by Babs Horton
She pulled back the curtains. They were stiff as boards, pleated with frost, freezing to the touch. The window was frosted with diamonds and doily patterns.
She breathed hard and hot on the thickened glass and scraped furiously with her nails until her fingers turned to indigo and pink and hummed with the cold.
She saw the world through a jagged peephole. A world that had tilted overnight towards the North Pole. It was a soft smudged town now, with no hard black edges, reshaped in the dark secret hours of the night. The roofs of the houses slumbered beneath billowing snow quilts. Soft and smooth and spotless.
The rutted road was gone. In its place an ivory highway led down to the now invisible hump-backed bridge. Crystal spears dripped from the trees and the groaning guttering of the houses. Below in the valley the river was a twist of frosted glass.
She wondered if polar bears and penguins would come sliding over the Sirhowy Mountain and would there be Eskimos walking on snowshoes like tennis racquets, slipping down to the Cop to buy candles for their dinner?
She flew through the lightening parlour and into the kitchen where Nan was stoking the fire as if it were an engine on an uphill climb.
Iffy danced up and down in front of the fire.
“You’ll have to hang on,” Nan said. “You can’t get out to the lav. If 11 be frozen over.”
But she didn’t need to wee. It was excitement that made her hop up and down. A buzzing of excitement that fizzed over the tendons at the back of her knees, like telephone messages on wires.
She drew back the bolts and opened the back door. An eye-aching white bank of snow, reaching up past her head, way up past the latch…
“Shut that bloody door, Iffy. You’ll have the knackers off the cat.”
Sometimes Nan could be very vulgar.
No way out of the back door. There was no going anywhere. Not even to Bessie’s.
No point anyway. Bessie’s mam would keep her indoors for days in case she got lost forever under a snowdrift.
Billy would be snowed up in the baker’s shop where even the huge red-hot ovens would fail to thaw a way out of there.
There was a scrabbling noise outside the back door, then someone cursing loudly. A fist battering at the door.
“Suffering Angels!” Nan said. “Who in God’s name would be out and about on a morning like this!”
Fatty heard his father calling out from his bedroom across the landing. “Give us a hand with these bastard trousers.”
Fatty played with the thought of ignoring the voice and legging it out of bed and away down the stairs and out of the house.
“I know you’re in there. Shift your fuckin’ arse in here, boy.”
Fatty sighed, got up, slipped on his red sandals and crossed the freezing landing. He peeped through the crack in the door. His father, half sat, half lay across the bed, his trousers twisted about his bloated legs. Fatty looked round the room for the belt. It was way over by the window out of harm’s way. A large, brown leather belt with a spiteful buckle. He’d felt the cut of it on his skin many times.
He crept towards the bed, nerves raw. His father opened one red-rimmed eye and glared at him.
“About bastard time too.”
In a flash he’d helped the trousers up over the blue-veined legs, over the stained baggy underwear. He’d held his breath against the stink, piss and worse, beery sweat and stiffened socks.
His father coughed, spluttered, struggled to sitting.
“Give us a fag.”
Fatty picked up the packet of Players from the floor. He slipped one out. His father took it between his wet lips. Fatty flicked back the lighter’s lid. He ran his thumb down the wheel, the wick lit and a warm paraffin smell filled his nostrils. The cigarette glowed in the gloomy room and his father set to with a racking cough, unable to speak.
Fatty flew while the going was good. Down the stairs and out of the door, except that when he opened the door his way was barred by a wall of white snow.
In the living room his mother was sleeping. She was still dressed in last night’s clothes, her green tweed coat and a battered old fur hat. He stood looking down at her. Sleep had softened her face making it almost pretty again, like it used to be when he was little. In the good days when the old man had been away in the army. Away for so long they were able to forget he even existed. Before she drank. He touched her hand gently. It was freezing. For a second, even though she slept, she squeezed his hand, a warm little touch that reminded him of how it had once been. She was a wreck now, but he loved her, couldn’t imagine how life would ever be bearable without her. He took down the heavy old army greatcoat that hung on the back of the scullery door and draped it across her, tucking it in around her body. He couldn’t light a fire because the coal shed had been empty for weeks. Underneath the kitchen sink he found a box full of old clothes. He dressed as best he could and then launched himself into the drift of snow outside the door.
He grew scarlet in the face with the effort of moving through the deep snow from Coronation Row down to the road that led past the Big House. No one else was about. Despite the cold, his body was hot. He felt more alive than ever before.
He was out of the house. He’d escaped! He felt full to his skin with bursting. It was pure pleasure.
He’d seen snow before but not like this. It was bloody magic. The slag tips had been transformed into undulating hills, the rutted road was a fairy-tale highway and the tumbledown houses with missing slates and crooked chimneys were winter grottoes with pointed icicles and patterned windows.
A robin perched on the wall of the Big House. Its red breast was the only colour in the whole of the world at that moment. This new white world crackled with freshness, it smelled sweet and strange and exciting.
Smoke spiralled up from the enormous chimneys of the Big House. The smell of sausages cooking drifted over the walls and made his belly ache. It was almost a day since he’d last eaten anything. There was nothing in the pantry at home except a brown paper bag of split peas and a jar of dried-up Bovril.
It took him a good twenty minutes to climb the hill that ran alongside Inkerman and Balaclava. When he reached the steps that led down into the bailey of Inkerman he turned to look back down the valley.
The snowdrifts rolled way down past all the lonely farms and the abandoned village, probably all the way down to the sea. One day he was going to reach the sea. He was going to escape for good. He was going to stow away on a boat, travel to faraway places, and come back for his mam when he was rich. And if he could get his hands on what Carty Annie had hidden in her house he’d go as soon as possible and p’raps, if she’d come with him, he’d take Iffy Meredith too.
Iffy jumped in fright, stepped backwards in alarm and trod on the cat as a snowman came clambering over the step and into the kitchen.
The cat yowled, hissed and slunk away under the table.
“Morning, Mrs Meredith!” said the snowman.
“Suffering Jesus!” shrieked the old woman and dropped the poker with a clang.
The snowman shivered and shook until he became a mini blizzard in the doorway.
“Hiya, Iffy! Mrs Meredith!”
Fatty Bevan stepping out from the flurry. Mrs Meredith laughing. Iffy staring.
“Good God! You gave me a right turn then. You’re like a bloody Egyptian mummy only more colourful. Get by the fire and warm up, you must be perished,” Mrs Meredith said.
Iffy couldn’t take her eyes off Fatty. He was wrapped from head to foot in frosted bundles of woollen scraps…like Joseph in his coat of many colours. He wore his father’s holey brown working socks pulled on over his sandals, and a pair of odd socks for gloves, one green, one maroon, both holey. His head was wrapped in an ancient flannel vest, his blue black eyes glistened through slits cut into the cloth.
He stood quivering on the coconut matting and began to unwrap himself, layer by layer, a pass the parcel game with clothes.
Iffy watched, mesmerised. It took him
ages, until at last, he stood in his khaki shorts and faded blue T-shirt, grinning at them cheerfully.
He got close to the range and soon steam oozed out from his clothes and joined up with his warm breath, hot cumulus clouds drifting up towards the ceiling.
“It took me nearly an hour to get up here. I had to dig myself out of home.”
“Why didn’t you stay in the warm like normal people?” said Mrs Meredith.
“Cos it wasn’t warm and I needed a pi – a pee.”
“Mind your tongue, Mr Bevan!” said Nan, but Iffy could tell she wasn’t really cross which Iffy thought wasn’t fair. She would have killed Iffy if she’d nearly said pee i double ess.
“See anyone else about on your travels?”
“Ay, Mrs Tudge going down the hill on skis.”
“You lying little monkey!” Mrs Meredith said laughing.
“No. Didn’t see no one. You can’t get up the road from town. The drifts are too big. Old Man Morgan can’t get out of the farm with the milk cart and the town clock has seized up.”
“Ay, I wondered what was missing. It was the sound of the chimes. Well you’d better stay and have a bite to eat now you’re here.”
Soon he was sitting in the grandfather chair, in the cosy kitchen, wrapped in one of Mr Meredith’s old grey working jumpers that came down almost over his blue knees.
At the kitchen table Mrs Meredith cut thick doorsteps of bread from a Swansea batch, jabbed them on the end of the blackened toasting fork and held them close to the roaring fire. The smell of toasting bread and wetted tea filled the kitchen and mingled with the smell of dog and horse and bubble gum that steamed out of Fatty’s drying clothes.
Fatty, half hidden by a mountain of toast, munched away happily, his face red and shining, his knees turning slowly from blue to pink, yellow butter running down over his chin.
“Damn!” said Mrs Meredith. “It’s a pleasure to see you eat, boy! Our Iffy eats like a bloody sparrow!”
Iffy nibbled toast and pulled a face behind her nan’s back.
Fatty wolfed down four pieces of toast on the trot before he spoke.
“The drifts outside the Big House are up to the top of the gates. It’ll take that Mrs Medlicott a week to shovel her way out.”
The toasting fork dropped from Mrs Meredith’s hand and clattered to the stone floor. “Mrs Medlicott! What do you mean Mrs Medlicott?” she said.
“The woman from the Big House,” said Fatty through a mouthful of toast.
“But Lawrence, Mrs Medlicott moved away years ago. Abroad somewhere. She’s probably been dead this long time!”
“Well, then she was a healthy-looking ghost when I seen her.”
“Seen her? Don’t be so daft, boy!”
“I’m not being daft. I seen her. Honest to God.”
“Where?” Her voice was a breathy whisper.
“Last night.”
“Last night!” She echoed his words.
“Ay, old Gravelwilly, sorry, Mr Sandicock brought her in a big black car.”
“What time was this?” Mrs Meredith asked and sat down suddenly with a sound like the air rushing out of water wings.
“Bout five o’clock yesterday.”
She wiped her eyes on the skirt of her faded old pinafore.
“It couldn’t have been her, she wouldn’t come back here.”
“Are you crying, Nan?” Iffy asked staring at the old woman’s face.
“Don’t be so soft, Iffy. Crying! Just the heat from the fire making my eyes run, that’s all. What did she look like, Lawrence?”
“Old. Oh and posh. She had a hat, a black hat with net on the front of it. She was wearing a big fur coat. And she had a big hooky nose like a witch.”
Mrs Meredith stared at Fatty but didn’t speak. She closed her eyes, the veins on her eyelids were pale lavender. Her knuckles whitened as she pushed down hard on the wooden arms of the chair as though she were about to stand up.
Fatty helped himself to another piece of toast.
Iffy kept count. Five.
Mrs Meredith stayed sitting, rocking backwards and forwards in the chair.
The gaslight popped. The fire roared up the chimney.
Beneath the table the cat rasped and purred.
“They say she’s come back to live here,” said Fatty, licking butter from his grubby fingers.
Mrs Meredith stopped rocking and opened her eyes. Blue eyes swimming beneath a cloudy film of water.
“Who says?”
Her voice sounded as if it came from somewhere far away.
“I can’t remember who told me.”
Iffy watched her nan’s face with interest. It was as though someone had dipped a paintbrush in water and diluted the deep pink of her cheeks and the dark blue of her eyes, until she was a faded picture of her real self. Mrs Meredith coughed, stood up and poured herself more tea. Her hand shook and the cup rattled against the saucer. She spooned three spoons of sugar into her cup, which Iffy thought was strange as she normally took none.
“I wouldn’t like to live in the Big House,” Iffy said. “It’s haunted!”
“Don’t talk so daft, Iffy!”
Iffy wrinkled her nose and thought better of arguing for once. It was haunted though. All the kids knew that. When it was dark they never walked past the gates in case long hairy arms came out and grabbed them. They stepped out into the road and walked in a wide half circle. Except for Fatty of course who wasn’t afraid of anything.
“The ghost of old Dr Medlicott comes out of the pond when the moon is full,” said Fatty.
“Don’t be so silly!” Mrs Meredith banged down her cup and went into the pantry.
She stood in the icy room and leant her back against the wall trying to get her breathing under control and stop her heart from beating so fast. She felt in the pocket of her pinny for the bottle of pills. With fumbling fingers she opened the top and tipped out a small pink pill. She popped it in her mouth and swallowed. He must have got it wrong. He could be a fanciful little fellow. He’d say anything bar his prayers would Lawrence Bevan. Agnes Medlicott would never have come back after all this time. She took down the medicinal whisky from the shelf, filled the cap and drank it down. Beyond the door she could hear the children talking.
“They say he chopped a girl’s head off and she comes back to look for it,” said Fatty.
“Don’t, Fatty! It gives me the shivers just thinking about it. He kilt himself, didn’t he?”
Fatty nodded and grinned. “Yep. Drowned himself in the fishpond!”
Mrs Meredith came back into the kitchen and sat down at the table.
Fatty glanced up at her. Her eyes were red as though she’d rubbed them too hard, or had been cutting up onions.
“Why did he drown himself?” Iffy asked.
“Because the girl he loved, loved someone else.”
“Who was she?” said Iffy her eyes bright in the glow of the firelight.
“A foreign girl. She had a baby in the home for bad girls. She gave it away.”
Mrs Meredith banged her cup down hard on the table and tea slopped over the side into the saucer, strong dark tea made with Fussell’s milk.
“Whoever told you that! That’s a load of old nonsense. Nobody had a baby! Nobody! That’s just nasty old gossip.”
“Sorry, Mrs Meredith. I was only saying what I heard.”
“Oh forget it…that’s enough talk of ghosts and daft old stuff. Who’s for a game of cards? Go and fetch them, Iffy.”
The playing cards were kept in the right-hand drawer of the sideboard in the back parlour. Iffy hated going into the back parlour on her own so she dragged Fatty with her.
Together they stepped from the warm glow of the kitchen into the gloom and fustiness of the parlour.
“Who’s that?” Fatty said.
Iffy jumped.
“Where!”
He pointed up at an enormous sepia photograph of an old woman that hung on the wall.
Iffy breat
hed with relief.
“Oh, it’s only my nan’s mam’s mam.”
“Ugly old cow, ent she?” said Fatty.
“Shhh!” Iffy giggled, and put her finger to her lips. “She swam all the way over from Ireland.”
“Why?”
“They ran out of potatoes.”
“By the size of her she probably ate them all.”
“Hush up! My nan’ll hear you.”
“What’s that, Iffy?”
Fatty pointed at an old green glass bottle at the back of the sideboard.
“Holy water,” she said.
“Oh.” He sounded bored.
“It can do miracles though.”
“Don’t be daft!”
“It can. Come on, let’s go.”
She didn’t want to hang around in the parlour a minute longer than she had to. She pulled open the drawer in the sideboard, snatched up a packet of cards and dragged Fatty back into the kitchen.
“It can, can’t it, Nan?” she said.
“It can what?”
“Your bottle of holy water can do miracles.”
“Well, it cured Mrs Bunting’s warts when nothing else would shift them…she’d tried everything. And Auntie Blod down the valley’s shingles…And Auntie Mary Johanna had the baby she’d always wanted.”
Fatty winked at Iffy over his seventh piece of toast.
She knew what he was thinking. She shook her head.
“My dad brought it back from abroad, didn’t he, Nan?”
“Ay, he did, Iffy, God rest his soul…that bottle is all that we have left of him. Now who’s going to shuffle?”
Spain, 2003
The clock on the ancient church of Santa Maria Magdalena clattered out the hour, and the dusty pigeons perched between the sleepy gargoyles woke from their early siesta and flew in disarray above the square. Will Sloane crossed the baked dust of the road, on his way to the clinic on the Avenida de Los Angeles for his appointment with the heart specialist.
The air was still, the heat overwhelming. For months now there had been no respite from the sun. He wiped the sweat from his brow and winced as the pulse in his head hammered into a headache.