The Devil in the Snow

by Sarah Armstrong

  Shona said, ‘That’s not quite the situation, is it?’

  ‘Depends what happens to her.’ Mariana’s face was stern but her tapping fingers betrayed her enjoyment of the discussion. Shona had often wondered why she was a solicitor and not a barrister.

  Time passed. Neither of them drank any more coffee. Mariana’s head twisted round towards the window. Shona became anxious that she was looking at Kallu, or Rob.

  ‘I heard that Jimmy is getting out soon.’ Shona took the mugs to the sink.

  Mariana looked confused. ‘Who?’

  ‘My uncle, Jimmy. The one in Highpoint.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Mariana’s eyes drifted away again. ‘That’s good.’

  Shona could feel Mariana wanted to ask a question but would rather snip off her tongue before she did. She’d never had a silence like this with her before. Mariana was so full of words. There was clearly something she needed to say and couldn’t.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Shona said.

  Mariana snapped her head back. ‘Of course. I should go.’ She checked her watch and gasped. ‘Shona, Jude!’

  ‘He’s having tea at a friend’s. But I do need to collect him soon.’

  Jude had eaten at Callum’s and was settled in front of the TV when Shona arrived for him.

  ‘Cup of tea?’ asked Thea.

  ‘Just a quick one. I haven’t fed Cerys yet. I’ll have to pick up some chips on the way home.’ Shona looked at the bowl of celery and carrot sticks Thea had left for the boys to snack on. ‘It won’t hurt her to wait this once.’ She couldn’t remember when she’d last done a proper shop, had the cupboards full of more than lentils and ancient dried apricots. ‘Do lentils get weevils, do you think?’

  ‘No idea,’ said Thea. ‘Any reason you’re asking?’

  ‘No.’ Shona smiled. Thea, unlike Mariana, didn’t seem to need a full awareness of the thread of her thoughts. She was happy just to dip in and out. ‘I have a confession.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  Thea sat down, her loose shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbow. Shona could see more of the tattoo than before, could make out a name.

  ‘When I said Jude was sick—’

  ‘I know, he told Callum all about the beach.’

  ‘Oh. OK.’

  ‘Sounded nice.’ Thea raised her eyebrows. ‘I wouldn’t have said anything.’

  ‘I know. Sorry. I don’t know why I didn’t just say.’

  Thea reached for the ceramic pot in the centre of the table and pulled out a small packet of tobacco and papers. Shona watched her stretch out the tobacco and heat a small amount of resin, before crumbling it on top. She nimbly rolled the joint up and Shona watched her lick the paper shut. She wasn’t sure what she felt about this. Thea tore a small oblong of cardboard from the ragged packet of papers and pushed the roach into place.

  ‘Fancy some?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. I would. It’s been a really long day.’

  They perched on the back doorstep, the door mostly closed, and Thea lit up. The sky was clear but the sun was long gone from this part of the garden and Thea rolled her sleeves back down.

  ‘That name on your arm, is it a boyfriend?’

  Thea nearly choked and blew the smoke out hard. ‘No,’ she croaked. ‘Here, you’d better take this.’

  She stood up until the coughing ended, her eyes streaming a little. Shona had a couple of puffs before handing it back.

  Thea pointed at the tattoo. ‘Jonathan was my name for a while.’

  ‘You were a man?’

  Thea shook her head but held the smoke in this time. ‘I read Jonathan Livingstone Seagull at an impressionable age. What can I say?’ She laughed. ‘I quite liked it, being Jonathan. I liked the way it confused people. But when I had Callum it suddenly seemed really complicated for no good reason. Did you find that?’

  ‘Yes, children make everything complicated.’ Shona shook her head at the joint, feeling her legs going warm. Another mark against her, if Maynard ever found out. She’d not expected this of Thea, but then she’d never have guessed she used to be called Jonathan. That was a bit complicated, she supposed. ‘At least you don’t have a boy who lives in your shed.’

  Thea, inhaling, got caught out again and coughed until she laughed.

  Shona’s mobile began to trill its annoying alarm.She got her phone out and felt confused, and then horrified.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ said Shona. ‘I’ve got Parents’ Evening.’

  Cerys was waiting for Shona.

  ‘You forgot.’

  ‘You could have called, reminded me.’ She pushed Jude in front of her and turned to go.

  ‘I’m coming too,’ said Cerys, closing the door behind her and pushing Jude back.

  ‘But it’s for parents.’

  ‘It’s about my GCSEs, Mum. I’m supposed to be there.’

  Shona tried to think quickly how she could get out of it.

  ‘Have you been crying?’ asked Cerys.

  ‘No, I think I have conjunctivitis. Maybe I should stay away from schools. It’s catching.’

  ‘I’m going.’

  ‘Fine. We’re all going. Fine.’

  Cerys had the list of times and teachers, not that it meant much. They spent most of the evening standing in corridors waiting for their long-expired time to come up. Cerys did most of the talking. Shona tried to look unwell but interested. Why did you need parents when your children were as organised as her daughter? Cerys knew exactly what she was going to do. She hadn’t even discussed it with Shona.

  It was time to get up again. Shona followed Cerys, holding Jude’s hand.

  ‘Last one,’ said Cerys. ‘He won’t be busy, he’s only maternity cover.’

  They walked into Mr Cartwright’s History room. Rob smiled up at them and stood to shake their hands.

  By the time she got home Shona could feel her eyes were still heavy. She put Jude to bed and made herself a sandwich for dinner. Cerys was sitting at the table with a bowl of ice cream. She hadn’t spoken while they were in the room with Rob, or after it. She was angry. Shona could see that.

  Cerys glanced at her hand and looked back at the bowl. They both watched the consistency change from whipped to single cream.

  ‘Can I change the time I am allowed to come in?’

  Shona raised her eyebrows. A classic argument opener. ‘No. Five o’clock on a school night.’

  ‘So it’s all right for me to spend time with pseudo messiahs in my own house, but I’m not allowed to spend time with actual friends outside the house?’

  ‘Not after five, no. I need to know where you are and I need to know that you’re safe. When you’re older, I know we’ll have to think about it, but not yet. I’m not ready yet. And I don’t think you are either.’

  Cerys looked at the door and then back to her mother. ‘Do you think that you spend so much time with weirdoes that you see them everywhere?’

  ‘I know that you like Kallu.’

  ‘I did before, but even you don’t trust him. You said I need to be supervised with him. You shouldn’t have people in your house who you don’t trust around your children.’

  That was Maynard talking.

  ‘So you’ve discussed this with your father too?’

  ‘Oh, am I not supposed to talk to him either? Why don’t you just get divorced?’

  ‘We will, one day.’

  ‘It’s hardly a convincing pretence of a marriage.’

  ‘I need to stay in this house. He doesn’t want to, but I’m not selling it. That’s all.’

  It was the guilt of action which drove him away and the guilt of inaction which kept her there. Divorce was inevitable and would be a blessed relief. Sometimes she fantasised that Maynard already had a second family for his weekdays in London, a pretty young wife and a curly-haired toddler. Maybe a boy to play football with. She hadn’t seen or heard any clues but she had never been to his flat in London and didn’t really want to look too hard. Keeping two children safe was clearly all she c
ould think about or manage.

  Cerys spooned the melted ice cream and let it drip back into the bowl. ‘Dad says it isn’t up to you. He says we’ll all be living somewhere else by Christmas.’

  ‘What does that mean? He can’t sell the house.’

  Cerys kept her eyes fixed on the spoon, the final drip that hung there. ‘He can. He paid for it and he can sell it.’

  ‘It doesn’t just belong to him. It’s mine too. You don’t want to move, do you? Cerys? I’ll fight him.’

  ‘You fight everyone.’ Cerys dropped the spoon and shivered. ‘I’m not going to keep to your rules any more. I’ll be in when I like and you can say what you like.’

  Shona’s throat tightened. ‘Stop it, Cerys.’

  ‘You suffocate me. You’re selfish and tarty, you drink too much and you only want to control what everyone does. You don’t love any of us and you never have and I can’t wait to leave.’ She smirked. ‘Where’s your boyfriend? Keeping your bed warm?’

  The only thing Shona could do was keep calm. She rested her arms on the table. ‘There’s nothing like that between me and Kallu.’ She wasn’t sure if that sounded convincing. She wasn’t sure what to think of him, most of the time.

  ‘You just picked up a teenage boy off the street and brought him home for no reason whatsoever? And this house is so fucked up that I didn’t say anything because, in the scheme of things, it didn’t seem that weird.’

  ‘Why are you swearing at me?’ Shona stopped pretending to finish her sandwich and folded her arms.

  ‘It’s only now, talking it through with my friends, that I realise you kept him away from me because you wanted him to yourself. Because you’re a pervert.’

  ‘He’s a kid. Nothing has happened and it wouldn’t.’ Shona rubbed her eyes. She should have made coffee. Doing it now would look like an evasion. She rested her eyes behind her hand.

  ‘What about my teacher?’

  Shona looked up. ‘What do you mean?’

  Cerys shook her head. ‘You want me to spell it out? The blushing, the flirting, the way his foot slid under the table towards your—’

  ‘Stop!’

  Cerys looked close to tears. ‘In my school! Where I have to go! Didn’t you hear them laughing in the corridor?’

  So that’s what this was about. Cerys had guessed. Rob had basically told her by the way he behaved and Shona hated him for that. ‘Can we talk about that?’

  ‘God, no!’ Cerys rolled her eyes. ‘Let’s keep some kind of barriers in place. I really don’t want to know the specifics.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ve known Rob, Mr Cartwright, for a while. He was just being stupid.’

  ‘You think that explains it?’

  ‘Are you going to tell Dad? I’d just like to know.’ What she wanted to say was, don’t tell Daddy, darling, daughters always hold their mother’s secrets. But she hadn’t quite turned out to be that kind of mother, and Cerys wasn’t that kind of daughter.

  ‘Everyone else knows. Why shouldn’t he?’ Cerys pointed at Shona. ‘Your boyfriend flirts with all the girls at school, he’s all over them. Everyone knows to keep away from him. Only the desperate look twice.’

  Shona hadn’t ever wondered what Rob was like as a teacher but had to accept that this would fit with her own picture of him. Maybe it would be better if Cerys did tell her dad, maybe they could all go their separate ways, but she knew that Cerys would choose Daddy and the house would be sold. And that would be the end of that.

  ‘So, don’t tell Dad that you’re a prostitute,’ Cerys summarised. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘A prostitute? I’m not sleeping with anyone for money. And it’s none of Maynard’s business. I never ask you what he gets up to in London, do I?’

  Cerys curled her lip.

  ‘Right,’ said Shona. ‘It’s not good, but this is how it is. It’s about time you just accepted the situation. Your father and I have a terrible relationship, you know that. We see other people but this was a bad choice and I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry that I was seeing someone who worked in your school, but I met him before he got a job there. I do think you’re exaggerating, and no-one noticed. If you don’t say anything at school, it will blow over.’

  Cerys crossed her arms.

  ‘Next, I know you like Kallu.’

  Cerys blushed and held her arms more tightly.

  ‘I’m not trying to keep you apart to keep him for myself but because I don’t think he’s in a good place at the moment. What he’s working through is a really difficult—’ she struggled for a word to sum it all up and failed ‘—thing. A spiritual thing.’

  ‘You’re an atheist. You don’t even believe in spirits.’

  ‘But he does.’

  ‘So why’s he working in the Natural History Museum? Shouldn’t he be on a retreat or something? A monastery?’

  ‘It’s not like that, it’s complicated.’

  ‘Why?’

  Shona shifted in her chair. ‘He needs a sign.’

  ‘And you believe him?’

  ‘I don’t need to. That’s not what he needs from me.’

  Cerys stirred her melted ice cream round the bowl.

  Shona placed her hand on the table. ‘But I need you to believe me.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’ Cerys stood up. ‘But none of it will matter because I’m not staying here any longer than I have to.’

  Cerys left the room. Shona lowered her head to the table and closed her eyes. She’d run out of words. She had never managed to be the mother she thought she could be. All her life she’d been convinced that she would make up for her miserable parents by bettering them at everything, paying attention to what her children said and did and wanted to be. In the end, she had accumulated a few random people around her, most of whom didn’t like her one little bit, and she could live with that as long as she had the house.

  ‘Go then,’ she said.

  Greta

  It was only girls who had to worry about the devil. My brother, born two years after me, never believed any of the stories about the devil chasing us down across the counties. James would pull rough woollen blankets over his head and chase me around the room, making horse clopping noises and would make me laugh about it behind their backs. In bed I would rehear those hooves and pull my own blankets up. I never wondered if I believed. No-one ever asked me.

  To their faces my brother was a dedicated advocate, devout to the point of ridicule. When he was twelve, he painted an icon for our grandmother’s birthday, copied from the cover of one of her many religious books, and she adored him even more for it. She never asked him where he got the paint, the gold and blues, or the brushes with their fine spikes of hog’s hair. She showed it off to the priest who was more interested than adoring of him. James began to be invited round for long nights of wine and books. The priest loaned him icons from the church or from the local cathedrals and offered him money to paint more. For the church, he said. We never saw them in our church. My brother bought a lot of clothes that year. No-one asked him where that money came from either, but I’d say it was straight from the collection plate. The flowers in the church were sparse in those years, even at my grandmother’s funeral, and the candles were thin.

  When my brother left school, only fourteen, he had enough money to travel to cathedrals and shrines all over the country, Canterbury, Durham and Walsingham, and came back with his sketch books full of humble mothers and serious babies framed by arching haloes and punctured with visible hearts. He became an expert on the lost icons of the Reformation, when Suffolk used to be the Virgin Mary’s own country.

  I’d been working for three years and James was fifteen, more than old enough to earn his keep. He was just back from Canterbury with a bag of apples for my mother and paper money for himself that he kept in an engraved copper tin with a large opal in the middle. He was eating a slice of the cake Mother had cooked for his return. I asked him when he was going to start working.

  He brushed crumbs fro
m his trousers and laughed at me. ‘Only fools work, Greta, you know that.’

  I hid my calloused hands under my apron. ‘I do not.’

  ‘Would you, given a choice? There’s people who never work because they get given money, just sit there until they get it from other people who were given money. There are more worlds than this one, and I like them.’

  ‘I don’t know why you keep coming back, in that case. You never give Mother a penny and they could use your bedroom for their own instead of keeping it for you.’

  He yawned and looked at me sideways. ‘When she asks me to leave, I will.’

  I rarely talked to him. I rarely saw him to talk to.

  I had the box room, a small afterthought of a bedroom to play my records in, and my parents made up their bed in the front room every night and put it away every morning. My brother’s bedroom, the largest room upstairs, became a studio to rival any artist. Deep dyed silks were nailed to the walls so he could absorb their colour and texture while he slept, slabs of wood held the traces of unique rainbows. I caught my mother, more than once, in his room with an exotic silk swathed around her shoulders, contrasting against the worn brown of her woollen skirt. She jumped when she saw me looking and threw the scarf away from her. It buckled in the air before it reached the bed but she left it on the floor, pushing past me to leave the room.

  My brother started to use words like tincture and perspective, and it wasn’t from the many books of illustrations that started to litter his floor that he got them, as his reading never improved. It was from people he crept out at night time to meet, taking my bicycle quietly from the shed and rattling away from the house. One night he never brought it back and I cried when I realised. A week later I had a brand-new bike resting by the back door.

  No-one asked the question. Least asked, soonest mended was the thought on everyone’s mind. The paintings started as smoothed planks, were decorated and dried and then were gone. My brother started to wear cravats and to come home less and less frequently until he wouldn’t even spend one night at home in three months. At seventeen he had moved to London and my mother pined for him in a way which made me wish I had never spoken about him leaving her.