She reached across the bed, feeling for Lenny’s naked back. He was gone. All she could feel were cold white sheets, with snaking wrinkles in them like the snow.
‘Lenny?’ she said, and turned around, and sat up. ‘Lenny – where are you?’
The fire had died, and the bedroom was dark. The wind was screaming now, like a demented beast. Elizabeth dragged herself across the bed and switched on the bedside lamp. No doubt about it, Lenny was gone. But his clothes hadn’t gone, and neither had his wallet or his shoes. Oh, I have left my –
‘Lenny?’ called Elizabeth. Maybe she didn’t have anything to worry about. Maybe he had gone to the bathroom, that was all, or hadn’t been able to sleep.
He had shocked her and upset her, hitting her like that, but at least she could understand why he had done it. She had met more than one veteran who seemed to have escaped the war uninjured: Peter Vanlies from Freestone Books, Rudge Berry from the New Yorker. Friendly, balanced, equable men – until something inexplicably frightened them or riled them, and then they became Marines again, instantly, capable of any violence, out of control.
She climbed out of bed and walked across the bedroom naked to pick up her robe. It was then that she became aware of an unexpected coldness in the air, even colder than the wind that was blowing, even colder than the snow. She turned around, and there was the Peggy-girl, floating at the end of her bed, her face whiter than ever, her eyes even darker, her lips even bluer with frostbite.
Her dress was soiled now, soiled and greasy, and it stirred listlessly in the wintry draught. She held out her thin, blue-veined arm, with its frostbitten fingers, and said, ‘Lizzie . . . you’ve betrayed me.’
‘Betrayed you? I haven’t betrayed you! Why can’t you leave me alone? I don’t need you, Peggy. I don’t want you! Just go, and go for ever, and leave me alone!’
‘Lenny hit you, Lizzie. I can’t allow that.’
‘Lenny hit me because Lenny has problems. I didn’t like him hitting me, and I never want him to hit me again, but I know what his problems are, and I love him, and I want to help him to solve them. Can you understand that?’
‘Lenny won’t ever hurt you again.’
Wide-eyed, terrified. ‘What do you mean? What?’ Oh God, don’t tell me . . .
‘We haven’t killed him, don’t worry,’ smiled the Peggy-girl. She danced a slow aerial ballet around the bedroom, her feet barely skimming the floor. Her smugness and her dirtiness were frightening. So was her ever-encroaching frostbite. Her feet and her ankles were so black now that she looked as if she were wearing boots.
‘Where is he?’ asked Elizabeth, hoarsely. ‘What have you done with him?’
‘Don’t you know? teased the Peggy-girl. ‘Can’t you possibly guess?’
‘Tell me,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Please.’
‘I was Gerda, wasn’t I? You guessed that much. But I didn’t have a Kay.’
‘You’ve taken him.’
‘Yes, we’ve taken him. The Snow Queen took him on the sledge and carried him away, and now he’s sitting in her palace, naked as naked, on the Mirror of Reason, cold as cold, trying to form the word Eternity, so that he can escape . . . which he never will.’
‘You bitch!’ screamed Elizabeth. ‘You horrible little bitch!’
The Peggy-girl looked taken aback. ‘He hit you, Lizzie. He took his hand to you, and hit you.’
‘Yes, he hit me! But it’s my decision what I want to do about it! Mine, do you understand me, not yours! You have no right whatsoever to interfere in my life and take Lenny away from me! You had no right whatsoever to kill the Reverend Bracewaite, or Miles Moreton, or those movie people that Laura knew. You had no right to mutilate Aunt Beverley. You had no damned right at all, and I’m going to make you pay for this, believe me?
The Peggy-girl was hop-skip-jumping in front of the hearth. Oh, yes, Elizabeth? And how are you going to do that?’
It was four-thirty in the morning and Elizabeth and Laura were sitting in the library, close to the fire. Even so, the house was so cold that they were wearing their overcoats.
‘I can’t think of anybody,’ said Laura, in despair. ‘And God almighty . . . it’s nearly dawn.’
‘I have to be somebody strong.’ Elizabeth insisted. ‘If I’m going to have any chance of saving Lenny, I have to be somebody strong.’ She felt distraught, exhausted, too frightened for Lenny to think straight.
‘What about Scarlett O’Hara?’ Laura suggested.
‘Can you really see me as Scarlett O’Hara?’
‘Maybe you don’t have her temper, but you have her looks. And if you burned Atlanta, wouldn’t that melt all the snow, and the Snow Queen, too?’
Elizabeth thought for a moment. ‘Burning,’ she said.
‘Well, that’s right, burning. The Snow Queen’s afraid of fire, isn’t she? That’s why the Finland woman kept her house so hot, to keep the Snow Queen away.’
‘Burning,’ Elizabeth repeated. She stood up, and looked quickly at all the books in the library. ‘Not here,’ she said.
‘What isn’t here?’
‘Bleak House. Can you see it anywhere?’
‘It’s in your old bedroom. I saw it there yesterday when I went in to borrow your robe. What do you want Bleak House for?’
‘Esther Summerson, that’s what I want it for. I always adored Esther Summerson. She was Ada’s companion, don’t you remember?’
‘I never read Bleak House. There was never anything literary to read at Aunt Beverley’s, unless you count Variety.’
‘Esther Summerson was blonde and very beautiful . . . but more than that, she was strong and calm, and that’s just the person I need. Gerda was strong, too, but her greatest strength was her persistence, not her depth of character.’
‘And the burning? You said “burning”, as if it was something important.’
‘It is important. Esther knows Mr Krook, who keeps a rag and bottle shop by the wall of Lincoln’s Inn. Mr Krook dies of spontaneous combustion. He catches alight, and burns, and there’s nothing left of him.’
‘I’ve heard of spontaneous combustion. There was an article about it in the Saturday Evening Post. Some old farmer was sitting in his kitchen in Nebraska or somewhere like that, and they found his body half-burned down to the waist, even though the linoleum floor that he was lying on was hardly scorched.’
‘Exactly,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I’m going to be Esther Summerson, and I’m going to take Mr Krook to meet the Snow Queen, and see how the two of them get along together.’
Laura slowly shook her head. ‘Listen to us,’ she said. ‘Listen to what we’re saying. We must be going out of our minds.’
‘If we’re going out of our minds, where’s Lenny? Don’t tell me he walked off into the snow and left all his clothes behind.’
‘All right, then,’ said Laura, standing up, and wrapping her overcoat tightly around her. ‘When do you want to take the peyote?’
‘As soon as I can . . . now.’
‘Don’t you think you ought to change your clothes, like you did when you were Rosita? You ought to look a little more Dickensian.’
‘I could wear great-grandma’s bonnet, couldn’t I? This coat will look all right, and nobody’s going to see what I’m wearing underneath.’
She hurried upstairs – first to her old bedroom, where she found a tatty paperback copy of Bleak House on the shelf next to her showjumping books and The Last of the Mohicans. Then she went through to her father’s room. His great-grandfather had been so grief-stricken when his great-grandmother died that he had kept all of her clothes, of which the last surviving remnants were her tiny patent-leather button-up shoes, so small that Elizabeth had no longer been able to wear them when she was eight years old, and the grey velvet bonnet which she used to wear on Sundays.
Elizabeth lifted the bonnet out of the musty, varnished hatbox. She put it on her head, and it was uncomfortably tight, but it would have to do. She went back downstairs. Laura was waitin
g in the hallway, holding the mescal buttons in her hand.
‘You look terrific,’ she said. ‘But do you really want to do this?’
‘Laura, this has got to be ended, once and for all.’
They went into the library. Elizabeth sat down on the leather sofa, with Bleak House open on her knees. She closed her eyes for a moment and said a prayer, the prayer that Gerda had recited in The Snow Queen. Then she looked up at Laura and said, ‘I’m ready.’
‘Remember what Eusebio told you . . . chew it slowly.’
She took the mescal button, and she was just about to put it into her mouth when the wind, already furious, let out a shriek that sounded almost human. It came screaming down the library chimney, so that the logs were hurled out of the hearth, blazing and cartwheeling across the room. At the same time, the french windows burst open, and the blizzard came lashing in. The heavy velvet curtains flapped and rumbled, and snow flew around them like angry white bees. It was so fierce that rows of books toppled from the shelves, and fell with their pages flapping to the floor. Papers whirled in the air, and the desk-lamp tipped sideways and smashed.
‘Lizzie!’ screamed Laura, in terror. The noise of the storm was deafening. The french windows flapped and banged, flapped and banged, until the glass shattered. Snow tumbled across the floor and began to pile up in the corners of the room, and on the chairs. The coldness of the wind was unbearable. Elizabeth held her hand up in front of her face to shield her eyes, but she still felt as if the skin of her cheeks were being scrubbed with a cold wire brush.
The wind and the snow extinguished most of the logs, but one was still burning underneath her father’s desk. She kicked it out of the kneehole and into the open, and stamped on it. As she did so, however, she dropped her mescal button, and it disappeared somewhere in the snow.
‘Laura!’ she shouted. ‘Keep hold of that peyote! I’ve just lost mine!’
But Laura shouted back, ‘Look!’ and pointed frantically to the garden.
Walking towards them through the blizzard was the Peggy-girl, her white dress napping, her face black-and-blue with frostbite. Her expression was angry and haunted, and even though her feet didn’t quite touch the ground, and she left no footprints in the snow, she seemed to be flagging as she approached them, as if the snow and the icy winds were taking their toll on her.
But it wasn’t the Peggy-girl that had alarmed Laura so much. Behind her, in the darkness, a tall black shape was approaching them, too. It was only visible because the snow was flying off it, and it looked like a huge ungainly woman in a cloak.
‘Oh God, she’s bringing it here,’ said Laura.
She turned to run but Elizabeth caught her arm. ‘Peggy won’t hurt us, you know that. She’s here to protect us.’
‘You think so? Then why is she leading that thing here?’
‘She won’t hurt us. She can’t.’
‘You can believe that if you want to. I’m not going to stay to find out.’
She ran to the library door, but when she tried the handle it wouldn’t turn, and it was so cold that it flayed her fingers, the way that Lenny had burned his hand on the stove.
‘It’s frozen solid!’ she called out. ‘Help me open it!’
‘Leave it!’ said Elizabeth. ‘You won’t be able to!’
‘Then I’m going the other way!’ Laura shouted at her. ‘Come on, Lizzie! You can’t just stand there and wait to be turned into ice!’
The Peggy-girl had already reached the snowbound patio, and was gliding towards them with those strange, tired footsteps, rather like an exhausted skater. Close behind her, the huge black shape of the Snow Queen grew larger and larger, and Elizabeth was sure that she could hear it, over the shrieking storm. It was making a deep, thunderous sound like a subway train passing beneath her feet, mixed with a clashing noise, like hundreds of scissor blades. Beneath its cowl she could make out a long pale horse-skull kind of shape, which must have been the Snow Queen’s face, if it had a face.
She tried to turn to Laura but she couldn’t. She suddenly realized that she was paralysed with fear. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t speak. She could hardly even breathe. Laura snatched her hand and tried to pull her toward the french windows, but she couldn’t think how to make her legs work.
‘Come on!’ screamed Laura. ‘Lizzie, for God’s sake, come on!’ The cold was so appalling that she couldn’t say any more, and the temperature was falling like a stone down a well.
Laura pulled her one more time, and then gave up. She stumbled out of the windows, and across the patio, heading for the tennis-court. But she hadn’t gone further than the patio wall when she tripped on a step that was hidden beneath the snow, and fell, and knocked her head. The knock was so loud that Elizabeth could hear it over the wind.
‘Laura!’ she called, and managed to walk stiffly towards her. But as she reached the french windows, the Peggy-girl came and stood in front of her, with both hands raised, palms forward, as if willing her to stop.
‘Laura’s hurt!’ Elizabeth protested. All the same, she glanced behind the Peggy-girl at the black hunchbacked shape which loomed in the darkness. If it came any nearer, she was going to try to run, too.
‘I know what you’re trying to do,’ said the Peggy-girl, dispassionately. ‘But you must stay as you are, and lead your life as you always wanted to. You don’t want your Lenny to suffer, do you?’
‘Leave us alone!’ Elizabeth shouted at her. ‘Why can’t you leave us alone?’
‘You have to be protected, Lizzie. I don’t want anyone to harm you.’
‘I don’t need protecting! I don’t want protecting!’
The Peggy-girl said nothing more, but turned her back, and glided away through the teeming snow. At first Elizabeth thought that the Snow Queen was going to come closer, but as soon as the Peggy-girl had passed it by, it turned away, too, and within seconds it had vanished in the blizzard.
Elizabeth limped over to Laura and knelt beside her. Her face and hair were already covered in a thin veil of snow. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was very shallow. She looked almost as white as the Peggy-girl. ‘Laura!’ she called her. ‘Laura, wake up!’
Laura’s eyes stayed shut, her face pressed against the snow. Elizabeth took a deep breath, and managed to lift her up in her arms, and slowly carry her back into the library. She cleared the snow from the couch, and laid her down. ‘Laura, wake up! Laura!’
She turned Laura’s head to one side, and it was only then that she saw that her blonde curls were matted with blood and snow. ‘Laura! You have to wake up! Laura!’
She went to the door and tried to open it. The lock was still frozen solid, and the handle wouldn’t turn, no matter how furiously she rattled it. Desperate, she went across to the fireplace and picked up the poker. She wedged it at an angle in between the doorhandle and the door, and heaved. To her relief, the lock gave way, and she was able to drag the door open. She carried Laura into the sitting-room and laid her carefully on the sofa. Then she picked up the telephone to call for an ambulance. The receiver was dead; the storm must have brought the lines down.
Gently, she sponged Laura’s head with a wet tea-towel from the kitchen. It was difficult to see how deep the wound was, underneath her hair, but Laura still seemed to be deeply unconscious and her breath kept catching. Her pulse was faint and irregular. There was nothing else Elizabeth could do; she would have to borrow Mrs Patrick’s pick-up and drive to the doctor’s, and bring him back to help her. The blizzard was far too fierce to risk driving to New Milford, and she didn’t want to take Laura with her to the doctor’s in case the pick-up broke down, which it very often did, even in good weather.
The fire had died down to ashes, but they were still glowing, and she quickly jabbed at them to liven them up, and put on more logs. Then she took off her great-grandma’s bonnet, wrapped her head in a scarf, and pulled on boots and gloves.
‘I’ll be back as quick as I can,’ she whispered to Laura, and left her a
scribbled note, Gone to doctor, in case Laura regained consciousness before she got back.
She went out through the front door and trudged down to Green Pond Farm through the furious snow. She kept slipping and stumbling, and the wind was so fierce that she had to lean into it, to stop herself from being blown over. It took her nearly ten minutes to walk the short distance to the farm, and by the time she passed the old pigsty her nose was so cold that she couldn’t feel it.
To her surprise, the farmhouse was in darkness. Not a light showing anywhere. Maybe the power was out. The Patricks must be at home, because the pick-up was still parked in the farmyard, and there were no tracks in the snow to indicate that they might have walked anywhere, or that another vehicle had come to collect them. What was even more peculiar, the front door was wide open, and snow was drifting into the hall.
‘Mrs Patrick? Seamus?’ she called. She peered into the darkness and listened, although it was hard to hear anything over the wailing of the wind. ‘Is anybody at home?’
She stepped hesitantly into the hall, and felt her way through to the kitchen, where Mrs Patrick and Seamus spent most of their time. The door was open and she could see that the kitchen itself was illuminated only by the ghostly, reflected pallor of the snow. It was cold, too, and her breath was visible as she looked inside.
Everything in the kitchen was covered in glistening layers of ice. The plates and jugs on the hutch were buried in ice, and the shelves were dripping with icicles. The dried flowers sparkled with ice, and even the pie that Mrs Patrick had been baking was frozen solid, with spangles of frost on it.
Mrs Patrick herself was sitting at the table, and Seamus, as usual, was sitting in his blanket beside the fireplace. Elizabeth said, ‘Mrs Patrick, thank God you’re – ’ even as she realized what had happened to them.
She approached them cautiously and tenderly, with a feeling of overwhelming grief. Mrs Patrick was frozen so hard that her eyeballs had turned opaque, and her skin was deathly white. Elizabeth gently touched her hair, and it broke in a shower of frozen white filaments. She went across to Seamus. Her footsteps crackled on the frozen floor. Seamus sat with his head on one side, a string of ice dangling from his lower lip. He looked oddly peaceful – more peaceful than Elizabeth had ever seen him before.
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