Winter Solstice (10 page)

“You are here.”

“I can listen. If you want to talk, I can listen.”

“Not yet.”

“I know. Too early. Too soon.”

The vicar called, very soon after the accident. Very soon after I had been told that both Gloria and Francesca were dead. He tried to comfort, and mentioned God, and I found myself wondering if he had taken leave of his senses. You asked me once if I was religious, and I don’t think I was able to answer your question. I only knew that my music and my work and my choirs meant more to me than any churchly dogma. The “Te Deum.” Do you remember, that first day we met, outside the church, and you said that you had particularly enjoyed a certain setting to the “Te Deum.” The words, and that music, once filled me with a certainty of goodness, and perhaps eternity.

“We praise thee, O Lord. We acknowledge thee to be the Lord. All the earth doth worship thee, the Father Everlasting. Thundering away on the organ, pulling out all the stops, hearing the boys’ voices soar to the rafters. That was when I truly believed, when I knew a faith that I thought nothing could rock.”

He fell silent. She waited. After a bit, she said, “And now, Oscar?”

“It was all to do with God. And I cannot believe in a God who would take Francesca away from me. I sent the vicar home. He departed, I think, in some umbrage.”

Elfrida was sympathetic.

“Poor man.”

“He will, no doubt, survive. The kettle’s boiling.”

It was a welcome interruption. Elfrida busied herself finding the teapot and the tea, spooning tea, pouring the boiling water. She found another mug for herself, and carried everything over to the table and sat facing Oscar, just as they had sat that day, an eternity ago, before she went to Cornwall. In her little house in Poulton’s Row, and Oscar with gardening mud on his boots.

“You like builders’ tea, don’t you?”

“Strong and black.”

She poured her own mug and left the pot to stew. She said, “Hector told me about your stepsons and the house. About selling it, I mean.”

“They think that I should book into the Priory, a Victorian mansion converted for the benefit of desiccated gentlefolk.”

“You won’t go there.”

“I admit, I would rather not.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I would like to be left alone, to lick my wounds. But I can’t be left alone here, because Giles and Crawford want me out of the way, so that they can put the house on the market as soon as possible.”

“Brutes.” She poured his tea, black as ink, and pushed the mug towards him. He reached for the jug, added some milk, and drank.

She said, “Hector McLennan told me his suggestion.”

“I had a suspicion that he might have.”

“Is it such a bad idea?”

“Elfrida. It’s mad.”

“I don’t see why.”

“Then I’ll tell you why. Because Sutherland is the other end of the country. And I haven’t been there for fifty years. For all Hector’s optimism, I should not know a single soul. The house will be half empty, and hasn’t been lived in for weeks. I am not a naturally domesticated animal. I wouldn’t know how to start to make it habitable. And who would I turn to?”

“Mrs. Snead?”

“Elfrida.” It was a reproach, but Elfrida persisted.

“Is it very isolated? Your house, I mean.”

“No. It’s in the middle of Creagan, the little town.”

It sounded to Elfrida perfectly suitable.

“Is it horrid?” she asked.

“Horrid,” he repeated.

“What words you use. No. It’s simply a large, square, undistinguished Victorian dwelling. Not actually ugly. But not blessed with redeeming features. And it has a garden, but that’s not much joy in the middle of winter.”

“It won’t always be winter.”

“It’s just that I can’t imagine what the hell I would do with myself.”

“Well, one thing’s for sure. You can’t stay here, Oscar. And you go into the Priory over my dead body. So you must consider any available alternative. You could come and live with me at Poulton’s Row, but as you know there is scarcely space for me and Horace in that little cottage.” Oscar made no comment on this wild suggestion.

“I thought perhaps you’d like to go back to London, but Hector said no.”

“He’s right.”

“Scotland,” she mused.

“Sutherland. It would at least be a fresh start.”

“I am sixty-seven, and at the moment in no shape to start anything. And although I can scarcely bear to speak to any person, I still dread being alone. Solitary. Living alone is the worst. Empty rooms. Even before I married Gloria, there were always colleagues, choristers, schoolboys-a whole world of lively company. My life was full.”

“It can be again.”

“No.”

“Yes, Oscar, it can. Never the same, I know. But you have so much to give people. A generosity of spirit. We mustn’t waste it.”

He frowned.

“You said ‘we’.”

“A slip of the tongue. I meant you” Oscar had finished his tea, and the mug stood empty. He reached out for the teapot and poured himself a refill, the tea blacker than ever and singularly unappetizing.

“Supposing I went to Scotland. How would I travel so far?”

“There are planes and trains.”

“I would want my car.”

“Then drive. You’re in no hurry. Take it in stages….” Elfrida heard her voice drift into silence, and found herself unable to finish her sentence. Because the image of Oscar setting off by himself on such a journey into the unknown filled her with desolation. Gloria should be there beside him, to share the driving, Francesca in the back, with her computer games and her ingenuous chat. In the boot of the big car, the two yapping Pekes, included in the holiday, along with golf clubs and fishing-rods. All gone. Dead. Never again.

He saw her distress, and put out his hand and laid it over her own.

“You have to be brave, Elfrida, otherwise I shall go to pieces.”

“I’m trying. But I can’t bear it for you.”

“Suppose … suppose we discuss your idea? Suppose I went. Drove to Scotland, to Sutherland. If I made that journey, would you come with me?”

She was silenced; could think of nothing to say. She stared into his face, wondering if she had heard right; if he really had made that extraordinary proposal, or whether, confused by shock and sadness, her imagination had made it all up.

“Come with you?”

“Why not? Is it such a bad idea? To go together? Somehow we’ll get there. We shall collect the key from Major Billicliffe, and find my house, and take possession and spend the winter there.”

“Christmas?”

“No Christmas. Not this year. Would that be so bad? It’s so far north that the days will be short and the nights long and dark, and I probably won’t be a very lively companion. But, by spring, perhaps, I shall be stronger. Time will have passed. Here, as you so clearly stated, I have no future. Giles and Crawford want the house, so I shall let them have it. With all convenient speed.”

“And my house, Oscar? What should I do with my little cottage?”

“Let it. Or shut it up. It will be safe. Your neighbours, I am sure, will keep an eye on it.”

He meant it. He was asking her to go away with him. He wanted her company. Needed her. She, Elfrida. Eccentric, disorganized, not beautiful any longer; even a little raffish. And sixty-two years old.

“Oscar, I’m not sure that I’m that good a bet.”

“You underestimate yourself. Please come, Elfrida. Help me.”

How can I help? she had asked Hector as they waited for Oscar to return from the glasshouse. And now it was he who answered the question.

She had been impulsive all her life, made decisions without thought for the future, and regretted none of them, however dotty. Looking back, all she regretted were the opportunities missed, either because they had come along at the wrong time or because she had been too timid to grasp them.

She took a deep breath.

“All right. I’ll come.”

“Dear girl.”

“I’ll come for you, Oscar, but I owe it to Gloria as well. I shall never forget her kindness and generosity to a stranger. You and Gloria and Francesca were my first friends when I came to Dibton….”

“… Go on.”

“I feel ashamed. We’ve been talking, and this is the first time I’ve said their names to you. In Cornwall I spoke about you so much. Telling Jeffrey about you all, telling him how good you’d been to me. I went shopping and bought Francesca a book, and I very nearly bought a picture for you and Gloria, but then I thought that Gloria wouldn’t really like it.”

“Would I have liked it?”

“I don’t know.” A lump had swelled in her throat, and it became difficult to talk. She was crying and could feel her mouth trembling, but the tears, strangely, were something of a relief, warm and wet, rolling down her cheeks. Old people, she told herself, look dreadful when they cry. She tried to wipe the tears away with her fingers.

“I… I’ve only been to Scotland once. To Glasgow, ages ago, with a touring company. We had pathetic audiences and it never stopped raining …” Fumbling up her sleeve for a handkerchief, she found one and blew her nose. “… and I couldn’t understand a single word anyone said to me.”

“There’s a Glaswegian for you.”

“It wasn’t funny at the time.”

“It’s not funny now, but as always you’ve made me smile.”

“Like a sort of clown?”

“No. Not a clown. Just a dear, funny friend.”

At seven o’clock on the first dark Friday morning of December, Sam Howard wheeled his trolley of luggage out into the Arrivals hall of Heathrow Airport. Beyond the barrier crowded the usual confusion of people come to meet the plane. Elderly couples, youths in trainers, and tired mothers humping toddlers. As well, uniformed drivers for the VIPs-of which Sam was not one-and unidentified men holding up mysterious notices, labelled in capitals. MR. WILSON was one; and ABDUL AZIZ CONSOLIDATED TRADERS another.

There was nobody to meet Sam. No wife, no driver. No welcome, however tame. He knew that outside the heated terminal building it would be very cold, partly because they had been warned of the temperature in London before the plane landed, but also because everybody was bundled up in padded jackets, gloves, and scarves and woollen hats. It had been cold in New York, but a dry crisp cold that stimulated, with a bitter wind blowing up the East River, and all the flags at mastheads flying stiff and square in the teeth of its blast.

His trolley was awkward, laden with two suitcases, a huge American golf bag, and his briefcase. He manoeuvred it towards the automatic exit doors and out into the wet black cold of an English winter morning. There, he joined the queue for taxis. He had only to wait five minutes or so, but even that was long enough to freeze the soles of his feet. The taxi was covered, for some reason, in simulated newsprint, and the driver a morose man with a walrus moustache. Sam hoped that he was not a talker. He was not in the mood for conversation.

“Where to, guy?”

“Wandsworth, please. SW17. Fourteen Beauly Road.”

“‘Op in.”

The driver did not stir himself to help with luggage, apparently having decided that Sam was young and fit enough to deal with it himself. Accordingly, he humped it aboard, stowed the golf clubs on the floor, shoved the empty trolley out of the line of trouble, and climbed in, slamming the door shut behind him. The taxi, windscreen wipers going full-tilt, trundled forward.

The short wait had chilled him. Sam turned up the collar of his navyblue overcoat and leaned back against the fusty plastic of his seat. He yawned. He felt tired and unclean. He had travelled Club Class, with a number of other business men, but before landing, they had made discreet trips to the lavatory, to wash, shave, knot ties, and generally freshen themselves up. Probably, poor sods, they had early meetings. He did not have an early meeting and was grateful for this. His first appointment was for Monday at twelve-thirty, when he had to present himself at Whites for lunch with Sir David Swinfield, Chairman of Sturrock and Swinfield, and Sam’s ultimate boss. Until then, his time was his own.

He yawned again, and ran a hand over the raspy stubble of his chin. Perhaps he should have shaved. He would have felt a little less like a vagrant. It occurred to him that he probably looked like one, too, dressed as he was in elderly and casual clothes: a thick pullover, a pair of worn jeans, boat shoes. His eyes were dry and gritty from lack of sleep, but that was because he had spent the short night reading his book. And his stomach was slightly queasy, but that was doubtless the result of eating a huge dinner at two o’clock in the morning UK time.

The taxi drew up at a red traffic light. Suddenly the driver spoke, flinging the question back over his shoulder.

“Been on ‘oliday?”

“No,” Sam told him.

“Fort … you know … the golf clubs.”

“No, I haven’t been on holiday.”

“On business, then?”

“You could say. I’ve worked in New York for six years.”

“Blimey.

“Ow do you stand the pace?”

“It’s okay. Good. You get used to it.”

Rain streamed down.

“Not much of a mornin’ for comin’ “ome.” Green light. They moved forward again.

“No,” Sam agreed. He did not add, And I’m not coming home. Because right now, he did not have a home. Which seemed to figure with the vagrant image. For the first time in his life, and he was now thirty-eight, he found himself without bricks and mortar to call his own.

Bundled gloomily in his overcoat, cocooned in the back of the taxi, he thought of homes, remembering to the very beginning. Yorkshire and Radley Hill, where, an only child, he had been born and brought up. A large, solid, and comforting family home, filled with the smell of wood-smoke and spring flowers and cakes baking. The house was surrounded by four acres of land, and it had a tennis court and a little wood, where on autumn evenings he would stand with his gun, waiting for the pigeons to fly in from the stubble fields. To Radley Hill he had returned from day-school, and then boarding-school, usually with a friend in tow, come to spend the holidays. It was a place comfortable as an old tweed jacket, which he had thought would never change, but of course it did. Because, during his last year at Newcastle University, his mother died, and after that nothing was ever quite the same again.