A Winter's Child

by Brenda Jagger

  ‘Benedict – have you rescued me?’

  And she listened to her own voice, speaking a little off-key, as if it had been the voice of another person.

  ‘I believe so. From Miriam and your mother at any rate. Are you in a desperate hurry to get home now?’

  Home? What an odd word. Did she even know its meaning, or where to look for it, or how to recognize it should it ever be found?

  ‘No,’ she said, answering her own question, not his.

  ‘Good. I have a house in Wharfedale, a village called Thorn-wick – not far. The couple who look after it for me put on a very decent dinner. Would you care to join me?’

  For a moment – not a long one – she allowed the silence to fall.

  ‘He has a cottage in the Dales,’ Nola had told her, ‘with a black marble bath and black satin sheets to match, I shouldn’t wonder – where he entertains his passing fancies.’

  Could Benedict regard her as a fancy, passing or otherwise? Benedict! Was it possible? Yes, of course it was. And having decided that much, she wondered why, being far from naive, she had not suspected it before. Possible, natural, highly, terribly dangerous. She knew that she ought to be scared half to death. Yet she was not. She knew, far beyond supposition, that she would unhesitatingly have advised anyone else in her place to withdraw now – to bolt for cover – while it could still be done in a friendly fashion. Not – absolutely not, for Heaven’s sake – to tamper with what any fool could see amounted to dynamite. She knew all that. But the temptation to observe this man at closer quarters, removed from the schemes and fears and frustrations of his family which so coloured him, was too strong to ignore. Here, offered to her in the guise of a simple invitation to dinner, was the challenge, the contest, the dare, her overwrought nerves had demanded. She knew, with an amazing cairn, that she could not resist it.

  ‘Thank you Benedict. I am rather hungry.’

  She travelled a mile or so in a drowsy silence and then fell asleep abruptly, very deeply, a loss of consciousness rather than slumber from which she woke alert and – to her own amusement – eager; her restlessness having given ground entirely now to simple, healthy curiosity.

  They were driving along a dark, narrow road, branches entwined overhead in a bare trellis through which she could glimpse a charcoal grey sky, a thin drift of cloud, an impression, on either side, of empty fields, cold, swift water, a land already drawing itself together to do patient battle with the coming winter.

  She had been to Thornwick once before, she remembered, a long time ago, on a picnic with Dorothy, a holiday treat which, like so much else in childhood, had given little pleasure. For Dorothy, to whom ‘good impressions’ were of greater importance than enjoyment, had, at some sacrifice, bought her daughter new shoes and a pretty new summer dress for the occasion, an outfit which, no matter how many compliments it had drawn from old ladies on the train from Faxby to Skipton, had made Claire look and feel like an overdressed doll. But Thornwick had been – could have been – an adventure, rural enough to seem quite foreign to her city eyes, a page from a Girl’s Own storybook had it not been for the stiffness of her pale pink sash, the spotlessness of her white cotton gloves, the straw hat with its satin ribbon tied in a tight little bow under her chin.

  There had been a village green, she recalled, a square of tufted grass, coarse and springy to the touch, with low, square stone cottages built all around it; a shop with a wonderful window like a patchwork of coloured, dimpled glass; a public house that had worn a shuttered, sheepish took; a squat grey church with an ancient graveyard where Dorothy had set her to decipher the headstones while she rested in the church porch, out of the sun. There had been a river, fast-flowing, magical, strewn with flat, white stepping-stones upon which Dorothy would not allow the child to set her feet, because of those precious, black patent shoes. There had been a steep grassy bank starry with wild flowers, where Claire, because of the pink muslin dress, had not been allowed to sit down; a dozen stiles which dress and shoes and white gloves combined had forbidden her to climb. And so they had walked about all day, prim and awkward in their finery, eating their picnic on a hard plank bench near the station yard, Claire longing to be barefoot, hatless, ‘common’, Dorothy longing simply for train time, home time.

  Neither one of them had ever suggested a picnic again.

  ‘I have been here before,’ she said cheerfully now to Benedict. ‘I was seven and wearing new shoes. They hurt abominably. I scuffed them too, which made my mother very cross.’

  They left the village behind, the road beginning to climb and to narrow until, for the last half mile it was little more than a can-track cut by usage between two dry stone walls, a roofless stone tunnel down which the November wind hurried, cold and whining and then rushed back again towards the high moor. Yet, in the way of tunnels, there was a light at the end of it, a gate opening into a flagged courtyard, two houses, one long and low, the other, some distance away, much smaller, the traditional grouping of farmhouse and labourer’s cottage with all the agricultural debris swept away, the yard no longer littered with the rusting tools and plough-shares Claire had often seen in such places but neatly, expensively paved, the old wooden farm gate replaced by elaborately scrolled wrought-iron; an immediate impression, even in the fading light, of money well spent, good window frames, solid roof-tiles, recently cleaned chimneys; a conviction that the plumbing would be advanced and efficient, the woodwork sound, that there would even be electric Light.

  She got out of the car and stood leaning into the wind listening to the muted, moorland voices of water over sharp, clean stones, the stirrings of coarse grass and autumn heather, the resigned bleating of a solitary sheep, the sudden, questioning bark from the nearby cottage of a dog.

  ‘The good ladies who keep house for me,’ said Benedict, ‘have an ancient spaniel, hardly for their protection so I must suppose they are fond of it.’

  ‘And they live up here – in the cottage?’

  ‘They do. And I live here, in what was the farmhouse – as often as I can. Shall we go in?’

  The door was old, beautifully preserved, solid oak banded in black iron, so low that Benedict was obliged to bend his head slightly although she passed through easily enough into a long, surprisingly high room which may once, she thought, have been two, where the first and growing impression was of warmth and quality, restrained but impeccable taste. The ceiling was old too, its massive oak beams venerable and fragrant with woodsmoke and polish, the fireplace not original perhaps, but magnificent, an entire wall of rough-hewn stone bearing a blaze of vigorously crackling logs in a black iron basket. There were armchairs of dark brown leather with fringed, berber-striped cushions thrown against them, rugs of black fur over the deep reds and browns of the Persian carpet, cabinets filled with books and china, small tables bearing, each one, some object at which a first glance simply aroused the desire to look again.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Swanfield,’ said a plain, pleasant woman in her late fifties, taking Claire’s coat as if she had been expecting her. ‘Can I get you anything, madam?’

  ‘Oh yes – if you could just show me –?’

  She was longing not to use but to see the bathroom, to find out if it really was black marble and decadence as she had been told, and following sensible Mrs Mayhew along a narrow but dimly-lit, deeply-carpeted corridor, she felt not in the least apprehensive as she knew she ought to have done, but buoyant, lightheaded, released as she had longed to be all day.

  The bathroom was everything she had hoped for, a bath of imperial proportions in black veined with white, white fur rugs on black and white tiles, startling at first until her eyes adjusted to these dramatic contrasts of colour, enabling her to pick out the touches of elegance, the white opaline beakers threaded with gold, the slender nymph, long hair tossing in a sculptured breeze, holding out in naked, alabaster arms a fluted shell of pure white soap, the wall mosaics of delicate sea creatures swimming in a midnight-coloured sea.

 
And, as she gazed at it, smiled at it, allowed herself to be just a little excited by it, one thought rushed into her head and lodged there. How Nola would have loved all this.

  Returning down the same bright, lavender-scented passage she found sherry waiting, a chair drawn up to the fire, yet so entranced was she by his possessions – each one a clue, surely, to the truth of him, or something near it – that she made no attempt to stop herself from peering around the room with the open delight of a child intent on deciphering a party puzzle.

  ‘Benedict – you have such lovely things.’

  And astonishing, delicate things. French paperweights, clear crystal encasing the petals of flowers or the jewelled wings of a butterfly; slender vases of cameo glass, white chrysanthemums engraved on amber, acanthus leaves on sapphire, classically robed goddesses on sepia, all of them intricate, exquisite, easily broken. And then modern things. A Tiffany lamp of coloured glass panels, iridescent as a peacock’s tail, a vase of Tiffany glass that had the pale sheen of a lily-pond, another that was, indeed, the tail of a bird of paradise made of green glass feathers, all the opalescent enamelled art-glass creations of Lalique and Galle, the riches of Art Nouveau so despised by Upper Heaton and High Meadows. How Nola would have adored them.

  How Claire adored them herself, this personal blending of styles – the traditional opulence of fur rugs and log fires and carved mahogany so perfectly balanced by the fragility, the frankly decadent, wholly bewitching allure of these crystal water lilies and peacock feathers – completely enchanting her.

  ‘And your books, Benedict? May I look?’

  Voluptuous poetry, she wondered? Swinburne and Dowson and wicked, wonderful Baudelaire, his ‘Flowers of Evil’matching the sensual iridescence, the delightful wantonness of the Art Nouveau glass? She hoped so. But they were volumes of political philosophy – another enigma – gold-tooled and richly bound but, to Claire, quite boring.

  ‘Do you have any land?’

  He drew back the curtains and she went to stand beside him at the window, peering through the gathering dark at a bare field sloping sharply towards a stream, naked trees erect and solemn in the distance, black, quiet hills beyond. A night wind, rising cold and stainless from the surface of the moor, hurled itself suddenly against the window-pane, making her shiver.

  ‘Heavens – winter is coming on.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind the cold weather. I was born in the winter. Miriam thinks it suits my nature.’

  ‘Oh yes – Miriam would. I’ve heard her theory. I was born in July and she thinks that makes me warm and sunny and easy to handle.’

  ‘And does it?’

  She smiled, went back to the fireside, took a sip from her glass, feeling – how could she best describe it? – separate, individual as she was never allowed to feel at High Meadows; unhampered – and how delightful that was – by the flurried, anxious choices her mother wished to force upon her; fully and competently adult.

  ‘Do you want to sleep with me, Benedict?’ she almost said, could have said quite easily, for this was a situation she had met before, handled before, discussed in a perfectly friendly fashion with a dozen men between Jeremy and Paul, sometimes the decision going one way, sometimes another, encounters just as brief, most of them, as this one was likely to be.

  Where were those men now? She blinked hard, reminding herself that she, at least, was here – safe – in a warm, clean room with nothing more dangerous to threaten her than a man’s perfectly normal desire for her sound, whole, living body. She smiled at him, thinking she would have her dinner first and then talk about it afterwards over a glass of brandy. Probably she would refuse. It seemed best.

  The dining room was heavy English oak with one or two surprises, pictures of Chinese pagodas and willow trees painted on silk, pieces of frail Chinese porcelain in shades of rose and jade, a pale green rug patterned with delicate Chinese flowers which gleamed like velvet on the highly polished wood floor. The food was English, too plain for the exacting talents of Aristide Keller of the Crown Hotel, but of the highest quality, excellent beef and home-grown vegetables, harvested by Mrs Mayhew’s spinster sister, Miss Todd; well risen batter puddings and thick brown gravy; a fruit tart – a perfect combination of Mrs Mayhew’s pastry and Miss Todd’s apples; a good Cheddar cheese and, as a sole concession to the gastronomic arts of France, a ripe Camembert. The claret was old and smooth and full, conversation easier by far than she had expected.

  ‘You are very comfortable here, Benedict.’

  And he told her, pleasantly yet rather as if she had been a recent acquaintance with only a superficial knowledge of his status and circumstances, how he had found the house some years ago in an almost terminal state of decay and how, through what she assumed to have been an enjoyable summer, he had rescued and restored it, cleared the land, drained the marshy area around the stream, installed competent Mrs Mayhew and energetic Miss Todd in the cottage, purchased his cameo vases, his Chinoiserie, his Art Nouveau glass. What had his wife been doing that summer? No casual acquaintance would have dreamed of asking. Therefore – since in this atmosphere, his private place, they had not met before – she did not ask. Nor did she greatly care. She was having dinner with an intelligent, attractive, highly civilized man who would certainly make love to her if he could, and his identity as her brother-in-law, Nola’s husband, the Swanfield paymaster – the colours in which other people had painted him – quickly faded before the stimulation of these exploratory approaches, the teasing preliminaries to the game of sexual love. She had not expected him to play it so well. She had always known him to be attractive but had never felt it, never actually seen it before. She realized now, with some amusement and a fresh upsurge of curiosity, that he knew it himself, not from any personal vanity or observations in a looking-glass, she thought, but simply from the effects, the results, his appearance had produced, many times she supposed, on women. Seduction, evidently, had come easily, even regularly. It followed, therefore, to a man of Benedict’s logical turn of mind that he possessed a seductiveness adequate to his needs. Did it seem to him as simple and straightforward as that?

  In the oak-beamed, close-curtained living room, where coffee and brandy awaited them, the light from the Tiffany lamps was emerald and gold, the light from the fire a warm excitement, of moving shadows, the armchair into which she sank was wide and deep, a nest of ease and forgetfulness, inviting her to repose not only her body but the bonds of social restraint, inducing a mood of companionable abandon in which it seemed quite natural to slip off her shoes, arch her back and stretch; her body, pampered by food and firelight, asking nothing better now than to drift mindlessly and gladly into love. Had she taken just a glass or two more of the claret then the outcome would have been quick and clear. She almost wished she had.

  Seeking to divert her own attention she glanced swiftly around her and, attracted by a sudden blue reflection from the crystal paperweight on the table beside her, murmured ‘How pretty.’

  ‘Yes.’ And apparently understanding her need to talk about anything but the real issue, the real purpose of their meeting which seemed now to be lapping all around them like gently but persistently rising water, he added, with a calm voice and a distinctly dry humour, ‘Very pretty. Millefiori from the glassworks of Baccarat in Lorraine. About 1855. Millefiori meaning a thousand flowers. Hold it up to the light if you want to see them all’

  She did so, already no longer certain whether she was playing for time or simply prolonging this delicious hesitation for its own quite separate pleasure, her hand suddenly full of jewels as fine points of light in sapphire, amber, amethyst, diamond, began to fly in all directions.

  ‘They are made from canes of glass,’ he said, ‘in various colours welded together.’

  ‘No, Benedict. They are real flower petals.’

  ‘I fear not. Just coloured rods cut and moulded and then fused into clear glass which magnifies them…’

  ‘Oh no –!’

&n
bsp; ‘Oh yes – I do assure you –’

  ‘Benedict,’ and she was light and laughing, physically aglow, ‘I don’t care how they are made, or who makes them. I’m just grateful somebody does – or did.’

  ‘I dare say.’ And as he leaned forward in his chair and looked at her with the keen, shrewd yet caressing eyes of a collector, a connoisseur, she knew, with the lurch of her stomach, the dryness of her throat, the sudden catching of breath which meant excitement, sensation, that the first stage was over and the time of question and answer had come.

  ‘Those cameo vases are exquisite too,’ she said.

  ‘So are you, Claire.’

  ‘And you want to add me to your collection?’

  She made the gesture of reaching for a cigarette and, offering her one from a vibrantly enamelled box, he lit it and then returned to his own chair, maintaining a physical distance which was in itself a provocation.

  ‘Yes – setting collections aside – of course I want you, as you very well know.’

  ‘Would you care to tell me why?’

  ‘Certainly. You are a very desirable woman. You must know that too.’

  ‘Well – yes. But I do hope you have rather more to say about me than that.’

  Did she actually like him? She rather thought that she could, or might. Certainly his capacity to intrigue her remained immense and, in that case, surely there must be something about him, some hidden key to his nature which she, like everyone else, had missed? And how clever she would feel, how rather like a cat with a cream-pot, if she managed – when all the others had failed – to find it. Not a noble aspiration, she admitted, but better, surely, in this world of compromises, half-hopes, half-truths, than no aspiration at all. Did she even want to like him? Was it necessary that she should? She had great liking for Kit Hardie, the possibility of rather more than liking for Euan, and she had taken pains to commit herself to neither. She had come instead to this isolated place with a man who would not ask for commitment and could not, therefore, be in any way hurt by her unreadiness, perhaps her inability, to give it. Benedict’s motives, she knew, were openly and entirely sexual. Why should hers be different? Yet, as the last remnant of caution briefly reasserted itself, bidding her, albeit with a very small voice, to think again, she knew, with a shrug of resignation, that for her – perhaps for most women – the act of sex could never be so uncomplicated, so unentangled by feeling of one sort or another, as that.