When Nights Were Cold

by Susanna Jones

  Sarah stepped back from the trunk with the soapy cloth in her hand. She sneezed.

  ‘There we are, nice and clean, Miss Grace. I’ll pack your clothes now.’

  She knelt at my dressing table, pulling out collars, stockings, handkerchiefs. Everything was neatly folded but she opened and shook each item, refolded and placed it on the bed.

  I lifted a framed photograph of my family from the mantelpiece. We were standing on the back steps, peering uncertainly at the camera. Even my father looked caught out, uneasy on his own property. Memory added colours to the picture. Mother had been wearing a shawl of peacock blue, too bright for her dark blonde hair and pallid skin. Catherine and I stood between our parents. We were the same height and both bore the Farringdon look, reddish hair and a sort of dark-eyed sleepiness. In the background, the door to the coal cellar was open, as though caught by the wind.

  I put the picture into my trunk, for I believed that we would all soon be friends again. I added my pressed wildflowers and a photograph of my sponsors, Aunt Edith and Uncle John. The items sank into the black and brown ripples of my clothes. Miss Ladbroke had given me an old school microscope to take. I opened its wooden box to check that it was intact, held it for a while, examined a bit of fluff from my blanket, then pushed the box into the corner of the trunk to nestle in my shawl. We pulled down the lid and Sarah locked the trunk. We dragged it to the wall.

  Grace, stop banging around like an elephant up there and bring me my veronal.

  The floorboards and carpet hardly dulled Father’s shriek. It was my duty to fetch the bottle of medicine while he waited in his armchair, rubbing his bad leg with his good hand. I hurried downstairs scarcely able to believe that I should not have to do this again. I shook out a cachet of veronal. Father took and swallowed it.

  ‘Ah.’ He pressed his lips together and saliva bubbled around the corners of his mouth. His eyelids drooped. ‘It does the trick. It eases the pain so that I can sleep. Catherine, let’s have a little music to wash the evening away. It’s a sad night indeed. Grace is abandoning us tomorrow. Somehow you will have to take her place as well as your own.’

  ‘What place is that?’ Catherine put down her sewing and went to the piano. ‘Grace is hardly ever here. I’m not going to start playing cricket or shutting myself away to read adventure books. How would anything get done?’

  Catherine shuffled into place on the piano stool, stretched her fingers.

  I went to her side and spoke quietly to her.

  ‘Catherine, if you wanted to go away, I’d give you the money from Aunt Edith. She may even be willing to help us both. You don’t have to give up everything and be angry with me. I don’t want you to—’

  ‘How can I leave now? Father is so weak these days. And who would help Mother with the house?’

  It was true that in leaving I was abandoning Catherine to our parents, but she seemed to want to stay and did not care about finding any solution for herself. I perched on the footstool beside Father and held his hand.

  ‘Herbert, will you read from the Bible this evening, since it is our last night together as a family?’ Mother’s hand rested lightly on his wrist.

  Father shook himself free. ‘What the devil would be the good in that? I’m reading The Times’ He picked up the newspaper and rattled the pages. ‘What nonsense,’ he muttered. ‘Madame Tussaud’s with a tableau of the South Pole. A life-sized Ernest Shackleton. People will make money out of anything.’

  ‘It sounds rather good,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I’m not going.’ Father scowled. ‘And certainly not with you.’

  Catherine’s fingers pressed gently into the piano keys and she began to play a Telemann Fantasia she had learned years before.

  Father let the newspaper fall to the rug. He stroked my fingers with his thumb. He let out a series of cracked, weary sighs and his head lolled. He was, as Mother always said, setting off to sea. When the music reached its final bars, he jumped, stared at me with round, pale eyes.

  ‘I can see them again,’ he whispered. ‘They’re here.’

  ‘Can you? You can see them? Will you be all right, Father?’

  In the evenings, after taking his medicine and dozing for a while, Father sometimes saw pictures in the air. They seemed to come from his days at sea. I imagined old sailors, singing sirens, his friends, my ancestors, all life-sized in the shadows on the walls and up by the ceiling. Father would talk to them, not in sentences, not even in words that we could understand. Sometimes he cried out and would lift his arm to shield himself from high waves. On bad nights he would beg them to carry him away.

  Tonight he did not converse with them but gripped my hand until it shook.

  His face turned pink, drops of sweat formed on his brow, and then his skin whitened again as he sank into his trance. Eventually his eyelids fell. A tear ran down my nose and I hurried upstairs so that I would not change my mind.

  Chapter Four

  Why should I write to Catherine when she has done nothing to find me? Fifteen years she has had to post me a letter and see whether or not I’m still here. Edinburgh is far, but I know that she has been in London sometimes and not written to say so. Mabel’s sister cooks for our neighbours and she told me that they met her once for tea at Brown’s, but no one invited me. And they said that her husband, George, had died a few months before that, so I know she must have been lonely.

  Over the road a dog barks. The Kennys used to live in that house. While Mr Kenny was practising homeopathy in Holborn, dispensing nettle tea and poultices of ivy leaves, Mrs Kenny gave dance lessons in a room at the back of the house. Catherine and I learned how to waltz in that room, with our old nurse watching, upright on her chair in the corner, nodding her head to the music as Catherine and I whirled. Sometimes we hid in the garden to watch grown-up men and women trot and step around the room, always a little tentative in the too-small space, always self-conscious and, to us, so amusing that we would hold onto each other, collapse into the pansy bed and rock with laughter.

  New people live there now, a young couple called the Tickells, who have a friendly black and white mongrel they call Pongo. Sometimes they cross the road to pay me a visit and Pongo jumps on and off my front step, panting and seeming to laugh, the way dogs with long noses do. I give him a biscuit if I have one. Mrs Tickell is a cheerful, intelligent woman and has invited me several times to join her luncheon group, but I have told her that I am not quite well enough to attend, and would not be good company. Perhaps in the future I might accept an invitation. She is very persistent, I must say. You’re always welcome, Grace. My friends have heard about you and are dying to meet you. That puts the fear of God into me and so I make sure my curtains are always safely closed on luncheon day. Perhaps when Catherine is back, we shall go together to that sort of thing. We’ll enjoy the conversation and exchange a glance every now and then when something amuses us. Afterwards we shall sit up late with cups of cocoa, having a gossip and a fine time, right here in the den, and be glad that we are safe again.

  I kick off my slippers and give my feet a wiggle. There isn’t much feeling in them so I rub them with my hands. I stretch my legs out almost into the fire and let my stockings smudge in the ashes on the hearth.

  A bright autumn afternoon. Yes, I think it was. We had a bad summer and a sunless September, but then a big, blue day landed on us. Carriages lined the drive and servants lugged trunks into the Main Hall. The red brickwork flamed against the sky. Young women called out friends’ names and chattered in pairs and clusters. Some wore elegant and colourful hats and gowns, far more fashionable than my dowdy brown dress. I felt a little forlorn and uncertain.

  Mother and I walked under the clock tower and into the north quad. Mother seized my arm and walked slightly behind me as though I were accompanying her and not the other way round. Sarah was to have come with me – it was usual to bring a maid to help one settle in – but just as we were about to leave, Mother had ordered her into the kitchen and sai
d that she would travel with me instead. It was not because she had changed her mind but that she might have a little longer to change mine.

  Mother’s fingers tightened around my arm. I shook them off and stomped ahead.

  ‘You can come home again now. We don’t have to stay.’

  ‘I am staying.’

  ‘Slow down, Grace. I’m talking to you.’

  ‘Yes, and everybody will hear you.’

  ‘The quad was almost empty. Just a few students and their parents lingered at the opposite side, but windows were open and curtains fluttered.

  ‘We’ll think of other plans for your future. It doesn’t need to be this way and you don’t have to be proud about it. Look at your Ernest Shackleton. He knew when to turn back from the Pole, even though it wasn’t what he wanted. It was the right thing to do and now he’s a hero.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. I’m not going home with you.’

  In truth, I longed to be back in Dulwich with Catherine and Father, but I knew it was only nerves and I would somehow survive them. We followed the path alongside the neat lawn. Rows of dark windows lined each side. The space behind them seemed somehow forbidden and yet it was to be my new home.

  A third-year student led us on a walk around the college. I imagined that Mother would see the grand buildings and facilities and fall in love with the place as I already had. Indeed, as we strolled around the grounds, her eyes widened at the neatly mown grass, the pretty walkways and balustrades. She admired the statues, the carvings, the chapel and picture gallery.

  ‘Very nicely done,’ she said of the library and museum. ‘Though I wouldn’t like to be the one to dust them. Some of the teachers are forbidding, don’t you think?’ She gave me a tentative look. ‘Their clothes are very severe.’

  ‘They are lecturers, not teachers.’

  I had also noticed that the principal and some lecturers wore very sombre clothes and did not look as friendly as the mistresses at my school, but I considered this an appropriate sign of academic seriousness which my mother could never be expected to understand.

  We strolled through the woodland to the swimming pool, then across the road to the botanical gardens, where a couple of students pulled up weeds and tended to the plants. One of them had caught an earthworm on the end of her pitchfork and waved it at the other. They were both laughing.

  ‘Is it not pleasant, Mother?’

  ‘It would suit some, I daresay. It must be a sweet interlude for those who have no future but to work like cart horses.’

  ‘Can’t you keep your voice down a little?’

  We returned to the Main Hall and passed through the long corridors towards my rooms. Mother peered at the ceiling. ‘And all electric lighting.’ She nodded, impressed by the place.

  She watched some students as they passed us in the corridor. They greeted us politely and resumed their conversation about the summer holidays.

  ‘Very confident young ladies. They have plenty to say for themselves.’

  Each student had a bedroom and a sitting room. My sitting room overlooked the north quadrangle and my bedroom, on the other side of the corridor, looked out over hockey fields and tennis courts. There was a bed, a wardrobe, chairs and a gigantic mirror. The founder of the college, a wealthy industrialist who had made his money from sewing machines, believed in educating women but insisted that every room had a large, oval mirror. Next to the fire was a small kettle. I could not wait to use it.

  As we stood in the doorway of my sitting room, I heard my name. We turned to see another version of ourselves, mother and daughter, coming along the passage.

  ‘Grace Farringdon? How do you do? I’m Leonora Locke. I’m two doors away from you. I’m a fresher too. Biology.’

  Miss Locke’s mother smiled from under a swooping, elegant hat. She had a kind, expressive face which was familiar to me.

  ‘Hetty Locke. Delighted to meet you.’

  Mother let out an oh before she could stop herself. She lifted her mouth into a smile but I saw the confusion behind it. Mrs Hetty Locke was a West End actress who played in popular farces. She was often in the newspapers, part of a theatrical set considered, by people like my mother, quite scandalous for their affairs and divorces. She was striking: tall and long-limbed with black hair and a smile that dipped into a deep V. Her daughter had the same dark hair and green eyes, but was small, springy on her feet, and pretty rather than beautiful.

  ‘You do look quite tired, my dears,’ said Mrs Locke.

  My mother managed a weak nod.

  ‘There’s so much to take in,’ I said, and my mother hasn’t been here before.’

  ‘It’s such a very strange place,’ said Mother. ‘Isn’t it? Is it a boarding school or a university? I can’t make any sense of it.’ She grimaced. ‘Perhaps it will just take time.’

  ‘But I’d have loved to study somewhere like this. I envy our daughters. I can’t wait to read Leonora’s letters and find out what adventures you’ve all been up to.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Mother. ‘But I understand that the girls are closely chaperoned and there is a very clear schedule of study, with chapel every morning.’

  Mrs Locke swallowed her smile and gave a serious, emphatic nod.

  Her daughter looked at me with interest. Her eyes were sharp but friendly. She exuded warmth and colour, made me think of fireflies.

  ‘We’ll enjoy ourselves though, won’t we, Miss Farringdon?’

  ‘Certainly,’ I said, brightly, to annoy Mother.

  I wanted to ask my new friend what it was like to have an actress for a mother, a mother who didn’t care what the neighbours thought and who yearned to be in her daughter’s place at university. I must have stared at her quite hard but she smiled back, with no trace of shyness or nerves.

  ‘Come, Leonora,’ said Mrs Locke. ‘Let’s see if we can find some flowers for your vases.’

  Leonora Locke hurtled down the corridor and her mother followed, upright and graceful.

  I shut my sitting-room door and Mother began to cry, not her usual silent weeping into a handkerchief but a series of sharp hiccoughs which grew faster and louder until she collapsed to her knees and sobbed. I had never seen her so wretched.

  ‘And these are the sort of people you’re going to live with. They’re not like us. I tried to warn you and now you see for yourself.’ Her sobs intensified until she seemed to be choking. I went to her but she pushed me away. ‘What a supercilious woman. And as for the facilities – laboratories and classrooms, for goodness’ sake. It’s like a boys’boarding school. Did you notice that the students in the corridors called one another by their surnames? They don’t even say Miss. Grace, it is all wrong for you. Why won’t you see sense?’

  I crouched down, placed my hand on her back, touched the soft rim of skin that bulged over her corset.

  ‘You’ll have to go home without me,’ I said after some time. ‘I’m sorry. I can do without your encouragement, but I would, at least, like you to stop crying. It isn’t helping either of us. Mother, please.’ I stroked her arm. ‘There’s no point to all this unhappiness.’

  She balled a handkerchief into her eyes.

  ‘You’re very severe for a girl of eighteen.’ She tried a brave smile and squeezed my hand. ‘I’ll go now – I know you want me to – but I shall say this first. You’ll always have a bed in your own home and, if you’ve grown out of being a student by Christmas, we’ll be pleased to have you back. Your father and I will always be good, compassionate parents, no matter what you do, I’m sure.’ She shook her head and sat in silence waiting for her breathing to calm. ‘And we shall always have Catherine.’ She stood, straightening her hair and hat. ‘I’m leaving now. Your father wants pork chops for supper and I didn’t tell Mrs Horton to get any.’

  Poor Catherine, I thought. She will be there until she’s a dusty old skeleton perching at the piano or hunched over the sewing box.

  I stared into the large mirror, watched my room as it was reflecte
d back to me. I saw a small, scared face among large, unfamiliar furniture. My reflection looked empty, as if I weren’t behind my own eyes. I wanted the excitement back but my mother’s tears had ruined it all. I didn’t want to go home but I no longer liked being here.

  I placed a small painting of a ship sailing from Cardiff on my mantelpiece. Father had kept it on his study wall and when I was a child he had found me sitting on the floor staring at it. He took it from the wall and gave it to me. I touched it now and blew a little dust from the glass. The room looked just a little better.

  Before dinner, I went to find Miss Locke. I knocked on her door but there was no reply. I knew that I would feel more lonely and nervous if I stayed in my rooms so I decided to take a walk around the building. I set off down the corridor, along the central walkway and into the other side of the hall. I soon became disorientated and could not remember which quad was which and whether I was in the east or west side. I hurried up and down corridors, onto another floor, and finally had to leave the building, follow the path around to the clock tower at the main entrance and begin again. When I arrived back at my room, now choking back tears and beginning to hate the place, Leonora Locke appeared from her room and bellowed my name. A couple of doors opened, faces poked out to see what the noise was about, but Locke seemed not to notice. She grinned and ran towards me.

  ‘You’re brave to go exploring alone. Could you just help me with my pictures and things? Then we can do yours, if you like.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I’m not sure where to hang the male nude.’

  She shot me a sideways glint and looked for my response. I started, tried to hide my surprise by adjusting a hairpin just above my ear, but I suspected she was testing me. Voices rose and babbled behind us in the corridor and, for safety, I reached for Leonora’s arm.