When Nights Were Cold

by Susanna Jones

  I could hear him now, in the drawing room with our neighbour Mr Kenny, shouting about the scandalous behaviour of a shopman from our street who had done something terrible, but I could not catch what it was.

  ‘Disgraceful behaviour.’ Mr Kenny relished the words. ‘I hope there’s a brother who can chase him and shoot him.’

  ‘I’ve a good mind to write to The Times on this very point.’

  He was always writing letters to the newspapers and sometimes they were published and he read them aloud to us at breakfast.

  I shut my bedroom door and pulled my pillow around my ears. I wanted Shackleton to succeed but how would he afford it? Could one just write to people and ask them for hundreds of pounds? Wouldn’t they think it rude? It seemed a terrible thing to have to do for such an important expedition. Yet people were giving him funds and expecting him to pay them back when he returned. How would they know that he had the money? What if, like Father, he was injured and wouldn’t be able to work? Father was wealthy because he had money from his father. He never had to write and ask a stranger for help.

  I was coming to the end of my school years. I was trying to accept the prospect of a life at home like Catherine’s, then perhaps marriage. It depressed me, for I knew it was all wrong and not the life I felt sure I was supposed to have, but my parents would never change their minds about university and work. How could I learn anything from the explorers when they never had to contend with such nonsense?

  It was three years since Catherine should have gone to college. She no longer took piano lessons. She played in the evenings, still, as Father demanded it, but with a different kind of fervour. Her music was less precise. She was careless in difficult technical passages. She rarely bothered to learn new music, not with the hours of work and pencil scratching of before, but made lazy, haphazard attempts at pieces she had already studied. During the daytime she helped Mother run the house and she spent hours on her needlework, making rag dolls in bright dresses for the church bazaars. She never complained but she hardly spoke to me nowadays. I had annoyed her by continuing to mention the Royal College and all the things she might still do, if only she would try. She told me she never wished to speak of it again and that I had better worry about my own life for a change for I was hardly doing anything so extraordinary.

  I still worried about her.

  For the first two years after leaving school, Catherine had received invitations to dances and parties. She always declined. Neighbours invited her to give recitals, but she said that she no longer had the nerve to play to an audience. She had one or two friends from her schooldays and, though they paid occasional visits, Catherine rarely left the house except to run errands. The friends and invitations stopped coming and Catherine seemed relieved. When he was well enough, Father took her to recitals at Bechstein Hall, but he was embarrassed by his cough and sometimes spent most of the concert waiting in the lobby while Catherine listened to the music alone.

  ‘I don’t know about life outside the house,’ she said to Mother. ‘It doesn’t seem to suit me any more. It’s much nicer to be at home and not have to worry about things. Whenever I go into town, I come back with a frightful headache.’

  ‘That’s because you’re disappointed, Catherine,’ I interrupted. ‘But you needn’t give up.’

  ‘No, that’s because life is this way. Here I am and here is my life.’

  I switched off my light but lit a candle and crouched on the floor to write a letter. I wrote to my Aunt Edith, my father’s sister, who lived in New York. Edith and her husband owned a paper mill and were very rich, but Catherine and I had never met them because my father didn’t like his sister. Father never explained why, but said that it was fair since she couldn’t stand him either. I sucked the end of my pencil and tried to imagine her from the few details I knew. She was a giant who towered over the city and its people, managing her factory with her tiny husband (I had not met him either). She gazed across the water at my family – somehow we were all visible to one another – and she looked a little like the Statue of Liberty. I wrote my letter and posted it the following day.

  My aunt’s reply came several months later. By now Shackleton had arrived in the Antarctic, one thousand five hundred miles from the South Pole. The Koonya, which had towed the Nimrod all the way, had returned safely to New Zealand.

  Mother opened the letter at breakfast. She and I were alone, eating toast and marmalade as Catherine and Father strolled in the garden.

  ‘What a strange thing this is,’ she said. ‘Your father must have mentioned you in his Christmas letter to your aunt. She’s a very headstrong lady and her husband is quite eccentric. Well, everyone must have an eccentric aunt or uncle, I suppose. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your Aunt Edith in America.’

  Their only contact was through politeness at Christmas, or a death in the family. It wasn’t Christmas and the envelope had no black edging. She must have received my begging letter.

  ‘Has she said something about me? What does she say?’

  ‘That if you want to go to university, she and John will pay all the fees and living expenses. Ha ha. They must be made of money or very silly. My goodness me. And she doesn’t know the first thing about you.’

  ‘She’ll pay for me?’

  ‘They have made a fortune and now they’ve gone into property, too, she says. I suppose they don’t know what to spend it on. I wonder why they even thought of such a thing. She came to our wedding, but caused an argument with your father about the vote, of all things. I was glad to see the back of her.’

  Edith must have been careful enough not to mention my shameful request. Mother read the letter again then folded it neatly, slipped it back into its envelope and pinched it shut.

  ‘It makes no difference and you don’t want to go to university, you know. There’s too much work to be done here.’

  ‘I don’t do much work here.’

  It was true. Although I did a little sewing and a few chores in the house, I spent most of my days out of doors, meeting my schoolfriends and playing sports. Catherine and Mother left little for me to do and never complained about it.

  ‘Grace, I still say you may get married soon. There’s no point in waiting for Catherine to be first any more. You might be waiting for ever, and now I think that we couldn’t do without her at home. Perhaps we need to think a little harder about your future. Your sports keep you healthy and strong and I’m glad of it, but you meet no one except other galumphing girls whose mothers are all suffs, and you’re hardly likely to pick up a beau through any of them. I’ll talk to some of the ladies at church and the sewing circle.’ She gave me a secret smile. ‘I wonder how Frank Black is getting along at Oxford. He must come home from time to time.’

  ‘Frank Black? But he was for Catherine. You’re not seriously thinking of him for me?’

  ‘Now, Grace, it’s always worth—’

  ‘He’s not interested in us any more, not after what happened with Catherine and the audition. He thought we were ridiculous.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not true. They weren’t quite right for each other. We’ve all been very busy these last three years and Frank will have been absorbed in his studies and university life. You’re too dramatic about this sort of thing. And as for your Aunt Edith, she doesn’t mention any plans to visit us, just to patronize us with offers of money. It’s an insult.’

  But I had sometimes bumped into Frank Black on my way to school or the park during the holidays, and he never asked me about Catherine. I would find some reason to say her name so that I might give him the opportunity to ask a question or suggest a visit, but it was as if she had let him down by giving up her musical career. He was as disappointed in her as I was.

  Once we roller-skated past each other at the Crystal Palace. He called me Shackleton and I called him Wilson in reply, but then we didn’t know what to say and I skated on fast so as not to lose my balance in fr
ont of him and fall over. Catherine never skated, though I told her that Frank went. She sometimes came with me to watch a dancing display or a polo match, but she could not risk hurting her hands.

  Catherine seemed to acknowledge that she had lost Frank, just as she had lost her dream to study music. I could no longer reach her. She was drowning and she knew it, but would not struggle, would not give me her hand to let me save her, and I’m ashamed to say that she made me impatient.

  ‘Would Aunt Edith really pay for me to go to university, even though she doesn’t know me?’

  ‘If she says it here and she has the money then, yes, I suppose she would. I’ve told you, though, money has nothing to do with it. If we felt that it would be right for you to go to university, your father would pay for it himself. He’s well off from his stocks and your grandfather’s death, you know, so we don’t need charity. He’d rather be sure that you’re happy and comfortable when you marry. A good marriage is a much better investment for you’ll never need to work. No, I’ll write a polite letter to your aunt and thank her very much.’ Mother sipped her tea and gave a small cough. ‘I’ll ask Mrs Black how Frank is getting along. Perhaps he’ll pay us a visit in his next holiday.’

  ‘Oh, Mother.’ I tossed my head in the manner of young ladies I had seen in the park.

  ‘It can’t do any harm.’

  ‘Do you not consider Catherine’s feelings?’

  ‘I don’t think she felt much for Frank. Whatever was there didn’t last long and I never saw any tears over him. They weren’t terribly good for each other, both on about art and music all the time, which was so bad for Catherine’s state of mind. But he’s a bright young man with excellent prospects and he’s certainly handsome. I don’t know any other men of his age who are so tall and strong. He has such a good head of hair, too.’ Mother gave me a playful nudge. ‘You must have noticed how nice his hair is. There are other pretty young women in the neighbourhood, not to mention in Oxford. I expect he’ll be graduating soon, so you don’t want to dilly-dally.’

  ‘Mother, really.’ I laughed. ‘The sort of hair he has is not important. Only character matters. And he was planning to be an artist so I can’t believe you like him as much as you say.’

  ‘He won’t be planning that any more. He has been to Oxford now and his mother told me that they’re expecting him to go into law like Mr Black.’

  ‘No, he’s going to be a famous painter. He is taking law for something to fall back on. I’d better write to Aunt Edith and thank her myself. It’s very generous, after all.’

  I took the letter from Mother’s hand and went straight to my room.

  Of course, I wrote and told Edith that I would, indeed, be grateful for her patronage and that I would pay her back afterwards, as soon as I had a salary of my own. With a university education, I was sure to be rich in the future. I told her that I looked forward to meeting her one day and that, if her generous offer were to stand, I should do my best to make her proud.

  The headmistress of my school, Miss Ladbroke, encouraged all her pupils to better themselves through education and work. She was a spinster in her sixties, and conservative parents held her up as an example of what might befall their daughters if they were not careful. My mother had once sighed that it seemed terribly sad that such a thin, empty life was turning into such a long one, but Miss Ladbroke’s manner was sweet and feminine so, though pitied, she was not considered dangerous. She hid her feminism beneath a piccolo laugh and a mild but unpredictable deafness.

  Miss Ladbroke had taken me to see various colleges and I fell in love with Candlin College just outside London. No one from my school was there that year so I could make the place my own and, unlike many women’s universities, it allowed its students to take degrees. The main building was a strange red-brick chateau, tucked away in the Berkshire countryside and surrounded by deep woodland. It seemed to exist quite separately from the nearby towns and villages, a tranquil world where I would immerse myself in study.

  When I returned, Mother was busy stitching clothes for the Waifs and Strays Society and Father had become exercised about the planned railway up the Matterhorn. We must protect the sublimity of the mountains. A railway is a mutilation of Nature.

  ‘The Gornergrat railway is one thing. It is already there and we may as well accept and use it. The Jungfrau is a step too far,but this—’ He tossed aside a newspaper and coughed into his fist.

  Nobody noticed what I was doing. I passed the entrance examinations and won a scholarship to study for a degree in science, all without telling my parents. Aunt Edith had agreed to pay my expenses for three years. When they found out that I had won a university place, Mother nearly knocked the school door off its hinges. Such perfidy! she cried. Trust a woman to be so scheming and underhand. Miss Ladbroke merely smiled and remarked that she was grateful to Mother for raising her voice as she found it so difficult to catch all the words nowadays.

  Mother rushed home at such a speed she caught her shoe in her petticoat and almost fell over on the pavement. She picked herself up and fell over again in our hall. In a fervour she took her sewing scissors, a length of muslin, and began cutting a new dress for me. She pushed and pulled me around, with a measuring tape over her arm and pins between her lips. She spat them into her hand to speak.

  ‘This is going to suit you so well, Grace.’ The fabric was mauve and had been in the cupboard for months, waiting for Mother to decide its purpose. ‘You’re more unusual than Catherine and we just need to make a bit more out of what you’ve got so that we can see you grow into the lovely young woman you are going to be. Yes, see this colour against your complexion? It just brightens you up. Wait till gentlemen line up to meet you.’ She gave a strange whinnying laugh that made me jump, and tucked my hair behind my ear. ‘The charming and exquisite Grace Farringdon.’

  I held one end of the fabric at my waist as Mother let the rest fall to my ankles, and I caught sight of my face in the mirror, suddenly as bright and pretty as Mother saw it, but it was alone.

  ‘Mother, I don’t think I’ll meet many gentlemen. It’s a women’s college.’

  ‘But you’re not going to the college now, are you?’ She spat more pins, frowned, then scribbled my measurements in her sewing book. ‘When the dress is ready, I’ll give you my pearls and you’ll feel like a princess. Remember the stories you used to tell me about princesses? Remember how you loved Catherine to put flowers in your hair? That’s the sort of little girl you were. We’ll have you as you were meant to be – a lovely bride – not what that Miss Ladbroke thinks you should be. How does that preposterous woman think she knows anything about you?’

  She had the manservant remove all the books from my room and hide them in the attic so that they could do me no further harm. When I told her that I was going to college whatever she did, she even consulted Father’s lawyer, Mr Sweetman, to see if I was breaking the law. The dress was unpicked and put away. We shouted up and down the stairs at each other until we were hoarse. My sister would pass between us with her nose in the air and lips together, not prepared to be an ally to either of us.

  Father’s method was different. He wept that he was too old and weak to fight a cruel opponent like me. He regretted the hours we had spent together at the maps, letting my imagination roam, and confessed that he had done me great damage, but it was only because his son had died and he had needed a companion in the lonely evenings. He pulled his seat close to the fire and stared, pink-eyed, into the flames. Mother and Catherine shook their heads, and glared at me for putting him into a mood.

  ‘Those women – the suffragettes and suffragists – who marched in Hyde Park last year, thousands of them. I was coming back from a lecture and I saw them from my cab. Every face I saw was miserable or hysterical, Grace. They weren’t happy women. Even the ones who were laughing looked as though something – some demon – had got into them and was making them laugh, forcing them. I felt sorry for them, being so so – ’ he shut his eyes to find th
e word – ‘not themselves, not anyone’s daughter. I don’t want that to happen to you.’

  One evening at dinner he lost his temper and threw the salt pot at the wall. While we waited for Sarah, our maid, to brush up the pieces, I did the only thing I could think of and I threw the pepper pot after it. We both shed tears but neither could change our position and mine was stronger. I had the money and I simply had to endure the arguments until I could escape. After the tears, Father had no ammunition.

  ‘You can cut me out of your will,’ I said, blowing my nose so that he wouldn’t see that I was crying. ‘I’ll manage on my own.’

  ‘I would never disinherit you,’ he pleaded. ‘No matter what you do to me, I’ll never do that, but I do not consent and never shall.’

  We had planned to go to Sandon Perkins’s lecture on Cook and Peary at the Hippodrome, but Father gave my ticket to Dr Sowerby and they went off together.

  On my last evening at home Arthur carried Father’s old trunk to my room and I unlocked it with a dusty key, lifted the lid. The wooden chest had not been touched for ten years or more. Cobweb strands curled and rose like seaweed in a rock pool. A crumpled brown shoe lay at the bottom, bent and turning up at the toe. I reached for it and found, inside, a pair of spectacles.

  I peered at them, meaning to ask my father later if he remembered how they had come to be there. They must have belonged to him once. The arms were loose, the lenses scratched and, when I tried them, they gave a blurry view of my bedroom. I tucked them back into the shoe.

  Sarah cleaned the trunk and I returned to sorting through my belongings, deciding which to take so that she could pack them. I would have liked new clothes, but I had no money so had mended my old dresses and made myself a new skirt and blouse. I had a few books to take and hoped to find the rest in the college library. It terrified me that I might arrive unprepared. I didn’t want to get anything wrong. I didn’t want to be different from the others.