The Devil in the Snow

by Sarah Armstrong

  She pushed the books on Apollo to one side to take back to the library. Shona had used her three usual places for research. The Internet had enough to give her an initial overview of her title: ‘Entertainment at the Tower of London: The Oldest Pleasure Park’. The library had the usual books, the standard texts and all for free. Greyfriars Bookshop on East Hill had second-hand oddities, the kind of books that would be impressive and indicative of a first. It also had the pungent smell of age and ideas and time and little chairs in which to absorb all of this tactile knowledge. She had bought three books on London and one on torture. She had only managed to read half of the tortures so far, although she knew she shouldn’t be reading about anywhere other than London but she felt attracted, in a perverse way, to the suffering of others. Even those long dead. It angered her and she thrived on this energy. All her achievements, she felt, came from this dark space.

  Mariana rang to let Shona know she was coming in the back door, and came upstairs to the office off the bedroom.

  ‘Hey. I left your keys on the kitchen table.’

  ‘I got them. Thought I’d just ask how it went.’

  ‘He’ll be out in six weeks. All set, apparently.’

  Mariana nodded. ‘Good. It will be tough, but it’s good.’

  She migrated to the table and began reading the Tower web page, open on the computer.

  Shona thought about telling her she was busy and changed her mind. ‘I’ll get some coffee.’

  ‘Even better.’

  When she returned, Mariana had scrolled through the page on torture. Shona put the biscuits down and handed Mariana her mug.

  ‘I’d like to squeeze the Kray twins in, but I don’t think it’s going to work.’

  ‘Are they important?’

  ‘No, just interesting in a tabloid kind of way.’

  Mariana looked through the A4 pad in which Shona had been making notes and began to read aloud.

  ‘“The Scavenger’s daughter, A-frame metal device, forced the head down and the knees up to compress the body making blood spurt from the nose and ears.”’

  Shona shrugged and dipped a ginger nut in her tea.

  Mariana kept reading. ‘“The rack was also known as the Duke of Exeter’s Daughter. The body was stretched until the joints dislocated and muscles were often rendered useless.” Were they named after someone’s actual daughter?’

  ‘I haven’t got that far, but I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why daughters then?’

  ‘No real reason. The dukes created them or used them so they were named their offspring. I suppose daughter sounds spookier than son.’

  ‘It’s disgusting. But isn’t your title about pleasure?’

  ‘I got a bit distracted. Do you want to help me get back on track?’

  Mariana shook her head. ‘No. I don’t do torture. I will have nightmares and you’ve given me enough of those.’

  Mariana did look tired, her eyes darkly sunken. She should have given her the option to stay away, dropped the car back at Mariana’s house. As it was, she had forgotten to wash it like she promised herself.

  ‘Here, let’s finish the coffee and you can drop me in town on the way home.’

  ‘Haven’t you got to pick up Jude?’ Mariana picked up her mug and folded her fingers around it.

  ‘He’s having tea with a friend. I have a couple of hours to myself.’

  Mariana shook her head. ‘That’s when the devil makes work for you. You have to make your own work.’

  Mariana dropped her off as it started raining. Town wasn’t busy, just a few school children making their way home with little enthusiasm but no money to extend their meandering. Cerys would be home soon too with her new key. Shona had always been there to make sure she arrived safely, but since her conversation with Maynard she was trying to give her a little more space, a little more responsibility, without changing the time that Cerys was expected home. It hadn’t been discussed again but Cerys was always there, always sullen, always with a slight sneer when Shona spoke to her. Maynard kept out of it in front of Shona, but sometimes she could hear Cerys complaining to him at length on the mobile before asking for more credit. She wondered why Maynard hadn’t given her a key.

  She sent Cerys a text message, letting her know what time she’d be back.

  Shona pushed open the door to the Natural History Museum. Kallu was sitting cross legged on the floor with a selection of necklaces in front of him. She sat down next to him.

  He smiled. ‘If you’re here, then you must need to solve a problem too.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Look. There are forty-eight necklaces here, each one linked to the others. It’s an exercise in patience and simplicity, removing the knots and seeing the situation clearly. It called you.’

  Shona smiled. She didn’t understand his thought processes, how everything could link together in life, how situations and objects could call to her. Kallu could see the threads between everything and, while she was with him, it did seem possible. She watched his long fingers teasing and unravelling. His eyebrows were lowered over his eyes, his lips slightly pouting. His hair was curling across his cheek. Shona ran her fingers through it, pinning it more firmly behind his ear.

  A clump of necklaces fell loose to the floor and he passed it to Shona. ‘However many there are is your answer.’

  She felt responsible for him, what he ate and where he lived. He felt responsible for her soul.

  ‘You only have one shadow,’ he had said early on. ‘You’ve lost one. You can get it back but you need to spot it when it’s around. Maynard has lost one too, but it’s gone for ever.’

  And so Kallu cared for her, protected her because of this lost shadow she never expected to have. She would take him out to woods and the seaside. He would create circles around her with sticks and flowers or sit silently. He didn’t mind that she sat with a book, that she didn’t believe any of it. She had enjoyed the space, the silence and being celebrated for being there.

  Shona nodded to Kallu and began to undo the problem she didn’t know she had. The answer turned out to be seven.

  ‘Goddess of the seven stars,’ said Kallu.

  Shona carefully lined up the separated necklaces. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Questions, questions.’ He was still hunched over his tangle.

  ‘Well, what does it mean?’

  He smiled at her. ‘I don’t know. It’s your answer.’

  Sometimes Shona wanted to shake him. Her voice rose, ‘Answer to what?’

  ‘Your question.’

  Shona tried to jump to her feet for a dramatic exit but her right foot had gone to sleep and she stood, holding onto a display cabinet, waiting for the pins and needles to pass.

  ‘It would be quicker if you walked on it,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’ She placed her foot down but knew there was too little sensation to shift any weight onto it.

  Kallu watched her, raised his eyebrows and nodded. ‘Ah.’

  She refused to ask this time, absolutely refused.

  She checked her phone on the way to collect Jude. There was no reply from Cerys. She rang her while she waited for the bus, and then she rang the house. Nothing. She comforted herself that Cerys was just continuing her silence. Dumb insolence, Shona wanted to call it. She hadn’t said a word to Shona since Maynard had last been at the house. Shona accused her of being childish, being selfish, being ignorant but all she got in return was a haughty toss of the head or a yawn. She was strong-willed, Shona had to concede that. But every day it was getting harder not to say something, however dreadful, to get a word of reaction from her. She started to imagine it was a plan she’d concocted with Maynard to punish Shona or to force Shona into inviting Maynard back into the family home and marital bed. But Shona didn’t believe that was really what Maynard wanted, however downcast he could look about it in front of Cerys.

  No, it was just Cerys showing Shona how much she hated her and how little she needed anything to do
with her.

  She left a message anyway.

  When she got home with Jude at half past five, Cerys was sitting at the kitchen table in her slippery dressing gown, talking into her mobile. Shona waved at her.

  ‘Speak to you later,’ Cerys said into the phone. She hung up and moved around to face Shona. Her gown fell open to show an ornate bra Shona hadn’t bought for her.

  ‘Hello,’ said Jude.

  Cerys didn’t look at him. ‘Is Kallu coming round?’

  ‘You know Kallu. He comes, he goes. He’ll probably be around. Why?’

  ‘Didn’t you see him today?’

  Shona frowned. ‘Yes, but I never mentioned that. I wasn’t expecting him to come over for tea or anything.’

  Cerys shrugged and left the room.

  ‘Cerys didn’t say hello,’ said Jude.

  ‘I know. What a dope,’ said Shona. ‘I’ll make my dinner, you watch TV, OK?’

  She thought about whether she’d been wrong, and maybe had mentioned something that Cerys may have overheard. She certainly hadn’t told her directly as Cerys was still having her silent protest. She must have read Shona’s phone messages. Shona checked them, wondering whether she had invited Kallu round and forgotten, but there was nothing like that, just him asking if she was free. Cerys must have assumed that he would be coming. So why had she been wearing a loosely gathered dressing gown? Shona groaned and left the pasta to boil. Her first conversation with Cerys in weeks and she couldn’t just try to be normal and be nice. She’d promised herself she would. She would let Cerys know that she loved her.

  Shona knocked on Cerys’ door and walked in. Cerys glared at her and the planned reconciliation disappeared again.

  ‘Were you planning to throw yourself at him again? You have to have more respect for yourself, Cerys.’

  Cerys turned away and Shona noticed the sports bag open on the floor. There were some T-shirts on top and a bundle of underwear.

  ‘Are you going to Dad’s this weekend?’

  Cerys stared at the window and settled down against her pillows.

  Shona sat on the end of the bed. ‘Cerys, Kallu is nineteen. He’s too old for you.’

  Cerys turned away to the wardrobe and snorted. ‘But you’re not too old for him.’

  ‘I’m not chasing him in my pants!’

  Cerys turned. ‘I’m not talking to you, you bitch! I hate you more than anyone in the world. You don’t trust me because you know what you’re thinking and what you’re doing. You have destroyed Dad and made him leave and you’re making me leave too.’

  Shona stood. ‘Oh, grow up. Not everything your dad says is true.’

  ‘But he loves me and knows exactly what you’re like. You’re such a slag that you’re rotten inside.’

  Shona closed the door behind her and pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets.

  6

  Cerys wasn’t home.

  Shona had called the house phone to let her know she would be late, in the hope that Cerys would answer if she didn’t know it was her. Instead Maynard answered and he said he’d tell her. She hadn’t worried about not being there when Cerys got back from school because Maynard would be there to collect some things and eat with her, but then Shona got home and Maynard was there and Cerys was not. And there was a secret, something hidden behind his words, that she couldn’t get an answer to, so she hid in the kitchen and cooked for herself and Jude.

  Maynard wasn’t concerned, not at five or half five, that she wasn’t back. He said she’d been back after school, changed her clothes and headed out again. He was working at home, he said, nothing strange in that, as if he’d ever done it before. He never spent any time in the house if Cerys wasn’t there.

  It wasn’t until six o’clock that Cerys’ absence became somehow real.

  Shona left Jude in front of the TV and let herself into Maynard’s room. If he was staying the night, he normally had the sofa bed made up by now, but he was sitting on the sofa with a pile of papers which he placed face down beside him. He raised his eyebrows.

  Shona said, ‘She’s not answering her phone, now where exactly did she go?’

  Maynard stood up. ‘Can you get out, please? I’ll talk to you in the hall.’

  ‘This is my house. You have no right to keep me out of this room, lock me out. Tell me where my daughter is.’

  Maynard took a step until their feet were nearly touching and spoke slowly. ‘She went out.’

  ‘You were here. You were responsible for finding out where she was going, if you couldn’t say no to her. It’s dark and she’s fourteen. I’m going to have to call the police if you don’t help find her.’

  ‘Call them then,’ he sighed. ‘They’ll quickly have you pegged for what you are, a mental case. I’m busy.’

  Shona looked around at the antiques, the glass display cases full of tiny breakables, the walls full of paintings and spaces that used to hold them. There were boxes on the floor, the large one holding bubble-wrapped painting-sized squares, the smaller one holding files. Where had they been hidden?

  ‘She’s not in here,’ he said, as he returned to the sofa.

  ‘Why are you packing up?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, first you want me to move out and now you want to know why I’m packing.’ He picked up the papers again and held them to his chest.

  She felt butterflies, as if excited and slightly panicked. ‘Are you leaving?’ This is what she had waited for and yet, now, with Cerys missing, it seemed overwhelming.

  ‘I am just moving some of my things from one place to another.’

  ‘Why today?’

  ‘Because they are mine.’ He held the papers out and started to pretend to read them, and then changed his mind. ‘There’s not as much work at the moment, because of the recession. I’ll have to sell some things.’

  ‘Are you selling the London flat?’

  ‘No. That belongs to the business in any case, and I need a London address for work.’

  His money had always been filtered through the business, which consisted of only him: a trendy tax ploy he’d explained to her at length one night after too much wine. She’d never understood it. ‘A tiny bolt hole, not a flat really, more of a bedsit. Just somewhere to sleep.’ That had been his reason for not moving out properly, that and Cerys. The cyclist had been her main hold over Maynard, enabling her to stay in the house, but Shona had always suspected that his mother wouldn’t allow him to leave before Cerys was eighteen. She didn’t want the shame, and Maynard didn’t want to risk his inheritance.

  ‘Will I still get the housekeeping money?’

  He smiled and looked back at the papers. ‘Cerys will never go without.’

  Cerys. It was so late now.

  She left the door open to take Jude to bed, but when they walked past it was shut again. Jude brushed his teeth and noticed Cerys’ door was open and her room was dark.

  ‘Where’s Cerys?’

  ‘She’s just out. She’ll be back later.’ Shona kissed his head. ‘What book do you want?’

  Jude found his favourite three books and, as usual, whittled it down to one without explaining how he arrived there.

  ‘This one.’ He jumped into their bed and switched the lamp on while she switched the main light off.

  Shona planned what she would say to Cerys when she finally returned, and went over the rules that she had agreed to stick by, however reluctantly. At half past seven she realised that she didn’t have any numbers for Cerys’ friends. They were all on the mobile she had with her. Neither did she know more than a couple of surnames, which weren’t in the phone book. No-one she knew was in the phone book any more.

  At eight she set out. Maynard agreed to stay with Jude until she got back. It made her angry. This is what it should have been like with Cerys, two parents who could trust each other to care for their children. A husband she wouldn’t ever doubt would still be there when she got back from a night out with friends, or a late-night trip to the shop. I
nstead she’d gone without people and food because there was no-one to trust and nothing to believe in.

  She walked through the alley to the fields by the school. The lights were on in a couple of downstairs rooms and she remembered that Cerys had gone to Guides here for a term. Guides was Tuesday, piano on Wednesday, swimming on Fridays; the days when she always knew exactly where Cerys was because they went and came back together. When had that ended, when she was twelve, nearly thirteen? It was so hard to let go, to see her walk away and not walk back. The parents were arriving to pick up their daughters in the hooded jacket and baseball caps that Cerys had worn, but Shona didn’t recognise any from her days as a Guide’s mother.

  Shona walked away from the school. She walked down to the main road, scanning benches next to phone boxes and driveways. She knew that she wouldn’t find her but the looking became the point, the thing that Maynard was not doing. She walked rather than face the emptiness, rather than acknowledge that even Maynard might be getting concerned.

  She found herself in front of Rob’s house and knocked on the door. A man, slightly older than Rob and a beer in one hand, opened the door.

  ‘Is Rob in?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know where he is?’

  ‘No.’ He looked at his beer. ‘Do you want to leave a message?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  She waited until he had closed the door before leaving and sat back on the wall outside the house.

  That morning Rob had left a message about the paper due in on Monday. Shona had reassured him that she had written twelve thousand words and was preparing to edit it down to ten and check the references. What she hadn’t told him was that she didn’t think it was going to get a first. It was too dry, too derivative. She’d found no angle to make it her own work, which it wasn’t in any case. If she didn’t deliver, the organisation might blacklist him, but there were thousands of others that would pay. He hadn’t arranged to see her for fun, he was just chasing his investment and that bored her. She didn’t care enough about him to pull something brilliant together and she certainly didn’t care about the student who was waiting for their work to be completed. There wasn’t much that she did care about any more.