THE VERY DEAD OF WINTER

by MARY HOCKING

  Andrew looked up at her. ‘You’ve stopped breathing.’

  She said gently, ‘I think we should be on our way now. Do you want to bury the fox?’

  He nodded and she let him scoop the first handful of snow on to the arrowed head.

  ‘We’ll go back now, shall we? Grandpa will be wondering where we are.’ She put an arm lightly round his shoulders and they set off.

  They were surprised to find that the forest was full of activity. Busy little vans festooned with trailing branches, Land-Rovers bearing ladders and coils of wire, ploughed through the snow; men shouted to one another from high in the trees.

  ‘It’s all right for some,’ one of them called down to Frances.

  ‘If you get our electricity back we’ll stand you lunch,’ she answered cheerfully.

  She and Andrew were walking close, jolting each other companionably, as they came to the garden gate where Jasper waited, muzzle comically masked by snow.

  Chapter Five

  No one spoke at breakfast except Florence. ‘I have been making plans during the night. Someone has to look to the future. There will be a lot to sort out in the house. You’ll have to come back for a time, Anita. Terence will understand – selfish though he is he can’t fail to see that it would be impossible for me to manage alone. Perhaps in time we might find somewhere for the three of us? It would be a wise move. Terence is not reliable and one day you’ll find yourself alone and you know you’ve never been able to cope on your own. I haven’t liked to say this before, but now is the time to speak plainly. And you, Nicholas, will have to deal with the business side.’

  It’s like being under machine-gun fire, Nicholas thought, pouring coffee. He was glad he had trained himself to pick out distant noises from the surrounding hubbub – outside the window a blackbird fluted and he heard every note.

  Anita thought: she is like a vampire; it’s not just comfort she wants, it’s our life’s blood.

  ‘Solicitors make such a meal over even the simplest estate. You remember Mildred Percival and how ill she became when there was all that trouble over probate or whatever it is one has to wait for. I, of course, am not a depressive like Mildred. No one has ever seen me go weeping down the high street with my dress open to the belly button, or ever will. But I have borne a much heavier burden than Mildred, who had only to visit the hospital once a day for a matter of months. All the worry and upheaval of Konrad’s illness has taken its toll – running up and downstairs until I very nearly had a heart attack and we had to move him down to the sitting-room; special meals to prepare; making sure that wretched doctor was doing all he could (and I’m still not sure that he did, but that can wait). You don’t know what it was like, Anita; you only dropped in in the evenings on your way home from work. You should have taken compassionate leave; it was false kindness on my part not to insist. But I shall insist now, for your good as much as my own.’ She took a fourth piece of toast and dug a spoon deep into the honey pot.

  She doesn’t know what she is saying, Sophia thought; this is her last stand against her fears.

  ‘And it wasn’t just Mildred Percival. Look what happened to Josie Symonds. If it hadn’t been for her family – all so supportive, the Symonds young – I shudder to think what would have become of her. I don’t like talking to you in this way, don’t think I do; but you’ve been so sheltered, so shielded from unpleasantness, you’ve never had to take up your responsibilities and it’s only fair that I am straight with you now, I would be failing as a mother if I weren’t. I remember Josie Symonds’s daughter saying to me, “I should never have forgiven myself if I had failed Mother at this time.” Her husband, of course, was very supportive too. You must remember to point that out to Terence. It would be good for him to model himself on Harold . . .’

  A mirror, Sophia thought, that’s what we are, her mirror; without us she would cease to exist. She has no inner life. I never understood that it wasn’t selfishness made her fight for attention, that it was her only way of survival. When she sits before her mirror each morning she sees no reflection. Ever since she was young, she has refused to look in the mirror until her hair is brushed out. Then she will raise her eyes and begin to create a person. She has never examined the raw material. My poor sister, we have all expected too much; it wasn’t her fault that she had a big, forceful body and a timid soul.

  Anita had gone for a walk, Florence to her bedroom. On the half¬landing Florence had looked down on Nicholas who had just emerged from the kitchen carrying a wicker basket full of logs. ‘I’m going to need a lot of help, remember.’ She had then proceeded to her room, shouting for Sophia. Nicholas began to make up the fire, listening to his mother telling Sophia, ‘This can’t go on, this pretence that nothing has happened to change our lives. There has been a very big, a profound change. We have to discuss what arrangements need to be made.’ He did not hear Sophia’s reply; it was either brief or cut short by Florence. ‘These last months have been a terrible strain on me, a torment. I was strong for Konrad’s sake, but now I’m exhausted. I can’t go on any longer. Do you understand me? Do they understand me, my children? It’s I who must be cared for now.’ At this point, a door had been closed.

  Nicholas finished tending the hall fire, his face expressionless. He took a small hearth brush and began to dust the wood ash into a scuttle. Tobias, who had been observing him from the sitring-room doorway, came and played with the brush and for a time Nicholas amused himself with the cat, delight brightening his usually guarded face. He squatted on his haunches and parried blows with Tobias; then he rolled over on his back and held the cat in the air above him. Tobias, wild with excitement, lashed out with paws which, for once, were ineffective, so expertly was he held. ‘It’s not fair, is it?’ Nicholas said. ‘Come on, then. Show what you can do.’ He let the cat down on his chest, whereupon Tobias decided that there was nothing he wanted more than to be a lovable cat and he lay with paws outstretched across Nicholas’s shoulders, in an ecstasy of purring and dribbling. Nicholas stroked him and whispered in his ear. Eventually he sat up, cradling the cat in his arms. ‘We’ll go and make a nice fire for you in the sitting-room, shall we?’ Tobias, who didn’t much like change when he was comfortable, dug in his claws and spat. ‘I know, I know,’ Nicholas soothed as he carried him into the sitting-room. ‘They never let you have peace, do they, these restless mortals. And you so small you can’t wrest it for yourself.’ He continued to soothe Tobias, amused and tender, while he built up the fire.

  Nicholas was so occupied that his usually acute hearing failed him and he was startled when Anita spoke from the doorway.

  ‘Nicholas, I’m going.’

  She shut the door and leant against it. Turning and seeing her there, he thought she looked as she had years ago when they were children and she planned to emulate some great adventure she had read about in a book. His face twisted as if she had hurt him.

  ‘Going where?’ he asked, adopting that tone of indifference with which he had made it plain he was not going to play her game.

  ‘Away, now.’ She came forward eagerly, the absurd hair, the exposed face, making her intolerably childish. ‘This evening. I’ve asked the men who are mending the telegraph wires to give me a lift into town.’

  He wedged a log firmly in place. ‘You can’t go away before the funeral, silly.’

  ‘I can and I must.’ She stood over him, compelling attention.

  He said wearily, ‘Oh, Anita, go and play somewhere else.’

  ‘Come with me, Nick.’ She crouched beside him. ‘I’ve found out where Konrad was born – a small town in East Germany.’

  ‘We knew he came from Germany, didn’t we?’ The flames leapt up and he sat back on his haunches, dusting his hands on his thighs. Tobias, who had moved away in a huff watched from the far side of the hearth.

  ‘Sophia says he had a grandmother who was in a circus – a circus, imagine that! – and he remembered his mother saying she was Russian and came from Vlonsk.’

>   ‘Vlonsk?’

  ‘Well, that’s how it sounded. I’ve got it written down somewhere.’

  ‘That will be a great help. A circus performer, from Vlonsk – somewhere at the turn of the century, perhaps? There must be a lot of people who will remember that.’

  They were crouching on the hearthrug, knees touching, in what should have been companionable proximity; yet it was now that she saw how far away he was. Behind the lashes which formed a lacy curtain to the eyes, there was a glimpse of steel. Uneasy, she leant forward and gave his hand a little shake. ‘I don’t want to trace our family tree, stupid. And I certainly don’t expect to walk down a street and have the sense that here is where I belong. But a part of us was formed by people who came from these places.

  Don’t you want to see where Konrad and our great-grandmother were born? Surely you can understand; you make journeys which are of far less personal significance. It’s our memory, Nicholas; the memory that we should have allowed Konrad to give us.’

  ‘He didn’t have much in the way of memory himself and what little he had, he can’t give us now.’

  ‘Now more than ever, perhaps.’

  In the firelight, her face glowed with the innocent simplicity of a child. He said, ‘We can talk about this after the funeral.’

  ‘No, it has to be now.’

  ‘What about Terence?’

  ‘I’ll leave him a note. His senses are very acute and I suspect he’s already making his own arrangements.’

  ‘And your job?’

  ‘The Council will be only too happy to find that one of it’s educational psychologists has taken voluntary redundancy. You have none of these problems, you always travel light. Come with me.’

  He pursed his mouth primly. ‘We couldn’t possibly leave Mother before the funeral. I’m surprised you can even think of it. It would show a lack of respect for Father.’

  ‘Oh, Nicholas, how can I make you understand! Imagine yourself given the chance – a once-only chance – to visit the place you most wanted to see, the most remote, the most secret, on the condition that you left immediately. You would recognise an offer you had to close on without havering or backward glances.’

  ‘There is one flaw in that analogy. This place would have had to fire my imagination – not my sister’s. As far as I’m concerned, no chance has presented itself here, no offer has been made. You’ve been working yourself up into a state ever since we arrived. Mother always said you were very highly strung as a child; she was forever having to make sure your mind wasn’t overstimulated.’

  ‘Are you agreeing with her that there might be madness in Konrad’s family? Well, that’s a risk I have to take. When I looked at those paintings I realised how joyless my life has become. A pensionable job and an available man – I so very nearly settled for that. Those paintings turned everything upside down.’

  His lip curled, giving his usually sensitive face a spiteful look. ‘One thing seems fairly constant in all this.’

  She drew back, her eyes glancing from side to side as if seeking something she had overlooked. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘When you left home you said you weren’t ready to be on your own – hence Terence. Now you’re leaving Terence you’re looking for another prop. You do understand what I mean?’

  ‘This is different,’ she said sharply. ‘It’s natural to want to share it with you. We came here, the two of us; I felt we should find our way out together.’

  He raised his eyebrows, mocking her. One of the logs crackled and she plucked a spark from the rug. ‘Havering, is it?’ he said. ‘Having a few backward glances, are we?’ He got up and went to the window. ‘The undertaker is coming tomorrow – did you know? There’s quite a lot of cloud now.’ He opened the window and leant out. ‘Smells different. A thaw on the way.’

  She got up slowly as if her limbs had stiffened. Her face was that of an adult confronted by defeat.

  ‘I’m sorry, Annie,’ he said. ‘Truly, I am sorry; but we’re a bit old now, you and I, for escapades.’

  Florence met Thomas in the wood that afternoon. She was on her way to his house to thank him for his letter. ‘This sort of thing should be done personally,’ she had insisted at lunch.

  ‘He didn’t express his condolences personally,’ Anita had pointed out.

  ‘That was delicacy.’

  He was still being delicate this afternoon and seemed disposed to discuss the puzzle of the pony ad infinitum. Apparently he was returning from a round of visits aimed at finding its owner. ‘One or two people were out and I dropped a note through their letterboxes, so it’s possible that one of them . . .’

  ‘I would have thought you knew every pony in the forest.’

  ‘I concern myself mainly with legal matters affecting the Commoners. And I don’t socialise much. Neither does your sister. I didn’t recognise half the people at the party and I certainly wouldn’t know their animals.’

  Florence was convinced that this was no chance meeting and was determined that they should not let a golden opportunity pass them by. She marvelled at the generosity of life. Here, at the time when she most needed it, was this man, a widower, saddled with an unappealing grandson and a sullen, self-appointed housekeeper. And as if that were not cause enough for rejoicing, he was personable: tall and upright, not lacking energy, and with a promise of humour – a good, salty humour at that – in the slant of eyes and lips. How little faith she had had. There are circumstances to which some are suited, others not. She was not suited to living alone and her needs had been realised. There had been no call for panic. Long before Konrad died, before he was taken ill, even, a new life was being prepared for her. She had scarcely understood her decision to come to the forest when Konrad was dying; now she saw that she had been guided here. This was one of those things which had to be. She could see herself years hence talking of her late-found happiness to a friend – ‘God has kept this good wine until now’, or some such apt quotation. There could be no other reason for Thomas’s presence in the vicinity of her sister’s cottage, let alone on this unfrequented path at this particular moment. She felt an hysterical desire to cry out and shout loud hosannas.

  ‘You must let me take your arm,’ she said. ‘The snow has turned to ice on the soles of my boots.’

  They made slow progress, for Florence had a lot to say before they reached his house, by which time she hoped to have disposed of Frances and the boy, a boarding school in his case, she thought.

  ‘Of course, you understand all that I’m going through.’ The words had been so long waiting she could not hold them back any longer. ‘It’s a great shock to find oneself alone. To be alone is not a natural state for a normal, healthy person.’

  ‘I’m sure your family . . .’ She could have wished him to take her point more immediately, but at least he sounded gently concerned.

  ‘Oh, the young will flee. It is natural for them to spread their wings.’ She remembered, too late, that his son had chosen not to spread his wings. How tiresomely the events of his life conspired against her efforts.

  Thomas, who took her to be referring to Frances, said brusquely, ‘We wouldn’t want to hinder them, would we?’ thereby hoping to discourage any attempt on her part to give advice.

  ‘Oh yes, indeed, we should never rely on the young.’ Florence regarded this as the opening she needed and went on with feverish haste, ‘I have friends – as I am sure you have – who sit around counting the days to their children’s next visit. All their arrangements are provisional. “Of course you will understand that if Debbie or Jamie come down that weekend we shan’t be able to manage it . . .” “Yes, we would be delighted provided we don’t have to go to Debbie or Jamie to mind the children, paint the house, feed the animals . . .” Quite pathetic. And such a mistake to cling to the company of the young. One must find companionship among kindred spirits of one’s own age. I have no time for the elderly who talk about being lonely. They are the sort who wait for people to come to them. I
have always been impulsive, I have to reach out to others.’ Instinctively, she tightened her grip on Thomas’s arm.

  Thomas swung his stick in a circle, a habit Florence found irritating in a man. ‘I’m sure you have a lot of friends in Chiswick. One mistake which people in our situation make is to move away from the area where they have established themselves. Wouldn’t you agree?’

  Florence lost no time in disposing of this. ‘One must be enterprising.’

  ‘Exactly my point.’ Thomas took her up enthusiastically. ‘So, even more important to stay where there are likely to be the most opportunities for enterprise.’

  ‘But one must accept change.’ Florence made a gesture towards the transformed wood with her free hand.

  ‘Life provides the changes,’ Thomas mused. ‘We, on the other hand, must ensure the stability – old friends, local interests . . .’

  God, but the man was obtuse. Florence could barely control her impatience. ‘The main interest of Chiswick was the District Railway line which enabled Konrad to get to work easily.’

  ‘Your dramatic society,’ Thomas continued smoothly. ‘The tennis club.’

  ‘Fewer and fewer parts as one gets older.’ Florence was beginning to feel the cold creeping from legs to thighs, sending probes into her stomach; she had not eaten well at lunch. ‘And club life, while nice as a bonus, is scarcely a foundation for an interesting old age.’

  ‘Quite.’ Thomas paused to poke his stick into a tangle of branches which seemed to have offended him.

  Florence sensed her moment. ‘A woman needs someone to care for.’ She had some experience of putting this sort of line across and never had she done it better, the little tremor which was beyond her control adding much to the poignancy.

  They walked on in silence for some time while Thomas meditated and Florence anticipated. Eventually: ‘Hospices? Had you thought of that? Visiting and so forth?’