When Nights Were Cold

by Susanna Jones

  She knotted her hands together in front of herself, like a nervous child.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Catherine rubbed her check with the heel of her hand. ‘I can’t tell you yet but I’m expecting to go away one day soon. You’ll be Mother’s nurse now, won’t you?’

  ‘But why can’t you tell me? Have you met somebody?’

  Catherine’s eyes darted around the room. ‘No, though I did see Frank Black a month or so ago.’

  ‘Ah, Frank. And how is he?’

  ‘I don’t know. He was at his parents’ house. I was visiting his mother for tea and he was there too. We didn’t talk much but he was very pleasant, very amusing as he always is, you know.’

  ‘But why will you be leaving? Has it something to do with Frank?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  She didn’t seem to know what she was saying and I thought that it was something she had invented to keep me in the house.

  ‘Catherine, it’s only fair that you should do whatever you want and I should help, but Mother does not seem so ill to me, just weak from mourning and getting used to things. What if we help her get better, encourage her to see that there’s plenty still to do and enjoy?’

  ‘You’re going to refuse me but you mustn’t. We can’t both be free, not while she’s alive being ill, and I know that she’s not even properly ill. That just makes it worse. She’s decided to be ill until she dies but that won’t be for years.’ She turned and opened the door, stepped through into the hall and screwed up her eyes to glare at me. ‘It’s your turn to stay, Grace. This is your life now because it has been mine. Goodnight.’ She scurried upstairs, tripping halfway and clutching for the banister.

  Miss Hobson replied to my letter. The position was not available, she wrote, and she was not inclined to recommend me for another. She gave no explanation. Perhaps it was because of the accident or perhaps it was because I had rejected her attempt to help me at college. It made no difference. Without a reference from the college, it would be difficult to teach anywhere. I must think of something better. I sat on the stairs with the letter, rested my elbows on my knees. I pictured Frank with the four members of the Society behind the window of the hotel in Wales, chattering around a table with cups and scones and teapots everywhere. Rain spattered the glass and obscured our faces as we laughed and shared our stories. There were no voices, just the bluster and slap of the wet wind from the hills.

  Five or six thick cobwebs dangled from the recesses of the ceiling, fluffy black scarves and beards. I looked down at the dark walls of the hall, dusty photographs of grumpy ancestors and pictures of unvisited, bucolic landscapes. A vase of yellow flowers made the hall table pretty but it was jetsam on a miserable ocean. The wind rattled the panes in the door. I thought of Catherine on her bed, crying and dreaming of the day that Frank Black would beat down the door and rescue her.

  And what was I doing there, in the middle of it all, Father? Don’t look at me as if the answers are all mine to give.

  A key in the front door. A creak and shuffling feet. It is Mr Blunt. His umbrella rustles, slots into the stand in the corner of the hall. His overcoat and hat come off, land on the hooks behind the stairs. He works in a bank and goes somewhere most nights afterwards, but I have no idea where. There is a pause as though he has noticed light from behind the drawing-room door, heard the chatter of the flames and coal. He is wondering whether or not to greet me. It is late. It must be the middle of the night and I don’t care where he has been. I don’t call, Evening, as I sometimes might, and he says nothing either, but pads up the two flights of stairs to his room, straining not to be heard. Goodnight, Mr Blunt. Threads of cigar smoke creep under the door and taint the air.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Locke visited. Her anger had not waned. She wanted us to tell Hooper’s family about Parr and the rope, about their daughter’s mountain sickness, that we had let her down and we wanted to apologize, but that Parr was mostly to blame. Now Locke had heard that Parr was writing her own account of the tragedy for a mountaineering journal.

  I poured tea and offered her a scone. She waved the plate away.

  ‘It will be a tissue of lies, with no mention of the fact that she chose not to use the rope or that she drove Hooper to exhaustion. We have to tell everything before her story is accepted as truth.’

  ‘I don’t know about this, Locke. What do we have to tell and to whom?’

  ‘Farringdon, don’t stand up for her now. You simply cannot.’

  Locke grasped the sugar tongs, dropped a lump into her tea and stirred it as though she were beating an egg.

  ‘I’m just not clear what good—’

  ‘I need to know that you will support me and that we shall be united on this. Of course I do not say that we were blameless in the accident. We weren’t.’

  I nodded. ‘Indeed. We should have listened when Hooper first mentioned her headache.’

  ‘But the responsibility is Parr’s and she must take it.’

  We sipped our tea. I nibbled a bit of scone but I had no appetite. Catherine moved around upstairs, opening drawers and cupboards. Sarah was in the kitchen, splashing water and clinking cutlery. I wished that something would happen to make Locke go away. She wanted to worsen a situation that was already bad and would cause more pain for Hooper’s family. It irritated me that she would not let it rest, let Hooper rest.

  ‘Parr can tell her story,’ I said. ‘She’ll give the truth as she remembers it. Only Parr knows why they didn’t use the rope. It’s cruel to think the worst, cruel to blame her when none of us could help Hooper.’

  I choked on the last words. Locke’s eyes filled and she looked away. We weren’t able to comfort each other. Locke covered her face with her handkerchief and wept. I stared at a smear on the window pane.

  ‘I remember saying that I would spend all my summers in Zermatt.’ She sniffed. ‘Ghastly place.’

  ‘But that’s it, Locke. You’re angry with Parr because it’s all so fresh and terrible. Wait a while—’

  ‘Don’t insult me.’ She folded her handkerchief into a neat square and tucked it into her pocket. ‘I’m going home. You may as well know, I’ve decided to write a play about the whole affair and then the truth will be public.’

  ‘Why deepen the agony for Parr? Leave it alone, Locke. Hooper is gone. Please stop this.’

  She stood and left the room without looking at me again. Sarah came to the hall, but Locke already had her hat and coat. I watched her from the window, pulling her arms into her sleeves as she hurried away, almost tumbled along the street, like an injured bird trying to take flight.

  The argument upset me, so I curled up on the settee and lay in silence for the rest of the afternoon. I did not want Locke’s friendship just now, if it had to be filled with anger and accusation, but I did not want to lose it either. She was my best friend and had sometimes seemed closer to me than Catherine. I decided to wait, perhaps for a few months, until we were all a little stronger.

  Parr had been silent since the funeral, so I wrote to her and received a brief message in return.

  I can’t bear to be in Europe now, not after the accident. I’m making arrangements to go to South America and climb therefor a few months, at least, perhaps a year or more. Come, if you can. We could even travel to the south of Argentina and look down towards Antarctica.

  I clutched her letter and went to the window. I gazed over the rooftops to the sky and at the faint glimmer of sun behind the clouds, feeling that I could jump to the grass below, run and run. South America. We might climb in Peru, follow in the footsteps of Annie Smith Peck, ascend the north summit of Huascarán and more. We could indeed visit Buenos Aires and travel down through Argentina towards – but – but I had no money for this sort of adventure and it was out of the question. And then, even if I could afford it, what of Hooper? Was it decent to climb again so soon? And what of Catherine and Mother? Yet it might shut up the naysayers in the newspapers, if we did i
t well and bagged new peaks.

  ‘What shall I do, Hooper?’ I had taken to addressing my dear friend from time to time since she always seemed to be nearby. ‘Shall I go with Parr?’

  There was no reply, of course, but I imagined an emphatic No. It was the right, sensible answer. Catherine needed my help with Mother and I had neglected my family for too long. If Catherine wanted to leave home, I must let her, though I did not believe she had anywhere to go. And, I reminded myself again, I could hardly afford a passage to South America.

  Mother liked me to do my reading and sewing in the drawing room because it was directly beneath her bedroom. She could bang on the floor with Father’s old walking stick when she needed me and didn’t have to use her voice or press the servant bell, which was, she complained, stiff and put her finger out. The thud of the stick might disturb me at any time and I gave up trying to read. I played Patience or slept. Sometimes I shut my eyes and spoke a few silent words to Hooper, asked her if she was warm enough. When my mother called me upstairs for no reason, I cursed her and asked Hooper to give me strength. Mother was difficult to please, often angry and stubborn. One day she asked me for a book, did not like the one I chose, and threw it at my head. The urge to throw it directly back at her was strong but Hooper told me to resist, so I took the book and, quite calmly, left the room.

  Dr Sowerby sometimes visited but Mother’s illness remained mysterious. Pain moved from limb to limb. Sometimes she could not move her legs and, on other days, she walked around but her neck and back were sore, or her hands tingled.

  ‘She has a touch of arthritis but her main complaint is probably nervous,’ Dr Sowerby told me one day. ‘Ensure that the house is always clean and quiet with plenty of fresh air circulating. Nothing must happen that might upset her routine and cause her anxiety or surprise.’

  ‘Anything that causes surprise in this house now will be a surprise to me too.’

  But I woke that night feeling strange. I could hear music and I realized that I had been listening to it in my sleep and that it had been playing for some time. Catherine was at the piano, working her way up and down a slow chromatic scale. I sat up to listen. She played three octaves then moved up a semitone and began again and again. I got out of bed and pulled back the drapes to let a little moonlight onto my clock. It was ten past three. She was banging confidently up and down the keyboard as though it were daylight. I went back to bed but by half past three she had moved onto arpeggios and then minor sevenths. Each exercise segued into the next as though there were some deeper compulsion pushing her on.

  I tiptoed down to the drawing room and pushed the door. Catherine rocked slowly back and forth as she played. She looked like a ghost with her white nightgown and loosely plaited hair. Her eyes were wide but there was no expression on her face.

  ‘Catherine? Are you all right?’

  ‘What?’ She looked up but her hands continued to play.

  ‘Catherine, it’s the middle of the night.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t sleep.’

  ‘I can’t sleep and you can’t sleep.’ Her voice was singsong. She paused. ‘Oh dear.’

  I wondered if she were sleep-walking. She didn’t seem to be talking to me but to herself. She played to the end of her arpeggios and brought her hands together, then placed them in her lap, head bent.

  I waited for the notes to fade. ‘Catherine, if you’ve finished, why don’t you go to bed?’

  ‘If you’ve finished, why don’t you go to bed?’ She turned slowly to me, eyes flat and empty, like buttons.

  ‘Why are you practising scales in the middle of the night?’

  ‘Scales are very easy if you practise every day but you have to practise every single day. The middle of the day and the middle of the night. Where is he?’

  ‘Who?’

  She frowned.

  And her fingers found the keys, meandered back into an uneven chromatic scale. I opened my mouth to persuade her again to go to bed but stopped. Her mind was somewhere in a dream and I could not reach her.

  I looked into Mother’s room before returning to my own. She was asleep. The moonlight bathed her white bedclothes blue. The piano was faint here so it was possible that Catherine often played in the night and Mother never knew. Her arms and legs splayed at gawky angles and her covers were sliding to the floor. She mumbled that she was cold. I tugged at her blankets, trying not to disturb her. I drew the bedspread gently to her chest and I watched her for a while. Some days, when she sat up and rapped her stick on the floorboards, I had wanted to shake or hit her but now I wished her sound sleep.

  ‘I’m warm now,’ she whispered.

  I touched her brow and she rested her hand on my wrist, her powdery fingertips quivering on my skin.

  The following day, Catherine called Mother and me into the drawing room to announce that she was going to get married and leave us. Mother collapsed into her armchair and Sarah brought the smelling salts.

  ‘Catherine, who is he?’ I whispered.

  ‘Frank, of course.’

  ‘Frank Black? You have been meeting him after all?’

  ‘No. I have only seen him the once recently – I told you about it – but I know he likes me. I’m not lying so you needn’t look at me like that. I couldn’t have done anything before you came back because my responsibility was to her.’

  ‘You mean nothing has happened. Aren’t you hurrying a little, if you’ve only seen him once?’

  ‘No. He loved me then and he still does. Now you’re back and I’m free to do as I please.’ She loosened her hair, ran her fingers through it, then held it up into a knot on top of her head, using the glass in Father’s portrait as a mirror. She sucked in her cheeks and lifted her lips into a haughty smile.

  ‘But Frank didn’t propose?’

  ‘No, but he will. You see, I have seen him pass by the window twice. He was looking at the house both times – really staring – so he must have hoped to see me.’

  ‘Then he might have rung the doorbell.’

  She pinned her hair back the way it had been, patted down the loose coils at her temples. ‘He wouldn’t want to disturb us while Mother is so ill and we’re still mourning Father. He was always a gentleman. Well, you wouldn’t remember but he was. I’m tired. I’m going to bed now. Goodnight.’

  It was not yet evening but Catherine left us, yawning and rubbing her eyes.

  Mother had recovered and was sitting up, holding a handkerchief across her forehead and shooing Sarah away.

  ‘Oh, Grace. Whatever is she thinking? I swear your sister is touched. It’s not only that she’s lost all her manners, but she is more eccentric by the day. We should never have let her spend so much time at the piano. It’s worse than a drug and I don’t know how she’ll ever get back to herself now.’

  ‘I hadn’t realized that she was so badly off.’

  ‘And what did I hear her saying just now about Frank Black? Imagine. Who on earth would marry her now? What sort of a wife would she make? I shudder at the thought. Poor girl.’

  Perhaps I had imagined, in my first year at college, that Frank might return to Catherine and fall in love with her again, but I knew better now. She was too far away from him and all of us. If Frank were really walking past our house and it was not a fantasy of Catherine’s, then perhaps he was hoping to see me. I longed to see Frank again. I longed to talk about Switzerland, the accident, my three friends and all that had happened between us. He had met them all, Locke, Parr and Hooper.

  Locke would be working in London now, a bachelor girl, perhaps lodging with other young women, or perhaps still at home with her family in Kensington. She had not replied to my last letter and I imagined her writing her play every evening, her version of the truth, commuting each day to the West End to work and, somewhere between, perhaps meeting a lover. He would be an actor or writer too and they would share heated conversations about the world and theatre. They would have free love and not care who knew. Parr woul
d be preparing for her grand voyage to South America now, packing her ropes and boots for the next big climb.

  I attempted a letter to Teddy. I jotted some memories of Hooper, found a photograph of her in the college woods, gave him my warmest regards. I looked at the picture, her soft face and surprised smile and felt that somebody was taunting me. I rubbed my eyes. Should I tell Teddy that Locke was writing a play about his fiancée’s death? It was bound to portray her as a weak, sickly girl, dropped into the abyss by her selfish, scheming friend. I thought of Edward Whymper and the Taugwalders, survivors on the broken rope. As my father had told me, Peter Taugwalder could not have had time to cut the rope when the others were already falling. He would have been pulled before he knew what was happening. But, if he had done it, could he be blamed for it? He would have saved not only himself but his son and Edward Whymper when it was already too late for the others. I remembered the story of Parr’s parents, the pair of them on one rope, slipping over the edge of a broken cornice to their deaths. What if Parr and Hooper had been roped up and both had gone? I imagined Parr packing her trunk for South America, off into self-imposed exile, unable to keep away from mountains no matter how much of her they destroyed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘Mother,’ I said the next morning, ‘why don’t we sell the house and move somewhere smaller? We need the money and there are too many rooms for the three of us. A fresh start would do us good, don’t you think?’

  ‘Great heavens. You are always trying to get from one place to another. This is our family home. Your father would be horrified to hear you say such a thing.’

  ‘Change might be good for us. Catherine is losing herself here. Perhaps away from her childhood home—’

  My mother nodded and clasped my hand.

  ‘Catherine is a bit of a lump, but she would only get worse elsewhere. She’s still mourning her father and needs to be close to his things and all her memories. Do you see? If we took her away, I’m afraid that she might not know where she was. This house gives her comfort and safety, puts some edges on her world that the piano took away. I’ve talked to Dr Sowerby and he says so too.’