by Paul Hazel
no notice. In the summits of the trees a high wind was
blowing. The old man never lifted his head. He was remembering the starry evening Okanuck had come out of the darkness to sit with him, remembering the woman who had
arrived the next morning, slept in his cottage and gone. To
his mind they both seemed to stand at a beginning. He
remembered them because they had brought on a feeling of
profound anticipation and because they had shared, with only
a difference of hours, the moment of Wykeham’s return.
After fifty years something was about to happen.
He had no desire to join in their lives; he only wished to
see for himself what they did. His own life, he had come to
believe, had taught him almost nothing. Not that this mattered.
It only meant that one life was never enough. What was
needed, he suspected, was not a few decades but centuries,
time to feel and smell the grain of existence and uncover its
possibilities.
2 0 1
202
WINTERING
“Young Wykeham’s home again,” he repeated to himself,
only slightly puzzled by the swirl of dry leaves that came
tumbling from trees that had been old when Adam, barred by
the angel, walked away from the wood.
Hearing the postman, the Reverend Mr. Longford rushed
out onto the dark porch in his socks.
The postman stared at the minister’s feet. “You in a
hurry, Tim?” he asked.
“It’s the shoes,” Longford answered. His voice was
strained, his eyes wandered. “Three pairs,” he said thickly.
His gaze turned abruptly to the host of small stars that by
now should have faded. “Tried each one,” he said softly. “But
they all seem to have shrunk.”
“You might have Plum stretch them.”
Longford looked away.
“She’s gone then, is she?” said the postman.
Longford did not answer.
To cover the moment’s awkwardness the postman dug
into his bag. When he had fished out the letter, he thrust it
into Longford’s fingers.
The minister looked down distrustfully.
“There is something wrong. .
he began.
“Cut myself,” said the postman.
Longford brought the letter closer to his face. “Where did
you get this?” he asked.
“At the station.”
“It’s from here in the village.”
The postman nodded. “Her Majesty’s Mail,” he said
glumly. “Everything goes first to Bristol.”
“But it’s only down from the hill.”
“Sent two days ago,” the postman admitted.
“You are certain?”
“Mr. Wykeham gave it to me himself.”
Longford screwed up his eyes. In the shadows and
without the aid of his spectacles, it was difficult to read. In
order to see at all he had brought the letter up so close he
could smell the ink and the paper.
“October, I think,” he said irritably.
The postman looked puzzled.
“The postmark,” said Longford. Out on the lawn something fluttered. He looked up.
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2 0 3
From the gray hills a sharp exhalation flowed down into
the village. The dawn wind, ruffling the grass, filled the yard
with the cool, unmistakable breath of autumn.
An hour later, on the grimy steps of Hunt’s garage the
postman was shivering.
“. . . and the sun was late,” he muttered, adding to his
list of complaints.
Hunt took no interest. With two of his hands, he was
sharpening a scythe. The leaves that came spinning through
the air dropped noiselessly at his feet. The only sound was
the monotonous grinding of stone on metal.
“The birds are gone,” the postman went on sadly, remembering how in the hedges there had been sparrows.
Each morning when he passed the cemetery there had been a
crow on the gate. This morning the gate had been empty.
“It’s the women who take them,’’ Hunt said.
“I expect they fly south.”
Hunt smiled. With a free hand he rubbed the blood on
his trousers. “Believe m e,” he said, “it’s the women.”
He tore open his letter.
The postman waited. In his own hands he was shuffling a
pair o f letters, stamped u n d e l iv e r a b l e , that had come back to
the village. Dr. Oliver Holmes, the postman read, turning
over one envelope then the next, Professor Harwood. Hunt
tucked the letter away in his pocket. Like the others it was an
invitation to Greenchurch.
“You plan to go up there?” the postman asked.
“It’s not a matter of choice.”
The postman stared vaguely into the street. At the far
end of the green a team of horses was hauling a well-laden
wagon toward the hill that climbed to the House. “Do you
think there will be women?” he asked.
Hunt shrugged one of his shoulders.
“I was kind to her,” said the postman. “I was sober.”
“Perhaps you’ve a hard heart,” Hunt told him.
The postman sighed. “I’ve thought of that,” he said miserably. “Or maybe no heart at all.” He looked down at the blood still oozing from his fingers. “Do you think they can tell?” he asked.
Hunt only frowned. He went back to the scythe, his
powerful, broad hands moving rhythmically. With his great
strength he could mow an acre of barley in less than an hour.
2 0 4
W IN TER IN G
Nonetheless he was impatient. He drew the stone roughly over
the metal. Men, he thought thankfully, were much shorter work.
The wheels clattered on the pavement. On the high
front seat, the butcher was singing. His bass voice rolled over
the green. Undiminished, it echoed among the houses. It was
fortunate perhaps that Longford had gone in for his breakfast.
It was a foolish song, but, with his theological turn of mind, it
would have hurt Longford deeply. Yet it was the song’s simple
foolishness which most pleased the caroler, the plain fact that
the song had nothing to do with the boxes of oysters or the
fine pickled salmon soaking in claret, nothing whatever to do
with the six wheels of Midland Stilton cheese, the rib roasts
or the four Banbury cakes wrapped in paper, all of which and
a great deal more he had carried, at Wykeham’s request and
starting well before midnight, up the river road from Bristol.
The butcher threw back his head.
“Shoes,” he roared cheerfully,
“I got shoes,
You got shoes,
All God’s chillun got shoes..
Holmes lay slumped on the ground, sleeping off his
whisky in the alley behind the Royal Charles. The song
drifted into his mind and then out again. The sunlight was
cool on his face but did not wake him. Finally, hearing odd
gulping sounds, he stirred. Harwood was sitting up beside
him. He had wrapped himself in his greatcoat.
“How did you manage to sleep?” he asked bleakly.
“It seemed more sensible than staying awake,” Holmes
answered. For the first time the doctor looked a
bout him. “It
must have been hours,” he said, looking into the morning.
Harwood sniffled. “It was longer,” he whispered. In his
voice was the same weariness that showed in his face.
Propped wide awake by the wall while the others had
slept, Harwood had watched the bright stars swing through
the heavens. Hour by hour he had watched them, the warm
summer stars sliding westward, withdrawing, the fall stars
climbing colder and fainter up from the east. Alone in the
darkness he had felt the world turning. With an almost
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2 0 5
infinite slowness, his muscles beginning to stiffen, he had felt
himself turning as well; and it had come upon him with
sudden sickening horror that he would surely die.
“How cold the wind is,” he said with a shudder. He was
shivering but his forehead was damp with sweat.
At the bottom of the alley the Duke slammed the door of
the privy. Grasping his trousers with one hand, he clambered
across the alley. With the other he was holding a letter.
"W e can go there,” he cried out excitedly.
Holmes tried not to , grimace. “Just walk up to the
house,” he said dryly, unable to stop himself, “and inquire
whether he is a murderer?”
“If you like.” There was a pleased look in the Duke’s
eyes. “The point is he expects us.”
“We knew that,” Holmes said. “You are to save the
daughter.”
“Yes, of course.” His Grace was smiling. The daughter
was a matter beyond question.
“You could have gone before,” Holmes persisted. “Probably any time you wanted.”
“Not until seven,” the Duke said. He dropped the
invitation into Holmes’s lap.
“When did you get this?”
The Duke went on smiling. “On the morning he went
away, I’m afraid.” He put his hands into his pockets. “Yet I
seem to have carried it about with me since.”
Straining to look at the paper, Holmes was baffled. “But
this is not until. . .”
—till hell freezes,” Harwood said hoarsely.
On the front step, in the clothes they had slept in, they
waited for the public house to open. Out in the street the
procession of wagons continued. One after another they
thundered up the hill and, in under an hour, came rumbling
back empty. Swinging wildly without their ballast, they
disappeared around the edge of the green.
Holmes listened to the last hurried shouts of the drivers.
“I wonder how many are invited?” he asked.
“An army,” Harwood whispered. They both looked at
him, but Harwood had slipped into silence.
Damn him, the Duke thought, annoyed with the man’s
bitterness. Certainly there were worse things than spending
206
WINTERK1NG
the night in an alley. The Duke himself had slept soundly.
Slept at once, he remembered, falling away into a stillness so
deep that, had he listened, the movement of the stars might
have seemed audible. In fact, he had heard nothing. The
intent dark eyes that in the deepest moment of his sleep had
turned as though from other, pressing thoughts to gaze at him
had watched him silently.
He was too old, too confident of his powers to be lured
away by a memory that on his waking paled. He had not let
his thoughts dwell on it. He wondered instead what Wykeham
was doing and what would come of their meeting. But there
is nothing so small that it is unimportant, even the flushed
red cheeks of a woman, met and all but unremembered in
the stillness of sleep.
The air now was cooler, sharper. The patch of blue sky visible
between the trees was shining. The Duke stood over Harwood.
Somewhere within him a longing he thought he had put away
quickened.
“It is time we were about our business here,” he said
roughly. Without quite knowing why, when Harwood did not
move at once, His Grace kicked him.
“Your manners seem to have got lost altogether,” Morag
said. His conscience pricked him a little to say it. A man with
his wife just run off was bound to be short on charity.
Doubtless, he must try to be a bit more understanding. But
Longford was being insufferable.
Morag stared enviously at the racks of clothes hanging in
the minister’s closet. “It is only the loan of a dinner jacket,”
he said.
“You’re not invited,” Longford replied wearily. He had
climbed up on the bed with his last pair of shoes and was attempting, without noticeable success, to enlarge them by making holes with a knife.
“I was his guardian,” Morag reminded him. He looked
once more at the closet. His own jackets had hung there until
someone, packing away the things of the dead, had disposed
of them. For all he knew it might have been Longford
himself. Still, it seemed mean-spirited to mention it. “I am
expected,” Morag said civilly. “There have to be nine at the
table.” He looked shrewdly at Longford. “I can assure you I
am one of them.”
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2 0 7
Longford worked on without speaking.
Morag rested his small, plump hand on the windowsill.
In the yard the light was already failing.
“We are to be his generals,” Morag said. "His commanders in the field.”
The shoes were a hopeless mess and Longford abandoned
them. “You are not coming,” he repeated.
"W ho’s Wykeham to find on such short notice?” Morag
asked. “Nine are expected.” His splotched forehead wrinkled.
“Eight just wouldn’t do. It would be the ruin of everything.”
"It would be a blessing,” Longford retorted, wishing to
have a few hours free of the old man’s company.
“Do you think so?” Morag turned. “This particular world
in ashes?”
Longford looked at him oddly. He had been feeling that
he must put his foot down once and for all; only, it occurred
to him suddenly, he had no idea what Morag was talking about.
“The world. . . ? ” he began.
“There wouldn’t be,” Morag answered. “In any event
not this one. And not the world he intended.” Morag shook
his old head. “Though I suppose there would have to be
something. But what’s the good of a world if you’re no longer
in it? And you wouldn’t be. You can be quite certain of that.”
He took out his handkerchief and blew his red nose.
“So it has to be nine,” he continued. “Just as there were
the time before. As there will be now, if I may have the loan
of a dinner jacket.”
A final spasm of annoyance came over Longford. “You
can’t talk to me!” he shouted. “You’r e . . . why, you’r e . . . ”
Morag nodded. “Quite right, of course. Here in this
room, if you’ll pardon me saying so.”
Longford’s face flashed with despair.
“But then,” Morag went on, “as far as I can determine,
they were most always dead.”
There was a
long silence. Morag saw that Longford had
understood nothing.
“We are less distractable,” he explained. “That is why, I
imagine, it is generally old dead men. We remember the
shape of our lives. That’s the real point. To have seen it
before. To know enough not always to be expecting new
faces, new anything. Though, of course, Wykeham would
challenge that.”
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W IN TER IN G
Longford made a movement of irritation.
“You said nine,” Longford whispered. Because the rest
had seemed gibberish, he had gone back to that.
There were nine towers in the village. He had discovered
them, one after another in the hills, on his tramps during his
first weeks in Devon. Uncertain of their meaning, he had
suspected nevertheless that they were bound up with the
river, with its changing, and had recorded their positions on
his map.
Longford took a deep breath.
“Why are there nine?” he asked quickly.
“I told you.”
“Tell me again.”
Morag sighed. “Because there were before.”
Longford stared at him uncomprehendingly.
“Before what?”
“Before this!” Morag said, raising his voice. “In the
world before now. In the last world Wykeham fled, making
this in its place. Though it made no difference. But he
wouldn’t learn. He never did learn and so can’t learn now,
that’s what I think. Because he never ended, never had to
stop, and so thinks somehow he can just keep on, world after
world. And yet you and I will help him, though it won’t
change anything. We will make a world again.”
The words poured forth in one breath.
Longford lowered this head, understanding none of
them.
“But why nine?” he persisted.
“That never mattered.”
“Give me a reason.”
“They all come to the same ”
“I don’t care.”
Morag looked out the window.
“Because he fell,” Morag said quietly.
Longford stared at him.
“Him,” Morag whispered, “the Almighty Power hurl’d
headlong. . .”
Morag frowned. “. . . Nine times,” he continued, his
voice flat, reciting, “the space that measures day and night.”
Across the green the postman had dragged a chair out