The Possessors

by John Christopher

  Her devotions took their usual form. An Our Father, and then a prayer to God to care for those she had known in her life and, in her poor way, loved. The children first, the unvarying pang. At one time she had attempted to see them in her mind as they would be in reality, but she no longer tried to do that. They changed so much at that age, and so quickly. Johnny, who had been five, would be thirteen, the girls young women. So she prayed for them as they had been when she had seen them for the last time: Johnny in his little blue suit, face flushed, blond hair untidy, Lois and Annette in their yellow frocks with the red pockets, brown hair neatly pigtailed, eyes puzzled and unsure. Oh God, she thought, let them be happy.

  And John, bitterly hurt for all that armor of complacency—let the hurt be all gone, forgotten. Let him be happy with the new wife, whose face she had seen once in a magazine, oval, thin-lipped, quite pretty. His women always had to be a credit to him. Let the children love her and, please God, let her love them. She prayed for her mother, in the Florida sun, and for her dead father. For all the dead: her two brothers, killed in the war, for Grandfather and Grandmother Hardy. Remembering them, she remembered so many things. The house at Cape Cod, the long summers of sailing and swimming, the toboggan winters, the days of knowing one was safe, and being told that one was beautiful

  The wind, shaking the house, disturbed her reverie. She said the second Our Father, and got into bed. Curled up, she thought of George, of his surprise at finding she said her prayers before bed, of his delight and tenderness. A long time ago, but he was fond of her, and she of him. She hoped he would not stay up too late playing dice. He tired himself without realizing it.

  She slept soundly, undisturbed by George when he came to bed, and awoke at six thirty. She lay in the dark, listening to the wind which was still raging outside and to her husband’s heavy breathing beside her. This, always, was the hard time, the moment which might have turned to misery if she let it. Above her head, far off and faint, she heard the jingling of Marie’s alarm clock. She pressed the switch of her bedside light, but nothing happened. A fuse gone, probably. She pushed the bedclothes back, swung her feet out of bed, and fumbled in the dark in the cabinet. The bottle was in its place, and the glass beside it. She poured out, guessing the amount, and clipped the top back. Then she drank the raw gin quickly, feeling its heat in her throat, the glow in her stomach. Anxiety receded. She had had her usual tot, and there was still some in the glass. But that had not been deliberate, she argued with herself; she just had not been able to see how much she was pouring. She drank the rest and felt better, much better.

  Footsteps pattered outside, and there was Marie’s voice, whispering.

  “Madame?”

  Mandy went to the door, and opened it.

  “Yes?”

  “The light will not work, madame.”

  “I know. You’ve got a torch, haven’t you?”

  “I can’t find it.”

  She sighed with exasperation. The girl was reasonably intelligent and a willing worker, but had an incorrigibly scatter-brained streak. She went to her dressing-table drawer, found her own torch, and brought it to the door.

  “Take this, and use it to look for yours. And tell Peter to go down and check the fuses.”

  When Marie had gone, she found her bedroom slippers and dressing gown. She sat on the edge of the bed. There was not much she could do until she had a light of some kind. She sat there for what seemed quite a long time, listening to the storm, before she reached for the bottle. She was careful as she poured the gin into the glass. Just a little … but perhaps rather more than that. She had scarcely poured any. She replaced the top again, and pushed the bottle firmly to the back of the cabinet. She took the drink in sips, rationing herself. Only when she heard Marie returning did she tip the rest back in a gulp. Marie said, “Your torch, madame.”

  “Where was yours?”

  “Under the bed.”

  “Did you tell Peter?”

  “Yes, madame. He has gone down to see to the fuses.”

  “Get dressed, then. I’ll see you downstairs.”

  There was a sound from the bed, as George turned over. He said drowsily, “What is it? Anything wrong?”

  “Only the fuses. Go to sleep.”

  He did not answer her, was probably asleep already. So as not to disturb him again, she took her clothes to the bathroom, stood the torch on its end so that some light was reflected from the ceiling, and had her bath quickly. She dressed in the weird half-light, and made her way down to the kitchen. Marie had set her torch up also, and was looking helpless.

  “The lamp,” Mandy said. “Get one of the lamps out, and light it. You can’t do anything like that.”

  Going down the last flight of stairs, to the basement, she felt a little lightheaded. She would be better after coffee, and she decided she would have some toast this morning, too. Getting up without lights, and with a storm raging outside, required some allowances to be made.

  She called to Peter, from the foot of the stairs, “Haven’t you found it yet?”

  “No.” He turned toward her, the light from the torch lighting up the wrinkles of his face, the harsh line of jaw. “It is not here. I have checked the main fuse also. The line must be broken somewhere outside.”

  “My God, that’s all we needed.”

  “There was a noise in the night. Avalanche, I think.”

  “It didn’t wake me. Look, get all the lamps out of store, and get them lit. We have plenty of kerosene, don’t we? Marie can take one up to each room when she takes the tea, and we can put the rest where they will do the most good.” She listened briefly. “It’s still blowing hard. We won’t have any power till the weather clears. Even if it’s a minor break, they won’t fix it in this. Plenty of wood inside?”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “I will see to all that.”

  Marie had a kerosene lamp burning in the kitchen, which made things look a little better. The solid-fuel cooker was made up ready for lighting; she put a match to the paper and heard the comforting roar of combustion. She glanced at the kitchen clock. Five after seven. They would have their cups of tea by eight o’clock, their breakfasts, if they wanted them, by half past.

  It meant a long wait for her own coffee and toast. She thought of going to the bar for a small tot and then, putting the thought behind her, got down to the work that needed to be done.

  As she had guessed they would, they found the whole business rather exciting. The Graingers, as usual, were the first down of the guests, and they joined George who had already started on his bacon and eggs. He greeted them, and said, “You won’t get much skiing done this morning. Or this afternoon, by the look of things. Not at the village, anyway. Even if it clears, I doubt we’ll get the bus through.”

  “A day of relaxation will do me very well,” Grainger said. He looked at George’s plate. “Breakfast! That was what worried me. I thought you cooked by electricity?”

  “We have a solid-fuel stove as a stand-by,” Mandy said.

  “You’re a wonderful woman!” He waltzed exuberantly toward her, planted a cheerful kiss on her cheek. “Good old Mandy.”

  She accepted the tribute, smiling. She had seen enough of Grainger, during the five days he had been at the chalet, to have formed a view of him: not a lecher, but a man distinctly light with women. The chasteness of this particular salutation was a tribute to her years, not to her virtue.

  She said, “The toast may be a little variegated. We’ve had to improvise a toasting fork.”

  “Toast made on an open fire!” Grainger said, “Can I come and make my own?”

  Mandy shook her head. “You’d get in Marie’s way, and we can’t afford confusion this morning.”

  “And the light from a paraffin lamp,” Grainger went on. “I haven’t seen one since I was a boy. They used to have them in the gardener’s cottage. I used to make toast there in front of the fire. They had a fork Kendall had made himself from thick copper wire. I used to sit on the hearthr
ug. It was one of those made of bits of rag —all different colors, in patterns.”

  Elizabeth Grainger said, “The old nostalgia is working overtime this morning.”

  George started to butter his toast. “I know just what he means,” he said, “rag hearthrug and all. But it wasn’t the gardener’s cottage. I lived in it, with my old gran. And those lamps, quite frankly, were a bloody nuisance —trimming the wicks was one of my jobs.”

  He was smiling and, she saw, watching the Graingers. It was one of his tricks. He enjoyed seeing if he could produce a reaction; embarrassment he found particularly amusing. She felt herself, as always, warming to it. It was on just such an occasion that he had first stood out to her as a person.

  Grainger smiled back imperturbably. “Mrs. Kendall used to let me trim the wicks on her lamps. I must say I enjoyed it. But I suppose there’s never much fun in forced labor.”

  The Deepings came down, and she went into the kitchen to organize the other breakfasts. Peter had been clearing snow away from the front door. He came in, rubbing his hands, and she poured more coffee for him.

  “Any sign of the weather clearing?” she asked him.

  “It is blowing less hard.” He held the cup between his hands to warm them. “I was right about the avalanche. A small slide, maybe three hundred meters west.”

  She nodded, and then thought about what he had said.

  “West? But that wouldn’t account for the power line going.”

  Peter shrugged. “Maybe another slide, as well, between here and the village.”

  George came into the kitchen, lighting a cigarette. He offered one to her, and she shook her head. He said, “Has anyone tried the telephone yet?”

  “I didn’t think of that.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  When he returned, he said, “No joy. We’re cut off, all right.”

  Mandy said, “We’ll need to keep the children amused. I think maybe I’ll have Marie clear the dining room as soon as breakfast is over, and they can do puzzles or play games in there.”

  “Fair enough,” George said. He found a cup and poured himself coffee. “I’ll do a recce as soon as the weather brightens up a bit.”

  The storm continued, though with diminishing force, during the morning. So far there was no particular sign of boredom among the guests; they seemed content to read, or talk, or merely to look out at the snow. Mandy adapted herself fairly easily to cooking on the solid-fuel stove. For the main course she prepared a casserole of beef, with sweet com and jacket potatoes. She was a little short of green vegetables; this would have been the day for picking up supplies from Nidenhaut. There were three cabbages, a couple of large cauliflowers, and maybe three kilos of carrots in the cold store. On the other hand, there was a good supply of canned vegetables. Not that there was any cause to worry. Tomorrow, probably, they would be able to get through to Nidenhaut.

  It stopped snowing during lunch, and the wind dropped a good deal. George announced his intention of going out to have a look at things.

  They were drinking coffee in the salon. Ruth Deeping asked, “Are you taking the car?”

  Her husband said, amiably contemptuous, “With six feet of snow up against the garage door? I don’t know how he’d expect to find the road, either.”

  She said, “I suppose that was silly. I didn’t think.”

  Grainger cut across her embarrassment. “Are you skiing down, George?”

  “Yes.”

  “Down to the village?”

  “If I can make it.”

  “How about getting back?”

  “I’ll walk it if necessary,” George said. “The exercise wouldn’t do me any harm.”

  Grainger said, “That removes from my mind the vagrant thought that I might volunteer to go with you. Walking up from Nidenhaut through this would do me quite a lot of harm.”

  Diana got up and walked restlessly to the window. “It really is clearing up,” she said. “There’s a break in the clouds.”

  Grainger went and stood beside her. “Where? I can’t see any.”

  “There. Look.” She leaned against him, Mandy noticed, while she pointed it out. How pointless it all was, and how sad. “Quite a big break.”

  “The girl’s right,” Grainger said. “Enough blue to make a bikini. Half a bikini, anyway. Let’s get our skis and do a small local slalom, while George treks for help across the boundless wastes.”

  Mandy did not have her own coffee until everything had been cleared away and she had seen Marie well started on the dishes. She slipped into the bar while it was filtering. There was no one there; through the window she could see the Deeping children dragging a luge up the slope. She unlocked the cupboard, quickly poured herself a gin into a medicine glass she had brought with her, put the bottle back, and locked up again. Then, the need for haste gone, she took the glass over to the window, and looked out, holding it untasted.

  The others were skiing farther off. She recognized the Deepings, the Graingers and Diana Blackstone, and Douglas Poole. No sign of Jane Winchmore; she must have gone to her room instead. She sipped from her glass, and felt a wave of affection for them all, for all humanity, whether soaring like a bird or slipping and sliding, falling in ridiculous humiliation. Even someone like Leonard Deeping was not bad, really. To know a little was to understand a little, to understand a little was to forgive all. She was amused at her own thoughts. Why, child, she told herself, you are becoming quite a philosopher. She tipped down the rest of the drink, slipped the glass in the pocket of her apron, and went to get her coffee.

  The salon was deserted. It was nice to have the place empty for a moment, to be at peace and alone. She pulled a chair to the window, fixed herself a footstool, put her coffee on the table beside her, and settled down with a book. From time to time she looked up from its pages to the long sloping fields of snow outside, and the faraway peaks. She was surprised, on one occasion of doing this, to see a figure toiling upward: George returning. She looked at her watch. He had not been gone more than three quarters of an hour.

  Mandy went to the door to meet him. He took his skis off and stacked them and scraped snow off his boots. “What’s it like?” she asked him.

  “Half the bloody mountain’s gone.”

  “At the corner?”

  “Yes.”

  “No way of getting across?”

  “Not without being a mountaineer, and you’d want to be well roped to go out on it.”

  “Then we are cut off.”

  “Not much doubt of that, my old love.”

  “For how long, do you think?”

  George shrugged. “A couple or three days’ work to clear it, at least. And they may not be able to start right away.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t be surprised to find they’ve got trouble of their own. This mountain’s given itself a fair shaking, one way and another. I mean, there’s two slips we know of—might be more, further down.”

  “So what do we do?”

  He grinned suddenly. “Got a cigarette?” She found him one. “What do we do? We sit tight and wait. Not much else we can do, is there? How are we off for grub?”

  “Not too bad.” She thought it over. “I can feed them for a week, anyway. Out of cans, that is.”

  “And the Scotch will last even longer. Pity it’s the Deepings who were to have gone tomorrow.”

  She had lit his cigarette, and now lit her own from it. “Why?”

  “Because Leonard, unless I miss my guess, will have it that the contract includes delivering him back at Nidenhaut. Failing which”—he went on, imitating Deeping’s north-country accent—“I reckon we’re being detained against our will, and in consequence of that I don’t reckon we owe you anything for further board, in fact I’m not sure we don’t have a claim for damages.”

  Mandy laughed. “I suppose he might say that. They will be able to open the road up within a week? You’re sure of that? We don’t have to start rationing food, or a
nything like that?”

  “No rationing,” he said. “They know down at Nidenhaut that we have supplies in for an emergency. If it were going to last long they would call in one of the helicopters to 32

  toss us a few boxes of provisions. These are the nineteen sixties, honey. We don’t have to start drawing lots for who eats whom.”

  “Then there isn’t anything to worry about?”

  “Well, you’ll have to worry about keeping them happy on tinned food.” He put an arm around her shoulders; an ordinary gesture of affection, but she was conscious of strength and reassurance flowing from him. “Put you on your mettle, old love, but you can do the trick if anyone can. Tell you what, let’s go and have a sustaining noggin before the horde comes ravening in for tea.”

  She protested. “At this time of day?”

  He smiled at her, and she thought how silly ,it was to pretend. He must know, at least, about the bottle she kept in the bedside cabinet, and the lowered levels in the bar itself had probably not escaped him. She pressed her head back against his chin.

  “I could do with a drink,” she admitted, “at that.”

  One of the disadvantages of children was the need for preparing a separate evening meal. This evening, Mandy made them macaroni cheese; they had had it before and liked it, and macaroni and cheese were among the items in best supply in her store room. At least with the Deeping children she did not have to supervise the meal as well as prepare it. Ruth Deeping sat with them. Mandy brought her a cup of tea, and she smiled gratefully.

  “Just what I needed. Thank you, Mandy.”

  Stephen, the faster eater of the two, had finished his macaroni cheese. He said, “Can I have some bread and jam?”

  “Please, darling,” his mother said.