The Secrets of Winter

by Nicola Upson

  ‘This one,’ she said, choosing the bed nearer the door. ‘You can have the view and the draughts.’ She smiled and walked over to the window, pulling him with her. ‘And will you please stop worrying? I’m glad we’ll be together tonight. It’s not very friendly out there.’

  The curtains had been drawn to prevent the cold night air from penetrating the room, and she threw them back to prove her point. Johnny grinned and put his arm round her, and together they stared out into the blackness. The sea was higher than she had ever seen it, a rolling mass of white horses, and the dark bulk of the Mount – just visible beneath a grudging moon – was the only thing standing in the way of the sweeping blizzards. There were pinpricks of light from the castle, appearing and disappearing amid the pattern of swirling snowflakes, as if someone were switching them on and off, signalling to the mainland. A pair of binoculars stood on the windowsill, and Johnny picked them up and trained them on the island. ‘Can you see your mum’s house?’ Violet asked.

  ‘Just about, but she must have gone to bed early. I can’t see any lights on, and she normally has them blazing away. I hope she’s not ill.’

  ‘She’s probably spent the evening with a friend and been stranded by the weather,’ Violet suggested. ‘I’m sure she’s fine.’

  Johnny looked doubtful. ‘Perhaps I should have tried harder to get across there tonight,’ he said. ‘Something doesn’t feel right. I’m sure one of the lads with a boat would risk it if the price was right.’

  ‘You are joking?’ Violet stared at him in astonishment. ‘Try anything like that, and I’ll be going across there tomorrow to tell your mother to get her black out again.’ She took the binoculars out of his hands and pulled him away from the window, then turned back to draw the curtains. ‘There’s nothing we can do until tomorrow,’ she said firmly, ‘and anyway, like I said, I’m sure she’s fine.’

  9

  Rachel Lancaster hung back as the rest of the women made their way to the drawing room for coffee. Even though she would have welcomed something to counteract the effects of all the wine she had drunk, she couldn’t bear the thought of yet more conversation, their voices drilling into her as she tried to hide in plain sight at the dinner table. With the exception of Angela Hartley, who seemed as vulnerable as Rachel felt, she had nothing to say to any of them.

  Suddenly she craved some air. There was a door to the terrace from the Long Passage, and she was relieved to find it unlocked. Her head started to spin as soon as she was outside, but the shock of a cold night was better than coffee, and she breathed the air in gratefully, feeling instantly better. The snow had finally stopped, except for a few flakes drifting down as an afterthought, and the clouds had moved on, leaving the moon in charge of a clear sky. Swathed in winter, this part of the castle was overwhelmingly beautiful – pure and bright, like a world without a past. She envied its unsullied perfection, even if the peculiar stillness which always followed snow was strangely absent: down below, the churning, restless sea sounded angrier than ever, and she wondered if there was a time when the island felt truly at rest.

  She was freezing cold, but it was preferable to being inside, and the area of the terrace where she stood was sheltered from the wind by two long stretches of the castle’s walls. The smoking room where the men had lingered after dinner was immediately next to Chevy Chase, and she could see her husband through the leaded windows, drinking his port and trying to fit in. Had she been a stranger, she would still have known that Gerry was uncomfortable in this sort of company. The policeman and the photographer sat together on a wooden bench in the alcove, listening as the vicar talked, apparently at ease with themselves and with each other, although the photographer never quite lost that watchful quality which she supposed was integral to his work, but which made her uneasy nonetheless. Gerry stood at the other end of the room, a child waiting to be invited to the game but unsure of the rules; as she watched, he drained his glass and helped himself to more from a decanter, then went over to study a painting which was out of sight of the rest of the group. Casually, as she had known he would, he took something small from a side table and slipped it quickly into his pocket; she couldn’t see what it was, but she knew what it meant, and the shame made her turn away.

  She moved further into the shadows, just in case Gerry glanced out of the window and saw her. On the other side of the terrace, the drawing room curtains were closed, but she could hear laughter and music coming from inside and she half wished that she had joined the other women after all. It was too late now to put in an appearance without an explanation; when she went inside, she would have to go straight to bed and apologise in the morning for her rudeness. She found the cigarettes in her bag and began to smoke one, hoping it would kill the last waves of nausea from the drink. High above her, the tower of the church was silhouetted by the moonlight, and in one corner she could just make out the shape of the chair they had been talking about at dinner, a solid lump of stone on the left-hand side, extending further up than the rest of the wall. She stepped back to get a better look, then jumped when she felt the warmth of another body behind her and heard her husband’s voice, hushed and tight with anger. ‘What the hell are you doing out here?’ He followed her gaze up to the tower, and laughed. ‘Fancy your chances, do you? Well, let’s see how you get on.’

  The smile disappeared from his face, and suddenly he was dragging her roughly by the arm across the terrace, kicking snow up as he went. ‘Gerry, stop it! What are you doing?’ She tried to resist, but his fury made him even stronger than usual, and the only thing left to her was an appeal to his pride. ‘They’ll hear us, and then what will they think? They’re only over there in the drawing room.’

  He turned and slapped her hard across the face. ‘Then shut the fuck up.’

  He pulled her on, past the drawing room windows and round to the door of the church. Rachel hoped desperately that he would find it locked, but it opened easily and he shoved her in ahead of him, then closed the door behind them. The moon was the only light on offer and Gerry paused, allowing his eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness; once he had got his bearings, he quickly located the tower and she protested in horror as he forced her over to the door. The smell of dust and decay hit her, bringing back the nausea with a renewed intensity. She resisted his efforts to pull her inside and up the steps, clinging to the door frame with every ounce of her strength, but he pulled the door roughly shut, catching her fingers, and she screamed in pain. The sound of her fear echoed back off the stone walls, trapped and magnified by the enclosed space, and she began to sob. ‘We’re supposed to race each other, aren’t we?’ Gerry said. ‘I’ll make it easy for you. You go first.’

  Rachel stared up into the black nothingness of the tower. ‘I’m not going up there.’

  ‘Of course you are. It’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it? The chance to rule the roost. Well, go on, then. Find out how it feels.’ He pushed her again and she fell forward onto her knees, fumbling her way towards the beginnings of a staircase. ‘Go on,’ he repeated. ‘Crawl like the fucking pilgrims.’

  It was a kick this time, fuelled by too much alcohol, and she knew that if she didn’t do as he asked, he would beat her to a pulp where they stood. She scrambled up the spiral staircase, scraping her arms on the walls as the steps twisted sharply round to the right, hearing his footsteps behind her, driving her on. The space was impossibly narrow, even for her, and she thought for a moment that he wouldn’t be able to follow, but his rage was relentless, and she felt his hands on her whenever she faltered. There were window slits in the stone at regular intervals, but the brief respites of slivered moonlight only made her ordeal worse, and she would rather not have seen the cobwebs or the rat droppings which hinted at what lurked in the dark. The ascent seemed endless, but eventually she could go no further and her hands pressed against another wooden door. ‘Open it,’ Gerry demanded.

  ‘It’ll be locked.’

  ‘Open it!’

  She did
as she was told, and the rush of cold air brought both relief and a fresh hell to face, even worse than the claustrophobic terror of the climb. The doorway was square-shaped, more like a vertical trapdoor than a proper exit, and she struggled to get through it. Outside, a narrow channel ran between a block of stone holding the flagpole and the outer parapet, which was only waist high – an inadequate barrier between her and oblivion. The wind whipped her face, much stronger at this altitude, and the flag strained at its leash, its metal fastenings rapping rhythmically against the pole. He’s going to kill me, she thought, surprised by how calmly she viewed the idea. That’s what this madness means. After all these years, it’s finally over.

  Gerry struggled to haul himself out after her, and just for a second, while his hands were too busy to threaten her, she considered doing the job for him: at least then it would be her choice. One glance over the parapet was enough to change her mind. She recoiled in horror, but he caught her by the hair and forced her to look again, and she thought she was going to faint as the terrace below seemed to rise up to meet her. She twisted her head to the side, and there was the chair, covered in snow and facing out to sea, its stone seat hanging perilously over the precipice. Quietly, she began to whimper like an animal. ‘I can’t, Gerry. Please don’t make me.’

  But in one swift movement he turned her round and half pushed, half lifted her onto the wall. She grabbed at his hands, pleading with him not to let her fall, but somehow she was on the chair. The stone felt solid at her back, but it was wet and icy cold. She couldn’t bring herself to look down. ‘So how does it feel?’ he asked, his hands holding her tight around the waist. ‘Is power all it’s cracked up to be?’

  ‘Just get me off here,’ she begged. ‘I’ll do anything you want me to, anything at all, but please get me down.’

  He laughed, momentarily easing his grip, and for a moment she thought he was going to leave her there, but then he put his hands under her arms and began to pull her round, and for the first time in as long as she could remember, Rachel was glad of his strength. She drew her knees up and tried to get a purchase on the parapet with her feet, but the ledge was slippery and she felt herself falling back. In that split-second, before he pulled her to safety, she saw a fear in Gerry’s eyes which was every bit as great as her own, and something shifted between them – something that had nothing to do with superstition or St Michael or an ancient piece of stone, but with the sudden realisation that she had the power to hurt him, too.

  10

  ‘Your room or mine?’ Marta asked, as they walked down the Long Passage to go to bed. ‘I know I’ve got the Christmas decorations, but there’s something very tempting about the four-poster bed.’

  ‘Whichever is warmer,’ Josephine said, rubbing her hands together. ‘It was freezing in that drawing room. The only time I’ve been warm since we got here was sitting in front of your fire.’

  ‘All right. You come to me.’

  ‘It’s probably better that way round. I’m right next to the Lancasters and the Hartleys, and all you’ve got on your corridor are the missing Mrs Carmichael and two bathrooms.’

  ‘Just how much noise are you planning to make?’

  ‘I meant there’ll be less chance of being seen.’ She blushed, and returned Marta’s smile. ‘I hope Mrs Carmichael’s all right.’

  ‘Yes, so do I. With a bit of luck, she’ll be here tomorrow if the weather calms down.’

  ‘Have you brought an alarm clock? I need to be back in my room by eight to be woken up.’

  ‘I don’t even own an alarm clock.’

  ‘Then I’ll bring one. I’ll go and fetch what I need now, and come back when I’m sure everyone else has stopped moving about.’

  ‘All right. Don’t be long.’

  Back in her room, Josephine found her nightclothes already laid out on the bed. Feeling guilty for wasting Mrs Pendean’s time, she scooped them up into a bag ready to take with her, then waited by the fire until she was sure that the staff had finished their reign of terror for the night. The snow had brought with it a vast, muffled silence, amplifying the noises in the castle’s passageways. She heard people saying goodnight in subdued tones, then a voice that sounded like Hilaria’s calling something down the corridor about the carol service. Footsteps passed repeatedly outside in a flurry of trips to the bathroom, followed by a sequence of closing doors and a man’s loud cough; eventually, the house fell quiet. Josephine left her room, resisting the schoolgirl urge to put a bolster in the bed, and hurried down the dimly lit corridor.

  She turned the corner and bumped straight into Angela Hartley, and it was hard to say who was the more surprised as each of their wash bags clattered to the floor. The vicar’s wife looked older without her make-up, an impression only emphasised by her pale mauve dressing gown and the anxiety etched deeply on her face. ‘I’m sorry to startle you,’ Josephine said, when her own heart had slowed a little. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure it is,’ Mrs Hartley said, with an artificial certainty that implied exactly the opposite. ‘I was just trying to find my room. It’s silly of me, but …’ She tailed off, looking bewildered, and Josephine knelt down to gather up the soaps and toothbrushes that had been dropped, restoring everything to its rightful bag and noticing that the hem of Mrs Hartley’s dressing gown was soaking wet, as if she had been outside in the snow. ‘Richard went to speak to someone, you see, and I was waiting to say goodnight to him, but he was longer than he said he’d be, so I went to the bathroom while he was gone. I thought I knew how to get back, but now I’ve no idea where I am.’

  ‘It’s not silly at all,’ Josephine said. ‘I’ve been lost myself so many times today. One corridor looks much the same as the next in a strange house, especially when it’s as big as this one.’

  Mrs Hartley smiled, grateful for the reassurance, and Josephine gestured back the way she had come. ‘I think your room is near mine. Shall we try down here?’

  She led the way, relieved not to have to explain what she was doing in a completely different part of the castle, and they were soon outside the vicar’s door. ‘My husband’s gone to speak to someone,’ Mrs Hartley repeated, ‘so at least he won’t have been worrying about me. Thank you, my dear. You’ve been very kind.’

  ‘Not at all. See you in the morning.’ She waited until the vicar’s wife had gone back into her room, then retraced her footsteps yet again along the corridor. The lull in the wind should have been soothing, but the sudden quiet was somehow more unsettling, and Josephine was glad when it was filled by a peal of now familiar laughter. She paused, then took a short detour to the corridor that Archie shared with Marlene, stopping outside the film star’s door. Marlene was talking, although the words were indistinct, and every now and again a man’s voice, low and muffled, said something in response. Smiling to herself at the thought that Archie’s Christmas had arrived an hour before everybody else’s, she made her way to Marta’s room.

  11

  Never in all her life had Nora been so grateful to finish a shift. The blizzards had blown themselves out by the time she left the castle, but the sea was still high, and she could hear the familiar dull thud of boats knocking against the harbour wall as she made her way down to the village. The Mount’s dense canopy of fir trees had protected the higher paths from the worst of the snow, but by the time she reached the old dairy, any shelter had dwindled and the only thing in front of her was a vast lawn of white, exposed and radiant under a three-quarter moon. Something in its cleanness saddened her.

  She walked through snow that was two or three inches thick, and felt it begin to soak into her boots as she neared the bottom of the slope. Most of the village houses were gathered together in two terraces that ran parallel with the south wall of the harbour, and all were in darkness except for her own. The lights were confined to the downstairs rooms, and she knew that Tom would be waiting up for her; it must be Christmas Day by now, and he would want to mark it with her, this year more than ev
er. Nora forced herself on, listening to the whisper of powdery snow beneath her feet. Their cottage was at the end of the row, near the lodge house, and she put her hand on the back gate to let herself into the tiny yard, knowing that Tom would have cleared a path to the door for her. The thought stopped her abruptly in her tracks, a reminder of the love that she had betrayed tugging insistently at her conscience, and suddenly she knew that she simply couldn’t bring herself to go home. It was like a physical paralysis, an inability to walk in through the back door and call to her husband as she always did, to pretend that everything was normal. In that instant, Nora realised that she had lost the right to belong in her own life; regardless of how worried she knew Tom would be, she turned and walked away.

  The museum was in darkness, covered in its own white shroud, and Nora stood in the shelter of the lych-gate opposite, imagining Emily’s body lying still and cold under the sheet, where the woman she thought was her friend had left her. If she had one decent bone in her body, she would go in there now and stay with Emily until someone found them both, but the revulsion of what she had done had only increased as the day wore on, and it had been as much as she could do to lock the door earlier, when the visitors threatened to go inside; now, on the most haunting, emotionally charged night of the year, her friend’s death had taken on an almost superstitious horror, and the devil himself couldn’t have dragged her over the threshold.

  ‘Nora? What the hell are you doing out here? I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Where have you been?’ The shock of Tom’s voice brought her to her senses. He stared at her, and she saw her own despair reflected back in his bewildered expression. ‘Christ, Nora, you’ll catch your death. What on earth do you think you’re playing at? I expected you home ages ago.’