Her words made the back of my neck turn cold, and though I moved closer to the fire, it gave no heat.
‘I know it’s just superstition,’ she said. ‘But this is the place where everything was good.’
‘We won’t have to leave,’ I said, suddenly determined. ‘I’ll think of something. Mother, maybe if you let me give up school—’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, you are not giving up school. That is absolutely final.’
We sat in silence, listening to the fire murmuring. ‘Wake me at seven tomorrow,’ she said eventually, and got to her feet. ‘I think I will be well enough to go back to work by then.’
She went to bed soon after, and after a while she fell asleep, but I could not. Father Dunstan had said her illness was no more than a winter chill, but it seemed like a bad sign. The baby was due in six weeks’ time, and all of us were worried. In six weeks’ time, it might be born into occupied territory. It might be born into a country at war. And how could we stay in the shop for long if things were really as bad as she said? Dr Keller was not a lenient man.
I paced through the empty house. Jasmine was in my mother’s room now; she slept with her head against my mother’s shoulder and her thumb in her mouth. I went down to the back room and polished up some old jewellery and laid it out in the window. By the time I had finished, it was past four o’clock. I sat down at the counter and rested my head on my arms. I thought I would just rest for a while. I thought perhaps if I rested, I might think what to do.
I woke up shouting, as I had only when I was a small boy. ‘Papa!’ I was calling. I half expected Leo to come running into the room.
‘Shh, be quiet!’ said someone, putting a small hand over my mouth. It was Jasmine, in her nightgown and my mother’s boots.
I came back. I had fallen asleep with my head on the shop counter. The lamp was still burning. ‘What time is it?’ I said.
‘Six o’clock,’ said Jasmine. ‘What were you shouting about?’
‘Nothing. It was a dream.’ I sat up. ‘Why are you awake?’ I said. ‘It’s early; you should still be in bed, Jas.’
‘I couldn’t sleep, so I came down here.’
She went to the window of the back room. ‘Anselm, the snow has settled at last,’ she told me solemnly. ‘Come out in the yard and make a snow statue with me.’
‘It’s below freezing out there.’
‘Please. Papa would have.’
I could not argue with that. We went upstairs and dressed in the dark. The light outside was cheerless, but Jasmine would not be dissuaded. I took a lamp out with us to guard against the dismal grey morning, and we began. Jasmine worked intently, her forehead fixed into a permanent frown. When she glanced up, the lines remained there. ‘Anselm, how shall we make his head?’ she asked.
‘Here, roll the snow up.’ I pulled the sleeves of Leo’s jacket down over my hands and began rolling a ball. Jasmine watched, her thumb in her mouth.
‘Bigger than that,’ she commanded. But we were acting out the scene, and it was no good. I stuck the head of the statue onto the body and stepped back.
‘What do you think?’
‘It’s all right.’ Jasmine carved the eyes and mouth carefully with one finger, then lost interest. ‘Anselm,’ she said. ‘You know that box Uncle gave me?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I think it’s not from here. I think it’s from somewhere else.’
‘Where could it be from? One of his journeys, do you mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘But not here.’
My grandmother was downstairs now, banging the poker on the bottom of the stove. The clocks chimed seven. ‘I had better go and wake Mama,’ I said. Jasmine followed me up the stairs, but she did not say anything more about the box; she just disappeared into her room to get ready for school.
I stood still at the door of my mother’s room for a long while before I woke her. She was sleeping on her side, her arms wrapped around the space where Leo would have been. My mother was so beautiful that even if you had known her all your life, you sometimes stopped and noticed it. She turned her head and murmured something into the pillow. I did not want to wake her. I suddenly felt that I would rather die than go over there and wake her and see her face when she came back from wherever she was. But it was already past seven, and I had promised. While I stood there, she stirred and looked up at me.
Her eyes moved through several degrees of confusion as she sat up. ‘Anselm,’ she said then.
‘How do you feel?’
‘Better. Better than yesterday.’
‘Shall I bring you a cup of tea?’ I said, and went down to fetch it. When I came upstairs, she was lying back on the pillows again.
‘I didn’t know where I was when I woke up,’ she said with her eyes closed. ‘I was dreaming of other times.’
‘I could tell,’ I said.
‘Thank you for waking me.’
I watched her drink the tea in silence. ‘You had better get ready for school,’ she said then.
She left for work at the same time as we set out. Jasmine dragged on her hand all the way to school, crying that she did not want to go. I was late, and the only desk free was at the back of the class, already occupied by John Keller. I sat down beside him in silence. Sister Theresa was lecturing the class on the history of the monarchy.
‘You haven’t paid your rent,’ John Keller wrote on a scrap of paper and glanced at me.
My heart gave a quick jump. I hesitated, then wrote,‘We have.’
‘You haven’t,’ whispered John Keller, crumpling the paper. ‘Your father pissed off without paying. Times are hard; tell your mother so.’
‘I won’t tell her anything,’ I said.
Perhaps I said it too rashly, because John Keller narrowed his eyes and said, ‘Your family are all the same.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘The poor scum we have to deal with to make an honest living—’
I pushed back my chair. John was already doing the same.
‘Sit down,’ said Sister Theresa.
‘You don’t know a damn thing about my family!’ I said, ignoring her.
‘Your father is Leonard North,’ said John, raising his voice. ‘And the Imperial Order are after him, and when the Alcyrians come, they will be after him too. Your family think they are better than everyone just because of some story about once being famous. But people like you are going to have to learn. So you should watch out, Anselm Andros, and not take money that you can’t pay back.’
‘And you should shut the hell up,’ I said. ‘You’re a spoiled rich boy who knows nothing about the world.’
‘Anselm!’ shouted Sister Theresa. ‘Sit down at once!’
John Keller was laughing at my outrage, and it made me angrier. ‘I’ve seen your father,’ I went on, abandoning all caution. ‘And everyone says he cheats his tenants. He’s the meanest old bastard that ever lived.’
‘At least he’s my real father,’ said John Keller very quietly.
I started forward, but someone held me back. Someone else called, ‘Fight!’ and ducked below his desk again. John Keller swung a clumsy punch at me, but I had hold of his shirt and his face grew startled. For all his bravado, he was not used to fighting. I was struggling, but someone had tight hold of my arms. I wrestled free of his grip and knocked John Keller over. Then he hit me, hard, and blood was in my mouth.
‘Silence!’ shouted Sister Theresa.
The fight was over before I realized what had happened. ‘Anselm, John,’ said Sister Theresa. ‘Into my office, now.’
We were still struggling as she marched ahead of us towards her office door, but I was only struggling now because I had to; all the will to fight had gone out of me. Sister Theresa divided us and made us stand facing the wall. ‘I have never seen such bad behaviour,’ she said. ‘You, John, need to think seriously about whether you have a future at this school. Anselm, I am quite frankly shocked and appa
lled by the violence you have just displayed. You will both stand there for the rest of the day. If I hear either of you talk, you will be expelled.’
It was very quiet in Sister Theresa’s office. Outside the window, snow was falling. Blood ran steadily into my mouth; John Keller had broken one of my teeth. The fight stood unfinished between us. But we could only wait there, while the rest of the class went on in an unnatural silence next door. Sister Theresa came to the door of the office at lunchtime. ‘Anselm, go and get some paper to put on that tooth,’ she told me with no trace of sympathy. ‘And clean that blood off my office floor.’
‘Can I go out to lunch?’ said John Keller. ‘My father will be expecting me.’
‘No,’ said Sister Theresa. ‘And you should both know that I will be writing to your families in very serious terms about this incident. I will also be including it in any future references I write.’
The snow thudded lightly against the glass, and the wind howled. Sister Theresa went away again. A group of younger boys were running about the yard in coats and scarves, kicking an empty bottle against the fence. ‘Bastard,’ muttered John Keller. ‘Bastard. How will I get a place at medical college now?’
‘John Keller, I hope you were not talking!’ shouted Sister Theresa, appearing abruptly at the door. ‘Anselm, I told you to get some paper and clean the blood off the floor.’
I did it, then stood there and stared at the woodworm in the floorboards under my feet. I could not help thinking of Leo. He had been gone only a few days, and already I was in bad trouble. I could not have faced his disappointment at this. I knew how he would have reacted. He would have refused to believe I was guilty. Even when my mother was disappointed in me, he would have gone on defending everything I did.
My whole head was aching, and my tooth throbbed with a steady rhythm. We stood there miserably, my mouth still bleeding and John Keller sniffing as though he was about to cry over his medical career. The afternoon drew on and dusk began to fall. Eventually Sister Theresa began the national anthem, and the others filed out. ‘You may both go,’ she said. ‘I will escort you to the gate.’
We walked in silence, on either side of Sister Theresa, along the empty corridors and out into the snow. A gang of John Keller’s friends was waiting for him. As Sister Theresa walked back to the school, he tried to lunge towards me, but they held him back. I turned and started towards Sacred Heart.
When she saw me, Jasmine stopped in the middle of, ‘You’re late, Anselm,’ and started to cry.
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘It’s all right.’
‘What happened to your tooth?’ she said.
‘John Keller broke it.’
‘Anselm, it looks bad. And there’s blood all over your face.’
‘I’m all right. Hey, Jas, don’t start crying. Please. Don’t worry about me.’
‘I am worried, though,’ she said. ‘Anselm, I am.’
My tooth was still throbbing, and a heavy tiredness came over me suddenly. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s just get home.’
Our feet on the close-packed snow were the only sounds as we walked. We crossed the new square, past the half-empty market and the statue of the king. He had a coat of snow now and snow lying on his head and encrusted on his eyelids. The lights of the city were brightening. Among them were lines of Advent lanterns, arranged early along a few of the windowsills.
‘Oh, Anselm!’ Jasmine burst out eventually. ‘What are you going to say to Mama?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Jasmine, you can’t tell her I was fighting.’
‘She’ll notice.’
‘I’ll wash it off before she gets home.’
‘Shall I help you? Or shall I go and meet her and make sure she stays away until your face looks better?’
She was looking up at me with such concern that it startled me. A few snowflakes drifted down out of the grey air and lodged on her overcoat. I brushed them away. ‘Thanks, Jas,’ I said. ‘But I’ll be all right.’
The shop was in darkness, and the fires had gone out. I began to relight the stove in the back room, but Jasmine said, ‘I’ll do it,’ and sent me out to wash my face instead. There was blood streaked across my cheek and caked in the edge of my hair; I looked like a desperate criminal. The water was so cold it felt like there was ice in it. But I washed my face anyway – there was no time to light the gas burner and wait for the hot tap to grow lukewarm. When I straightened up, I shivered. My face looked altered. It was just one missing tooth, but it changed everything about me, the way each ruined building altered the whole face of the city. I looked like an untrustworthy stranger. After I went back inside, a fit of repentance came over me, and I helped Jasmine with her newspaper cuttings, and corrected her homework for her, and listened to her reading her part from The Beggar King. But I kept thinking about John Keller’s father now; I could not help it. ‘Jas,’ I said. ‘It was a bad idea to start a fight with our landlord’s son. It will mean nothing good.’
Jasmine, with more wisdom than I had expected, made no answer. The clocks in the city were striking five. ‘I didn’t realize it was so late,’ I said. ‘I thought they might send Mother home early, since she was ill.’
‘Yes,’ said Jasmine. ‘I want Mama to come back.’
‘Go on with your reading,’ I said, and tried to convince myself that John Keller’s father would see the situation in a favourable light.
By six o’clock, we were growing anxious. The city was dark, and the explosives on the border were clearer tonight than they had ever been. Mist rose and drifted over the snow. When I looked out into the night, I could see figures in it, just out of sight, where no people stood at all. We sat at the upstairs window and watched the empty street. Mr Pascal was walking about, putting up posters with the king’s face and some propaganda message and singing a song about how he married the most beautiful girl in Angel City. This was as far as his war work extended, and the relief had made him more talkative than ever over the past few days. But he did not come near our shop today. I almost wanted him to, to drive out the silence.
As we sat there waiting for something to happen, a carriage drew up with all its lights blazing.
‘Who’s that?’ said Jasmine, jumping up and pressing her face to the window.
‘It looks like a gentleman and two fine ladies,’ I said.
‘It is.’
‘So what are they doing outside our shop?’
‘Let’s go down,’ said Jasmine.
‘We can see better from here.’
The people were getting down from the carriage, one of the ladies supporting the other, who looked weak and pale. ‘Put the lamp out,’ said Jasmine. I did it. And it wasn’t a gentleman and two fine ladies at all. It was a gentleman, a lady, and my mother. The woman supporting her was the merchant banker’s wife. The man was Dr Keller.
Surprise kept us fixed in our places until they knocked at the door. Then Jasmine ran down to open it, and I followed. The shop was open, and they were already inside.
‘Hello,’ said the lady. ‘Mrs Andros’s children?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Your mother is not well; I brought her home in our carriage.’
Jasmine ran to my mother and put her arms around her, saying, ‘Mama, what’s wrong?’
‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘Really, it was very kind, but there is no need—’
‘I took the liberty of asking Doctor Keller in,’ said the banker’s wife. ‘He is a neighbour and our own doctor, and I knew he was acquainted with your family. I wanted some one to see to her after she fainted.’
‘You fainted?’ I said, turning to her.
‘Really,’ said my mother. ‘It is nothing serious.’
‘I’ll help you upstairs.’
She leaned on my shoulder, protesting all the way that she was fine. ‘You had better go down and talk to them, Anselm,’ she whispered when I had helped her onto the sofa and Jasmine had run for a blanket to cover her. I hurried back down the stair
s. They were lingering in the middle of the room, not touching anything, as though they had never been in a shop before and were afraid the goods might be infected.
‘Thank you for bringing her back,’ I said, avoiding Dr Keller’s eyes. I was not sure why he had accompanied my mother home, but I took it as a bad sign.
‘It is no trouble,’ said the banker’s wife. ‘I was anxious about her, I must say.’
‘She will be right again in a day or two,’ said Dr Keller. ‘Rest and good food, and a tonic if you can get it.’
They were already starting towards the door. ‘Thank you,’ I said, and my stomach wrenched with guilt suddenly for the kindness with which Dr Keller was treating us. ‘Do I – do we owe you—’
He raised his hand. ‘No charge.’Then he was helping the banker’s wife into the carriage. He reached out as if to grip my hand in farewell. But when I made to take it, he handed me an envelope, so quickly that no one else could have seen. He put on his hat and got into the carriage, and they swept away down the street.
I stood for several seconds in silence. Then I went back into the shop, bolted the door, and opened the envelope.
Inside was a page, handwritten, with FINAL DEMAND stamped across the top. I raised it to the lamplight. It was a short note to the effect that our rent had been raised without notice, and as a result, we must ‘either find the requisite monies or vacate the premises’. The new rent was five times what it had been. The requisite monies totalled three thousand crowns.
I threw the letter into the stove. It was not only that he was turning us out of the shop. It was the way he was doing it. The way he covered his tracks so that he would look like an honest man. And what cut to my heart most bitterly was that the whole thing was my fault.
When I went upstairs, my mother was lying very still, her hand resting on her stomach. The fire had gone out; a drift of snow down the chimney had drowned it altogether. ‘Are you all right?’ I said.
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
‘You don’t look it. Mother, what’s wrong?’
Jasmine was trying to light the fire. I took the matches from her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Let me do it.’The draughts were so strong in the room that I had no choice. Jasmine took the match and frowned at it, and the flame straightened and caught the wet coals.
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