The Devil in the Snow

by Sarah Armstrong

  My mother cried when she saw his room was empty, and then moved her clothes from the front room to the bedroom. She caught me on the landing, watching her.

  ‘Time to go to church,’ she said.

  Like her mother, mine spent as much time as she could in the church, on the cleaning rota, the flower rota and any other rota she could find. Churches were the only place I ever saw either of them not looking over their shoulders or jumping at the slightest noise. They stretched it out as long as they could. My mother would kneel and bend until her knees seized and she could barely walk. She often begged me to become a nun and put an end to the waiting. If I sacrificed myself, then the curse would be broken, this mother to daughter string of misery, expecting the devil at any moment. So she thought. And she spent so long waiting for the devil to find her that I couldn’t believe it was going to happen. What did he intend to do with us when he got here?

  With my brother gone my mother gave in, or gave up, and allowed me to marry, but not before telling me that she wished she’d left me at a convent in a basket. Even when it turned out that I should have listened and never, ever married I couldn’t forgive her. Many years later my mother died waiting out in the cold, wrapped in her shawl, waiting for the devil to find her. I didn’t discover her until the morning. James didn’t come home for the funeral.

  4

  After a few weeks at school Jude was getting up just a little later and taking just a little longer to dress himself. Shona stood at the gate, shouting at him to hurry. That’s how she noticed that Cerys hadn’t gone the usual way, down the road to the right and then left, but straight down the road which ran up to their front door. When they moved in, people had talked a lot about feng shui and how bad it was to have a road coming straight at your door like that. They recommended that Shona buy some kind of octagonal mirror to ward off the bad energy. Shona had heard enough of that kind of thing as a child, and wasn’t afraid to tell them so.

  Now, as she watched Cerys walking along Audley Road, she wondered.

  Mariana was waiting for Shona when she got back from dropping Jude off. They walked round to the back door.

  ‘Were you late this morning?’ she asked Shona.

  ‘No. Of course not.’ Five minutes didn’t count. She decided to change the subject. ‘I think it’s odd you still have Tuesdays off.’

  ‘I am a creature of habit. Volunteering on Monday, my day on Tuesday, money slave for the rest of the week.’

  Shona hesitated with her key in the lock. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

  Mariana placed the ground coffee on the table with a flourish. The coffee was always made in a cafetière when Mariana used to call. Shona had found it in the back of the cupboard. Now she realised that she’d forgotten to clean it before putting it away.

  It was so dusty it had turned sticky. She scrubbed at it while the kettle boiled but it didn’t quite come clear, a misty glaze sticking fast to the surface. Shona’s mobile rang.

  ‘Can you finish up here? I have to take this.’ She went into the back room and pulled the door closed behind her, feeling awkward about abandoning Mariana, but was not like she’d invited her. If Mariana wanted to pretend nothing had changed, then she’d had to accept Shona as she was and always had been. Rob wanted to talk business and Shona wanted to talk money.

  ‘Tell me about the Tower one.’ Shona turned away from Mariana, who had brought the coffee through to the back room and was making no secret of her interest in the conversation.

  ‘Oh, that’s a good one,’ said Rob. ‘Forty pages, ten thousand words. A twenty-day job.’

  Shona lifted some papers and eventually a blue biro rolled out. ‘What standard?’

  ‘First class. It’s nearly two grand, but you could get more than that doing three little next day ones.’

  She scribbled the details on the back of an old envelope. ‘No, I’ll do that. Email it to me.’

  ‘Do you know anything about the Tower of London?’

  ‘No. And neither does the person who’s going to get an MA. The difference is, by the time I’ve finished, I will. See you later.’

  ‘Today?’

  ‘Maybe, I’ll have to see how things pan out.’ She flipped her phone down. They never said goodbye. That was a total giveaway to Mariana she realised, all niceties abandoned.

  ‘Is Maynard around this week?’ asked Mariana. She sat with her back to the window at the side of the table and had piled up the books and papers to give herself space for her coffee. Behind her Shona could see that rain had speckled the window and obscured the detail of the garden. Shona switched all the lights on, giving the feel of the evening.

  ‘No. He’s working. I haven’t heard when he’ll be around.’

  Shona folded the envelope over, put it on the mantelpiece and rearranged the photos in front of her. One showed a small, round roadside chapel in France and one of Jude and Kallu in the garden, both flexing their biceps and smiling.

  Mariana put her head down and pushed the plunger of the coffee so it sat on the surface of the liquid. ‘These trade fairs seem to be very frequent.’

  ‘If he’s even at them. He usually only comes back at the weekend now, if ever. Cerys barely sees him so, of course, she adores him.’ Shona grimaced and sat down.

  Mariana lifted her head. Shona conscientiously squinted out of the window to avoid Mariana’s look. It didn’t work, she could feel her gaze.

  ‘I don’t need a lecture,’ said Shona. ‘He’s been talking to Cerys about selling the house again. Apparently. I didn’t hear it from him. I think he means it this time, but he won’t say it to me, so I don’t know. You know how things are. I don’t know anything about anything.’

  ‘You’re right.’ Mariana eyed up the coffee. ‘Why am I here?’

  ‘Love and devotion.’

  ‘Coffee and not enough biscuits. Now you know that, at least. So, where is Maynard this week?’

  ‘The last I heard was that he’s just done some massively secret deal on a new Vermeer in Cologne, Cairo, wherever. Somewhere beginning with C. His mother phoned to tell me.’

  ‘He didn’t tell you?’

  Shona stood up. ‘I’ll have a look for biscuits.’

  ‘A really good look. Keep looking until you find some.’

  Shona bent in a slight bow. ‘I always liked our Tuesdays, Mariana.’

  Mariana tried not to smile. ‘They’re OK.’

  Shona found three soft ginger nuts and half a packet of Jaffa cakes in the cupboard. She arranged the Jaffa cakes on a plate for Mariana and carried them to the table.

  They sat in silence for a while. The rain had stopped but the windows were still dotted with the memory. Mariana didn’t say anything. Shona tried not to hold her breath, wondering what the question was finally going to be.

  Finally, Mariana spoke. ‘Has Jude asked who his father is yet?’

  Shona held her hands steady. ‘What’s got into you recently? Who’ve you been arguing with?’

  Mariana plunged and poured. ‘I’m perfectly fine, just making conversation. I’m sure you’ll make the right decision about everything. I’m going to go and do some shopping soon. I just wanted to call on you, in case you needed me.’ She drank her coffee.

  ‘I have missed you.’

  Mariana looked confused. ‘I don’t know how you missed me as I was still there. All the time.’

  ‘Things have been difficult. I wanted to make the most of Jude, while I could.’

  ‘By keeping him to yourself? Children have to be shared around, Shona.’

  ‘Jude is fine, happy. He’s very happy.’

  ‘And work? Writing about the Tower of London? That doesn’t sound as if you’ve moved forward. You need to come back to me. I’ll look after you. Jude’s at school and you have untapped talents.’ She smiled in the old way and drank her coffee.

  Shona indicated the empty cafetière. ‘Shall I make some more?’

  ‘No, you have the pleas
ure of torture to write about. And lots of thinking to do. I’ll see you soon. Phone me, maybe.’

  ‘Thanks, Mariana. For coming.’

  ‘As always. Adeus.’

  Sometimes Shona wished that Mariana would just give her an opinion or advice. She spent so much time in the silence of disagreement or the silence of allowance, but Shona knew that Mariana would have an opinion on the outcome. She made Shona make her decision and then told her what she thought of it. The silence ended and the words spilled out; if she was angry, they were mostly Portuguese which cushioned Shona a little.

  Shona heard the door slam and she relaxed. Drinking the last of her coffee, she turned off the ceiling light and put on the corner lamp instead. The tapping on the window reminded her that the gutter needed fixing. It was probably urgent. It should probably have been done when she first noticed in the spring. Sometimes she missed being able to delegate stupid little tasks like that to Maynard.

  She thought about writing an essay plan but instead her eyes drifted to the photo of the roadside shrine she’d taken in France. Mariana had been asking for a copy of that photo. She’d do that first.

  Mariana had been volunteering at the Citizens Advice Bureau for years when Shona started there, after Cerys was born. Mariana was doing it as penance for all the money she earned three days a week as a solicitor. Shona was there because she had been very publicly sacked. They met over biscuits when Shona found herself being scrutinised by a glamorous woman with dark eyes and darker lustrous hair.

  ‘You’re the Opium Wars fighter?’ Mariana frowned.

  ‘Not really.’ Shona cringed. She had hoped it had faded in people’s memories. ‘Now I’m just a troublemaker.’

  Mariana nodded. ‘Well, we all need to be that, once in a while. But you went further than most trying to get drug smugglers acquitted.’

  ‘Their defence had merit.’

  ‘Their defence was the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century.’

  ‘I wasn’t even on the jury. I wasn’t expecting it to be published until after the verdict.’

  ‘But you persuaded the defence team to push for an appeal and many others that the argument of the smugglers was sound. That shows some skill in persuasion, if not in judgement.’

  They looked at each other and Shona waited for what she would say about the Mission, crumbled, folded and all funding removed. Mariana nodded.

  ‘I’ll be keeping an eye on you.’

  In a way it was the threat that it sounded, but Shona enjoyed challenging people and within a year Meghan had been born and died and nothing was the same anyway. Shona clung to Mariana’s brutal kindnesses in a way that surprised her and she enjoyed the way Mariana discomfited Maynard. She left the prayer cards and candles Mariana brought on the mantelpiece and in the centre of the table during meals so that Maynard had to look at them and be reminded and reminded and reminded. Mariana liked it and Maynard hated it and Shona didn’t care because she couldn’t forget for the length of a breath in any case. She’d left the Citizens Advice but Mariana didn’t let her go. She came in, wanted or not, invited or not, and talked about the day Shona would return every Tuesday. She only drew the line at Mariana’s attempts to take her to church. Mariana came to her, as no-one else did, and that was enough.

  Mariana slowly persuaded her to let Cerys go back to nursery and to visit, ‘just half an hour’, at the Citizens Advice, until Cerys was doing a whole day and so was Shona. No matter how brittle and argumentative Mariana could be, Shona remembered how she coaxed her back into the world.

  Shona spent a few minutes reading through the library books in her office, a few pages at a time, but put them back in the pile next to her computer. Apollo, Apollo, Apollo. ‘Interventions of the gods in Greek tragedies.’ She had to finish this by next week if she was going to have enough time for the Tower.

  The office was accessed through the bedroom she shared with Jude. Their sharing was getting silly now. It was OK while he was little but he would only grow. They might have to get bunk beds. What other options did she have? Maybe she could install some fire escape so he could let himself in and out, but it was still a tiny room. She couldn’t even consider displacing Cerys from her light, airy room at the front. That left going up into the loft. The mess and disruption made her shudder. The house was paid off but she’d never get a mortgage to make improvements.

  She moved to the chair by the window and pushed up the bottom sash. The air was warm now and she leaned over the windowsill. The garden next door was empty apart from a couple of sparrows in the miniature apple tree.

  She liked the back of houses, their hidden nature. Even in tightly packed Victorian streets you didn’t expect to be looked at. A little four-foot fence did its symbolic job and directed the eyes upwards.

  A quick movement in the window of a house opposite caught her eye; a young girl with long, brown hair stood holding both curtains open. Shona couldn’t make out her features but she could see she was naked. The curtains closed.

  There was a sense of familiarity, of something troubling. Gradually she realised that it looked like Cerys. This house had black guttering and an empty trellis against the back wall. The kitchen and third bedroom were on the left, the gate on the right.

  Cerys walking a different way to school may have meant she wasn’t actually going to school. Had they phoned? There were no messages on her mobile, but something didn’t feel right about this. Cerys hadn’t spoken to her since Parents’ Evening. They’d fallen out before but this felt serious, like she was planning some kind of punishment for Shona.

  She ran down the stairs, pulled her keys from her jacket pocket, and left the house. She ran round to Rob’s house and banged on the door. There was no answer and she couldn’t hear anything at the letterbox. She banged again and then walked around the side of his house. She couldn’t open the gate, so pulled herself up using the small wall that marked the boundary with the next house. She could clearly see black guttering, but the far kitchen wall couldn’t be seen. It was on the correct side and she could see into the kitchen when she jumped, but she’d only ever gone straight up to Rob’s room so didn’t recognise it.

  She went back to the front door and banged again. She tried phoning his mobile but it went to answerphone. She tried her daughter too, but Cerys never answered her phone and she was at school, or supposed to be. She sat on the wall in front of his house and tried to think rationally. It probably wasn’t Cerys; she had only an image of long hair to make her think so. It also probably wasn’t Rob’s bedroom, not that she had any misguided sense of loyalty, on his side or her own. She had no claim over Rob and no right to behave in this possessive odd way. Unless it was Cerys.

  He knew she was married. She knew he had no desire for permanency in any area of his life. Neither of them had discussed their backgrounds, other than academic, or politics or beliefs. She liked having a space where she didn’t have to be political and she doubted it even crossed his mind. In her real life, she was angry most of the time at every injustice and imbalance and unfairness. And she didn’t need to write essays for the money. She took that because it was there. She liked his nihilistic arrogance and hated him for it. That’s what made him attractive.

  She returned to the door again and knocked more quietly, as if a different caller. There was still no response. She went back to her house wondering, should she wait on this corner, or this corner? She convinced herself that it was her own guilty conscience. There couldn’t be a problem. The school would have phoned. Someone would have told her that her daughter wasn’t where she should be. She decided to go home and wait for the panic to subside.

  She went back in her front door and sat on the bottom of the stairs. A normal person might sit in the front room to see what was happening outside in the street, and she cursed the fact that she couldn’t use her front room like a normal person, the door being locked to her and Jude.

  She had had the occasional glimpse inside Maynard’s room. There were paintings
on the walls, ridiculously expensive, she assumed, none of which she liked, and imported hardwood cabinets with a minimalist display of glass and ceramics. She didn’t like those either. His paperwork was kept in the antique bureau, all of the drawers painted with a delicate one-hair brush, so he’d said. As he made more and more money he asked her if they could move to a better house, a more appropriate house, but she refused. Instead he filled this medium-sized Victorian terrace with furniture for the house he wanted.

  She needed this room, or another in the loft. She went back upstairs and lay down on the bed, trying to decide on how she could phrase it so that Maynard would see it as an investment for his house, rather than creating living space for her bastard cuckoo child.

  The alarm on the phone woke her, reminding her to collect Jude. It was so warm. They could have gone to Mersea almost any day this month after the morning chill had lifted. As she cut across the grass on the way to school, daddy long legs lifted from the shudders of her feet, one after another, like tiny grey ghosts.

  Shona heard Cerys pause at the bottom of the stairs, Jude shouting hello to her, before going up to her room. She was two hours late. She had ignored three phone calls and five texts. Shona heard the music go on in Cerys’ room above her head and strained to listen for noises beyond that. Cerys refused to come down for dinner. Shona refused to have the argument in front of Jude. She could wait.

  Shona took Jude to bed and lay down with him to read his story. When she woke up, it was dark and Jude’s arm was sticky on her neck. She sat up, unsure whether it was morning or evening, her tongue thick in her mouth. There was a light underneath the door and she edged towards it, feeling her way. When she opened the door, her eyes ached with the strong hall light. She could hear talking in the kitchen and went through. Cerys was sitting at the table, her legs pulled up in front of her. Her chair was tipped backwards slightly as she turned to look at her father.