A Spell of Winter

by Helen Dunmore

  ‘Now get yourself downstairs and no more noise out of you. You’ll be late and he won’t take you.’

  Her long eyes sparkle danger. I don’t always know with Kate whether it is real or not, so I put my lips tight together and nod obediently.

  ‘Good girl.’

  She’s right, Father is waiting for me in his cap and jacket. But he makes me swallow a plateful of toast first, his own toast with thick marmalade on it, cut into triangles. We are never allowed toast, only porridge, but today I’d rather go with an empty stomach and be sure we were on our way, out of the house and together. On the other hand it would be nice if Rob was there to see me eating the toast. I keep my eyes on Father all the time to make sure he doesn’t suddenly remember something he has to do. And then, just as I’ve bitten a little door in the last piece of toast, he does.

  ‘Wait here, Cathy, I must go and say goodbye to your mother.’

  ‘Kate says she has a headache. She wants to sleep. She said no one was to go in her bedroom in case it hurt her eyes.’ I go on, inventing feverishly. I know all about my mother’s headaches. I would tell him she was dead if I thought it would keep him down here with me, but I am pretty sure it would not. ‘Oh.’ He hesitates. ‘One of her sick headaches?’

  ‘Yes. Kate said so.’

  ‘Better not go in then. She might be asleep. I’d hate to wake her …’ he says quietly, as if to himself. I think of my mother’s white, shut face in her cloud of pillows, and how she always turns her head away towards the window when one of us creeps in through the door.

  ‘She said not to wake her,’ I repeat.

  ‘Oh well, in that case … we’d better cut along. Finished that toast?’

  I crunch the last triangle and lick butter off my fingers. ‘Finished, Father,’ I echo obediently. I am sleek with virtue and butter.

  Father is taking a gun. I like its dull shine, a bit like the gleam of the range. It is a shotgun. I would like to stroke it, but I’m not allowed to touch. Touching a gun is the one thing that will make Father shout and slap me. He doesn’t care at all about puddles. But the backs of my legs itch, remembering the sting they got when I put out my finger to the gun barrel where the sun was licking it. Lucy’s puppy races at Father’s side. As we walk the puppy skids to a splay-footed halt, runs back, snaps at his shadow, races to catch up with us again. He runs three times farther than he needs. He’s going to make a useless gun-dog, John says, but when I say this Father tells me, ‘He’s young, Cathy,’ and slaps his side to make the puppy come.

  The stubble is wet, the soil heavy. My boots clod up with mud and they are heavy to lift.

  ‘Don’t drag at my hand,’ says Father, and I let go and hop over the caked ruts in the field path. My skirt is dirty already. I might as well go in lots of puddles on the way home. Father is walking fast, with the puppy dancing effortlessly at his side. I must keep up. I stumble and grab at whatever’s there, but it’s a hoop of sharp-clawed bramble and it tears my palms through my gloves. As long as I keep my gloves on I won’t see the blood. Father’s even more ahead now. The sunlight bounces off his hair and the cotton-wool swathes of old man’s beard which loop the hedges. I was going to collect some to make tiny eiderdowns but there’s no time.

  ‘Come on, Cathy!’ he shouts back. I pick up the sides of my skirt and jump a puddle. The mud is over the top of my boots now, and squeezing down into them. It spatters up into my face. Father has stopped, looking back for me, and next moment a big white handkerchief is scrubbing at my face. It smells of cologne. I am going to smell the same as Father.

  ‘Try and keep to the dry side up by the hedge.’

  I stare round. Is there a dry side? It all looks the same to me. But Father’s boots aren’t even splashed. We are coming to the top of the field. I know the way from here – through the field gate, straight across the next field down to the lane, then all the way along the lane to Silence Farm. No one else lives here. The lane is full of birds and rabbits that don’t bother to run until you are nearly up to them. I always try to catch one with my bare hands, creeping up on them softly and talking to them.

  I know the way, but Father seems to have forgotten. At the top of the field he leans on the gate, waiting. But I’m already here, and Lucy’s puppy is squirming under the lowest bar of the gate. Father ought not to let the puppy loose here, because there are sheep. But he doesn’t seem to notice. I pull very gently at his sleeve.

  ‘Father, the sheep.’

  He looks at me as if I’m another person. His eyes are empty.

  ‘Oh. Yes. The sheep.’ He reaches down, grabs the puppy’s collar and holds it. The puppy strains its soft neck against the collar. Its eyes stretch as it tries to butt its way free into the air. Father gets a leather leash out of his pocket and ties it on to the collar. The puppy runs to the end of it, jerks hard, falls back. It runs again, falls back and whimpers. Father is quite still, looking away over the gate, while the puppy keeps throwing itself against the air. But he must be holding the leash very tightly because his hand is bunched on it and the knuckles are white. The puppy yaps and whines loudly. Suddenly, as it begins its run again, Father pulls the leash up sharp with both hands. The puppy paddles in the air, caught by its throat. The noise changes. The puppy’s face hangs by mine, and I shrink back. I don’t know what Father is doing. He always knows what to do with puppies and dogs. Father jerks hard again then drops the puppy. It sprawls on the ground, coughing, and its legs go all ways. Father rummages in his pockets and gets out a white paper bag.

  ‘Like a humbug, Cathy?’

  Father likes humbugs, and so do I. But I look at him doubtfully and don’t take the sweet. The puppy is making a funny noise, as if it can’t breathe properly.

  ‘Here, take two,’ says Father, shaking them loose in the bag. They always stick together. I pick a humbug out of the stripey mass, put it in my mouth and suck hard. The puppy is getting up. I’m sure he’s all right now. But I wish we could go on to Silence Farm. This journey is too long, and I need to go and there’s nowhere here. If I was with Rob we’d both go on the path, seeing how big a puddle we could make together. Father takes my hand and swings the gate open. He ignores the puppy, but it creeps along behind us, close to the ground. I wonder why it still wants to be with us, but perhaps it can’t think of anywhere else to go.

  We are in the middle of the field when Father stops. His hand holding mine is suddenly wet and I want to pull mine away, but I think of the puppy and I don’t. Father looks back the way we’ve come, then quickly ahead. His hand tightens on me. ‘Quick, Cathy. See how fast we can run to the hedge.’ His voice sounds as if he’s pretending it’s a game, but I know it isn’t. He runs with his head down, dragging me stumbling over tussocks of grass, scattering the sheep. In the shelter of the hedge he crouches down panting. His face is all covered with sweat. I am standing between his knees and he is holding both my hands. Far back across the field I hear the frightened whine of Lucy’s puppy. He can’t find us.

  ‘The puppy’s lost,’ I say, but Father doesn’t take any notice.

  ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do,’ he says. His voice is tight and quiet. ‘What we’ll do is we’ll just walk a little way along this hedge, it’s not very far, and then we’ll get to the gate and over it, then it’s only down one more field and through a bit of the woods, then home. That’s not very far, is it? We can manage that. Oh God. Help me. It’s all right, Cathy, I’m all right. Wait a minute. We’ll just get our breath. Father’s out of puff, that’s what it is. Oh no. Oh no. Not very far. Nearly home now. Over the field. That’s all. Just keep going straight on.’

  But we aren’t moving. Father sinks slowly into the tangle of wet, coarse grass under the hedge. I can’t see his face any more, only the top of his head. Then he lets go of my hands and covers his face. He wraps his arms tight round his head and curls up in a ball, as if he is going to sleep. He is making strange noises, like crying or laughing. Behind me I can hear the puppy getting close. I turn r
ound and there he is, pushing his way over a tussock of grass. He needn’t have climbed over it, he could have gone round. He is shivering. I pick him up and hold him close to me. He curls up like Father and tries to lick at his neck, but he can’t reach it properly. His body keeps giving little jerks in my arms.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I whisper in his ear, ‘don’t be frightened. We’re going home in a minute and your mother will look after you.’

  In a little while the puppy feels better. We start playing a game where I stroke his head and he rubs his ears up against my hand. He likes that. Then out of the corner of my eye I see the gun where Father has dropped it. It is pointing at us.

  Never never let your gun

  pointed be at anyone.

  I ought to move it. Even Father would want me to move it, I argue with myself, but when I glance at him he’s very still. He won’t even know. I stand up with the puppy in my arms and tiptoe towards the gun. I tiptoe in a careful circle until I am behind it. Then I put the puppy down on the grass.

  ‘Keep still!’ I tell him. ‘Guns are dangerous.’

  I kneel down in the grass and slide my hands underneath the butt of the gun, making sure it is pointing away from me. There is the trigger. That is where the shot comes out. Very gently, very quietly, I lift it. After all I’m only going to turn it round so that it is pointing into the hedge. I’m not doing anything bad. It is very heavy. I can’t hold it at all the way Father does. I brace myself and lift the weight of the gun on to my shoulder.

  But my back is to the hedge. The gun is pointing not at the hedge, but at Father. I shift it. It is slipping on my shoulder, hurting me. I’m afraid I’m going to drop it. The puppy wriggles round my feet.

  ‘Cathy!’

  It’s the breath of a voice, no more. I’ve been too busy trying to control the gun to notice Father. But he’s up, uncoiled on his hands and knees staring at me and the gun which is pointing straight at him. I’m going to swing it round, only it’s so heavy. Father’s face is white, streaked with mud.

  ‘Cathy! Don’t move now. Keep perfectly still. I’m coming round to you.’

  I stand perfectly still. The sun glints on the gun, the puppy wriggles warmly against my ankles, and my arms tremble with the weight. Father edges very cautiously round the grass, watching me all the time. Then he is at my shoulder, lifting the gun. There is a sharp, fierce smell coming from him.

  ‘I’ve got it now, Cathy,’ he says. ‘Step aside.’

  I step aside.

  ‘Are you all right now, Father?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I was ill for a bit, that’s all. Like your mother and her sick headaches. But I’m better now. And what in God’s name were you doing with this gun? How many times have you been told?’

  ‘It was pointing at me,’ I say, beginning to cry, ‘and you were asleep and you always told me –’

  ‘What did I tell you?’

  ‘Never, never, let your gun …’ I sob and hiccup. But I can’t finish it.

  ‘Pointed be at anyone,’ says Father, and he swings up the gun and points it at a cloud in the bright autumn sky. ‘There now. Watch this.’ The gun kicks his shoulder and the bang comes, splitting the sky into thistledown. I shut my eyes and ask,

  ‘What did you hit?’ but Father laughs. ‘Nothing. I was only pointing at the air. Come on now. Let’s go home.’

  ‘What about Lucy’s puppy? He’s not very well.’ And father looks at the puppy just as he usually does.

  ‘Poor little beggar. He’s played out. You can carry him if you like.’

  I glow with pleasure. I’m not usually allowed to carry the puppy, because he hasn’t been wormed yet. But, ‘Aren’t we going to Silence Farm, Father?’

  ‘Oh – Silence Farm,’ says Father as if he’s forgotten all about it. ‘No, Cathy, not today.’

  I think of the bitter tea and the dark parlour with its slippery chairs, and the rabbits in the lane.

  ‘No, Cathy!’ says Father. His voice is beginning to sound funny again. Quickly I take his hand, holding the puppy cradled in my other arm.

  ‘I don’t really want to go there anyway,’ I say. We walk quietly most of the way home. Father helps me over the ruts, and at the end of the muddy part he wipes my boots clean with grass.

  Just before we come to the wood he says casually, glancing down at me,

  ‘No need to tell anyone we didn’t go to Silence Farm, Cathy.’

  ‘No, Father.’

  ‘We’ll forget about it.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  I know he means all of it. The puppy and him curling up under the hedge and me holding the gun. Already I am not quite sure if any of it has really happened.

  ‘This little fellow’s cut his paw,’ says Father, ‘we’ll get it bound up before Lucy sees it.’

  I smile. Lucy is the fussiest bitch, John says, it’s a wonder she can bring herself to bear a litter of puppies, still less do what she has to do to get them. I squeeze the puppy and he looks up at me anxiously, his puppy-grin showing white needle-sharp teeth.

  It was cold inside the counterpane. How many other days had dropped clean out of my memory? What had I lost? He told me to forget, and I forgot, not because I was obedient but because I was afraid. My shoulders were hunched high and my breathing was tight.

  ‘Cathy will do as she’s told.’

  ‘You didn’t see what happened.’

  ‘You didn’t hear that, did you, Cathy?’

  ‘We’ll forget –’

  ‘Yes, we’ll forget …’

  ‘… all about it …’

  My body trembled, as if it knew things I didn’t know.

  Thirteen

  I’d had two hours of sleep after the dawn came, and my head ached. When I drew the curtains my eyes stung. In the mirror they were small, washed out as if I’d been crying in my sleep. The winter light was harsh this morning and my clothes were scratchy as I pulled them on, shivering. Rob shouldn’t have left me alone. We had to be together now. When his face on my pillow twitched with dreams, I could almost read them. They were my dreams too, my nightmares. I was entering him, going through the walls of skin between us. I thought of the inside of his brain like honeycomb, pale golden. I was a bee crawling through the chambers where he thought, my wings clogged with honey. We used to pretend to remember a life before we were born, when we played in our mother’s womb together. And how I was sad when he left before me, leaving too much space, forcing me to grow without him. I almost remembered seeing him swim away over the threshold without me. I grasped his heel but he was slippery. He was gone.

  We had to be together now because there was nowhere else to go. We needed to drowse together, fitting one to another and lapsing in and out of sleep. My heartbeat slowed to the pace of his, and I seemed to feel a larger heartbeat enclosing us both.

  But he wasn’t at breakfast. There was a half-eaten fried egg in his place, and a cup of coffee he hadn’t even touched. His chair was shoved back. He’d be down again in a minute. I poured tea for myself and watched the stream of it wobble with the shaking of my hand. The hand looked like someone else’s, not mine. I could not predict what it would do next. I was very tired, that was all it was.

  Kate came in and started to bang plates together.

  ‘He hasn’t finished,’ I said. ‘He hasn’t had his coffee yet.’

  ‘He won’t be drinking it,’ said Kate. ‘She came to fetch him. They’re going riding.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Livvy Coburn, who else would it be that could make Rob go off without finishing his breakfast?’

  ‘Have they gone?’ I asked, my hands clumsy, knocking my tea so it slopped. His coffee was still warm.

  ‘You might catch them,’ said Kate, eyeing me ironically, ‘if you run.’

  ‘It’s just there’s something I needed to tell Rob …’ I wouldn’t run, not in front of Kate. I walked to the door, stiff, my thighs rubbing against one another, my face set in a little smile.


  They were on their way out of the stable yard. The sun was on them as they sat big and powerful on their horses. They stretched down their necks and looked at me as if they were part of another race, Livvy on her beautiful cosseted mare and Rob sitting on a horse I didn’t know.

  ‘It’s Starcrossed,’ said Rob. His face turned to me, a glitter of evasion which I couldn’t read. ‘Mr Bullivant sent him over for me to exercise.’

  He belonged there on Starcrossed, his back straight but not stiff, his thighs against the powerful muscle of the horse. The two of them shone.

  ‘When are you coming back?’ I asked.

  He looked at Livvy, and she said, ‘I must be home for one o’clock. There are people coming for luncheon. But my mother wants you to come too, Rob. Starcrossed can go in our stables. Isn’t he an absolute angel, Catherine?’ she asked, and she laughed and leaned over to pat Starcrossed’s neck. Her touch was slow and caressing, and she glanced over her shoulder at Rob, her laughter still bright in her face. She was blonde, pink-tipped, immaculate. I wondered if she knew why she suddenly wanted him. No, she acted on instinct. She might look remote, but Livvy was as intuitive as a fox. She knew when her belongings slipped out of her grip.

  ‘Stand back, Catherine,’ said Livvy in her thin sweet voice. ‘She strikes out with her heels.’

  But I wasn’t going to let them go like that. ‘Rob,’ I said, ‘what about Miss Gallagher? You said you’d do something about her.’

  ‘When I get back,’ said Rob. ‘It’s all right, Cathy, forget her. She’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Oh, she’s a sweet old thing really,’ said Livvy, ‘but quite batty, of course. You don’t mind her, do you, Catherine? She likes you, you know.’ She smiled at me kindly, offering me Miss Gallagher as if she were worth something. Or did she believe that Miss Gallagher was all I was going to get, because deep down where Livvy could see and I couldn’t, we were alike?