Winter Solstice

by Pilcher, Rosamunde

  “Heaven forbid. Jeans and trainers.”

  All the time they had been talking, it had been growing threateningly dark. It was now that the first large white flakes of snow began to fall. They drifted from the leaden sky and lay on the front of the tractor, and gathered against the windscreen. Rory turned on the wipers. He said, “I wondered when that would start. You could see the snow-clouds, coming down from the north. I heard the weather forecast this morning, and they said we’re in for some heavy falls.”

  “Is it going to be a white Christmas?”

  “Would you like that?”

  “I’ve never had a white Christmas.”

  “Good for sledging. Hard work for the road men and the snow ploughs By now they were near the end of their journey, grinding up the slope that led to the clubhouse. Rory turned the tractor into the car-park, killed the engine, opened the door, and climbed down.

  “Will you be all right now?”

  Snow settled on his hair and the shoulders of his thick donkey jacket. Lucy clambered down behind him, and he reached into the cab and lifted Horace down and set him on his feet. Horace gave himself a shake, and even wagged his plumy tail. The snow drifted and swirled all about them, and the ground beneath their feet was already iced with crunchy flakes. Lucy felt one settle on her nose and brushed it away. She took the lead from her pocket and Rory clipped it onto Horace’s collar.

  “That’s it, then.” He grinned down at her.

  “You get home now.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  “See you tomorrow evening.”

  “Yes.”

  She walked away from him, down the hill, into the falling snow. Bravely, Horace limped along beside her. A disinfectant bath, Rory had told her, and then, perhaps, a visit to the vet. She hoped Elfrida would not be too upset, but was pretty sure that she wouldn’t. She would be sympathetic and would understand that none of it had been Lucy’s fault. Behind her, she heard the tractor start up, and turned back to wave, but there was too much falling snow in the way for Rory to see.

  She trudged on, feeling quite shattered by emotion and excitement. It had been a momentous outing. A long walk, a dogfight, a tractor ride, a snowstorm, and an invitation to a dance. She could scarcely wait to get home and tell Oscar and Elfrida all about it.

  ELFRIDA

  It was an enormous relief to Elfrida when she heard the front door open and Lucy’s voice calling out. It was now nearly midday, but dark as evening, and the world beyond the kitchen window blanketed with falling snow. Ever since the snow started, drifting down from a granite sky, she had been worrying about Lucy, blaming herself for being irresponsible and letting the child go off on her own, imagining every sort of horror. Oscar, upstairs by the fire, was not nearly so concerned. He read his newspaper and assured Elfrida, each time she rushed to gaze from the window, that the girl was sensible, she had the dog with her, she couldn’t be mollycoddled for the rest of her life.

  All of which Elfrida knew was true; so she returned to the kitchen to do something about lunch, peeling potatoes, but keeping her ear cocked, like a dog. When she heard Lucy in the hall, calling her name, she abandoned the potatoes and rushed out to meet her, wiping her hands on her cook’s apron. Lucy and Horace stood on the doormat, both encrusted in snow, and with a terrible story to tell.

  It was told in the warm kitchen, while Lucy shed her coat and hat and pulled off her boots. “… This horrible dog, a Rottweiler… and it didn’t have a lead … and it went for Horace and bit him, and then there was a tractor… Rory Kennedy … and he was frightfully brave … and had a dreadful row with the Rottweiler lady … shouting at each other … she stumped off… and Rory Kennedy brought us back to the Golf Club in his tractor and then it snowed. And, oh, Elfrida, I am sorry, but I couldn‘t stop it. And poor Horace has got bites and bruises. Rory said we have to give him a disinfectant bath, and maybe take him to the vet. Have we got any disinfectant? Because if not, I can go down to the chemist and get some…. It was so frightening…. I think he might have killed Horace….”

  She was clearly much upset by the whole incident, but, in an extraordinary way, excited as well, having come through the entire adventure and brought Horace home alive. Her cheeks were pink, and her eyes bright. She was a sweet child, of course, but serious-minded, and docility did not suit a fourteen-year-old. This metamorphosis was hopeful, and Elfrida forgot about all her anxieties, and knew that by sending Lucy off on her own she had done exactly the right thing.

  As for Horace, he sat on the floor and looked sorry for himself.

  “What happened, Horace?” Elfrida asked him.

  “Were you attacked by a savage hound?”

  “He did bark,” Lucy had to admit.

  “But not very much.”

  “Only stupid dogs bark at Rottweilers.”

  Elfrida went upstairs for a bottle of Dettol, and Lucy filled the big clay sink in the scullery with warm water and then they lifted Horace into this, and all the snow that was stuck to his paws and his chest melted away. There wasn’t a shower, but Elfrida found an old jug and used this to pour the hospital-smelling water over his back and his legs and his neck.

  He sat in sodden, suffering silence, but by the end of his bath Elfrida had discovered no serious wounds, simply a series of nips and punctures which would in time heal themselves. His stomach was badly bruised and one of his ears a bit torn, but by and large he appeared to have emerged from his battering with little lasting harm.

  Lucy sighed with relief.

  “So we won’t have to take him to the vet?”

  “I don’t think so. Just as well. I don’t actually know where the nearest vet is, but in this snow, we couldn’t drive anywhere.” She let the water out, lifted Horace out of the sink, and carried him into the kitchen, wrapped like a Bedouin in a thick clean bath towel. Gently, she patted him dry.

  “Now we’ve got two invalids. Perhaps we should put up a notice saying estate house nursing home.”

  Lucy was struck by guilt.

  “How awful. I actually forgot about Carrie. Is she still asleep?”

  “I expect so. I haven’t heard a sound.”

  “Where’s Oscar?”

  “In the sitting-room.”

  “I must go and tell him everything that’s happened.”

  “He’ll be enthralled. But, darling, your jeans are soaked. I think first you should go and get some dry clothes on. Bring the wet things down and we’ll string them up on the pulley.”

  “All right.” Lucy started to go, but at the open door turned back.

  “Elfrida.”

  “What is it, duck?”

  “Rory Kennedy’s terribly nice. And he’s got dyed hair.”

  “Dyed hair?” Elfrida put on an expression of horror.

  “What would your grandmother say?”

  Lucy told her, in Dodie’s voice. “

  “Disgusting!”

  ” And she grinned and was gone, and Elfrida heard her running, two at a time, up all the stairs to her attic bedroom.

  It was three o’clock that afternoon before Elfrida went to check on Carrie. The snow had stopped, but the dark day was already dropping into evening, and she had had to turn on lights and draw curtains.

  She gently tapped on Carrie’s door, and opened it.

  “Carrie?”

  “I’m awake.”

  In the half-light, Elfrida saw her head turn on the white pillow. She moved forward to switch on the little bedside light. Carrie stretched, and then smiled at her.

  “What time is it?”

  “Three o’clock.”

  “It’s like night.”

  “I know. It’s been snowing. We’ve had about four inches. But it’s stopped for the moment.” She went to close the window and draw the thick curtains, and me small bedroom at once became enclosed and cosy, with the single light burning and corners thick with shadow. Elfrida perched herself on the edge of the huge bed.

  “How do you feel?”
<
br />   “Stunned. How could I sleep so long?”

  “You were tired out. Would you like something to eat? Or a cup of tea?”

  Carrie thought about this.

  “I’d adore a cup of tea. And I’ve got to go to the loo.”

  She climbed out of bed; long thin arms and legs and a long night-dress. She reached for her dressing-gown and wrapped herself in it, tying the sash tightly about her narrow waist. Elfrida left her and went downstairs to boil a kettle. She set a tray for the two of them, and found some very delicious and expensive biscuits which Oscar, on one of his shopping expeditions, had been impelled to buy. She carried the tray upstairs and found Carrie back in bed, having washed her face and cleaned her teeth and combed her dark hair. She had put scent on, too, her own special perfume, and clearly felt much more presentable.

  “Elfrida, you are an angel. I am sorry. So much trouble.”

  “No trouble at all. I’m just so happy you were able to have a rest.”

  “It’s so quiet. Where is everybody?”

  “Once the snow stopped, Oscar and Lucy decided to go shopping. Just in the town. They’ve gone to look for decorations for the Christmas tree.”

  “Where will they find them?”

  “No idea. Probably the ironmonger. Lucy took Horace for his walk and had a tremendous adventure….” She told Carrie the long saga of Horace and the Rottweiler, and Carrie was suitably horrified, but impressed, too, by Lucy’s composure, the manner in which she had conducted herself.

  “What an adventure! Quite frightening, but probably just what she needs. She leads such a dull, unexciting life in London with Dodie and Nicola. They are both of them such selfish brutes, and neither has a scrap of imagination. I can’t imagine what my life at Lucy’s age would have been like if it hadn’t been for Jeffrey. And of course, she hasn’t got a Jeffrey, and she hasn’t got a proper father. Dodie and Nicola have such terribly limited horizons, there can be no stimulation at all. All they talk about is other people-mostly bitching-or clothes.”

  “What does the poor child do all day?”

  “Most of the time, she’s at school. She’s got a nice little room of her own in the flat, and a friend called Emma….”

  “I suppose she never sees a man. Or a boy.”

  “The school is all-girls, and if she does visit her father, the dreaded Marilyn is always much in evidence. Jealous, probably, stupid cow.”

  “I think she was rather taken by Rory Kennedy. Quite apart from being immensely brave and rescuing Horace, he has dyed hair. And an earring.”

  “Too exciting.”

  “We’ve all been asked up to the Manse tomorrow evening for a drink with the Kennedys. I’d love you to be able to come, because I want you to meet Tabitha Kennedy, but perhaps you aren’t feeling up to such wild sociality.”

  “I’ll see.”

  “And then, apparently, there’s some shindig on in the school hall, all the children are going to dance reels. Rory asked Lucy if she’d go with him and his sister, and she’s all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about this, and says she’s going to wash her hair tonight.”

  Carrie drank her tea, which was scalding-hot and smoky-tasting because Elfrida had made it with Lapsang Souchong tea-bags. She said rather sadly, “I have an awful feeling that when the time comes to go back to London, we’re going to have terrible sadness and tears.”

  “Don’t say it. I can’t bear to think about it.”

  “I’ve been thinking about this job with the travel company. In London. I’ve decided I’ll take it. Maybe just for a year. Then I can be around for Lucy, try to brighten things up for her a bit. I’ll bludgeon Dodie into submission, force her to let me take Lucy to Cornwall to stay with Jeffrey and Serena. You know, she’s never seen Jeffrey. She was just a baby when they divorced, and Dodie’s resentment and grudges show no signs of abating.”

  “Poor woman.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because she has nothing else to think about. More tea?” Carrie held out her empty cup and Elfrida refilled it.

  “Did Nicola ring today?”

  “Nicola? Were you expecting a call?”

  “No. But tomorrow she’s flying to Florida. I thought she might have called to say goodbye to Lucy. But she obviously hasn’t.”

  “Lucy never spoke about it. To be truthful, I think she’s too preoccupied with doggy adventures, Rory Kennedy, and buying Christmas tree decorations with Oscar.”

  “Good for Lucy.”

  They fell silent, sipping tea, companionable. The house was very quiet. Elfrida said, as casually as she could, “Is this a good time to talk?”

  Carrie raised her head, and her beautiful dark eyes gazed into Elfrida’s face.

  “Talk?”

  “You said you would tell me. Some time. Later. Why you left Austria. Why you came home so precipitantly. Why you are taking this job in London. Perhaps now, with no person to interrupt, is as good as any. I’m not prying, I just want to know. Not so much about Austria, as why you are so worn out and sad-looking.”

  “Is that how I look?”

  “But no less beautiful.”

  “Oh, Elfrida, what a star you are. I don’t feel beautiful. I feel old and finished. I’m nearly thirty now. It’s like a watershed. And I don’t know what’s waiting for me on the other side of the hill. Since I last saw you, the years have gone so fast. Thirty once seemed an age away. Now, before I know it, I shall be forty and then fifty and I have to make something of my life. But the simple prospect of decisions and meeting new people and finding old friends drains me of all energy.”

  “That’s probably why you caught this horrible cold. Why a small virus has laid you so low.”

  “Psychosomatic, you mean?”

  “No, I don’t mean that. I mean physically vulnerable.”

  “Vulnerable. I never thought any person would use that word about me.”

  “Everybody is vulnerable.”

  “I thought I was strong.” Carrie had finished her tea, and Elfrida took the empty cup, and got off the bed to put the tray down on the floor. Then, she went back to the bed and made herself comfortable, leaning her back against the brass foot rail “What happened, Carrie?”

  “I’d been in Oberbeuren for about a year, done a winter season and a summer season. The pay was substantial and I’d found an apartment of my own, and I was doing what I liked doing better than anything else in the world. It was a good time. And then I met Andreas. He arrived with the first of the snow, he came with a party of men friends…. It was a yearly date they’d kept, a sort of stag-party that had started when they were all at University. They stayed in the big hotel, and I met him then. He was a banker from Frankfurt. A prestigious family business, and his father was head of it. He was married with two children. I knew from the very beginning that he was married, but I wasn’t a young innocent any longer, and I told myself that I could handle it. I didn’t mean to fall in love with him, and I don’t think he intended to fall in love either, but it happened. It just happened.

  “He was the most attractive man I had ever met; and the most generous and amusing of companions, a brilliant skier, blissful in bed. He wasn’t Germanic-looking at all, not fair nor blue-eyed. In fact, he was very dark, and tall and thin, rather intellectual in appearance. He could have been a writer or a professor. But he wasn’t. He was a banker.

  “He came to Oberbeuren quite often that first winter. He flew into Munich in the company plane, and drove from there up into the mountains. Then he didn’t stay in the hotel, but with me. And it was like a private world that nobody else could enter. I thought, when the snow melted, that he would go, too, but he loved the mountains in summer just as much as wintertime, and we walked, whole days on end, and swam in icy lakes, and slept in remote inns. And we’d wake in some goose-feather bed, and hear the cowbells as the herds came in for the morning milking.

  “He travelled all over Europe on business and sometimes I would join him, in Vienna, or Luxembour
g, or Munich. In Vienna it was winter, and we walked to the Christmas Market, and bought gingerbread biscuits, and sparkly stars and little painted wooden decorations. And we went to the opera that night and listened to Rosenkavalier, and afterwards had dinner at the Three Hussars.

  “Then, about six months ago, he came again to Oberbeuren. He looked tired and a bit preoccupied. When I asked him if anything was wrong, he told me that he had asked his wife if she would divorce him. Because he wanted to marry me. I felt torn in all directions. I remembered Jeffrey and Serena; I told myself how happy they were together. But I remembered, too, the acrimony and bitterness of that particular divorce. I didn’t know his wife, except that she was called Inga. I could not imagine any woman not being totally in love with a man like Andreas. So I felt guilty and ecstatic at the same time. But I didn’t look ahead, because there was no point. I’d lived with Andreas, from day to day, for so long. I could scarcely remember the time when he had not been there or been the most important thing in my life.

  “He didn’t talk about the divorce again. He came to the mountains and we were together, and sometimes he would say things like, “When we are married, we shall build a house here, and come every weekend, and I shall bring my children. You shall meet my children!”

  “But I never made any sort of reply because I was afraid; it seemed like tempting providence.

  “Then he said he had seen a lawyer. Later, that he had told his parents. Told them his marriage was over, and he was going to get a divorce.

  “I think there must have been a monumental row. Andreas’s family were important in Frankfurt; rich, well-connected, influential. As well, they were Catholic. I can imagine how it must have been for him. And yet I can’t. I only knew that I didn’t have the strength to be the one to say goodbye. So what happened to me was up to him. Andreas. It was his decision.

  “He held out for about three months, and he was so strong and so sure, and so reassuring that I truly believed he would see it through, stick to his guns, and tear himself loose. But I think in the end the pressure was too much. He was obviously deeply fond of his wife and adored his children. He respected his parents and relished his lifestyle. I think he had probably been told that if he tore the family apart, then he was finished. Out on his ear.