The Snow Globe (8 page)

Howard, once so dashing, so attentive and in love with her, had all but vanished from her life. Now she and her husband were more like business partners, running a home, a family; making the day-to-day—or rather, week-to-week—decisions about that place. He came; he went. Inevitably weary. But he had not always been like this, she thought, her heart lurching once again.

At first, she had blamed her husband's neglect on the war. Not that Howard had gone to the front, thank God. He had escaped that horror because he and his business were deemed necessary, and because he'd been too old anyway, even then. No, she had blamed the war simply because
it
was blamed for everything: from a general collective malaise to each individual shift in attitude.
It's because of the war
had been said by so many and for so long that Mabel came to believe it was also in some way responsible for the state of her marriage; that the profound anxiety of those long dark years had eked away Howard's love for her.

She could, she thought now, have allowed him some sort of reprieve, perhaps, then. But their estrangement had continued.
And all this time, all these years . . . untouched . . .
smiling at late arrivals, smiling at early departures, smiling at telegrams to say
DELAYED
; smiling back at the children, alone. All the time hoping, hoping that this year—this month, this week, this night—he might come to her, reach out to her and love her once more. Through six springs, six summers, six autumns and winters, she had waited . . . Or had she?
Five,
she corrected herself, smiling and closing her eyes.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Mrs. Jessop was also counting: “Half a dozen guinea fowl, four brace of pheasant . . . makes eight . . . three rabbit, four pigeon, two goose, one turkey, one ham.”

She would get Mr. Jessop to pluck a few of the birds and skin the rabbits first thing, make a fricassee . . . get Hilda on to the ice cream for the peach melba while she made the meat loaf and pastry for the pies: two ham and egg and two pigeon. But four pigeons wouldn't
do, wouldn't be enough . . . She'd have to send Stephen out with his gun again. But no, Stephen would be needed to clear the driveways and then for chauffeuring from the station. And she couldn't ask Mr. Jessop, because that was what had set him off the last time: the sound of the gun or the feel of it in his hands—she could never be sure which it had been.

Mrs. Jessop's husband didn't say much. In fact, he had barely spoken since returning from the war. And though at first, it had been queer to be with someone so silent, Mrs. Jessop was long used to it now, and long in the habit of improvising during their one-sided conversations, answering any questions she (and others) posed to him
for
him. And he was a very agreeable sort. And he adored Stephen, and Stephen was ever so good with him, so patient and gentle and caring.

Mrs. Jessop had long since hung up her apron and sat next to the range, still warm, in a wheel-back chair. Beside her hung a variety of long-handled copper pans and ladles and skimmers and large spoons—slotted and wooden. A toasting fork and two flatirons stood on a rack in front of the range, along with the old bellows she still liked to use, and hanging below the knife box were the old snuffers and scissors for candles.

These hard objects were a queer source of comfort to Mrs. Jessop, and she liked to look at them. They hadn't changed, and they reminded her of her childhood, that time when she'd worked in the fields, harvesting and haymaking from dawn till dusk with her grandfather and grandmother, her parents and siblings. At seven years old she'd been driving small birds from the turnip seeds; scattering off rooks from the peas; waving about a stick tied with a
white handkerchief; working from six in the morning until nine at night.

Mrs. Jessop liked to remember. She liked to sit there at that time of night, when she didn't have to share the kitchen with anyone else, when the only sounds were those reassuring creaks and clanks and shudders of pipes or floorboards, or the drip of a tap, and now the intermittent whirring of the new refrigerator in the scullery. Not that she was at all sure of that, mind you. In fact, she had only just sat back down from checking on it, staring at it from the safe distance of the scullery doorway, when it had started its strange juddering again and given her a fright. Well, they'd managed for enough years without one, and the use of electricity to keep food cold didn't make much sense to her; an unnecessary expense, in her opinion. But folk seemed caught up with newfangled gadgets these days, and they were advertised all over the place, even in
True Love-Stories
.
Fair enough,
she had said to Mr. Jessop,
if you
have that much money to burn,
and he had agreed with her, had nodded—in that way he always did.

Hopefully no one would ever suggest replacing the range, she thought, glancing to its blackened facade. Three sturdy doors—two eyes and a nose—looked back at her beseechingly, like a familiar old face threatened with extinction. It would be over
her
dead body. Nobody in their right mind would cook with electricity. She certainly would not. And yet, it seemed to her as though the world wouldn't stop until it had changed
everything
. And for no need. More money than sense, she sometimes thought, because you could buy almost anything these days, even ice cream. She preferred her own, using the old wooden ice cream maker, where you put the
chopped ice into the outer bowl and the cream, sugar and other ingredients in the inner bowl and then turned the handle, slowly, over and over, until the cream was gelled—the way she had been taught all those years ago.

Mrs. Jessop's thoughts continued to drift. Plagued by nostalgia, she more than hankered for the past. It was to her like the iridescent tip of a dragonfly's wing hovering in the long, sultry summer of her memory. She wished with all of her heart to be back in that place, to feel the warmth of the sun on the back of her young neck once more, to catch a glimpse of
him
once more.

“Michael,” she whispered.

One of the reasons she liked to be alone in the kitchen at this time of night was so she could think about him and sometimes say his name out loud. Everybody liked to do their thinking in private; it was the only way to think properly, and certainly the only time she could. If she had been at the cottage with her husband, well, she couldn't have thought about Michael, because it would have been disloyal . . . and he might see her smile or something and wonder what she was thinking about, and then she'd have to tell him because she didn't believe in lying and it would very likely set him off on one of his turns, and she didn't want that. No, it was always better to think about Michael in private.

Whenever Mrs. Jessop thought of that time, and of Michael, it was impossible for her not to remember her cousin Nellie and Mr. Forbes. She cast her eyes over the table—already laid for breakfast, over the assortment of eggcups and teacups and plates, the image in front of her transforming itself to a smaller table, a basement kitchen and Mr. Forbes holding the tiny infant in his arms. He was
ever so good with babies, destined to have a few, at least. Destined to be a father, she thought. No, he was not a saint, but he was a good man at heart.

“All in the past,” Mrs. Jessop murmured.

But the past almost always came calling at this time of night, and in the roll call of lost names Mrs. Jessop was tempted always to remember the others, those who had once been with her at Eden Hall. She began to go through the names in her head and then stopped. She didn't want to get maudlin; it was Christmas, and they were in a better place now anyway. But it was hard not to think of them at this time of year, and hard not to see and hear them, too: the ghosts of the kitchen and servants' hall. And yet so much had changed, so many had gone, that that time often seemed like a dream to Mrs. Jessop. As though she had imagined it all. As though she'd imagined him, Michael.

She smiled, closed her eyes . . .

The sun had been high in the sky, the grass long and filled with buttercups and poppies. She could hear the stream, the sound of bees, nothing more. Nothing more. He said, “This is perfect.” He said, “You're perfect.” He said, “Remember this always.”

She had not imagined him: She had known great passion once.

The clock on the wall chimed the half hour. The house was silent;
everyone asleep,
she thought, easing herself to her feet. The pain in her hip was always worse at night, and she had been sitting in that chair for far too long. The pipes let out another shiver, swiftly followed by a loud judder. She hoped they wouldn't freeze and burst again. She straightened herself with a grimace, cast her eyes about the room, then tilted her head, listening for a sound from
the scullery. But the machine, too, seemed to have at last gone to sleep, and so she turned off the electric light and headed down the passageway to the back door, reminding herself in whispers about tasks for the morning.

It was still snowing when Mrs. Jessop stepped into the yard with her flashlight, and as she pulled her shawl up over her head she saw the light in the window of the coachman's flat. She smiled. She was lucky to have them both, she thought: one, asleep no doubt but alive; the other, wide awake and up to who knew what.
It is what it is and that's that,
she said to herself, closing the door of her cottage.

“Dear Daisy,” Stephen wrote, and then paused. He still wasn't sure how to put into words what he wanted to say, and the nips of malt whiskey, which had set him off wanting to write the thing in the first place, now blurred the words on the page as well as his thinking. He heard the clank of a door down in the yard and lit another cigarette.

He wondered where she was, what she was doing at that moment. Asleep, he imagined: fast asleep and dreaming . . . Maybe dreaming of him, he thought, allowing himself an indulgence that curved the corners of his mouth up into a weary smile. Oh, to feature in one of her dreams. That alone would be enough. Yes, that would be enough to keep him going for . . . for a whole year, at least. And how could he expect anything more?

He glanced down at the name and bit hard on his lip. It was a ridiculous notion, he thought, wobbling again, but he had to tell her, had to ask her. Taking liberties, his mother would call it. But
she was old-fashioned and locked in the past, and times had changed—hadn't they?

He crumpled the paper in his fist, closed one eye and took aim at the grate:
If I hit it, she's mine.
It was his ninth hit—out of thirteen. Not bad, he thought, but not good enough.

“Dear Daisy,” he began again.

Down a darkened passageway, behind another firmly closed door, Daisy sat at her desk with her journal. She wore the long beaver-fur coat her grandmother had given her, her flannel striped pajamas and thick woolen socks. Despite the freezing temperatures outside, the curtain was pulled back and a mullioned window stood open. Snow had settled on the outer stone ledge, and powdery flakes danced into the room, where the embers in the grate still glowed orange. From time to time Daisy lifted her head, absently following a tiny crystal's whirling descent, tapping her pencil on her lips.