The Devil in the Snow

by Sarah Armstrong

  18

  January 2012

  ‘Did you show Fernando the papers?’

  Mariana sighed. ‘I did, and I’ve read them too. I think you’re going to have to sell up. It’s a very, very good company. And he hasn’t even mentioned the adultery.’

  ‘I can’t lose my house. He’s got his own flat, his own home. This is mine.’

  ‘It’s his house too. He’s on the deeds, he paid the mortgage. He has the legal right to half of every square metre.’ She sighed. ‘His flat belongs to his business, legally. It’s tied up very tightly and in his mother’s name primarily. He’s had very good advice, or bad advice. It’s not ethical but it is legal.’ Mariana stroked Shona’s shoulder. ‘It will be OK.’

  ‘No, it won’t. I can’t afford to buy a house with half the money.’

  Mariana tutted. ‘Yes, you can. You can get exactly what you need for you and Jude to be happy. You just need to look in different areas.’

  Shona spread her arms. ‘I won’t be able to buy this house.’

  ‘Children move houses all the time. They cope, as long as the parents allow them to cope. They just need, Jude just needs you to smile and tell him that it’s different but still good. Still somewhere he can feel safe.’

  Shona scraped the chair back so it hit the wall, moved away and flicked the kettle on. She stood by the window and bit on her thumb. She heard Mariana behind her, taking her coat off and placing it on the back of the chair before pulling it out to sit down. She decided.

  ‘I know where something is that Maynard really wants.’

  Mariana squinted. ‘What kind of something?’

  ‘It’s dodgy, though. Really dodgy. Do you want to know?’

  ‘How am I supposed to know if I want to know?’ Mariana looked suspicious and busied herself with her handbag before pulling out a packet of chocolate biscuits. ‘How many biscuits would I need afterwards?’

  ‘The whole packet.’

  She sighed. ‘It’s really illegal, isn’t it? Do you need to tell me?’

  ‘No. But I think that using it would mean that I get my house.’ Shona sat down next to her. ‘There’s a painting. I think, from the description, that it’s a religious icon. A stolen icon, most likely.’

  ‘You haven’t seen it?’

  ‘No. But I know at least two men who rate it very highly.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t Maynard return it and be happy with the fame of finding it?’

  ‘He never loved art. He loved the money and there’s enough people with money who do love art to make it worth his while. I think he got it for someone specific. Someone who has never forgiven him for losing it. Or he just doesn’t like losing.’

  Mariana opened the biscuits and bit into one. ‘You realise that you’re in possession of stolen goods?’

  ‘No-one gave it to me.’

  ‘You know perfectly well how the law works. Ignorance is not a defence, and you can’t even claim ignorance. And now, neither can I.’

  ‘It isn’t in my house and I haven’t touched it, yet. I’m not interested in it, but maybe I can use it as leverage.’

  ‘Where do you think it was taken from?’

  ‘At that time probably a church,’ Shona said. ‘Originally, anyway.’

  ‘And you want to use it to gain from in the divorce?’ Mariana finished the biscuit and picked out another. ‘I don’t think I want to be involved in this hypothetical conversation any further. Stealing from churches is stealing from history at the very least, the lowest of the low, and I think you, Shona, should do the right thing and return it. Have Maynard arrested, return the painting, get divorced and just start your life properly again.’

  ‘What about the house?’

  Mariana thumped the table, the biscuit crumbling. ‘What about the house? It doesn’t belong to you, it’s shared property and has to be divided. You won’t get any of his flat as it belongs to his company. You won’t get any of his income as he’s been sacked. You don’t deserve anything other than half this house as you cheated on your husband and had a bastard child outside your marriage and you can’t expect sympathy or payment for that.’

  Shona sat, stunned and shifted on her chair. Mariana’s fury wasn’t over.

  ‘You used to be decent and honest. You were a friend and I would have done anything to help you. Now I don’t even like you any more. You’re deceitful and unfaithful not just to your husband, but also to your friends.’

  In the silence Shona blushed. ‘You know.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ Mariana’s frown crumpled and she held her hands to her face. ‘I don’t know how you have looked me in the face all these years without the slightest trace of guilt or even self-consciousness.’ She took a deep breath and pulled her hands away. ‘You have two children who are alive and one who is dead. Accept it and move on.’ She pushed her chair back from the table and started to put her coat back on.

  ‘Does he know you know?’

  ‘Does my husband know that I know you fucked him or that he’s the father of your son?’

  Shona cringed. Mariana bent down towards her.

  ‘He worked it out. Anyone who looks at them together can work it out. I truly believed you’d tell me eventually, but you didn’t.’ She gestured towards her breast. ‘My marriage belongs to me, no matter who tries to get in the middle of it. I’m a good person and I believe in forgiveness but I do not believe in supporting people who don’t want to be forgiven and just make things worse. Cheating, lying and now theft. Where do you see this ending?’ She put the biscuits back in her bag and slammed the back door behind her.

  What would the church or cathedral or wherever benefit from the return of this panel? Shona didn’t even know where it had come from. One cathedral in Ghent had a panel stolen and so they had commissioned a replacement, which had proved satisfactory since 1945, by a copyist. An acknowledged fake which did exactly the same as the original had, to those who could see something in it. Which Shona couldn’t. Jimmy was right. It was just paint on board. And money.

  She had no right to keep it and she didn’t want it. She didn’t want to return it. Now two other people, Jimmy and Mariana, wanted it too but last week no-one knew it existed. She shouldn’t have told Mariana, or Jimmy. Maynard must know by now as well.

  Shona didn’t know where she saw anything ending. She did know that it was a relief, a cowardly one, not to have to tell Mariana about Jude. She also knew that avoiding the problem hadn’t made it go away. Fernando knew and she would have to face him and, oh God, tell Jude. Mariana, Cerys and her mother – she owed something to all of them.

  She found her mobile in the front room and listened to another message from Jimmy. Once she’d finished she noticed that she had a second voice message that must have come through as she was listening to the first. She didn’t recognise the number but called up to listen to it. There was a lot of background noise and the sense that someone was walking along, the sound of material being brushed against the speaker. Then a man’s name saying ‘Cerys’, and the line went dead. She’d had another photo of Cerys in the past week, looking away from the camera, pensive, so different to the early photos where she was hair-swingingly happy. She hoped that the photos were a sign that Cerys was missing her, maybe regretting having left home. Was she thinking about her mother, her brother, even her room? Shona knew it was probably a brief fit of pique over a pair of shoes, a badly expressed question that had annoyed her, but why send it? She looked again at the ones on the fridge and saw, she thought, a change, a quietness in the later photos. She felt she was getting her back, but it would never be the same.

  Greta knocked on the back door before opening it and shook her umbrella off.

  ‘Is Jude ready?’

  ‘I think so. I’d better warn you, he’s overexcited about this.’

  ‘Don’t worry. He’ll sleep well and be ready for school in the morning.’

  Shona called Jude. He came in, sweating under his hat and scarf.

  ‘H
ow long have you been wearing all of that?’ asked Greta.

  ‘Hours,’ groaned Jude.

  ‘We’d better get you to the bus stop so you can cool down.’

  Jude stepped outside. Shona gestured to Greta.

  ‘Do you need any money? He’ll demand all sorts of things but you don’t need to say yes.’

  ‘Every time I took you to the zoo you got to choose a toy. I know how it works.’ Greta waved and left.

  Shona tried but couldn’t remember ever going to the zoo with her mother. She couldn’t remember choosing a toy to cherish or ignore. Every time she spoke to her mother recently she wondered how much of the childhood she remembered was real, and how much she’d forgotten or never really seen in the first place.

  She went upstairs to turn Jude’s bedroom into one for him alone. All her books and clothes were moving into the front bedroom. Her office would be packed up and filled with his toys. She was ready to let go.

  When Shona came back from the shop, the smells from her kitchen were homely in a way they hadn’t been for years. This was a meal someone was taking time over.

  At the table Jude had a blocky figure he was posing, her mum had a bowlful of potato parings and Jimmy had his furry hat squashed between his hands. The lights in the kitchen blanched all the deep darkness of the evening. Shona noticed new fairy lights around the neglected rubber plant by the table.

  All three looked up at her and immediately the scene was altered as they jumped up to pull the table from the wall to free up the fourth chair.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Shona said, pulling off her hat and scarf and draping her coat on the corner of the kitchen door.

  ‘We had a lovely day,’ said Greta. ‘Now Jude’s going to help me with the carrots.’

  ‘I got a lion!’

  Jude started rubbing at the carrots under the running water as her mother fetched the onions from one of the drawers in the fridge. There hadn’t been any in there when Shona had left. The chicken in the oven fizzed. Greta turned the radio on, just high enough to allow them to talk freely.

  Jimmy was watching them too. Shona looked at his sad smile. He looked well, but tired.

  ‘We need to talk,’ she said.

  He looked at his hat. ‘So, are you going to give it to the police?’

  She waited until he looked at her before answering. ‘I need to know what you think about this. I don’t know where it’s from, I don’t know anything about it and I don’t have my hands on it yet. But, if I can get it back, I need it to be around for a couple of weeks so I can get my house off Maynard. I won’t give you away but I need him to truly believe that I would in a heartbeat. I don’t know whose side you’re on, or if you’re just on your own side, but can I trust you?’

  ‘I’ve just spoken to my sister for the first time in twenty-two years.’ His eyes filled and he blinked rapidly. He whispered, ‘She’s still mad,’ and smiled. ‘I was never on Maynard’s side. I always thought that everything he did, we did, would work out for the best for you as well. Even after everything with Meghan, I thought – well, never mind that. I’ll support you however I can.’

  ‘Even if you ended up in prison again?’

  He lowered his head. ‘Don’t ask me that, Shona.’

  Shona nodded. ‘Fair enough.’

  He looked up. ‘Can I see it again?’

  Shona looked over, but Jude and Greta were busy. ‘We’ll talk about that. I need all the information I can get on how you or he found it, who it was for and how he paid for it. If I’m going to persuade him to sign the house over, I need to terrify him with what I know. Will you help?’

  There was a slight hesitation. ‘Yes. Not who it was for though. I can’t give you that.’

  ‘Shona, can you set the table?’ said Greta. ‘Are you eating with us, James?’

  ‘That would be lovely.’

  Greta started to dish up and Jude carried the plates to the table.

  ‘No more questions though,’ said Shona to Jimmy. ‘I need to write everything down after dinner so I can get things moving. Time’s running out. OK?’

  He nodded.

  Greta

  Wherever he went, James sent a postcard. Everywhere he went came back on a small illustration, a piece of card, to Coggeshall, centre of demons and ley lines and hoof prints. The first time he came back he lifted the postcard, a pen drawing of Canterbury cathedral, from the mantelpiece and put it in a rosewood box. It was exactly the right size for a postcard standing upright.

  ‘All the postcards I send you need to go in here. You will keep them, won’t you?’

  ‘All right.’

  I wondered whether the box was mine or just a holder for his postcards. I never felt they were mine but that I was keeping them safe for him, box and all. So every time a postcard arrived I put it in front of the previous one. As the years went on, long after I married and moved, the postcards got larger and I had to trim off more and more to fit them in without bending them. There were never many words to worry about. That wasn’t why he wanted me to keep them. I wondered whether it was some memory prompt he felt he might need in later years, but it was odd for such a young man to think about being old. No teenager ever believes that it will happen to them, maybe no-one in their twenties either. There was another reason.

  One by one James’ postcards arrived: Berlin, Toronto, Holland, Montreal, Besancon, Geneva and New York. No-one in our family had ever been beyond England’s borders before, apart from my trip to Paris. Then in 1971 I happened to read an article on the soaring prices of fine art, and the flurry of robberies in the 1960s. The cities all sounded familiar. I didn’t see Jimmy from one year to the next, had no way of contacting him. I waited for the next postcard, Zagreb in September 1971. It took three days until I found it reported in the newspapers at the library. I began to research all of the thefts in the cities on the dates of the postcards. The more I found out the less I believed that James could be involved. James would never cut a picture from its frame; he would never throw a painting in the boot of a car. James loved paint on canvas more than a normal person could love their own child. The next postcard took five years to arrive, Chicago in November 1976. In it James mentioned being in prison. He didn’t say where or what he had been sentenced for. He didn’t need to. I was his accessory. Then again, I had every power over him.

  I got them out and began to read them. Then I got my maps out again and found the lines that drew everything together, but they didn’t help. I decided to just leave him to it. I had enough to cope with, trying to stop Larry murdering my son, trying to stop my daughter from idolising him. We all had our own problems, and our own secrets, and I could keep James’. For a time.

  It was a bit easier to get in touch with James in the 1990s. He had friends in Brighton near Shona and they saw each other quite often in the last year of her degree. She started to call him Jimmy then. I wouldn’t hear from her for months at a time, but if I did phone James had always been round the weekend before or the one before that. I tried not to feel jealous, but to be pleased that at least one element of our family still worked. James got on with Shona and always had. He was caught up in his art, and never in a quite legal way, but what she didn’t know was never going to hurt her. I got the occasional postcard from James, from Amsterdam and Boston, and Shona worked hard. Then Shona moved to Maynard’s flat in London, near to James, and they carried on meeting.

  I don’t know what made me phone her when I got the postcard from Frankfurt. James had been to Germany a number of times and there was nothing different in the anodyne message. Blue biro, four words, Wish you were here. But I didn’t think of being in Frankfurt, I thought of Shona.

  I looked up her new London phone number in the small notebook I used to keep track on Shona and Sean’s lives. No-one else was in there. I dialled, my fingers nervously feeling the unfamiliar holes of the disc sweeping the numbers, weighing the heavy receiver and lifting it to my ear. Shona answered quickly. She was surprised, maybe worr
ied. I could hear the radio in the background as she rushed through a series of questions.

  ‘Did you want something?’

  ‘No, nothing. Just a chat.’

  ‘I’m busy.’

  I could hear her run the tap, filling the kettle. ‘Nothing’s happening then?’

  ‘No, just enjoying being on my own. Maynard’s on a work trip to Frankfurt and back in two days. That’s all.’

  I made myself reply something so she could ring off. I went back to the box of postcards. I had to get James away from her. I wrote to him and told him that I knew what the postcards meant. I said that I’d send them to the police if he didn’t stay away from Shona and her stupid husband. I thought that was enough to break their association and leave Maynard to make a business of his own. But I was far too late. Maynard already had a taste for stealing and fraud and money. Everything that James could teach him was used.

  I never asked Maynard about it and I never told Shona. I never told her that her family had everything it needed because her husband was a criminal, that it could all be taken away in a breath. She’d had the worst father, the weakest mother, a criminal uncle and I couldn’t tell her. I heard about his successes while Cerys was small, I heard about how his mother tried to mould her and borrow Cerys and make her into her father’s child rather than her mother’s. And I said nothing.

  The postcards still sit on the mantelpiece but I don’t have to add to them any more. Sometimes I think of Larry smiling at them and wonder what he had to do with it all. How did he help James to find that world and draw everyone around Shona into it? It could have been James on his own but, in my experience, if Larry was nearby he was involved.

  I wanted Larry dead and was pleased when I buried him. It was over. I didn’t have to be scared of his shape in the chair or stand in front of my children so he had to fight to reach them. We were free. But after he died I found myself watching for his shadow, listening for the clip of his feet, smelling the cigarette smoke that still drifted behind him. I knew that when I died he’d haunt my children, then my grandchildren. The cycle hadn’t been broken but was still binding us.