A Spell of Winter

by Helen Dunmore

  My nose was fine. I would catch it as soon as it came, that first acrid thread of fear.

  ‘Yes, a guessing-game,’ I said. ‘Guess what happened here.’

  ‘Really, Catherine, this isn’t such awfully good fun, you know,’ she said. She was trying to be one of us, the way she used to try. Using our language.

  ‘It happened a long time ago,’ I said. ‘Guess.’ The light was thickening. She was quite clear to me, but I wondered how well she could see my face. I put the spade by my side and knelt down on the earth, beginning to brush away the dead leaves.

  ‘What are you doing, Catherine?’

  ‘Looking for something we left here.’

  She was watching me with her mouth a little open. Ten minutes ago she would have asked if I was digging for treasure, but the heart was leaking out of her. ‘It was around here that we buried it,’ I murmured. She had to strain forward to hear me, but she heard me.

  ‘What? What did you bury?’ Her voice was sharp.

  ‘The hare,’ I said. ‘We brought it here and buried it. Rob shot it in the field. Do you think the bones will still be here?’

  ‘That’s why you brought that spade,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Partly. It’s ill-luck to meet a hare, did you know that? It’s a pity you haven’t got your scarab pin.’ She put her hand to her throat as if to fasten herself together. ‘There’s a poem Kate told me,’ I went on. ‘You have to say it when you meet the hare, to take away the ill-luck. We could say it when we find the bones. The hare has a hundred names, did you know that? You must call her by all of them. Call him ditch-diver, broken-leg, black-on-the-ears, white belly, beat-the-wind … We buried the hare just about here,’ I went on, patting the ground. ‘That’s strange, it feels warm. What if the hare were to break out of the soil and leap past us? If I leave my hand here, do you think I might feel her kick at the earth? She would come out of the ground with her ears laid back, ready to run. She was big, you know, as big as a young child. Do you believe in ghosts, Miss Gallagher?’

  ‘They are against my religion,’ she said, as firmly as she could.

  ‘Not against mine,’ I said, ‘I’ve seen them. Besides, if there weren’t ghosts, who could bear anyone going?’

  ‘They go to eternal happiness, Catherine.’

  ‘That’s lucky, then.’ I brushed my hands and stood up with the spade in them. It made a clean, heavy shape, swinging of its own weight.

  ‘You’re not going to dig it up, are you?’ asked Miss Gallagher.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘perhaps not. You’ve made me change my mind.’

  She liked that. I felt her pleasure, though it was nearly too dark to see her expression.

  ‘I told you a lie,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t Rob who shot the hare. It was me.’

  ‘Nonsense, Catherine, you couldn’t shoot then. You were only a little girl.’

  ‘Oh yes, I could. Rob taught me, but we didn’t let anyone else know. I was a good shot.’

  ‘We must be getting back, Catherine. It’s much too cold to stand here talking.’

  Her voice was brisk, a governess’ voice. But she couldn’t fool me, not any more.

  ‘I like it here,’ I said, hefting the spade a little. ‘Isn’t it one of those places that makes you want to stay?’

  ‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘I’m not feeling well. You’re not well, Catherine. You should be in bed.’

  ‘Really? Do you think there’s something wrong with me?’

  ‘You’re pale,’ she gabbled. ‘You need rest.’

  ‘You can’t even see me,’ I pointed out, ‘not properly.’

  ‘Catherine!’

  ‘A moral idiot. Is that what you think? Say it again.’

  ‘Catherine, stop it!’

  ‘No one saw you come, did they?’ I said. ‘I wish I had my brother here. These leaves make a good bed. Wouldn’t you like to sleep here, Miss Gallagher? Shall we lie down?’

  She made a dive but the brambles caught her before I did.

  ‘Sit down,’ I said, and she flumped on to the leaves. She whimpered a little and I forgot for a moment it was her and felt tender, as if she were an animal.

  ‘Hush,’ I said, ‘you’ll frighten the hare. But I told you a lie. It wasn’t a hare we killed. It was something else.’

  She was crying now. If there’d been more light I would have seen the tears and slime on her face. ‘The hill-leaper,’ I said, ‘the dew-thumper, the ghost in the grass. Do you believe in ghosts, Miss Gallagher? You made me kill her. If it hadn’t been for you no one else would have known.’

  I held the spade high. She saw it and burrowed down into herself, yapping with terror. Her hat was knocked off and her white bony neck gleamed under a thin knot of hair. The noise she made was thin and high and it went on and on. The thrush sang again, suddenly, startled.

  ‘You frightened him,’ I said, ‘why did you do that?’ The spade sliced down hard, into the earth. I felt the sing and shiver of it, and her noise stopped.

  ‘It didn’t touch you,’ I said scornfully. ‘Get up.’

  She had keeled over like a doll and was lying sideways on the earth. She was pretending I had hurt her, but I knew that all I had done was frighten her. She was all right.

  ‘Get up,’ I said again, but she didn’t move. Perhaps she had fainted. It was almost too dark to see, and I had forgotten to bring a candle. That was stupid. I bent down as close as I could without touching her. She was breathing in big, snoring breaths, and stuff was running out of the side of her mouth. While I watched she twitched suddenly, twice, her whole body jerking in its parcel of clothes, then the snoring stopped.

  I stood, and picked up the spade and the sacks. It was dark, but I could find my way in and out of this wood blindfold. There was the feather touch of old man’s beard blown against my face to guide me, and smooth holly trunks when I put out my fingers. The earth cupped my moving feet at each step. I would leave her there and slowly the hurt place would heal over. She would be ugly at first, but they would make her beautiful. They would all come out, the wood mice, the voles, the rabbits, the big spiders spinning out their stretchy webs. At first they would be frightened but then they would come closer, touching her cheeks and the hem of her dress. They’d walk around her until they had mapped the world her body made, then they would begin to climb. In the morning the rooks would rise boasting from their shaggy nests, and swirl above the clearing where she lay stiff with winter dew and starred all over with the points of spiders’ webs. A cold fresh breeze would rustle through the undergrowth, and for a while the thrush I’d heard would sing.

  Seventeen

  They were playing cards.

  ‘Two-handed bridge,’ my brother said, ‘Want to join in?’

  ‘How can I if it’s two-handed?’

  ‘Share Kate’s hand. Or mine if you like.’

  Kate was wearing a new dress. I’d seen her sewing it but it looked quite different on her body. The colour was a dark, dusty rose, almost brown in its folds. Her face took a new soft colour from it, and she had twisted a tortoiseshell comb into her hair.

  ‘You look beautiful, Kate,’ I said, stroking a fold of her skirts. The cloth was very soft, and there was a sheen on it which I’d never seen on plain wool.

  ‘It’s cashmere,’ said Kate.

  ‘Cashmere!’ It must have cost her a year’s wages. I looked at Rob but he was smiling down at his cards.

  ‘It’s my afternoon off,’ said Kate, ‘so I thought I’d dress myself for a change.’

  She had cut out the dress with a plain round neck and added a small lace collar. Kate had some bits of lace from home, collars and handkerchiefs, creamy and soft. She rinsed them in rainwater from the water butt, just as she rinsed her long hair in rainwater and splashed it on her skin in the mornings. You should try it, Cathy. Better than any of those old lotions they advertise in the newspapers. But I could never be bothered. The dress was simple because Kate could not sew to a difficult pattern,
but all she needed was that warm-shadowed cloth moulding to her breasts and hips. The rose cashmere made you think of how it was touching her.

  ‘Will you look at these,’ said Kate, spreading out her cards so I could see them, ‘what would you do with a hand like this?’

  But it was a good hand, I thought. ‘Play it,’ I said.

  ‘Mmm,’ said Kate, staring down at the cards. She didn’t even glance across at Rob; you wouldn’t have thought she was playing with him. ‘Oh well.’ Then she glanced up at me. ‘Hasn’t she come in then? You got rid of her, did you? I made sure she’d ask herself back to tea. I’m ready for my tea, aren’t you, Catherine? she mimicked in Miss Gallagher’s high, chivvying voice.

  The imitation was too good: Kate’s voice flickered over my skin, making it crawl. But I said woodenly, ‘Who?’

  ‘You know. Herself. Didn’t she come in with you?’

  Heat flashed up me. What had she seen? I looked down, shielding myself by scanning her cards again. ‘I’ve only just come in,’ I said casually. ‘Who’s been here?’

  ‘I made sure she went out with you,’ said Kate. ‘I watched the pair of you going round the side of the house when I was up at the window. Did she go off then? I thought you were going for a walk.’

  ‘Oh – Miss Gallagher. Yes, we did. But she left.’

  ‘Was it a nice walk with Euniss then? Where did you take her?’

  ‘Into the woods,’ I said.

  I felt Rob watching me. His eyes were dark, attentive pools. He was staring at me across the card table, but I wouldn’t look back. I watched the cards, but the gas light glared on us and my face would not stay still. I never had a twitch but something was plucking at the corner of my mouth. They knew I had been with her.

  She wouldn’t be missed for a while. A whole day perhaps, if we were lucky. But when people started to ask for Miss Gallagher, Kate would know that she’d been here. It didn’t matter that Rob knew, because that was the same as me knowing. I thought of Miss Gallagher wobbling home on her bicycle in the last light of the afternoon to make her solitary tea. Her house would be dank and quiet. She did not light a fire until evening if she could help it. Why? Coal was cheap, and we’d have given her wood. It was like her not to have a fire. Head up, legs slowly pumping up and down as the spokes ticked round and round. I heard the crunch of stones under her tyres and the tiny chatter of gravel inside her wheels. I had heard it so many times that I could not stop believing in it. Who was to say it wasn’t still going on? Kate believed it was. Kate knew it was just an ordinary day. Here they were, playing cards, and only the sunrise of Kate’s cashmere made the quiet scene by the fire at all unusual.

  If we kept quiet it could still be a day like any other. Miss Gallagher had gone for a walk with me and now she was on her way home. There she went, her face shiny with the evening mist, her mouth closed over her big yellow teeth and her eyes open and seeing.

  ‘Cathy,’ Rob said, ‘tell us what’s happened.’

  He was always quicker than me. He’d jumped ahead and seen what I hadn’t. There was danger in the pretence I’d begun. He had taken it all in as quick as thought. We had to cut in first. Be open, Cathy, show things as they are. There is still just time. His thoughts felt at me, urgent as exploring fingers. Don’t try to hide anything. And the spade was back on its nail in the potting-shed, having touched no one. Her bicycle was deep in the rhododendrons. There was nothing else. I had not touched her. Kate looked from one of us to the other.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘She fell down,’ I said. ‘She was ill suddenly, in the woods, and she fell down and started breathing wrong. It was like snoring. I didn’t know what to do. It was nearly dark. I couldn’t carry her. I would have hurt her, dragging her back through the woods.’

  ‘Did you try? Did you touch her?’ asked Rob.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  His eyes brimmed with something I couldn’t easily read. I had never seen him look at me like that, and I knew all his expressions. He leaned forward and gripped my wrist, hard.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us as soon as you came in?’ he asked, and I knew it wasn’t a real question, but a question asked so that Kate could hear it, and hear its answer. It was a line he was feeding me. If I followed it Rob would rescue me. He was holding on to the line and waiting for me, the way he always was. He would never let me fall. I tried to say his name but the other things came with it and filled my mouth like blood after a blow.

  ‘It was the shock,’ said Kate. ‘Look at her face. Look at her eyes. She’s been ill, she’s in no fit state for any of this. Of course that one would be taken ill just where she could do most harm. Not that she’s dead nor near it, so don’t you think it, Cathy.’

  ‘Then the noise stopped,’ I said. ‘I think she stopped breathing.’

  ‘It was all your imagination,’ said Kate. ‘You know what you are. She’ll have fainted, that’s all. Just a little faint looks bad enough when you’re alone. Unless it was a stroke – it sounds a bit like the stroke my grandmother had. Was her face twisted up at all, Cathy?’ And she screwed up her face at me inquiringly. Kate could never describe anything without mimicking it.

  ‘I couldn’t see. It was too dark.’

  The fire flared and the red-and-black faces of the cards looked up at me, composed and full of secret merriment. That Jack would lead you a dance, Kate always said when the cards were dealt. She and Rob would look after me. Perhaps it was not so terrible after all, since here we were talking. No one had sent the cards flying and fluttering around the room.

  ‘A stroke,’ Kate repeated, gaining belief as she spoke. ‘That’s what it was. That’ll be it for sure. Still, poor soul, she wants help. Where’s she lying?’

  ‘She’s deep in the woods,’ I said, ‘But I can find her.’

  ‘You shouldn’t go out again,’ said Rob. ‘We’ll need men to carry her. And lanterns.’

  ‘Send to the village for the Semple boys.’

  ‘No need to tell Grandfather yet.’

  ‘And a blanket – you’ll want a blanket to wrap her in. Poor idiot, but you’ve got to feel sorry for her.’

  ‘Brandy, Kate – and a hot brick for her feet. Get a bed ready. We’ll have to have her here till she can be moved.’

  ‘God above, if it’s not one invalid it’s another. You’ll have to be getting a trained nurse this time.’

  ‘What we’ll need is Dr Milmain. Send for him first off, Kate.’

  They had it organized, and there was no need for me to say anything. It was all happening so quickly now, voices in the hall, messages, boots clopping across the flagstones. Nobody liked Miss Gallagher but this was a surge of life in the dead time of winter. Suddenly the Semple boys stood there in stockinged feet, big and serious with excitement. They wouldn’t walk mud into the house, they said, they had been cleaning the clogged stream that ran to the millpond, and they’d been in mud to their – waists, they said delicately, seeing me.

  ‘You ought to have the doctor to her,’ said Theodore, looking at me. ‘She looks poorly.’

  ‘He’s been sent for,’ said Kate.

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Mrs Blazer with satisfaction, ‘he’s been sent for. That’s right. And who’s to tell her grandfather?’

  ‘No need for that yet,’ said Kate. ‘He’s in his study, not to be disturbed.’

  The Semple boys nodded. God alone knew what the old man got up to in that study of his, but everyone knew he had the devil’s temper if he was disturbed there. There was drama enough today without it. What were we good for if not to spice the lives that laboured for us? Here we were with a death among us, or as good as, and maybe more to come.

  ‘Can you remember just where it was?’ Rob asked me again. It seemed we had to say everything twice. Like actors, we had to show that we’d rehearsed. It looks like a play, I thought, the way all those faces turn to me, waiting for me to speak. And Rob and Kate watched me like prompters, turning the
leaves of their scripts over in their hands.

  ‘She ran back, you see, to get help,’ Kate said, her eyes snapping round the circle of faces. She glowed in her beautiful dress as she poured brandy against the cold. She handed out blankets, bandages and lanterns while I sat like a dead thing. She was that woman in my Bible, the dark one, graceful, holding her pitcher on her hip with one negligent hand. The woman at the well, that was it. How fast I was thinking. My thoughts leapt and joined, forming fantastic patterns. But I would have to stir now, I knew it, if we were to get to her. I’d thought I could leave her with the owls and foxes, but although no one loved her they wouldn’t leave her outside as if she were an animal. Look how we were all gathered to bring her home out of the night. They’d find her and fetch her home.

  I hadn’t seen her eyes because it was too dark and she was lying face down. People said that when a man was murdered you could find the image of his murderer if you looked into his eyes before he was cold. Like tiny mirrors they would show the face of the last one who had looked down on him. If Rob was there he would stand in front of them all and make sure nobody saw. It was crows that took the eyes of young lambs. I’d seen it. But Miss Gallagher was lying on her face. She could not look at me now and there would be no pictures in her eyes. The owl was watching her, sitting on his branch.

  ‘There’s no moon,’ I said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. We’ve the lanterns,’ said Rob.

  ‘I never touched her.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t. Anyone would have been frightened to touch her, the way she was,’ said Kate briskly. ‘I wouldn’t have liked to myself, for fear of doing more harm.’

  Her talk led them away from me. Kate was a liar like the mother peewit trailing her wing as she piped the predator away from her nest.

  ‘But you’ll never find her. I’ll have to come with you.’

  ‘You can’t do that, you’re not fit for it,’ said Rob. ‘Just be sensible and try to tell us where she is.’

  How strange it was to talk to Rob like that, every word spelled out for others to hear. It made us like two new, different people. ‘You don’t know the place. I’m all right now, Rob. It was just –’