Half the World in Winter

by Maggie Joel

  Beside him Gus groaned.

  ‘Good Heavens!’ replied Mrs Jarmyn as though she had only that morning been pondering the Battle of Agincourt and now all her questions had been answered. ‘That is most interesting,’ she added, at which point even Jack appeared to realise his mother’s interest in the uniforms of the English soldier did not equal his. He seemed to deflate a little and fell silent.

  ‘And I have been busy too!’ announced Mrs Jarmyn unexpectedly and, almost imperceptibly, they all tensed. No one said, ‘Have you, Mama?’ but it did not seem to matter for Mrs Jarmyn continued unbidden.

  ‘I have been planning a holiday! There! What do you think of that?’ She did not wait to hear what they thought of that, instead plunging ahead with her plan. ‘We shall travel to Paris and perhaps spend one or two nights there then take the train to Florence and from there to Venice. And—what do think?—the Brightsides will be in Venice in the spring! We shall stay at their villa or perhaps take one of our own. It will be an education! What do you think of that?’

  The Brightsides were Mr Jarmyn’s sister, Meredith, and her husband, Travers. Uncle Travers was an ecclesiastical publisher, a one-time cleric himself though now, for reasons never adequately explained, minus a parish. Aunt Meredith was the God-daughter of a former bishop of Coventry and Lichfield and seemed to have made a dreadful mistake with her choice of husband. Why her mother wished to holiday with the Brightsides was not immediately clear to Dinah. Nor, she could see, to her two brothers. But her cousin Rhoda would be there, she presumed, and she and Rhoda were almost of an age and, for the most part, friends. Roger, who was her only other cousin and Rhoda’s elder brother, would not be there because he had recently gone off to become a soldier.

  No one had yet remarked on Mrs Jarmyn’s plan and Dinah felt it incumbent upon her as the eldest in Bill’s absence, to offer some response. ‘How marvellous,’ she suggested, and looked to her brothers but Jack and Gus seemed to have nothing to add.

  ‘Venice is always at its best in the springtime. The weather will be perfect,’ said Mrs Jarmyn, needing no further affirmation of their wholehearted acquiescence.

  And now Dinah understood, or thought she did. Florence, Venice—Italy. It would be warm. Warmer than here at any rate. And it would be away. Far, far away.

  ‘Will we still have to have lessons? Will Mr Todd have to come?’ asked Jack, and Mrs Jarmyn laughed her high tinkling laugh, seemingly unaware that Jack was in earnest.

  ‘I expect we would have an Italian tutor,’ suggested Gus. ‘Mr Todd is all very well for your run-of-the-mill Greek but he’s hardly up to scratch for Ancient Rome or modern Italian, one would have thought,’ he added, his grievance with the ageing tutor clearly still fresh in his mind.

  ‘Of course Mr Todd must come! We must all go! Just wait till I tell your father!’

  And as though he had been summoned, they heard footsteps outside as their father approached. It seemed an eternity that he crossed the hallway and put his hand on the doorknob and Dinah sat quite still and silent, waiting. Across the table Jack was still fidgeting and she tried to catch his eye to make him stop.

  At last the door softly opened and she caught a whiff of tobacco and tweed and the something that she thought of as ‘the world of business’, whatever that was, she was never quite certain, but it always preceded her father into a room. She studied her napkin, observing the way it had curled naturally back into a roll even though she had removed it from its ring. At the final moment, just as Mr Jarmyn reached the table, she looked up, the correct expression ready on her face. What that correct expression was she could no more describe than she could describe the smell of business but she saw that expression reflected back to her now on the three other faces around the table.

  Mr Jarmyn pulled out his chair, lowered himself into it and repositioned the chair beneath the table. He reached for his napkin, removed it from its ring, placed it on his lap and only then did he look up, appearing to notice the various members of his family observing him in silent anticipation.

  Dinah was aware of an uncomfortable sensation in her stomach that felt like hunger pangs yet she felt no desire for food. It hadn’t always been like this. Now it had become their routine.

  ‘Good evening,’ said Mr Jarmyn, making this remark to his wife, and the absence of the words ‘my dear’ at the end of this greeting was as stark as the absence around the table of the two other family members (though Bill was merely at Oxford).

  ‘Good evening, Lucas,’ replied her mother, and Dinah averted her gaze to avoid seeing that bright smile or her father’s answering frown.

  ‘Good evening, Dinah. Gus. Jack.’

  ‘Good evening, Father.’

  ‘Good evening, Father.’

  ‘Good evening, Father.’

  It was a relief, of sorts, to get that part over and done with.

  Dinah settled her shoulder muscles into a softer posture.

  ‘Well. Tell me about your day. Dinah?’

  ‘I’ve been arranging flowers, Father, from the garden …’

  ‘Have you? I don’t see any.’

  Dinah thought, not of the flowers, but of the old tunic button she had discovered in the garden and instead of offering some reply to her father she stared mutely at him. Perhaps he needed no reply as he turned instead to Gus.

  ‘And Gus? What have you been up to?’

  ‘Studying hard, Father.’

  ‘Good. Good. And you, Jack?’

  ‘And I too, Father.’ No mention of Agincourt now.

  ‘Good. Good,’ said their father a second time. He pulled out his fob watch and studied it for such a long moment it seemed that what he was reading there must surely be more than just the time. They waited and eventually he put the watch away.

  Dinah stared straight ahead, determined not to glance at her mother, who was seated at the far end of the table. Her mother poured herself a glass of water from the carafe then slowly rotated the glass on its coaster, seeming to study the colourless liquid within. Her hand shook ever so slightly. Their father had not addressed her, had not asked what she had done that day. It was as though their mother was not there at all.

  Mrs Jarmyn cleared her throat and Dinah bit down on her lip. It seemed that her mother must speak, that she might even mention her wild plans of a moment earlier. But she said nothing and, on the other side of the table, one of the boys let out a tiny sigh.

  ‘And where, do you suppose, is our dinner?’ remarked Mr Jarmyn as though just that moment realising it was nearly ten past six and no dishes had yet arrived from the kitchen. ‘Dinah, call for Annie.’

  But before Dinah could reach for the bell the door opened and Mrs Logan herself entered, her normally smooth, calm features unusually flushed, and even more unusually, she was carrying the silver soup tureen.

  ‘Mrs Logan. You appear to be carrying a soup tureen,’ observed Mr Jarmyn. ‘May one inquire as to the reason for this sudden demotion in your position in my household from housekeeper to maid?’

  ‘Certainly, Mr Jarmyn,’ Mrs Logan replied, manhandling the large tureen with surprising dexterity. ‘We find ourselves temporarily deficient in staff to the tune of two housemaids. The soup is quail and leek.’

  ‘I see,’ Mr Jarmyn replied grimly, receiving the news of another housemaid’s departure in the same vein as he did the advent of Cook’s quail and leek consommé. ‘I suppose we had better have some of it, then. Don’t want Cook quitting on us too.’

  He leant back in his chair to allow Mrs Logan to serve him, which she did with a measured concentration that seemed out of all proportion to the task at hand. Having satisfied herself that Mr Jarmyn’s soup bowl was suitably filled, Mrs Logan moved on to their mother. Dinah had no wish to experience Cook’s quail and leek soup but it seemed that her father had spoken for them all and they each submitted in turn as Mrs Logan wielded her ladle before discreetly withdrawing. Dinah picked up her spoon and submerged it slowly into the pool of liquid in her bowl. The
soup, as was often the case with Cook’s soup, defied any particular colour or texture but still managed to coat her spoon with a sticky residue.

  They ate the soup in silence aside from the tiny and unavoidable slurps as they each took a sip. Dinah concentrated all her energy on making no sound at all and she achieved this until she realised she was taking none of the soup into her mouth and that the pool of liquid in her bowl was not going down. A drop of soup made its way onto her tongue where it scalded her, then slid down her throat and into her stomach where it congealed, a thick indigestible mass. She remembered as a girl being hungry all the time, feeling ravenous before meals, spooning great quantities into her mouth, receiving each new dish with relish. Now she could no longer eat. She wished Mrs Logan would remove the soup.

  ‘Father, we are to go to Venice,’ said Jack, and beside him Gus stirred uneasily.

  Where was Mrs Logan? Surely she must realise they had finished the soup? Perhaps they ought to ring for her?

  ‘Indeed?’ said Mr Jarmyn, putting down his spoon and studying his youngest child with interest. ‘And when are we to make this journey?’

  At this, Jack appeared to lose confidence, looking to his mother for confirmation.

  ‘Oh. It was a little scheme of mine,’ said Mrs Jarmyn with a modest laugh. ‘You know, Lucas, how delightful Venice is in the springtime—’

  ‘No indeed, I have not had the pleasure of visiting it at that time.’

  ‘—and how educational it is, especially for young children? The Brightsides, of course, will be there. They are taking a villa.’

  But neither the time of year nor the anticipated educational value of the trip, nor even the allure of spending an extended amount of time with the Brightsides appeared to hold much sway for their father, who met her remarks with a stony silence.

  ‘Shall we be going, Father?’ asked Jack, the idea, once planted, not easily dislodged.

  Beside him Gus scowled. ‘Of course we are not going,’ he hissed.

  Jack was at once outraged. ‘But—’

  ‘Be quiet.’ Mr Jarmyn did not raise his voice but both fell instantly silent.

  Where was Mrs Logan? Why did she not take away the soup bowls? Dinah smoothed out the creases of her napkin again and again, her fingers digging into the embroidered monogram.

  ‘We will not be going to Venice,’ said Mr Jarmyn slowly and deliberately. ‘And I would prefer there to be no further mention of the subject. Is that clear?’

  Jack and Gus nodded silently.

  ‘Oh, but it seemed like such an agreeable idea!’ said Mrs Jarmyn chattily and seemingly impervious to the chill that had settled over the dining room. ‘Dinah thought it was a grand scheme—didn’t you think it a grand scheme, Dinah?’

  Dinah stared at her mother but was spared from answering by Mrs Logan who finally emerged with the next course.

  But it was not the next course Mrs Logan had brought. It was the silver letter tray from the downstairs hallway into which, in another era, callers had left their cards. Nowadays it was generally used when telegrams arrived and it was such that Mrs Logan now offered to their father.

  ‘A telegram, Mr Jarmyn,’ she explained, offering him the tray. ‘And there is baked sole in asparagus jelly with parsley sauce.’

  ‘I will have the sole, Mrs Logan,’ said Mrs Jarmyn, and it seemed inconceivable to Dinah that her mother had just attempted a witticism.

  Her father, at any rate, chose to ignore it, taking the telegram and nodding to Mrs Logan, who wordlessly withdrew. He opened it at once, using his fish knife to slit the envelope. He unfolded the slip of paper, reviewed its contents expressionlessly, refolded it and replaced it in the envelope, placing the telegram beside his plate. There it remained as the sole in asparagus jelly with parsley sauce was served, consumed and removed, so too the roast loin of mutton and the baked pear pudding that followed it.

  Once, Dinah realised, her mother would have said, ‘Not bad news I trust, my dear?’ But now Mrs Jarmyn remained silent for there could be no bad news left. They had had it all already.

  There had been another railway accident and this time three people were dead—two employees of the railway and a young child travelling with its father.

  This much Lucas Jarmyn had established from the telegram that had arrived during dinner and from a second one delivered to him by Mrs Logan an hour or so later. Both came from Kemp, a fellow director of the railway line and a man Mr Jarmyn usually took pains to avoid.

  After dinner he retired to his study and sat contemplating the two telegrams over a glass of port. The dinner had not been a pleasant experience. It seldom was. And the arrival of the two telegrams had merely made things worse.

  He frowned, avoiding that other presence in the room: it hung over the empty fireplace, a portrait of his father, the elder Mr Jarmyn, a solidly built man in late middle-age sporting enormous whiskers and a florid complexion and wearing a collar, hat and morning coat in a style that had been briefly fashionable in the late forties. As a child Lucas remembered his father sitting for this very portrait during one exceptionally warm June and the maid having to be on hand with a sponge and a jug of iced water to mop the old man’s face when the perspiration got too much. Mr Jarmyn Senior had been enormous by then, barely squeezing his bulk into the chair in which he was seated, though the portrait, painted by a young Royal Academy artist with an eye to further commissions, merely suggested a man of generous rather than excessive proportions.

  But Samuel Jarmyn had started life from humble beginnings and perhaps, no matter how wealthy one became in later life, one never really got used to having enough to eat. Born at the turn of the century, the son of an impoverished Spitalfields silk weaver, Samuel Jarmyn had by the early forties somehow scraped together enough capital to build a railway line to transport coal, iron ore and wool to and from the newly industrialised towns of Wolverhampton and Birmingham and had, overnight, become extraordinarily wealthy. His company, the Wolverhampton and Birmingham Freight and Passenger Railway Company, had been listed publicly in 1851 and, following an extension of the line as far as Shrewsbury, renamed the North West Midlands Railway. It was no longer a family-owned company but, as Mr Jarmyn’s only son, Lucas was the majority shareholder and held a lifetime seat on the board of directors.

  It was a role he sometimes disliked.

  At a time when railway accidents rivalled cholera as the main cause of premature death amongst the working population, the NWMR held a safety record unmatched by its rivals: it had more accidents per stretch of line than any other railway in the Kingdom—more derailments and signal failures, more passenger fatalities and employee injuries, more coronial inquests and Board of Trade inquiries, and more column inches in The Times than the Midland, the Great Western and the North Eastern combined. Truly, it was said, the passenger on the North West Midlands Railway took his life in his hands when he purchased his ticket and stepped into the brown-and-salmon liveried carriage. A famous Punch cartoon showed a young man being offered a ticket to travel on the NWMR or a place in Wellington’s army to face Napoleon on the battlefields of Waterloo. ‘The young fellow’s dilemma!’ was the caption. The cartoon was oft cited in business circles and a copy had been framed and placed on the wall of Mr Jarmyn’s own club in St James.

  Lucas reached for the first of the two telegrams and cast an eye over it for the fourth or fifth time, contemplating this further evidence—should any be needed—of the continuing carnage on his father’s railway and the uneasy reputation the line had earned for itself. And yet it was difficult to see beyond the fact that the railway provided his—and his family’s—livelihood. This house, the servants (those who still remained in his employ), the clothes his children wore and the expensive education provided to them, his membership of the club in St James, all paid for by the endless trainloads of coal and passengers trundling between these distant towns.

  There would be a damning report in The Times tomorrow. Well, so be it. The company would of
fer to pay the railwaymen’s funeral costs and there would be a small annuity for the widows. The usual letter of condolence would be forwarded to the dead child’s father.

  He finished the port in a single gulp and gazed at the tumbler in his hand. A lot of men had shaken his own hand at his own child’s funeral last June though he could not remember a single one of their faces.

  He reached for the decanter and was disconcerted to find it empty. Ringing vigorously for Annie, he was further disconcerted when Mrs Logan answered his summons.

  Of course, Annie had quit. He looked away as Mrs Logan entered the room and the frown that had clouded his face since dinner deepened, though the arrival of his housekeeper could hardly account for this. She had a strong face, though he was not at this moment looking at it, a strong North Country face. No, that was not quite right—it was her character that was strong, he decided, and it was this strength that showed in her silent, thoughtful demeanour. Could one’s character show in one’s features? He did not know.

  ‘Mrs Logan. We appear to have run out of port as well as housemaids. Are you in a position to rectify either of these deficiencies?’

  ‘I trust I am in a position to rectify both, Mr Jarmyn. I have fetched a bottle of the Quinta Dos Santos ’58 from the cellar and the agency are sending us a girl tomorrow afternoon.’

  There was a silence, then, ‘Are you running my entire establishment single-handedly, Mrs Logan?’

  ‘It would appear so, Mr Jarmyn.’

  He nodded and watched as Mrs Logan coolly decanted the ’58, her hands moving smoothly and skilfully and with the minimum of fuss and, now as he glanced up at her face, he saw the same calm concentration there.

  ‘You will have noted there was no wine served with the dinner?’ she inquired in her soft North Country voice.

  ‘I did,’ he replied, turning back to his contemplation of the two telegrams, but when she had retired from the room, he found he had no stomach for the port. He had lately discovered a horror of drunkenness.