The Snow Globe (7 page)

In the commotion that followed, amidst the cacophony of three yapping dogs and Debussy, still, and louder and more dramatic than ever, Lily burst into tears: because scenes did not happen at Eden Hall, and because it was Christmas, and because—Daisy
supposed—Lily didn't and couldn't understand. Then, after the mess of broken glass and spilled drinks had been cleared, after Mabel had asked someone to please turn off the wireless, after Noonie had been pacified with “just a small sherry, please,” after Lily had called Daisy a “stupid little fool” and
after Iris had told Lily, “Oh, do shut up; you know nothing anyway,” Howard quietly excused himself and went to his study, leaving the six women to ponder
their
hysteria.

At first, no one spoke. Iris sighed and fluttered her made-up eyes heavenward. Lily stretched out the fingers on her left hand, pouting sulkily at her diamond engagement and wedding rings. Noonie sniffed, took a sip of her sherry and turned to the empty chair next to her as though about to speak, but then stopped. And Dosia sat with her eyes closed, quietly humming “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”

“Leave it,” said Mabel—unusually curt, unusually loud—when the telephone rang and Iris leaped to her feet. “Please, leave it, dear,” she said again, quieter.

Iris sat down.

Mabel's mouth twitched. It was Christmas, she reminded herself.
Christmas.
These things happened. There was no point in screaming, becoming hysterical—too many of her sex had succumbed to that, and where had it got them? She quickly glanced at
Dosia. It had—in a way—got them the vote, given them a voice. But the term
hysterical
—so derogatory, and so often used by men, so often used by her own father—had made Mabel confused about that other word,
passion
.

Mabel looked over at Daisy, gazing once more into the snow globe on the table next to her, daydreaming again. But what on earth had made her attack her father like that? So out of character . . . She glanced again at Dosia, whose eyes remained tightly closed; then she turned to her mother, who stared back at her and shook her head:
No.

No. Noonie was right. It must be left alone. Despite her forgetfulness, her mother still had moments of clarity.

Mabel cleared her throat. “Mrs. Jessop tells me there might be as much as five inches of snowfall tonight.” It was a start. She had to keep going. “Yes, she says we're in for a very cold spell . . . and even worse to come in the New Year.” She smiled up at the ceiling: “But a white Christmas will certainly be very pretty . . .”

“It always used to be so,” said Noonie, eager to take the baton and run with the conversation. “Do you remember when you were young, Mabel? There was
always
snow at Christmas.”

Mabel tried out a little sound of amusement. It was not the time to disagree with her mother. “Oh yes, always.” She ran her hands simultaneously over the upholstered arms on either side of her chair. It was a struggle, but they had to get back to where they had been, somehow. She looked to her mother for reinforcement.

“Of course, in my day,” Noonie began, a little croaky but nonetheless committed; and Mabel smiled, the warmth of relief flooding her tense body, grateful to her mother for another well-worn
anecdote, removing them further from what would in years to come be referred to as the Cigar Incident.

Daisy's outburst, her irrational behavior, had been a momentary lapse, Mabel concluded, smoothing out a crease in her crepe jersey dress.
Sometimes we'd
all
like to scream,
she thought. Even she. Oh yes, even she. Though she had long ago learned how to scream in silence, or how to stuff a handkerchief into her mouth. And if she had not, where would she be now?

But flightiness and sudden rages were, Mabel had read, common traits among modern young women who were given to thinking too much. And Daisy was quite modern . . . Not as modern as Iris, perhaps, but modern enough. And Daisy appeared to think a little too much. She was without doubt the most enigmatic of Mabel's three daughters, and she would need a certain type of man to cope with such a passion for pondering. Was Ben Gifford the one? Mabel doubted it, and it would be over Howard's dead body—or so Howard had said at the end of Ben's unfortunate and overly long stay with them last summer. But there was plenty enough time for Daisy. It was Iris Mabel was concerned about. Iris: There was a conundrum. But before Mabel could contemplate this further, the telephone rang out once more. Iris immediately looked to her mother, who nodded. And they all remained silent as Iris took another call.

“The
Embassy
? . . .
Tonight?
 . . .”

“Ah, sounds like an emergency at the embassy,” whispered Noonie. “Is she very involved there, Mabel?”

“It's a club, Mother . . . a nightclub.”

“No, 'fraid not . . . 'Fraid so . . . Yes, tricky . . . I
wish
 . . . And you, darling . . . Good-bye.”

Iris sat back down and glanced to her mother: “Awfully sorry. About the telephone, I mean.”

“You must tell the people at the embassy to send you a telegram in future,” said Noonie. “The telephone line needs to be kept clear for emergencies. Isn't that right, Mabel?”

“Oh my, I almost forgot to tell you all,” said Lily, coming to. “I've decided to go with lilac for our guest bedroom. It goes with the fabric I've chosen and I've always adored that color. Miles says—”

“If you don't mind, I think I'll go to bed now,” said Daisy, interrupting her sister and standing up. “I'm sorry about earlier. It was . . . completely irrational. I don't know what came over me,” she added.

“Emotions are far better out than in,” said Dosia. “I'm a fervent believer in free expression . . . And I don't in the least blame you for wanting to slap my brother. I've longed to for years. In fact, there are very few men I've met that I have
not
wished to slap,” she added, winking at Daisy.

Everyone laughed, including Mabel, who beckoned Daisy over to where she was sitting and then took hold of her daughter's hand. “Let's say no more about it. But perhaps it would be nice if you went and bid your father good night. I think he'd like that.”

It was close to midnight and Mabel had been at her desk for some time when her husband opened the door of her lamplit boudoir. It was a small, cluttered room with lace-draped French doors leading out onto the garden, situated on the eastern side of the house, next to the morning room and opposite Howard's study and the billiard room.

Mabel stared back at her husband's bewildered face. “I've told you, Howard, I have absolutely no idea. I rather think
you
should know what you did to upset her, not me. Did she come and say good night to you? I asked her to.”

Howard shook his head.

“Well, you must have done or said
something
.”

He appeared to be genuinely mystified. He looked tired and, Mabel noted, rather hurt.

“We had been chatting . . . about nothing in particular as I recall, wishes and secrets . . . the usual sort of Daisy stuff . . . ,” he began hesitantly, remembering. “Then she went off to fetch me some ice. I thought she was taking a while, and then . . . when she returned, well, you saw.”

“Perhaps it was that. Perhaps it was the fact that you sent her off for ice,” Mabel suggested with a shrug of her shoulders. “You know how she disapproves of people drinking.” She cast her eyes to the clock on the wall and then to her paper-strewn desk. It was much too late for any inquisition. “You of all people should know by now how emotional—dare I say
passionate
—we women can sometimes be.”

“And what do you mean by that?”

“My dear, think of your own mother . . . your sister, your daughters . . .” Mabel went on, taking care not to include herself in the lineup. “I'm quite sure it'll all be forgotten in the morning . . . and she'll explain, apologize. And if not, well, you must ask her directly why she behaved toward you in that way.”

Howard nodded. He bent down, kissed his wife's forehead. Mabel watched the door close; she listened to the sound of his
footsteps fade. “Good night, Howard,” she whispered. Then she closed her eyes, inhaled deeply and reminded herself not to dwell on him or on the past. It was Christmas, another family Christmas, and they had to get through it.
She
had to get through it. And this year she had a special surprise for Howard.

She smiled and returned to her lists.

Benedict Gifford was to be collected from the 12:26—along with Lily's husband, Miles; which would make them nine for luncheon . . . and dinner—or eleven, if Patricia and Bernard Knight made it through the snow. Then she remembered: Reggie. “Ten . . . or twelve,” she said aloud, relieved.

Aside from meal plans, numbers and menus, there was on Mabel's small desk a list of Christmas presents—those wrapped marked with a capital
W
, the initials of the recipient next to each item. There was a list of rooms allocated to guests with dates in and dates out and notes on specific needs—such as Miles's desire for coffee instead of tea to be brought in to him at eight, and her mother's need for a chamber pot (to be emptied each morning). There was a “Laundry” book, a “Mending” book and a “Dressmakers & Tailors” book, a ledger for staff wages and another for general household expenditure. There were invoices, paid and unpaid and pending; and invitations, and RSVPs, and postcards and letters—from friends, from family and from charities dependent on her support.

This was Mabel's life, or had been, once. Because many of those books and habits—though Mabel hung on to them, perhaps in denial, or in longing for what had been and waiting for its return—were, in truth, redundant and quite unnecessary. The number of servants at Eden Hall had late one summer and in a matter of weeks
dropped from fourteen to seven, then to five. Of the seven men from Eden Hall who'd gone off to fight, two had survived, but only one had returned there to work. And regular houseguests—those vibrantly colored Saturday-to-Monday creatures who had spilled out of cars and into the house, filling it with noise and laughter—were, too, a thing of the past. The war had silenced the party, and now it was simply too costly to live like that.

When Mabel finally rose from her desk, she turned off the lamp, paused by the window and pulled back the curtains. Snow continued to fall, blanketing the contours beyond in ever-thickening white, creating newly fat shapes of the topiary and specimen trees. From where she stood, Mabel could see the light of Daisy's room, burning so brightly that even through the veil of falling snow it appeared for a moment as though the window were open. Briefly, Mabel wondered what her youngest daughter was doing. Hopefully collected, hopefully composed, she thought, moving away.

Climbing the stairs, Mabel ticked off and added to the list in her head: rooms and beds still to be aired . . . clean towels and new cakes of soap to be put out . . . At the top of the stairs she paused and thought for a moment of looking in on Daisy. But it was late and she was weary, and she simply could not cope with any more histrionics. Furthermore, it was, she knew, only the very beginning of a potentially hazardous week. As she passed her husband's bedroom door she could hear the low rumbling from inside, picture him lying on his back, mouth open. He hadn't always been like that, she thought, and a glimmer of a younger Howard fought to break through in her memory. She pushed it away. There was no point in remembering, not now. It had been too long, much too
long. Excluding the cursory kisses of their weekly hellos and good-byes, and the others reserved for special occasions and birthdays, Howard had not touched her in years, and she tried to remember how long, exactly, it had been.

Hanging her dress away, closing the wardrobe door, Mabel sought to recall the last time. She stretched up her arms, pulled on her nightgown, feeling the silken fabric fall over her naked body like gossamer in a spring breeze, and slowly moved to the bathroom. She raised her eyes to the face in the mirror: the dark curls now silvering at the temples; eyes once bright now dull; the lines around those eyes and the other lines—running from either side of her nose to her mouth, her chin. Time, not Howard, had taken her and made her
his
, she thought. She pressed the two tiny slivers of soap together in her hands, turned on the taps and washed away the threat of tears. Then she picked up the rough towel and held it to her face.

“Six years,” she said finally, turning back the voluminous eiderdown.
Six years,
she thought, climbing beneath the cold linen and pulling up layers of blankets. She stretched out an arm, pushed a switch and turned onto her side, rubbing her feet against the warm hot-water bottle at the end of the bed, wrapping her arms around herself, remembering.