Snow Angels (44 page)

He walked out of the library and went upstairs. The night was unforgiving and all the ghosts came at you from the corners when the lights were out. It was easier when Chloe was there. Maybe she would marry him and he wouldn’t have to go to bed by himself any more. There was brandy in a glass by the bed and he knew that when he had drunk half a bottle, Helen would not be dead any more. She would just be in another room and Edward would be playing billiards and his mother and father would be having a party. He could soon hear the music and the laughter down below and he could have the ship launch and see the
Northumbria
slide down into the Tyne. It had been the best moment of his life and he could have it back any time. He could have it back any time at all. There it went again, hundreds of Newcastle people cheering and the men throwing their caps into the air and his father standing beside him smiling and the proud look in his mother’s eyes and Rhoda … He wished Chloe was here. He wished that she was here.

*

Abby worried. She told herself over and over that he was uncaring and not worth her losing sleep. The night was bitterly cold with a heavy frost and a lot of stars so that both ground and sky twinkled. She stood with the heavy curtains pulled back, but it was cold even though she had kept the fire going in her bedroom. Tomorrow it would be Christmas Day. She didn’t decide to leave the room or to go into Gil’s room, she just went. She opened the heavy oak door of his room and a blast of freezing air hit her. It was in dark shadows because the curtains were pulled well back and the window was wide open. Abby
fumbled about in the dark and finally found the lamp, but it wouldn’t light. Eventually she found a candle. That didn’t help much, but it gave enough light for her to see Gil.

She had seen Robert in that state too many times not to know how drunk he was. He was unconscious, face down on the bed with one arm under his eyes, fully dressed in neat, expensive clothes. He had blotted everything out with brandy, taken himself into oblivion. She went over, closed the window, pulled the curtains and then she went back to bed.

*

Christmas Day was difficult. She went to church with Charlotte and the children. Gil was downstairs when she got back. He didn’t look like somebody who had been drunk the night before, he was just the same and laughed at Georgina’s kisses and cuddles. He was too indulgent with her and had bought her far too many Christmas presents, which she unwrapped gleefully. For Matthew a beautiful cricket bat, which he insisted on using, so he and Gil went outside in spite of the weather. One of Abby’s presents from Gil was a silver locket containing photographs of her parents. He was good with presents.

They had a big meal and went out for a walk, watching the sun set over the horizon. As the evening drew in she put the children to bed and when she went back downstairs, heard him ordering the carriage.

‘Gil!’ She went after him into the drawing-room. ‘Where are you going?’

He looked at her in slight amusement.

‘What?’ he said.

‘If you go … if you go to that place—’

‘What will you do about it? Beat me when I come home, withdraw your favours, leave me? Well?’

‘Stay here.’

‘What for?’

‘Those girls only do it because you pay them!’

‘Nice and simple,’ Gil said.

‘You were drunk last night.’

‘That wasn’t entirely because you wouldn’t let me have you on the sofa.’

Abby hoped diligently that nobody was listening.

‘You sleep with the windows open.’

‘For the stars,’ Gil said and left.

*

Gil had great hopes of Chloe. He hadn’t been there in a long time. She greeted him with enthusiasm and she was so pretty, seventeen or eighteen at the most. She didn’t mind the windows open or the whisky or anything at all. From her bed you could hear the sounds of the streets outside and when it was late you could throw back the curtains and see those same stars. They hadn’t altered, they were Helen’s stars, they went on and on.

He knew the girls. At least, he could distinguish some of them though he tried not to because after a couple of drinks, by candlelight, naked in his arms, each of them became Helen. But tonight it didn’t work. Chloe wouldn’t turn into Helen. She remained a pretty young girl with a Byker accent, dyed blonde hair and an innocent willingness, in spite of her trade, which Helen had never had. Helen had not looked at him like that, desperate to please. Chloe undressed for him and then she seemed almost like a child. Gil turned away, then he turned back and put her into bed and covered her in bedclothes. The room was freezing. Gil stood by the window and watched the stars and drank brandy and the room grew colder and colder. He went on drinking to try and make the magic happen but it didn’t. All he could see was Abby standing in front of Matthew, protecting him from somebody twice as big as she was who could kill her. He spent most of the night watching the stars from the window while Chloe finally went to sleep and the brandy took its hold on him.

In the morning when he left to go to the office, he caught an anxious look on Chloe’s face. He sat down on the bed.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You’re supposed to say “I don’t want you to go.”

‘Chloe’s face slipped.

‘You weren’t happy.’

‘I was very happy.’

‘No, you weren’t. I didn’t make you happy.’

‘And I’m going to complain to Mrs Fitzpatrick, is that it?’

‘Maybe.’

‘It had nothing to do with you.’ He lifted her chin and looked into her clear blue eyes. Then he kissed her on the cheek and gave her a handful of money. ‘Go and buy yourself a new dress,’ he said.

*

Gil went to the office. Only the watchmen were there and the maintenance people, but the fire burned in his office as it did every day. He had given the men an extra day’s holiday. The talk in the clubs, John told him, was that they said he would bankrupt himself. It made him laugh. He liked being here when few other people were. He worked in the silence and drank coffee all day and enjoyed the light-headed feeling that came from eating nothing for too long.

Towards evening he sat by the window and watched the river and debated whether to go home. Mid-evening he heard a noise, assumed that it was John, poured whisky and then realised that the steps were much too light. Abby appeared in the doorway. Gil didn’t even get up. He looked into the golden liquid so that he wouldn’t have to look at her. She was so beautiful, not as angry as she had been, but there was fire in her eyes. He got up and went to the window. All the shapes outside were defined against the clear sky, all strong and tall and looking as though they would last for ever, when none of them would. They were buildings and ships and one day none of it would be left.

She seemed to think she could get his attention when in fact the whisky and the night held him inside its magic circle and nothing could get past. The smell of the whisky was sweet and sharp and the night was doing its special floor show with its stars and all its terrors. He thought that, later, when the golden liquid had completely gone, he would be part of it somehow. The view of his shipyard was beautiful; it was possibly the best view in the world. Gil took another swig of whisky and regarded the night. He was prejudiced about the Tyne. He couldn’t look at another river and love it like this. He wished he could hold it in his arms. Whenever he launched a ship, he imagined the Tyne taking the ship into its arms like a lover.

‘Aren’t you going to speak to me?’ she said from the other end of the room over by the desk.

‘What is there to say?’

‘You haven’t talked to me at all since you came back from France. You’ve screwed the arse off me of course, but that’s not quite the same thing.’

Gil turned and looked mildly at her.

‘One of these days somebody will leather you for your language,’ he said.

Abby came to the window.

‘You haven’t said a single word about Edward.’

‘He’s dead,’ Gil said flatly. That was the first time that he had acknowledged to himself that Edward had died. He had known it in his head, but he had not believed it in his heart. There was a bit of him that still thought he could go any night of the week to the billiard hall they had frequented in the town and there, among the quiet talk and the slow movements of the players, his brother would be across the room, not speaking to him or looking at him, glancing up at Toby from time to time and smiling his slow smile, his fair hair haloed under the low lights above the tables. Toby would be leaning on his cue and suggesting where the next shot should go.

In Gil’s mind it was always a night when Edward would
suggest after dinner that they should go out. Then they would be in the fuggy warmth of the room and Edward was smiling and there would be another day and another time and another chance. But there was not any more and never would be.

‘Did you go to Mrs Fitzpatrick’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you wouldn’t let me “screw the arse off you”,’ he said.

Abby stood for a few moments as though in admiration of the view and then she said softly, ‘That’s not true, is it?’

Gil leaned against the wall so that he didn’t have to say anything, so that he couldn’t even see her except from the corner of his eyes.

‘You were never really like that, not like Robert and his friends who would bed anything that looked vaguely female. Why do you go?’

Gil took a sip of whisky and stared out at the darkness of his shipyard.

‘When I’ve had a few drinks, every woman is Helen.’

Abby considered her hands carefully.

‘Is that why you put me down into the snow?’

‘I wanted you near.’

‘That was fairly near,’ Abby said.

‘It was you I wanted.’

‘Sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘So I’m not Helen. She is dead, you know.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Then why does everybody have to be her?’ He didn’t answer. ‘You’ve had a drink or two now. Am I Helen?’

‘No, of course not?

‘Then what? What?’ She thumped him. ‘Goddamn you, talk to me!’

The whisky flew everywhere. Gil put down the empty glass.

‘Don’t do that!’ he said.

‘What, this?’ she said, thumping him again and he got hold of her. ‘Come on then. You’ve had enough whisky to float a ship. Put me down and make me Helen. She didn’t even love you!’

‘Yes, she did!’

‘When? When she waltzed off to Venice with your brother? When she came back pregnant? When she accused you of fathering Matthew? When she killed herself to spite you?’

‘She didn’t!’ He shook her.

‘If she loved you, why didn’t she give up Edward and marry you? She never loved you and you know it! And no matter how hard you try, it won’t make any difference and no matter how many women you put down in the starlight, it won’t alter anything.’

Gil released her when she twisted away from him. She didn’t go far, just nearer the window, leaned against it, looking out.

‘You can’t make people love you, not Helen and not your father, not even Edward.’

Gil couldn’t answer that and she turned to him again and said, ‘That’s the worst of all, isn’t it, Edward?’

‘I betrayed him.’

‘He didn’t care about you.’

‘There were days … when he did. There were times when I thought he did, but I wanted him to so very much. He loved Toby.’

‘Isn’t that slightly different?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know where love and touch differs, where it begins and ends, but I know what it feels like when you don’t have any, when people don’t want you near them or even in their company. People who grow up together have special things between them or they should have, don’t you think?’

‘I loved my parents, I miss them. Why don’t you come home?’

‘You don’t want me.’

Abby sighed.

‘That was just because … of what happened. I was afraid. I
thought you were going to knock me out of the way and beat Matthew.’

‘I was.’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘That was because some termagant got in the way.’

‘I’m not that bad. You could have done it.’

‘I turned into my father.’

‘Almost. Gil—’ Abby moved nearer. ‘If I hadn’t loved you very much I wouldn’t have let you put me down into the snow like that. I wouldn’t have let anyone else in the world do it – I thought you knew that at least.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said. ‘I love you.’

Abby took a deep breath and let go of it.

‘So, you weren’t you just screwing the arse off me.’

He looked disapprovingly at her.

‘If you say that once more, I will wallop you.’

Abby grinned.

‘That would be a big novelty,’ she said. ‘I doubt you’re capable of it.’

‘Just don’t.’

‘Will you do me a favour then?’

‘What?’

‘Don’t go to Mrs Fitzpatrick’s.’

‘I didn’t do anything when I got there. I haven’t been there since before we left Newcastle. The only woman I’ve been anywhere near is you.’

She went closer and reached up both hands to his shoulders and kissed him very gently on the mouth.

‘Come home,’ she said. ‘I love you and you have the children and even your wretched mother tolerates you.’

He smiled a little.

‘She’s got better,’ he said.

‘She’s almost bearable,’ Abby said, ‘please come home.’

*

It only occurred to Gil when they got there that since he had come back from France, the piano playing had stopped. Was that why he could no longer conjure Helen’s image? Or did it have more to do with the fact that the children, who were supposed to be in bed, heard the carriage and ran down the stairs in greeting? He picked them up and they squealed and giggled and Georgina put her arms around his neck. He took them into the small sitting-room, which was the cosiest room in the house. Abby had placed big squashy sofas at either side of the fire. It was high and bright with logs. Gil sat down with Georgina on his knee and Matthew cuddled up to Abby. Gil’s mother came in.

‘My children went to bed at seven,’ she said. ‘I don’t approve of all these new-fangled ideas.’

‘It’s the holidays, Grandma,’ Matthew said.