Snow Angels (36 page)

He stayed the night with her and the illusion was complete. He could even come back into reality as far as to imagine the house that he had let go to ruin way back during those wonderful
stolen nights when he had been happy. That brief time had altered everything, finished his life, but now he remembered why he had done it, that it had seemed worth it, that he had wanted nothing but her.

In the morning the magic died. She was just a pretty girl in bed with him and beyond them the Newcastle streets were busy from the early hours and the room seemed tawdry in the harsh morning light. He drew back the curtains and it was still raining.

‘Do you have to go?’ They always said that. Mrs Fitzpatrick had trained her girls well; they always pretended they were reluctant to see you go, even if they had wished you in hell several times during the night while you made good use of your money and their time.

‘I should have been at work an hour ago.’ He washed and dressed and she watched him from the bed, her bare shoulders so kissable and inviting. He would pay on the way out, but he always gave the girl some money. This time she recoiled from the wad of notes.

‘I can’t take all that!’

‘It’s only money.’

‘Missus will think I’ve robbed you. I’ll be on the street.’

‘Go back to your old man then.’

‘No fear.’ She took the money and laughed and kissed him. Her breasts were so soft and her mouth was so warm that Gil wanted to stay. He walked out into the cold of the Newcastle streets and thought how unremittingly cruel life was, how spiteful. People were always going on about what a wonderful world it was, but it wasn’t true. It was shite. The deserts burned you, the sea drowned you, the ice froze you, you dragged some kind of existence out of it all, taking the bread from another man’s mouth if necessary, and then you died.

He walked to the office in the pouring rain. It was a long way and took most of the morning and he had had several meetings planned. His secretary would be having fifty fits. He reached it and shook the rain off his jacket and she came pale faced to him.

‘You have a board meeting and—’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘Mrs Surtees is here.’

Gil slicked back his shiny wet hair and went into his office. It looked so comfortable against the grey of the morning and the greyer of the river and the thick dark steel of the sky. The fire was burning, the lamps were lit and Abby sat there with her hands in her lap.

‘You didn’t come back,’ she said, just above a whisper. ‘I was so afraid when you didn’t come back. I didn’t mean it, I was just—’

Gil went back to the door and ordered some coffee and then he went to her.

‘You thought I was going to shoot myself, yes?’

‘No—’

She made him ashamed, sitting there with that anxious look on her white face. He got down beside her as he did with the children and said, ‘I’m sorry, I should have understood better than that. It won’t happen again.’

‘But—’

‘Go home. You look as though you haven’t slept. We’ll have some coffee and everything will be all right.’

She had been hurt too many times. Gil resolved not to do it again, but things changed. After that he quite often stayed out all night, there was nothing to go home for beyond the children. Sometimes he went back and had tea with them and read them a story, but more often he stayed at the office until late and then went either to Mrs Fitzpatrick’s or drinking with John Marlowe. John seemed to have time on his hands unless he was working and Gil surmised that his home life was no better. Edwina was, John said, absorbed in the world of culture. He said it in such a funny way, as though Edwina had been caught in a mouse trap. She sat on committees and chaired meetings to do with the local arts and had other ladies to tea in the afternoons. She did not drink and abhorred smoking. She went to bed early and got up early.

‘She’s pure, blameless,’ John said with a laugh.

One evening he persuaded Gil to go to the billiard hall with him. Gil didn’t want to go. It was the same place that his brother and Toby had frequented in the old days but, since there was no alternative except the office, the whorehouse or the pub, he went. It hadn’t altered. It was just the same with the big baize tables, the low lights focused on them and men standing around drinking beer. He had always liked the atmosphere, the talk. It didn’t matter what you did or who you were here, you were accepted. You didn’t even have to play, you could just be there. To Gil’s surprise, Toby was there with another young man. He seemed pleased to see Gil.

‘If we weren’t in public I would hug you.’

‘I can get by without it,’ Gil said.

‘This is Everett. He’s quite charming, not as handsome as some people but very talented.’

‘What about Henrietta?’

‘My dear boy, we have the perfect marriage, two lovely little boys and she is expecting another.’

‘You amaze me.’

‘Why should I? It’s the simplest thing in the world, rather like threading a needle. You should try it some time.’

Gil laughed. He couldn’t help asking, ‘Do you see my brother?’

‘Yes, often.’

‘You do?’

‘We’re the best of friends, we always were. He’s working for someone else. I think he likes it.’

‘Nothing could be harder than working for my father,’ Gil said grimly.

‘He’s not well. You should see him.’

‘I don’t need any advice.’

‘Families,’ Toby said with a sigh. ‘Would you care to play with Everett?’

‘Thank you, I’ve got John somewhere.’

‘It’s your loss.’ Toby said and went off, smiling happily.

*

Abby relived that evening again and again. It was funny, she thought, how the smallest things mattered. Nothing had happened and yet Gil was different after that. She had not thought that he came home to her or for her. She had thought that his life carried on as it had before she arrived, but she could see now that that was not true. He had liked coming home to her. Now he didn’t. The only reason he came back was for the children. All the charity work and all the time spent with Matthew and Georgina seemed dull because, even though she hadn’t known, she had looked forward to him coming back. It was too late. He didn’t give her the chance to redeem herself. He stayed at the distance where she had put him. She could smell perfume and whisky and cigars around him and she knew what that meant. Robert had always smelled like that, decadent, indulgent.

Gil went to work every day but Sunday and then he and John would go to the pub and come back at around three, very much the worse for beer, eat a huge dinner and then fall asleep. Many was the Sunday afternoon when the weather was fine and warm and the children were about, but Gil was no longer available to take them out. At first they complained, but it was in vain. He didn’t hear them. Then they complained to Abby and she tried to talk to him and, though he listened and agreed, it didn’t make any difference. Gil’s life had taken on some pattern he imposed upon it and he didn’t choose to alter it for anyone else. He would stay out all night on Saturday, go to the pub, have his dinner, sleep and go out with John in the evening. On Mondays and Tuesdays he stayed at the office until late, on Wednesdays he stayed out all night and on Thursdays and Fridays he played billiards. It was as rigid an existence as he had had before, but different. His room was always a complete mess
now, though the maids didn’t complain, they just cleared up all the clothes from the floor. The office at home was clean and empty because he didn’t work there. It was like living with someone else and all for … Abby didn’t know, for a few moments when he had tried to touch her and she had stopped him?

She had another problem. Matthew had started disappearing on Sunday afternoons. Gil didn’t notice. When questioned he said blithely that he had been to the park playing cricket with the other boys. Since it wasn’t far it seemed a perfectly plausible explanation, but Abby had the feeling that it wasn’t true. It happened the next Sunday, too, so the one after that she left Georgina playing by the fire – it was not a fine day – and followed him. She had suspected what he was doing and so it proved. She had difficulty keeping up, though she thought she knew where he was going. She had to see him go in the front door. She kept back a little way but was close enough to see the short fat woman who embraced him. Abby walked slowly home through the poorer streets, uncertain what to do.

Matthew came back with glib tales of cricket. Gil went out. Abby put Georgina to bed earlier than usual and she stood Matthew by the fire in the sitting-room and said, ‘I know where you went.’

She could see his small face deliberating. Was it worth a lie? Might it work?

‘You went to see your grandparents.’

Matthew frowned. He looked a lot like Gil when he frowned.

‘They are my family,’ he said.

‘And what about your father?’

‘He doesn’t care,’ Matthew said bitterly. ‘He doesn’t care about anything except the shipyard. He never comes home and when he does he brings that man with him.’ The children, Abby thought, didn’t like John Marlowe. They didn’t say anything, but they called him ‘that man’ and blamed him for keeping Gil away
from them. Georgina no longer ran along the hall at teatime; she no longer listened for Gil’s footsteps. Like most other men Gil had compartmentalised his family but then, she reasoned, they weren’t his family. She was a leech and Georgina was her daughter. He kept them separate and mostly ignored them. He provided money and not his time or attention or regard and she had done it.

‘What if he finds out?’

‘Will you tell him?’

‘What if I don’t tell him and he finds out?’

‘He won’t. He doesn’t notice anything.’

‘If I promise not to tell him will you stop going?’

‘I don’t see why I should.’ Abby didn’t see why he should either.

‘Because he will be very angry.’

‘He’s never angry.’

The opposite was true, Abby thought now. Gil was permanently angry, it was just that he didn’t shout or lose his temper or give any signs other than obscure ones.

‘Matthew, your father doesn’t like being crossed. A great many men have regretted it. I know he looks … even tempered but you are a very small boy and you must accept that your father would not like you to see your grandparents.’

Matthew became the small boy that she was speaking of and started to cry.

‘My grandfather is ill. He stays in bed and they are poor and my father did it. He did it! He did! I hate him!’

He ran upstairs. Abby went after him.

‘I hate him! I hate him!’ In the room that was his own, Matthew shouted again. ‘I know what happened. I know what he did. My grandfather told me. He’s a horrible man. He’s horrible and when I am older I shall go and live with Grandfather and Grandmother and never speak to him again!’

Abby didn’t know what to say.

‘What did your grandfather say your father did?’

‘He made them poor. He took the house and the business and everything and they have nothing and he – he—’

‘What?’

Matthew looked straight at her, his dark eyes spilling tears.

‘He killed my mother,’ Matthew said.

Gil couldn’t remember her name. Was it Sylvia? It could have been Desirée – where had she got that name from? – no, no, it was Chloe. He was convinced that Mrs Fitzpatrick named her girls as one would name a new puppy. They were probably all called Ethel and you couldn’t possibly call a girl Ethel in bed. Ethel and Agnes and Agatha. He was sweetly drunk. Not so drunk that he couldn’t take her, just drunk enough so that her name didn’t matter. He listened to her catching at her breath in the silence. It was three o’clock in the morning and the Newcastle streets were deserted. It was his favourite time. You could conquer the night by not asking it for sleep, he had found that. He no longer had to pretend that she was Helen and the vision had gone. He could not, even the worse for half a bottle of whisky, conjure the images of Spain in his mind so that they flooded the room. Helen was dead. Each night he knew it and it was so unforgiving. You couldn’t distance yourself from such things, yet he was a long way from her now, so far that he could not remember what she tasted or felt like. The life that they had had was no closer than the way someone would see it in a book, with words and paper between you and it, nothing of substance, nothing there. She was gone from him as though someone had closed every door between them. All he had now was the work and the whisky and this girl
whose slender thighs were parted for him. It was all there was and he had been a fool not to know it.

Gil felt nothing when he saw his brother from across the billiard hall. He had not expected that. A thousand times he had pictured them meeting again, what he would say, what he would do. All the years when they had not seen one another and not spoken he had missed Edward more than he missed Rhoda and differently from how he missed Helen. He missed him in a way that said ‘it’s your own fault’. He wanted to see his brother, but he did not feel as though he deserved to do so. It was hard, too, because Edward was always near, at first either at the works or at Bamburgh House and then a hundred times Gil thought he saw him in the Newcastle streets. He was always mistaken, but each day he looked just in case. Even to catch sight of him would somehow help, but until the night in the billiard hall he had not. They could have met face to face on any of the big streets. People who knew one another met every day; the chance of it happening must be big, but they didn’t. He couldn’t understand that. At Toby’s wedding he had not looked at Edward because of his parents, but in the billiard hall they were not there and it was different. Night after night in the loneliness he had dreamed that they met. The best dreams were where it had all been a mistake and it was the old days and he was at home. In fact, it was not the old days because there had not been a time when they were as happy as he saw them in his mind, when they were both married and their parents had smiled on them. No such time existed except in Gil’s subconscious, but he would awaken and feel cheated and then guilty. He could not free himself from what he had done. He knew that he never would, that he must learn to live with the person he was because he had made too many mistakes and could not go back and undo them. Neither could he make reparation. There was nothing to do but go forward and hope to try and do better in the future. He was beyond that, too. He didn’t want to do better, he wanted to drown in whisky and women and never
sleep again while it was dark. No more of those nightmares which had Rhoda and Edward and Helen in them. Gil had discovered that if you could sleep during the hours of light you didn’t have nightmares. It was as if they were not allowed. You could sleep a damned sight more peacefully when there were not deep shadows in the corners pulling faces at you.