Spell of Winter

by Helen Dunmore

  It was two miles to the station. The platform was perfectly still, and the signal was down. The porter came out to look if we had any bags, then he went back to his place in the shade by the wall and screwed up his eyes, staring into the dazzle of rails. Rob put a penny in the chocolate machine on the platform and bent the bar of chocolate backwards and forwards before taking off the silver paper and giving half to me. He didn’t even look at Miss Gallagher. Big stains of chocolate sprang on to my gloves. I wondered if Father would notice them. I thought he would, but perhaps since he was ill he would be lying down and all he would see would be my face leaning over him. I could keep my hands down by my sides.

  ‘Will Father be able to sit up?’ I whispered to Rob.

  ‘Course he will, idiot,’ said Rob. I rubbed my gloves together but it made them worse. The chocolate was like mud, growing the more I tried to get it off. The signal jerked and the wires by the line sizzled. The porter peeled himself away from his cool place and put his cap straight. Miss Gallagher seized my hand as our train gave a far-off ‘Whoooo’. We knew from the sound that it was going through the cutting, and in less than a minute we would see first the smoke, then the engine as it rushed out on to open track again and into the station.

  A fat lady lurched out of the Ladies compartment and dropped her three brown-paper parcels on to the platform. Miss Gallagher gave Rob a look which meant ‘Pick them up!’ but he took no notice of her. The fat lady scrabbled, catching hold of the strings. Her face was purple and she had white hairs coming out of her chin. They sprouted in a little bunch. I wondered why she didn’t have them pulled out. Perhaps it would hurt her. Those hairs were the kind of thing Miss Gallagher would have on her face, though in fact she did not.

  ‘Really!’ said Miss Gallagher to the air, pushing me ahead of her into the compartment. It was hot and smelly. First of all there was the smell of train dirt, then under it a smell of violet cachous. Miss Gallagher seized the strap and banged down the windows. The train started and I fell hard against the cushion so that dust flew out.

  ‘We’ll have something to eat,’ said Miss Gallagher, sitting back against the seat and putting up her veil. We stared as she took a paper out of her big black bag. There were three hard-boiled eggs and a twist of salt, nothing else. I had never eaten eggs without bread. She gave one to Rob and one to me. I held mine tight until brown chocolate from my gloves started to come off on to its white shell. I pressed the egg too hard and tiny cracks rippled out from my fingers, then bits of shell began to break off. Underneath it there was dirty white egg with green-blue marks on it, like bruises. A cloud of smuts flew in at the window as the train began to gallop around the bend. Rob leaned forward and took my egg out of my hand. He looked at Miss Gallagher then he put his arm back the way he had taught me at cricket and threw the egg straight out of the open window. Miss Gallagher stared. A sharp patch of red burnt into her cheeks and she opened her mouth as if she were going to break her rules and speak to Rob.

  ‘She doesn’t like eggs. They make her sick,’ said Rob. His own egg had vanished. I wondered if he had eaten it while I looked at mine, but I didn’t think so. We were learning conjuring out of a book, but we hadn’t got very far yet, certainly not far enough to vanish an egg. I wondered if the eggs had flown through the air and landed in a nest, a skylark’s perhaps, or a nightingale’s, some bird that nested on the ground. But then it was August –

  Miss Gallagher poked her face into mine.

  ‘Are you feeling sick, Catherine dear?’

  I nodded. She pulled down the opposite window and warm air flapped round us, making so much noise no one had to speak. I leaned on the corner cushion and shut my eyes.

  Later on there were houses, sprinkled on the country and making it messy.

  ‘We’re coming into the outskirts,’ said Miss Gallagher. I thought of Miss Gallagher’s hard, prickly skirt, and the way she twitched it tight round her when she walked up steps. Sometimes Miss Gallagher said ‘underskirt’. Or she laughed and said, ‘Queen Anne’s dead, Catherine.’ That meant my petticoat was showing. The train was rattling and shaking. A thick, different smell poured in through the windows and Miss Gallagher banged them up again.

  ‘Next stop,’ she said.

  We walked down a small quiet path, not even as wide as a lane. But there were houses ducked down behind the trees everywhere. I had the feeling of the houses pressing on us, hidden by thin veils of green, pretending to be country. Rob walked close beside me so I could feel his shoulder moving against mine. His Norfolk jacket was rough and safe through my sleeve.

  ‘There’s the park,’ said Miss Gallagher. ‘This park is famous for its deer, Catherine.’ She nudged me, showing her long, strong yellow teeth, ‘Look out for the deer, dear.’ Her teeth hawed at me then she folded her lips back over them quickly. I stared through the trees but I couldn’t see anything. We had deer at home, and Rob and I used to see them very early in the morning, feeding. They were fallow deer and we would track their rumps, flicking through the long grass. Their white spots were camouflage when light moved over their brown skins.

  I knew from the way Miss Gallagher was walking that we were close to where Father was. Her steps were quick and hungry. There was only just room for the three of us on the path, but ahead it widened and ran across a little green towards a pair of gates.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Miss Gallagher.

  We looked at what was written on the gates.

  ‘The Sanctuary’ Rob read aloud. Later on I’d ask him what it meant. I remembered not to ask Miss Gallagher anything.

  It was a big, staring, tiptoe house. The path was new yellow gravel, not old grey gravel with weeds trying to push up through it, like at home. The doors had two lions crouching by it, one on each side. They had no moss or soft places on them, like our stone pillars which were worn away by frost and lichen so that you could rub your fingers in and out of the tiny valleys and mountains. The lions’ teeth were new and sharp, ready to bite. Rob went ahead so I could walk right up the middle of the steps, as far away from the lions as possible.

  In the entrance hall there was a woman in a dark dress sitting behind a heavy desk, with a little brass bell on it. From where she sat she could watch everyone who came up the drive. She had a pile of papers in front of her, and a big pen-stand full of sharp, shiny pens. She stared ahead as if she had been waiting for us.

  ‘Stay here, children,’ said Miss Gallagher, and she marched straight up to the desk. She put her head right over the desk so that it was close to the dark woman’s, and then she whispered so we couldn’t hear anything. All we could see was the back of her hat nodding. A hard shiny beetle bobbed on the end of her hatpin. It was Miss Gallagher’s scarab.

  ‘I never take it off, Catherine. I always have it somewhere about my person. The scarab is a bringer of good fortune.’

  Since she’d told me that Rob and I had always looked for the scarab somewhere about her person. Did she wear it at night too? She was always wanting to stay the night with me, but Kate and Eileen had a string of reasons why she never could. I knew Miss Gallagher would wear a huge flannel nightdress with the scarab stuck in it like a dagger. It would wink and glitter while I was asleep like the eye of a nightmare.

  ‘She’ll make you say your prayers aloud with her,’ said Rob.

  ‘I don’t want that one here poking and prying,’ said Kate.

  ‘Father won’t let her come,’ I said. Father had never liked Miss Gallagher. But now Father was gone, and Miss Gallagher was taking us to see him.

  Miss Gallagher came back and took my hand without saying anything. I was afraid the chocolate would get on her gloves, so I tried to pull my hand away, but she only held on harder. Suddenly the woman at the desk stood up and smiled. Her voice poured like treacle across the shiny wooden floor. ‘He may be in the garden. It’s such a perfect day,’ she said to Miss Gallagher, as if it were their secret.

  ‘Oh yes,’ cried Miss Gallagher. ‘What a summer we’re h
aving!’

  ‘The roses – I never saw the like.’

  ‘And such ducks of little clouds,’ said Miss Gallagher wildly. Her face was flushed. She never knew when she had said enough. The woman looked at her as if she was used to this sort of thing. Rob lolled against the door, staring out, making himself separate from us. He watched the sky which burnt as if it had been hammered.

  ‘We’re very fortunate,’ said the woman behind the desk, and put her lips together. She picked up one of her pens and began to stab the paper with it. Miss Gallagher looked round for me and Rob. Her eyes were watering, the way they did when she was excited.

  ‘When are we going to see Father?’ asked Rob flatly, counting the row of bells on the wall as if it didn’t matter whether she answered or not. ‘I thought that was what we were here for.’

  Miss Gallagher squeezed my hand.

  ‘This way, Catherine,’ she said. ‘Not far now. I expect those little legs are tired, aren’t they?’ she added, smiling at me. I drew my hand out of hers and walked stiffly beside her through the double glass doors.

  Three

  There were closed doors all along the corridor. The bare polished floor disappeared. Thick carpet swallowed the noise of our boots. The carpet had dark-red roses on it, as big as cabbages, and the roses were the colour of boiled beetroot, or the blood that oozed from the butcher’s parcels left on the slab for Mrs Blazer. They made me think I could smell old meat and cabbage, but all I really smelled was polish and Miss Gallagher’s skirt shushing along next to me. None of us said anything. The corridor seemed to have swallowed up our voices, too. Once the corridor bulged out into a half-moon space at the side, like a room with a path running through it. Someone had set spindly chairs there, and tables with flowers on them. I wondered if anyone ever sat there, and what they did. But there was no sound except a humming deep in the house, like the hum of a furnace.

  ‘I know the way, I’ve been here before,’ said Miss Gallagher proudly. Rob looked at her, but he would not ask her when. Miss Gallagher had no right to have seen our father before we did. She had been here before, talking to our father, carrying back stories of him which we had not been told. Rob was angry.

  ‘Don’t be frightened, Catherine,’ said Miss Gallagher. I had not been frightened before, but now I began to be. If only she would walk ahead, and let me walk with Rob.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Miss Gallagher.

  There was a small brass number 17 on the door, and a little flap like a letterbox under it. Rob touched the flap. He was going to lift it. I saw the mist from his warm fingers on the brass.

  ‘Don’t touch!’ hissed Miss Gallagher. He had done it. He had made her speak to him. Two points. Rob lifted the flap and I squeezed up close to him so we could both look through, while Rob’s warm rough jacket rubbed my arms. We saw a white space, perhaps a wall, or sky. Nothing was moving in there. It was the kind of room where there might be an animal hidden in the corner which would jump out on you.

  ‘Is Father in there?’ I whispered.

  ‘I think so. He knows we’re coming.’

  ‘How does he know?’

  ‘Grandfather will have told him,’ said Rob confidently.

  Miss Gallagher rapped on the door above our heads. I heard something move but no one answered.

  ‘We’ll go in. He may be resting,’ said Miss Gallagher. When she put out her arm to turn the doorknob tiny raised dark hairs prickled all over her wrist and the back of her hand. I wondered how far the hairs grew, under her clothes. Perhaps they grew long, and thick. The doorknob clicked and Miss Gallagher’s body filled the space as the door opened, then she moved into the room. I saw a bed like a raft on the pale shiny floor, and on the shipwrecked bed there was Father, lying on his back, staring at the door. His eyes moved a little and he looked at us. First he looked at Rob, then he looked at me. He smiled like a weak sun.

  ‘Kitty cat,’ he said, ‘come on in.’

  No one called me Kitty cat now. I was too old. I felt strange, as if I were suddenly the wrong size for Father.

  ‘And how’s the boy?’ he said, crinkling up his eyes at Rob. The real smile had gone but he was trying to hold on to it. The wide shiny floor between us and Father was like a deep sea. They did not put any carpet in here, although at home it was only in the servants’ rooms that there was no carpet. I had hold of Rob’s hand and he tugged me forward, our feet slipping and squeaking across the floor. Rob went right up to the bed so that he was nearly touching Father. Father did not even look at Miss Gallagher. She had gone over to the window and she stood there staring out, fiddling with the blind cord. The back of her looked lumpish and sad, as if it were saying ‘I know when I’m not wanted.’ I had heard her say that once, when Mother was still at home. I slid my feet forward so that they matched Rob’s.

  ‘Who gave you the roses?’ I asked. They were dark, fresh ones, with little drops of water curling inside the petals. There were none of Father’s things in the room, not even his razor or the stuff in a little green bottle which he put on his face after he shaved.

  ‘Someone puts them there,’ said Father. He screwed up his face a bit as if he were trying to remember. ‘Every morning,’ he sighed. The thought of the roses seemed to make him tired. His hair was combed flat in a new way, and it wasn’t shiny any more. It looked as if Father had been put out in the rain and left there. I thought of how Father always came in from the rain with quick, fresh steps, holding his gun under his arm. He had a fine mist of rain all over him and he smelled of air and the fields and sometimes of blood from the birds he had shot. Rob said he couldn’t smell the blood, but I could. I would stand on the fifth step and jump to Father and he’d catch me up tightly into his arms, and wrap me in his smell and the warm touch of his cheek with the bristles coming through because he hadn’t shaved since morning. The rain would come off in patches on to my pinafore and make me smell of the fields too.

  He would go into the drawing-room without changing anything but his boots, and he would let me toast his muffins at the fire, and butter them. Rob was the one who always spread the Gentleman’s Relish, which was really called Patum Peperium. We all liked it, though only Father was allowed to have it. But on these days he would give us a quarter of a muffin each on the end of his knife, and I would push the Gentleman’s Relish into the buttery surface of the muffin with my tongue, then suck it out.

  I toasted muffin after muffin. When I turned round from the fire with the toasting-fork the windows would have changed from dark blue to black and it would be suddenly night, with the rain coming thicker, blowing in gusts against the panes. I would give Father his next muffin and think of how he was safe in here with us, and not out in the wild wet dark, walking over the fields.

  ‘I shot two rabbits on Monday,’ said Rob. ‘A buck and a doe.’

  ‘We’ll make a gun of you yet,’ said Father. He smoothed the counterpane down over his legs. There was still a wrinkle. He smoothed it again, trying to make it quite flat, his face twitching as if a fly had landed on it. I tried to remember if I had ever seen Father lying in bed before. Perhaps he had always pulled at the bedclothes like that, and frowned, as if the straightness of the sheets was more important than we were. I watched the shape of his legs under the bedclothes. Were they thinner, and was that why he was lying down? There was a boy in the village who got pushed round by his brothers and sisters on a cart. It was like a long tray with wheels on it, and the dust blew in his face in summer. His legs were wasted away so that you could put your hand round one of them and touch your fingers together, even right up at the top of his thigh. If you gave his brothers and sisters a penny they would fold back the blanket and let you put your hand round his leg. He was called Sammy Hucknall and Nanny told us he wasn’t like that when he was born, it was because of an illness. Illness could make your legs shrivel up like dead flower stalks, so you could never walk again. That was why Kate came in and out all night when one of us had a fever. What kind of illness had Father g
ot?

  ‘Can you walk, Father?’ I asked.

  ‘I could climb a mountain,’ said Father in a loud, firm voice. ‘But I must polish my boots before I go out.’ There was a drawer in the table next to his bed, and he leaned over and got out a cloth and a tin of polish. He didn’t even have to look, because he knew where the knob of the drawer would be. It was as if he was used to doing everything while he lay in bed, just as Sammy Hucknall was used to the dust and the trolley and the blanket being peeled down so that people could feel his legs.

  ‘You ought to put your boots outside the door for them to polish, Father,’ said Rob. He sounded angry. We’d never seen Father do anything like polishing his own boots. What Father did was put them in the boothole and shout if they weren’t shiny enough the next morning. I was sure he wouldn’t know how to polish.

  But Father bent down again and hooked up a pair of boots from under the bed. They were shiny and clean. Miss Gallagher turned round and stared brightly at us. ‘Such roses in the garden!’ she exclaimed. But no one answered. We watched Father’s hands going round and round as he worked on the leather, feeding polish into the grains. The backs of his hands were pale, and there was a deep purple mark on one of them. I wondered how it had come. Smears of polish rubbed off on the bedclothes, but he didn’t seem to notice. I smelled the polish, and a dry yellow soap smell, like the smell of a clean kitchen floor.

  The door opened and a tall rustly nurse came in without knocking. She stood with her hands folded and looked down at Father. She must have seen the marks on the sheets, but she kept a small smile on her face, as if she was pleased about something.

  ‘We’re keeping busy today,’ she said, looking at Miss Gallagher. She balanced on her toes, rocking lightly backwards and forwards. Her stiff white veil bounced on her shoulders. ‘Dr Kenneth will be coming round in quarter of an hour,’ she said to no one.

  ‘We may be in the garden,’ said Father.