A Spell of Winter

by Helen Dunmore

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ said Kate. ‘Couldn’t he see you don’t know anything? Why did you let him? Did you know what you were doing?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘don’t say anything. Nobody must know.’

  ‘Everybody’s going to know soon enough. Look at you. It’s only because they’re not looking that they don’t see it. It’s in your face too. My mother could tell when a girl was pregnant just from looking at her face. It’s in the eyes. Look at you, look at those brown marks under them. You’ll be feeling it move yourself, it must be about that time.’

  I felt a snake coil in my belly. It had a flat, inhuman face. Nobody had seen it yet, but soon I would feel it. It would rustle, then stir in its basket inside me where it now lay sleeping. At last it would emerge and everybody would see it. But what kind of creature would it be? How was it possible that it could live? A monster, Rob said. He had made sure this would never happen, but it had happened.

  ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘Help me, Kate. You’ve got to help me.’

  It was moving. Now I thought about it I had been feeling it for days. It was blind inside me. I must not think of a snake or I would want to tear at myself until I had gouged it out. It was like a clothes moth fluttering in a cupboard. That was better. But that night I saw snakes. I felt the tiny stir of its tail and I knew that Rob was right. We had made something that ought never to have been made.

  ‘It’s a baby,’ said Kate, ‘a little baby.’

  ‘You’ve got to help me. If you don’t I’ll do it myself. I’ll find out how, you can’t stop me. I don’t care what I do to myself. I don’t care if it kills me.’

  She would help me, I knew she would. She knew things like that.

  ‘I’ll help you,’ said Kate. Her face looked strange in the light, as if she was frightened of someone. But there was no one in the room to make her afraid.

  The woman had been a nurse, Kate said. She knew what she was doing. She would meet us at the empty cottage at eight o’clock the next night. She had given Kate a list of what to bring. Kate kept it folded in her hand and did not let me see it.

  ‘But it’s not safe in the empty cottage,’ I said. ‘The ceiling’s coming down.’

  ‘We shan’t be staying,’ said Kate. ‘It doesn’t work right away. There’ll be time to get you back here. It’s just we can’t bring the old woman into the house.’

  ‘Someone’ll see us.’

  ‘They won’t. Anyway, you’ve been ill. You had a fancy to go out for air and then you were tired and we sheltered in the cottage. Sick people have fancies.’

  ‘You must keep Rob away from me. Don’t let him come in to me.’

  ‘I’ll say I’m sleeping with you while you’re ill.’

  ‘Yes, that’s good. And Kate –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Will there be much blood?’

  ‘There was with –’ she stopped and I knew she had been going to say a name. I wondered if it was Eileen’s, but I knew she wouldn’t tell me.

  ‘Then put old sheets on my bed. We can burn them.’

  She looked at me.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t that a good idea?’

  ‘It is. Only I’d never have thought you’d be so practical.’

  Her words hung over us.

  ‘This time next week, it’ll all be over,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t wear that skirt again,’ said Kate. ‘Anyone can tell if they look.’

  ‘They won’t be looking. People only see what they expect to see.’

  ‘That’s true enough. Now get some sleep.’

  ‘You’ll help me.’

  ‘I promise.’

  I will tell you what the woman did. It was a crime. She made me lie down on the splintery floor of the empty cottage. Kate had brought a blanket to put under me. The woman made me open my legs. She had a rubber bag with liquid in it, and a syringe. It went up inside me and she squirted hard until there was flashing pain in my side and she stopped. Kate had gone to the door to look out. I must have screamed but there was nobody coming.

  ‘It doesn’t hurt,’ the woman said, looking at me hard. We had made an owl hoot. The silence of the night rearranged itself.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It was the shock, that’s all.’ Kate helped me up. I was shaking because of the cold in the cottage and the smell of dirt. I felt as if my insides had washed loose.

  ‘If it doesn’t work, send for me again,’ said the woman. ‘It’s all in the price.’ Kate counted the money into her hand. It was my money. The woman dipped her hand into the folds of her skirt and the coins were gone. I thought of her money-dirty hands entering my body.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Kate. ‘Can you walk? We should be going.’

  She was on edge, wanting to get us away from the empty cottage and the woman, but I didn’t care. I might as well lie here and bleed in the dirt and make the owls hoot. I was all right. I was nothing. I could not even tell how I felt. If I hadn’t been holding Kate’s arm I wouldn’t have known I had a body.

  ‘Don’t be frightened,’ said Kate. ‘This happens to lots of girls and you’d never know. They go on and get married. It was his fault, not yours.’

  ‘I’m not frightened,’ I said. I thought of my father, piling the stones into heaps on the drive, two piles, the saved and the damned. We picked our way back home over the snapping twigs, and I climbed the staircase to my room alone. I was not ill and nothing hurt me, but my feet felt heavy and it was an effort to keep climbing. To go up those stairs was as hard as to climb into a tower, but I knew I must. Kate had been clever, she had made my grandfather believe that another doctor should see how Rob’s leg had healed. She had done it as if reluctantly, sorry for the money it would cost, and he had believed her. So my grandfather had taken Rob to see a surgeon in town, although he wouldn’t be half as good as Dr Milmain, Kate said.

  ‘Never mind, it’s money well spent. We’ll have the house empty,’ she said, and she laughed.

  I heard it in my head as I went up the stairs. Money well spent. Money well spent. I had only to get to my room and later Kate would come. I was at the top of the stairs now, and the darkness around me was beginning to sway, but nothing hurt. I would get there. I forced myself through a narrow tunnel of lights which sparked and fizzed in front of my eyes. I fumbled for the door handle and there it was, and although I could see almost nothing now I knew the way to my bed.

  It began to work in my dreams. My dreams were hurting. I rolled over and there was Kate.

  ‘Hush,’ she said. ‘You’re making a noise.’

  ‘It’s started,’ I said. There were big hands working at my stomach, squeezing it. It hurt but it was not too bad. I could get through this, I thought. Then a sharp white pain jerked into me. Kate put her hand over my mouth. I tasted the sweat on it.

  ‘Keep quiet. They’ll hear you,’ she said.

  I turned my face into the pillow. The pain snapped at me, then shrank away. The pain was the old woman’s hands still in me, her dirty hands. It was coming again.

  A long time later Kate was pushing at me. ‘Lie still. Lie still. I’ve got to have a look at you.’

  I felt myself bleeding. It was warm and wet and it came out whether I wanted it to or not. I tried to close myself up with my muscles but there was another helpless gush of blood.

  ‘It’s stuck,’ said Kate. ‘That’s what’s making you bleed. Try to push. If we get it out you’ll be all right.’

  She was pulling at me and my legs were shaking so much I could not keep still. My body thumped against the bed as if it was a fish someone else had landed. I was in my body but I could make myself go out and watch it. Kate had washed her hands with yellow soap and they were clean. I saw the pale half-moons of her nails, with blood on them. I sat up and felt the blood slide into a pool under me.

  ‘It’s coming, it’s coming,’ said Kate, and I felt it come through me in a slithering rush, and out of me. There was more blood, then nothing but quietness inside me. It w
as gone. I lay back and there was a round stain on the ceiling that matched a pattern in my brain. I must have been staring at it all the time, without knowing it. I lay there flooded with something like happiness, though it was not happiness. The thing was gone and I was alive. I turned my head and saw Kate standing over a bucket. There was a slow, creaking noise coming from it, as if rust had a voice.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing. It’s nothing,’ said Kate, her face hidden from me as she bent over the bucket.

  ‘Don’t look at it,’ I said. I didn’t want Kate to see what it was like.

  ‘It’s nothing to be frightened of,’ she said. ‘It was a girl.’

  The creaking noise had stopped. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘A little girl.’

  ‘Let me see. Show it to me.’

  She stood between me and the bucket. ‘Lie still, or you’ll start yourself bleeding again.’

  ‘Show it to me. Kate, show it to me.’

  I wouldn’t have known what it was if she hadn’t pointed. Head. Arms. Legs. It was a curled up thing, top-heavy and dark as a skinned rabbit. It squirmed slowly, but that was only the movement of the bucket as it swung from Kate’s hand. Slowly my eyes settled and the little creature became what it was. It was tied to a bloody sac but you could see its hands, its feet, its big, noticeable sex. It was a little female thing. It was not moving.

  ‘You were further on than we thought. I’ll take it away now,’ said Kate.

  She would not tell me where she buried it. When I was better I went looking for it, first of all in the garden, then farther afield, in the woods, the orchard, the quiet corners of the kitchen garden. When I saw fresh soil I crouched down and paddled my fingers through it, but it was only where John had been digging. I looked under the silver birches where we had buried our pet finches long ago, but Kate had been too clever for me and it was not there. I had to sit for a long time with my back against the cold trunk of the birch before I had the strength to go back to the house.

  *

  I did not let Rob come to me at night any more. The surgeon in town had given him exercises to do, to strengthen his leg, and I sat and watched him do them. He swung his leg up and round, up and round.

  ‘Wasn’t that farther, Cathy? Wasn’t that farther than I got it yesterday?’

  I nodded. The leg jerked as if it had a life of its own. I could not imagine touching my brother. He hopped and swung, hopped and swung. His leg would be as strong as a spider’s soon.

  ‘We’ll have another dance!’ panted Rob. His eyes were brilliant. ‘As soon as I’m better. You and me and Kate, like we did before. You’ll like that, won’t you, Cathy?’

  I sat with my hands folded. I was neither thin nor fat now; I was nothing. Blood seeped rustily out of me, into the wad of cloth between my legs. I thought I would never stop bleeding.

  ‘Kate!’ I whispered from the bottom of the stairs. It was moonlight. The light fell slant through the deep little window at the turn of the stairs, on to the drugget. I was barefoot. I whispered again but she didn’t hear, and I could not bring myself to go up the stairs.

  ‘Kate, where did you bury her?’

  I would find her. I would kneel by the grave and eat the soil from it. I would make roses grow from the grave of my girl, but they would be slim, narrow-petalled yellow roses, not the fat red ones my father had spilled all over me.

  ‘Kate, where did you bury her?’

  I only whispered, but I heard footsteps. When we were little she had told us, ‘Don’t shout. You only need to whisper and I’ll come to you,’ and the big bag of the night had been full of whispering. She was at the top of the stairs now, in her long white nightgown with her plait of hair slipping forward over one shoulder. Her face was swollen with sleep, not my Kate’s face.

  ‘What is it? Are you ill?’ she asked me.

  She was here but now I could not ask my question. I stared up at her, at her feet curling on the edge of the drugget and the strong column of her body. She blocked the way up.

  ‘Wait, I’ll come down,’ she said, and she pushed back her plait. She didn’t want me to come upstairs. It was her place, and Eileen’s, never ours. Behind her the floor creaked as if there were someone walking behind her.

  ‘Is Eileen there?’ I asked. ‘Can I see her?’

  ‘You’re not awake yet, are you, Catherine? You’re half in your dreams. It’s years since Eileen went. Come on back to bed,’ and she started down the stairs towards me.

  ‘I can see her behind you,’ I said. Of course Eileen was there. The night ruffled and parted, showed her for a second, then closed over itself like water. If I walked round the house I would see everyone. I would find my mother sleeping in her white room, on her pile of pillows. This time she would turn her face to me as I eased open the door. Her face would shine out from its cloud of hair. I was her daughter. She would not hurt me.

  ‘She would never hurt her own daughter,’ I said, but the darkness squirmed and I saw the little female thing in her dress of blood.

  ‘Kate, where did you bury her?’ I asked, but Kate was already going backwards as if a strong arm was pulling her up and away, away from me.

  Sixteen

  The next day Mr Bullivant brought over a letter for me. It was a thick cream envelope with unfamiliar black writing slanted across it. Miss Catherine Allen, it said. I love the sight of my name on an envelope. It looks so definite, so sure that I really exist. I fingered the envelope, wondering who had sent the letter and why it had been delivered to Ash Court. I’d open it later, when I was alone – but here was Mr Bullivant, planted as if he meant to remain. This time I’d have to ask him in, never mind what Kate thought. Every day the stepping stones I had to jump were wider apart. What did Kate think, what had Miss Gallagher seen, what did Rob guess? A forest of eyes watched me as I moved around the house, my body stiff with the stiffness of someone trying to look at ease. The stones rocked under my feet, half sunk in water which was rising fast.

  Kate was feeding logs on to the fire as we went through the hall. She sat back on her heels and stared at us. She was seeing the man who had brought that long bloody night on us, not the one who really walked beside me. I thought of how we had made Mr Bullivant into a sort of ghost of himself, and wished we had not. I should have made her believe it was someone else. Her long eyes would have frightened me if they’d been turned on me with that look in them, but of course he knew nothing of what was in Kate’s mind.

  ‘A fine morning,’ he said to her.

  ‘I dare say. I’ve not been in it to find out,’ said Kate.

  He raised his eyebrows at me. ‘What’s eating her?’ he whispered.

  I felt myself colour as I looked back over my shoulder at Kate. I wanted to stay in the daylight world with Mr Bullivant. He had the fresh smell of morning on him from his ride, and I stood close to him, loving the smell which was like the smell of innocence. I was so tired. Kate stared straight at me, one of her hands flat on the floor, the other holding a log. I wondered what she saw. She was too sharp. Could you tell by looking at two people what lay between them? There was not enough between us, the air was thin. And there was Kate showing in her face that she remembered everything I’d said the night before.

  ‘I wasn’t really awake,’ I wanted to say to her. ‘I was imagining things, that’s all.’ But Kate believed in ghosts, and that they came when they were wanted. If I’d seen Eileen, it was for a reason.

  I took Mr Bullivant into the conservatory. It was faintly warm, though the day was sunless, and the dusty smell of indoor soil was stronger than the smell of the orange trees.

  ‘I’ll ask Kate to bring you a glass of madeira,’ I said, but he shook his head.

  ‘I only came to deliver your letter.’

  ‘Strange that it was sent to you. They don’t often make a mistake, and it has my name written on it clearly.’ I looked at the address again. The writing was certainly clear, and beautiful.

/>   ‘Not really strange at all. There’s something I should tell you. It was posted inside another letter, and sent to me on purpose. If it had arrived here with that writing on it, you would never have had it. Your grandfather knows your mother’s writing.’

  I was still looking at the black lettering with its smooth downstrokes and delicate slanting upstrokes. As I looked the strokes flexed themselves like the glossy wings of a blackbird. It was my name, written by my mother. She’d sat at her desk in a window looking over the sea, an open window with flowers growing in it, and she’d blotted her sheet of paper swiftly, reached for an envelope, dipped her pen and written my name. She had written the word that was me, making my name as she’d made me long ago. I touched the ink.

  ‘Why is she writing to me?’

  ‘She didn’t tell me what she was going to write. She just said she wanted to write to you, and would I make sure the letter reached you.’

  ‘Why? What’s made her write after all this time? Have you been telling her about me?’

  He was crisping leaves in his fingers, not noticing that they were crumbling to pieces. It was dry here, the soil in the pots was dry as sand. ‘Nothing you would mind.’

  ‘You had no right. And nor has she – she has no right to know anything about me.’

  ‘Hasn’t she?’

  ‘No. Not any more.’

  ‘But at least read the letter. It may explain.’

  ‘It’s too late for that,’ I said. I wanted the morning world which he’d brought with him, but it had gone. He was in with us now, dragged into the story. I was never going to get away from it. My fingers were sweating. The ink was blurred on the smooth cream-laid envelope. I itched to destroy it. But I would wait, and do it where no one could watch me. I’d given away too much already.

  ‘She writes such good letters, too,’ he said, half-teasing, as if I were a child.

  ‘Does she,’ I said. ‘Well, I’ll have to take your word for that.’ Anger spurted down my fingers and I ripped the envelope across, then again the other way, and again. It was hard to tear because there were several thick sheets of paper inside, folded together, but I did it. I ripped up the black writing as if I were choking off a voice. Little pieces fluttered onto the black-and-white tiles and into the pots, and Mr Bullivant stooped down to gather them.