Lakeland Lily

by Freda Lightfoot

  He trekked happily through the thick drifts of snow with her, very nearly laughed when she tossed a snowball at him, and even tossed one back at her. She urged him to help make a snowman for Thomas and he did so, lending it his bright red scarf and woolly hat.

  Lily watched with joy as something seemed to unfurl and blossom within him. It came slowly at first, his smiles stiff and unnatural. And if most of this newborn pleasure was derived largely from the lake, what of it? Frozen white from shore to shore, he told her how rarely this occurred over the years. ‘Though it happens more often with the smaller lakes, like Carreckwater. People have been known to hold parties and dances upon it.’

  ‘I doubt we’ll risk it, Bertie.’

  ‘We could go skating.’

  ‘It might not be thick enough.’

  ‘Thomas would love it.’

  ‘He might drown if the ice breaks.’

  But the old reckless light was back, however momentarily, in the brown velvet eyes. ‘Have you ever had a ride on an ice yacht, Lily?’

  She laughed. ‘You know I haven’t.’

  ‘I used to do it all the time when I was a boy. You must try it, this very day. We’ll check, but I’ll swear the ice is thick enough along this eastern section, and there’s just the right amount of wind.’

  How could she refuse? He looked so bright and happy, almost his old jolly self. Lily felt a weight lift from her heart to see the anguish banished from his eyes, for even one day. ‘Not Thomas, though. He’s far too young.’

  ‘I’m not, I’m not!’ But though the probe Bertie pushed into the ice told of a good thickness, Thomas was placed firmly in Betty’s arms and only allowed to watch Mummy and Daddy sail up and down on the ice yacht. Though he jumped up and down with excitement and shouted, ‘Let me, let me,’ his pleas fell upon deaf ears.

  The ice heaved and squeaked alarmingly as the flat-bottomed yacht with its metal runners sped over its surface, tacking into a strong headwind, skirting the rocky base of Hazel Holme and bumping terrifyingly over frozen waves till they reached a smoother stretch and could swing about.

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ Bertie yelled.

  ‘It’s freezing. I can’t feel my face. Is it still there?’ Laughing, he told her that it must be because her nose glowed like a beacon in the middle of it. Then, daringly, Bertie reached over to kiss her as she struggled to change sides before they turned about. It was the first time he had touched her in months.

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ she scolded. ‘You’ll have us both over.’ She shuddered at the memory of another accident so long ago. A lifetime?

  ‘You’re my beautiful ice maiden,’ he yelled above the scrape of blades and the roar of the wind. ‘What a sport you are, Lily.’

  ‘I’m not made of ice at all,’ she shouted back. ‘I’m a warm-blooded woman, and I need thawing out.’

  They stopped frequently to fortify themselves with steaming hot cups of coffee, enjoying the happiest afternoon ever. With one small chubby hand clutched in each of theirs, they took Thomas out for a trial skate on a very safe thick corner of the ice. Oh, and didn’t he love it? The little boy was pink with excitement by the time Betty took him inside for hot chocolate and his nap. A perfect family day.

  Bertie said, ‘I thought I might start designing again soon. Then I mean to build a power boat this summer while you’re busy with your little business.’

  Swallowing the protest that her ‘little’ business was meant to keep them, Lily merely smiled encouragement. ‘That would be wonderful.’ Perhaps soon, she thought, he would also be ready to talk, and then surprised her by doing so there and then.

  ‘Sorry I’ve been such a silly ass, Lily.’

  ‘You haven’t.’

  ‘Made a bit of a pickle of our marriage, eh? Must have driven you demented. All that nonsense with Rose and then Nan.’

  ‘Nan?’ The shock of this new information caused a trickle of cold sweat to run between her breasts. Not Nan as well. How could he? Bertie looked discomfited, hardly able to meet the expression of disappointment in her eyes. ‘I was grieving, as you were, after we lost little Amy. Couldn’t quite get a grip on things, don’t you know?’

  ‘Oh, Bertie.’ Lily remembered Ferryman Bob mentioning how he’d ferried him back and forth quite a lot at that time. She’d paid little attention. Now she saw where Bertie had found his consolation, in a life of debauchery. She couldn’t help but shudder at the thought, and Bertie couldn’t help but notice.

  He shuffled his feet like a naughty schoolboy, wondering how he could explain to her about his feelings of uselessness. How he’d suffered his own sense of loss and guilt for his beloved child. And how later, in London, he’d kicked over the traces good and proper, not wanting to face the future. Preferring to punish himself by living with the lowest of the low because of bitter feelings of inadequacy. No, he couldn’t tell her all of that.

  ‘I’m no good, old thing. Don’t deserve you, my lovely Lily.’ His voice was mournful, sad. ‘The likes of Nan are all I’m fit for now.’

  What could she say? Was this the moment to call an end to this mockery of a marriage? Dare she simply agree that she too was far from innocent, that they had married for the wrong reasons and, fond though she was of him, that was no basis for a lifetime together? ‘I don’t blame you, Bertie,’ she managed, and her heart softened as he grinned with relief.

  ‘Should’ve known you’d understand, old thing.’

  Lily knew she should explain that she loved Nathan. She wanted an end to this farce so she could be with him. But Bertie was saying that at least they were still good friends, that they could surely start again.

  ‘But…’

  ‘We’ll give it a try. What d’you say?’ Taking her agreement for granted, he urged her back on to the ice to skate further out, now that Thomas had gone.

  ‘Bertie…’ she began, but got no further as an all too familiar figure emerged from behind snow laden holly bushes. ‘Nathan?’ She felt as if her eyes were playing tricks on her, forming a mirage out of the ice. But, no, he was real enough.

  Bertie said, ‘Ah, there you are, old chap. At last. Thought you were never coming over to see me. Didn’t you hear I was home?’

  The two men in Lily’s life now stood face to face, considering each other. Bertie in his plus fours, Fair Isle sweater and peaked cap, and Nathan less stylishly attired in fisherman’s jumper and dark trousers tucked into his boots.

  In that moment it occurred to Lily that although Bertie had been home for several months, he’d never thought to call on his one-time friend either. She knew, of course, why Nathan had not come to see Bertie. But why had Bertie not gone to see him? She looked into her husband’s face and saw the reason. It made her heart jump. Dear God, he knew. It was written there, plain as plain in his brown eyes.

  Yet he sought a fresh start for them both. He’d accepted her forgiveness as if by right. Would he now offer his? Lily wished she could read his sad, injured mind.

  Bertie opened his gold cigarette case and held it out. ‘Got no Turkish left old chap. Only gaspers, I’m afraid.’

  Nathan declined and, turned to Lily. ‘You look half frozen. Why don’t you go inside and leave Bertie and me to chat about old times?’

  Nothing would have induced her to leave them alone together at that moment. Lily gave a brittle little laugh which sounded false even to her own ears. ‘Why don’t we all go in and have a hot toddy?’

  ‘No, no,’ Bertie protested. ‘Nathan hasn’t had a skate yet. Care for a race, old boy?’

  Nathan met his shrewd gaze and gave a half-smile. ‘Why not?’

  ‘A mile down the lake and back, and jump the gap. What d’you say?’

  The blood drained from Lily’s already pale face. Close to the centre of the lake a current ran too fast to freeze and several feet of open water cut through the ice. ‘The gap? You can’t seriously mean to try...,

  ‘Why not? Bit of a lark, eh? Nathan ain’t afraid of taking a risk, are yo
u, old boy? Get away with anything, he can. Luck of the devil, don’t you know?’ Grinning at his rival. ‘Best man takes all?’

  ‘Right,’ Nathan said, in his softest voice. Unusually for them both, they didn’t lay down a bet. But Lily recognised they were talking of more than a race.

  Lily watched with her heart in her mouth. She couldn’t believe this was happening. Why had Nathan accepted such a foolish challenge? Why had Bertie issued it? But she knew the answer, only too well. A reckless passion burned in them both, showing itself in the grim set of their faces, in every line of their straining bodies.

  Skates were put on and adjusted, a distance set and agreed. ‘Down the eastern side as far as the folly, then swing into the centre of the lake, jump the gap, and cross to the western shore.’

  ‘That tall beech as the finishing post?’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘This is madness,’ she said, trying one last time to stop them. ‘How will you ever get back?’

  ‘Walk around the lake, silly.’

  Lily was instructed as to how to start them off. How to time them with Bertie’s pocket watch. How to wave her handkerchief in acknowledgement when the first one crossed the finishing line. She couldn’t even think of finishing lines. Her eyes were riveted upon the swiftly running ribbon of black water that marked the centre of the lake.

  Bertie didn’t kiss her as he set off. Neither man asked her to wish him luck, nor begged for a favour as the knights of old might have done. But it was a similar contest, all the same.

  They started slowly, muscles straining, arms swinging, Nathan’s balance less certain than Bertie’s because of his stiff arm. Little by little they gathered pace and the two figures rapidly diminished as they sped away. She wanted to call them back, to wake as if from a deep sleep and find this all a nightmare.

  They skated on, strong and determined.

  It was perfectly clear to Lily’s anxious eyes that each was putting everything he had into the race. Whatever the outcome it must be seen through to its conclusion. Though they looked like two dolls skimming swiftly away over the frozen ice, they were men, filled with anger and the desire for revenge: Bertie because of his wife’s betrayal, and Nathan because he believed Lily had been treated badly.

  Nothing she could say now would bring them back. She called their names anyway, just in case, but the wind tossed her voice carelessly back.

  Lily had never felt so alone. The silence of the lake was broken only by the swish of blades against ice, the whisper of the wind in the trees. A dozen sensations and questions fought for supremacy in her mind. Would they be safe? Would the ice hold? Which one would win? More to the point, which one did she want to win? And if one fell ... But she could not take this thought any further.

  One moment Nathan was ahead by a fraction, the next it would be Bertie. The distance to the gap was lessening and the nearer they got to it, the thinner the ice was. Lily could hardly bear to look, daren’t even breathe.

  They were almost upon it. Nathan reached it first and took off, leaping, legs splayed, high into the air. For an endless, heart splitting second that seemed like a lifetime he hung perilously over the rushing black water. Almost at the same instant Bertie too leaped the gap which from this distance appeared thin and narrow though Lily knew it to be five or six foot wide at least, and deadly. Then with a loud crack Nathan’s blades touched the ice, skidded, rocked, swerved a little. He was safe. It needed only for Bertie to land and the agony would be over.

  Something was happening. Whether it was Bertie coming down too close to Nathan, or Nathan losing his balance she couldn’t quite tell, but even from this distance Lily could hear the ice splintering.

  Selene had been keeping a disdainful eye upon the activity on the frozen lake as she sipped her tea in the little parlour. She was furious that Margot had forbidden her the satisfaction of revenge upon her trollop of a sister-in-law, despite the obvious goings-on which she would have loved to tell Bertie about. Yet because of his precarious state of health, she had been ordered not to.

  Certainly he’d been behaving rather oddly lately. He was suffering endless headaches, moody depressions, and frequently talking to himself. He drank too much, and had recently taken to walking out late in the night, or so servant gossip informed her.

  Gossip. There was another cross she had to bear. All Selene could do was to bite her tongue and suffer in silence. She’d become increasingly aware of whispers and pitying glances following her wherever she went. They saw her as the spurned woman, unwanted and cast-off in favour of another. The fact that the other woman in the case had been her own sister-in-law only made the humiliation worse. Yet there was nothing she could do about it.

  She quailed at the prospect of facing her thirtieth birthday next year, still unwed. Had anyone warned her of such a fate at twenty-one, Selene was quite sure she would have expired from shock. Planning with Mama which suitor she might favour had once been a favourite sport. Now her last chance had been spoiled by Lily. A fact she intended never to forget. If she could find some means to get her own back, she would most certainly do so.

  Meanwhile her mother’s little tea-parties had become a veritable minefield of question and innuendo.

  Mrs Philip Linden, once the insipid Lucy Rigg, now a young matron of means and mother of four children, was at this very moment pressing her hand and stifling a manufactured tear as she softly enquired how ‘dear Selene’ did these days.

  ‘I do very well, thank you,’ Selene responded, not rising to the implied request for a confidential exchange. At least she had the satisfaction of knowing this to be perfectly true, even if her life had not proceeded in quite the direction she had expected.

  She and Marcus had developed a most satisfactory routine in which caring for his wife took very little part. This chore could largely be left to the servants, though Catherine’s presence provided the cover of respectability which they needed. Privately Selene dreamed of a day when his wife was no longer a feature in their lives. But since Catherine was still a relatively young woman, and for all her aches and pains surprisingly resolute in taking excessive care of herself, there seemed little prospect of such an event in the foreseeable future.

  However, there were certainly compensations to be enjoyed in the meantime.

  Marcus had taken to sleeping in a private bedchamber, for the ‘increased comfort’ of his ailing wife. Catherine had not objected and Selene often wondered how much she guessed or if she heard footsteps creeping along the corridor each night.

  ‘It must be so stifling for you, being at the beck and call of an invalid all the time. Poor you.’ Lucy’s strident voice broke into her thoughts.

  ‘Not at all. I am her friend, not her servant. Catherine is a most untroublesome creature and I do have access to Marcus’s Daimler, complete with chauffeur to take me about.’

  Lucy looked momentarily nonplussed by this piece of upstaging. Even her own dear Philip couldn’t run to such magnificence.

  ‘How lovely. Although motors are such dreadfully noisome machines, are they not? Simply shrouding the landscape of the Lakes in clouds of dust.’ It was the best put-down she could devise for a machine she’d give her eye-teeth to possess.

  Sophie Dunston, fiddling with her spectacles and talking through her adenoids, fervently agreed. ‘Almost as bad as women smoking. Quite dreadful.’

  Selene, who had recently taken up this pastime, gritted her teeth and smiled. ‘Oh, I don’t know, a puff of a Turkish can be most satisfying.’ How she loved the expression of shock on their faces. If these excessively proper ladies disapproved of fast motor cars and cigarettes, what would they have to say about her more nefarious diversions? she wondered, recalling the panting, thrashing figure of Marcus in her bed last night. There were indeed many compensations in her life, even if there were still one or two matters left unsettled. Selene gazed upon them with a pitying condescension, not least on her own mother who suffered such disappointment on her behalf.

&nb
sp; Margot was at this moment sitting tight-lipped while Edith Ferguson-Walsh went boring on at length about how ‘darling Dora’ was soon to be married to a French businessman who owned two large hotels in Paris.

  ‘So romantic. They met when Dora was recuperating after her illness. He’s terribly rich and the entire family is to be invited to stay for a whole week for the wedding.’

  ‘How very splendid,’ Margot drily remarked, inwardly fuming at the way such a dull, plump creature as Dora could strike so lucky.

  When the little tea-party was thankfully over and Selene stood by as Betty helped the ladies on with their furs and wraps, Lucy bent close to whisper yet more words of comfort.

  ‘I do think you’ve had an awfully lucky escape. Did you hear how poor Captain Swinbourne has died in poverty after going to live with his sister in Harrogate? And we know who we can blame for that, do we not?’

  ‘Do we?’ Yet more gossip.

  ‘My dear, he was not exactly old, was he, the poor man? Nor suffering from ill health so far as I’m aware. Though they do say he was an inveterate gambler.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘A weakness taken full advantage of by that dreadful man.’

  ‘Do you mean Nathan Monroe?’

  ‘Who else? Worked his way up from ticket-collector through deck-hand to manager and then bought the company off Swinbourne. Though how else he came by the money if not through gambling I wouldn’t care to speculate. Really, dear Selene, you should thank your sister-in-law for taking him off your hands.’

  ‘And what about my poor brother?’

  Lucy had the grace to flush and, hastily kissing the air inches from Selene’s cheek, prepared to depart. ‘I really must dash. The children will be needing me and Philip does so hate it when I’m away too long. Unlike you, I am not a lady of leisure. Dear me, no.’ A smile of triumph and a gentle tilt of her pretty head as she swirled out of the door on a breeze of Ashes of Roses.