The World in Winter

by John Christopher

  McKay said: ‘Ah, there you are, Cartwell! Someone I’d like you to meet. Andy Leedon – he works on the programme.’

  He completed the introduction with a nervous brusqueness which quite justified his lack of faith in his own ability to handle people socially.

  Cartwell said: ‘Glad to know you. I’ve already told McKay I watch your thing when I get the chance. One of the three television programmes which rarely induce the vomit reflex: the best of the three, I should say.’

  He was a small dark man, with a quick smile and a look of alertness. He was wearing a lounge suit which was well cut but, Andrew thought, a shade too light. He was also wearing a bow tie, a practice of which Andrew, in general, disapproved.

  McKay, having introduced them, seized an opportunity to move away. It was the sort of thing he had done before, and Andrew found it partly touching, partly irritating. He said to Cartwell:

  ‘Ian tells me you’re Home Office?’

  ‘Did it need telling? Doesn’t the Civil Servant shine through the grosser flesh?’

  Andrew smiled. ‘I wouldn’t say so.’

  ‘Thank God.’ He plucked drinks from a passing waiter. ‘I’m starting to get defensive about it, though. Something I must watch.’

  ‘Does that mean you don’t like the job, or that you think you ought not to?’

  ‘Not quite either, I fancy.’ He looked at Andrew with interest. ‘I like the comment, at that.’

  Instead of circulating, they stayed talking to each other until it was time to leave. David Cartwell was, Andrew found, a good talker who was still capable of listening with intelligence and attention. More than this he had a gift for intimacy without obtrusion. On the point of leaving, Andrew said:

  ‘We must meet again some time.’

  Cartwell nodded: ‘I’ll tell you what – come round for a drink on Sunday. About eleven? With your wife. 17 Denham Crescent – do you know it?’

  ‘Round the corner from South Kensington tube station?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Well, thank you. We’ll be very glad to come.’

  It was only after they had parted and he was walking towards Park Lane to get a bus that Andrew remembered McKay had wanted him to sound Cartwell on the matter of the solar radiation drop which was thought to herald a cold winter. He was a little annoyed with himself for having forgotten; he liked to think of himself as methodical. It was a consolation, he reflected, that the matter was so unimportant a one.

  Carol raised some objection to his having accepted the invitation on such brief acquaintance, and of involving her on social terms before she had had an opportunity of appraising the other people. On the Sunday morning she toyed with the idea of crying off, leaving Andrew to go on his own and present excuses for her. What finally decided her in favour of going, as she frankly explained, was that she had always admired the houses in Denham Crescent – Regency in white stucco with Italianate porches – and wanted to see what they were like inside.

  They were admitted by a dark, rosy-cheeked girl, who seemed a little more than maid, a little less than au pair, and who showed them into the sitting room overlooking the road. It was a bright morning, and sunlight gleamed on the dark glossy leaves of the shrubs in the small paved courtyard below the windows.

  Carol examined the furnishings of the room.

  ‘Some quite good stuff,’ she said. ‘That bow-fronted chest in the corner …’

  She broke off as a thin blonde girl came in. She appeared to be in her middle twenties. She was quite plain, Andrew decided, and this surprised him. He would have expected Cartwell to have a more decorative wife.

  In a nervous, somewhat harsh voice, she said:

  ‘Mr and Mrs Leedon? I’m Madeleine Cartwell. David will be down in a moment.’

  She turned with a quick smile, snatching herself from them almost before she had finished speaking, at the sound of rapid footsteps from outside. David Cartwell entered the room. He looked dapper in grey slacks and a dark red silk shirt. As with the bow tie, it was the sort of thing Andrew did not particularly favour. Nor did Carol. He hoped it would not put her off too much; she had a tendency to let first impressions of people harden into prejudices.

  ‘You found your way,’ David said. ‘Good boy, Andy. And this is Mrs Leedon?’

  ‘Carol,’ Andrew said. ‘This is David.’

  He looked at her closely, intently, as he took her hand. He turned to Andrew.

  ‘Do you realize you have a beautiful wife? I suppose you do. Probably not well enough, though. You get too used to things by having them.’

  Carol smiled faintly. She seemed amused. Madeleine said:

  ‘Don’t let him embarrass you.’

  Carol smiled more openly. ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Ah, but she is a beauty,’ David said. ‘Don’t you agree, Maddie?’ His glance went to Andrew. ‘I do a little colour photography. I’d like to borrow her for that. You don’t mind, do you?’

  Andrew was amused. ‘Of course not. Should she take her clothes off here, or do you have a studio upstairs?’

  David laughed. ‘My line is faces. That’s one I did of Maddie over there.’

  Andrew went to examine it. It was a full-plate study of Madeleine in three-quarter profile, against a soft brown out-of-focus background. It did not contrive to make her beautiful, or even pretty, but it caught a fine distinction of features, a delicacy of brow and jaw and throat which, now that the photograph had drawn his attention to it, Andrew could see in the woman herself.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘borrow her by all means. And I want a copy of the result.’

  ‘It will be arranged,’ David said. ‘Now, what are you people drinking? Teacher’s or Haig? Gin or vodka? I think there’s some sherry kicking around as well, a remnant from last Christmas.’

  Carol, in due course, manoeuvred Madeleine into showing her round the house, and the two men were left alone. The girl who had let them in brought a silver bowl containing mixed nuts and put it down on a Georgian occasional table. Andrew commented, as she went out again:

  ‘Extraordinarily rosy-cheeked, that girl.’

  ‘Effect of high-altitude living,’ David said. ‘She comes from some tiny village up in the Italian Alps. You get that sort of thing above the fifteen-hundred metre level. The small capillaries rupture – I’m not sure if it’s the low pressure or the cold winters. Perhaps both.’

  ‘Now you mention it, I remember seeing a lot of glowing complexions at Zermatt.’

  ‘That’s it. She’s a pleasant morsel, don’t you think?’

  Andrew nodded. ‘Very pleasant.’

  ‘Tempting, too, but quite apart from her simple Catholic virtue, which I suspect is still unspoiled, it would be embarrassing for Maddie.’

  He spoke with a matter-of-factness that caused Andrew to revise the opinion he had begun to form of him. Among his acquaintances, he had summed up the men who were as openly attentive to women as David had been to Carol as purely verbal performers: the philanderers used a less direct, even secretive approach. But the comment on the maid, its tone in particular, put things on a different level.

  He said, partly in evasion of the turn the conversation was taking, partly in challenge: ‘I should think Madeleine is a very nice person.’

  ‘A great girl,’ David agreed. ‘One way and another, I don’t know how she puts up with me.’

  The same theme cropped up a week or two later, when the two men met for a lunchtime drink. In the interim, the Cartwells had been for drinks to the Leedons’ house in Dulwich, and they had made up a foursome for the theatre. It looked as though they were likely to see a fair amount of each other. Andrew liked David well enough in mixed company, but found him better with the women out of the way. He was more relaxed, less emphatic in tone. They drank and put their pint tankards of bitter back on the polished brown counter, and Andrew thought, with surprise: this man could be a friend. It was a feeling which had not occurred to him in more than ten years – since his middle
twenties, since his marriage, he had made many new acquaintances but no new friends.

  David said: ‘I like this pub. Perhaps because there’s always a man behind the bar, instead of a woman.’

  ‘Do barmaids bother you?’

  He grinned. ‘Maddie calls it my atavistic streak. The old deep-down need to get away from the female sex from time to time. The Freemason in all of us.’

  ‘Well, yes. I can’t say I mind female hands drawing my beer, though.’

  ‘The protest is exaggerated? Yes, I think you’re right. I find women too fascinating too much of the time; hence the compulsive need for occasional lay-offs.’

  It was a simple confession, neither rueful nor boasting. Andrew said:

  ‘I suppose there are worse obsessions.’

  ‘Worse, but none stronger. Do you feel like going on to a proper lunch, or can you make do with a fattening snack? They have a tolerable line in bangers.’

  ‘That will do me.’

  David signalled to the barman, and ordered sausages and rolls and butter. He looked at the level of beer in their glasses.

  ‘Better double up on those, too.’ He fumbled in his pocket for silver. ‘Everything degenerates into habit – nausea, vanity, everything. For a year after I began drinking beer, I couldn’t stand the taste of it. All I was getting was the satisfaction of being one of the boys. And even when I’d grown to tolerate it, I’d always had enough at the end of the first pint. Then I got to like the taste. Now I don’t even notice it going down.’

  ‘I wouldn’t altogether agree with you,’ Andrew said. ‘Many things have lost their savour as far as I’m concerned, but a glass of good bitter isn’t among them.’

  David smiled suddenly. ‘They don’t keep a bad cellar here, do they? No, write that last one down to the disillusionment of middle age. The ordeal of too much pleasure and too few kicks.’

  ‘It suits me.’

  ‘It suits me, too. That’s what I dislike about it.’

  It became a habit for them to have a midday drink together, two or three times a week. From time to time, in addition, David persuaded him to stop off at Denham Crescent in the evening, for a drink and sometimes a meal. This was on Tuesday or Friday, when Late Night Final was broadcast. Andrew wondered, at first, how Carol would take this. But when he made a tentative, semi-apologetic approach on the subject, he said:

  ‘My God, Andy, why should I mind? I like the Cartwells.’ She smiled. ‘And I don’t suspect you of running after Madeleine.’

  ‘No.’ He smiled in return. ‘That would be a little improbable.’

  ‘Yes. Just a little.’

  It was a week later that David, meeting Andrew at lunchtime on Friday, said:

  ‘You were planning to drop in tonight, weren’t you?’

  ‘If I’m invited.’

  ‘What do you want, a gold-engraved card? Thing is, I shan’t be able to be there myself.’

  ‘That’s all right. I can find something else to do.’

  ‘No,’ David said, ‘you must drop in. Maddie will be expecting you.’

  ‘If I find myself round those parts, I will, then.’

  David said earnestly: ‘I wish you’d make it definite.’

  With surprise, he said: ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Well, this is something that’s turned up unexpectedly – my not being able to get back till late. It would cheer the girl up to have company.’

  Andrew shrugged. ‘If you think so.’

  ‘I haven’t made my marital excuses yet. I’ll be giving her a ring when I go back to the office. I’ll tell her you’re coming.’

  The Crescent was cool, cream and green from the painted houses and the shading trees, when he turned into it from the glare and noise of Denham Street. Madeleine opened the door to him. She was wearing white slacks and a pale blue blouse and her hair was drawn tightly back. Andrew was conscious again of her lack of beauty, but conscious, also, of her freshness, of the delicate emphasis of bone beneath the skin.

  ‘Come right in, Andy,’ she said. ‘Nice to see you.’

  She led the way to the sitting room. ‘Gin and something?’

  ‘What are you having yourself?’

  She picked up her glass from the coffee table. ‘Just Cinzano and soda.’

  ‘That will do me very well.’

  He watched her pour his drink. She went to the kitchen and he heard the refrigerator door open and slam. She came back and eased the square of ice out of its plastic container into his glass.

  ‘Are you sure it’s not a nuisance,’ he said, ‘my dropping in like this?’

  She shook her head, smiling. ‘You saw David at lunchtime?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he told you he wouldn’t be able to get back himself until late?’

  ‘Yes. I was going to cry off, but he insisted you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Did he say why?’

  ‘Why you wouldn’t mind?’

  ‘Why he wouldn’t be here himself.’

  ‘Well, no. I assumed it was something that had cropped up at the office.’

  She brought the glass to him, and he took it, thanking her. She stood by the chair, looking down at him with an expression whose significance he could not fathom. There was some wariness in it.

  ‘I used to think once,’ she said, ‘that men always confided in each other. I got it from a boy-friend I had when I was about nineteen. He certainly had, as I found out.’

  ‘Confided? About their womenfolk, you mean?’

  She sat down in a chair opposite his, and crossed her legs. She was wearing heel-less leather slippers with an intricate gold-stamped design.

  ‘Womenfolk is a lovely expression,’ she said. ‘That’s one of the things I like about you, Andy – you’re just a little bit old-fashioned.’

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘tell me what I’ve done wrong.’

  ‘David really didn’t say anything?’

  Andrew said awkwardly: ‘Is there anything wrong between you two, then?’

  ‘I do like you for being old-fashioned,’ she said. ‘No, I suppose he wouldn’t, under the circumstances.’ The last phrase carried a shadow of emphasis. ‘There’s nothing wrong – nothing basically. He’s meeting … a woman.’

  With surprise, Andrew asked: ‘Did he tell you that?’

  ‘No. He doesn’t, at this stage. I’ve never been sure whether it’s because he genuinely thinks he’s deceiving me, or just because he finds it embarrassing to talk about.’

  Andrew was embarrassed himself, and a little resentful. It was not his affair, and he objected to being forced to discuss it. It would have been understandable if Madeleine had taken her troubles to Carol, he thought, but not that she should ventilate them among David’s male acquaintances. He stayed silent, and Madeleine said:

  ‘You find it the same, do you? I don’t usually talk about these little affairs, Andy.’ She hesitated, on the point of saying something else. ‘Oh, never mind it.’

  He was touched by her unhappiness. ‘I’m sorry.’ He paused. ‘What did you mean – at this stage?’

  She shrugged. ‘He tells me about them afterwards, once they’re safely over. It’s his kind of honesty. And his way of getting absolution, I suppose.’

  ‘And you forgive him, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ She spoke with faint irony. ‘There couldn’t be any doubt about that, could there?’

  ‘It’s a childish way to carry on, but people do childish things. They don’t mean anything.’

  ‘Don’t they?’ She gave him a hard look. ‘Don’t they?’

  ‘Not in any real sense.’

  ‘Tell me, Andy, have you ever been unfaithful to Carol?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I haven’t. Do we need to discuss me and Carol?’

  ‘No.’ Her voice had misery in it. ‘We don’t have to discuss you and Carol. I’m sorry, Andy. I ought not to inflict things on you. Knowing, when you can’t do anything about it, is the worst part. I just wish he could b
e a bit clever in disguising things. Happy ignorance is something to be envied.’

  The resentment he had felt against Madeleine was transferred to David; he pictured him taking some girl out, at this moment laughing and talking with her, and was angry with the picture on her behalf.

  He said: ‘Would you like me to talk to him?’

  ‘Talk to him?’ She stared. ‘About his carrying on? I don’t think that would do any good.’

  ‘It might.’

  She gave a small laugh. ‘I’m sure it wouldn’t. Forget about it.’

  ‘There must be something I can do.’

  She considered him thoughtfully, and then smiled. ‘Yes. I’ve nothing to offer you but pastasciutta or a scrappy salad. You can take me out for supper, if you like.’

  Andrew nodded. ‘I’ll be glad to do that.’

  3

  The weather broke in mid-October, and the Fratellini hypothesis came back into the headlines, swept there by the blizzards that ranged over continental North America and continued unchecked across the Atlantic to Europe. In London, the first morning, there were three inches of snow, soon churned into mud and slush by the rush-hour traffic, but augmented, as the leaden morning wore on, by fresh falls. The wind was cold, from the north-east. Before midday, the evening papers were talking of Fratellini’s winter. The following morning, with snow still coming down, there was fuller coverage and more speculation. McKay called Andrew into his office where, Andrew observed, the large print of the Utrillo snow scene in Montmartre had been replaced by a Renoir of a girl in the long summer grass. McKay valued art for its thermal effects.