But all of that had come all the same: the steps, the voice, the singing. All of those places, all of those words. They had come from nowhere, yet perhaps they hadn’t all the same. Suddenly she thought of something. Sonia reached out and took the radio, and Marie’s hands did not resist; they fell away as if they had been pieces of candle wax. She took the radio and turned it over onto its back and found the little plastic clasp. She caught it with her fingernail and it came loose; the little black lid fell away onto the bedclothes. She stared in disbelief. In the little cave of the compartment there was nothing at all. There never had been anything.
She looked up at the old woman, the empty box that weighed nothing at all still held in her hands. And Marie’s head had fallen forwards; her eyes were quite closed.
The Ice
For the last three miles of the drive, once onto the Hallion estate proper, Lewis felt as though he wasn’t there. Perhaps it was the motion of the car on the bumpy track, and the warmth of the vehicle with its steamed-up windows; it felt as though his hands and feet melted away, and all he heard from somewhere far away was the engine’s hum.
Harry had said nothing either: the odd thing when he met the boy at the station, about bags and boxes and what could go where. But somehow he sensed there was no point in more, about what Glenellen was like and how the first term had gone. Lewis sat, eyes fixed straight ahead, the crumpled coat still held under his right arm, there and yet not there at all.
Only when they passed the dark forest of rhododendron and swung round a wide bend did the boy seem to come alive. A sudden glint of silver through the birches, and he was wiping the misted window to see.
‘Woodpeckers this morning,’ Harry said, filling the silence. ‘Two of them at the feeders behind the Lodge.’
But Lewis was looking away left, through the thinning trees to the grey expanse of water. He was there and yet not there, and when the tall white walls of the Lodge were finally visible, he unclipped the seatbelt and opened the door before Harry had properly stopped.
‘Will you wait!’ Harry exclaimed, but there was no point. The boy was running between tree roots and rusted clumps of bracken towards the water. The engine fluttered and died. A scattering of mallard scrabbled into the air, complaining. Harry sat there still, hearing the silence, watching the boy’s silhouette against the grey-white water, till the back door of the Lodge banged and a tall man in a tweed jacket started over the gravel towards the car. Harry was out at once.
‘You’ll need to have a look at the fence above Croft Hill. Bloody deer through again. Have you time, Harry?’
A violin in its dark case was lifted carefully onto the track.
‘Yes, sir, as soon as I’ve seen to the track. The flood’s made a right mess.’
Suddenly the man looked down towards the water. The boy was still there, small and dark against the pale surface of the lake. Far out, over towards the opposite shore, was an islet, crowded with tall trees and dark shadows of undergrowth.
‘And how’s he?’ the man asked, not looking round.
Harry paused, watching him. ‘Seems fine. Eager to get down there!’
They both laughed and Harry started carting in bags. The man kept where he was and took out a cigarette; the blue smoke hung in the still air. When the first luggage went into the hall he heard a muffled voice from upstairs; Harry’s name was all he made out. Then his mother appeared, looking round anxiously in every direction.
‘Lewis!’ she shouted. ‘Where are you, Lewis?’
Her voice carried; echoed over the water to the far shore. The boy turned and began to run, almost as though there was no gap between turning and running. He flew up through the bracken in one sure line towards that voice.
The cigarette’s thin blue coil drifted into the still air.
‘Mind your coat, Lewis!’
He watched the boy as he ran, eyes dark, but the boy didn’t look at him. As though he hadn’t heard. He poured himself into the arms of the elderly woman in her wide skirts and checked jacket. She buried her hands in his hair.
*
He stayed on the couch in her sitting room till the clock in the hall fluttered seven times. He lay curled there, face turned away and buried in the cushion, as though fast asleep. She sat beside him a long time, her hand in the straight dark gold of his hair. He talked after he’d stopped crying; he talked in angry fragments about the Latin teacher, about Saturday nights after prep, about the way the matron treated him when he fell. But most of all he talked about swimming; the stone-cold place where they waited for Macgregor, and all that happened before he came. She felt there herself with those thin, white boys as the shouting echoed around the walls at those who still couldn’t swim. Her fingers ran over the soft skin at the nape of his neck, and she brushed her hand fiercely over her eyes so he wasn’t aware of her emotion.
‘Lewis, it’s time for dinner. You’ve not unpacked a thing and I haven’t written my letter. Come on, you’ve barely seen your father!’
She moved but he didn’t. She looked at him, curled there on the couch, and remembered him two years before, in the weeks after Kate died. This was where he’d come and this was how he’d lain – just the same, only a little smaller. And she heard again that crying she’d never forget; the long, slow wave of it, exhausted and broken, like some terrible song. He’d talked to her then too, and that was how he felt safest – turned away, head buried in the pillow and eyes closed, her hand at the back of his hair. She’d given him then a little white elephant her husband had once carved. He was dying when he made it for her; he said nothing but she knew it was to be a way of remembering him. Now it was for Lewis and no one else, to hold when he could endure no more – something to take back to Glenellen, to carry always. She remembered and sat down again beside him, her hand suddenly even gentler than before. He noticed and half-turned, not understanding, his face glassy and broken.
‘Listen,’ she said, taking hold of his hand instead. ‘I have an idea. The island on the lake.’
Now he sat up, was watching her.
‘Your grandfather had a house out there, you know. Not much more than a cabin, but when he was a child he called it the Christmas House. One winter he stayed there, when there was enough ice. It was something he never forgot. Why don’t you go there this Christmas, with your brother and your cousin Winifred, if the ice is strong enough?’
‘And stay out there?’ Lewis asked, not blinking. ‘Would we be able to stay out there?’
She nodded, almost regretting what she’d said, as her son called from downstairs that dinner was ready – had been for twenty minutes.
*
Roddy came home that Friday. Even though he was only fourteen he’d persuaded Harry to let him drive once they were off the main road. His father was checking pheasant pens and met them half a mile from the Lodge; he all but strung Roddy up, face pulped to purple fury. He didn’t speak to Harry for two days, just left the sparsest notes for him in the porch.
Lewis felt strange when he saw his brother from the landing window, as though there were things to hide away. He felt confused and scared and didn’t know why. But they laughed about Roddy getting caught, and that was all right. He wanted to tell him about the Christmas House, but he didn’t.
‘What was it like?’ he asked instead.
Roddy looked up from his bags. ‘The corps training? Awful, bad as it could have been. Fuzzy was in charge of my group. At least Macgregor wasn’t there, though.’
Lewis felt his cheeks sting when he remembered Macgregor. Suddenly he smelled Glenellen again in the stale clothes Roddy spilled out over the floor. He wanted it gone, to have no place here, not to spoil what was precious.
That afternoon he ran up Croft Hill in the last light, all the way to the top, and stood there panting, palms on his knees. His father said you could see every corner of the estate from the summit. All Lewis wanted was
to see the lake, and this was the best place. He dug out his grandfather’s precious monocular from its chestnut case, crouched in the heather and forced his breathing to slow.
The magnified circle crossed the lake and found the islet. A beach on the near side, the one facing him. He followed what looked like a path further in, through birches and bushes to something round and wooden. He heard his heart. A window in the near side, small and thin, like in a castle. The very heart of the islet a tangle of trees and brambles. At the very far end a line of stones, and there on the last of them a heron, hunched grey. He was sure there was a rough ring made for a fireplace; suddenly pictured them years ago, not in the middle of winter at all but at midsummer. The night blue and the orange glow of a fire lighting their faces; laughter echoing over the water and someone daring them to swim. They’d pulled off all their clothes and crashed into the water, splashing and laughing as the rest of them watched, applauding.
*
That night Lewis was back at Glenellen. There among a wandered tangle of dreams, dense as the island’s heart. Back in the first week; the first day of swimming. He heard the drip as they waited, twenty-four white figures; feet together, toes touching the pool edge. Like the drip of time itself.
A prefect was there in uniform. Mr Macgregor would be over shortly; this was a chance to talk about a gala happening in October. An inter-house gala; they all knew the importance of representing their houses? Twenty-four heads nodded and the drip ticked, ticked. The boy’s black shoes echoed dully on the cold stone as he paced up and down at the deep end. How many would still be twelve on the thirteenth of October? A flutter of hands. How many were thirteen now?
Lewis was confused, kept his hand up after the others had fallen, and the prefect noticed. The shoes stopped. His question echoed.
‘Please, sir, it’s my birthday today. What should I do?’
A smile spread over the prefect’s face, like flame across paper.
‘What should you do? Well, to begin with, you shouldn’t call me sir.’ A slow snigger from twenty-three figures, suddenly watching and enjoying. ‘Secondly, you should come up here.’
Lewis was right down at the shallow end. He obeyed, bare feet treading the shimmer of thin pools on the stone. He didn’t understand. He was freezing.
The prefect was grinning. He had bad breath. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Lewis. I mean Cameron.’
‘Right, Cameron, happy birthday!’
The prefect lifted him as if he was nothing more than balsa wood, carried him up to the top diving board, and tipped him out into the deep end. Lewis came to the surface, swallowing and choking, arms swirling to reach the side, the laughter and applause sore in his ears. He couldn’t swim.
*
That Sunday there was a party at the Lodge. The last rain was gone and the skies luminous blue. Not a whisper of sound by the lake; a twig cracked underfoot and the echo seemed to carry like a gunshot. It would freeze that night: the first frost. Lewis turned and looked over at the islet; nothing more than a dark shadow hunched on the water’s surface, the taller trees searching like dark hands into the sky. This was going to be the first night of frost. His heart sang.
The boys ate at a table set by their grandmother.
‘Why can’t we come to the party?’ Roddy asked through a mouthful of venison.
‘Because you can’t,’ his father said, looking out of the side window onto the track, a cigarette in his right hand. He didn’t look round.
The cars came in soft curves up the track, headlights turning the hillsides vivid gold. Voices and laughter warm in the yard; plumes of white breath clouding the night, a night that left diamonds on sills and roofs. Lewis watched from the window of their bedroom and missed his mother so badly it felt sore as a rusty knife. He found the elephant in his pocket; dug it into his palm. He yearned for her. Whenever he remembered she filled him like a gust of longing and he felt blown out of himself. Nothing in the world mattered then but that longing.
The cars shone below under a cold ball of moon like a single eye. Everyone had arrived; the downstairs rooms flowed with talk and laughter, the clink of cutlery and glasses.
Roddy came over to the window and opened it.
‘Look,’ he hissed, brought out a miniature of whisky and a cigarette. ‘Got them from Dad.’ In answer to the loud question in Lewis’ white face.
He didn’t enjoy either, though he pretended to. He was too terrified of his grandmother appearing at the door, of the consequences. He just felt sick and dizzy.
He ate mints and brushed his teeth twice, scrubbed his face as though scraping moss from stone, and gargled. He lay awake long after Roddy’s breath grew soft and easy; the car doors thudded and the goodnights were loud outside. He padded onto the landing and looked for his grandmother; sat there, crouching and shivering. At last she appeared, wheezing, one hand slow on the banister, turning to go up her own stair.
‘How thick does the ice have to be, Granny?’ he whispered.
She looked round, paused, not understanding at once. Then her eyes lit and she smiled. ‘Three and a half inches.’
*
John Cameron was up before dawn. He’d not slept well, had what his own father called a whisky head. He went out into the blue stillness, coat buttoned against the cold. It must have been five below during the night. He heard something in the trees at the back of the Lodge: the ragged voices of greylag. He heard them but couldn’t see them and remembered the last goose he’d shot the year before, over on the lake’s far shore. He’d found it, flapping and broken, its long neck stretched for breath. It was trying so hard, flailing, and in that second he remembered Kate, two days before she died in the white lie of that city hospital. He’d looked down at the goose and something broke in him too.
He went down to the lake. The bracken bristled with frost; sharp panes of ice crackled underfoot. It was beginning to grow grey; he saw the lake edge as he came close. A white skin of ice. He extended one foot and heard the sound as it crackled; it was thicker than he’d imagined, though further out the water remained black and clear. They’d said it would be a hard winter: maybe Lewis would get his wish. He smiled ironically. His mother shouldn’t have filled the boy’s head with hope all the same; what chance was there of that kind of ice? They’d made the lake a hundred years and more ago for curling; back then it could be frozen solid for weeks.
The cabin on the island, built by his great-grandfather for those curling matches. For a hot toddy and a glowing brazier on days when hands turned to raw, red, useless stumps. His father christened it the Christmas House; several winters running he’d gone out there as a boy, taking all he needed over the ice.
How long since winters like that? John Cameron bent for a shard of ice. This might be all they’d get. He skimmed it away and stood tall, suddenly cold himself. The hills grew from the darkness. Up beside the Lodge he heard the soft riches of a blackbird’s song, so beautiful he had to stop. And he remembered another blackbird, however long ago, singing in the back courts of the city. He’d stood and listened, made up his mind that when his studies were done he’d return to Hallion after all, and with his Kate.
*
‘Why is Winifred coming for Christmas?’ Roddy asked at breakfast. ‘Don’t they celebrate Christmas in Manchester?’
His father folded his paper and just looked at him.
Their grandmother put down the teapot. ‘Winifred is coming because her parents are going to the Lake District, and they decided for a treat she should come north to us, which is why it’s up to you to make sure her time is special.’
Lewis hadn’t seen his cousin since his mother died. She’d been there at the church, had shaken his hand on the way out. He remembered her eyes, her very brown eyes – that was all. She’d said nothing; just looked right at him, as though saying something nonetheless.
‘That’s not the reas
on Winifred’s coming,’ Roddy said upstairs, thumping onto his bed and yawning. ‘I heard Gran talking to her parents yonks ago; they’re probably getting a divorce. I reckon they’re off to get peace and quiet, sort it all out.’
Lewis thought about that, and about Winifred’s brown eyes, when he went up to the attic. He’d tidied his room, but was to wait in the house until Winifred arrived.
The skylight window was covered with crystals of frost. He stared up at a patterning of thousands of gems. He couldn’t see the sky, it was so frosted.
He started rummaging through an old box of stuff, gathered from castles and lodges and boats. He bounced a rubber ball against the wall till it leapt away and started down the stairs. Some of his father’s rugby shirts from Glenellen; his name in Gothic script along the inside of the collar. It felt strange to touch them.
He pulled out a black radio: held it, thinking. Inside were voices from every corner of the globe. Sometimes far away, as though trying to speak through a storm of crackling, then suddenly clear as if there in the same room. This would be dead for certain.
He clicked the dial nonetheless and bent to listen. Not even a crackling; just a distant hiss. It was somehow like mist, but that wasn’t a sound. He turned the dial very slowly; sometimes the mist lessened, and perhaps there was the ghost of a voice. He kept on, bent right over, his ear hard against the radio, hoping.
And suddenly a voice, every word clear:
‘. . . for England and Wales much the same story. About five or six in sheltered parts, but several degrees warmer elsewhere, especially along the south coast. In Scotland the weather’s set to get much colder as high pressure moves in from Scandinavia; tonight we could be looking at a dip to minus ten . . .’
Lewis clicked off the radio and the voice was gone. He crouched there, his heart singing.
*
‘Train an hour and a half late. Heavy snow in the Lakes.’
Harry staggered in with a case, several odd-shaped parcels and a thinly disguised bottle which John Cameron helped to safety.
Winter Tales Page 8