The Winter People

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  I had no doubt that the cat she had portrayed here was Jezebel. Jezebel hopelessly snared in a portion of fish net which had been pulled tight about her tiger body, and from which she fought furiously to escape. The cat’s yellow eyes burned with fury and terror, its ears lay back and its teeth were exposed in a snarl. One paw protruded through the net with claws wildly extended, and its tail was cruelly looped through another opening in the mesh.

  Glynis came to stand beside me, smiling slyly. “Poor Jezebel. No wonder we can’t stand each other. She’d have been all right if she hadn’t struggled so. I must say she wasn’t a very quiet subject for me to paint, but I think I caught her rather well, don’t you?”

  She was waiting for me to be shocked, watching for me to recoil, so I kept my hand steady as I gave the picture back to her.

  “It’s very good. Unpleasant, but good. Much better than the sketches you’ve done of Keith in the last few days.”

  It was she who astonished me by recoiling herself. She snatched the water color from me and returned it to its drawer. When she spoke she was breathing quickly.

  “Exactly what do you mean by that?”

  I hadn’t known that I meant anything by it, but there was something a little heady about having the balance of power shift so suddenly. I had had enough of her cruelty. If I was to help Glen I could not always be the one to be hunted. This time it was I who attacked.

  “Perhaps you’re no more a separate person than Glen is. Have you thought that the time might come when he would draw everything he needs from you to sustain him as an artist—and leave you empty? Do you suppose being twins can be as psychic as all that? It does seem strange, doesn’t it—that you should drop behind in your own work as soon as Glen moves ahead?”

  She slammed the drawer of the desk shut so sharply that it twisted, and I heard the splintering of wood. She left it askew and crossed the room with the same free stride with which she walked in the woods, the sunflowers of her Pucci dress swirling about her.

  “You seem to have missed the whole point in what I meant when I showed you the picture of Jezebel,” she said. “I thought you’d be clever enough to see what I intended. The cat was caught in the fish net—with no one to come to its help until I was through with it. Isn’t it the same with you tonight? Aren’t you caught in a net, with a blizzard blowing outside and no one to turn to except me?”

  The small cold paws tapped the back of my neck again. I understood very clearly indeed. I had sensed this all along—ever since Naomi had gone rushing off to Glen’s car leaving me with Glynis. But I must not show her that I was afraid.

  “I’m scarcely caught in a net,” I said. “To begin with, I am hardly helpless. I have only to walk out of the house and not come back.”

  “But you won’t,” she assured me.

  I had to show her then, and I moved too quickly, with the quickness of near panic, so that pain in my ankle stabbed up my leg. I limped upstairs to my room and pulled on my boots gingerly, flung myself into my coat, tied a scarf over my head. She was waiting when I came down the stairs. The leopard prowling again.

  “I’m going over to the McIntyres’,” I said.

  She smiled at me sweetly. “And have Glen come home and find you gone? Because you’re terrified of his twin sister you’ll let him find that you’ve gone over to the enemy? You’re as much of a fool as I suspected. Don’t you think he has already noticed how fortuitously Trent rescued you from that trap—and managed to instill in you the idea that I had set it there?”

  “Didn’t you?” I said.

  She shrugged. “It’s more fun to keep you guessing. But don’t think I haven’t read Trent’s chapter on your father. Don’t forget that I was married to him when he went out to California to finish up that piece. And came home with quite a tale about a moonstruck child who thought herself in love with him. Oh, I’ve heard about his charming Bernardina. I read your letters, never fear. I know who Dina Blake is—if Glen doesn’t. This is something I’ve kept up my sleeve to use when the right time came.”

  I hated the sick warmth that flowed through me, hated the pain of a twisting knife I could do nothing about. Nothing could have upset me more than to learn that she had known all along of that first overwhelming love I’d had for Trent. To know that she had even read those young, innocent letters! But if it killed me, I would not let her see how much I minded her words.

  “I’m going for a walk,” I told her stiffly and went out the front door.

  The snow was not as bad as it would be later. Not as deep, not blowing as severely. But it was already treacherous underfoot, and I slipped and fell as I went around the house, wrenching my hurt ankle again. When I limped out into the open on the lake side the wind struck me full force and sharp granules stung my face. This was sleet, and I welcomed the sting of ice pellets in my face. I would welcome anything that would wipe from my mind the picture she had created of Trent sharing my letters with Glynis, laughing over them, never meaning to answer.

  The night was not as dark as I expected. Light fell through the windows of the house and lay in bright patches on the white earth. The very whiteness of the storm carried light and movement in its heart. Ahead of me the hillside fell away like a sheet of glass. I righted myself by clinging to the wet branches of a pine tree and fought my way back to the drive. There could be no going down that hill and across the frozen lake tonight—unless I wanted to slide all the way. But perhaps it would be possible by way of the road.

  My foot hurt me, but on the upper driveway I could manage. When the road steepened, however, I could not stay on my feet. After my second fall I crawled back to the level and struggled across the open space where wind and sleet caught me full force, stumbled up the slippery steps to the veranda. At least Glynis had not locked the door against me. I let myself into the house, gasping in wind that cut, my face burning and my ankle throbbing.

  For the moment it was simpler to face Glynis Chandler than to deal with the enmity of that foreign world outdoors, that world of ice where it seemed that all my hopes, my very life, could shatter in the glass-cold surfaces which mirrored my own fearful face. The country could be beautiful and peaceful and benign. But it could tear you to pieces if you lacked the courage to deal with its more malevolent moods. Fortunately, Glynis was not in sight when I returned. Undoubtedly she had known I would come back indoors and had not troubled to watch my ignominious retreat from the storm. Lights still burned in the empty drawing room. I left them on and started upstairs. On the way I thought of going to Nomi’s sitting room for Jezebel, bringing the cat to my room for company. But my memory of Nomi’s pet, wild-eyed with fur on end as I had seen her, both in life and in the snarling, spitting fury Glynis had painted, made me decide to do with my own company until Glen came home.

  In our room I fell asleep with the sound of the storm in my ears. The ice phase was over and the real blizzard was well under way, burying countryside, house, and lake under thick, drifting snow.

  I fell asleep—and wakened to the sound of a key turning in the lock of my door, imprisoning me—as the fisherman’s net had imprisoned Jezebel with its confining meshes. I did not know why she must do this. Whether it was to torment me, or because she planned something more dreadful, more serious, I could not tell.

  For a long while I stayed awake. I sat before the fire and kept it burning. I listened for steps in the hallway. Steps that never came—or came so softly that I could not hear them, which was even more terrifying to consider. In my mind I went over it all—over everything that had happened to me since the moment when Glen Chandler had walked into the museum storeroom and swept me off my feet. I could not see—given the person I was—how I could have behaved any differently. It was so easy to accept the glamorous dream and believe it real.

  But of course it was real, when I loved Glen as I did, and when he loved me. I did not doubt that he loved me, though now, because of Glynis, our very love was at stake. I longed for Glen to be with me—longed for the
man he had been before his sister came on the scene. Yet I pitied and understood this other side of him. There was no one to help him but me, and now I could not even help myself.

  After a long while I found I could keep awake no longer. I crept wearily back to bed and crawled beneath icy covers, pulled the quilt to my ears—and was asleep almost at once.

  When I wakened again, morning had come. I sat up in the cold room and looked at my small clock. It was six o’clock, and the radiators had not yet started to heat. My hearth was cold ashes, but I emerged into the chill and found that I still wore my long robe. I went to the window on the lake side of the house and flung the draperies back, to see that the window was blocked by snow halfway up. I breathed on a frozen upper patch and rubbed it clear of frost so that I could look out.

  Snow still blew across a white, strange world. No tree was recognizable and the unfamiliar earth was piled high with drifts of white. Boughs hung heavy with their burden, swaying toward the ground, and a small spruce tree under my window was bent almost double with heavy ice claws at the tip of every branch. At least there was gray daylight out there. Nothing dreadful had happened to me after all, except a rather bad night.

  In the morning, at least, I always felt braver, more courageous. Now I was angry as well. I went to my door and turned the knob, found the door still locked against me. This was completely absurd. What could she possibly gain by keeping me a prisoner in my own room? If she was asleep by this time, then I would waken her and do so at once.

  I rattled the door and banged on it furiously. I shouted Glynis’s name and demanded that she come and let me out. I caused such an uproar that it must have been heard throughout the house—wherever Glynis might be. Yet nothing happened. Absolutely nothing at all. There was not a sound anywhere, and I had the slow, cold feeling that I might have been locked into this room and deserted forever. Glynis would know her way around the countryside better than I. And she was accustomed to snow and ice. There were skis and snowshoes about, and stout walking boots. If she wanted to go out, she would—leaving me in a cold and empty house, locked into one room.

  I found Glen’s small transistor radio and turned it on while I once more tackled the laying of a fire. There was a good deal of static—country reception could be bad—but at least the familiar voice of a New York station came through, uttering doom-filled messages of clogged roads, wires down, cars abandoned, deaths from freezing in suburban areas. The worst storm of the beginning winter … The worst storm of any beginning winter … The worst storm since … I shut it off and warmed my hands at the fire, considering what I must do.

  At least I had my own bathroom and I would have water to bathe in, however cold it might become, and water to drink. But unless Glynis chose, I’d have no food. If Glynis kept the furnace off, it would soon be bitter cold. I washed and dressed in warm brown slacks and double yellow sweaters. I must conserve the wood for the fireplace too.

  When she finally called to me through the door her voice came so faintly that I scarcely heard her. “Dina? Dina—are you up?” The whisper had an almost eerie sound.

  I flew to the door and rattled it fiercely. “You know very well that I’m up. Open this at once and let me out!”

  I could almost see her shaking her head. “No, my dear. I’m not ready for that yet.”

  I tried strategy. “You can’t be serious about locking me in, Glynis. Besides, we might need one another in a storm like this.”

  “People can go for quite a long while without eating,” she said. “And you’re much too high up to get out a window, even if you could battle the ice. So just be a good girl, and after a while I’ll give you a little heat.”

  “Glen will be furious,” I warned her. “I don’t think he’ll approve of this prank.”

  “Prank?” Glynis echoed softly, her voice far more controlled than mine. “He didn’t mind about the trap, did he? And I wouldn’t call this a prank. If you really want to know why I’ve locked you in, I’ll tell you. It’s because I want more time to think, and I can’t have you running off to the McIntyres’ in the meantime. Or using the phone.”

  “Think about what?” I challenged her.

  “Why—” there was surprise in the soft voice, as though I should have understood, “—about what I’m to do with you, of course. There are so many interesting possibilities that I haven’t been able to decide. But I’m sure I will think of something really lovely before long—something no one but you and I will ever know about. Something you’ll be blamed for and I won’t.”

  I must not let that beguiling voice terrify me. I pounded on the door again. “You’re mad, Glynis! There’s nothing you can do to me. If you touch me, I’ll fight you back. I’ll—”

  “Oh, I won’t touch you,” she said lightly. “Not in the way you might think. Not directly.”

  “That glass ball was direct enough,” I said.

  The soft, eerie laughter came again. “That was a mistake, of course. A fit of temper.”

  I wondered if she really was mad. Or if she was coldly sane and perversely enjoying her ability to seem mad. I didn’t know which was worse.

  “Keith!” She cried the name in sudden inspiration, startling me. “Perhaps I can use Keith. You might as well go back to bed, Dina dear. There won’t be anything for you to do for quite a while. I’ll have to reach Keith. I’ll see you later.”

  “Glen will come!” I shouted after her, but I could already hear her retreating down the hall, hear her steps on the stairs. I had a feeling that she knew very well that Glen would not come. Perhaps he would never come again in the sense of returning to me.

  I paced the room, feeling boxed in and desperate. I remembered how Glen had been about the trap—how he had not really minded, how-he had made light of my injury. This was another trap and even if he were here, he might merely regard it as a joke—am amusing trick of his sister’s. What was I to do? Not only now, immediately—but in the future? How was I to come between this dreadful twinship? They were one. Yet they were not one because there was ambivalence here. They pulled against one another at times, though only to be drawn back into a closer relationship than ever, once the parting between them threatened to become permanent. I was the threat now, and they would not tolerate me. Glynis would destroy Glen’s love for me—she might even destroy me. And I could no longer be sure that Glen would not help her when the time came. Indeed, wasn’t he helping her now by driving off and leaving me behind to her mercies? He knew her every thought and reaction. He would know very well what he was leaving me to. There was no help for me there. If I was to get out of this predicament, I must help myself.

  I walked about, surveying the room. There were two windows—the one I had looked out a little while earlier, with a very steep drop to the sloping hill below, and the one that opened upon a small balcony at the side. I tried the balcony window and raised it with difficulty against solid ice. Snow fell into the room, but I ignored it and stepped through the opening into deep snow that filled my shoes. I went to the balcony rail where windblown whiteness engulfed me. The wooden rail wore a thick white icing and I swept a small stretch of it and leaned over. The ground was a long way down, but there were deep drifts rising as high as the first floor windows of Nomi’s sitting room just below me. Glynis had forgotten the snowdrifts.

  It was bitterly cold and already my hair and eyelashes were frosted, while melting snow dripped down my face. I crawled back into the bedroom and closed the window as softly as I could, kicked off my wet shoes. Then I cast about for the next step. The obvious one, of course—bed sheets! I ripped them off the bed, twisted them into long ropes diagonally, and knotted two together.

  For once I was glad of my glamour-girl outfit of white wool. It wrapped me in warmth, and the wool hat had flaps to pull down over my ears, the long boots came to my knees and helped to protect my ankle. I thrust knitted mittens in my pocket and let myself through the window. Though the balcony rail was of carved wood, it stretched between solidly p
lanted iron posts, and it was about one of these that I tied the end of the first sheet. Out in California my mother had been good at sailing, and I blessed her for having brought me up around boats and ropes and sailor’s knots.

  My exit was far from graceful. I went clumsily over the rail in my bulky clothes, slipped and slid and jerked my way down the knotted sheets. The snowdrift sank beneath me as I dropped, breaking my fall, and I was into snow to my thighs. I scrambled out as fast as I could and fought my way to a shallow place at the side of the house where I could look up at the windows. No one gazed down at me. Nothing stirred except at the window of Nomi’s sitting room. Jezebel was there, peering at me over a mound of snow. She patted one paw at the glass as I started down the hill. She was trapped too, but I could not help her now.

  I started down the hill as fast as I could walk with the stabbing pain of my ankle. I was going to Trent. It was the only thing I could do. It didn’t matter that long ago he had laughed over a schoolgirl’s attachment. He’d had the right to laugh. No one understood how painful sixteen-year-old first love could be. I would have seemed ridiculous to anyone—and knew it now. But this was a matter of my life. Even Glen would understand what I must do.

  The world I stepped into was like nothing I had ever seen before. The storm had blown itself out, but its evidence remained on every hand. Icicles hung heavy as steel bayonets from the eaves of the house, and every glistening brown tree branch dripped stalactites. Looking at the evergreens as I went down the hill, it seemed that the trees were mock Christmas trees turned cruel with their burden of real ice and snow. Every bough was frosted and glittering with rainbow lights as the sun came up across the lake. I almost wept for the first time, remembering my father’s youthful love for decorating our tree. The Chandlers had turned even Christmas trees into an ice-brilliant nightmare. The Chandlers? Was I already including Glen in a pattern I was coming to fear and hate? I shook off the thought.