Winterking (1987)

by Paul Hazel

  him a double set of ears and eyes, the second detached and

  sardonic, gazing with amused interest over the dark plowed

  earth of the delta, over the sky’s illimitable whiteness, watching,

  listening to the hobnob of women as though he were watching

  and listening to the strutting and hooting of birds.

  What he had not expected was the invitation, dated six

  months in advance— for October— to a dinner at Wykeham’s

  Devon estate. Puzzled, the Duke laid the letter aside on the

  table. The butler had long since gone beyond hearing.

  “What do you make of that?” His Grace asked no one in

  particular.

  It was not chance that brought them. Yet it must have

  seemed like chance to the two young women arriving separately

  but witbin a few moments of one another at the information

  desk in the waiting room at Water Street Station. The Duke

  lifted his eyes from the timetable to look across at the

  dark-haired woman asking the track number of the evening

  train to Devon and at the woman behind her, listening closely

  to the clerk’s answer. The answer given, he watched them

  turn quickly away, in both faces the same apprehension and

  seriousness. He recognized at once that in some fashion they

  were Wykeham’s and that each had come alone, unaware of

  the other. His eyes followed their long legs and slender hips

  into the crowd. In his imagination younger women were

  always slender, and he congratulated himself on sharing

  Wykeham’s admiration for the clear bold grace of slender

  women. He wondered whether Wykeham had managed to

  sleep with both of them.

  The waiting room was dim. The air, pulled in from the

  platform, was full of the smell of steam. When he looked

  around again, he had lost them. He stood off to the side,

  watching quietly, for he knew there was plenty of time. A

  man pushed hurriedly past him, inquiring anxiously at the

  desk. He was tall and balding. He had on a new gray overcoat

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  of such elegance that for a moment the Duke was certain he

  must have met him. Then suddenly he got a glimpse of the

  man’s wet shoes. He has walked here through puddles,

  the Duke reflected, disappointed. The discovery remained on the

  Duke’s face, mingled with bewilderment, until he overheard

  the clerk answer: “Devon? Certainly, sir. Track nine.” His

  Grace smiled. Wykeham, he thought, still enchanted but wiser.

  Harwood turned his eyes doubtfully and began to hunt

  for the gate,

  “1 beg your pardon,” the Duke said, moving nearer.

  “Nine is out by the river. If you will permit m e . . .”

  “I’d be obliged,” Harwood said. He fell in beside the

  older man gratefully.

  Neither was carrying luggage.

  “I’m not actually catching the train,” Harwood said.

  “Like yourself,” said the Duke mildly, “I have been

  planning to miss it.”

  It was Harwood’s dinnertime and except for the coat

  he would not have come. But the obligation nagged at him.

  Late in the afternoon he had gone to Wykeham’s room in the

  college, thinking he still might find him. When he had

  knocked, no one had answered. He had tried the next door

  and met a sullen-looking boy who barely knew Wykeham and

  was of no help. He had intended then to return to his rooms

  but walking across the courtyard, he had encountered a

  groundsman counting a few crisp bills with his blackened

  fingers.

  “Paid me right well,” the man had answered him breezily. “Not many like him. Though I’ll admit I had a bit of trouble with all them boxes.” He folded the bills twice and

  thrust them into his pocket. The man grinned. “Engaged me

  for three hours and paid me for six, it’s being Saturday and all

  and my own time. Though I’d have settled for four. But me

  and Jake got him oft.”

  “W here?”

  “Down to Water Street.”

  ‘T-I’m sorry I don’t— Harwood stammered.

  ‘ To the trains.”

  Watching Harwood turn and rush into the street, the

  groundsman shook his head. But then it had been his experi­

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  ence that education, if it did anything, made it harder for

  those who had it to find their way around.

  An hour before closing Carolyn simply walked away from

  her desk. The woman who worked with her had to admit she

  hadn’t been of much use anyway. She had arrived late and

  kept going to the bathroom. When, looking owlish and tired,

  she managed to stay at the desk she uncrinkled a piece of

  paper, read it again then crushed it only to repeat the process

  a few minutes later. The circles under her eyes seemed to

  darken like bruises. “Why don’t you just go home,” the

  woman had whispered to her kindly. But as a matter of pride,

  she stayed. Gradually the students marshaled behind her

  desk drifted to other lines. Carolyn no longer looked up. The

  clock behind her started the little whirring sound it made

  before it announced the hour. She closed her eyes tightly.

  Then she collected the paper, slipped the strap of her bag

  over her narrow shoulder and went toward the stairs. He had

  never made a secret of how and when he was going. He had

  simply taken for granted, she thought, hating for a moment

  his arrogance, that because he had not specifically requested

  it she would not come to watch him go.

  Before she expected it, Nora was through the doors of

  the station and out on the platform. The woman walked stiffly

  in front of her. Because it was already dark and she did not

  know the way, Nora hurried after, climbing when the woman

  climbed a steep metal bridge which crossed the track bed

  nearest the station. A heavy puffing engine passed sluggishly

  under her. The steam came up from below.

  He will have forgotten me, Nora said to herself, though

  she clutched in her hand the ticket that only he, although his

  letter had been unsigned, could have sent her.

  Half believing it was a college prank, she had left the

  shop and gone out into the streets she seldom walked and

  barely knew even after a dozen years in this land of strangers.

  On her way she had stopped and looked into store windows,

  gazing at female mannequins of frozen elegance, wearing

  clothes she had never dreamed of. In the end, standing

  before a slovenly red-faced agent in the office of the steamship line, she waited as he searched through the records. Yes, of course, the ticket was valid. She saw his sly, conspiratorial

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  smile. He leaned forward over the desk on his fat arms. He

  remembered now, he said, the man who had made the

  purchase. He had no doubt, he told her, that the young man

  had ample reason to be grateful.

  Her head throbbing, she retreated into the darkening

  street just at the moment when Wykeham stepped out of his

  cab. A second cab had drawn up behind. Two men began

  unloading trunks and boxes on
to the sidewalk. The streetlamps

  were coming on and lit her pale tense face. She hadn’t meant

  to stay out so late. She coiddn’t think of what after their brief,

  odd encounter in the shop she might actually say to him.

  Feeling foolish and yet determined, she drifted into the

  street. When she had crossed over, the young man, who had

  kept his back toward her, had already disappeared into the

  monstrous old station. A breath of night air swirled around

  her legs. She stood among the trunks and boxes holding

  herself so still it almost seemed to the men easing boxes

  down beside her that she was waiting to be lifted onto the

  loading cart.

  “Your pardon, miss,” one of the men said to her. “Is

  there something?”

  Nora hadn’t noticed the man and so did not hear what he

  was saying. The boxes were growing around her like the wild

  black hedge that had surrounded her in her dream. Indeed

  she felt like the girl in the dream: beset on all sides by great

  dangers and yet somehow made larger to meet them. She

  was frightened. But because she was frightened she also felt

  she carried inside her a braver destiny.

  The man jabbed at her with his finger. “Miss,” he

  repeated.

  She saw him then. At the same time she saw the tag on

  the box he had set at her feet. She gave a startled laugh. It is

  fate, she thought recklessly, not certain it was so. In the tiny

  old-fashioned letters that had been on the envelope she had

  read his destination.

  Selecting a door at random, she walked past the man and

  into the immense dimness of the waiting room.

  The train loomed in the blackness, hissing to itself.

  “There,” the Duke said.

  Harwood walked ahead but the Duke lingered. Hearing

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  the other’s footsteps stop, Harwood turned and looked over

  his shoulder.

  “Are you coming?” he asked.

  The Duke shook his head. He smiled. “I can see from

  here.”

  Harwood nodded and went on.

  His Grace held back in the shadows. Perhaps no great

  harm would be done if Wykeham should see him. After all,

  he had been invited to Greenchurch and so presumably

  Wykeham, ignoring the prohibition or perhaps rewriting it,

  intended that at last he should meet him face-to-face. But for

  thirty-eight years he had been the Will’s most faithful servant

  and the Will was clear on that point, as it was on so many

  others. His Grace would be granted one audience with but

  one member of the family. Thereafter, while he was free to

  maintain an active correspondence with its male heirs whether in residence at Greenchurch or scattered over the globe, he must never seek another meeting. And he had met (and

  therefore should have been satisfied) the grandfather, Joseph

  Wykeham, a grave young man when he stepped into the

  Duke’s office, tall and well spoken and, according to the

  records, slightly younger than himself. But of course that

  had been long ago. Joseph had died or at least had been

  declared missing, then dead. Then, from time to lime, His

  Grace had written the improbably named Sebastian, the

  father, who had been bom abroad, married early and who

  with all hands had gone to the bottom in the Gulf of Is-

  kanderun without once writing back. It was young William,

  for reasons which even now remained largely obscure to His

  Grace, who had been set alone on the Turkish coast and,

  thereby surviving the disaster, began seven years later to

  send letters addressed starkly to West Redding, Leeds Bank,

  New Awanux, the Americas.

  It was for William only that the Duke maintained a

  lasting affection. And yet when the boy, finally a young man,

  had come in from his wanderings to begin his studies, His

  Grace had kept his distance as the Will required. The letters

  still flew back and forth, crossing a few narrow streets where

  once they had crossed the oceans. But the Duke had come no

  nearer. Faithful to his trust, even when, the latest Wykeham

  (for there never seemed more than one at a time) announced

  that the Duke’s term would be ended or later when it was

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  learned that Wykeham (the first Wykeham to enter the bank

  in more than a generation) had come himself to meet the new

  man, even then, faithfully, His Grace had left the room as

  Wykeham had come in.

  The younger men were left to each other’s company.

  That was as it should have been. The Duke had been the

  servant of the Will for thirty-eight years but for thirty-eight

  years he had been its master as well. His hand went into his

  pocket, touching the letter. Well, the whole bloody tangle is

  Houseman’s now, he thought. How then was he still bound?

  The Duke lifted his head.

  The realization came to him, almost as a physical shock,

  that he was looking directly across the platform at Wykeham.

  4.

  It was simply that there was no time (both too little and

  none at all). It seemed to happen all at once. In an instant

  there were men and women of no consequence, milling about

  the platform, preparing to mount the steps as soon as the

  conductors had opened the doors. While Carolyn was herself

  preparing, although for what she was not yet certain, Wykeham

  was suddenly walking ahead of her. She had no idea from

  where he had come. His dark head was turned, staring

  upward into the cars as he passed them. Carolyn opened her

  mouth. Then she saw the woman beside her, a woman she

  had not before seen, suddenly rush ahead. In the same

  instant the conductor swung open the door.

  Wykeham stopped, waiting for the thin metal door to be

  hooked back. From beneath the engine there still came a

  clattering and the laughing curse of steam. And yet, as if by

  stopping, he brought her to a stop as well. She waited,

  feeling, just for the moment, as though the world itself had

  stopped. She did not move. The woman went by her. Carolyn

  saw only her profile, sick with longing, and knew beyond

  dispute or reason that this woman too had followed him.

  It happened all too quickly. The conductor came down

  the steps. Wykeham climbed up. He turned left into the car

  and was gone. Other people moved into the car, finding their

  seats, lifting bags and huge bundles onto the racks. He was

  surely one of them. The woman’s lips moved but, as though

  trapped by the glass, they made no sound.

  It was George Harwood who first noticed her. She was

  not especially pretty although he guessed that once she might

  have been. Such things are hard to judge but he suspected

  that she was several years his senior. He had not meant to

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  look at her. He had caught a glimpse of Wykeham just as he

  stepped onto the train. He had run forward to meet him but

  a crowd of passengers blocked his way. Harwood turned,

  walking slowly back
in the direction he had come, looking up

  into the windows. It was, he thought later, simply because

  she looked so surprised and in his experience people on

  trains, their destinations and perhaps even their lives clearly

  in mind, never did.

  The edge of her cider-colored hair fell across her shoulders. Her eyes were wide open, grown round. She looked, he decided, like a woman in a tale for children. Caught by a

  gust of adventure, he wondered not who she was but where

  she was going. For a moment, with the extravagance of one

  who has read too many books, he fancied that her journey

  might take her in and out of sorrow to the ends of the earth.

  Harwood shrugged, aware suddenly that he was being foolish. In the cars the passengers had settled. He still had not seen Wykeham.

  The conductors reboarded the train, leaned out and

  looked down the tracks. The engine uttered a scream.

  The last porters scattered. The Duke listened to the pad

  of their feet as the platform emptied. Only he had seen

  them all, the dark-haired woman wandering aimlessly under

  the windows, the man a few paces behind, his hands thrust

  clumsily into the pockets of a coat that was too grand for him.

  He had not thought about them, nor about the other woman

  although he had watched her as well. Even Houseman,

  though he should not have been there, had gone from his

  mind.

  The wind came in off the river, catching the edge of a

  sign above his head. The sign creaked and groaned. The

  Duke listened without hearing. But all the while he had

  watched. He had seen Wykeham’s assured steady gait as he

  walked between seats, striding with the same unhurried ease

  with which he had once stepped from the elevator into the

  room with its great windows. It had seemed a long time ago

  and yet the Duke hadn’t needed to explore his memory. It

  had been the same long face. The Duke had watched him

  stop at the front of the car, reach up with his hand to place a

  small package, the one thing he had carried, onto the rack.

  And His Grace had kept on watching although, from the first,

  he had been certain.

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  Wykeham dropped his hand. Showing no consternation,

  though the other had no right to be where he was, he slid