Winterking (1987)

by Paul Hazel

  lying outright, perhaps. He had seen, he believed, the

  doctor’s essential honesty. If anything, Holmes had been

  forthright and, given the hour, remarkably unresentful.

  Presented with a direct question, he could not imagine that

  Holmes would be other than equally direct. The distortion,

  the Duke decided, had to have been in the question he had

  asked.

  “Yet you did notice,” he persisted.

  Holmes turned, as he had turned in his bed, his mind as

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  well as his body seeking a new position. Nonetheless he

  found himself again staring over his spectacles into the garden. Disgusted, he drove a quantity of air through his nostrils.

  “Not then,” he said, “not at first.”

  While he had kept his eyes on the hedge, he saw,

  reflected in the window glass, the startling image of his own

  sharp features. Was it his own face? Holmes wondered, the

  face of a man who was frightened? Because he was frightened. And for no reason. Because he had taken a photograph of blots and shadows. But, of course, he had not looked at it

  in the morning. His hand trembled.

  A moment passed.

  Holmes looked away from the window.

  “Your G race,” he said, “I should like you to examine

  something,”

  Without looking down he found it.

  The Duke took the photograph into his left hand, turning it at once another way. With the other he half reached into his pocket, then he stopped.

  “A horse,” he said confidently.

  But he held the photograph again at arm’s length as if to

  be certain. He continued to stare.

  “Yes,” he said after a moment. “See, here is a leg. In

  fact,” He counted four legs. But before he had finished he

  had counted four more. The Duke shook his head. “A rather

  peculiar horse, I admit,” he said, “but a horse indisputably.”

  3.

  Olivia Tennison, who for the better part of a fortnight had

  been assistant housekeeper, half-scullion and full-time

  drudge, scuttered into Nora’s bedroom without knocking. It

  was the end of the week, for there was washing. Her little

  wren’s face was darkly flushed. Her eyes had been glaring.

  She advanced in fearless little hops like a bird on a wire. She

  had already stripped the master’s bed, having removed a

  heap of books, a tablet of writing paper, pens and a hunting

  cap. His sheets, which were muddied and would cause no

  end of trouble, she had bundled into a pillowcase, which,

  with an air of injured dignity, she had placed by the door. By

  now she was accustomed to his thoughtlessness. More than

  once she had found his trousers, with most of a swamp still

  clinging to the cuffs, under the covers, where— weary, she

  supposed, after half a night’s wandering with her Georgie

  through fields and ditches— he had kicked them. He threw

  his clothes every which way, more than likely still talking, his

  head swimming with plans, with innumerable tasks, changing

  every minute, which her Georgie, staggering after him from

  one place to the next and even up the old back stairs to his

  bedroom, must somehow see to as best he could. Olivia

  brooded. As if there wasn’t enough to do, she thought, and

  only a few women for the inside work. She would have her

  Georgie speak with him. After all, they were thick, those

  two. Her face went completely blank. She had left the door

  open.

  Nora sat at the end of the bed. Bars of dusty light fell

  across her bare legs. Because she still had only the clothes

  she had come with, she was dressed, as she had slept, in one

  of his shirts. She stretched her arms and yawned. The shirt

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  hitched up on her thighs. Olivia’s pale eyes hardened. She

  stood before the bed, staring at rather more of Nora’s rounded legs than she approved of seeing.

  “I’ll trouble you for the sheets, Miss Barnacle,” Olivia

  said.

  Nora reached for a brush and began on her hair. “He

  doesn’t call me that,” she said evenly.

  “Oh, I’ve heard him, miss. Like a barnacle he says to

  Cook. Like those little things that attached themselves to

  ships. . . and no one knows how they got th ere. . . and they

  don’t come off.”

  From where she sat Nora could see out the window onto

  the drive. She became aware of a figure, standing in the

  gravel, looking up at the house. As the face turned toward

  her window, she saw it was the stableboy.

  “He wouldn’t ,” she said.

  “You’ll suit yourself, I’m sure.” Olivia began to tug at the

  sheets. “Though it isn’t for my own good that I mention it.”

  Nora climbed down from the bed. For a moment her

  fingers lingered on the carved pattern of the walnut post. He

  hadn’t, she was certain, even if he had said it, meant anything

  of the sort. Nobody could tell her what he thought. She had

  listened. More and more she was convinced that he spoke in

  a language which was only incidentally directed to those

  around him.

  There was no sound in the room, only the crunch of the

  stableboy’s boots from outside the window. Nora reached

  across to the chair. She took the skirt and, stepping into it,

  drew the heavy woolen over her legs.

  “I hold my own here,” she said coolly, sweeping out of

  her the last particle of doubt. “I work as much as anyone.” To

  keep her long yellow hair from her eyes she had bound it

  back with a scarf. "But I get up when I want.” She walked to

  the closet and began rummaging. But after a moment she

  turned back empty-handed. They were both looking down at

  her feet.

  “You haven’t by any chance. . .”

  “No, miss.”

  On an impulse Nora went out into the hall. Her shoes,

  tipped on their sides, were in plain sight on the carpet. She

  slipped them on, knowing all the while that she had not put

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  them there. Finished within, Olivia, a new bundle in her

  arms, came through the door,

  "You’ve found them, miss,” she said with pretended

  surprise.

  "H e is thoughtful, don’t you think?” Nora answered

  steadily. They could think as they liked. The truth was he was

  innocent. Often enough she had waited in his bed; but he

  had on those occasions slept elsewhere or, for all she knew,

  slept nowhere at all. And what she had left of her presence,

  shoes or a scarf, the hairbrush (she had so little), he returned

  without comment.

  Nora stood in the hall until Olivia trotted along down the

  stairs. Then she followed. Below a door opened. There was a

  faint sound of women’s voices from the back of the house. She

  could hear the cook, old Norfolk’s wife, complaining as she

  did regularly when, the men already come and gone, the last

  pan scrubbed, Nora came late to breakfast. “1 see how it is,”

  she announced in the abused tone she saved for those moments she had an a
udience. Yet Wykeham could come in without warning, in midmorning from wherever it was his

  jaunts had taken him, and Lizzy Norfolk, her heavy jowled

  face bent over the silver, was up in a moment and the kettle

  began singing.

  “I can readily imagine. . .” The voice drawled on with

  accustomed resentfulness.

  Nora took a small breath and went out onto the porch.

  The stablcboy was waiting. He turned on hear with a

  brief bitter smile.

  “He is gone,” she told him. “I don’t know where.”

  The boy’s eyes fell. His demeanor was intense, almost

  desperate; yet it seemed to her that he had no one to blame

  but himself. It was the fourth time he had come seeking

  Wykeham. She had watched him for as many days, in the

  morning, pacing up and down in the gravel, looking uncertain, uncomfortable out in the open before the house. He had never come up the steps, never knocked on the door. It was

  as if he waited for her instead, waited to be told over and

  over that Wykeham had gone.

  “I shall come tomorrow,” he said.

  She gave him an oblique look. "You might try after

  dinner.” The boy stared back sullenly. She felt a sharp redness come into her cheeks. She had meant to be helpful but

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  it seemed instead that a distance had opened between them.

  His grave small features were watching her. She realized

  suddenly how hard it was to look at him.

  She had an impression of dark, haunted eyes, a plain

  lean face. Spikes of black hair fell in several directions across

  his forehead. But if she averted her eyes, what was left of her

  memory of him? She started to turn away.

  He threw her a tortured look.

  “Tell him,” he said quickly, “that it is time he spoke with

  me.”

  As if he perceived as well some danger of vanishing, he

  thrust his thin shoulders forward.

  “If I see him,” she said. Nora hesitated. “If I do, I will

  ask him to come to the stables.” Something else occurred to

  her and she turned, staring at the roofs, now partially mended,

  of the workmen’s cottages. “You will be there? You do live

  here somewhere?”

  His eyes had run past her. He was looking instead at the

  house, at the wide uneven porch where she waited. The old

  railings were threaded with thorns and buttressed with vines,

  just now beginning to flower.

  “He can find m e,” he said.

  There was a long moment. Then he went back down the

  drive, heading, it seemed to her, nowhere in particular. Later

  in the day she saw him again, shuffling idly along the edge of

  the hill. It was one of the last days of April; the sky was

  extraordinarily distant. He was standing out in the open

  without even the shadow of a cloud to cover him. She

  watched him as, unconscious of any immodesty, he relieved

  himself in the grass. It struck her then that probably he was

  ignorant of indoor plumbing. Looking out from the house,

  which now she seldom left, she found herself wondering

  where he had come from. Not from this place. He is like me,

  she concluded, feeling the tender stirring of sympathy.

  There was a movement in the room behind her. Her

  heart rose to her throat.

  The crow hopped onto the carpet. Shamed by her disappointment, she met its stare.

  “Pretty girl, pretty girl,” the crow rasped consolingly.

  The voice, however, because it was the first time she had

  heard it, only made matters worse.

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  In the darkness, looking across the valley, George Tennison

  rubbed his right hand, acknowledging with a sense of good

  fortune and prodigality the thickness of his calluses. There

  was a little mound of folded pound notes in his pocket and

  more coming at the end of each week as long as the work

  lasted. And the work, he assured himself with a private wink,

  was sure to last longer than he did. He grinned. The shine of

  many twinkling stars winked gaily back at him.

  He went across the field and through the gate. Over the

  black hill he recognized— or might have, he thought, had he

  not been brought up in the smoke of the mills-—the striking

  array of fixed stars. They were pictures, he had heard, of men

  and beasts, of impossible deeds. A strange excitement filled

  him. With the pleasure of Adam, because there had never

  been anyone to teach him, he named them for himself.

  Cunningly, among the splendid luminaries, he distinguished

  the labors of which he was now master: George Tennison

  (those three bright stars were his arm, the fourth was a

  hammer) restoring breached walls; George Tennison, just to

  the left of the moon, climbing over slick acres of slate to

  repoint the chimneys. Deep in reverie, he leaned back his

  head.

  Floating in front of him were innumerable stars, great

  stars for the great labors while his back was still strong, lesser

  stars, their configurations as yet remote, for the lesser tasks

  awaiting his old age. He patted the lump of folded notes in

  his pocket. His men would be waiting in the village, drinking

  away their salaries in the front room of the Royal Charles. It

  was only sociable that he go and have a beer with them— his

  fine bunch of Bristol stragglers, laid-off clocksmiths, men like

  himself, craftsmen made over into common muckers and

  gardeners and lucky, he knew, for the chance. Once or twice

  before he made up his mind to join them, but Wykeham had

  always needed something looked into and needed it right

  then. Indeed, this was the first evening in over a week

  George Tennison had had his liberty.

  He shambled out of the margins of South Wood. The

  Royal Charles was still a good few minutes’ tramp down the

  road. He walked stiffly. There was a bit of arthritis in his leg,

  which he had got, he suspected, from wading most of the

  afternoon in an ornamental fish pond, trying to unstop the

  drain. Nevertheless, passing along the dark shut-in corridor

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  of branches, he found himself quietly whistling, glad of the

  work and glad, at least for an hour or two, to be free of it.

  A light burned steadily in the bedroom of the parsonage.

  George Tennison turned down the cracked walk under the

  trees, passing within a dozen yards of the house without

  noticing. He did not know these houses yet; they were

  simply houses. He recognized the feed store because he had

  been sent there once and Hunt’s garage because it was a

  garage and because Fred Norfolk, with whom he had spent a

  day shingling the roof of a cottage in Black Wood, had kept

  muttering and laughing to himself about Charon Hunt without ever once quite coming to the point. It had merely strengthened George Tennison’s conviction that Devon folk

  were an odd sort, not actually a mystery but crackbrained and

  out of touch. Like their church, he thought, coming abreast

  of it in the darkness. It was an ordinary church, with doors

&nb
sp; and a steeple like any church, except, of course, they had

  painted it green. Painted it once, and every fifty years or so it

  looked, kept repainting it, not out of some prankish habit, not

  because they liked it, but because (it had been Wykeham

  himself who had told him!) they believed a green church

  would never be burned by Indians. It just makes you wonder,

  he thought. But, in truth, he did not. Instead he mounted

  the two broad stone steps of the Royal Charles.

  "George!” someone called out.

  “Mister Tennison,” Adam France added loudly, because,

  after all, George was foreman now.

  “Ten-thirty,” Jakey shouted, examining his watch. “Well,

  you have a bit of catching up to do.”

  “A beer,” George Tennison said, passing the counter. He

  stopped and, reaching into his pocket, uncurled a pound note

  and laid it out on the dark, polished wood of the bar. “And a

  whisky."

  With a glass in each hand he wandered back among the

  chairs and tables where men he had never seen sat quietly

  absorbed in their glasses. He glanced abstractedly from one

  to the next, taking little notice until Fred Norfolk stood up.

  “Come in at last, have you?” Norfolk said. He looked as

  though he wanted to shake hands, which, unless George

  Tennison put down a drink (and he had no mind to do that)

  was impossible. Comrades, nevertheless, Norfolk’s lopsided

  grin seemed to announce, men of common understanding,

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  both working up at the great house, their wives too, for that

  matter.

  George Tennison looked for a way around him.

  Norfolk saw it but did not move away. He whispered:

  “You come along with old Fred.”

  He seemed to realize the Bristol men were watching him.

  He winked conspiratorily. “Later,” he said none too softly.

  “Been waitin’ a million years. Been waitin’ forever.” He

  winked again, the model of patience. “ Keep till you’ve had a

  wee drop with your friends.”

  Norfolk sat, or rather his big legs folded, compelling the

  rest of him to follow. Seated, although undoubtedly the world

  wheeled ever faster about him, he held himself still, his huge