THE VERY DEAD OF WINTER

by MARY HOCKING

  But as they drew nearer to the cottage, she was overwhelmed by the longing to see Nicholas so that all her wise intentions deserted her. Her heart beat faster, her nerves shrilled; she was cross with Andrew and shouted at Jasper. Her lips parted at one minute as if to laugh, the next they snarled as the dog thrust against her. When the cottage came into view, she made Andrew stand by the fence, holding Jasper in case Tobias should appear, and she was glad when Jasper barked because surely Nicholas would hear and understand and come rushing out. She noticed that for the first time this week the curtains were drawn back in the shed and she glimpsed Florence and Anita. They might all be there, but no one came out. Her face bleached, and had anyone been with her they must have thought her about to faint. She put the letters in the box outside the cottage door and walked slowly up the path, feeling they were all watching her, perhaps staying out of sight so that she could not intrude where she was not wanted. Her cheeks burned with humiliation and she clenched her hands as she turned her face to the wintry scene.

  Paintings lined the walls of the shed; their colours were strong, the figures boldly executed, so that, although at first glance they seemed to catalogue disaster, the main impression was one of tremendous energy.

  ‘Why, it’s the Challoners’ house.’ Florence stared at a man on a gaping roof, a mug of tea in his hands, seemingly unaware of the devastation that surrounded him. Other paintings depicted people similarly unobservant of their surroundings – a grimy street, discoloured washing on the line, contrasted with the brilliant, excited face of a boy on a skateboard; a man trimmed his roses in the last of the evening sunlight as the sky darkened with parachuting figures; a woman baked in a house surrounded by soot-blackened warehouses; a girl laid her doll in its cot while the roofs of distant houses were tipped with flames. Florence put her hands to her face and turned away, but on all sides the figures blazed from their frames. ‘It’s too terrible,’ she cried, staring at men crouching in the corner of a hideous factory yard, intent on their game of dominoes.

  ‘But think of the courage it took to get it down.’ Anita was excited. ‘To order, compose . . .’

  ‘And something else besides courage?’ Sophia suggested.

  ‘You!’ Florence rounded on Sophia. ‘You and Konrad.’ Suddenly, she shouted, tearing away the bonds of control, her face mottled purple. ‘Anita, Nicholas, look at her standing there so cool and unashamed. You should want to kill her for doing this to me.’

  Nicholas said in a cold, uninflected voice, ‘He came here to paint. You didn’t want him at home.’

  ‘It was the paintings I didn’t want, the bloody awful paintings.’

  Sophia said, ‘He was his paintings.’ Although she spoke calmly, the tenseness of her body revealed her apprehension. She had put her treasures on show.

  ‘Dear God,’ Florence said. ‘What has happened to me?’

  Standing there, in the centre of the room, it was as if she had come on stage to find herself in an unfamiliar play. She was, above all else, a performer, and to find that she had got the performance wrong was deeply disquieting. She felt as if she was about to be found out, revealed as not belonging, inadequate at some very basic level; and there was something worse, some fear that she had never been able to identify. She saw them all looking at her, Sophia, Anita, Nicholas; not one of them moved to help her. She was alone. How had it come about when her entire life had been spent ensuring that this moment could never happen?

  ‘You came down here because you “needed space”,’ she said to Sophia. ‘What need had you of Konrad, you who had to be solitary? He was my husband. It was important to me that he was there. He belonged in my life.’

  ‘He was there for you, Florence, for what you needed.’

  ‘A person can’t belong in two places at once.’ As the assertion settled, something occurred to her and she cried out, ‘It was because I told Father that you went to the gypsy camp. You meant to repay me for taking away your precious freedom, so you took Konrad.’

  Sophia swayed as from a blow. ‘No, no.’ A hand went to her heart.

  Florence watched her sister, now bent and shaken. She said, ‘It was revenge.’

  ‘No, it was never that, never!’ Sophia’s voice was hoarse and she seemed to have difficulty in breathing. ‘That was cruel of you.’

  ‘Cruel. Did you expect me to be kind and consider your feelings? Is that what you think is due to you?’

  Sophia straightened slowly, as a person will who is recovering from cramp, afraid that any unconsidered movement may bring on another spasm. ‘No.’ She moistened her lips. ‘Nothing is due to me and you have a right to be cruel. But please don’t talk of revenge. I was grateful to you for telling Father.’

  ‘That wasn’t the way you behaved at the time.’

  ‘Not at first, but later I was grateful. You helped me to see that running away with gypsies was a childish fancy.’

  ‘You hated me.’

  ‘No, Florence, never.’

  ‘Why else would you have done it?’

  Sophia ran her hands slowly down her face. She seemed perplexed by the question. ‘I didn’t think of you, Florence. It was wrong of me, I see that now. But at the time, I hardly gave you a thought.’

  Florence stared around her, unable to comprehend what was being said. ‘She never gave me a thought,’ she addressed Anita, but Anita had turned to the paintings.

  ‘We met at an exhibition. It was years since I had seen you. Konrad told me he needed somewhere to paint. That was how it started.’

  ‘And are you telling me you had no idea how it would end?’

  Sophia smiled. ‘Oh, I knew how it would end, I don’t deny that.’ The smile was not triumphant, but tender, a tenderness which was private and excluded Florence. To Florence, it was as if her sister had said: this is something about which you can know nothing. She lashed out.

  ‘You lied and deceived me, you and Konrad. It was sordid, squalid. Do you understand? Squalid.’

  ‘Konrad never lied to you, Florence.’ Sophia was angry and made no attempt to hide her contempt. ‘He was always very open. If you had ever made enquiries about his painting holidays, he would have answered honestly. But you never put the question.’

  ‘I was fed up with his paintings. I wasn’t going to gratify him by asking questions.’

  ‘They are accepting something!’ Anita’s voice vibrated at a pitch Florence had not heard in a long time. ‘These people are all accepting something.’ She was going from painting to painting, her face agitated by the unhealthy excitement that fairy stories had aroused in her as a child and that had led Florence to impose a ban on them. As soon as she had been round the room once, she started again, her eyes devouring each painting as if she could not have enough of it.

  ‘Madness,’ Florence said. ‘I always sensed it. There must have been madness in his family.’

  ‘But they are so wonderful,’ Anita exclaimed. ‘Can’t you see, don’t you understand? Mother? Nicholas?’

  Florence thought she looked unhinged, face flushed and eyes feverish. ‘Look, look! He isn’t emphasising the weird, the menacing. That man on the roof isn’t trying to pick up the pieces after chaos; he’s savouring the first gulp of tea, the warmth going right down to the pit of his stomach.’ She darted from painting to painting, fingers stabbing, as if a demon had been released in her. ‘The boy on the skateboard, the child with her doll. See them! They are so intensely alive. It is here and now. It is always now in these paintings.’ Her voice cracked.

  Florence said, ‘I think you had better go and lie down.’

  Anita ran over to Nicholas who was at the far end of the room. ‘Surely you can see. What we call ordinary and humdrum was precious to Konrad. It springs out of all these paintings.’

  Nicholas said drily, ‘Something else springs out of these two.’ He was looking at two portraits of Sophia, painted when she was some twenty years younger, the intense gaiety of the face invested with the artist’s love of her.
/>
  ‘No,’ Anita said. ‘Not something else. The same thing – acceptance, now.’

  They stood looking at the portraits for a long time in silence.

  At the other end of the room, Sophia and Florence stood facing each other, oddly alike, hair tumbling out of comb and clasp, eyes insistent, mouths eagerly open. Sophia said, ‘I never hated you, Florence. I understood why you told our father about the gypsy camp.’

  ‘You left me on my own, and you knew Mother wouldn’t let us have friends in to play.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘When I played with the kitten. Mother said it gave her a headache. She made me practise hem-stitching.’

  ‘Poor dear.’

  ‘Then, when they realised you had run off, they shut me up in our bedroom while they talked. Mother said I mustn’t think of myself all the time. But there wasn’t anything else to think about.’

  ‘Was that why you tore up all my books?’

  ‘I had to do something.’

  They were talking quietly now. They might have been replaying the past, trying to make a better version.

  ‘You could have set fire to the room,’ Sophia said. ‘That would have made them attend to you. Remember how they reacted when we tried to have a bonfire on Guy Fawkes night.’

  ‘There were the two of us, then. I couldn’t have done it on my own. I have always needed company. I’m a sociable person and I have always made a place for myself in society.’ Her voice became childishly cross. Sophia took her hand. Florence said, ‘I had always taken it for granted that there would be people; that’s not unreasonable, is it? I had not envisaged the supply running out.’

  Anita said to Nicholas, ‘Can’t you see? The pain and terror aren’t the last word. Konrad worked from chaos to order, from despair to hope.’

  He found nothing but pain as he stared at the paintings, thinking of his father and wishing he had made better use of their time together. He turned away to the window and stood looking out on the snowy scene. Anita saw the expression on the strained face change to one of sad perplexity. As she moved beside him she caught a glimpse of Frances walking slowly away from the house to where Andrew waited for her at the garden gate. She said teasingly, ‘When you are old and grey and full of care, you will want a hearth to warm yourself beside.’

  He said, ‘There are other things. When I was sitting with Father, I came across a copy of John Buchan’s Sickheart River on the bookshelf. It reminded me that I’ve never explored that part of Canada. It would be interesting.’ She saw that his mind was beginning to circle the familiar foothills of all his travelling – finance, equipment, timetabling.

  ‘He gave them to you?’ Florence’s voice rang out. ‘Nicholas, Anita, she is saying that Konrad gave these paintings to her.’

  ‘You didn’t want them,’ Anita pointed out.

  ‘I should still like to have one good reason why you should have them, Sophia.’

  ‘I like them.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem to me an adequate reason.’

  ‘To me, it seems the only reason.’

  ‘But you’re no longer young, Sophia. What happens to them when you pass on? I hope you’ll have the grace to leave them to Anita and Nicholas.’

  Nicholas said with unexpected firmness, ‘They are Sophia’s to dispose of, if that is what Father wanted.’

  Sophia laid a hand on her sister’s arm. ‘Florence, I would like to found a gallery where they could be exhibited. There would be other paintings for sale, of course, but Konrad’s would be on permanent display.’

  ‘Galleries spring up overnight and disappear as quickly.’

  ‘His paintings are going to be valued.’

  ‘I doubt that very much. I tried to have one of them valued once – the man was not at all encouraging. And even supposing you’re right, and had the money, you could never run a gallery, you haven’t the expertise.’

  ‘I think Frances could run one, judging by the changes she has brought about since she went to work in the bookshop.’

  ‘Frances?’ Nicholas said.

  ‘She’s a very capable and determined person. She would soon acquire what expertise is required for anything she set her mind to.’

  ‘And the money?’ He seemed disconcerted. ‘These ventures do cost money.’

  ‘Thomas might be prepared to put up the money. He would like to do something for Frances.’

  ‘I seem to be excluded from these considerations.’ Florence was becoming distressed.

  ‘You didn’t want Konrad’s paintings in your home,’ Anita said. ‘You can hardly object to their being on show in a gallery.’

  ‘And I should play no part in it,’ Sophia assured her sister. ‘I should hand over all the paintings.’

  Florence looked at her in disbelief. ‘But you like them. How could you let them go?’

  ‘Because, as you have pointed out, I have no right to consider them mine.’ She made a little gesture with her hands, as if offering a gift to her sister. ‘Any more than I have a right to consider Konrad mine.’

  ‘Not one painting?’ Anita asked. ‘You won’t keep one painting for yourself?’

  Sophia turned on her angrily. ‘If I kept one I might as well keep them all.’

  ‘That is unnatural.’ Florence’s voice was at its most declamatory. ‘We have to hold on to what we love.’ She incorporated Nicholas and Anita in one proprietary glance.

  ‘Sophia said fiercely, ‘Love is a matter of letting go.’

  ‘Letting go, letting go, I am sick to death of all this letting go,’

  Florence burst out. ‘Bad things come of letting go. You don’t just stay still, you get carried somewhere you didn’t want to go. Look what happened to Konrad. He let go and from then on it was as if his illness drew him like a magnet.’

  Sophia seemed to recede from them. She did not move but one had the sense of a turning away; the signs of conflict and response in the body ceased, the hands became still, the shoulders dropped. ‘It is too soon to talk of these things,’ she said, quite lightly, as if putting aside a bill she had no intention of paying immediately. She looked at her watch. ‘Poor Tobias will think he is never to be fed.’

  ‘It would be no great matter were that cat to miss a meal,’ Florence said, but Sophia was already walking away.

  Florence stood between Nicholas and Anita and the door; the brother and sister reacted nervously, as if trapped. Florence said, ‘This will bring about a change in our lives, you do realise that?’

  Anita said, ‘Yes, Mother, I do realise it.’ She took Nicholas’s hand. ‘But now I think perhaps we should all go and have lunch.’ They circled Florence to reach the door and she swivelled, her eyes considering them.

  ‘As if she was wondering which one to pounce on,’ Anita said, her voice a little hysterical. ‘But we got away, Nicholas; we got away, didn’t we?’

  Florence, alone, stood transfixed, an expression of utter astonishment on her face. Wherever her eyes rested, impending disaster leapt out of the paintings. She scarcely looked at the central figures which had so impressed Anita. In her mind, another figure took their place. As a child she had had a recurrent nightmare in which a great tower that shadowed her dream house was about to fall. She had been too terrified to cry out, lest she precipitate disaster. Once, half-waking, it had occurred to her that even had she been able to summon help, neither her parents nor Sophia could have stopped the tower falling. That had been over fifty years ago; the tower had been a long time falling.

  Frances and Andrew had been to the Hoopers’ house and Frances had tested the central heating, proving, rather to Andrew’s disappointment, that their electricity had not been cut off.

  ‘We should have had to empty the freezer,’ she said as they set out for home. ‘And you wouldn’t have found that very interesting.’

  Jasper ran ahead, nosing in the undergrowth, and then backed away from his find. Andrew, who had followed close behind, halted suddenly and Frances coming to them saw a
n old dog fox lying rigid, the head thrust forward, making a last foray among dead leaves and rotted roots; snow tufted the whiskers around the bared teeth.

  Andrew said, ‘P’raps if we took him home and wrapped him in a blanket?’

  ‘I don’t think so, do you?’

  He bent down and stroked the stiff bristles as though by touch he hoped that life might be restored. Jasper had run off in search of more lively game; in the distance, they heard him thrashing about and snorting as he did when pleased, then he was gone out of earshot.

  Andrew hiccuped, the noise shockingly loud. He put a hand to his chest.

  ‘You ate your breakfast too fast,’ Frances said.

  He hiccuped again, even more violently, and doubled up. Frances comforted, ‘It’ll be all right; just hold your breath and count to twenty.’

  The spasms came too fast for him to contain: his hunched body jerked from side to side and Frances, impelled by a need to share his pain, did what she had never before dared; she closed the distance between them and put her arms around him. He stiffened, but she held him until after a few more racking hiccups he buried his face against her shoulder. His breathing gradually became easier until they seemed to breathe as one.

  They breathed and they alone. Frances was aware of how still it had become. Jasper must be far away by now; it was unusual for him to leave Andrew, in whom he took a jealous interest. If other creatures were abroad, they stirred no branches. Not one flake of snow fell. No bird sang. It would have been possible, had one been of a nervous disposition, to be a little afraid.

  Light flickered. Frances, turning her head in the direction of that brief shadow play, saw a stag standing beneath an arch of branches. It seemed to her that he was the most natural creature she had ever seen, so completely did he belong in the space he filled; and she was struck by the courtesy with which he accepted their presence, his stance, despite the imperious head, so graceful and the eyes mild. She wanted to tell Andrew, but she knew that if there was any movement the stag would go. And, indeed, he was gone in a matter of seconds. No sound marked his passage.