Why not drive off the cliff?
I force the thought away. Concentrate. This endless and repetitive snowfall was pretty enough three days ago, now it is menacing. We could be snowed in – that’s what Juliet warned. We might be imprisoned by the drifts and cut off from the grid. I cannot bear to contemplate that other warning implicit in her words: David is, in the end, possibly a murderer.
And if he is a murderer? Could he do such a thing again? He is already excluded from his own house: he is staring at a divorce. I am in the way. We are trapped in Carnhallow.
Kelly Smith, the PCSO, told me, weeks ago: I’ve seen it too many times … when they do it once, they will do it again.
I shall call her when we get home. I will, I will, I will.
Or maybe I will not. Slamming the boot and strapping Jamie in the back seat I start the car, working the logic.
‘OK?’
‘OK, Rachel. OK.’
‘Let’s go, soldier. This is Team Kerthen, heading for the North Pole.’
Jamie laughs. Faintly.
I am only faintly joking. We need to get home before the roads are impassable.
The dilemma is excruciating. If the police reopen the case and Juliet’s suspicions are correct, then David will go to prison. For twenty years or more.
If he is convicted and jailed, David’s income ends. We are left with the house, which will have to be sold.
And Jamie will lose a father for twenty years, essentially for ever, when he has already lost a mother. And my baby will grow up without a dad. The conclusion is inescapable: it is better to leave the past where it is: to leave the corpse of Nina floating in the tunnels.
If she is down there.
Flinging dirty snow with my whirring wheels, I pull out of our parking space. The car slides on to the main road, the windscreen wipers are crushing the snowflakes with a special relish.
Turning sharp left, we take the Zennor road. The last of the St Ives suburbs, with their shivering palm trees, quickly yield to the craggy vaults of snowbound moorland, made glitteringly pretty and eerily immobile.
All is wrapped in ice and white. The landscape is thwarted, autistic, mute. Icicles hang from granite carns like armouries of glass. The only movement is the sea, which waltzes endlessly, a dance of death. It will never stop. The sea looks hysterical compared to the frozen and motionless earth.
The car tyres skid on the muddy drifts, as more snow falls, turning the mud-stained snow immaculate white, once again. Repeat, repeat, repeat. We are the only people driving the moors, the only people mad enough to be out and about in this freezing-point whiteout.
‘Christingle!’
‘Sorry?’
From the back seat, Jamie is shouting, and pointing. There is a weathered metal sign saying Zennor Church. And beneath that sign is a temporary placard, which says, Christingle, Christmas Eve 2 p.m.
‘Can we go? Rachel? Please.’
‘Jamie, it’s getting dark already, we have to get back, if this snow gets any worse—’
‘It was Mummy’s favourite! We always went to it. She didn’t like Christmas. But she loved the candles. Please please please. Please?’
There is no way I can refuse. His mother’s favourite. Reluctantly steering the car right, I drive down the silent, snow-paved lane into Zennor. The little pub, the Tinners’ Arms, is decked with kiddy-colours of straggled Christmas lights. I can see people drinking inside, enjoying a roaring fire, good cheer, mulled wine, hot punch, dogs snoozing in the warmth. There are more cars parked outside the church, as well, some of them already sporting polar-bear-skins of snow on their roofs. So others are as mad as us, other people have braved this brutal weather.
I slide the car to a stop: almost hitting the churchyard wall. The medieval door of Zennor church is open; a vicar stands there, smiling and benign, greeting arrivers as they shake snow from umbrellas and hats.
Somehow I know what will happen when we scrunch the path to the door: Jamie will pull me left. The gravitational attraction, the black hole of grief, will prove too much. Sure enough, he glances across, and his hand tightens on mine. And now he is tugging me, off the icy, gritted path, towards the softly desolate spot that is his mother’s empty grave. The perfectly incised mermaid. The fearful epitaph.
The snowflakes are tumbling on to the churchyard yews, on to the speartips of the cast-iron fence, on to the fine polished granite of his mother’s grave, and Jamie kneels directly in front of the tombstone. I cannot bear to watch him kneeling in the icy grit, hugging the gravestone, holding it tight, as if it is his mother, returned. His boyish arms, in his little raincoat, trying to embrace the entire stone, tears rolling down his face as he whispers, ‘Happy Christmas, Mummy. I love you, Mummy.’
The crow-dark dusk-light gathers in the west, as the snow falls with exquisite gentility on to his blue Chelsea bobble hat.
‘Happy Christmas, Mummy. I’m sorry for making you sad. Happy Christmas. Happy Christmas.’
This is enough. Kneeling down next to him, I try to comfort him. But Jamie’s grief is an aquifer, an underground river, unseen until it bursts on to the surface – tidal, swollen, flooding, capable of sweeping everything away.
‘Jamie.’
In the corner of my gaze I can see the vicar, observing from the door. A grimace of pity has replaced his beatific Christmas smile. He surely knows who we are, and what is happening. He knows Jamie Kerthen’s tragic story.
‘Jamie—’ I hug my stepson. ‘It’s OK. It’s OK.’
The tears still come in their dozens. Jamie’s cold little shoulders are shaking, from the bitter chill and the agony of grief. The Christmas Eve snow falls on Zennor carn. And yet, this is good, I think. Let it out. Let it come. Let it fall.
For three, four, five minutes I hug my stepson. There is no way I can take his father from him as well. I cannot ring the police.
‘Goodbye, Mummy.’
He kisses the gravestone once more, then he wipes the snot from his face with his raincoat sleeve. Snowflakes melt on his long expressive eyelashes. We are quiet, together. Plucking a pebble from the grave he turns it in his hand, as if it is a jewel, and then he stares at me. ‘You know, you know Mummy said horrible things?’
‘Jamie?’
His words come in a thawing rush. ‘They were arguing all the time. I don’t know, Rachel, Mummy, they were arguing so much, I don’t know why. It must have been important because it made Daddy angry. That night, at Christmas, she said Mummy and Daddy aren’t who – who – who you think they are but she said it like she didn’t mean it, and then she turned and said – Let me tell you about Mummy, the truth about Mummy – and then I screamed and said No and I said I hated her and I ran to the mine and she tried to reach out to me, to touch me, to say sorry, she slipped.’ His face is pink and white with cold. ‘So maybe it was something she did or something I did? She said I would understand one day, about Christmas, why it happened. Why she hated it. And—’ He looks at me. Desperate. As if he wants to tell me a deeper truth, to go further, but he can’t. Not allowed. ‘Maybe it was my fault, the things she said in the mine before she fell. Was it my fault?’
I hold his hand. ‘Jamie, please. Calm down. Calm down. You know your mummy is in heaven and she loves you, she is looking over you.’
‘But if she is in heaven why do you think you are going to die tomorrow, why is she back, taking your place? Who is she?’
I shrug, and look at the ice that rimes the antique and rusting sundial. The glory of the world quickly passeth.
His face is red-eyed. ‘I don’t want you to die tomorrow, Rachel. I don’t want you to die, I don’t want the other Mummy back any more – she scares me. I don’t understand. I don’t want you to go, don’t leave me alone here with Daddy and a ghost. Don’t die at Christmas.’
‘I’m not going anywhere. I promise.’
I feel an urgent need to protect the boy, almost as much as the daughter inside me. But I am also trying to stay calm, to work this t
hrough. I now know what Nina said: Mummy and Daddy aren’t who you think they are. I need to know why she could make such a terrible remark, even as a joke. Who could do that to their own child?
I yearn to know more, clear my clouding mind – but I also want to go home. I must leave this be, for now. Christingle awaits, and Jamie needs it.
Standing up, we brush the grit and snowflakes from our clothes, and pursue the frosted path to the church and the waiting vicar, who takes my hand and wishes me a very Merry Christmas, and as he does, stares me in the face, meaningfully, surely trying to express his sympathy. Then he takes Jamie’s hand and says, ‘Well hello, little Jamie. It’s been a while since we saw you.’
We step inside, taking a pew towards the back. The service begins immediately afterwards, as if God has been waiting for us.
And I am not sure what I am expecting, but the ritual surprises me, and after half an hour it ravishes me. Makes me forget the weather. I need this peace.
I have never been to a Christingle before. I imagine this is a Church of England thing: but I like it. Amidst the horrors, it soothes. Local children carry candles stuck in oranges, and carols are sung as these many candles glitter, like the candles in the felt hats of the miners, climbing down the shafts, bobbing down the tunnels that reach under the sea. And then the vicar stands in the pulpit and talks of the great prediction, in the Bible, in Isaiah:
‘For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor. The mighty God.’
And the words are so beautiful they make my eyes tingle, yet again. As if am learning the great truth for the first time. I hold Jamie’s hand. One by one the candles are extinguished, until the sacred, scented darkness entirely surrounds us.
For unto us a child is given.
When we emerge, it is near dark. We have about twenty minutes of light remaining. And a new front has been opened: the descending snow is heavier than ever. Pausing by the car door, I touch my stepson’s shoulder. ‘Jamie. You know. We could go to a hotel.’
His mouth opens. In shock.
I hasten to explain. ‘It’s just, this snow, it’s dangerous.’
‘No. No we can’t do that. No, Rachel, please. We have to go home. We have to go to Carnhallow. Mummy’s there. Please. We have to be there. It’s Christmas—’
His anguish is rising. And it is decisive. ‘OK,’ I say gently. ‘We’ll go home.’
We climb in the car and the car swerves and yaws as it battles the narrow roads, heading west, heading for Carnhallow. Three times I have to stop, back up, reverse, and softly careen into piling drifts, banked against the ancient stone hedges. But somehow we make it to the great gate that leads down to the wood.
The sea is distant, ahead. Like a mighty legion forever advancing, under silver shields. A cold and dark blue dusk surrounds. Once more, the snow has relented, this time with an air of finality: twinkling to tiny spangles of cold and starry dust, then nothing.
End.
There is an air of accomplishment. The weather has concluded its task. Perfected the landscape. Dressed the doomed and lunatic bride. A full moon rises and smiles, complacently, like she is used to this sort of thing. I look up at that moon as I drive, accelerating here, braking there. I imagine that the moon has seen Carnhallow in snow many times before, over the centuries. They are old friends.
‘Rachel?’
Too late.
‘No—’
The car growls, wildly, on a large patch of black ice – we are speeding up, the brakes will not work.
‘Jamie!!’
‘Rachel!’
I slam my foot in panic and throttle the car to twenty, thirty, forty miles an hour – and now we slide over the edge of the path and down a frosty slope and Jamie screams.
Christmas Eve
Evening
This is the silence. The silence of the mind, contemplating survival. Shaking my head, I rub snow from my face, then I wonder why I have snow on my face. It is so dark in the car, the dashboard lights have gone out, the engine has died. Jamie?
Urgently I press the little light switch above me, and turn: he is gone. Disappeared. I have lost my stepson. As I lost my baby daughter. These children that never really existed.
‘Rachel, I’m here.’
The boy is outside the car, the feeble moonlight illuminates his face: he has opened the passenger door, and made his escape, and a low valley wind is blowing snow into the car. Flakes of crystal and the taste of salt. We are down to the primary sensations. Jamie is standing outside the car, staring in at me.
‘Rachel, I had to get out it was frightening.’
‘Sorry. God, Jamie. We must have skidded, hit some ice. Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think I must have passed out for a second.’
‘Tried to shake you awake.’
‘Thank you,’ I sigh, as the shock ebbs away. ‘I – I’m OK now. But …’
Unstrapping my belt I reach for my phone, and turn on its flashlight. A hasty scan shows that my Mini is angled into a ditch, at the side of the path, and that the bumper is shunted into the base of a dark thick tree trunk: which probably stopped the wild skid, yet made me bang my head on the steering wheel, knocking me senseless for a few moments. The car is dented and immovable. The stilled engine steams in the freeze.
The only way in and out of Carnhallow, for a few days, will likely be on foot.
A cold knifing wind, chilled by its journey over snow, slices through that open door. I need to get Jamie straight inside. Perhaps I could call Cassie and forewarn her: but a glance at my phone says I have no signal. We will have to trudge through the woods, right down to the House.
‘All right, Captain Kerthen.’
I kick open my own door and step gingerly on to the impacted snow. The mild sprain in my ankle still hurts, from when I fell down the stairs, but I have no other bruises or pains save the ache of whiplash in my neck. And a big fat bruise on my forehead where I nutted the steering wheel.
Holding my phone as a torch, I pace round the car and give Jamie a quick, reassuring hug, though he seems relatively unfazed. Perhaps he sees this as an adventure, something to tell his friends at school. Perhaps not. He is a very brave boy, in his own way. There is something admirable, deep in his soul. There always was.
Lifting the shopping bags from the boot, we abandon the car and begin the wintry march to Carnhallow. Jamie has his arm linked through mine: we can’t hold hands, as I am carrying the shopping in one hand and my phone in the other.
We are two people alone in a noiseless wood that feels as grand as a Bavarian forest tonight, on Christmas Eve. All is regal, and lofty, and sombre. Black trees line the path like mourners. Icicles on wet dark branches sparkle in my flashlight, they are the marvellous fangs of invisible dragons. The fresh young snow beneath our feet has a glow of its own.
We walk, together, stepmother and stepson. And say nothing.
Above us the moon rises, queenly and dismissive; the jewels of the stars are randomly scattered, as if Carnhallow has been looted by angels, and her family diamonds are randomly spilled across the velvet sky.
‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ says Jamie, as we slowly walk down the moonlit path.
‘Yes.’
Shadows leap on either side, apparently alarmed by our presence.
‘But also scary.’
I don’t want him to talk this way. ‘Soon we’ll be back—’
‘Do you think she is out here now? In the wood? Mummy loved this wood. Do you think that’s her over there?’
I jump at his words. Then chide myself. Rachel. Rachel.
Yes. Rachel. I am waiting.
I ignore the voice. But I heard it. The madness returns. Daddy don’t. Daddy don’t.
Jamie is pointing at one withered tree, barely more than a stump; it has two outstretched branches, the twigs like extended fingers, writhing in pain.
‘No,’ he says. ‘Over there!’
He’s right, I saw something. A brief shadow of darkness passing between the black trees, which are ranked so silent, branches weighed down by the snow: like soldiers bowing for the funeral carriage of a passing queen. But what did I see? It was something. Anything. Please let it be anything. Or nothing. Let us get home safely.
It was an owl, perhaps, huge wings casting even bigger shadows from my phone-light.
‘No, Jamie, that was the wind, or a bird. We’re halfway there now.’
The light of my phone is so meek, it will not stretch more than a few yards. Beyond it, the world is iced, and impenetrable.
‘It’s like the valley is trying to speak to us, isn’t it, Rachel? But it can’t. Like one of those people in hospitals you think is dead but isn’t.’
‘More than halfway there now.’
I am ignoring what he says, even though he is exactly right. Tonight, Christmas Eve, the day before I am meant to die, the world feels like it is immobile but sentient, a patient in a white hospital bed with locked-in syndrome. It thinks and watches, but it cannot move. For the moment.
Desperate to get us indoors.
Onwards we walk. We are nearing the house. Its windows are square and black, and quiet. The West Wing. The Old Hall.
‘Wish Granny was here,’ Jamie says, quietly. ‘Miss her.’
‘Well, when we get to Carnhallow I’m sure Cassie will have something nice for us. Hot and warm.’
My fingers ache in the cold, and there’s still no signal. We must trudge on alone. From the faraway cliffs I hear the sea birds, and then the waves, crashing on the rocks beneath the mine stacks.
‘Jamie?’
He has detached himself from my arm, and is running towards the great house, towards the doors of Carnhallow. The lights are on.
The Fire Child Page 24
