A Spell of Winter

by Helen Dunmore

  ‘Cathy.’

  I turned. He’d rolled towards me. His eyes were wide open, wider than I’d ever seen them, like a baby’s eyes.

  ‘Did you get your brother his coat?’

  I didn’t know he even knew about the coat.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I said.

  ‘I never saw it.’

  ‘The Army and Navy make up parcels for France. They sent it straight out to him as soon as they got the order.’

  ‘Good.’ After a while the bubbling wheeze grew louder and I saw he was trying to laugh.

  ‘No coat if he hadn’t –’

  ‘Hadn’t what?’

  ‘Gone in as an officer. No coat for private. Good thing changed his mind.’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  I’d spent on the coat the money I’d put aside to hire horses. Now I’d have to see what price I could get for timber this year … There wasn’t much else left to sell … except land.

  ‘Good coat.’

  ‘Yes it was. The best. Superior Quality British Warm.’

  He was sweating heavily. Was that bad, or good? People sweated when their fevers broke. It had a strange, childhood smell to it, teasing at me. Then I had it: pear drops. We’d have to change his bedlinen again.

  ‘Do you want the bed-bottle, Grandfather?’

  ‘No. Water.’

  He couldn’t sit up to drink it, but we had a feeding-bottle with a spout that Livvy had sent over. She was a VAD now, working in the convalescent hospital. It was good of her to think of us. Her groom had bent down, po-faced, handing me the feeding-cup without getting off his horse. How was it she had kept her groom? He was a fine strong young man, fit to be fighting. I put the spout to my grandfather’s lips and he sucked noisily, his eyes closed with concentration. There was a little brandy in the water, to keep up his strength, and a spoonful of honey. The liquid began to run out of the side of his mouth. He’d gone to sleep again, and the prow of his nose was sharp and white in his darkening face. I wondered how long it would be before they came. It wasn’t market day, so the wizard would be at home. He worked long hours making up his remedies, Mrs Blazer said. There was a skill to it like nobody knew. And then the sweets, which made good money in the greyness of the war: candied angelica, crystallized violets, peppermint drops. He could always get sugar from somewhere. If you wanted beauty as well as sweetness there was honey water and elderflower water, and eyebright cream to make the whites of tired eyes as clear as a child’s.

  ‘You ought to try it,’ said Mrs Blazer. ‘Shall I bring you home a sample?’

  He’d gone a long way now, deep into his sleep. The summer air moved around the room, flickering patterns on to the walls and drying the sweat on his face. It couldn’t do him any harm, and I was very tired, too tired to close the window. I curled my feet under me in his big, uncomfortable armchair and shut my eyes. I heard the swifts skirling under the eaves.

  When I woke they were both bending over my grandfather’s bed, one at each side, Mrs Blazer and the wizard. His broad back faced me. He was a big man, not as I had imagined, broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted, his hair so black it had blue in it. And young: I’d thought he’d be old. But when I turned I saw he was not so young. Fifty, perhaps, or more. He was a walking advertisement for his own remedies, his skin supple, his eyes clear and pale in his dark face, his hair still thick and glossy. His eyes shifted around the room, taking it all in, fixing on nothing. He rummaged in his pockets and brought out a brown paper bag, untwisted it, shook out a few white lumps.

  ‘You melt this, see, over a flame. Would you have a little dish, and a lamp? Then he’ll breathe easy.’

  Mrs Blazer took the white stuff reverentially, and hurried away.

  ‘We’ve been rubbing his chest with eucalyptus balsam to help his breathing,’ I said. ‘I thought you might bring some remedy he could swallow.’

  It seemed to me that if you went so far as to call in a wizard, he ought to do something more than you could do yourself. Perhaps there were other brown paper bags rumpled up in his pockets.

  ‘There’s no need for medicine,’ he said.

  ‘But he looks worse to me. That’s why we sent for you.’

  ‘Come here.’

  He had a strong animal smell, like the fresh sweat of a horse mixed with herbal mustiness. His body was huge and safe at my side.

  ‘Now if you look down at him, see those little speckles round his mouth and nose, coming up under the skin.’

  They seemed to spread as I looked.

  ‘Skin’s got that plum-colour since this morning, has it? You’ll see the blue coming stronger now.’

  Yes, it was stronger. It was the blue of bruises around his lips.

  ‘He’s quieter than he was,’ I said. ‘Is that a good sign?’

  ‘He’ll go out easy,’ said the wizard. ‘Sometimes you see ’em thrash like they’ve missed their tide, but he’s caught his. Knowing what I know of him, he had his mind made up.’

  What do you know of him, I thought. Only his reputation. A hard man. The man from nowhere.

  ‘He’ll be finding them already,’ said the wizard.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The ones he wants to find. Dessay you’ll know who they are.’

  ‘So you won’t give him anything.’

  ‘Give him a little water if he asks. But I think he won’t ask.’ He bent over suddenly, and took my grandfather’s wrist, counting his pulse just as Dr Milmain did.

  ‘Want to feel it?’ he asked me.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Starting to flutter now; a bit of him’s still caught here. You were dreaming when I came in.’

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘What was it about then?’

  ‘A dance we had, a long time ago. Only it was all different.’

  ‘How was that?’

  ‘There were two dances, one in one hall and one in another.’ I didn’t want to tell him any more.

  ‘Good and evil, eh?’ said the wizard. ‘Was that it?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I cast dreams, didn’t she tell you?’

  ‘Then you know what I did.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Mrs Blazer came back with the lamp, the flame turned down as low as it would go and a little tin dish balanced above with the white stuff beginning to swim in its own grease. As the lumps melted a smell of roses curled into the room. Dark red roses, red almost to blackness and fleshy at the base of their petals, with drops of dew standing on them. I looked at the wizard.

  ‘Attar of roses,’ he said. ‘You have to take a field full of flowers to make an ounce of it. I don’t let it go to everyone, but Mrs Blazer has promised to pay me well.’

  I opened my mouth to say we had no money, then I saw how she looked at him, smoothing down the folds of her apron over her belly. She was old but she was young too, just as he was. The smell of roses opened out into the room.

  ‘He’s going,’ said Mrs Blazer suddenly and sharply. My grandfather’s face was a wreck now, only the nose standing out on it. For a second he seemed to want to rear himself up and catch his breath, then he sank back. The lamp burnt but he was going. I had my arm behind him, and his nightshirt was wet and cold with sweat. His head lolled into my shoulder, the whole head rasping, not just his breath. Mrs Blazer put a wet flannel to his lips, then wiped the sweat from his face, but it sprang out again, as if every pore of his skin was weeping. The wizard turned up the flame of the lamp so the stuff bubbled and the fume of roses mixed with the May air blowing in through the window. Then black slime ran out of his mouth. He coughed once, struggled and then he seemed to tear free of himself, leaving his mouth wide and empty as a cave and his body slipping down my shoulder and back on to the pillows, which wheezed softly with escaping air as if he were still alive.

  Twenty-three

  It is winter in the house. The floorboards creak overhead as if someone is walking up there in long deliberate strides. Suddenly there is silence. The footste
ps have risen into the air, skimming it as they ride from room to room. Dust angels stir in the corners, then subside. I don’t open many doors. It’s not necessary, and I don’t want to see the damp patches growing on the walls like watercolours. There’s a trapped, musty smell which would go if I opened up the rooms in turn, throwing up the sashes and lighting fires. But there’s not enough fuel, and why should I air rooms for people who are never coming back to them?

  Kate has sent me a photograph. She sits with a child slipping off her lap, a hefty boy who looks as if he is already fighting his way out of her arms. His brows are drawn together as he scowls into the camera. All Kate’s features are mixed up in him, but he is not an attractive child. He hasn’t inherited Kate’s long eyes, and when I look closely Kate’s own eyes look narrower and more ordinary than I remember. Perhaps the boy takes after his father, who stands beside Kate, his spade-shaped face impassive, one arm resting on her shoulder as if he owns her. And Kate sits bolt upright as if she is proud of the possessing hand, the dark-clothed man who is hers as much as she is his. I wonder. The Kate I know would whisk out of his grip in an instant. This Kate is heavier, and she wears a hat that looks more like a testament of respectability than an ornament. The photograph is hand-coloured, and Kate’s face is a startling china pink. I peer close to see if there is a ring on her hand, but she’s wearing gloves. Behind this little family the Niagara Falls thunder. Kate, chair, child, husband and all look as if they are about to topple off the edge of a precipice and disappear in a cloud of spray, leaving Kate’s hat bobbing on the turmoil of the waters. But it’s only a photographer’s backcloth, draped out in some airless room, smelling of dust.

  Another photograph fell out of the envelope when I opened it. It’s an amateur snapshot, over-exposed, showing a whitish house with windows like tiny staring eyes. On the front porch there stands a sideways Kate, one hand on the door handle in proof of ownership. At the edge of the photograph there is the corner of another, similar, whitish house. They live in the fast-growing town of Forêt Noir, where Kate’s husband manages a timber yard. The little boy is called Paul and he is stuffed into a waistcoat and jacket that are a tiny replica of his father’s clothes. His arms stand away from his body stiffly, and his legs look unchildlike, as if a little old man has perched himself on Kate’s lap. How old would she be now – about thirty-five? She might have many more children, but somehow I feel that she won’t. The three of them look as settled as a story which has already been written.

  I don’t suppose Paul is ever allowed to play in the timber yard, tossing up handfuls of white, resinous sawdust and riding the logs as if they were bronco horses. One day, Kate writes, they plan to make a trip back to the old country, but she doesn’t say which old country that will be. I am sure she won’t come here. Paul won’t want to meet the grown woman who once sat on his mother’s lap, and Kate won’t want her widower to see her narrow attic room with its looking-glass making faces at him.

  She asks after Rob and my grandfather as if they are still alive. I can’t bring myself to write back for a long time. She is the last person in whose mind they are living, eating, sleeping, quarrelling, still capable of change. My letter will end that: even in Canada they will be finished and fading. I wait, letting the words I will write drum over and over in my mind. Perhaps Kate ought to know how things had happened. But then I re-read her letter and realize that she has only written to me because she wants to stamp on to the image we have of her the icons of her house and her child. She has probably written the same letter to the little house in Dublin where what remains of her family lives and has enclosed the same two photographs, the proofs of her new life. It is the sending of that letter that is important to her, not any answer I might send back. In the end I write briefly, telling her that Grandfather has died, and Rob is missing, believed killed.

  Missing, believed killed. Believed by whom? It takes a long time for belief like that to solidify from whirling grains of hope, fear and speculation to a slow giving up. He died little by little in my mind. At first I was sure he was hiding out somewhere behind the lines, holed up with an injury or loss of memory. The front was another Canada, and one day he’d appear when I least expected him, telling me nothing of his past, giving me nothing but the fact of his presence.

  Nothing told me he was dead. I can’t look back on that ordinary day and make it extraordinary. It was a clear late summer day, that last day he was seen alive, the day on which I have to presume he died. He walked out of the world while I was picking apples. My hands moved from branch to basket, drunken wasps throbbed inside hollow windfalls, and I thought of nothing but checking the apples for blemishes, and how many baskets I had picked. It was a calm, satisfying day. The Michaelmas daisies stood still, waiting to glow at dusk as if they were lighted from within. There wasn’t a tremor in the air as I lugged the first basket to the orchard gate.

  There wasn’t a shred of his clothing left, or of his flesh. There was only the coat, because he hadn’t been wearing it. It was sent back to me muddy, smelling of wool that has been packed when damp, and of wood smoke. There was nothing in the pockets. I shut my eyes the first time I felt deep into his pockets. When we used to walk side by side I would put my hand into his pocket and our fingers would meet and twine there. I felt the ridge of the seam, and the silky, expensive lining fabric. They had given me my money’s-worth with that coat. There wasn’t even the tiniest hole through which something might have fallen.

  Weeks after the telegram and the official letter I had a letter from someone who knew him. They’d been at a rest camp together and he’d played chess with Rob every night. It was summer, so they played until the light went.

  We never had a candle because of the moths. It was only when someone lit a lamp that we’d realize it was quite dark.

  There’d been a concert and Rob had sung a song in French.

  It was the kind of tune you catch yourself whistling all the next day. I meant to ask him to write it down for me, but then our orders came and we were sent back up to the line, so it went out of my head.

  It was a nice letter, though he didn’t know any more about how Rob had died. The war was over by the time he wrote.

  It seems such terribly hard luck that it should happen just then.

  I lost the chess set when our trench was shelled, or I’d send it to you.

  I’d read in the newspaper how our men played chess using bits of paper for pieces. These were better than wooden pieces because they could be swept up into a pocket in an instant when orders came. The men did not need to have the real thing. If ‘Queen’ was written on a piece of paper, then it was a queen and it could ramp triumphantly over the other pieces, destroying them. I thought of Rob playing chess with Edward Manston in the greenish twilight, with the white pieces still showing clear while the players had to fumble for the black.

  I’ll be able to go and see his grave if I want, only it won’t be his grave but a representative grave where they’ve reverently lowered a lump of flesh that is supposed to approximate to Rob and all the others who can’t be traced by so much as a button. I shan’t go. Better to think of the ditches lined with cow-parsley and Rob knocking off flower heads with his stick as he strolls down the lane to turn in. I see him look up suddenly, startled to see me. He’s brown again from living outside for months; his freckles are like the speckling on a hen’s egg. His hair has grown and it springs up, full of life.

  ‘Cathy!’ he says. ‘Whatever are you doing here? You’d better get home, you’ll be frightened.’

  He knows I’m frightened of everything: Grandfather and Miss Gallagher and the boy in the wallpaper. But I’m not any more. I look back at the long lines of tents which make up the rest camp, and the men lounging their way to bed or queueing for the cocoa and biscuits organized by the YMCA. Then I blink and the field clears and grows green. The pale yellowish oblongs left by the tents show for a moment, then vanish in a wave of bright new grass. It’s up to our ankles, then our knees.
There are dog-daisies in it, and corn-cockle, and the ripe tips of the grass tickle our legs. Rob’s wearing his Norfolk jacket again, the one I haven’t seen for years, and his dirty hands move deftly as he plaits a tiny trap for field-mice. Not to kill them, he tells me, just to let them run in and out. I bend over to have a look. There is the little hole for the mice to go in, and crumbs of the biscuit I’ve brought in my pinafore pocket, to tempt them. It is such a satisfactory little mouse-house that I can’t believe the mice will be able to resist it.

  ‘There!’ says Rob, triumphantly, holding it out to me, and I take it very carefully and balance it on my palm, turning it round while I become a mouse in my mind, brushing my way through the plaited entrance.

  Suddenly we both stiffen. A voice caws from far off, near the house:

  ‘Cath-eee. Rob-ert.’

  ‘Get down,’ says Rob. ‘She’ll never see us,’ and we fold ourselves down into the tickling, rustling grass, slowly so that we won’t attract her eye by a sudden movement. We are close together, facing one another, the flower heads and grasses blowing above our heads. This is exactly like being inside the mouse-house, I think.

  ‘She’s just shouting. She doesn’t know where we are,’ he says reassuringly.

  I can smell his hair, hot from the sun, and his sweat, and the overheated wool of the Norfolk jacket. This is our house. I nip off some tiny pimpernel flowers which are growing close to the ground, and spread them out on my lap. The breeze passes over us without touching us.

  ‘We could stay here for ever and she’d never find us,’ says Rob. ‘No one will ever find us here.’

  ‘I’ve brought you a letter,’ says Mr Bullivant. He has walked over, because there aren’t any horses at Ash Court now. When people in the village heard he was coming back they thought it was all going to start again, the building and planting and landscaping, with Ash Court buoyed up on its tide of money. But he’s selling up and going away.

  ‘We’re always hearing about hard-faced men who’ve done well out of the war,’ he said, ‘but I’m not one of them.’