Twenty minutes later, when my heartbeat and breathing rates had slowed to normal, I was less certain than I had been that I had witnessed a visitation from the next world. But, whatever the facts, I could report what I had seen and make it gripping. With perhaps a few embellishments. I must turn this troublesome insomnia to my advantage and compose my masterpiece on the spot while the details were vividly before me. ‘Her watery footprints gleamed silver beneath the moon like a snail’s trail –’ No, that sounded vaguely disgusting. ‘The moon gleamed like a single eye on the silver river of prints –’ No, a trickle was more like it. ‘Her damp snails trailed …’ I was asleep.
Breakfast had an air of gaiety about it. Along the table branches of larch were decorated with gilded cones, nut and orange pomanders, silver balls, dried pink roses and red lilies. In addition to the usual eggs, bacon, mushrooms and kedgeree, there were dishes of warm curd cakes, which melted in the mouth like snow. In honour of Christmas Day Sir Oswald came in to breakfast and was cordial with us all, particularly Cordelia. He cradled her hand between his fat paws and sniffed it like a police dog.
‘It’s my new Cherchez l’Homme soap,’ explained Cordelia.
‘Il ne faut pas le chercher longtemps,’ he replied with a soulful look and a creaking of corsets.
After breakfast, to which everyone except Jonno and the colonel put in an appearance, groups were organised for church-going. Cordelia and Annabel disappeared immediately and I noticed that most of the men and Georgia had also slipped discreetly away.
‘I so sad,’ said Emilio, his eyes moist with sorrow. ‘I am Catholeek. I cannot go to Eenglish service.’
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Maggie with perfect innocence. ‘Miss Tipple is also a Roman Catholic. You can take her in the Land Rover to the RC church in Bunton.’
Emilio’s eyes dried immediately and became reproachful. Mrs Mordaker, Maggie and Freddie were to accompany Sir Oswald in the Rolls, which had been brought round to the front door by Dingle, who, on the few occasions Sir Oswald left Pye Place, acted as chauffeur. I assured Maggie with perfect truth that I was very happy to walk down with Mrs Whale and Dirk.
The morning was brilliant. The sun’s rays shattered into spangles on the snow. The yew shapes, with their giant mushroom caps of snow, cast grotesque shadows on the glittering sea of white. Every leaf had its proportionate burden, every stalk its rim of crystals. The stone balls on the gate piers had shocks of white hair. Further down the lane long trickles of frozen water hung from the eaves of an old cart-shed. Our breaths streamed over our shoulders like smoke.
Mrs Whale walked beside me, gloved hands clasped across her stomach, the collar of her black coat turned up against the wind, which this morning was in a teasing mood, shooting cold draughts up our sleeves and skirts. Mrs Whale’s complexion looked more faded than usual against the brightness of our surroundings. Deep lines were engraved between her brows and down her thin cheeks. The wind stood her shorn hair on end like a crest. Her eyes, which still had something lustrous and fine about them, were trained on the road. It was evident that the wintry scene had no power to engage her mind.
‘We never have snow like this in London,’ I said conversationally, when the crashing of the waterfall was sufficiently far behind us. I was keen to make headway with this woman who had so far resisted all my attempts to be friendly. ‘Even in the park it quickly gets spoiled by footprints and turns to slush.’
‘It’s a nuisance when it gets trodden into the house.’
‘I suppose so, but it’s so pretty. And to have snow on Christmas Day! I shall always remember this.’
‘The Lord made the earth beautiful to tempt us into misdoing, I often think.’
‘Really? How could that be? Surely we ought to take pleasure in it.’
‘Pleasure’s a distraction from the duty we owe to Him.’
‘But it’s glorious to see such a wonderful sky going on and on for ever, so blue you could drown in it.’ I drew in deep breaths of dazzling, freezing air. I wanted to skip or sing – to express my exultation. For once the imp of misery was ineffectual. I felt confident and optimistic. ‘Look how perfect the snow is. It makes everything look so – well, it’s a cliché I know – innocent.’
‘You want to be careful, miss. Every year, just about, there’s cases of snow blindness. Even local folk what ought to know better go missing in the hills ‘cause they can’t see nothing but white.’
My resolve to be kind and attentive to Mrs Whale weakened. But it must be difficult to be cheerful when you had to work hard all the time so that other people could be idle. ‘Have you always lived in the High Peak?’
‘I was born here, miss.’
‘How lucky to have spent your childhood in such a beautiful, peaceful place.’
‘I can’t say as it felt all that lucky. I was brought up by my sister. She was a hard woman and rough-tongued. Our mother passed away with the cancer when I was four. She left six children. Snow meant the swedes were frozen in the ground and firewood was scarce. We went hungry to bed often enough. We slept head to toe, four in a bed, and that kept us from perishing with cold.’ There was a subdued bitterness in Mrs Whale’s voice that made me feel as though it were my fault. ‘Our dad was a miner. He died of his lungs five years after our mother. I was in service from the age of fifteen till I married the head gardener at twenty.’
I felt the need of a little rhapsodising to lighten the gloom. ‘I always think gardeners must be nice, contented people, tending the earth, making things grow – trees, lovely flowers.’ I waved my hand in a vague, all-embracing way. ‘Do you like gardening too?’
She lifted her eyes to engage them for the first time with mine. ‘I hate it.’
‘Oh.’
‘It reminds me of him. He beat me. Sometimes I’d have to go to hospital. Then he tried to throttle me with twine. I’ve still got the scars.’ She pulled down the neck of her black jersey and I saw a white line zigzagging across her throat.
‘Oh, how terrible!’ I had quite forgotten about the blueness of the sky and the innocence of the snow.
‘I couldn’t take it any more. I ran away. I found a room and a job in Sheffield.’
I was surprised that Mrs Whale, previously uncommunicative, seemed suddenly keen to tell me the story of her life. ‘That must have been difficult with no one to help you.’
‘I started in a factory, making clothes. I was good at sewing. But the factory went bust. So I went to work as wardrobe mistress in a theatre group.’
‘Really? How interesting! My father’s an actor. At least –’ I stopped, wincing from the blow of remembering.
‘I know about your father, miss. The name rang a bell with me at once when Lady Pye mentioned it and then I recognised you from your photograph in the papers. I’m sorry for it. Prison life is very hard. It can break your spirit.’
I was mildly surprised that someone so determined to shun the frivolous things of this world should have allowed herself to read the Daily Banner, which was what Colonel Mordaker would have called a ‘scurrilous rag’. But perhaps it had come wrapped round pork chops or something.
‘I liked it in Sheffield,’ continued Mrs Whale, who seemed determined to unburden herself. ‘I was happy for the first time. We toured the country and I saw a bit of life. I had a lover.’
‘How very nice.’
‘Yes, it was – very nice.’ I did not think she intended irony. ‘But my husband got to hear about it and came after me. There was a fight. I thought he was going to kill the only man I’d ever loved. So I took up my scissors and I stabbed him.’
I was shocked into speechlessness. Mrs Whale crunched through the snow beside me, head bowed, face impassive. ‘Was he …? Did he …?’ I asked when the silence became a burden.
‘He died. I went to prison for ten years.’ We trudged on a little way. The sun had gone behind a cloud and the snow no longer sparkled. ‘It was what I deserved.’
‘Any of us might have done the
same to protect someone we loved. I think the sentence was rather harsh.’
‘They’d only my word that was how it was. My lover went abroad and couldn’t be got to testify. He’d been in trouble with the police before.’
‘How mean!’ I was disgusted.
Mrs Whale shrugged without lifting her eyes. ‘Men are weak. It doesn’t do to put your trust in them.’
‘Surely they aren’t all bad? You were unlucky.’
‘I don’t believe in luck, miss.’
‘It sounds very sad,’ I said inadequately. All my optimism had sunk beneath the weight of Mrs Whale’s misfortunes. My feeble attempts to sympathise were obviously failing to cheer. I thought it might be a good idea to talk of pleasanter things. ‘Look, a darling robin on a snowy branch just like a Christmas ca – Oh, Dirk! Did you have to bark at it?’ Dirk gave several more confirmatory barks. ‘This must be the village. How pretty it looks from above, all those snowy rooftops clustered round the church.’
‘Those years in prison broke my spirit,’ continued Mrs Whale as though I had not spoken. ‘Never alone, but always lonely, the cold in winter, the heat in summer, the dirt, nothing to look at that wasn’t ugly as sin, nothing to hope for. But worse was feeling oneself a thing of contempt, as though one wasn’t hardly human.’ Her voice became a touch savage here and I felt alarmed.
‘Don’t let’s talk about it if you’d rather not,’ I ventured timidly. ‘It must be painful.’
‘It hurts all right. But that’s my punishment. Only one person spoke a kind word to me in all those years and that was the prison chaplain. He said whatever I’d done I was still one of God’s children.’ Mrs Whale lifted her head to gaze heavenward and her voice trembled with feeling. ‘He said, “Joy shall be in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.” It meant a lot to me, the idea that I belonged somewhere to someone. All the hate and hardness and despair fell away and I saw a shining light!’
I told myself it was shallow and unkind to feel embarrassed but I was. The nuns frowned on displays of excessive devotion. Expressions of religious fervour were considered to be ‘putting oneself forward’, than which there was no greater crime.
‘Gosh!’ I said.
‘Yes. Gosh.’ I might have suspected a little satire here had not Mrs Whale’s expression been so absolutely solemn. ‘I saw the chaplain every week after that and together we read the Bible and I learned about God’s infinite mercy. When I came out of prison I wanted to join an Anglican order but Mother Superior wasn’t sure of my vocation. She thought it might be wanting to hide myself away so’s society wouldn’t judge me. She said I had to spend a few years yet in the world, telling my story to anyone who’d hear it, in expiation of my great sin.’
‘Well, I must say, that’s pretty tough!’ I was indignant. ‘You’d already been miserable for ten years. I don’t know why religious people have to be so jolly unforgiving.’
Mrs Whale smiled for the first time, a faint thinning of the lips. ‘Strait is the gate and narrow is the way.’
Huh! I thought but did not say.
The Rolls was parked in front of the lichgate, forcing the rest of the congregation to squeeze past it in their best clothes, gathering snow from running boards and walls. There were mutterings and black looks.
I was ushered up a staircase and through a door into a private pew where those of the household who had been brought down by car were already assembled. Sir Oswald opened his eyes briefly to give me a smile of approval before closing them for the duration of the service. We could look through a screen down on to the congregation without being seen ourselves. We had cushions on our seats and our own small fireplace, filled with glowing coals. It seemed that as far as physical comfort went, things were strait and narrow only for hoi polloi.
The service was ‘high’ with plenty of incense and tinkling bells. Freddie and I sang with gusto but everyone else mumbled and groaned discreetly, ducking out of the top notes altogether. When the soloist began the anthem I looked through the screen to see Mrs Whale, mottled red and blue by sunbeams falling through stained glass, standing alone on the chancel steps, her cropped head thrown back and warbling like a thrush. During the sermon most of us followed Sir Oswald’s example and closed our eyes. The vicar’s theme of neighbourly love was well worn and had been proved to be unfeasible centuries ago. The vicar had a reedy voice that made Dirk bark until Mrs Mordaker hissed like a pit full of snakes and almost pushed his nose to the back of his head, which for once shut him up.
Afterwards Sir Oswald stood in the porch blocking the doorway, while he gave the vicar the benefit of his views on Uganda, the National Health Service, modern agriculture and the novels of Agatha Christie. I had never heard him so voluble. Behind him, in the shadow of his great bulk, the congregation grumbled to each other about turkeys and puddings being incinerated to blackened crisps while timers rang in unattended kitchens.
I was saved from more of Mrs Whale’s oppressive conversation by Freddie’s insistence that she preferred to walk back to the house. Mrs Whale was borne away in the Rolls with the others, looking anything but pleased by this addition to her comfort.
‘Besides wanting your company, the smell of the cow byre coming from Dingle was so overpowering I thought I was going to be sick,’ Freddie said as we strolled up through the village. ‘Vere has gone to look for the falcons. We’re leaving tomorrow morning, you know, so today’s his last chance. The painting’s virtually finished and I shall take it to the framer’s next week.’
‘I’m very sorry you’re going. It’s so lovely here, isn’t it? I think house parties are an excellent thing. You can really get to know people.’
‘I must admit I always rather dread them. The enforced intimacy day after day with people one mightn’t like. I expect it’s because I’m an only child. At parties I tend to get analytical, observing people rather than joining in. But naturally coming from a large family, you feel at home in a crowd.’
‘Actually I often feel like an outsider myself. Sometimes even in my own family. They always seem somehow brighter, starrier, more – more visible than me. But it isn’t that they stifle me. On the contrary, I wouldn’t be me without them. That’s what families do for you. They define you. The thought of being an only child is quite alarming. I shouldn’t have the least idea who I was.’
‘Well, friends define you as well. And husbands and lovers.’
I was silent for a moment, thinking. ‘Of course I do have friends,’ I said eventually, ‘though I don’t see them very often. And I did have a lover. But it’s as though I’ve been half-turned away from everyone else, always looking back to my family. I think I’ve been too comfortable and contented to want to step outside the enchanted circle.’ I was much struck by this idea. ‘I didn’t realise. This is the first time I’ve been away without them, the first time in my life I’ve spent time with people who didn’t know that my father was a famous actor and I was the least remarkable member of his eccentric, glamorous family.’ The idea gathered momentum. ‘Or could it be that I’ve been too scared to be myself, by myself? Perhaps I’ve been like the froghoppers that live in the lavender bushes in our garden – a tiny grub happily munching at the leaf provided, protected from the elements by a ball of spit and thinking it’s the universe.’
‘You’ve got a job. There’s self-definition through achievement. An attractive idea to the only child who shrinks from relying on other people.’
‘I admit I do secretly feel extremely proud to have lasted several weeks at the Mercury in spite of ups and downs. I’m only an amateur writer, not a real journalist, but the fact that someone thinks I can do anything worth paying me for fills me with glee. The idea of being taken even a little bit seriously by other people is intoxicating.’
‘The thing about a family, though,’ Freddie slowed her pace as the road became steeper, ‘is that you can’t have it on your own terms. I mean, you have to accommodate
other people’s follies and caprices. In a family you’re thrown together with people you haven’t chosen. And, whatever happens, you’re bound to each other. Even if you row like blazes you’re still brother and sister. There’s a grounding reality about that I rather envy. And such useful early lessons in tolerance and love.’
‘Didn’t you love your parents?’
‘I was nine when my mother died. I adored her. Fay appeared on the scene the day after the funeral. She resented having to look after me. My father took Fay’s side. At least that’s how I saw it then. I stopped even trying to love anybody for years.’
I put my arm through hers, moved by an inexpressible pity. ‘You’re making up for it now.’
‘Yes.’ Freddie’s face had a rapt look, as though she still marvelled at her new found happiness. ‘Vere said he’d told you about the baby.’
‘I guessed, really. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘No, of course not. I don’t mean to make a drama of it. It’s just that I need time to get used to the idea myself.’
‘I’m so pleased for you. I adore babies.’
‘Do you know, I’ve never even held a baby.’
‘There’s nothing to it – looking after them, I mean. You just have to put yourself into their position. You have to look at everything as a baby might. Then you won’t get at cross purposes.’
‘That sounds to me like very useful advice. So,’ Freddie said when we’d gone a little further in companionable silence, ‘what actually do you write about in your newspaper?’
I outlined my brief as author of ‘Spook Hall’.
Freddie seemed to find the idea amusing. ‘I suppose it wasn’t you who stole the arm just to have something to write about? No, of course not. You wouldn’t want to frighten Maggie.’
Clouds among the Stars Page 40