Spell of Winter

by Helen Dunmore

  Fourteen

  I didn’t turn when I heard the door open. Let him be the first to speak. But it wasn’t his voice.

  ‘Catherine!’

  It was Livvy. I’d never seen her dirty before. There was mud on her face and the front of her riding-skirt. And something darker, rustier –

  ‘Rob!’

  ‘Cathy, there’s been an accident.’

  Even then part of my mind registered that she called me Cathy because he did. She had no right: it was what my family called me. Then her words sank deep into the space that had always been waiting for them. Of course he was dead. I got up slowly, looking away from her. My hands stuck out in front of me, pointing like signposts.

  ‘I’ll go and tell Grandfather,’ I said, ‘you sit by the fire.’

  ‘What do you mean? I haven’t even told you what’s happened yet.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ I said, ‘isn’t he? Isn’t that what you came to tell me?’

  ‘No, of course he isn’t dead. Really, Cathy, you do make things difficult. He’s had a fall.’

  She was in charge, and strong. ‘You’re the one who ought to sit down, Cathy. You look awful. He put Starcrossed at a hedge and he shied. Something ran under his hoofs. I think it was a stoat. Horrible little beast.’

  ‘Did you jump it?’

  ‘For goodness’ sake what does it matter? They’re bringing him home on a gate, he’ll be here in half an hour. You’ll have to send for Dr Milmain.’

  ‘I’ll tell Grandfather,’ I said again. She was tugging off her gloves, finger by finger, looking down. Had she jumped off the mare, forgotten about herself and run to him? The rust on her dress was where his blood had fallen. Had she laid him in her lap and cradled him to her? I went out of the room to find my grandfather, but he was already coming down the stairs. Livvy’s news had flown round the house. He brushed past me and went straight to Livvy. He put his hand on her shoulder and she lifted her face to him, letting tears come now, letting them hang and not fall so that her wide pale eyes were more beautiful than ever. He wiped a smear of mud off her forehead.

  ‘Poor child,’ he said.

  ‘His leg’s broken,’ said Livvy, ‘the bone came through his skin,’ and a little shiver went over her face like wind on water.

  ‘John’s already gone for Dr Milmain,’ said my grandfather. He took no notice of me at all. His eyes were fixed on Livvy, attentive, hard, considering.

  ‘They had to shoot Starcrossed,’ said Livvy. ‘His leg was smashed.’

  ‘We shan’t let them shoot Rob,’ said Grandfather. ‘We’ll have him as good as new for you.’

  He spoke to Livvy as if she were his daughter. There was no space for me in that room, and I didn’t want to be there. Livvy smiled up at my grandfather. You fool, I thought, can’t you see it means nothing. You’re money Rob might get hold of, that’s all. Don’t think you’ve charmed him. But she was bound to think it, since it was what she always did wherever she went.

  He said, ‘Catherine will take you to her room. Get Kate to bring up some hot water, Catherine. And something to drink – brandy? Do you take brandy?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Try some. It will do you good. Think of it as medicine.’

  How she softened herself to him. That smile. Had I ever smiled like that, could I ever smile like that? No. And I didn’t want to.

  ‘I can’t be looking after Livvy,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to get things ready for Rob.’

  I stared at him and he stared back. I knew who he was seeing.

  I shan’t stay here. You can’t make me. Nobody can make me.

  ‘I’ll be out by the stables,’ I went on. ‘They’re bound to bring him round that way. I’ll show them up. They can put Rob in my room and I’ll nurse him.’

  ‘Kate can nurse him.’

  ‘Kate hasn’t the time. She has her work to do.’

  ‘Kate has always nursed you.’

  ‘That was when we were children. I shall nurse him.’

  He stared at me with his half-hidden eyes. We took no notice of Livvy but we hadn’t forgotten her. He might have hit me if she hadn’t been there. He had hit me once but I’d dodged and he struck the table. His hand had swollen so he had had to wear it bandaged for a week.

  ‘How can you nurse a broken leg? He’ll want lifting. You’re not capable of it.’

  ‘Dr Milmain will give me directions, and Kate can help.’

  I saw what he saw: my set, sullen face, my big hands. I was capable and I knew I was. I could inflict my will on him. Livvy watched us, taking in everything, the bitterness and the likeness between us. I didn’t care what she saw. She had taken Rob away from me on Starcrossed and look what had happened. Now it was my turn. What if my grandfather was hard? – he’d always been hard. His face was clamped tight, fixed in on itself. He was hard but he liked soft things, and he thought Livvy was soft. She would be no trouble to him in the house if Rob married her, or so he believed. But she was like water, that trickles through your hands but wears away a cliff.

  ‘They’ll be bringing him,’ I said again. ‘We’ll have to have the bed made up ready.’

  I didn’t go straight to the stables. I went to my bedroom first and met Kate coming along the corridor with an armful of linen.

  ‘I’ve taken off his good sheets, they’ll only be spoiled,’ she said: She had the old sides-to-middle ones in her arms, soft with wear. ‘These’ll do fine for now.’

  ‘He’s going in my bed,’ I said, ‘and I’ll have the truckle bed put in beside him. I’m going to nurse him.’

  ‘She’s not staked her claim, then?’ asked Kate.

  ‘She’ll go home,’ I said, ‘and change her clothes for dinner, and she’ll eat it too. She’ll just be a bit paler than usual so that everyone asks her why.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Kate. ‘She has a fine appetite, I’ve noticed it before. She’s one of those girls who can put away a good plateful, and then look as if she lives on fresh air and water.’

  ‘They’ve shot Starcrossed.’

  ‘Isn’t it a shame to feed a creature like that to the dogs,’ she said perfunctorily. And then, her face lively, ‘And what’s your Mr Bullivant going to say?’

  ‘He won’t say much, he doesn’t care about horses. And he isn’t mine. Anyway, that’s Rob’s business. Mr Bullivant knew well enough we couldn’t pay for the horse when he lent it. The money’s nothing to a man like him.’

  ‘He could be yours if you wanted him.’ She laughed at me with her long eyes, the bundle of linen drooping from her arms like a baby at a christening.

  ‘Rob’s hurt,’ I said, to stop her. ‘Livvy said the bone was sticking out through his skin.’ I wondered how I could say those words and feel almost nothing, only the faintest prickle like life crawling back into a dead limb.

  ‘It won’t be as bad as she says,’ said Kate confidently. ‘She’s a long streak of misery, that one.’

  It was delightful, the way Kate cut mysterious Livvy down to size. We smiled.

  ‘Give me the sheets,’ I said. ‘You light the fire.’

  Livvy was wrong about the bone. It hadn’t come through the skin, but it thrust up under it, sickeningly askew. He was colourless with pain, his hair dull where he had sweated into it. He smelled of blood and sweat and dirt. There was dirt in a deep cut on the side of his head, but it had almost stopped bleeding and Kate thought it was best to leave it until the doctor came.

  ‘He’s late. He should be here by now,’ Grandfather kept saying. We could not get him out of my room, although I knew Rob wanted him to go. He was sick with pain, dizzy, holding tight to the sheets as if he thought he would fall off the side of the bed. We had hooked the sheets and blankets up over a basket to keep the weight off his leg, but he had to be covered. He said he was cold, and long shudders ran down him.

  ‘It could be a lot worse,’ said Kate. ‘Once it’s set, he’ll be better.’ And she stirred up the fire until sparks snapped up the chimney
.

  ‘Brandy,’ said Grandfather, ‘get him some brandy, Kate.’

  ‘I’m not sure I should if Dr Milmain’s coming with chloroform.’

  ‘It won’t hurt him. Brandy never hurt anyone.’

  Rob felt for my hand. ‘Darling,’ he said, ‘darling.’

  ‘He’s wandering,’ said Kate. ‘He thinks you’re his best girl.’

  ‘He hasn’t got a best girl,’ I said. ‘He’s tired, Grandfather. It wears him out to talk. Why don’t you go down and see if the doctor’s here? I’ll sit with him.’

  ‘I’ll get that indiarubber sheet to put under him,’ said Kate.

  ‘He’d be better if he’d take some brandy. It’d put heart into him,’ said Grandfather. ‘He needs nourishment. What about beef-tea, Kate?’

  ‘Go down and give it to Livvy,’ I said.

  ‘She’s gone,’ said Kate. ‘A groom came for her.’

  ‘Good,’ I said, and looked across at my grandfather. Those hooded eyes full of his black temper could not frighten me today. I could say anything to him with Rob’s body between us. Rob’s hand was pale on the sheet, each tiny dark hair distinct, as if it were growing from wax. He was never pale, but now his freckles looked like dirt on his skin. He was curled a little away from Grandfather. I knew he was shrinking from him, afraid he would try to touch him. I felt inside myself how Rob’s flesh cringed from the jar of Grandfather’s hands. But Grandfather hung over him and couldn’t leave him alone. He touched Rob’s shoulder with awkward tenderness.

  ‘We’ll soon have you right again,’ he said, but Rob was too tired to answer. He lay with his head flung back as if to separate himself from the broken bone and the tent it made under his skin. At least Livvy was out of the way. In the end she was a poor thing, I thought. I would never have left him, either by that ditch, or now.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said to Rob when they were gone. ‘I couldn’t get him to go. But it won’t be long until the doctor comes.’

  ‘He means well,’ said Rob. ‘I felt sorry for him. All that about brandy. I’m all right.’

  ‘Yes, you’re all right.’

  ‘Don’t let them muck me about.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’ I squeezed his hand very gently. My feeling of protectiveness towards him was like a passion. He was quiet for a while, and his colour was so bad that I began to wonder if he was hurt somewhere else, inside, where we couldn’t see. Then he sighed.

  ‘It’s just I’m so tired,’ he said as if he were explaining something politely to a stranger. ‘I’d be all right if I could go home and sleep.’

  ‘You are at home,’ I said, but he’d lapsed into a quieter, distant place where he didn’t hear me. I wanted Kate back. Suddenly it was frightening to be alone with him. I looked at the door and she was there like an angel, flapping her yellowed indiarubber sheet in front of her.

  ‘He’s only wandering,’ she said, coming quickly to the bed. ‘He had a bit of a blow on the head, that’s why. Tomorrow he won’t remember anything, it’ll be just as good as getting drunk. And Dr Milmain’s here, wasting his time talking downstairs to your grandfather.’

  ‘What’s this, what’s this?’ asked Dr Milmain jollily, rubbing his hands like the parody of a physician. Rob smiled warily. The doctor looked eager as ever to get his hands on one of us. He was stripping off his coat already, rolling up his sleeves.

  ‘Nothing serious,’ he announced after a few minutes’ examination. ‘Noth-ing serious. We’ll have you up and about by the middle of next week, eh? And what’s this? Blood? Nothing to it, Kate’ll have that washed and dressed for you in three minutes, won’t you, Kate? But first we’re going to have to do a bit of basket-work here …’ he went on, all the time feeling up and down Rob’s leg, gently and lightly. He was no fool. His hands moved as if they had knowledge of their own, and liked what they did.

  ‘Now some doctors’ud have you off to the sawbones for this,’ he muttered, ‘but I shan’t. Why trouble trouble? No, all it needs is a little bit of patience – easy, Rob – and a bit of common sense and chloroform – steady on, there’s a good chap, Kate’s going to hold the pad for me. I want you to close your eyes and think of angels while I count to seven. There you are, lucky number. Breathe deeply. Bet you won’t get to eight. How much do you bet me? Not that I’m a betting man –’

  But Rob had gone. He was out of it, he didn’t feel anything I told myself as Doctor Milmain’s hands grew fast and fierce. ‘Now hold his ankle. There,’ he ordered me. ‘Bring your weight down so it can’t move. And Kate, keep that knee quite still.’ He felt at the place where the bone had broken, his fingers nervous and exploratory as butterflies. Then his face changed. He seized hold and pulled once, twice, hard. I thought I heard the ends of the bones grate.

  ‘There now, that’s done,’ said the doctor in quite a different voice. ‘A bit tricky, but he’ll do.’ He was splinting Rob’s leg, winding on a quick mass of bandage.

  ‘I’ll be here every day,’ he said. ‘The thing to watch is the colour of the skin. Any change at all, especially below the ankle, you send for me. Pain? Oh he’ll have pain. But the head’s nothing. Wash it with iodine. And get him to wiggle his toes, Catherine. It’ll heal twice as fast. Four times an hour and every time he thinks of it. You’re going to be the nurse, I take it? He’s to drink as much as he likes and do nothing. That means bed-bottles. Hold that bowl, Kate, he’s about to be sick.’

  He was coming round, his mouth squaring into a retch. Then there were long strings of vomit running between his mouth and the dish. I wiped his mouth when he had finished and helped him to lie down.

  ‘Just the chloroform, nothing serious. Give him a bit of dry toast at five o’clock and as much sops as he wants.’

  ‘You’re going round,’ Rob said in a hoarse voice. ‘I can’t see you.’

  ‘No more you can. But you’ll have enough of my ugly mug by the time we’re through with this. Now be a good chap and go to sleep. If you want anything your sister’s here. I’ll just wash my hands.’ Kate poured in the hot water and he soaped them carefully, finger by finger, whistling under his breath, not glancing into the looking-glass.

  ‘Were you with him when he did it?’ he asked me abruptly.

  ‘No. No, it was Livvy – Olivia Coburn. I was here at home.’

  ‘You’d have been safer with your sister, Rob.’ But Rob didn’t hear him. He was already asleep.

  Pain? Oh yes, he’ll have pain. Kate could soothe him better than I could. Her shadow on the ceiling seemed to quieten the whole room. I wanted to be there, in that room, nowhere else. I grudged fifteen minutes for swallowing some soup and a chop downstairs. I did not need food. Rob had a fever and for two days Dr Milmain came twice a day, then one morning he was suddenly cool and still in the bed, watching the faint trace of winter sun grown distinct, smiling.

  ‘Rob? D’you want some barley water?’

  ‘No. But Cathy –’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘You were here in the night, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  It was a small kingdom but it was strong. Kate serviced it, bringing up coals and hot water and jugs of barley water, taking away Rob’s bed-bottles and bed-pans. No one else was allowed in. Of course Grandfather came, but he was a stranger and I think he felt himself one. The talk snagged, the rhythm of our life was lost when he tapped at the door. Once I heard Miss Gallagher’s voice somewhere far off in the house, talking loudly. I would not think of her. She was out of the way and powerless. The things that were important were Rob’s beef-tea and the daily glass of port he was allowed, the way his skin itched inside the splint and wadding, the punctuation of Dr Milmain’s visits, the building and dying down of the fire. Kate was with us when she could be, and it was better when she was there, as if the presence of a third person were not an impediment but a shaping force. We were more ourselves when she was there.

  There were a couple of long, raw grey afternoons when we
were just the two of us. We played two-handed bridge, and chess, and I read aloud to Rob from The Prisoner of Zenda. We didn’t touch. Livvy had sent messages and a basket of cold russet apples, but she hadn’t visited. Russets were his favourite apples and we ate them together, six in an afternoon, biting away the sweet, nutty flesh and leaving the cores lying on the bedclothes. He was sitting up now. Tomorrow he would be allowed out of bed for the first time. Everything would change. He flipped the cards down, dealing our hands.

  ‘Let’s not play any more.’

  ‘All right. What d’you want to do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I stood up and walked to the window. It was the blank, lifeless end of a January afternoon. There was no frost.

  ‘Can you see the snowdrops?’ asked Rob.

  ‘No, there aren’t any.’

  ‘You’re not looking. Under the acacia. There,’ he said, as if he could see them, as if he were pointing at them. And there they were, white tiny stains in the gloom that grew sharper as I looked at them.

  ‘It hardly seems worth having flowers now, does it?’ I said.

  ‘It’ll be spring soon,’ said Rob. I felt a pang of anxiety. I was safe here, with everything banked down and predictable. Rob’s illness was like a second winter. We had our rituals, our drawing of curtains and lighting of fires. Spring would be too strong a light, showing up the dust everywhere.

  ‘I’ll be out of here long before the spring,’ he went on.

  ‘You might not be.’

  ‘Of course I shall.’ He looked at me. ‘It’s not so bad being shut away like this in winter, but once the spring comes …’

  Not so bad. ‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s not so bad.’

  ‘I mean, I’m very grateful and all that,’ he said quickly. ‘You and Kate have been marvellous, don’t think I don’t know that.’

  ‘But,’ I said.

  ‘Oh well, there are always buts. Aren’t there?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not for me,’ I said slowly. My jaws ached as if I were getting a cold. My chin hurt. Something was wrong. It was hurting the way it did when I was going to be sick –