A Place Called Winter

by Patrick Gale

  There was a quick handclap, a sharp French command and a thunder of little feet retreating back upstairs.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Mrs Wells returned to her station. ‘My youngest three. Curious to lay eyes on visitors. With so many charges, Madame Vance cannot always keep control. We are thinking of sending the middle two away to Belgium to be finished by the nuns.’

  ‘Are you Roman Catholics?’

  ‘Heavens no, but the Sisters are so good at conferring a certain je ne sais quoi. And, well, I fear one of the troubles with growing up in so large a family can be that one gets lax from sheer exhaustion and the youngest ones are allowed to become . . .’

  ‘Unruly?’ Jack suggested with a smile.

  ‘Overconfident. Ah! Te voici, Georgette. You have already met Mr Jack Cane, of course. This is his older brother, Harry. And here, at last, is my Winifred.’

  Like the principal and secondary couples in a comedy, Harry thought, they were two matching pairs, one blonde, one dark. Only, to his surprise, it was the dark one Jack had chosen for himself, the one who was handsome rather than pretty. But she shared his confidence and easy charm.

  ‘Sorry we took such an age,’ Georgina said, smiling. ‘I made Winnie change her dress twice, then she found a grass stain on mine, so then I had to change too. I’m sure you’ve both had more than enough of Mother’s tea by now. Why don’t you let us show you the garden?’

  ‘That’s a lovely idea,’ Mrs Wells said. ‘But if you go in one of the boats, dear, do let the gentlemen take the oars.’ She touched a little hand on Harry’s arm. ‘Her brothers encouraged George to be athletic and I fear it can sometimes make her a little headstrong.’

  ‘She means bossy,’ Winifred said quietly and dipped her head.

  ‘So you don’t row?’ Harry asked her as he stood aside to let her through the French windows before him as the other pair strode ahead.

  ‘Oh not remotely. I mean, I’ve tried, but I end by going in circles, which makes people laugh at me.’

  He winced. ‘It’s horrible being laughed at,’ he said. ‘People say you should be a good sport and get used to it, but the laughter never seems friendly and one never gets used to it. Or I don’t.’

  ‘Don’t you row either?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t really do anything much. I ride. I walk. I like walking.’

  ‘So do I.’

  So they walked very slowly around the pretty waterside garden while Jack and George, with much laughter, took one of several rowing boats moored to the landing stage and struck out across the water towards a nearby reedy island. Strictly speaking, he supposed, they should all have stayed at least within listening distance, but the scented almost-rusticity of the setting seemed to dispense with the rigid protocol of a Mayfair drawing room. And in any case, Mrs Wells had followed them out on to the terrace, where she sat in the shade of a little blue awning that hung from the house’s rear, and made a show of tidying nearby roses with a pair of secateurs.

  ‘What a lovely spot,’ he said. ‘Have you always lived here?’

  ‘All my life,’ Winifred told him. ‘I think it suited Father to have us out of the way. My brother Barry – Barrington – calls it the Nunnery.’

  ‘Yet you don’t want to escape?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Nuns. One always assumes they resent being locked up and want to escape.’

  ‘Really? I envy them the peace.’ She saw his questioning glance. ‘It’s not always so quiet here,’ she said. ‘The boys are all at work and the girls are being sat on by Madame Vance in the schoolroom. There are times when I think the privacy of a nun’s cell could be wonderful.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ he said, mock serious, and she smiled, if something so grave could be called smiling.

  They reached a wrought-iron bench in the shifting golden shade of a weeping willow, which seemed like a destination, so they sat. Winifred watched George row Jack, which gave Harry the opportunity to watch her. She was, he decided, quite lovely, with fair hair piled upon her head in the kind of relaxed arrangement he was sure had taken a good hour to achieve, and china-blue eyes and a creamy complexion. She was extraordinarily solemn, sad even, yet with a suggestion of irony, of the kind of weary humour he liked best.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not very good company,’ he said at last, because he had noticed Mrs Wells glancing anxiously their way.

  ‘No, no,’ Winifred protested, turning back to face him. ‘You’re . . . I’m a hopeless conversationalist. I’d always rather listen.’

  ‘Me too. Do you worry about your sister? On the water, I mean.’

  ‘George? No. Not really. She’s an excellent swimmer. When we were little, it amused Father to throw sticks for her to fetch, as though she were a dog.’

  ‘Your mother said she stood up to him.’

  ‘Oh yes. She’s quite fearless.’

  ‘Was he so fearful?’

  ‘Yes. When we heard his key in the lock, we would run upstairs.’

  ‘Like nuns.’

  ‘Quite. Only I’m not sure nuns are allowed to run. He made poor Mother so nervous she would get palpitations.’

  ‘Yet their marriage was a happy one.’

  ‘Not really. Just . . . fruitful. He only took her out once in all their years together.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Truthfully. He liked her to repeat the story, as it made him laugh. Just once he took her into town for the evening in her best finery. They went to the theatre and then for lobster and champagne and then, when they came out on to the pavement, there was a tremendous glow in the sky to the west. I suppose it was a sunset but he pointed it out to her and said, “Look, my dear. That might be our cherubs burning in their beds!” And she was so horrified, she insisted he call a cab for her to go home at once while he went on to his club to meet his friends. It was by way of a lesson, I suppose, and he never took her out again and she never suggested he take her. She used to say he was her street angel – so charming and amusing to his friends and clients and a perfect tyrant in the home.’

  ‘How dreadful for you.’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t so bad. We lived here, after all, in comfort. And he never beat us or shouted. He simply had a cruel tongue. Well, he beat my brothers sometimes.’

  ‘Why do you suppose he married, if it pleased him so little?’

  ‘But it did please him, I think; it magnified him. And he married for love. Mother was extremely pretty once. He wanted sons, of course, to take on the partnership one day, and he enjoyed having us all walk to church behind him. He liked the fact that we filled two pews.’

  ‘He was a patriarch.’

  She nodded sadly. ‘That’s the word.’

  ‘Are any of your brothers like him?’

  ‘Bob,’ she said, without a moment’s hesitation, so that Harry immediately worried that Bob might be about to appear. She stood suddenly. ‘We should fetch George back,’ she said. ‘It’s quite sunny and she’s gone out without her hat and will be getting a labourer’s tan.’

  Jack and George were enjoying themselves too much, however. Jack had resumed rowing duties and George was trailing a hand in the water. She said something that made Jack laugh so hard he had to stop rowing briefly. The two of them looked like an illustration for Modern Happiness, unguarded, relaxed, entirely themselves, in a way that made Harry feel he belonged to the old century. Perhaps it wasn’t beauty, ultimately, that won men to women or vice versa, but an ability to make one laugh? Harry made a gesture as of putting on a hat and pointed to George, but Jack wilfully misunderstood, making ever more complicated hand gestures back to make George laugh in turn.

  ‘Does he ever do as he’s told?’ Winifred asked, in a tone that made Harry wonder if she wouldn’t rather be in the little boat instead of her sister.

  ‘Not ofte
n,’ he admitted, and she gave one of her grave half-smiles.

  ‘It’s not easy being the eldest,’ she said.

  ‘George bears it pretty lightly.’

  ‘Don’t be gallant,’ she fired back. ‘It doesn’t suit you.’

  ‘Sorry. Your mother said you were shy, but you don’t seem—’

  ‘I’m shy in groups. I’m hopeless in groups, and that’s what a family like ours tends to be. All the time.’

  ‘Well I’m shy even on my own. There are days when I hardly speak.’

  ‘How wonderful!’

  ‘It’s surprising how few words you need once you put your mind to it.’

  ‘Do you ever dream about invisibility?’ she asked him.

  ‘Often. To be left entirely alone!’

  ‘That’s it!’ She clapped. ‘Some people would immediately rob a jeweller’s or an art gallery if no one could see them, but I think I would simply stay quietly in my room with a novel.’

  He was struck by how closely she had voiced his own instincts, and having established that each preferred silence, they walked wordlessly away from their happy siblings and around the rest of the garden, pausing to watch a bumblebee lumbering around the bells of a foxglove and a song thrush savaging a worm.

  Mrs Wells greeted their return with a tray of lemonade and cake, as though it were the most normal thing in the world to have entrusted a pretty daughter to a complete stranger for half an hour. ‘Pattie expressed a wish to come down and sing to you all. Pattie is my next youngest girl, Mr Cane. She fancies herself an artiste. Don’t fret,’ she went on in response to Winnie’s heavy sigh. ‘I told her perhaps another time. Encouragement of talent is all very well, but it doesn’t do to go too far. Ah. And here come the athletes!’

  Jack had a young boy’s instinct for sniffing out sweet things. ‘If I’m not hungry,’ he told them, ‘I’m either ill or asleep.’

  He had encouraged his companion to replace her hat so as to avoid a scolding. Shaded by its straw brim and blue ribbons, she looked almost demure.

  ‘It’s been a delightful afternoon,’ Harry told Mrs Wells.

  ‘Well I hope you’ll come again,’ she said, offering him a dry little hand. ‘Perhaps next time you’ll come for dinner, so you can meet my boys?’ She pulled a comical face. ‘Though we’ll all have to be on our best behaviour for Robert.’

  ‘That would be splendid,’ Jack said.

  Harry tried to catch Winifred’s eye but she had dropped her glance to the crumbs on the cake plates. He supposed that, being shy, she regarded dinners as a necessary evil.

  ‘Miss Wells,’ he said.

  She looked up, gave one of her sad little smiles and offered him her hand. ‘Mr Cane,’ she said.

  George mocked their formality by dropping Jack a deep curtsey, at which everyone laughed.

  Chapter Four

  A second invitation came from Mrs Wells, summoning them both to dinner, where they met two of the three brothers.

  Robert, the eldest, who was possibly good-looking behind a fulsome beard, suffered from the pompous, hectoring manner of a stupid man who believed himself clever.

  Frank, his younger by some six years, had successfully insisted on being made senior partner on their father’s death. He was softly spoken, observant, utterly lacking in social skills and really rather frightening. Winifred had already warned Harry he was very clever. Certainly he seemed to regard the family he had been born into with scornful dismay. Harry was glad to be screened from him at table by a parson’s amiable wife.

  On his other hand, his left, he had Mrs Wells, who was full of kind curiosity about his mother’s family and evidently a little alarmed by the subject of his father. By oversight or mischief, she had placed Winifred so he could admire but could not speak to her. Mrs Wells was, he began to realise, something of a manipulator.

  ‘You come from a small family, Mrs Wells was telling me,’ said the parson’s wife.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s just my brother and myself.’

  ‘I was an only,’ she said. ‘The functioning of large families remains a mystery to people like us. There are currents and influences we cannot always read correctly. And then, of course, we have to beware of clinging too tightly.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘Why, to those we love! People from large families crave freedom and privacy above all else. I know; my Benedict’s father was a Mr Quiverful.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘A character from Trollope with a great many children. I tease Benedict that he should have joined a silent order and he teases me back that he might just yet. Oh! We’re off already and I’ve barely begun to scratch your interesting surface!’

  Taking her cue from their hostess, she stood, as of course did he, and she made him a little smiling bob and followed the ladies from the room. The five gentlemen were left briefly speechless, as feminine laughter and conversation flared in the hall, then were enclosed in the drawing room. Harry thought cigars tasted of something meaty and long dead, and port invariably gave him a headache because nerves and politeness made him drink it like water. Not for the first time in his life, he felt a craven impulse to create a sensation by hurrying out in the ladies’ wake.

  He found the courage to wave aside the cigar Robert offered him and was about to pour, as a lesser evil, a small glass of port, thinking he might simply not then touch it and so avoid drinking too much, when Frank said, ‘Or perhaps you’ll join me in a Scotch? Port always gives me filthy headaches. Evil drink, I say. Like drinking wine gone bad. You know where you stand with whisky.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harry. ‘I will. Thanks,’ managing not to stammer on the W in his relief, and he passed the port on to Robert, who snorted disapproval. Perhaps whisky was more expensive? Harry had no idea.

  ‘It’s good to meet the famous Brothers Cane finally,’ Robert said. ‘The girls have talked of little else.’

  ‘How very dull for you all,’ Harry said. At least, he began to, but Robert was putting him in mind of a particularly cruel Harrow bully he had managed, until then, to forget, so all that came out was ‘How-how-how . . .’

  Well trained, Jack came to his rescue. ‘How very relieved you must be to find us both so ordinary. Excellent cigar,’ he added. ‘Are they Cuban? Harry won’t let me smoke them at home.’ He knew that playing on Harry’s compulsion to correct an unjust or inaccurate statement was one of the surest ways of helping him out.

  ‘Only because, on a student vet’s income, you have no business buying such luxuries,’ Harry said, with no trace of a stammer.

  ‘It’s touching that you look to your younger brother’s welfare so,’ the parson said. He had accepted both port and cigar with alacrity but seemed to be saving his cigar for later. ‘Jack has been telling me you’ve been like a father to him.’

  ‘Well, sir, as I’m sure our host can attest, the eldest has certain responsibilities.’

  ‘Huh,’ Robert Wells said.

  ‘Forgive me, but I’m always intrigued by cases like yours. My wife says I should have made a novelist but I fear I lack the necessary lightness. If you were so busy keeping Jack out of scrapes as you were growing up, who looked after you?’

  Harry liked the parson, as he had liked his wife; there was nothing of the prefect about him and he had a kind, plain face. ‘Why, Jack, of course,’ he told him, at which they both laughed.

  ‘Harry takes quite some looking after,’ Jack added.

  Robert Wells was one of those men who could not leave a question unanswered, or a subject abandoned. ‘They’re from Africa,’ he abruptly told Jack. ‘Our brother Barrington sends them. Taste like Cuban but a fraction of the cost and Empire-grown.’

  Harry became uncomfortably aware that Frank was about to say something personal.

  ‘Have you always st
uttered like that?’ Frank asked quietly.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Harry, instinctively avoiding an answer that began with a consonant. ‘It comes and it goes. Unfortunately it’s worse with strangers.’ He could imagine Frank tormenting caged birds in a spirit of scientific enquiry.

  ‘Funny. Winnie didn’t mention it.’

  ‘She didn’t make me nervous,’ Harry said, which made Robert guffaw.

  ‘He got you there, Frank. She probably didn’t say how rude her brothers were either, eh?’ Someone began to play a piano across the hall and Robert sighed weightily. ‘I fear that’s our cue for further delights.’

  ‘Can’t miss my god-daughter,’ said the parson, folding his napkin as he rose. ‘I made a solemn vow.’

  ‘Is Winifred your god-daughter?’ Harry asked.

  ‘No, no. Patricia is. I believe she asked to be allowed downstairs especially to entertain us.’

  ‘She needs no encouragement,’ Frank said as cigars were regretfully tapped out and they all stood.

  ‘I don’t think we’ve met Patricia,’ Harry said.

  ‘Oh, everyone meets Pattie before too long,’ Robert told him. ‘What is it Mam’zelle Vance says?’

  ‘Mees Pattie av a powerfool pairsonality,’ Frank said.

  As they crossed the hall, there was the clatter of plates being stacked in the distant kitchen and the familiar sound of giggling from the shadows on the landing above. Harry saw Robert glare up, mock furious, but then grin and pretend to fire a gun towards his hidden sisters. To find oneself head of such a household in one’s late twenties, or however old he had been when Robert Wells Senior died, was enough to make a premature ogre of any man. Pomposity. Severity. Snobbery. They were all masks for various sorts of fear. And to find himself supplanted by a younger, cleverer brother in the powerfully symbolic role of senior partner could not have been easy. Harry resolved to judge him less harshly in future.