When Nights Were Cold

by Susanna Jones

  ‘Grace, do you think we should put Father’s portrait in the cellar, lest anything should happen to it?’

  ‘But he didn’t like it. We shouldn’t try too hard to save it.’

  ‘But if he didn’t like it, should we ever have left it on the wall in the first place? Should we not have hidden it?’

  ‘I don’t know. But then would we be putting it in the cellar to save or to hide it?’

  ‘I suppose we could leave it there. There’s not much space in the cellar.’

  ‘Mother thinks that he is keeping us safe.’

  We left the portrait in its place.

  All our neighbours had lost a son or friend and sometimes it was too painful for them to tell anyone so they put notes through the door. My first big loss did not come until 1917. I received a letter from Mrs Locke telling me that Leonora had caught an infection and died in hospital in London. I fell to the floor with my arms crossed over my ribs, as though a heavy trunk had been dropped onto my chest. It took minutes to remember how to breathe and, even then, I could do little for days. I could not eat nor move about. I could whisper but I could not speak. I went alone to the funeral. Only Hester Morgan and Edith Foot were there from our college days. There was no mention of any play that Locke had been writing, or of our Alpine disaster. She had, apparently, devoted herself to her voluntary work and intended to qualify as a nurse and make it her career after the war. Morgan told me that when Locke first helped to save a man’s life she felt redeemed in some way, released from her guilt. The memory that came to me most was of our first meeting, in the corridor on our first day at university, when she called out my name and smiled. I was sick every night for a week but I was unable to cry.

  The next one came soon after. Frank died in a hospital in France of trench fever. Catherine heard it from his parents, who never knew about Frank and me. An explosion resounded in my ears when Catherine told me and did not die down, like a fire that roared and roared. We didn’t find out exactly where or when he’d died. I could have read the newspaper but I did not want to know.

  ‘But he came home a few months ago on leave,’ Catherine said. ‘He was at his parents’ house so they were glad at least that they had seen him. That’s what they told me. They seemed utterly destroyed so I can’t believe it gave them as much comfort as all that. I suppose it might in time. I had no idea he was here a few months ago, just round the corner from us.’

  ‘Catherine, shut up.’

  Catherine played the piano deep into the evening and through most of the night. All I had from Frank was the Pitman’s shorthand book. It had somehow survived my week on the mountains in Wales and was in my room, unread. I wanted to burn it – what an inappropriate token of our passion – but could not.

  In the midst of this, or somewhere behind it, Shackleton and his men were missing. By the end of that year they had not returned and there was no word of the Endurance. I looked out for news in the papers, but it didn’t matter to me as it would have mattered a year earlier. It was as though the explorers had fallen out of life, come too late to do their job, and history had simply pushed them down and buried them before they had quite finished. It didn’t seem likely that they could come back now. Where would they fit?

  Oh, what have you seen, Father, with eyes that search and always find us? Did you know that I would never leave, that I will probably die here in this room? Do the years fall out in order for you or do you see and hear it all at once? Perhaps Catherine is playing for you now and I am in the cosy corner seat and then Mrs Horton comes in with cocoa. Perhaps, for you, it is in layers, or all present in one moment, say the moment you died getting out of this chair and you are getting out of it to die, even now. Can it be true that Frank and I made love right here, under your shiny oil-paint eyes, with my mother upstairs and my sister nearby? And yet I do remember it. I giggle, cover my mouth so that my visitor does not hear.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I received an invitation to a talk at the home of a Mrs Gertrude Belcher by the renowned lady mountaineer, Cicely Parr ‘Peru Calling: One Woman’s Journey into the Andes’. – The Ladies’ Alpine Club no longer had official premises but, it seemed, members had unofficial at-home gatherings with speakers. The invitation must have come from Parr as I did not know any other members. I took the card into the garden, read it several times. I was curious to know about Parr’s adventures, but I wondered if I dared go.

  Mrs Belcher’s drawing room was vast, with seats for twenty or thirty people. I positioned myself to one side, near the door. Parr noticed me, just as she took her place to speak, and she gave a cautious nod and smile. She spoke very well, with a lightness and warmth I would not have expected. She even laughed several times, without any obvious effort. She made an amusing comment about the state of her bloomers after losing her footing and sliding down a wet, muddy hill. She showed us the mark on her hand where she had lanced and cut out an infection with her knife. She told us how the Peruvian expedition had almost ended in disaster as most of the climbers’ equipment shot away down a smooth slope of ice. I watched, astonished, as Parr enjoyed the attention, the admiring smiles.

  ‘It might as well have been a precipice, such were our chances of getting anything back. And it was partly my fault.’

  She had changed indeed.

  ‘But I managed to save the hypsometer from a fall and so we were able to measure the height, even if we then had to hurry down as we had little to eat and little to protect us from the wind. The Indian porters were camped on the foothills and helped us set up camp. Fortunately they had looked after our gear well and stolen nothing – I had been warned to expect otherwise, you know – and we were all delighted with ourselves.’

  As she was leaving, I caught up with her. It was beginning to rain outside and was turning dark. We put on our coats and hats, set off together along the pavement.

  ‘Farringdon, I trust you’re not going to run at me with an axe, or perhaps you’ve come to suggest that I forged the details of my own expedition. No doubt you were there with me and helped me to the summit while I wasn’t paying attention.’

  ‘No. You’re a brave climber and a good speaker. I wanted to ask if we could forget all the other business, if you would forgive me for upsetting you.’

  ‘Thank you. Yes, thank you.’ She nodded, solemn and understanding. ‘You seem more yourself than before, I must say. I wasn’t sure whether or not to invite you but, then, I thought that if you were still mad, you wouldn’t have come anyway, would you?’

  ‘But I wasn’t mad.’ I tried to make my voice light, as though the question of my madness were a silly joke.

  ‘Remember how unstable you were the last time I saw you? I really thought you’d cracked up and lost yourself for ever.’

  ‘But I hadn’t.’

  ‘You and Locke always wanted to blame me, as if I had made Hooper fall on purpose. Hardly surprising that you went mad. Did you have treatment?’

  ‘Parr, stop it. I did not go mad and I never shared Locke’s opinions.’

  ‘You came at me with my axe, remember? Struck the house with it. I was terrified.’

  ‘I tapped it against your badly built wall, that’s all. You know it.’

  We reached the stop where Parr would catch her tram. I waited with her and we talked about Locke, about the war and when it might be over. The tram rattled in, spattered dirty rain on our skirts. A few soldiers jumped off and hurried away through the gloom. One bumped into Parr and apologized. She pushed past him and hopped on board.

  ‘It’s dark so early these days, isn’t it? Goodbye then.’

  She moved further into the tram and did not look back.

  I wondered why she had bothered to invite me to her talk. Locke would say it was because Parr wanted to boast about her success and see me envy her. If this was true, she had succeeded in some respects. I watched the tram drive off and felt the usual muddle of fear and awe, and had the strong sense that, despite everything, I would not want to be
her.

  I used to go to the stations and watch people arrive and leave all day. Waterloo, Victoria, Paddington. I’d find a seat and listen to the trains and the voices. I liked to see couples who might have been Frank and me. I’d follow them sometimes towards the platforms and try to catch their conversations. I’d walk home late in the evening, exhausted, and I’d think about what I would say to Locke about it all. Sometimes I saw people I recognized but I never spoke to them. I made vague plans for after the war, but mostly I felt that if it were ever to end, I would just rest. I would want to sleep. We would all want to sleep, I thought. Until then, I would continue in a state that was somehow both frantic and numb. Even at the stations, I did not wander aimlessly. I would make lists of the kinds of people I had seen, the soldiers, Girl Guides, schoolchildren, men with flat caps and women with fur stoles. I listed and categorized the outfits they wore. I counted the tickets as the clippies punched them. I thought that I would, one day, find the courage to ask for a job like this myself. Knitting and housekeeping did not keep me busy all the time, but I had lost my nerve.

  I would go home and help the cook with dinner. I would watch Catherine knitting, unable to concentrate on work of my own. The lodgers moved around the house, sometimes closing a door or scuttling over floorboards. I took Father’s maps from their box and I imagined journeys through France, Belgium, Turkey, Germany. I sat by the globe and let it spin and spin. I measured distances with the nail of my middle finger (half an inch) and spent the evenings adding up measurements and comparing them, for no reason at all except to keep my head full.

  Peter appears with two glasses of brandy, presents one to me. He slips into the hall and returns with his little suitcase. The brandy is good. I used to rub it into my feet to soothe them. Now it warms my throat and I think it will help me with Peter, with conversation. He settles under the lamp, takes a pile of papers from his case and sorts through them. It is some sort of typed manuscript and he shuffles the leaves, stacks them neatly with a certain fuss, as though they make him proud.

  His eyes flick around the walls of my room. He makes a few notes on a slip of paper.

  ‘You hide in your dark, dusty house. I can understand it. I left my village three days ago and already I’m homesick. I don’t like the city at all. I would have been very lonely in a hotel tonight.’

  Peter puts on his spectacles and studies his documents. I don’t feel afraid. In fact, I like him being there but I won’t hurry. I have papers of my own.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Dear Catherine,

  I was sorry to learn George had passed away. Please accept my deepest sympathy. I have missed you very much and was excited to hear that you are planning a trip to London soon. I should so like to see you. Wouldn’t you like to visit me here in Dulwich and see the house again? I have kept it just as it was when you left, but it has always seemed incomplete without you. If you don’t like it, we can make any changes that suit you.

  I am sure that you know this already but I want to tell you again. The scandalous stuff in the newspapers was all untrue. It was based on gossip and a misunderstanding. I realize that it was difficult for you because of the attention from the newspapers and having to worry about George’s public reputation, but those people hardly bother me now and they certainly would not trouble you. I think I am largely forgotten so there is no need to be concerned about all that. I am rather reclusive these days. I am sure that few people know I am here.

  Write soon and tell me what you think.

  Your loving sister, Grace

  It might do the job. I have written so many times I can no longer guess what will work best.

  Just after Armistice Day, Mother caught influenza and was in her bed for a week. Dr Sowerby spoke to Catherine, for I refused to see him, and warned her that young, healthy people were vulnerable to this virus and that we must be careful. We took no notice, sat with her every day and we were fine. It was very different from the last time Mother was ill. I hope I get better. I was enjoying myself, she said in a small voice. I’d just started to live again. Then she seemed to recover a little, was able to come downstairs and sit with us for an hour or two one evening. She complained about the dreary colours of her bedroom so Catherine and I went to the shops the following day for curtain material. For some reason Mother decided to go into the garden while we were gone, perhaps to see if she was well enough for a stroll and some fresh air. Mrs Delaney looked out of her window to see Mother slumped on the garden seat, her neck uncomfortably twisted. The neighbours’ cat perched on the arm of the bench, put its head forward to sniff at her face and she did not move. Rheumatic fever had weakened her just when her spirit was strong again. Catherine and I slept in Mother’s bed that night top-to-toe and, in the hours when we could not sleep, we whispered memories and held each other for comfort.

  We buried our mother in the churchyard, with Father and Freddie, and spent the next days sitting in the garden because we could not stand to be in the house.

  Catherine and I continued to take care of the lodgers and, after a year or so, I began to teach the odd class at my old school. Our schoolfriends were beginning to travel again, going to tea dances, cutting their hair short and throwing their corsets to the wind. We did not do these things. We had no part in this new London but stayed in the safety of our home. Routine had got us through the war and routine would keep us going. For a while we wanted nothing more. We took an extra lodger and gave the cook her notice. Sarah came every day and we employed a new girl, Mabel, to help on laundry day.

  Frank came to my bed most nights. I would lie with my back to him until I felt the mattress tilt and then I waited for him to wriggle a little and get comfortable. His feet were always freezing and I would say, Don’t touch me with those feet until you’ve kicked the ice off. He would laugh and put his arm around me, let his hand rest on my hip. I would tell him what I had done that day, the little incidents at school or at home. He listened and smiled. I would check his fingers for flecks of colour, to see that he had been painting. Then he would tell me about his life and this would coincide with my medicine having its effect and so his stories would be strange and wild. I would fall asleep no longer thinking of him but heading off for a distant, stormy slumber. With Frank at night, there were no questions. During the day I asked myself why he did not write to me.

  I thought that Catherine and I would live like this for the rest of our lives, and consider ourselves fortunate. Four years passed where nothing much happened and then I discovered that Catherine was paying visits to Dr Sowerby I saw her enter his surgery one morning when I was walking to school. Later, when I asked about her day, she said that she had not left the house. I began to watch her and saw that she was seeing him once a week or more. I feared that she was gravely ill and looked around the house for medicines or some clue. I searched the bathroom and her bedroom, even looked under the piano lid and inside the stool, but found nothing.

  ‘Are you all right, Catherine?’

  ‘Yes, why not?’

  ‘You’re not injured in any way?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or ill?’

  ‘Why? Are you going down with something? I thought you seemed pale.’

  The following afternoon, Catherine announced her engagement to Dr Sowerby. I was in the dining room planning meals for the following week.

  ‘I know you’re surprised and you don’t really like him, but he wants me to be his wife.’

  I gazed at her and this time I knew that it was true.

  ‘Do you love him? He’s rather old, isn’t he?’ Dr Sowerby’s nasty, cold voice murmured near my ear. I saw his heavy black suit, his plodding gait as he trundled up and down our path. I could not imagine how they had come together, had any sort of conversation that could have led to a proposal.

  ‘Don’t envy me, Grace. He’s a husband.’

  ‘If it’s what you want, then of course I’m glad but—’

  ‘He’ll look after me and you can have
the house to yourself. I just want not to be in it any more. I’m so thirsty for something different—’

  Dr Sowerby had known Catherine and me since we were children, but his Catherine was a mild and demure knitter and pianist, not the wild, confused girl we knew in private. Catherine was much better nowadays, since Mother’s death, but she was not properly connected with herself or things around her. She was capable of sitting on the front-door step for three hours or more, looking into the sky, then denying that she had ever been there. She looked after the lodgers but never found work outside the house because she was not able to keep time or talk much to strangers.

  ‘As long as this isn’t some trick of his to have you locked away in some dark institution, I’m happy for you.’ I took her hands and squeezed them. ‘At least you’ll be nearby.’

  ‘He says he never wanted to lock you away, just help you get better from your illness. No, but we’re going to live in Edinburgh in a year or two. Is that – is that all right? He’s retiring and wants to live there near his brother. He says it’s beautiful. I want to go so much.’

  ‘Of course you must go. You don’t have to ask me.’

  I continued with my list. Asparagus, sausages, sugar, ham,biscuits, mustard, stout. I must ask Sarah to finish cleaning Mother’s room and move her things up to the attic. We also needed soap and salt and vinegar. I scribbled the words onto the paper as panic rose in my throat. Edinburgh? Catherine had hardly been outside London. And to go so far with such a man?

  A lodger banged a door upstairs and a crackle ran down through the walls. Sarah was cooking and the place smelled of cabbage. Everything was rotten and I was still here.