Christmas in the Snow

by Karen Swan

  ‘Oh yeah.’ Isobel grinned, swinging her arm out, ready for Allegra to loop hers through. ‘Why be calm when melodramatics will do?’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It felt odd walking to the home of a grandfather who’d been dead their whole lives, and they both fell into a nervous quiet as they rounded the street the priest’s note told them he lived on.

  Questions, too many, were running through Allegra’s head. How should she tell him who they were? He was an elderly man – would he cope with the shock of being suddenly presented with the daughters of the child he’d lost over sixty years ago? And how much should they tell him about her mother? Would it distress him unduly to let him know the extent of her decline?

  Their feet took them soundlessly past the historic, blackened, elevated stadels that had been so bewildering to them only a few hours ago, but they had experienced for themselves now their one-room, windowless humility, their rustic simplicity that had weathered the very worst of the Alpine elements and still endured. These huts were basic, yes, but they had an integrity and substance to them that had to be respected. This was simply how life had been in an isolated farming community sixty years ago and before. She would make no such faux-pas about the huts with her grandfather as she had with Connor. This was the life her grandparents had known and into which her mother had been born, and it was as much a part of her heritage as the Edwardian semi they had grown up in, in Sheen.

  She knew what to expect: Connor’s base had been an insight into just how compact and confined their grandfather’s home would be – she remembered the lanterns hanging from hooks (no electricity), the black kettle on the stove (no central heating), the hay-barn ladder to the upper level and a bed that must surely – given the dimensions of the roof – be just a mattress on the floor (no en suite) . . .

  They had arrived. ‘Chalet Gundersbach’ was carved into a plaque on a high wooden gate – a smart wooden gate – that even they couldn’t see over.

  ‘Oh,’ Allegra said in surprise, staring at the intercom system like she had never seen one before.

  Isobel pressed the button. It was a long time before anyone answered.

  ‘Ja?’ It was a woman’s voice, fairly young-sounding.

  ‘H-hello?’

  There was a pause. ‘Yes?’

  ‘We’ve come to see Lars Fischer.’

  ‘Do you have an appointment?’

  Isobel whipped round to look at Allegra, her nose wrinkled. An appointment? ‘Sorry, no.’

  ‘Then he is busy. Goodb—’

  ‘Wait! . . . Uh . . .’ Isobel cleared her throat. ‘It’s important. It’s about Valentina.’

  There was another long pause, so long Allegra began to wonder if the woman had gone away.

  ‘Hello?’ Isobel repeated.

  A sudden click released the latch on the gate and it eased open fractionally. Allegra stepped through, expecting to find a small garden. She had noticed some of the larger properties had them, but this wasn’t a garden; it was a path – an extremely long one with split logs painstakingly arranged against the walls on the left, metre-high glass lanterns spaced every five metres, filled with church candles, on the right.

  ‘What the . . . ?’ Isobel spluttered. ‘It’s like a bloody Anouska Hempel hotel.’

  They walked briskly, their frowns growing as they took in the espaliered fruit trees – bare for now – and Isobel crouched down at one of the lanterns, pointing out a silver hallmark with wide eyes. The path was on an incline, and as it turned sharply left, they came face to face with another door, which was on the latch.

  It led into a lift.

  ‘This is bloody weird,’ Isobel muttered, pressing the ‘up’ button.

  The woman had sounded very officious, Allegra realized. ‘It must be a care home.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, then, can I come and live here too, please?’

  Allegra smiled, but she was as flummoxed as Isobel. Exactly how big did their farm have to be for a goat farmer to afford this?

  ‘Oh! What do you think we should call him?’ Isobel asked suddenly, just as the lift arrived at the floor and the door opened. A woman in her fifties with short blonde hair and tight jeans was waiting for them, no smile.

  ‘What did you say your name was?’ she asked.

  Allegra straightened up to her full, imposing height – at least five inches taller than the woman. Her mother had instilled in her a deep dislike for bad manners. ‘We didn’t. It’s Allegra and Isobel.’

  Her eyes moved between the two sisters, but her voice was less strident, her eyes seeming to catch repeatedly on Allegra. ‘Allegra and Isobel . . . ?’

  The woman wanted a surname, but to say it would be to tell the story before they were even in the same room as their grandfather. ‘Does it matter?’ she asked. ‘If you could just tell him it’s about—’

  ‘Valentina.’

  The man’s voice wasn’t strong, not any more. It tremored at the edges like a frayed hem, but the sound still resonated with a bass timbre that Allegra instinctively understood had once filled rooms, silenced enemies, won women. The white-haired, moustached man in the wheelchair was weak now in body, but not in spirit, and as he stared at her across the lobby, she knew this was no care home. This man had power and wealth – the Rolex Daytona and handmade shoes told her that.

  ‘I would have recognized you anywhere,’ he said, his eyes surveying her like she was a painting – or a ghost. ‘You are just like her. Your hair, your height . . . her nose too. Hands—’ He stopped, as though out of breath.

  The blonde walked over to him. A private nurse, then? ‘Lars?’

  But he flicked the joystick on the left arm of the wheelchair and revolved away from her. ‘Bettina, bring us drinks in the lounge,’ he said curtly. ‘Young ladies, follow me.’

  Allegra and Isobel glanced across at the nurse, who had straightened up as though he had slapped her. Striding past them both without making eye contact, she muttered: ‘You can hang your jackets on the pegs by the door.’

  ‘Well, she’s a peach,’ Isobel said under her breath, doing as she had been told, her eyes casing the large square hall. It was a melange of blond pines, older in style than the contemporary vogue for woven green oaks, but still deluxe with antique rugs scattered over the floors and some antique wooden skis and snow shoes fixed to the walls. A console table, opposite to where they were standing, was the only furniture in the space, with two gold, red and white Japanese lamps at either end and some framed black-and-white photographs on the surface. But it was the woman in an oil portrait hanging above that caught her eye – and Allegra’s too.

  ‘Holy crap!’ she whispered under her breath, her head turning quickly between the woman in the painting and her sister: fearless blue eyes that looked haughtily, almost defiantly, at the artist, long black hair that fell past her shoulders, pinned with pink and red flowers like a corona, berry-stained lips that seemed on the cusp of parting as though about to laugh, smirk, scold . . . ‘That is creepy! If it wasn’t for the eyes, she could be you. In fancy dress, I mean.’

  Allegra shot her an unamused look. She was too shocked by the resemblance herself to be able to laugh yet. She was too shocked by all of this. This chalet, the first sight of their grandfather . . . the first image of Valentina . . . But she had to agree – were it not for their eyes, she and Valentina would have made a matching pair.

  ‘Come on,’ she said with another nervous glance at the painting, following after where Lars had passed through a large arched door into a lavish room with panelled walls and an imposing fireplace. Deep red and green velvet sofas with bullion fringe were plumped high with tapestried scatter cushions, and a cuckoo clock ticked quietly on one wall. Lars was lowering himself into a fireside club chair, holding on to the arms for support.

  Both women hesitated behind the sofa, not sure whether to offer to help, seemingly paralysed by indecision and nerves.

  ‘You are my granddaughters,’ he said with a puff of effort, lo
oking down as he placed a carved walking cane, which he had used to get from the wheelchair to the club chair, against the side table next to him.

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked up at them both expectantly, seeming surprised to see them still halfway back across the room. ‘Come, come,’ he motioned. ‘I am as deaf as a table and so blind I can hardly see my own feet.’

  Allegra cracked a tiny smile, grateful for his humour, though she knew he was just joking. There was nothing wrong with his eyesight, as he had proved in the hall. Hers, though . . . It was only now they were close that she was able to take in the finer details herself. The shock and distance in the hall had been too great to absorb the minutiae, but now she saw the swelling in his hands and guessed at arthritis; she saw the broken veins on his cheeks, which were full coloured, and guessed at a love of fine wines; she saw the beak-like angle of his nose, which wasn’t hers or Isobel’s or their mother’s – from his side of the family, then. She looked for herself in him, but it was hard to tell in such intense circumstances. Maybe his hair, before it had turned white?

  They walked forwards, taking small steps and both feeling like nervous children, as they settled themselves on the sofa to his left, facing the fire.

  His eyes never left them. ‘What are your names?’

  ‘I am Allegra,’ Allegra said. ‘And this is Isobel.’

  ‘You are the elder.’ His eyes were on her and she nodded.

  ‘Yes. I’m thirty-one, and Isobel’s twenty-nine, nearly thirty.’

  ‘You are the protector, the strong one.’

  Allegra glanced at Isobel. ‘N-no. I wouldn’t say that. Iz is incredibly strong and determined. Most of the time she ends up looking after me as well as her son.’

  Lars looked at Isobel, his hands so clawed from the swelling they seemed to grip the armrests. ‘You have a family of your own?’

  She nodded. ‘One boy. His name’s Ferdy. He’ll be one in February.’

  Lars’s mouth opened, but no sound came, his blue eyes watery and red-rimmed, still staring at the two of them too intently.

  Isobel smiled awkwardly under the scrutiny, crossing and recrossing her legs, and Allegra knew her sister was biting down the impulse to get up and run out of here.

  Lars, appearing to sense her discomfort, looked away and blinked for a long moment. ‘I am sorry if I am staring at you both. It is a shock to me, you understand.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The blonde woman came in, silent as the snow, with a tray of coffee and biscuits, and they all fell quiet as she set it down on the table between them. They watched as she took her time pouring the coffee into the cups, putting one on the table beside Lars before offering Allegra hers while still holding the handle herself. Allegra shot her a mutinous look as the too-hot cup singed her fingertips before she could turn it round.

  The blonde woman began poking the fire, throwing on another log, and Allegra wondered what to say next. Lars seemed defiantly silent in the nurse’s company.

  Isobel filled the silence for her. ‘You speak very good English.’ A note of suspicion tinged the words.

  A half-smile played on his lips. ‘In this town? It is necessary now. We are international.’

  ‘You have a beautiful home,’ Allegra said, before Isobel could say more.

  ‘Thank you. I built it myself, 1954. Everyone thinks I am too old, of course, to stay here, but this is my home and I will draw my last breath within its walls.’ He stared fiercely at the blonde woman – as though she were one of the ‘everyone’ – as she set down the poker on the hearth and exited the room again as silently as she had entered.

  ‘Well, they can hardly blame you for feeling that,’ Allegra murmured. ‘I think I would feel the same. Wouldn’t you, Iz?’

  Isobel gave a polite shrug. The memory of their mother bitterly resisting being moved out of their family home – her tears and desperate pleas – was still far too fresh in both their minds.

  ‘You love your home too,’ he said to Allegra, his eyes on her again.

  Allegra nodded, to be polite, but she wasn’t sure where home was – certainly not the flat in Poplar, which was still little more than student digs, certainly not the house in Islington, which was a financial investment and nothing more, and certainly not the orange-doored flat that protected her mother. Isobel’s maybe – when Lloyd was at work or out with the boys and it was just her and Iz and Ferds?

  He cocked his head to the side slightly, regarding her with an inscrutable expression, and she wondered whether it was her he saw or Valentina. ‘Tell me about your mother.’

  Allegra straightened her spine a little. It never got easier saying the words out loud; the guilt was as bad now as it had been then. ‘The best mother we could have ever asked for. Intensely loving and protective. She always did her best for us.’

  Lars stiffened, picking up the past tense immediately, his mind clearly still pin-sharp. ‘She’s dead?’ His voice trembled.

  ‘No! No. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you think—’

  ‘So she is here?’ The urgency in his voice betrayed the emotion behind the question. ‘She has come to bury her mother?’

  Allegra shook her head. ‘She doesn’t know about any of this. She has Alzheimer’s . . .’ She hesitated. Did that translate? But she saw his face change and knew he understood. She fell quiet, understanding the impact of her words: within minutes of bringing hope of reuniting him with his daughter, she was pulling it away again like a child playing a cruel trick.

  His expression folded inwards, growing smaller. ‘What . . . ? When did it start?’

  ‘Six years ago. It was early onset.’ Allegra rubbed her lips together at the memories – her mother’s sudden violence when she couldn’t find the jam in the fridge, only for it to turn up in the dishwasher, her overnight clumsiness that saw cups of tea dropped straight to the ground as she missed the table by clear gaps, her excitable chatter in a girlish voice that harked from the past . . . ‘We kept her at home as long as we could. I tried moving back in with her, but I travel a lot and work long hours and just couldn’t be around enough. We tried a care home, but she was so devastated about being put in there.’ Allegra exhaled, trying to steady her breath. It made her angry even now, when she remembered the call from the police saying she had escaped from the home and had been seen walking on the motorway slip road. ‘She’s in an assisted-living complex now, with her own nurse.’

  Lars was quiet for a long moment as he looked into the flames of the fire. ‘It isn’t right that she should be so young . . .’ His words trailed away, but his hand tightened round the arm of the chair.

  ‘Please don’t be distressed. In her own way, she’s happy. Her nurse is the very best, and she herself isn’t aware of the confusion most of the time. It’s me and Iz who . . .’ She cleared her throat. ‘Well, we’re the ones who have to adapt. Very often she doesn’t know who we are and we . . . you know, just have to accept it as part of the disease. But at least she’s not frightened herself. That would be worse.’

  ‘You are too young to lose your mother in this way.’

  She was quiet for a moment, staring down at her hands. ‘There’s never a right time, though, is there?’ She realized their loss was mutual – they had all lost Julia too young, Isobel, Allegra and Lars.

  ‘What about her husband?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ The question was like a bullet that she hadn’t seen coming and she glanced across at Isobel, who looked like she’d taken the hit. ‘Her husband,’ Lars said, his eyes narrowing as he took in her reaction. ‘Your father.’

  ‘He . . . he left a long time ago.’ Allegra clasped her hands together over one knee, the knuckles blanching.

  His expression fell. ‘When your mother fell ill?’

  ‘Before then,’ she nodded crisply, her voice suddenly distant and formal. ‘He has another family.’

  ‘And you have no contact with him,’ Lars said, more as a statement of fact as his eyes darted left
and right, reading her and Isobel’s body language.

  ‘That’s right.’ Her chin was beginning to push up in the air, a habit from childhood when she’d thought that to tip her head back would be to force the tears back down. Gravity on her side.

  He turned to the fire again, as though aware of the fragility of the ice he was walking on. ‘She has suffered too much, my daughter.’

  ‘No,’ Allegra said quickly, too quickly. ‘We were happy. We are happy. We didn’t need him anyway. We had each other – me, Iz and Mum.’ Her fingers found Isobel’s and interlinked with them. ‘Didn’t we, Iz?’

  Isobel looked up at her and Allegra saw the hollowness of her lie reflected in her sister’s eyes. Yes, they had had each other, but they had been fatally diminished by his desertion, like a tree that had been too brutally lopped – still alive but no longer able to grow.

  ‘And we had Granny too.’ Isobel’s voice rang out cold and steely and strong.

  The blood drained from Lars’s face. ‘Who?’

  ‘Granny.’ Defiance clung to the word.

  Allegra trod more softly. ‘She means Anya. We grew up believing she was our grandmother.’

  ‘Anya said she was . . . your grandmother?’ Every word aged him.

  Allegra nodded, watching him closely. The truth was somewhere in this room with them. ‘Mum doesn’t know yet that Valentina was her mother. We only discovered it ourselves last week, when the police traced us in England.’

  ‘England.’ A sound came deep from inside Lars’s chest, an expression coming into his eyes that would have seemed dangerous on a younger man.

  ‘You didn’t know that was where she went?’ Allegra asked, her eyes scrutinizing his every move.

  Lars shook his head.

  ‘When we got the phone call, it was the first time we’d even heard Valentina’s name. No one had ever mentioned her before—’

  ‘Or you,’ Isobel said, interrupting again, her every word a pushback against the new truth that made a liar of the only grandmother she had ever known and loved. ‘We were told you had died when Mum was a toddler.’