Snow Angels (7 page)

Beyond Hexham it was not too far to visit Rhoda and when Abby went there to stay overnight, she understood why her friend was not happy. Jos Allsop looked Abby over like she was a prize sow, Abby thought. His gaze lingered on her breasts and hips and legs. He came into the bedroom in the early morning when they were still in bed and his hot gaze upset Abby, even though he didn’t touch her. Rhoda’s mother was pregnant again and the house seemed overfull of noise and people. The small boy who was Jos’s son was spoiled, shouting and screaming when he could not have what he wanted immediately, so that Abby’s fingers itched to smack him.

There was plenty of money. The house was big, the food was good and there were servants, but Rhoda’s mother ignored her daughter and her guest and Jos gave them too much attention. Abby was glad to leave the little town and go for a walk on the
moors, even though the day was cold and bitter and up there nothing stirred.

‘I used to love it here when my father was alive,’ Rhoda said, her brown hair blowing about for she had refused a hat. There was nothing to stop the wind. The stone houses stood as a testament to good buildings and materials. Abby understood how Rhoda felt. When you knew you were loved, you could abide in such an inhospitable place, but when that security was threatened, the bleakness of it seeped into your life just as the wet wind blowing across the heather had soaked her gloves so that her fingers were starting to go numb. There was nothing here for people who were lonely. She thought, it strange that she could be so lonely amidst the elegant buildings of the Newcastle streets and Rhoda felt just the same out here, where the wind and hail blew horizontally across the unfriendly land. She even felt sorry for the sheep, who were huddled in for shelter against the backs of the drystone walls. It gave her a little glow to think that Robert waited for her when she wanted to go back to the more civilised atmosphere of Hexham. Rhoda had no one and it was difficult not to feel sorry for her, though Abby knew pity for an unworthy sentiment. Rhoda seemed to have lost her mother as well as her father and Abby thought that this was true. In a sense, when one parent died you lost both of them for the other one, being no longer part of a pair, was altered in some way. Rhoda’s mother now belonged to another man and Henderson belonged to his work, which he had gone to as surely as some men went to whores’ beds; but Abby knew that the most important part of Henderson, that which fools would call his heart, was buried alongside Bella Reed in the cemetery and that in some ways Abby would never get him back. He belonged to his dead wife and that was why he had not married again. Abby did not know whether to be angry that he had given up or to be glad that he had not made a bad second marriage. Neither seemed of benefit to anyone.

She walked a long way with Rhoda, beyond where she would
have been glad to turn back, grateful not to face the savage wind which screamed across the felltops. But Rhoda seemed oblivious to the weather; she had so little to go home to that was of any ease or comfort. Jos’s family would be there for Christmas and, though Abby had met them only briefly, she could see what kind of people they were. They were like Charlotte in a sense: they cared nothing for books, music or religion; nothing spiritual came near them. The men were crude and the women were vain. They had never seen beyond the dale nor hoped to and were secretly, she thought, afraid of everything outside it. Jos was one of them. She worried that he would be cruel and self-indulgent and that Rhoda would suffer. There was no longer a book in the house nor a piano. He drank and smoked, slept long and, Abby suspected, bedded Rhoda’s mother like a rutting goat. He did nothing useful because Rhoda’s father had left more than enough money for them to get by. Robert must have despised him, she thought. Abby made certain that there was nothing between the two men beyond pleasantries, though when she left she could not bear to look back and see Rhoda standing along with her sheepdog outside the door.

‘You will come and stay with us for the wedding?’ Abby had begged, and it was not just for Rhoda but for herself. She did not want to go and see Gil’s hungry gaze on the girl who was to be his sister-in-law, yet she had no excuse to offer for her absence. Rhoda would provide support and had promised to come unless there was snow and the weather prevented her.

The wedding was fixed for two days before new year and Abby watched anxiously from the windows as the sky darkened and snow began to fall. Rhoda was to come to her the day before and to stay for more than a week afterwards. Abby’s plan was that it would snow then so that Rhoda would be obliged to spend several weeks with her in Newcastle during January and February. That way, neither of them would be lonely.

Robert took Abby to several parties during December. Everywhere she went, Abby was accepted by Northumberland
society because of the man beside her. He asked her if she would visit his London house in the spring and here he would show her the city and take her to see the sights. Abby had not been to London and was excited at the idea. She had grown comfortable with him and had ceased to hanker after a boy who had proved stupid enough to fall in love with a woman he could not have. Abby felt the armour of Robert’s love and was content.

*

It had not at first seemed to Gil as though his brother had changed. All their lives, Edward had taken little notice of him and the day in the office when William hit his younger son would not make the difference. Gil assumed that Edward’s sympathy would pass, so he stored squirrel-like in his mind the way that his brother had defended him and the evening spent in the billiard hall. But, as each day went by and Edward did not revert to the superior scathing person whom Gil could not like, Gil stopped thinking about that day.

Because he could not have Helen, it seemed somehow that at least he had gained his brother and, more and more, it felt traitorous to him that he should want her. He tried to put the feelings from him and it also seemed, and this was strange, that in some ways they changed places. Edward’s work became less and less competent so that Gil began helping him, covering for him, making sure that William’s wrath did not come down on Edward. Edward was restless. It did not please him to stay at home by the fire – and the weather was foul. He would go into town and play billiards and drink and, to Gil’s surprise, his brother drank a great deal. He always asked Gil to go with him, which was an even bigger and much more pleasant surprise. Sometimes, Edward would not have reached home without him.

At first Gil was flattered by the invitations, that his brother would introduce him to his friends, but it also occurred to him that if Helen had been waiting for him he would not have wanted to leave her. Sometimes she came to stay and Edward
took her to the theatre or to see friends, but he did not often go to her parents’ house in Durham. Night after night, Edward played billiards. He would drink and laugh and call on Gil to admire the best shots. Often, he drank so much that he was not sober by morning.

Sometimes they went to Toby’s house. He lived not far from Abby, though it was a much smaller house. Gil thought it strange inside, unlike any house he had seen before. The walls were painted white and there were no carpets, just polished wooden floorboards. There were no ornaments; everything was simple and uncluttered. There was a big garden at the back, but not much to see, all black and brown and bare-treed in the winter weather.

‘What do you think?’ Toby asked Gil on his first visit.

‘It’s like a monk’s cell.’

Edward laughed so much that he choked. Toby grinned.

‘It’s so … sparse,’ Gil said.

Toby went to the window and looked longingly down the garden.

‘In the summer I’m going to sit out there under the trees and drink wine.’

Edward was leaning against the wooden shutter on one side of the window and Gil could see that he was also imagining himself there.

Edward was silent on the way home. Everyone had gone to bed by then, but he would linger, not because he wanted to keep the day, Gil thought, but because he wanted to steal as much of the night as he could, as if the morning held some kind of terror. The wedding was a week away.

‘Come in by the fire and have some brandy with me,’ he said, and Gil went.

In the small sitting-room, which was truly the only comfortable room in the house and everybody tended to go in there, the fire was kept burning brightly and the brandy decanter shone in the reflected fire, the housekeeper having discovered that they
would often finish their evening here. Edward poured the brandy and they sat down by the fire. Gil considered the dark liquid in his glass.

‘Do you mind if I ask you something?’

‘What?’ Edward stretched out his legs. He looked happier now than he had looked all day, as though brandy and the fire were his only pleasures.

‘Are you frightened of marrying Helen?’

Edward looked at him.

‘Of bedding a woman? I have bedded women before.’

‘No, that’s not what I meant.’

‘What then?’

‘Of being different, the responsibility, the – the commitment. Does it weigh you down, only you seem so—’

Edward didn’t answer straight away and then slowly.

‘Yes, it’s frightening and strange. What made you think that?’

‘You go out so much and you drink such a lot and … you take me with you like you had no company. You have Toby and your friends.’

‘I wanted to get something back. No, that’s not true. I wanted something I never had: to be close to my brother.’

‘Toby’s more like a brother to you than I am.’

It was a secret smile and an unhappy one that Edward gave. His face almost hid it and he shook his head.

‘I wanted … what was it … I wanted memories, but when I searched for them in my head they weren’t there. All I could see was this space and my father shouting at us and the smell of my mother’s clothes, the smell of her powder. And she was always coming and going like something that’s never still. I feel like I’m losing something, yet when I search my mind there’s nothing to hold on to. And that day in the office … I wished I had been kinder to you.’ It was only drink, Gil told himself when his brother, embarrassed by the words, had gone to bed; but when Edward left the room all the magic went with him. Gil had not known until then that his brother held the magic. He had
thought that it was the night or the brandy or the firelight. He realised then for the first time that the magic is only within people. The room was cool without his brother, and silent, and had nothing to do with him. Something was over and something new was just beginning and there was nothing left to do but go to bed.

Helen and Edward’s wedding day was as white as the icing on their three-tiered cake, but didn’t prevent anyone from getting there since the snow was decorative only and quite soft. The service was held in St Oswald’s in Church Street in the middle of the small city. From outside, you could see the cathedral in the background. Gil felt that his father would have been better pleased if the service had been held there, but Helen’s parents seemed determined that William should not be allowed to ask everybody of importance in the entire northeast.

Edward had been drunk every night for a week and on two occasions, nights when he had not asked Gil to go with him, had not come home. His mother would have protested but his father said, ‘Let the lad alone. He’ll be leg-shackled soon enough.’

Durham couldn’t help looking pretty in the snow, with its narrow streets, grey river and magnificent cathedral and castle, but when Helen walked up the aisle of the church she looked to Gil like some kind of sacrifice, as though the vicar was about to slay her on the altar. Gil had to make himself not stand in front of her to protect her from what looked to him like ancient rituals up to no good. For the rest of her life she would be Edward’s, belong to him in the most basic way possible, sleep in his bed, bear his children, obey him, be there for him to come home to. It was like a cattle market, Gil thought. Edward didn’t smile and
Toby, who was his best man, looked so pale throughout the ceremony that Gil was convinced he would faint. But Helen shone. She wore a long veil and a cream dress and nobody in the history of the whole world had ever been as beautiful. If he had doubted that she loved his brother, he doubted it no longer. She looked as though she had waited all her life for this moment. Her responses were clear and precise, whereas Edward’s were low and mumbled. Edward was better after the ceremony, laughing and throwing pennies for the local children who gathered in the street. Since the day was now bright and fine and the snow had retreated to lawns and rooftops, he insisted on walking with his bride on his arm the short distance to her parents’ home down New Elvet and across Elvet Bridge to the towpath where her parents had a gate to their house on the riverside.

It was a big townhouse. They went in by the gate and up the winding path through bare trees to where the house stood with its front to lawns and the river and its back to Claypath, up the bank from the marketplace. The older people went by carriage but the younger ones walked, laughing and chatting as the sun made the snow glisten.

Abby had said nothing but hello to Gil and he didn’t speak to Robert, for whom he had developed hatred. Rhoda Carlisle looked pretty in yellow and when Gil ventured to tell her so, since he was beside her and had to say something, she smiled and said, ‘Actually, it belongs to Abby. I haven’t a decent dress to my name. Who needs dresses when you live in the wilderness?’

‘I thought you liked it there.’

‘I did. Things like dresses only matter when you have little else, don’t you think? I used to love Allendale Common. Now, I would give almost anything to get away.’ She stopped and let the others troop past and it seemed only polite to stay with her.

She stood looking out across the River Wear, taking great breaths of fresh air as though she needed to store them. When the others had gone up the semicircle of stone and in by the French windows at the front of the house, the quietness was
pleasant, only the birds in the trees. Later they danced together at the ball that was held that evening in a huge hall at a nearby college. Gil danced with Helen, but she was so happy she couldn’t speak. He asked Abby, but she refused.