A Spell of Winter

by Helen Dunmore

  ‘You wouldn’t know I’d ever been here.’

  ‘Of course you would.’

  I was tongue-tied. Kate was leaving and there was no arguing her out of it. She planned and packed with the rapid decisiveness I’d always loved, and I had to love the deft movements of her hands even now when they were acting against me. She had her railway ticket and her passage across the Irish Sea, and she would be met by her cousin, Aunt Kitty’s son. This time next week she would be lining drawers with paper and unpacking her clothes in a room I’d never seen.

  ‘I was sick as a dog when I came over,’ she said, stretching up her arms and laughing. ‘There was a woman with her children running wild on the ship while she called on all the saints to help her. I remember now those children’s feet thudding past my head. They hadn’t a pair of boots between them but their feet were tanned like leather. I wondered if they’d trample me, but I was past caring.’

  ‘You were only fourteen,’ I said.

  ‘That’s true. But I was a big girl. God, I can see it now, the tops blowing off the waves and those kids racing around the rails. Thank God we were up on deck. I’d have died below.’

  The ship was real now, not us. She was still with us but we were going into the past, growing small like a country seen from a departing ship. Already she belonged to the rise and fall of the waves and the slap of the wind.

  ‘No, it’s never really been home. Well, you couldn’t expect it,’ she said again.

  ‘I suppose not,’ I said, smoothing down the neat oblongs of her packing. She would leave the lid of the box off for now. There was no lock, but she had a chain to wind through the fastenings, and a padlock for it. I stood up and walked over to the window where pale sun fell on my arms. I didn’t know the view from here because Kate had never liked us to come up to her room, but now she didn’t care. The room was nothing to her; it could be anybody’s. Soon there’d be just her striped, lumpy mattress on its iron frame, the peeling whitewash, the oilcloth, a couple of hairpins on the floor and the smell of Kate, fading.

  It’s never been home. But when I said Kate I was saying mother or sister, I wanted to tell her. It was always you in that space. You can’t go, because you’re taking too much of me with you.

  ‘You’ll be all right, Cathy,’ she said. Silence hung between us like a sheet we couldn’t fold. We weren’t easy with each other any more. She didn’t come to my room to help me brush my hair and tell me the gossip by firelight.

  ‘It was my mother’s,’ I said suddenly, ‘wasn’t it?’

  ‘What?’ asked Kate, so quickly that I knew I was right.

  ‘The cashmere. It was my mother’s, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You’re not thinking that I took it. Your brother gave it to me.’

  ‘I knew I’d seen it before,’ I said. It must have been bought before my mother went away, when she thought she’d have a dress made up from it, and then it had been left behind with all her other things. I must have seen it in her wardrobe, folded and wrapped, and that was why I’d half-recognized it when Kate wore her dress. ‘I don’t mind,’ I said. ‘It might as well be used.’

  ‘It’s not for you to mind,’ said Kate. She looked at me with an antagonism I’d never seen. She’d often been angry with me, but this was different, as if I were just another woman trying to slight her.

  ‘It suits you,’ I said to placate her. ‘Things ought to go to the people who can wear them.’

  ‘If I’ve any use for it where I’m going,’ said Kate, then she flushed.

  ‘Of course you will. More than you have here.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘Remember that dress of mine – the pink silk? Wasn’t it awful?’

  She smiled briefly. Then she looked hard at me. ‘You’ve a bit of colour today. You must get yourself out, Cathy. Away from here.’

  ‘That’s what Mr Bullivant says.’

  As soon as I said it I remembered I must never say that name to her. But instead of growing angry she looked at me steadily, puzzling me out.

  ‘It wasn’t him, was it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ve thought so for a while. And you couldn’t say his name like that if it was.’

  ‘It was no one you know,’ I said.

  ‘You must forget it,’ she said. ‘I know you. You’re always carrying things inside you, where they do no good. And you won’t have me here to shake you out of it.’

  ‘I know. You don’t have to tell me.’

  ‘It’s better if I go,’ said Kate. ‘You don’t think it but it is. With me here you’ll stay the way you are for ever. Remember what I said when I’m gone, Cathy.’

  For a moment something older and kinder than the Kate who was packing her box looked out of her eyes, then she slammed down the lid. ‘I’ll shut this up anyway – might as well. I’ve only my night clothes and my wages to put in it.’

  ‘I’ve got you something,’ I said. ‘A present.’

  I had it in my pocket, in a small box lined with midnight-blue velvet. I held it out to her. She took the box, but she didn’t open it.

  ‘Go on, open it now. I want to see what you think of it.’

  Reluctantly she undid the little gilt catch and the box sprang open. The ring lay there, dug into the blue velvet. The colour slept inside the opal, but as soon as it was held up to the light it would catch fire.

  ‘You can’t give me this.’

  ‘Yes I can. It belongs to me now.’

  ‘It’s your mother’s.’

  ‘No. She had it in her jewel-box but it was never hers. It was my grandfather’s – my other grandfather. You wouldn’t guess it was a man’s ring, would you? He had slender fingers, like my father. It was left to me when my father died.’

  Kate took out the ring and tried it on the third finger of her right hand. ‘It’s too tight. My hands are ruined with work.’

  ‘It’ll fit on your little finger.’

  She eased it over the knuckle and turned her hand round. The ring didn’t look quite right there. The milkiness of the stone showed up the reddening of her fingers, and the gold band was slightly too narrow for her broad, shapely hands.

  ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ I asked.

  ‘It is.’ She examined it slowly, twisting it this way and that. The heart of the opal flashed as if it had been put away only yesterday. ‘Some people say opals are unlucky, but I don’t think so,’ I said.

  ‘You ought to keep it for yourself.’

  ‘I’d rather think of it on you, going where you go.’

  She looked at me and I knew she wanted it.

  ‘Go on, don’t be silly. I want you to have it.’

  ‘Then I will. You’re very good, Cathy.’

  ‘No, I’m not. I’m not at all.’

  She brushed my cheek with her hand. It was the clumsiest gesture I ever saw her make, and I knew we wouldn’t kiss or cling to each other when she left.

  ‘I’ll wear it to keep it safe,’ she said, ‘but not until I’ve left here. I don’t want any talk.’

  ‘You’ll come back to visit us, Kate. It’s not so very far.’

  Kate turned the ring again, her head bent over the stone. When she looked up at me she was crying. Her face didn’t move but her tears slid sideways, covering her cheeks. I wanted to comfort her but I didn’t think she wanted me to touch her any more.

  ‘You’ll come again,’ I repeated.

  ‘It’s not likely, Cathy,’ she said in a whisper, and she pushed away the tears with the back of her hands.

  It had happened so quickly. We’d all had to go to Miss Gallagher’s funeral, naturally. There were no mourners from outside the village, and it was mizzling gently. The vicar stood with his boots planted firm in the wet, heavy earth, and rocked back and forth slightly as he droned out the words of the committal. He’d known her well, he said, but I doubted it. The box with Miss Gallagher in it went down slowly, rocking in its bands until it bumped to rest at the bottom of the hole. There was a faint
sucking noise as the coffin settled. People glanced furtively at the sky. If it rained any harder it would take the dye out of their black bonnets. Grandfather was gesturing to me. I stared back, unable to work out what he wanted.

  ‘She’s no family,’ Kate hissed in my ear. ‘He wants you to drop the first clod.’

  ‘No. No, I don’t want to.’

  Rob stepped forward quickly and took the ornate little shovel the gravedigger handed him. He held it high and let drop pieces of earth on Miss Gallagher’s coffin.

  ‘You ought to have done it. It was you she loved,’ Kate said.

  Rob’s hair was dark with rain. He had taken off his hat and was holding it in front of him. His head was bowed. The wind was getting up, sighing in the big elms at the corner of the churchyard where rooks nested. No one wept but there were coughs and sniffs which did for the sounds of sorrow. A group of boys kept jumping up to look over the churchyard wall. Sometimes the tops of their heads appeared, and their eyes, then they must have got together to hoist one boy high, because the top half of his body came clear of the wall and he stared across at us, collecting every look and word. When we’d gone they’d come in and look at the new grave, and one of them might be bold enough to stand for a second on top of its heaped earth and say to himself that he was standing on top of her. She’d never liked any boy, though it was Rob she’d hated.

  As we turned from the grave and walked along the path towards the lych-gate Kate fell back from where she’d been at my side. Grandfather was giving directions about the grave. He was to pay for her headstone, because she’d had no money and the relations she’d spoken of couldn’t be drummed up. Besides, she’d died on his land. She should have been left there, I thought. She would have sunk back into the earth quietly, without this show and the thud of soil on to wood. It was like Grandfather to order a coffin with brass fittings and a white satin lining. She’d had nothing as beautiful when she was alive.

  Now Rob was walking beside Kate. They looked serious, calm and oddly alike, as if the same thoughts ran in their minds. I stood and waited for them, watching Kate’s skirt sweep drops of rain off the long grass by the edge of the path, and Rob’s boots walking in step with hers.

  ‘Are you all right, Cathy? You look pale,’ said Rob. Everything he said to me sounded false and unnecessary.

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘Well, it’s over,’ said Kate, ‘and at least she’s decently buried.’ Then she looked at me quickly.

  ‘When do they fill in the grave over her?’ I asked.

  ‘Once we’ve gone, they’ll begin.’

  ‘It makes it seem so strange, doesn’t it, the noise of the earth on the coffin? As if she’s really dead.’

  ‘She is really dead,’ said Rob.

  ‘It’s the rain,’ I said. ‘She didn’t like it. That’s why she wore her mackintosh. And now we go home and take off our wet things and she stays here and it doesn’t matter because she can’t feel the cold or the rain.’

  ‘She’s snug enough, anyway,’ said Kate. ‘That was a fine coffin your grandfather bought.’ Rob laughed suddenly, a quick, unseemly explosion. The rain fell harder and it parted his hair and ran over his forehead like drops of sweat. Kate took a handkerchief out of her pocket, reached up and wiped his face, but as soon as she did it more rain ran down. I looked back across the churchyard but Miss Gallagher’s grave was hidden in a fine mist.

  ‘Let’s go back to the house,’ said Rob. ‘There’s some food.’

  ‘Tea and sandwiches!’ said Kate scornfully. ‘Oh well, let her die as she lived.’ Then she laughed. ‘Would you look at that!’ A fat squat duck was waddling down the muddy lane outside the church. Seeing us it stood still, then turned in purposefully and came up the church path towards us.

  ‘You’d make a fine dinner, wouldn’t you? I’ll have you if you don’t watch out,’ said Kate to the duck.

  ‘Break its neck and hide it under your skirt,’ suggested Rob.

  ‘I would, too. But not now, there’s too many people about. We’ll come back after dark.’

  ‘I’ll help you. I’ll wring its neck for you,’ said Rob, and he laughed.

  ‘That’s the best promise I’ve had from a man for a long time,’ she said, and she laughed back at him while the duck shovelled about in the verges. Damp had curled her hair up under her bonnet, and brightened her colour, and for a second I saw her as Rob did, fresh and vigorous, the funeral rolling off her and forgotten. She always loved the rain and liked to be out in it, striding miles with her skirts kilted up above her ankles. Was it then she first thought of going, when she saw the fine fat duck waddle through the column of mourners? I stood stupidly beside them, disliking my own presence. My mourning was shabby and it smelled of dye and old sweat. My body had been thin and then fat and now it was thin again. Whatever it looked like I didn’t feel as if I lived in it any more. I might have left myself there in the mist on her grave without knowing, like a caul in the rain.

  ‘It’s over,’ I said, and they both looked at me as if they’d forgotten I was there. I can shut my eyes and see their two faces now, while I hear rooks and a hammer beating somewhere, and people’s mourning voices starting to lighten as they moved away from the funeral and down the lane. Less than a month later Kate was packing her box.

  Nineteen

  ‘You can’t stay in your room all the time. You must go out.’

  ‘I don’t want to. I like it here.’

  ‘Come on, Cathy, we’ll go shooting. You like that. We’ll have pigeon-pie tomorrow.’

  ‘No. I can’t go out, not today.’

  I hadn’t been out since the funeral. I saw the outside world in slices from one window or another. Out there was a white, swallowing silence; in here, if I concentrated, I could wake up, dress myself, move about. Time moved oddly. Sometimes I’d be in a room and not know how I’d got there, or I’d be in the middle of washing, stroking the water over my arms again and again, and I’d know from the gooseflesh on my arms that I’d been there a long time. Here was my hand, with a fork in it, raising a brown bundle of fibres to my mouth. It was braised beef and I was eating my dinner. I must not look too long at anything or Grandfather would notice. Outside the window the arm of a bush tapped steadily at the glass, like a signal.

  ‘Time I asked George Bullivant over to play chess. Should you like that, Cathy? Should you like a game?’ Grandfather reached over and poured some wine into my glass. It was the colour of straw and it smelled of sweat. After the first sip I put down my glass.

  ‘Take a glass of wine, Cathy. It will do you good.’

  His dark eyes fixed me, attentive as a hawk’s. He thought I was missing Miss Gallagher. He had the idea that women wanted other women about.

  ‘Let me peel you an apple.’ He picked through the fruit bowl to find me the best one. There were russets, beginning to wrinkle now, but still firm-fleshed. When Grandfather peeled an apple he turned the fruit into the knife-blade and brought off the peel in one long curling piece. I picked up the peel and shaped it back into a globe, empty inside. My apple had gone brown and I couldn’t eat it.

  Opposite me Rob swallowed off his port and reached for more.

  ‘Haven’t you had enough?’ asked my grandfather.

  ‘No, not yet,’ said Rob, and he poured a deliberate stream of the wine, holding the decanter slightly too high so that we could see that his hands were perfectly steady and the port fell clear into the centre of the glass.

  ‘It’s hideous stuff, anyway,’ Rob went on. ‘You have to drink it fast if you don’t want to taste it.’

  ‘It’s the last I’m buying. You’ll pay for the next yourself.’

  Grandfather’s hand with the fruit knife in it drummed at the tablecloth, marking the linen where Eileen had webbed it with neat darns, years back. My hand jumped slightly with the drumming of the knife.

  Upstairs Kate was walking about. These nights she sat up late, I knew, because I saw the yellowness of her candlelight seep
ing down the stairs. I didn’t know it but she was already packing in her mind.

  My grandfather touched my shoulder where the blades made wings. If I looked over my shoulder in candlelight I could see the wings pointing out of my skin. When they grew a little more I would be flying. Eileen used to say if a newborn baby could speak it would tell us what it was like to fly with the angels, but by the time the baby had learned to talk it had forgotten. Grandfather’s hand stayed on my shoulder. He ought not to touch me, it might hurt him. Everything in me was sharp and burning. I twisted away, and he sat back heavily in his chair. Later I heard him talking to Rob over my head. Everyone was talking at me and over me and through me.

  ‘Grapes. What about grapes?’

  ‘She likes grapes.’

  ‘The sun’s quite warm enough if she wraps herself in a rug and sits in a sheltered spot. The fresh air would give her an appetite. Get some colour in her cheeks.’

  ‘She hasn’t been out since I don’t know when.’

  ‘It’s the shock.’

  ‘Seeing it happen.’

  ‘I never realized she was so fond of the woman.’

  ‘Still waters run deep.’

  ‘Why doesn’t she go out?’

  ‘Kidneys. No, liver, that’s the thing to give her.’

  ‘Ought to have it raw.’

  ‘Squeeze lemon juice on it and chop it fine and you don’t taste it.’

  ‘It’s for her own good.’

  ‘My mother swore by sarsaparilla. It cleanses the blood.’

  ‘Who’d have thought she’d pine for her like this?’

  ‘She looked very bad at the funeral.’

  ‘Course, it’s no life for a young girl. You’ve got to feel sorry for her.’

  ‘And her colour – it’s terrible.’

  ‘Her skin’s like candle wax.’

  ‘You’ve got to get the blood moving.’

  They weren’t real voices, they were just the blood moving. If I turned my head too quickly it sizzled in my ears and made words.

  ‘If you don’t try, Cathy, I can’t help you,’ said Rob. But who was he to tell me when he’d been drinking again? I could smell it on him, not fresh drink but the smell of last night coming out through his skin. He didn’t smell like my Rob any more.