Winterking (1987)

by Paul Hazel

  Whatever was in it was heavy. The truck bounced and swayed

  but the sack did not budge. The truck took the turn by the

  oaks widely, edging precariously near one of the trunks,

  rattling over the snarl of roots and, with a roar of its old

  engine, vanished.

  “You needn’t worry,” Plum called out to Nora. “They

  didn’t care to be looked at anymore than you. So I doubt they

  will be saying they’ve seen us.”

  Nora peered out from the brush. Her white skin was

  reddened down to her throat.

  “It’s just that I’m not ready yet,” she said.

  “Well, you had best hurry, my girl,” Plum laughed; “the

  house is not much more of a walk.”

  Nora shook her head and stayed where she was.

  "W hat will you do, then?” Plum wondered.

  “When I have my money,” Nora said, knowing that part,

  having begun her thinking somewhere in the middle, “then I

  will rent some place. I will live in the town he lives in. I will

  wait till he notices.”

  “Until then?”

  Nora brightened. “Couldn’t you,” she began. “1 mean,

  already you’ve been so kind.”

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  W IN TER IN G

  But Plum knew she could not, not with Tim. Though she

  could get him around most things, she knew with a pang of

  hard feminine regret, this would not be one of them, knew,

  despite his tenderness for her. She remembered the warmth

  of his arm about her waist. No, she thought, until it was all

  sorted out it was best perhaps Tim did not learn she was

  here. But clearly something had to be done and, as she

  looked around, it was equally clear to her that it would have

  to be herself who would have to do it. She studied the paper,

  which with the sudden appearance of the truck she had

  neglected to hand back to Nora.

  “I shall keep this,” Plum said firmly, “It has the address

  right here on the top. I’ll send it off myself tomorrow. You

  needn’t go into town. In the meantime. . . ” It really was a fine

  muddle, she thought. Who knew what had gone on between

  them? Or was likely to? Not yet anyway, she decided, not if

  she could help it. Certainly the woman could not go up to the

  house but neither could she be permitted to sleep under the

  trees.

  Nora stepped out on the grass.

  “No you don’t ,” Plum said with the sudden fierceness of

  inspiration.

  “Plum?”

  But a small smile was shaping itself into the corners of

  Plum’s mouth and she mounted the embankment with a

  sturdy, determined tread. “Turn around,” she directed, coming under the edge of the wood. “Now walk straight ahead,”

  she said, driving Nora before her into the limb-tangled

  darkness that even in the bold light of morning always made

  Black Wood seem like one of the straggling, spectral provinces of night.

  An hour later Plum let herself into the Great House

  without knocking. The hall was empty. Nonetheless she made

  her way carefully, trying the doors at random, until far in the

  back of the house and down a half level of stairs she discovered

  the kitchen. It was the largest kitchen she had ever been in.

  There were a great many copper-covered tables and at least

  five black stoves. Off to the side there was a separate room for

  a pantry, another for the table service and a third, quite a bit

  smaller, with drying racks and sinks. A month ago the first of

  the groundsmen and the chief hostler and his boy had been

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  let in to make their suppers. They had left, she saw, exactly

  the sort of disorder she had expected whenever men were let

  alone in a kitchen. Plum poked about impatiently. Now that

  Wykeham was here, of course, this would all have to stop.

  She began to collect the scattered plates and saucers.

  The young man, in his gray tweeds, came in quietly

  behind her. Plum’s first impression as she turned and found

  him smiling at her was that he was dressed like an old man.

  She had an armful of dishes and, becoming increasingly

  irritated, had just discovered a new hoard of messy platters

  wrapped in a tablecloth and hidden under a chair. Her breath

  came quickly through her teeth.

  “I don’t suppose you know you have a woman waiting for

  you in the wood?” she asked him angrily.

  Wykeham held open the kitchen door. A crow hopped

  across the threshold. Its rakish black head was tilted up so it

  could look at him.

  “The other one. . .” Wykeham asked, seeming only

  mildly interested. He returned the crow’s black stare. “Did

  you think she was pretty?”

  3.

  u F an should not have asked.”

  M

  “Would you have answered?”

  “No.”

  “Then there could have been no harm.”

  “It is harm enough if she thinks you are heartless.”

  “She may think what she likes.”

  “She will in any event. That proves nothing.”

  “Then it little matters if I ask you questions.”

  “It was never the asking.”

  “Then what?”

  “It was the thing you asked.”

  “W hether a shop girl was pretty?”

  “Yes.”

  “And was she?”

  “I am no judge. You all have fat legs and hair.”

  Wykeham grinned. “There! I have you,” he shouted

  happily. With both hands he hauled himself up the last rungs

  of the ladder. His large dark face pressed against the small

  attic window, he stared, smiling, down at the lawn. “And on

  two counts,” he said. “The first being that you are incapable

  of speech. And the second that, speechless or not, you are no

  fit judge. In neither case could she have thought I took my

  question seriously. Therefore there is no harm.” Wykeham

  scratched the glossy feathers along the crow’s neck but the

  crow turned away sulkily.

  “You are wrong in both,” it rasped. It hopped to the sill,

  holding its place with a sudden spasm of its heavy wings. It

  brought its head level. It blinked in the daylight. “For if,” it

  continued, “I could not answer, then she could only have

  thought it was herself you meant to ask.”

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  59

  “And the second?”

  "She was fit to judge.”

  Wykeham looked annoyed. “What can that matter? She

  is just an old woman.”

  “And therefore you are heartless,” the crow answered.

  “And she knows it. Accordingly there is harm.”

  Wykeham reached for its neck. But the wary crow flew

  up into the rafters.

  “Open the window and let me out,” it said. “I have spent

  the whole night watching and now I am hungry.” The crow

  looked Wykeham straight in the face. Wykeham knew he

  would not be able to catch it.

  “There is a new-killed rat in the pantry,” he said.

  The crow turned its back on him resentfully. “In the

  drive there is a
hare,” it said, “run over by a truck.” The crow

  picked at the underside of one of its long feathers with its

  beak. A little gust of wind rattled the window pane. It was

  already some hours since the woman had deserted the kitchen and the house was quiet.

  “I had been meaning to mention it earlier,” the crow

  said. “It appears, lord, that they have shot an Indian.”

  The wind had freshened all morning, tearing off small

  branches and throwing them to the lawn. In the afternoon

  Wykeham heard the wind prowling under the eaves and

  muttering among the loose bricks of the chimneys. He sat at

  his desk making drafts of a long letter to His Grace which,

  with each rewriting, grew shorter and shorter. The truth was

  he was agonizing over a verb in the very first sentence,

  struggling over meanings as a man will only struggle over a

  love letter, which, in a limited sense, this was.

  D ea r C allaghan , the letter began but his letters always

  started so and the salutation was essentially without content.

  I regret that I m ust requ est was what he had written first and

  the letter ran on to two pages. They both lay crumpled in a

  basket at his feet. He dug his pen into the inkwell, starting

  over. 1 n eed you r help on ce m ore, the second announced

  bluntly. The rest came a word at a time, grudgingly. He

  folded the single page over and set it aside. The deepening

  afternoon sunlight came in through the window behind him

  and lit the edges of a fresh sheet. The shadow of his right

  hand lay across its middle. He wondered what thoughts

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  WIMTERKING

  would come into Callaghan’s mind when he unsealed the

  envelope and began to read. Wykeham was desperately sorry

  about the death of Houseman. But there had been no choice.

  It was not the killing, though in fact he had never relished it.

  He had killed before, both with his own hands and by

  proxy. He had never pretended, as men often did, that both

  cases were not very much the same, but he had been at it

  longer and had less reason to lie to himself. The wars in

  which he had taken his first heads and left the bubbling necks

  empty were no longer remembered; the lands over which he

  had fought were no longer lands, but ocean. Yet he had never

  failed to understand what it meant or what a powerful thing it

  was to take a life or to be less frightened by it.

  He did not expect to be understood. He knew that not

  even the most rugged men now living could have lived as he

  had lived, gone where he had gone, or done what, to the

  horror of his soul, he had had to do. Nevertheless, for

  Callaghan’s sake as much as for the young man himself, he

  wished that Houseman had continued.

  I m ust call you again into service, he wrote at last.

  H ousem an, failin g , is d ea d an d 1 shall trust no on e e k e in this

  en terp rise. I h ave no o th er rew ard to o ffe r you except my

  affection ; he stopped, then added, everlastingly.

  Beneath the tiny printed letters he set a large cursive

  “W.” For a moment he looked at it oddly. His hand must have

  been unsteady. He had just about decided to make a second

  copy when he heard the men tramping onto the porch.

  He sealed up the letter in the envelope he had already

  addressed. Still, it was curious, he thought as he walked into

  the hall. Tipped on its side, rather as if he had been falling as

  he had written it, the one bold letter of his signature almost

  seemed an “S.”

  He put it out of his mind. Walking toward the door, he

  pulled on his coat.

  The men looked shy when they came for work. It was

  the first time they had ever seen such a big, queer house.

  Silently, collecting on the porch, they waited for the last

  straggler to remove his cap.

  “Is there a man among you who has ever handled a

  horse?” Wykeham asked them.

  When he had come out, they had stepped back, crowding

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  against the railing, and looked puzzled. The wind, which had

  been building up all day, tugged at their collars.

  "There's work here he told us,” George Tennison answered,

  who for twenty-seven years had been a tool and die maker at

  the Bristol clockworks. “Maybe we never asked what kind,

  but Longford never said it was horses.” George Tennison

  winced, thinking he had walked a good long way for nothing.

  He was about to put on his cap again, there being no further

  need for deference, when his eye ran into an unexpected

  piece of mischief in the young man’s face. He smiled himself.

  “Though I could,’ he said, grinning, “manage to pick up after

  a horse.” He contrived to wink at the man next to him. “And

  Sam here, he’d be right good at it.”

  Sam snorted but after that they all seemed a little less

  miserable. One by one Wykeham asked them their names

  and in turn each man came forth to shake hands with him.

  “I’m Jakey.”

  “I am pleased to have you, Jakey.”

  “Adam France, sir.”

  “Adam.”

  The others came forward. Despite the formality, as if

  their shared amusement at the thought of horse manure were

  bond enough, the curse lifted from the air.

  “Mostly, it is your backs I’ll be wanting,” Wykeham told

  them leading them off the porch and up the slope by the side

  of the house. “Though one of you, George I think, will have

  to ride with me when the rest are finished.” He paused and

  there was a moment’s dead silence. George Tennison seemed

  dubious. “It’s the horse,” Wykeham said, “that does the

  work. All you do is hold on to him.” Wykeham smiled. “And

  of course, it pays double.”

  “I’m your man, then,” George said.

  Wykeham laughed. “That was just what I was hoping.”

  There were birds in the wood, blown along by the wind

  from branch to branch or simply fleeing ahead of them, it was

  difficult to tell which. But because it was East Wood there

  were breaks where the evening light yet lingered, coppery

  and brown-yellow. They could still see one another clearly.

  Nonetheless Wykeham had brought along lanterns. Although

  he was not used to looking at the sky, George Tennison

  thought that they had at least another hour of daylight. He

  6 2

  WINTERKING

  clambered up on a stone and looked out through a dusky

  thicket of sumac. They were, he judged, a half mile or so

  from the house and climbing along the high uneven edge of a

  hill but Wykeham had yet to mention what they were doing

  there. With long, unbroken strides he kept on going and they

  tramped behind, dodging the ragged limbs, their arms already welted and their perplexed sweating faces smeared with the blood of small scratches.

  Far below him George Tennison heard what he guessed

  was the river. We’re high up, he thought and wondered

  whether he’d break his neck scrambling around in the darkness when evening came for good or the
y walked, as Wykeham showed every intention of doing, straight up at the stars.

  “Even then more likely than not,” he mumbled under his

  breath, “he’ll just keep on going.” But at the top they came to

  a clearing. Wykeham waited at its edge.

  “There,” he said, pointing, though there was nothing in

  particular to see.

  The wood merely came to a halt, leaving a rough circle

  nearly a hundred feet across. The undergrowth had stopped

  with the trees. There were a few blue flowers, of the sort

  without many roots that grow anywhere, and a crop of

  leprous white toadstools that grow only from decaying timbers. Otherwise the clearing was empty and flat. A tunnel of glowing light opened above it.

  “Set the lanterns alight,” Wykeham told them, “and later

  we needn’t be bothered,” He took a lantern himself, turned a

  knob at its base until the wick swelled with vapor. When it

  began to flicker, he put the lantern aside, his face looking

  curiously pleased in the fog of yellow light, and walking

  beyond the edge, began scraping the side of his boot in the

  rags of weed. Underneath there were boards.

  “Pull up the planking,” he said. “But be careful."

  None of the planks was nailed and the wood, long out in

  the weather, was soft. It shifted easily and though it creaked,

  nothing staved in. Gradually the sky darkened. The last hour

  they labored on in the shine of the lanterns. We must look

  like a crew of devils, George Tennison thought, opening a pit.

  He could see the immense hollowness growing under him,

  the steep earthen sides falling into a blackness too dark to be

  reached by the lanterns.

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  6 3

  “This is a barn cellar?” he asked the man working next to

  him.

  Adam France shrugged his shoulders. “Christ if I know.

  But it’s deep.”

  “Why would anyone put a barn so far from the house?”

  George Tennison wondered. Not that it mattered. Almost

  despite himself, he was beginning to enjoy the work. It was

  actually quite an adventure, he decided. He imagined coming back in the small hours to the boardinghouse where Mrs.

  Tennison would be waiting for him. She would badger him

  with questions. “Woman,” he saw himself answering, “he’s a