Winter Wood (13 page)

‘A school? This is a retirement home. Private apartments.'

‘I know, but was it ever a school? I mean, years ago?' Midge's heart was already sinking. The girl didn't seem too bright.

‘Oh. Years ago. I wouldn't know. Might have been, I suppose. But I wouldn't know – I haven't been here that long.'

‘Would there be some way of finding out? Only I'm trying to trace someone, you see. I think she might have been at school here.'

‘Oh.' The girl thought about it for a moment. Then an idea came to her. ‘I could ask,' she said.

Brilliant, thought Midge. You could ask. ‘Thanks,' she said. ‘It'd be really helpful.'

The girl picked up her phone, very efficient, now that she knew what she was doing, and tapped in a couple of numbers. ‘I'll ask the manager,' she whispered, her hand to the phone. ‘She's been here for . . . Hallo? Hallo? Is that Carol? Carol, it's Helen. Carol, there's someone down here at reception who wants to know if this place was ever a school. Yes. A girl. Was it a school? she wants to know. Oh, was it? Oh, it was. Thanks.' She went to put the phone down, but Midge quickly said, ‘Could you . . . thanks . . . could you just ask if they still have any school records at all? Anything to do with pupils that used to be here.'

‘Carol, are you still there? Hallo? Yes. She wants to know if we still have any school records at all. Anything to do with pupils. No. All right. Thanks, then. Bye.'

The girl put the phone down, and said, ‘No. Sorry. We don't have any information on that. Schools, or anything. There
are
quite a lot of schools around, though. Have you tried those?'

‘It's OK.' Midge tried to bite her tongue. ‘I had an aunt, that's all – a great-great-aunt. She might have been at school here, I think. But it was years and years ago.' She stepped back from the desk. ‘Anyway, thanks.' She turned to go.

‘What was her name?' said the girl. As though her knowing that might help.

‘Celandine Howard,' Midge muttered.

‘Oh. We've got a Miss Howard here. Her name doesn't begin with an S, though.' The girl laughed. ‘And she's a bit too old for school.'

‘Celandine begins with a C, not an S,' said Midge. She zipped up her fleece, and glanced at her watch at the same time. Nearly quarter past four.

‘Does it?' said the reception girl. ‘Oh, well, ours is a “D”, anyway. I know that, because she hates it if you call her by her Christian name – Dinah. She hates it even worse if you call her Di. Gets
really
mad, then, the old bat. Sorry. I shouldn't say that about her.'

‘Well, thanks anyway,' said Midge. ‘Bye.'

‘Bye. You have to push the door quite hard to close it properly.'

‘OK.'

It was freezing outside, and already beginning to get dark. Midge hurried along the front driveway. She reached the corner of the building, so wrapped up in her own anger and frustration that the sudden glimpse of a big shadowy figure lurking in the bushes nearly made her jump out of her skin.

‘Oh!' Her own gasp of alarm was immediately echoed.

‘Oh my G—!'

It was a woman – quite a large woman – smoking a cigarette. The woman put her hand to her chest, as though she were having a heart attack.

‘Lord, you gave me a fright!' she said. Her breathing was all thick and wheezy.

‘Sorry,' said Midge. She stood there for a moment, trying to recover herself.

‘Phew!' The woman blew out a puff of smoke. ‘What are you doing here, anyway?'

Hey, I could ask you the same question, thought
Midge, but what she actually said was ‘I've been looking for a relative. Trying to find someone.'

‘Oh, I see. Who's that, then?' The cigarette end glowed dimly as it was flicked into the bushes.

‘Someone called Celandine Howard. Not having much luck, though.'

‘Aren't you? I'd have thought she'd be around at this time of day.'

‘What? Who do you mean?'

‘Dinah Howard. Or Celandine Howard, to give her her proper name. Though she likes us to call her
Miss
Howard. She'd be getting ready for her tea, I'd have thought. Isn't she there, then?'

Midge just stared at the woman. ‘What – you mean you
know
her?'

‘Well, yeah, course I know her. I don't have much to
do
with her, like, but I know her. She's our oldest resident. Didn't you ask at reception?'

Midge felt that her head must be about to spin off altogether. ‘Well yes, but the girl there – Helen, is it? – she said—'

‘Oh, Lord,
that
one.' The woman threw up her hands in exasperation. ‘She's only been here about ten minutes. Still learning her
own
name, that one is. Come on, lovey, you come back inside with me. I'll soon find Miss Howard for you – but one good turn deserves another, all right? Nothing to anyone about the cigarettes. It's not allowed, and quite right too – horrible habit. But giving up's not so easy, either.'

The woman waddled along the drive and Midge followed her, up the steps, through the arched
doorway and back into the building again, feeling completely out of her depth. She saw the reception girl's expression turn from vague surprise to annoyance as the big woman marched wheezily over to the desk and, with no word of acknowledgement, picked up the phone.

‘Hallo? Elaine? It's Joan. Hiya, love. There's a girl here in reception come to see Miss Celandine Howard, if you please. Yep, that's right. Eh? Oh, I don't know . . . eleven maybe. Twelve. Can't tell nowadays. Yes? OK. I'll leave her here for you then.'

She put down the phone, still with no word to the girl at the desk, and turned to Midge.

‘Elaine'll be down in a minute. She looks after Miss Howard, mostly.'

‘Oh. Well . . . thanks. Thank you very much.'

‘No trouble, love.
Just
a matter of knowing what you're doing, that's all.' The woman did throw the girl a quick glance, then, before walking over to the open lift. She pressed the button, gave Midge a wink as the door closed, and disappeared.

Midge was so stunned, she didn't know what to do. She'd been totally unprepared for the idea that Celandine might actually
be
here. The possibility hadn't even occurred to her. She stood awkwardly in the centre of the reception space, trying to imagine what might be about to happen, and how she was going to deal with it. The girl at the desk seemed very busy with her computer now, and gave her no eye contact.

There was a faint whoosh from the lift, a
ping
, and one of the doors opened. A woman was standing there. She paused for a second before stepping out, her movement almost hesitant. Younger and smaller than the woman in the garden had been, wearing the same sort of light-blue shift. She raised her hands to her glasses, lowered them for a second as she looked at Midge, then put them back where they were. The expression on her face, as she came closer, was more than just one of curiosity, or even surprise. She looked really quite shocked.

‘Hello, love,' she said. ‘So you've come to see Miss Howard, then. Is that right?'

‘Um . . . well . . . I've been trying to find out more about her. I wasn't expecting to actually
see
her.' Something of the woman's apparent nervousness seemed to be catching, and Midge found that her voice was actually quite shaky.

‘Weren't you? Well, she's been expecting to see
you
, I can tell you. What's your name, dear?'

‘Midge. Midge Walters.'

‘Midge? Right. Well then, Miss Howard's just about to—' The woman broke off for a moment, and called to someone over Midge's shoulder. ‘Carol? Carol – could I trouble you for a moment?'

Midge turned round and saw another woman crossing the open space behind her. This one was dressed in a dark-grey trouser suit, very smart, and looked as though she might well be the one in charge around here.

‘Yes?' The smart woman changed direction and
came over to where they were standing, bringing with her a faintly perfumed air of authority.

‘Carol, this young lady is here to see Miss Howard.' The words of the first woman hung there, spoken as though they had some sort of extra meaning to them.

The smart woman stared at her colleague. Then she looked directly at Midge.

‘To see Miss Howard? Well, I'm . . . er . . . I'm' – she gave a quick laugh – ‘caught off-guard, as you can see. Absolutely astonished, in fact. Um . . . OK, then, Elaine. You'd better go and break this news to Miss Howard, and then bring her down for her tea as usual. In the meantime I'll take our visitor along to the day room, and we'll see you both there. What's your name, dear?'

‘Midge Walters.' Midge caught a last glance of amazement from the first woman as she returned to the lift. What was going
on
? Why was everybody so surprised to see her?

‘Right then, Midge,' said the smart woman. ‘I'm Carol Reeve – the manager here. Are you some sort of relative of Miss Howard's?'

‘She's my great-great-aunt. But . . . see . . . I really wasn't expecting her to just
be
here. I didn't even know that she was still alive. This is all such a . . . I mean, I don't know whether I actually want to—'

‘You mean you didn't know that she lived here?'

‘No! I just knew that she used to be at a school called Mount Pleasant, that's all. I'm supposed to be round the corner on a shopping trip, with my mum. At Almbury Mills. I only came in to see if this maybe
used to be Cel— my great-great-aunt's old school.' Midge was feeling overwhelmed, upset at how everything seemed to be running away with her. This was all happening much too fast.

‘But she's been expecting you. You didn't know that?'

‘What? How could she be
expecting
me? That's what the other woman said. I didn't even know anything about this place until today.'

‘My dear, let me tell you something. Miss Howard has been expecting you for at least as long as I've been manager here. And that's . . . what . . . getting on for twelve years now. Every day she tells us that you'll probably be dropping by, around four-thirty. It's little wonder that we're surprised to see you actually turn up.'

MISS HOWARD OPENED
her eyes as the last fragments of her dream floated away. Sharply focused, these dream images always were, like scraps of brightly patterned cloth. The edges of the real world that now surrounded her were blurred and fuzzy. Sometimes it was the only way of telling whether she was asleep or awake – the clarity of her vision. If everything was clean and sharp and bright, then she knew that she was dreaming.

Her dreams repeated themselves, over and over, just as the routines and conversations of her days were repeated, over and over. She was so tired of waiting.

‘
Thank you for telling me, Celandine. This means very much to me . . .
' Her mother's voice, still echoing in her head. It had been
that
dream. The one where she told her mama the ‘truth'. Comforting, because it had helped to put her mother's mind at rest, and disturbing because it wasn't the truth at all.

The events of that day had been real enough, she was sure of that. She was coming home to visit Mama, though she was not due any time off from the clinic
until the end of the month. She saw herself walking through the front door of Mill Farm, and then through to the kitchen. Mama at the sink, throwing carrot peelings into the slop bucket, turning at the sound of her footstep on the red brick floor.

‘Celandine – is you!
Look
at my girl – so grown up you are in your uniform. But you should say when you are coming. I have nothing done for you.'

‘There was no time to write, Mama. And it was quiet this week, so Uncle Josef said I might come home early and see you.'

‘Ach. That is a good man, to think of me.'

She saw her mother's face, so tired and frail and thin. And always so worried.

Then they were in the parlour, drinking coffee. Such a treat to drink coffee. It had made her want to cry, the thought that her mother would never spoil herself like this if she were sitting here alone. The smell of the coffee, hot and milky, was with her now – as was the overwhelming feeling of wanting to reach out and bring some comfort to that poor woman. She had lost her youngest son to the war, fighting the Germans, and yet she was still whispered about by those around her for being German herself.

‘Mama, I wanted to tell you something. I wanted to tell you about what happened to me that time when I . . . when I ran away.'

And then her mother's ringless hands raised quickly to her mouth, the little gasp of apprehension. They were too thin, now, those ivory-yellow fingers, to safely
wear wedding and engagement rings. The risk of losing them was too great.