Ghosts of Winter (27 page)

 “Thank you,” I said, unable to look her in the eye. She let herself out of the door. I didn’t breathe again until I heard her car pull away. I sank to my knees in the middle of the hallway and sobbed until I’d made my throat raw and my eyes swollen. Anna had shown me a possible path into the immediate future, some real solid happiness. But I knew all too well the dangers of thinking I was on a sure and certain path. It could all change in a painfully short amount of time. What Anna offered was wonderful, but it would be built on a shifting and weak foundation. I couldn’t take the chance with my emotional well-being. Given time, I could contemplate a relationship again. There would be other attractive women, when I was stronger. Now, gazing through blurred vision at the wilting mistletoe and half-eaten box of chocolates, I just had to reconcile myself to my sensible decision.

I waited indifferently for the New Year to dawn. Last year I had greeted the beginning of another January with enthusiasm, imagining the year in which I turned thirty would be one of the best of my life. I had expected to achieve something. Now I wandered blindly around Winter, my optimism dissolved, and the coming months loomed like huge obstacles in front of me.

What had happened with Anna left me longing to feel numb. Instead, I was tormented by thoughts of her. Where I’d expected ending our relationship before it began to give me room to develop the clarity and direction I was lacking, I found that I was instead rather more confused and full of doubts as to whether I should have handled things differently. Worse, the notion of facing her again terrified me. I knew I certainly had to see her again. Auntie Edie had wanted her to work on Winter, and I doubted there was anyone better. Besides, I wouldn’t deprive her of a job because of my own emotional turmoil. I’d simply have to find a way to deal with her on a professional level. Professionalism and efficiency were what Anna did best; dealing with her professionally would surely be straightforward, if not easy. I knew I would never forget her wine-sweetened kisses, those warm, firm hands, and the embraces of Christmas Day when, for a brief moment, my life seemed to come together again. But I would have to put the memories out of my mind.

I visited Maggie Potter on New Year’s Eve, motivated by the need to escape from the thoughts that were circling in my head until they were sending me half crazy. I found the entrance to her farm easily and drove slowly along the track leading to the house, wondering what her home would be like. I’d brought a bag stuffed with my dirty washing, as she’d instructed me to. I’d not been to the shops and had nothing to offer her as a gift, but I sensed she wouldn’t be offended.

I parked my car outside the house. It was an average-sized late-Victorian building built of red brick and looked almost exactly like the imaginary houses I’d drawn as a child—square, with a symmetrical pattern of windows, and the door in the centre. To the side was the first of a series of barns and outbuildings which stretched into the farmyard to the rear. Just in front of the house was a well-laid-out garden, with neat borders, which I imagined would be a riot of colour in spring and summer. The house and garden were surrounded by fields, some green with crops I didn’t recognise, some brown and fallow.

I was just climbing out of my car when the front door opened and Maggie came outside to greet me. She was wearing plain blue trousers, a colourful knitted pullover, and a floral apron. “Hello there, Ros, pet, I saw you from the window.”

“Hi. I hope you don’t mind that I brought some washing?”

“No, I told you, you’re welcome.” I heard a bark, and Pepper the Dalmatian darted out of the front door to stand next to Maggie, barking further at me. She smiled at him. “He’s pleased to see you.”

“I’m pleased to see him too,” I said, since it seemed the appropriate thing to say. “I hope I’m not disturbing you?”

“No, pet. I was just doing a spot of baking. I need someone to sample my coffee cake when I’m finished.”

“I’d be happy to help.” Maggie made me feel welcome easily. As she guided me, laden with my bag of washing, through her front door, I felt almost as though I was a normal person again, not a confused idiot who had just let a near-perfect woman slip through her fingers.

We went through the small hallway and into the kitchen. It was everything I expected a farmhouse kitchen to be, with the exception that the fittings were perhaps more functional than I had imagined, and there was no roaring open fire. This was the twenty-first century after all. The scent of the just-baked cake, cooling on a wire rack on one of the work surfaces, filled the comfortably warm room and made my stomach rumble.

“The washer’s here,” Maggie said. “Shove your things in now, pet, and they’ll be done in an hour.” I did as she said, and the washing machine was gurgling through the beginning of its cycle as I sat down in one of the chairs surrounding the long wooden table in the centre of the kitchen.

“Tea or coffee?” Maggie asked.

“I’d love a cup of tea. Milk and two sugars, please.”

“That’s just how my daughter takes hers. Always had a sweet tooth, that one. Heaven knows how she stays so slim.”

“I know the problem.” I grimaced. Maggie bustled around the kitchen making the tea, and I watched her, feeling more content than I had in days. I couldn’t let my turmoil over Anna, or anything else, overtake me now, since I had to keep an appearance of being mostly sane for Maggie’s sake. The ability to indulge my melancholy removed, I found I was able to feel something like happiness, as I relaxed in the warm kitchen.

“So, how was your Christmas?” she asked, as she poured boiling water into a large ceramic teapot.

I tensed instantly, a vivid recollection of my Christmas evening conjured suddenly into my mind by her question. “It was good,” I replied quickly. “How was yours?”

“Lovely. It was so nice to see Peter and Philippa again. I don’t see them so often these days.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Not really, pet. I don’t expect my children to organise their lives around me, no mother should. They’re their own people.” She placed the teapot, covered in a red-and-yellow knitted cosy, in the centre of the table, then fetched mugs, a milk jug, and a sugar pot. “You know, being a mother’s a wonderful thing, I won’t ever say otherwise, but a good one won’t ever make her offspring feel like they have to visit her. If they want to come, they will.”

In that moment I wished I could have had a mother like Maggie. I sensed her understanding and time for her children knew no limits. I felt guilty for allowing myself such a thought. Since my mother’s illness, I’d never really confronted the feelings I’d had about her when she was healthy, and I’d thought we’d have years left together. In some ways, her death had been a shock, because I’d always expected to have more time to really understand our distant relationship. Now, with Maggie’s words, I allowed myself to remember the feelings and insecurities I’d buried in mourning her death. I’d not been close to my mother and always felt the odd one out in our family. I had to let myself remember and confront these things if I was going to move on. I could never ask my mother about it now. I looked up into Maggie’s kind face and felt compelled to ask her instead. “Do you find you relate better to one of your children than the other?”

Maggie looked serious for a moment. “Well, pet, a mother shouldn’t, but sometimes she can’t help it. Only it can change with time too. Now, my Philippa and I used to argue terribly when she was a teenager. Then she was unhappy for a very long time in her first relationship. I knew it, and I wanted to help her, but I couldn’t get close enough to her to do any good. Her boyfriend was very possessive, you see, never let her have a thought she could call her own. It was the worst feeling in the world, to watch her suffering and not to interfere. It brought us closer in the end, when she finally left him. I’m closer with her than with Peter these days, though when they were younger she used to think he was my favourite. She told me that quite recently. Really, I think mothers love their children equally, just differently.”

“All mothers?” I hoped Maggie didn’t see how much I wanted to hear her affirmative answer.

“I think so, pet.” I looked back at Maggie, who was regarding me with curiosity in her expression. “Do you see your own mam often, pet?” she asked.

“She died earlier this year,” I replied.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. She must have been young still.”

“She was. It was cancer. I cared for her in the end.” So few words to explain a situation that had changed my life.

“That must have been hard for you.” Maggie’s expression showed nothing but sympathy and concern. In all of the funeral arrangements, worry over my job, trying to co-ordinate with Jeanne and to be strong for Francesca, I’d never had much time for sympathy. Now I realised the welcome comfort Maggie’s kindness was to my troubled soul.

“Yes. It was hard.”

“She’d be proud of you, pet, taking on Winter.”

“I’m sometimes not so sure.”

“Oh, I am.” It was that simple, apparently. Maggie’s faith in her assumption was profoundly reassuring. If I’d had more time with my mother she might have grown to be close to me and proud of me. I did have something to offer, and that my mother wasn’t here to see it and to express her pride in me, in the way she always had to my sister, didn’t diminish what I had to offer. She would have been proud of me. I could achieve something worthy of that pride. I felt a flicker of optimism.

Maggie watched me for a moment or two and said nothing as she rose and began mixing the coffee icing for her cake. “You know, I’m sure your mam is looking proudly down on you and hoping you’re happy,” she said, as she stirred coffee into icing sugar vigorously. Her words fitted so well with my own reflections they brought tears into my eyes, and I hastened to wipe them away. Knowing nothing of me, Maggie had still found words to comfort me. Even to inspire me to snap out of this latest bout of melancholy. She turned away from me to press her hand onto her cake and check it had cooled sufficiently. “And,” she went on, beginning to spread the icing, “you being happy would probably be the best way to honour her memory too.”

I wiped the persistent tears away hurriedly and drank some more tea in an effort to remain in control of my emotions. I could never know if my mother was watching me, from heaven, as a spirit, or in some indefinable way. However, the idea I had the potential to make even my apparently so hard-to-please mother proud of me compelled me to the resolution that I would henceforth act in a way to make her proud. As though she was still alive, and we really did have another chance at our relationship. If she was watching, then she would see. Part of that was accepting happiness, realising it was time I recovered from everything horrible that had occurred in the past year, finally letting some relief creep in. Not just for my mum. I needed it for myself. I’d come to Winter to rebuild more than a house. I’d known it all along but had been struggling to find my way. If I could grasp hold of that concept and hang on to it tightly, then maybe I could be ready to live and love again too. My thoughts strayed to Anna. Not yet. But one day, when I was ready, perhaps there was a chance she would still be interested.

“Slice of cake?” Maggie’s offer broke my contemplation. I saw she’d spread the icing on quickly and now stood ready with a sharp knife.

“I’d love one,” I replied, with a smile that almost convinced even me. She cut a huge chunk of the cake and placed it on a plate in front of me. It was delicious, and I had to force myself to eat it slowly. I’d barely eaten for days, and the cake was very rich, the coffee flavour very strong. While we ate our cake and drank second cups of tea, Maggie asked me about my plans for Winter. I was pleased to be able to tell her about the progress I’d made and that there were actually dates for the work to start now. As I spoke, I realised just how far I had come with the house. It struck me I was, in fact, looking forward to discovering how the plans played out over the next few months. Maybe I was already doing things my mother would be proud of. To be proud of
myself
for.

“Sounds like you’re doing well with it, pet,” Maggie said as I concluded. “I expect a guided tour there when you’re finished, mind. My own mam was a housemaid there for a while, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know. That’s amazing. When?”

“The late twenties. Just before the house was abandoned. I think it was partly because she lost her job that she chose to marry my father, who owned the farm here.”

“Do you know when it was abandoned?” I tried to imagine what Winter would have looked like in the late twenties, to give life and colour to the rooms I’d seen only in decay.

“Yes, pet, it was in the early thirties. The Depression was just too much for Evadne Burns—that’s the lady who employed my mam—to keep on such a big place on her own and bring up a little girl—your friend Edith—on her own. She moved south with family I believe. It was always hoped the Burns family would return, but I suppose the requisitioning during the war put paid to that in the end, leaving it in the state they did.”

“The lawyer told me that Auntie Edie always wanted to come back to Winter. She trained as a nurse in the last years of the war, did you know that?”

“I heard something of it,” Maggie told me.

“Her mother refused to sell the place, apparently, even when the money was tight. Auntie Edie hoped to be able to renovate one day. But I guess time ran out.”

“I heard Evadne Burns always said she didn’t want to betray the memories in the old place. I expect her daughter inherited her way of looking at things. That too much had happened there, and she was frightened it would be demolished.  So many of the great houses went that way, you know, in the middle of the last century.” Maggie looked troubled for a moment, then smiled at me. “I have a feeling it’s safe in your hands, pet.” Her faith warmed my heart and gave me a new boost of confidence. Talking to Maggie was proving to be an excellent tonic.