A Winter Flame

by Milly Johnson

  You haven’t a clue, Miss Douglas. You haven’t a clue what people want or need because you are too out of touch with everything. His words bounced into her skull to kick her whilst she was down. He was right, she was a mess.

  She sipped at her coffee and heard shouting and laughter from outside. The men were working 24/7 on the park to get it ready. Everyone was pulling together so hard but there was always a lot of jollity around, most of it at Effin’s comic profanities. She remembered the one and only time she and Jonathan had been to a theme park. She refused to go on the big rides, so Jonathan had joined her on the spinning teacups and pretended to be terrified. They’d hardly had time to do many things: one short holiday, one visit to a theme park . . .

  ‘He’s gone for good – dead, ash, dust, worm food. What, are you waiting for him to rise like bloody Lazarus? It’s pathetic. You’re a laughing stock.’

  Is that what people thought about her – that she was some sort of modern-day Miss Haversham?

  She felt tears gather behind her eyes and reached for the newspaper on the edge of Jacques’ table to divert her thoughts, which was a bad idea. The front page was taken up with a picture of yesterday’s funeral of the young female soldier who lived in Ketherwood.

  The coffin bore a teardrop wreath of white roses.

  ‘Town Mourns Brave Sharon’ was the headline.

  Brave Ketherwood girl Private Sharon Wilkinson was buried yesterday three weeks after her twenty-first birthday. Private Wilkinson was serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps when her patrol came under heavy fire.

  Her father John Wilkinson of Red Grove said, ‘The whole community couldn’t be more upset than it is. She was just coming into blossom. It was an honour to have my girl for twenty-one years.’

  Her boyfriend Kevin Hall said, ‘She were the best (sic). I was going to ask her to marry me on Christmas Day. We had so much to look forward to. I’m totally gutted.’

  War amputee Lieutenant Jean Jackson gave a moving eulogy at Ketherwood church at a service led by the Reverend Stephen Moorside.

  Donations in lieu of flowers are to be given to the Yorkshire Fund for Disabled Servicemen.

  There was a picture of her boyfriend, a young bald-headed man with a tattoo on his neck of Sharon’s name. His head looked at odds with the smart suit he was wearing and the long-stemmed white rose that he was carrying. Eve recognized that lost look in his eyes, which the photographer had captured perfectly. He and Sharon had planned out a whole future which had crumbled instantly. He would have no direction, he would crave oblivion. All the things of life would hold no interest or colour for him. He would feel like he was standing still in the middle of a motorway with cars zooming around him.

  She closed the paper hurriedly and tossed it back on Jacques’ desk. Today had been a totally shit day. She scanned through her emails and replied to one from the Yorkshire Post about drumming up some publicity. Then the front door burst open and one of the Polish workers tumbled in.

  ‘Is Captain here?’

  ‘No, I don’t know where he is. What’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s be-cause,’ said the young Pole.

  ‘Because what?’

  ‘No,’ and he started to do a mime. ‘Bee-course.’ He was stamping on the ground with one foot.

  What the chuff?

  Now he was gesturing that something was very tall and had a huge nose. Then he started thumping his chest. ‘BEEE-COURSE. SEEK.’

  ‘Show me,’ said Eve, before she snapped. ‘I follow you.’

  He seemed to understand her pathetic attempt at pidgin English and charged out of the Portakabin, checking she was behind him. He turned left into the dark enchanted forest just as the train was chuffing up the track.

  ‘It’s all mended. Want a lift?’ called Thomas. ‘Goes as slow as an old snail now.’

  ‘I don’t know where I’m supposed to be going,’ said Eve.

  ‘Oy, Josef. Want a lift?’ said Thomas to the young Pole. ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘BEE-COURSE. SEEK.’

  ‘Get on, then.’

  The language divide obviously didn’t exist between the Poles and the Welsh.

  ‘Did you understand that?’ said Eve in disbelief.

  ‘He said that the big horse is sick.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Eve. Not this. Not Christopher. Not today. Not any day. He was a lovely old fellow.

  ‘Has anyone rung the vet?’ asked Eve, getting a blank look from Josef.

  ‘Has anyone rung the vet?’ Thomas repeated to him.

  ‘Nie,’ Josef replied to him.

  ‘How the bloody hell can he understand you and not me? I’m saying the same thing.’ huffed Eve. ‘And why is this damned train so slow?’

  ‘It’s mended,’ said Thomas.

  ‘Well unmend it,’ grumped Eve. ‘This speed is pants.’

  As they came to the end of the track, Eve recognized the big-coated figure of Jacques in the near distance, talking down his phone and pacing from side to side. He’d had a shave and a very short haircut, she saw as they got even closer. She felt strangely reassured that he was there. He would take command, as he had when Holly was giving birth. Whatever was wrong with the old horse would be sorted. Then she neared the side of the paddock and saw Christopher, laid out on his side, panting, legs giving an occasional twitch. A few of the elves were standing by the fence, the old one who walked with a limp was wiping his eyes with an enormous hankie. Tim was on the floor, cradling the big lad’s head.

  ‘I think it’s his heart,’ he said with a voice full of trembles. ‘He just keeled over. Is the vet on his way, Captain?’

  ‘On his way,’ called Jacques, clicking off his phone. ‘All we can do is keep Christopher as comfortable as possible.’

  Eve rushed inside the paddock and bent on the ground beside Tim and stroked Christopher’s huge white cheek.

  Tears were coursing down Tim’s face and dropping onto Christopher’s mane. ‘I gave him a right good brush this morning as well. He loves that.’

  Eve felt Jacques towering behind her.

  Then Christopher’s eyes dropped shut as if the stroking was sending him to sleep and Tim felt an increased weight on his leg. ‘Oh no,’ he yelled. ‘Don’t you dare bloody die on me, you little sod.’

  But there was no rise and fall in Christopher’s flanks any more. Jacques dropped to his haunches and placed his hand on Christopher’s jaw where the pulse would be. There was nothing.

  ‘He’s gone,’ was all he said, and a sad eruption of grief overwhelmed them all. Tim was sobbing, some of the builders were shaking their heads, one of the younger elf-ladies was handing out tissues from her handbag. Eve wasn’t even aware that she was crying until she saw the splashes land on Christopher’s cheek.

  The ponies were protesting, shut away in the stable. One of them sounded as if it was trying to kick the door in.

  ‘Go home, Tim,’ said Jacques gently. ‘I’ll wait for the vet.’

  ‘Can we bury him here?’ asked Tim, sounding like a small boy wanting to bury a hamster rather than a grown man with a horse.

  Jacques looked to Eve.

  ‘Yes, of course, he belongs here,’ said Eve. ‘I promise you we’ll do that.’

  Tim, not caring what anyone thought, bent over and kissed the horse on his head, stroking him, saying goodbye. Then Effin helped him up and walked with him, his comforting hand on Tim’s shoulder, and the others drifted away, all except for Jacques and Eve, who was still stroking Christopher’s mane.

  ‘You can go home. I’ll stay with him till the vet gets here,’ said Jacques. ‘I’ll cover him for tonight and Tim and I will bury him tomorrow.’

  Eve nodded and leaned over to give the old horse a kiss too. He smelt of stables and the mud he liked to roll in. He smelt of hay and happy times.

  Jacques surprised her by placing his hand on her elbow to help her up.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘No worries,’ he replied, as if it was
an automatic, gallant gesture rather than one he had chosen to make.

  They heard a car rumble down the service road.

  ‘That’ll be the vet,’ said Eve.

  ‘I’ll take you back on the train, missus,’ called Thomas.

  Just as Eve was about to board, Jacques called to her.

  ‘Her name was Catherine. She was a sergeant from Devon and she was shot twelve hours after landing in Afghanistan on her first duty. We were together for nine months.’

  ‘Pardon?’ said Eve.

  ‘You know,’ he said.

  Then the vet braked sharply into the space between them and Eve climbed on the train to take the interminably slow service back to the front gates, wondering what the hell Jacques had been talking about. An ex-girlfriend, obviously, but why was any of that Eve’s business?

  Her house felt especially cold when she walked into it. Large and cold and weighted with loneliness. She walked in the dark to her office to the patiently burning flame and wondered if Christopher had made it up there yet. Did animals go to heaven? She didn’t think her Aunt Evelyn would want to go there if she wasn’t going to be reunited with Fancy and Kringles. A medium she had once been to told her that spirits often hung around until after the funeral before ‘making their way upstairs’. Mind you, that medium had also told her that she’d meet a man in a uniform and live happily ever after. ‘He’ll have an accident, but don’t worry, he’ll cope with it,’ the daft old cow had said. And because of that, when those men in suits arrived on her doorstep, she couldn’t take it in: that Jonathan’s accident was a fatal one. Were all mediums fake? They couldn’t be, surely? She had watched programmes on the television when mediums had delivered details to their audiences that they couldn’t possibly have known. So they had to be communicating with the dead, right? Eve had been to a couple of different mediums after Jonathan died, but they’d told her a load of codswallop. ‘He sends his love.’ ‘He says he doesn’t want you to be unhappy.’ Nothing specific that would identify him, like ‘This guy says he wishes he were biting that bit on your ear that always makes you giggle.’ Or ‘I have someone here who wants to know if you’ve finally changed that broken light fitting in the downstairs toilet?’

  ‘Jonathan, I’m begging you to send me a sign,’ said Eve. ‘I need it so much. Today’s been just pants. I wish you were here.’ She picked up his old jumper that she kept on her office chair and raised it to her nose, inhaling the smell which wasn’t of him any more, even though she had never washed it. Kevin Hall would be doing the same to a coat or a pillowcase imbued with Sharon Wilkinson’s scent, no doubt. He would try and cling on to every last vestige of his darling that remained on the real earth, and would lose a little more of her each day.

  Then she knew what Jacques had been talking about just before the vet’s car drew up. And she wanted to sink to the ground with shame.

  Chapter 42

  Eve was surprised that she had managed to sleep a wink, what with all the stuff that was whirring around in her head like an over-stuffed washing machine that threatened to blow the door off. But sleep she did because she came-to with the shrill, annoying alarm piercing a dream that she couldn’t remember in detail, only that it was something to do with her grandmother driving a train. Before her lay a day where she had to go into work and face a man who knew she had been in his house and seen that uniform hanging up in his wardrobe. And piecing together all the clues, it could only have come from Phoebe. She recalled how he had turned to ice after taking Phoebe to the carousel. God only knows what the little red-haired girl had said to him. There was nothing to do but face it head on and get the apology out of the way. She dressed quickly, threw an instant espresso down her throat, and locked up the house. She both hoped he was and hoped he wasn’t in the Portakabin when she arrived at Winterworld.

  He was there. Fiddling with the portable heater. There was a full pot of fresh coffee, its warm, cosy smell permeating the office space. He stole a look behind him at Eve, gave her the briefest of nods by way of a greeting, and then returned to attending the calor gas fire.

  After taking a long fortifying breath she said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What for?’ He didn’t look behind him.

  ‘You know,’ she said.

  She watched him stop what he was doing for a moment, then carry on.

  ‘You’ll have the office to yourself this morning. I’m going to help bury Christopher. The vet says it was more than likely his heart that gave up on him.’

  ‘That’s very sad,’ said Eve, taking off her coat and hanging it up on the peg. ‘Maybe we could take in another horse. You know, give an old one a retirement home, rescue one from the knacker’s yard, like Aunt Evelyn did.’

  His shoulders jerked as if they had been surprised by a laugh, but he still didn’t turn around.

  ‘I’m sure Tim would appreciate that suggestion.’

  ‘I’ve also been thinking,’ said Eve, still quietly, still shamed. ‘What if we renamed the train ‘The Nutcracker Express’ and made it a faster, rickety ride. Not as mad as it was, but a little less boring than the mended version.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Jacques was nodding. Then he straightened his long legs and zipped up his coat. ‘Do you want to tell Effin, or shall I?’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ replied Eve, feeling dreadfully awkward with him now. She wanted to ask him what Phoebe had said – God only knows what childish slant she had put on things; she didn’t like to think where the Topshop connection came into it. Please God, don’t let her have heard the bit about him being a cross-dresser. But whatever her little fox-haired god-daughter had let slip, she had managed to make it crystal clear to him that Eve had been snooping in his wardrobe and really, it didn’t get more incriminating than that.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ said Jacques. And as he went out, the cold air swirled into the office and caused Eve to shiver right down to her bones.

  Auntie Susan lifted her mood half an hour later.

  ‘I’ve just had a visit from Pav. He came to invite me to the surprise wedding,’ she gushed down the phone.

  ‘I hope you acted totally gobsmacked,’ said Eve.

  ‘I was like Meryl Streep,’ laughed Susan. Eve shuddered. She had seen her auntie acting in the Hoppleton Players’ version of A Christmas Carol. Meryl Streep she was not. ‘I’m off to buy an outfit in Meadowhall when Patrick finishes work. I think Pav must be doing the rounds and telling people today, so be prepared. He was off to Max’s and Bel’s houses next.’

  Max and Bel had been a brick to Violet when she was going through the trauma of splitting up from her last boyfriend. They’d been supportive and understanding and protective – everything that Eve hadn’t been because she had been too stuck on Planet Eve, surrounded by Eve’s problems and all things Eve. Some friend she was. Especially after all the love and support she’d had from the Flockton side of the family over the years. If it wasn’t for them, Eve would have been in care for sure. Considering Jacques hadn’t been in her life for very long, he seemed to have got the measure of her too quickly.

  ‘What about Granny Ferrell?’ Eve asked her aunt. ‘Is she coming?’

  ‘No,’ Susan said flatly and definitely. ‘She’s a loose cannon and after all Violet and Pav have been through, I don’t want anything to spoil it for them. And as you know, Eve, your grandmother has a particular skill for spoiling things. I won’t let her on this occasion. She can look at the photos afterwards and moan that she wasn’t invited, but somehow I don’t think she’ll be all that bothered, whatever her nasty mouth decides to say.’

  Eve agreed. Her grandmother was too good at knowing the wounding point. Everyone would be on tenterhooks if she was at the wedding, and she would enjoy commanding that sort of power. She put the phone down and thought how lovely Pav was to arrange all this behind Violet’s back, even if it wasn’t a church with a vicar, but a tiny chapel in a theme park and Santa Claus conducting the ceremony.

  As she looked through her diar
y, she wondered if she should go over to the paddock and see how Jacques was getting on burying the old horse. She didn’t really want to; she was sick of death – it seemed to be everywhere she looked at the moment – in newspapers, on the news, and the image of Sharon Wilkinson’s pretty face was branded on her brain. She tried to settle to work but couldn’t. She took two more sips of her coffee, then reached for her coat and set off towards the paddock. She couldn’t take the train because Thomas wasn’t around. He was glued to that train usually, so Eve presumed he had gone off to the loo or for a quick coffee. She cut through the forest and again felt that strange magical feeling that always trembled down to her bones whenever she watched those old Czechoslovakian fairy tales as a child, like The Singing Ringing Tree and Three Gifts for Cinderella. As she neared the paddock, she saw the unmistakeable back view of Thomas’s overalls and his bare bald head, because he was holding his cap in his hand. All the Welsh and Polish lads were there, gathered outside the fence, even Effin. Jacques was there, spade in hand, and despite the frost chilling the air, his coat was off and his shirtsleeves were rolled up. There were silvery lines criss-crossing down his arms, Eve noticed. Old scars.

  Thomas nudged the workman at his side who budged over to let ‘the missus’ through the crowd. Even Holly and her twin boys were at the adjoining fence looking across.

  ‘They’re just going to start,’ whispered Thomas. ‘It’s heartbreakin’, innit?’

  Jacques noticed her and nodded a brief greeting, without smiling. He hadn’t smiled at her in days, and she was both surprised and annoyed that it bothered her.

  ‘Christopher wasn’t with us for very long,’ said Tim with a cough, then his voice froze and he couldn’t carry on.

  ‘Christopher might not have been with us for very long, but at least he ended his days with good love and care,’ Jacques took over, against a background of sniffing. ‘A little love in life goes a long way, and I think Tim will tell you that Christopher really perked up living here with us. Some mornings he was like a spring chicken.’