Winter Solstice

by Pilcher, Rosamunde

  She reached out a hand and found her watch on the bedside table. Six o’clock on a dark early-December morning.

  The empty bed felt desolate. She found herself overcome with a physical yearning, a desperate need for Andreas, for him to be there, his smooth and muscular body close to her own. To be back where they both belonged, in the huge carved bed beneath the sloping beams: lovers, bundled in goose-down and bliss. She turned on her side, hugging herself for comfort and warmth. It will be all right. It’s like an illness, but I will recover. She closed her eyes, turned her face into the pillow, and slept again.

  At nine o’clock she awoke once more, and saw that the gloomy winter morning had begun to lighten. By now, David and Sara would already have departed, set off for work, and she knew that she was alone in their house. Already, she had been there for a week, and in that time had accomplished little; seen nobody, done nothing about finding herself a new job. Sara and David, infinitely understanding, had left her alone, and Carrie’s only contact with her family had been to call her father in Cornwall and have a long and comforting conversation with him, lasting almost an hour.

  “You will get in touch with your mother, won’t you?” he had said, and she had promised that she would, but kept finding good reasons for putting off this course of action. But a week was too long, and she knew that it could be postponed no longer. Today, this very morning, she would telephone Dodie. Surprise, she would say, sounding cheerful. I’m back. Here. In London.

  And there would be astonishment, and explanations and excuses, and then arrangements made for their reunion. She did not dread this, but neither did she much look forward to seeing either her mother or her sister, Nicola. She knew that they would have much to tell her and none of it would be good news. However, blood runs thicker than water, and the sooner it was done, and over with, the better.

  She got out of bed and pulled on her dressing-gown and went downstairs. The kitchen was neat and shining. Sara was an exemplary housekeeper, despite a full-time job. She had even found time to leave a note for Carrie, propped against the pot plant that stood in the middle of the. table.

  Have a good day. There’s bacon in the fridge and orange juice. David has a late meeting, but I’ll be home the usual time. If you go to Safeway, could you buy a veg for supper. Cauliflower will do. And some Lapsang Souchong tea-bags. Love X Sara.

  Carrie boiled a kettle, made coffee, put bread in the toaster. She drank the coffee but didn’t eat the toast. The telephone sat on the dresser and looked at her, like a bad conscience. By the time she had drunk three cups of coffee, it was a quarter to ten. Surely, even Dodie Sutton would be up and about by now. She reached for the receiver and punched the number. The rain dripped against the window. She heard the ringing tone. She waited.

  “Hello.”

  “Ma.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Carrie.”

  “Carrie? Are you ringing up from Austria?”

  “No. London. I’m here. Home.”

  “At Ranfurly Road?”

  “No. Ranfurly Road’s been let for three years. Three months’ notice on either side. I’m homeless.”

  “Then where are you?”

  “In Putney. With friends. Just across the river from you.”

  “How long have you been back?”

  “About a week. But there’s been a lot to do, otherwise I’d have called before.”

  “A week! Is this a holiday?” Dodie’s voice was querulous, as though in some way her daughter had pulled a fast one on her.

  “No, not a holiday. I chucked my job in. Decided I’d done it for long enough.”

  “I always imagined you were there for good. We haven’t seen you for years. What happened?”

  “Nothing happened. Just a whim.”

  “Will you get another job?”

  “Have to. Look, Ma, I thought I’d come and see you. Are you going to be in today?”

  “I’m in this morning. This afternoon I have to go and play bridge with old Leila Maxwell. She’s got cataracts, poor thing, and can scarcely see the cards, but it’s the least one can do.”

  Carrie persisted.

  “How about lunch, then?”

  “Here, you mean?”

  “I’ll take you out if you’d rather.”

  “No. I can manage. Soup and pate or something. Would that be all right?”

  “Perfect. How’s Nicola?”

  “Oh, my dear girl, such drama.”

  Carrie’s heart sank.

  “Drama?”

  “I think she’s gone mad. I’ll tell you all about it when you come.” A pause, and then Dodie added, some bright idea having obviously just occurred to her, “Actually, all this might be rather fortuitous. You coming home, I mean. She’ll be back for lunch, but perhaps you could get here a bit earlier and we can have a private chat about it all.”

  Carrie began to wish that she hadn’t telephoned after all. She said, “And what about Lucy?”

  “Lucy’s here, too. She’s got a morning off school, something to do with the boiler being replaced. She’s in her room, swotting for some exam or other. She spends most of her time in her room, so she won’t disturb us.”

  “I’d like to see her.”

  “Oh, you will, you will. What time will you be here?”

  “Eleven-thirty? I’ll probably walk.”

  “Haven’t you got a car?”

  “Yes, but the exercise will do me no harm.”

  “It’s a vile day.”

  “I’ll survive. See you later then, Ma.”

  “I’ll expect you.” And Dodie rang off. After a little, Carrie put the receiver down, sat and looked at it for a moment, and then found herself laughing. Not from joy, but wryly, because her mother’s chill and ambiguous welcome was exactly what she had both dreaded and expected.

  It had always been thus. A lack of communication, an antipathy, perhaps, that Carrie had come to terms with and learned to accept even before she entered her teens. Being with other families, seeing how they behaved with each other, had compounded her perception, and had it not been for the presence of her father, she could well have grown up with no knowledge of loving or being loved.

  She had never quite worked out why Jeffrey Sutton had married Dodie in the first place. Perhaps because she was pretty, flirtatious, and engaging, and as a young woman had the ability to turn herself into exactly the sort of companion any potential husband would wish to spend his life with. Only to discover, too late, that it was all a calculated act. On Dodie’s side, in Jeffrey she saw not only an attractive and virile man, but security as well, for his job as a City broker was sound, his career climbing steadily, and his colleagues were blessed with the social background that Dodie had always craved.

  Nicola was their first child, and then, five years later, Carrie arrived. So different were the sisters, so little did they have in common, it seemed that each belonged solely to a single parent. As though Dodie had produced Nicola without cooperation from Jeffrey, and Jeffrey had fathered Carrie, in some miraculous fashion, entirely by himself.

  He was her father, her friend, her ally … the strong partner of a marriage that could only be called a misalliance. It was Jeffrey who drove his daughters to school, while their mother lay in bed, sipped China tea, and read novels. Carrie remembered him returning home from work, the sound of his latchkey in the door, and running downstairs to welcome him, because Dodie hadn’t returned from her bridge game, and only the au pair clashed about in the kitchen. Grubby and exhausted after a demanding day at his work, he would dump his briefcase and shuck himself out of his overcoat, and come upstairs to help with homework, or listen to piano practice. It was Jeffrey who brought fun into family life, always ready with a spontaneous idea for a picnic, an outing, a holiday. It was he who had first taken Carrie skiing at Val d’Isere when she was only ten, to stay in a rented villa and be part of a cheerful house party consisting of two other families. It was one of the best holidays of Carrie’s life,
and the start of a passion that had never left her, but Nicola had turned down the invitation, partly because she was hopelessly unathletic, but also because she liked being on her own with Dodie, so that the two of them could go shopping together, and buy new dresses for Nicola to wear to all the Christmas parties to which she had been invited, and had no intention of missing.

  Clothes, boys, and parties were Nicola’s passionate interests, and it surprised nobody when she became engaged, and then married, when she was twenty-one. The young man in question was called Miles Wesley and was all that Dodie had ever dreamt of for her elder daughter. He had a grandmother called Lady Burfield, parents with an enviable property in Hampshire, had been educated at Harrow, and held a respectable job with Hurst and Fieldmore, an old-established property agent with branches all over the country. Miles was in the head office, in Davies Street, learning the ropes of selling huge sporting estates, grouse moors, and tracts of expensive fishing rights. No mother could have wished for more, and Dodie had a lovely time planning a wedding that would be the envy of all her friends, and a talking point for some years to come.

  Carrie was not a bridesmaid at this wedding because she refused to be. Now fifteen, she was tall, lanky, and working passionately at her lessons, because she wanted, above all else, to get a place at University. Her general appearance was the despair of her mother, who abhorred the worn jeans, heavy boots, and baggy T-shirts that Carrie favoured, and nearly fainted away when Carrie brought back from the Oxfam shop a leather jacket that looked like nothing so much as a dead sheep.

  When the word “bridesmaid” was mentioned, Carrie made her position instantly clear.

  She said no.

  There were terrible rows.

  “How can you be so selfish?” Dodie wanted to know.

  “Easily.”

  “You only have one sister; you could think of her.”

  “Look, Ma, I wouldn’t do it even for the Queen. I’m five feet nine inches tall, and I’m just not bridesmaid material. And I’m not walking down any aisle looking like a great pink taffeta meringue. A complete idiot.”

  “You know perfectly well it won’t be pink taffeta. Nicola and I have chosen deep-rose chiffon.”

  “Even worse.”

  “You never think of anybody but yourself.”

  “This time, that’s just what I’m doing. Nicola won’t mind. She’s got masses of pretty girl-friends just dying to be bridesmaids. Anyway,” Carrie yawned, “I’m not all that dotty about church weddings.” She found it amusing, sometimes, to wind her mother up a bit.

  “Why can’t they just nip round the corner to the Registry Office? Just think of the money you’d save. On the other hand, that would mean no wedding presents and yummy cheques.”

  “That is the most unkind thing to say.”

  “Just practical.”

  Dodie took a deep breath and kept her voice low and even.

  “If people wish to give Nicola a cheque for a wedding present, then I know it will be gratefully received. They have, after all, got to furnish their new flat. Refrigerators, lamps, carpets. Nothing’s cheap, you know.”

  “Or they could put all that lovely lolly into a special account, and use it to pay for the divorce….”

  Dodie left-the room, slamming the door behind her. The subject of bridesmaids was not mentioned again.

  Carrie was the first person Jeffrey confided in. She was nineteen now and at Oxford University, reading English and philosophy, and relishing every moment of her new life. One Sunday morning, he telephoned from London.

  “You doing anything today?”

  “Nothing special.”

  “I thought I might give you lunch.”

  “What a treat.”

  “Your mother’s with Nicola. Lucy’s running a temperature, so there was a cry for help. I’ll be with you around twelve.”

  Carrie was thrilled.

  “I’ll be ready.”

  It was a golden day in October, and when he had collected Carrie from outside her residence, he drove her out into the country and stood her lunch at Le Manoir de Quatre Saisons. An enormous and expensive treat. After lunch, they wandered into the garden and sat in the benign Indian summer warmth, and there was bird-song and leaves drifted down, like copper pennies, onto the grass.

  It was then that he told her about Serena, about meeting her, and seeing her, and falling in love. “… I have known her for five years now. She is young enough to be my daughter, but she means everything to me, and I don’t think I can live without her any longer.”

  Her father with a lover. Another woman. And Carrie had never had the faintest suspicion. It was hard to come up with something to say.

  “Are you shocked, Carrie?”

  “Of course I’m not. Just taken unawares.”

  “I am going to leave you all and be with her.” Carrie looked at him, and saw the pain in his dark eyes.

  “This is a terrible thing I am doing to you.”

  “No. Just telling me the truth.”

  “I would have gone before, taken Serena with me. But I couldn’t leave until I felt that both you and Nicola were … settled, I suppose. Adult. I had to be around while you needed me, while I could still be of use to you. Now, it’s different. You, I am pretty sure, can stand on your own feet. And Nicola is a married woman with a little girl of her own. I can only hope that she is content. Miles has always seemed a decent sort of chap, if a bit wet. I think she probably runs rings around him, but that’s his lookout.”

  “Poor man.” She thought of his own marriage to Dodie. She said, “All these years, have you been very unhappy?”

  Jeffrey shook his head.

  “No. There have been moments of great joy, mostly when I was with you. But I’m worn out of keeping up appearances, and making the best of things. I’m exhausted by the grind of trying to make enough money, struggling on, working flat-out. I need a different life. I need warm love and companionship and laughter, and Dodie is incapable of letting me experience any of these things. As you probably realize, we haven’t shared a bed for years. I want a home where friends drop in and sit at the kitchen table, and share spaghetti and a bottle of wine. I want to open the front door at the end of a day and hear someone call my name. In the mornings I want to shave and smell bacon and eggs cooking, and coffee perking. And it’s not just the male menopause, it’s a deep need that’s been simmering for years.”

  “I wasn’t going to say male menopause.”

  “I know you weren’t.”

  Another family had come out of the hotel into the warm afternoon sunshine. A young mother and father and a little boy. The little boy found a croquet mallet and a ball and was attempting to hit the ball with the mallet. After three misses, his father came to stand behind him, his hands wrapped around his son’s, to show him how.

  Carrie said, “You’ve done everything you could for us all. No man could have done more. If you feel this way, you must go.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “She’ll be devastated, of course, and her pride will be bruised. But I know she’s never put much into your marriage, and perhaps, at the end of the day, she’s a person better on her own.” Carrie sighed.

  “You have to be realistic,

  Dad. She’ll get a good divorce lawyer and make you pay.”

  “I know that. A price I’ll have to pay.”

  “What about your job?”

  “I shall chuck it in.”

  “Won’t you miss the cut and thrust?”

  “No. I’ve got as high up the ladder as I ever will. And I’m tired of the rat race, and the anxiety and the perpetual driving competition to keep up front. Perhaps I was never a very ambitious animal. And now I’m selfish. Do you think it’s wrong, at my great age, to want to be happy?”

  “You know what I think.”

  For a bit they didn’t say anything, simply sat there in a sort of silent harmony. Then Jeffrey spoke again.

  “This is about you, now. There’
s a trust fund for you; I set it up when you were born. Nicola, too, but hers has mostly gone on that ridiculous wedding. The point is, it’s sitting in the bank, breeding a bit of interest, and I think it would be sensible if you cashed it in and used it to buy yourself a house. In London, or somewhere. Property is always a good investment; I like to think of you being independent…. It’s not a great deal of money, but it would pay for a fairly modest house. What do you think?”

  “I think I like the idea.” Carrie leaned forward and kissed her father’s cheek.

  “You’re sweet. Thank you. We won’t lose each other, will we? We’ll write letters and faxes and telephone, wherever you end up. We’ll keep in touch.”

  He smiled, and looked less stressed than she had seen him look for a long time. He had, clearly, had a lot on his mind. He said, “Next Sunday, if I come back to Oxford and bring Serena with me, would you like to meet her?”

  “Of course I would. But she mustn’t think I’m too important, that I’m ever going to come between you. I don’t want to be a reason for Serena to feel guilty or remorseful. This must be where old responsibilities end, and your new life begins. Just make sure, this time, that it’s all happiness.”

  “And you, my darling? What about you? Have you a love in your life?”

  “Dozens,” she teased.

  “Safety in numbers.”

  “No chance of another top-heavy wedding?”

  “Not a ghost. Not for years. I have far too many other things to do with my life. And now, on top of everything else, I’ve got to go and buy myself a house. What a lot of plans we’ve laid and what a lot of things we’ve discussed.”

  “Don’t be too light-hearted. We’re in for a traumatic time.” She took his hand in hers. She said, “Allies, Dad. Shoulder to shoulder.”

  Jeffrey was right. They were in for a traumatic experience, and sounds of resentment and recrimination were to echo for a long time. At the end of the day, though, most people had to agree that Dodie had done very well for herself and made the best of a sorry situation. As Carrie had foreseen, she let Jeffrey get away with nothing, and ended up with the family house in Campden Hill, her car, most of Jeffrey’s worldly goods, and much of his money. He contested nothing, and could scarcely have done more to make amends.