Snow Angels (20 page)

‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘Come and sit by the fire. I was just going to have some breakfast. What would you like?’

Gil felt certain that he would not eat again before death.

‘I can’t stay,’ he said lightly, ‘but I will be back for him.’

‘Mrs Wilkins has some particularly fine ham to cook. That with an egg or two and some coffee. You prefer coffee, don’t you?’

Kate came back into the room bearing the coffee pot and cups and saucers, and milk and sugar on a tray.

‘Has it snowed much in the country?’ Henderson asked, pouring coffee and handing him a cup. Gil had not heard Henderson talk so much or be so convivial. Usually he was the opposite: grumpy and quiet. Perhaps the entire world had run mad.

Gil swallowed some of the hot liquid. It was tasteless.

‘I wouldn’t ask you, but I’m afraid for his wellbeing.’

‘Small children need looking after,’ Henderson agreed.

Gil put down his coffee cup and walked out.

‘Wait just a minute—’ Henderson began.

Gil got himself out of the house very fast. It was still snowing.

Robert had insisted on going back to Europe. Abby was tired of it and she was worried about her father. She wanted to stay in Northumberland. It was raining in France, so she could not see the advantage of being there. They had travelled down through the countryside and in some ways it reminded her of Northumberland and made her ache for home. The little villages and farms and the countryside around made her long for her father. She was tired of all the endless moving about that her life had become; she was tired of Robert’s friends and of doing nothing useful. She had discovered that where there was nothing but leisure there was no leisure, and though she had tried telling herself over and over again that other people envied her life, her husband, her houses, her dresses, her jewellery and her not having to work, anything which there was too much of could become monotonous.

If she could even have helped poor people; if she could have given money to decent causes, assisted people who needed help, that would have been something; but Robert did not believe in change so she was allowed to alter nothing, not even a set of curtains in any of the houses. She was sure that the feeling he had had for her when they were first married had evaporated almost entirely. He spent most of his time in pleasures which had nothing to do with her, men’s pursuits, shooting, fishing,
drinking, playing cards, going out to clubs and to various sporting matches. Abby was meant to carry on their social life alone and it was a lonely occupation.

She was still not pregnant, though he came to her bed three or four times a week. He did that out of duty and she let him out of duty. Her mind, having nothing to do, thought long on Newcastle and her father. She tried not to think about Gil. She could see that he was happily married and that his work was going very well. People talked about him with respect. Abby tried to be glad for him, but it was difficult. She knew that when you had regard for people you should wish them well, but it was difficult when he was so happy and she was not. She had homesickness and kept thinking of her father waving her away from the door of his house in Jesmond. Every time she did so the tears rose in her eyes and sometimes fell down her cheeks and she would chide herself and say that it was for lack of anything better to do that she was self-pitying and it was the worst thing anybody could be. She wanted to be home so much that the countryside around her made it worse. Though the weather was wet and cool, the countryside shone, the stones of the houses seemed bright and the fields were so green. Each morning she would walk up to the bakery and buy fresh bread for breakfast and it was the most wonderful smell in the world.

She was so afraid not to be there. She was afraid that her father would die while she was in France. She told herself to be rational; she told herself that it was unfair to Robert. He had wanted to show her this part of France, the countryside to the west of Bordeaux where his friends had a house, Perigueux, and the little villages around it. Robert loved being abroad. He spoke several languages fluently. It was one thing about him which Abby admired. He had spent most of his life going from country to country and knew French, Italian and Spanish.

The people they stayed with there, Veronique and Marcel, spoke little English. Abby found it difficult, stumbling along, not understanding their fast speech and there was no one around
her who spoke English. She liked their way of life. They lived for food and wine and Veronique did not have servants as Abby did. She ran her own kitchen and from it every day came wonderful smells of onion, meat and garlic.

The surrounding countryside was peaceful and Abby went for long walks when the weather was not too bad and spent what time she could reading by the windows of her room, which overlooked a huge pond. But she was not left alone long. They could not understand why she wanted to go out alone and either they or one of their friends insisted on going. They had lots of friends and there were visitors every day or invitations to lunch or to dinner.

When she had been there for two weeks, Marcel caught Abby in the dimly lit hall one night and tried to kiss her. When she showed that she was shocked at his behaviour, he only laughed. He was middle-aged and fat and Abby found him unattractive, but it did not stop him from trying to make love to her several times after that. Finally she suggested to Robert that they should leave.

‘We’ve only just got here,’ he said.

It was a month, a long, long month.

‘How much longer did you think we would stay?’

‘I don’t know. Over the winter, perhaps. They’re glad to have us and I’m enjoying myself.’

‘I would like to go home.’

Robert groaned.

‘What a provincial little person you are, Abby,’ he said.

Abby endured Marcel’s advances as best she could during the days that followed. But for that, life was pleasant enough. At least Robert was happy. They had been there another three weeks before Abby caught her husband coming out of Veronique’s bedroom during the afternoon. Abby hated the idea of lying down in the daylight, but at least it gave her a chance of being alone to read. How could you possibly be tired when you had done nothing for years and years and it was not summer, it
was not hot in the afternoons. She thought that she would go mad if she had to endure much more of this boredom.

She had left her room sooner than usual and then she saw Robert. She stared him out and went back to her room. It was a pretty place with a wooden floor and rugs, pale walls and pretty walnut furniture. He came to her.

‘I want to go home,’ Abby said.

‘Must you be silly about this?’

‘Silly?’ She glared at him. ‘You’re the one who’s silly, carrying on like that.’

‘She gives me what you do not,’ he said.

‘And what is that?’

‘Passion. She has more feeling in her little finger than you have in your whole body. You’re as cold as the place you come from. You never loved me.’

‘I do love you. I wouldn’t live a life like this for somebody I didn’t love!’

‘I have given you everything!’

‘I don’t want to be given everything. I am going out of my mind with the tedium of it. I’ve never been so bored in my life. I’m going home.’

‘Go then!’ he said and slammed from the room.

*

Going home was not easy. Abby had to find her own way, but she had plenty of money. She had not travelled alone before and had a great deal of time to worry about the future. She thought that if only there could be a child, it would alter everything. He would be pleased, proud; they would have something in common, something important to share.

Her spirits lifted a little when she reached England, even though it was bitterly cold. As she travelled north, it grew colder. There was the remains of what had been deep snow in the hedgebacks and against the walls, but she was glad to be there and, with each mile that took her north, her spirits lifted. She
didn’t go off to her home in the country; she went to Jesmond. A bitter wind was blowing in Newcastle. She left the station and hired a carriage to take her with all her luggage to her father’s house. She couldn’t wait the short journey to get there; she thought her heart would burst. She gazed from the window at the familiar landmarks, the houses, churches and pubs. When the carriage stopped outside the house she got out and ran up the steps to the door. Her only fear was that Henderson would not be at home, though it was Saturday afternoon and by rights he should have been. She opened the door and was about to call out when she entered its warm friendliness, then she noticed that a child was standing at the far end of the hall beside the kitchen door. He was very small, watching her with the concentration that only children have. Even in the dim light of the hall she recognised him immediately. He had Gil’s dark Collingwood eyes. It was Matthew.

*

Even when he had stopped using his own name, they had recognised him. Gil hadn’t thought how well known he was in Newcastle and how he stood out, being tall and dark and well dressed. Every shipbuilder in the area belonged to the same federation as his father and they would not employ him. Nobody dared offend William Collingwood. There was also disgust on their faces as the word seeped out about what had happened. He could have gone to Henderson and Henderson might have taken him on, but then again he might not. Gil couldn’t bring himself to ask. Even somebody as skilled as he was had no future here. He thought of leaving, then he thought of Matthew. He knew that Henderson would lend him money and he could have gone to Glasgow, to Ireland, even to Germany or America, but there was some stubborn feeling in him that wouldn’t go.

He couldn’t get taken on even in some lowly position amongst people who knew him so in the end he pawned his clothes, took some which looked as though they should have
been thrown out, let the stubble grow on his face, changed his voice and his name and got taken on, after a number of rejections, at his father’s shipyard. It was ironical that the only person who would employ him was his father. Down at that level, nobody cared what your name was as long as you kept your head down and worked. Gil’s hands were sore for weeks and his body ached from the unaccustomed physical activity, but in a way it was a relief. The other life was gone and he did not want to think. He worked and then he went back to bed. He had found lodgings in one of the houses his father had built down by the docks and it was awful. It didn’t matter much. The food was bad, but Gil didn’t eat. The beds weren’t very clean, but he didn’t sleep much. It was noisy because the area was full of pubs and dockers and people coming off ships; different languages were common and so was drunkenness. There were prostitutes on the streets; there were people sleeping in the doorways and the alleys. Gil drank quite a lot, but so did everybody and the men he worked with took him as one of them. You couldn’t fake the local accent; a man from another area stood out immediately. The language was unintelligible to anyone else, it was so thick and spoken so fast, it was its own language, but Gil had heard it from birth and had worked among labourers before. Nobody asked questions and the talk was all about work, so he was quite at home.

There was the question of Matthew. Gil didn’t feel like a father, whatever that was, and he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t expect Henderson to pay out anything for the child so he went to the back door of the house from time to time and gave Kate money. The shocked look on her face and the way she didn’t ask him in told him what they thought of him, so he said nothing. He didn’t even ask after the boy, he just gave her the money and left. What he had after that paid for beer, whatever he bought to eat and his bed at the house. The only way he could sleep was to drink and it had become a habit. You went to work and then you drank and then you went to bed. He knew that a lot
of his mates were married and that they drank their pay. Gil no longer cared about anything or anybody. He wanted never to care about anything again. He didn’t even care that he was doing the lowliest work beside the most beautiful ship that anyone had ever built. It wasn’t his any more. He could look on the majesty of this being he had created and feel nothing. In several months’ time it would leave to do its work and he didn’t care if he never saw it again as long as he lived.

*

Abby moved further into the hall and the child ran away into the kitchen to be scolded by Kate’s voice, but Matthew said something and Kate came into the hall.

‘Why, Mrs Surtees,’ she said, ‘I didn’t know you were back. Come in and keep warm. It’s bitter out.’

She ushered Abby into the sitting-room.

‘Mrs Surtees is here, Mr Reed.’

Abby had longed to see her father so much but now she didn’t understand what she had been fussing about. Henderson looked perfectly well and he got up and hugged her; but he was so glad to see her that she was pleased she had come back. He urged her nearer the fire, Kate took her outdoor things and her father asked after Robert. He showed some concern that she had travelled alone. Abby tried to convince him that there had been no quarrel, it was just that she had badly wanted to come home and he had wished to stay in France. She didn’t think her father was fooled. A man and wife should be together and they were not and he knew her too well to think that her jovial attitude was real. Abby was not altogether happy, either. He did not explain Matthew’s presence and for some reason Kate kept the child in the kitchen while Abby and Henderson had tea in front of the fire. Abby wasn’t hungry. In fact, she felt sick and the feeling increased as she stayed. Her father was not natural with her and although he was well, he looked upset, his eyes were dulled.

After tea, when he had still offered no explanation, she asked
him, ‘What is Matthew doing here? Is Rhoda in town? Is Gil coming to collect him?’ Abby didn’t really want to see Rhoda and Gil; her own unhappiness would seem worse against their apparently perfect marriage.

Her father looked down into his empty teacup, positioned it carefully back on the small table beside him and then he looked at her.