Ghosts of Winter

by Rebecca S. Buck

  “Can you try again with her?”

  “I don’t know. I think she’s dating someone else.” Even saying it was painful.

  “Maybe she wants you to fight a bit harder for her.”

  “Do you think?” I didn’t want to cling to false hopes, but it wasn’t such a far-fetched idea.

  “I don’t know, but if you like her, it’s worth trying, isn’t it?”

  “You’re right.” I smiled even though she couldn’t see me. “Thank you.”

  “I guess this is what sisters are for.”

  “I’ve not been a very good sister.”

  “Neither of us has, Ros. We’re going to change that.”

  “Yes, we are.” I replied with conviction. “Are you going to come up and visit sometime?”

  “Of course. And you must come down here soon. And get yourself online so we can be in touch more often.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  “I better go now, Madeline’s trying to pull the phone out of my hands.”

  “Go on. I probably ought to be making cups of tea for the workers by now.”

  “Talk to you soon, Ros.”

  “Yes. Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  I ended the call and stared at the phone as though it had worked some kind of miracle. In some ways it had. I understood I’d never really known my sister before, and I felt sadness for the years we’d missed, combined with a little thrill at what the future held. I really wanted to be friends with Jeanne.

  Her advice about Anna made sense too. Buoyed by the conversation with Jeanne, and the prospect of a much brighter future, I decided the workmen could wait a little longer for their morning tea and coffee and instead scrolled through the phone until I found Anna’s number. I dialled before I could think twice about it.

  I listened to the rings, wondering what I was going to say when she answered. The phone rang for much longer than it usually did. Then the voicemail answered. I’d never known Anna to be far from her phone. “Anna, it’s Ros. I want to talk to you. I’ll call again later.”

  Part of me was elated with relief and optimism. But somehow the situation with Anna seemed worse for it. I wanted to share my new happier mindset with Anna. I wanted her to see the progress at Winter. I wanted her to meet Jeanne. And now she wouldn’t even take my call.

  *

  Thankfully, I was occupied for most of the afternoon, going from room to room with the electrician, who wanted to confirm things such as the placement of light switches with me. Towards the end of the afternoon the chimney expert arrived to check the fireplaces and chimneys. He told me as soon as they’d been professionally cleaned, they would be perfectly safe to use. The thought of lighting a fire in one of the grand fireplaces, warming the room with the glow of dancing flames, and seeing smoke billow from the chimney, gave me a real thrill. Winter was gradually getting its life force back. I knew then how connected I felt with my home, and despite everything, I smiled. I couldn’t wait for Jeanne to see Winter.

  The work on the house had to stop once it grew dark, which, this being mid-January, was still before five o’clock. As twilight deepened and, the house empty once more, I grew accustomed to the silence again, Winter and I relaxed together. I switched on a lamp for the sake of the warm, yellow glow and heated a pan of vegetable soup on my camping stove. At some point in the next week I had someone coming to the house to tell me whether the old range in the downstairs kitchen was suitable for renovation. I looked forward to being able to cook a meal for myself other than the soup or pasta that I could manage on my camping cooker.

  Eventually, I found relaxation gave way to restlessness. The satisfaction resulting from my conversation with my sister was with me still, but it was at war with thoughts of Anna. Not being able to talk to her on the phone left me hovering in a vacuum. I didn’t know whether to begin the difficult process of trying to forget about her and the potential between us, or whether I could still hope, making it worth planning a way to fight for her affections. Hoping for a resolution, I grabbed the phone and dialled her number again. It rang, rang some more, then went to voicemail again. I knew Anna wouldn’t be at work at this time. She was ignoring me. The thought hurt more than it should have done. “Anna, it’s Ros again. Please can we talk?”

  So much had happened. I was at the beginning of a relationship with my sister that promised to be better than anything we’d shared before; I had a real sense of my mother being proud of me; Winter was progressing nicely, as the lingering odours of varnish and cut wood told me; I’d met, and spent the night with, a phenomenal woman. And yet here I was, in a quickly darkening room, on my own, longing for something I couldn’t have. A lot had changed from when I’d come here in November, but my life appeared to be in much the same shape. Was this going to be the perpetual state of my existence for the rest of my time? However optimistic I felt, it was all for nothing if I couldn’t translate the feeling into the way my life played out.

  Unable to sit still and contemplate this for any longer, I decided it was time to have a look around the house and inspect what work had been done today. I found it a comforting ritual, going from room to room, taking stock of the progress bringing the house into the present century. I left my hideaway in the Blue Drawing Room and headed upstairs. The old, mouldering carpet had been removed, and the steps looked rather sorry for themselves stripped bare. I had a meeting with an interior designer next week, another friend of Anna’s, who was an expert on period properties. The prospect made me a little nervous, for I had the impression interior designers were used to far more savvy and artistic clients than I was. I still found it hard to understand I even had the money to pay for an interior designer, having never been able to afford more than a pot of paint and a brush when it came to decorating in my previous homes. Auntie Edie’s money was dwindling gradually, but I was surprised by how much was left. I saw it as Auntie Edie’s money for Winter, not mine, but it still kept the roof over my head and provided me with my meals. I would be forever grateful for the chance she had given me, the honour of bringing Winter back from its decline.

  The landing at the top of the stairs was as bare as the stairs themselves, the floorboards naked and partially sanded. Some work was being done to the windows here, and one had been removed and boarded over. I opened the door ahead of me and peered into the Red Bedroom. The old bed was still there, draped in dustsheets. I intended to keep what scant furniture there was in the property, and consult an antiques restorer when the timing was appropriate. Some of the floorboards had needed to be replaced in this room, and I saw this work had been completed. There was a layer of white dust coating everything, the consequence of the electrician chiselling at the plaster. His channels were still open, and the new wiring was visible, tucked neatly inside. I still had power for the time being, as the electrician had left most of the old system in place for me while he fitted the replacement circuit. He promised I wouldn’t be without electricity for more than a day, for which I was grateful.

  It had grown completely dark outside, and the first floor was a shadowy place with the few working electric light bulbs illuminating it. I’d planned to go up to the attics and see what had been done up there, but something about the deepening night deterred me. The dark corners and passageways of Winter did not frighten me, but they were still not wholly familiar.

  At night, I always felt I was exploring someone else’s house. My knowledge of the long period of time the house had stood empty made that feeling even worse. The last people to call this their home had lived here in the early 1930s. Life had been so different in those days. I had a very good grasp of the events of that time, of what the people who lived here might have worn, but they were so far removed from me, so very different, that any traces of themselves left in this house might as well have come from another world. Winter had never seen truly modern life, and I never felt it more than when I wandered around its empty rooms in the evening.

  I wasn’t unwelcome here, I was just a su
rprising and unexpected chapter in a story that had seemed to be over. The missing pages of that story made it difficult to follow and I felt oddly connected to and yet separate from Winter’s history. If there had been such things as ghosts, I imagined they would gather round and inspect me curiously, trying to understand what I was doing in their house. Sometimes I felt they were there, the spirits of Winter’s past, unsettled by my presence. Maybe I would burn some bundles of sage in the rooms to rid the place of negative energy. Or perhaps I should embrace the lingering energy of times past. Its influence was not necessarily negative. Good things were happening to me here. Perhaps the spirits were helping me.

  I left the bedroom and returned to the landing. I was about to go back downstairs and maybe examine the restoration work being carried out in the Saloon, when my attention was drawn by a sound like a trapped bird beating its wings against a window in the shadows of the east wing. An eerie and strangely loud sound in this silent house. After a moment, I realised the source of the noise was a flapping tarpaulin. I guessed it had been secured over one of the damaged windows and had come loose. I wouldn’t hear it from my bed, and it wouldn’t disturb me once I went back downstairs, but it was a horribly disturbing noise, and with my reflections about the previous inhabitants of Winter fresh in my mind, I had to restore the peace to the first floor.

  The electricity in the east wing was not working, but I grabbed a torch left by one of the workmen and turned it on. The beam was weakening a little, but still shone bright enough for me to see my way to the window. Sure enough, the bottom corner of the tarpaulin had slipped out from behind the piece of wood that should have been holding it in place, and it was flapping in the breeze. Such restless fluttering was unnerving, the sound filling the chamber as though it had a mind of its own. I smiled as I thought how easy it must be to convince someone a house of this age was haunted, if they were ready to believe.

  I made my way towards the loose tarpaulin, still absorbed in my contemplation of possible ghosts. I did not notice the black and yellow tape in my path until I felt it touch my thighs. Before I realised that I’d walked into warning tape, or why it was there, I’d taken another step forward. A second later, the floor below me creaked and groaned loudly. Then it disappeared beneath my feet, and I was falling.

  Something caught my T-shirt as I fell and held me suspended for seconds before, through my panic, I heard the ripping of fabric and I fell again, farther this time. Though it must have taken just seconds, I had enough time to realise I had fallen through the floor into the room below, which had a very high ceiling. It was a long way from that ceiling to the floor. I was surely going to die. I had no time to be scared, just to be glad I’d made amends with Jeanne, before I hit the floor of the Common Parlour. And everything went black.

  Winter Manor, 1927

  “Really, Evvie, darling, this was the most top-hole idea!” Clara Bridgford accepted her glass of scotch whisky from the tray the housemaid offered her and reclined on the sofa in the Common Parlour, smiling at her friend Evadne Burns, who grinned back at Clara’s purposeful use of schoolgirl slang.

  “Yes, and how!” Courtney Craig added, from her place on the sofa close to Clara. “It’s so long since we saw each other. What is it now, nine years since we left St. Hilda’s?”

  “Nine years it is.” Evadne smiled with satisfaction and sipped her gin and tonic as the maid left the room quietly. Inviting her closest school chums to Winter to spend the weekend with her, a small reunion, had felt like a good idea when it had first occurred to her, but she had grown rather nervous over the previous week, as the preparations were made. Her friends were all so much more sophisticated than she was, and though she had seen them on occasion since they’d left school aged eighteen, they had not been together as a group at all in those nine years. She was concerned that, en masse, her schoolgirl pals would be rather overwhelming. However, she’d told herself, she was mistress of Winter Manor, a country house of her own, something none of them could claim. In the end, it was simply awfully exciting to see them again. Their idiosyncratic ways had deepened as they had matured, and they were all infinitely more fascinating than they had been in those long-ago days. She also found she derived endless amusement from the servants’ expressions when they encountered her friends, especially Clara.

  Aged twenty-seven, as they all were, Clara was strikingly attractive. Her dark blond hair was cut short in a severe Eton crop. She wore little make-up, just enough powder to make an already smooth complexion flawless. Her outfit was an immaculately tailored gentleman’s sports jacket in blue-and-cream striped fabric, complete with white silk cravat, and cream slacks. To see a woman in trousers was astonishing enough for Winter’s servants, but a woman in a man’s attire was something they could barely help but stare at. Clara sat with the posture of a man too, lounging back with the ankle of her bent leg resting on her opposite knee, her whisky in one hand, her other arm resting loosely around Courtney’s shoulders. Evadne had to admit to herself even she’d been slightly startled by Clara’s appearance when she had arrived with Courtney, driving her own motor car, earlier that day. Though Clara had never been feminine, she’d never been quite so blatantly masculine in their younger days. Yet a few minutes’ conversation had revealed that Clara, underneath the affectations, was still the warm-hearted, witty friend she remembered from their school days at St. Hilda’s School.

  That Clara and Courtney were still an item was no great surprise. They’d been sweethearts in their last year at school, and Courtney was totally dedicated to Clara. Originally from New York City, as her accent made apparent, Courtney’s parents had sent her to boarding school in England when she was thirteen. Though she had returned to her home across the Atlantic when she’d left school, it had only been a year before the separation from Clara had been too much for her to bear, and she had returned to England and her lover.

  Clara was justifiably proud of her girl. Courtney was beautiful, with her Marcel-waved chestnut hair, perfectly pale skin, red lips, and slender figure. She’d been made for the latest fashion of dropped waistlines and flat chests, unlike Evadne herself, whose swelling hips and rounded bosom she considered the worst of natural curses. Courtney’s midnight-blue dress, its hemline resting just below her knees, intricately covered with dazzling crystal beads, was a work of art in itself. It would have been easy to resent Courtney, were she not so engaging in conversation and quick humoured. Evadne was sure the Common Parlour, or any of Winter for that matter, had never seen a more intriguing or attractive couple as Clara and Courtney.

  “But where in this world has Edith vanished to?” Clara demanded.

  “I’m not sure, but she and Madge appear to be together wherever they are,” Courtney replied, her tone suggestive.

  “Well, can’t say I’d blame Edith, Madge is quite a poppet, even if her taste in dresses is perfectly horrendous.” Clara spoke as though she was serious.

  “You can keep your eyes to yourself,” Courtney said affectionately. “Besides, if you ask me, Evvie here’s got her own eye on Edith.” She cast a sly glance at Evadne, who felt her face colouring before she could do anything about it.

  “Oh, don’t be so ridiculous,” Evadne said, trying to laugh.

  “Do you know, Courtney dear, I think you might be right,” Clara said, as she leaned forward, placing her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hand, to study Evadne with new interest.

  “You can stop that right away.” Evadne squirmed under their attention. “How would you know who I’ve got my eye on?”

  “Oh, Evvie, darling, we just know.” Clara said.

  “We? Is this the secret wisdom of the sisterhood of inverts?” Evadne hoped a witty remark would divert their interest.

  “Oh, darling, how could you use that word?” Courtney sighed melodramatically as if really wounded.

  “Makes it sound rather fun, if you ask me,” Clara said, with a crooked smile. “As though we spend all of our time standing on our heads.”


  “Whereas we only do that some of the time,” Courtney said wryly, with a suggestive grin. “But all of this is drawing us away from the subject in hand.” Her gaze settled firmly on Evadne once more. “Have you got your eye on Edith, Evvie? Oh, do say yes, it would be ever such a thrill!”

  “I don’t find women attractive,” Evadne replied, hoping to silence them with a certainty she did not feel.

  “What about Miss Goodman at St. Hilda’s? You had a real crack on for her,” Clara said.

  “I did not.” Evadne flushed an even deeper red.

  “Oh, we all did, sweetheart, don’t even try to deny it,” Courtney put in. “They just don’t make women like her back home. So very severe, but when she smiled, you just wanted to—”

  “It’s not your fantasies we’re interested in, dearest,” said Clara. “We’re interrogating Evvie.”

  “And I would be pleased if you would cease in your interrogation.” Evadne said firmly.

  “Just give us a tiny hint,” Courtney said, in the tone of a spoiled little girl who knows she will get her own way eventually. “Please, darling. You don’t even have to say the words. Just nod your head if you like her.”

  Evadne hesitated. Then the temptation of confession, of potential empathy, was too great. She nodded her head slightly.

  “Oh, darling, attagirl! Welcome to the fun!” Courtney said.

  “I still find men attractive.” In truth, Evadne’s emotions regarding Edith were rather confusing—as they had always been—and more so now, considering the secret she was hiding.

  “Well, no one said you were forced to choose. Modern times you know, darling. We can do whatever we like,” Clara told her, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

  “Whatever we like?” Evadne asked.

  “Well, perhaps with a few carefully constructed boundaries,” Clara said.

  “You have boundaries?” Courtney enquired of Clara, eyes wide with mock surprise.