Snow Angels (6 page)

He thought that she would probably go after a week, but she didn’t. She stayed on because she said she could not bear to be parted from Edward. There was much talk about a wedding at Christmas. Charlotte and Helen spent hours making plans and long lists. Edward and Helen travelled to Durham to talk to the vicar of St Oswald’s. Helen’s parents had bought a house in Durham so that they could be near to their daughter after the marriage.

Gil couldn’t eat or sleep and Mr Philips was beginning to complain about his work. Helen floated in and out of his dreams. When he was with her, he was conscious of his hands because he wanted to touch her so much. Worse still, she seemed to like him and often met his gaze over the dinner table or across the room. Desperate to get away, Gil went to see Abby. He suggested they
might go for a walk. Abby looked surprised, as well she might, he thought. For a moment it seemed as if she might refuse, but she didn’t. They left the house and walked through the dene near her home. It was pretty, with a stream and trees and shrubs, a bridge and little waterfalls. There were lots of people about since it was a hot July day and Sunday.

‘How’s Helen?’ Abby asked stiffly.

‘She’s going home this week, I think.’

He hoped. She was sleeping in the room next to his. Why did they have to put her there? He could remember being with her, watching her turn in her sleep, her soft sighs, the sunlight breaking across the room, the shadows against the white walls … He dragged his mind back. Abby was talking to him.

‘What?’

She looked accusingly at him.

‘You haven’t heard a word I’ve said. Why did you ask me to go for a walk? You don’t want to talk to me. You never do talk to me or dance with me. You told me you couldn’t dance.’

The words stuck in Gil’s throat like dry biscuit.

‘I can’t.’

‘But you can! You danced with Helen as though you’d done it hundreds of times. Nobody who hadn’t waltzed before could have done it like that. You’ve obviously known for years.’

‘I haven’t.’

She didn’t believe him, Gil could see. And he couldn’t possibly tell her about the little dancing teacher in Pink Lane, it would make him look foolish. The angry look on Abby’s face silenced Gil. They walked back to the house, Abby almost striding. Henderson greeted him without a smile and it was then that Gil realised her father didn’t like him. What had he done?

‘Now, young Collingwood, what can we do for you?’ He looked grimly at Gil. ‘I hear there’s to be a wedding at Christmas. Awful things, weddings. Folk standing around looking stupid and trying to find something to say.’ And Henderson stamped off.

Gil waited for Abby to offer him tea. When she didn’t, he felt obliged to leave and go home.

*

Abby ordered tea for herself and her father the minute that Gil had gone. Henderson came in, sat down and drank his tea, but his face was dark and she had not long to wait before he said, ‘I don’t want that lad here, Abby. I’ve no objection to being friends with them up to a point, but if I thought you were taken with him—’

‘I’m not,’ Abby said quickly.

‘What was he doing here then?’

‘I don’t know.’

*

Helen went back to Durham, but each weekend she came to stay or Edward went to her house. The next Saturday that she was at the house, Edward was out of sorts and she wanted to go riding so Gil was obliged to go with her. They went early before the heat should take the day, while the dew was still on the grass, and it was just as good as Gil had known it would be. He was a better horseman than his brother and riding through the wide North-umbrain fields with Helen was as near to perfection as life could manage. She enjoyed it too, shrieking as she jumped a fallen log, laughing when they raced. He felt as though he was giving her up to Edward again when they got back to the stables.

Her pretty brown riding habit suited her, making her eyes look even bluer, and they sparkled from the exercise. Gil thought that she was nothing like Abby. He was determined to make things right with Abby and went into Newcastle the following day. He found Henderson alone and he was uneasy, following him into the study. Henderson obviously worked on Sunday afternoons. To Gil, from somewhere, there was an echo. Was this what people did when they were lonely? The room had the untidiness of concentration. There were papers everywhere.

Henderson’s house seemed small to Gil after the mansion that he lived in, yet it was a big town house with gardens and a tennis court, a conservatory and half a dozen big rooms downstairs.

‘This is getting to be a regular thing, isn’t it, lad?’ Henderson said, watching him.

Being called ‘lad’ was like being at home and Gil resented the intimacy.

‘Jack Philips tells me you have talent.’

Gill had had no idea that Abby’s father was on such terms with the head of Collingwood’s drawing office. The professional in Gil resented that, but he personally resented Mr Philips talking about him, especially to somebody like Henderson, who couldn’t have kept his mouth shut during a sandstorm in the desert.

‘Your father is lucky to have two sons,’ Henderson said gruffly. ‘Abby is out. I presume it’s her you came to see. She’s gone for a walk with Robert Surtees. Aye, you may well look. He haunts us.’

Henderson was watching him, rather, Gil thought, as though he might grab the silver candlesticks and run out of the door.

‘I’ve got nothing against you, lad. I don’t even mind that you’re a younger son. But I wouldn’t want to think that you were getting in the road here. Surtees is a man of property and distinction with a fine name and good breeding. I’ll be the happiest man alive if he asks Abby to marry him. The only thing I lack in life is a son and he’s a gentleman. He’s educated and clever and knows his way about the world. You’re just a lad and you haven’t exactly distinguished yourself so far.’

The silence which followed was a Sunday afternoon silence. Gil knew it well. The atmosphere that you got when you went pigeon-shooting on those cool, foggy November days just before dusk came down slowly like a thief. The woods were full of pigeons but you could not hear the flapping of their wings, nothing but the thick white silence before they moved, before
you put the gun up to your shoulder and pulled the trigger. Never a day off for pigeons, never a peaceful Sunday, always the possibility of death before teatime, blood staining their grey and white breasts.

He left. Henderson showed him the door and Gil went, Henderson telling him flatly that Abby could be hours so there was no point in waiting and that he had work to do.

*

There was nowhere to hide. The lengthening nights became a torment of sleeplessness and want. His mother complained that he didn’t eat and questioned the cooking. His father finally realised that he was making a mess of things at work and moved him so that he could watch him. After that, working beside his father and Edward, Gil was so miserable that he made elementary mistakes. Finally, one afternoon that autumn, his father lost patience and hit him. It was the kind of blow that sent you into the wall and, since the wall had no give in it, you took the pain twice. He had been thinking about leaving all that week, going he didn’t know where, and that strengthened his resolution; but his brother, who had never before defended him, sprang up from the far side of the desk, shouting, ‘Don’t do that to him!’

They were the sweetest words that Gil had ever heard. Edward was in front of him like a shield. He could hear the quiet threat in his brother’s voice when he said slowly, ‘Don’t hit him.’

William laughed.

‘How brave you are,’ he sneered, ‘brave on the back of your lass’s fortune? You aren’t wed to her yet. I tell you, you aren’t much better than he is. We’ll do a sight more when you’ve wedded and bedded her. Then we might get some work out of you!’ And his father left the office, slamming the door. Edward turned around, glaring.

‘What the hell is the matter with you?’

Gil could taste blood and he had hurt his shoulder and his
arm, but he got out of the office and down the corridor and into the cupboard-sized place his father had assigned his office before the stone in his throat eased.

*

Helen had arrived when they got home. It was Friday evening. She was particularly bright at dinner. She wore one of her prettiest dresses and afterwards she played the piano. William had barely spoken and went away to his study. Charlotte sat with a book. Edward came to where Gil was standing by the window and said, ‘Toby asked me if I would go into town and play billiards. Do you want to come?’

Gil was astonished and rather pleased. He couldn’t understand why Edward should seek his company or want to go out since Helen was there.

‘Just going out for a while,’ Edward said generally to the room and, since nobody raised an objection – his mother and Helen were forever discussing the wedding – they went. There was a full moon and Gil realised when they got out that it was exactly what he had wanted to do. It made him feel powerful, getting away.

The billiard hall was another world, companionable, warm, comforting. Young men drank beer and smoked and the sound of the billiard balls meeting with a snap across the table and clunking down into the pockets was mixed with talk and laughter. Toby greeted them with obvious delight and Edward seemed happier here than Gil had seen him for a long time. He played several games. Gil didn’t do much. It wasn’t that he couldn’t play, he just didn’t need to tonight. He cheered his brother on and gave him lots of advice and Edward laughed and made funny remarks at him. He was surprised at how well they got on and was content to watch the evening go by. He wished, in some way, that he could hold the time. Toby and Edward were like a double act at the music hall, they knew one another so well.

‘Did I tell you I’m leaving home?’ Toby said to Gil as Edward
paused, chalking the billiard cue and considering possible play. ‘I’ve taken a house in Jesmond, just a small house, all to myself.’

Gil envied him. At work that afternoon all he could think of was leaving. Now it didn’t seem so important. He was happy in Edward’s company. His brother had taken his part but would it last?

‘I’m going to plan my garden, immerse myself in it.’ He looked tenderly at Gil’s bruised face. ‘Been fighting again, old boy?’

Edward cleared the table.

‘How about a game?’ Toby said to Gil.

‘He doesn’t want to play,’ Edward said.

Toby laughed. His teeth were white and even and his eyes sparkled.

‘Are you sure?’

‘He’s quite sure.’

‘But you’ll play, won’t you, Ed?’ Toby asked him.

‘Play if you like,’ Gil said to his brother’s enquiring eyes. ‘I’ll watch.’

As Christmas approached, what Abby had both most hoped and feared happened. She was dreading the anniversary of her mother’s death, as she did every year. Her father’s house had ceased to be a refuge and became an emptiness, the house where her mother had been and where the ghosts and memories only served to make the present less bearable. Her father spent all his time at work and the optimistic tone which he had held to at first seemed slowly to evaporate like a pale winter sun in mid-afternoon. He hid among his work even more than he had before her mother died and Abby felt as though she could hear every clock in the house ticking.

Robert Surtees rescued her. Abby, being truthful with herself, acknowledged that she would have accepted invitations from someone less entertaining and handsome than he was to get away. She would have suggested to her father that they should move, but she knew he would see it for foolishness. In any case, they could not leave Newcastle because of his work, so it would be pointless. He hated the country, so they could not move there. Robert provided diversions. This year he had suggested going to the cemetery with her, but Abby had other ideas so they drove to his house near Hexham and spent the day there among his family. Abby suggested to Henderson that he should accompany them, but he only said gruffly that he would go to work as usual.

Robert’s parents were both dead. Rumour said that his mother had committed suicide after a miscarriage and that his father had taken to drink and followed her, but Abby found his family sane and kind. There was his grandmother, whom Abby could tell liked her, and various uncles, aunts and cousins. Coming from an empty house to a family who made her welcome was so pleasant that Abby could not tell whether it was Robert she liked or his house and family. His life was so easy, filled with pleasure, the opposite of anything she had been brought up to believe in.

In her world, men worked all the time. Robert had people to take care of everything: an agent to manage the estate, a housekeeper, reliable people to see to his possessions and, as far as Abby could judge, it went smoothly enough so that he could spend much of his time with her.

He would have bought her presents, but Abby refused, knowing that expensive gifts meant commitment. Her father did not hide his pleasure at her conquest. The pride in his eyes made Abby pleased with herself in ways she despised, and in her honest moments she knew that her mother would have laughed in scorn. Sometimes she thought that she heard her mother’s voice.

‘Going up in the world are you, Abby? It gives you further to fall, don’t forget.’

If her mother had been alive she would not have seen so much of Robert, but there was nobody at home and she began to spend her days with him. Her father encouraged the friendship and was eager to go to the big house for Christmas. Abby thought of Gil then, making snow angels. She had not made them again since that first year, had no inclination to do things like that with Robert, though she did other pleasurable things. They went skating when the ice was hard that winter and roasted chestnuts and gathered holly. Abby liked going out into the cold air and coming back to see the lamps lit in Robert’s house.

It was the kind of house she would have wanted for her own,
so far removed from the pretentious Greek mansion of the Collingwoods’ as a house could possibly be. Parts of it were five hundred years old and Robert told her that his family had lived in some kind of dwelling on that same piece of land for eight hundred years. Various members of the family had added on to the house when times were prosperous, so that it had no coherent heart to it. People like William would have hated it. There was no symmetry, no organisation, just a mish-mash of half a dozen eras. Abby loved it because it bespoke the personalities of the Surtees family, the silliness in the folly beyond the house, their fear in the tower which had protected them, their artistic merits in the long gallery which housed paintings by several famous artists of the past. There was a lovely garden where Robert’s great grandmother had grown herbs to cure ills, and a rose garden which his mother had designed shortly before she died. This was what houses should be about, Abby thought, the sum total of a family, not an image of one time, erected to impress people. It didn’t impress the upper classes, Abby thought, they only laughed at it. Then she was ashamed of herself.