipped away to his bedroom, pulled each other’s clothes off and made love and it was, he thought, the first time then. And a miracle had occurred. Saturday had been a perfect day. Sunday was even better.

Helen didn’t go back to Durham with her parents when they left that Sunday, even though they tried to persuade her. There was nothing at Bamburgh House for her now except that William and Charlotte loved Matthew and encouraged her to stay. Gil had been thinking too much about Rhoda that day to consider Helen, but the following morning early, when he got up to go to work his mother, to his surprise, was already up. As he came downstairs, she had a worried frown on her face.

‘Helen isn’t well. I think I ought to send for the doctor.’

‘She was complaining about her leg on Saturday, but I didn’t think anything of it.’

‘Was she? I didn’t know there was anything wrong and her mother didn’t mention it. She wasn’t limping. She has a fever.’

His mother was obviously in need of reassurance so Gil went upstairs with her to Helen’s room. It had been a long time since he had been in there and he was not comfortable. He thought of the nights he had spent there in her arms but when he saw her, thoughts like that left him. His mother was right. She didn’t seem well. The sweat stood out on her forehead and her cheeks were burning. He touched her forehead with his cool hand and she opened her eyes and smiled at him.

‘That’s nice,’ she said.

‘Is it your leg, Helen?’

‘My what?’

‘Your leg. You said on Saturday—’

‘Oh no, it’s fine,’ she said. ‘This is just a chill. I need to sleep, that’s all.’

She closed her eyes, and turned her back on them. Gil followed his mother out of the room.

‘I hate to bother the doctor,’ she said.

William came downstairs as they stood in the hall at the bottom.

‘Helen is unwell,’ Charlotte said. ‘She says it’s just a chill.’

‘She knows her own mind, surely. Stop fussing, woman. Come along, lad, we’re late.’ And his father went off along the hall to the dining-room.

Gil was happy at work. He was thinking of how pleasant it would be to go home to Rhoda and, long before the day was done, when the autumn light had gone and the cold evening had begun, he stared from the office window, thinking about his pretty wife and the homecoming she would provide. A single star was twinkling above his office window. He got up and watched it for a while and thought how lucky he was. He had everything. If it hadn’t been for the fact that William insisted on them working until six, he would have gone home at half-past four. Since then, he had not been able to concentrate. He had not thought he could feel so much joy. He let his mind wander past the ship launch again and the men throwing their caps into the air as the ship went down the slipway, the noisy crowds shouting and cheering, the party afterwards and how beautiful Rhoda had looked and everybody had been so pleased, then home to the second party. And Rhoda. She had completed everything. His wife loved him and he loved her and nothing could spoil it.

He was standing there when his father came into the office.

‘Your mother won’t be pleased if we’re late for dinner,’ he said and they left.

Gil watched that same star from the carriage window as they drove home in the darkness. It was a cold, clear night with barely
a cloud and the moon was full, so there was plenty of light. When they reached the house there was a horse and trap by the door. That was when Gil thought of Helen for the first time. The doctor.

He hurried inside, along the hall and into the drawing-room. His mother and Dr Brown were in there and they turned towards him faces that told him nothing good.

‘Is Helen ill?’

‘She’s not well,’ his mother said.

‘What is it?’ He directed his look towards the doctor as his father came into the room.

‘She has a badly infected leg,’ Dr Brown said.

‘Her leg? She said it was better.’

‘I would say it has been increasingly bad for at least a week.’

‘A week? Why didn’t she tell somebody? Shouldn’t she be in hospital?’

‘I don’t want to move her. She’s too ill. Nothing could be done there which cannot be done here. I will arrange for nursing and we will do our very best to look after her.’

Gil stared at the doctor’s careworn face. He looked tired.

‘What does that mean?’ he said.

‘It means that her condition could deteriorate and quickly. She should have been looked after several days ago.’

‘Didn’t her parents realise?’

‘Presumably not.’

‘But she must have known. She … she must have,’ Gil said and there was a small, sick feeling which began in his stomach and seemed to make its way through his body like a snake.

‘Sometimes these things seem unimportant, especially to people like mothers who have the concerns of their children to think about. They don’t understand that neglect can lead to serious consequences.’

‘Edward must be sent for,’ William said from behind Gil.

Gil couldn’t believe what they were saying. He left the room, ran through the hall and took the stairs two at a time, along the
hall to Helen’s room. When he opened the door, Rhoda was sitting on the bed with a cool cloth in her fingers, dabbing Helen’s face.

‘Helen?’ he said and she opened her eyes.

‘Why are they fussing? I’m not ill. I’m not ill, am I, Rhoda?’

‘No, of course not,’ Rhoda said soothingly.

Gil sat down on the bed and took Helen’s hand.

‘Do you remember the house, Gil?’ she said.

‘What house?’

She laughed. Her voice sounded hoarse and her laughter was full of disbelief.

‘The house in Spain.’

‘Was it in Spain?’

‘Where did you think it was?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘At the top of the mountain. It was best at the top of the mountain because we got what breezes there were. You do remember it?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the bedroom? The way that breeze used to catch the white curtains in the bedroom. You said it was as if they were doing a dance. The bedroom in the afternoons.’

Gil glanced at Rhoda to see if she was taking any notice, but she pressed his hand and shook her head to imply that she knew it was nonsense. His heart was beating so hard that it hurt. He and Helen had not talked about this before. He was not aware that she knew any of this and it was nonsense. It was. Before she had arrived at the house as Edward’s intended bride he had never seen her, he knew that he hadn’t. He had always told himself that it was the way he had justified wanting Helen, taking her. He had pretended to himself that they had had some other life, that they had been lovers before, but they had not talked about it. Yet here she was describing the very scenes that his mind had given him a hundred times. He could almost smell the lemons and oranges in the garden, see the blue of the ocean, feel that soft breeze which
had made its way across the mountain, cooled in the high air above the valley wherein lay the little white town. He could see it clearly now, the neat houses and the palm trees, the long evening shadows. People would be sitting outside drinking wine and talking and children played games in the quiet streets. Yet his sensible mind told him that he had not been to Spain. He had been to America. He had memories of New York, but they didn’t seem as clear to him as the place where he and Helen had been and not been together.

Helen was watching him and her eyes were so bright that he could hardly meet them.

‘You thought I didn’t remember,’ she said.

‘I knew you did,’ he said cheerfully.

‘We didn’t talk about it. I thought you might think it was silly. We were there together. It was wonderful. When I saw you again, do you remember, you were standing at the top of the steps here and I was talking to your parents below. I knew it was you.’

All this while Rhoda was applying cool cloths and looked as though she was taking no notice of the conversation. To her, Gil could see, Helen was a girl in a fever, unaware of what she was saying and he was agreeing with her to keep her as calm as possible.

Later, the doctor sent a nurse, but Rhoda would not leave Helen’s side. She stayed there all night. Helen slept fitfully and she talked a great deal. Some of it even Gil couldn’t understand. All night and all the next day she burned and sweated. Gil’s father insisted on them going to work.

‘There’s nothing we can do here,’ he said harshly. ‘The doctor has it in hand. We have money to make and orders to see to.’

‘Surely for one day—’

William looked severely at him.

‘Is it a service to stay here with her? You’ll be better off at work and so will I.’

His father was being practical, Gil knew, and so he went and
in some ways it was better. There was nothing they could do and Helen recognised nobody that morning so it was unlikely she would know whether or not he was there. Edward had arrived at the house early that morning so, from his father’s way of thinking, there were sufficient people. He and Gil would be in the way. Gil did no work. He sat at his desk and his mind flooded with guilt and responsibility and the heavy notion that she might die and he would not be there. He told himself that she wouldn’t know him even if he was there. When, after the longest day of his life, they finally went home, though there were grave faces in the house she was not dead. Gil ran up the stairs and into the room and there he stopped just inside the door. The young woman in the bed was not the girl he had loved. She was shrunken and grey and her hair was like seaweed on the pillow. Her eyes had no life. She looked tiny.

The nurse and the doctor were there. Rhoda was standing by the window. His mother was crying softly in a chair and Edward was sitting in front of the fire, not looking at anyone. Her parents were there, too, and they all looked so distressed that Gil knew she was not going to get better. He had not noticed until then that the room was different from how it had been when he and Helen had shared a bed. In those days there were always flowers and books, writing materials, pretty covers on the chairs and colourful bedclothes. Now it was all white and there was nothing to relieve it as though, he thought scarcely able to form it in his mind, she had attempted to recreate their bedroom in the house at the top of the mountain. There were white curtains at the windows which would not keep out the bitter autumn weather. Where had those come from? Had she so desperately needed somebody that she tried to recreate that time?

She opened her eyes and said his name. She had aged several years since the night before and her face was almost transparent. So was the hand she stretched out to him. He went to her, sat down on the bed beside her and took her hand.

‘I was waiting for you to come,’ she said.

‘I’m here.’

‘It’s so hot. It’s always so hot. Ask for some water.’

Gil put the glass to her lips and she swallowed a little.

Beyond the white curtains he could see the cold winter night, with lots of stars. He could remember lying in bed with her, watching those same stars, the windows flung back wide in spite of the cold because she had said that night was too pretty to be closed out. There was a white sheen upon the lawns; he had seen it coming back in the carriage. He had been so happy the night before. He ought to have known that such things could not last more than a few hours. He wanted to cry. He wanted to tell her that he loved her.

‘Everything is so white,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that good? I do love you.’

‘I love you too.’

The room was silent. It had been silent before, but the atmosphere changed then. They might think it just a sick woman’s rantings, but it was hardly appropriate that, with her husband in the room, she should tell his brother that she loved him. Not that anyone would expect her to say such a thing to the husband Edward had been to her.