When Nights Were Cold (2 page)

‘Grace, do make up your mind. It's your turn and you are trying our patience.'

‘I'm ready.' I moved my piece – a darning needle representing Ernest Shackleton – along the fold in the map.

‘Jolly good,' said Father, and sat back in his chair. His button, Captain Scott, was just ahead of my darning needle and the thimble which represented Wilson. ‘I think we may go no further for this evening. These conditions require proper consideration and I'm too tired. We'll have our cocoa now.'

That night I was about fourteen years old and Catherine was eighteen. It was 1904 or 1905. The drawing room ached with music from the piano. Catherine had just learned that she had won a place to study at the Royal College of Music and we were excited. Father had allowed her to audition, but now could not decide whether to let her go. He always said that Catherine's music was the heart of the family, for it pumped the blood through our veins and pushed air into our lungs. Catherine leaned over the keyboard with her eyes half-shut. She stretched back as her fingers pressed into the tinkling diminuendo. It was a dark, wet evening and the fire had burned all day. Perspiration jewelled her forehead.

I took lessons, too, but was only a competent pianist. My parents encouraged me to be outdoors all day for, when I was nine years old, I had contracted pneumonia and almost died like my brother Freddie. Mother's greatest fear was that she would find me, one day, cold and empty as she had found him. To keep my constitution strong and my lungs healthy, I spent hours playing hockey and tennis. I walked through London's parks in fog and wind, and bought hot potatoes to stick in my pockets and warm my hands.

In spite of Father's grumpiness that night, I loved our evenings in the drawing room. The play with the maps had begun recently after Father had been talking about Scott's expedition to the Antarctic in the
Discovery.
Scott, Shackleton and Wilson had left the main party to reach the Pole but had to turn back, partly owing to Shackleton's poor health. I had told Father that I could not see why they hadn't been able to reach the South Pole. It seemed to me that if they had gone within a few miles, it could not be so very hard to go all the way.

Father said that I was very naive and I could not possibly imagine the brutality of the conditions the explorers faced. One mile might take hours to cover. A few yards might make a man relive his entire life and have dark thoughts he never knew his brain could hold. Father's eyes seemed to blacken when he said this. In order to educate me, he took to unfolding great maps and newspaper articles in the evenings and we would throw a die across the hearth to make the journey ourselves, paying attention to physical health, the weather, food supplies and, as my father put it, the qualities of the hero from whom any schoolboy might learn.

I was a schoolgirl, of course, but I did my best. I didn't have any brothers, only Freddie, who died before I was even born so he was just a ghost.

It became a game we played often. We laid out pieces of paper, cotton reels, any odd thing we could find, in order to represent the seals and whales in the southern seas. We made a paper boat to represent the
Discovery,
and put thimbles and buttons inside it to represent the men. We sailed her to McMurdo Sound and Father marked the places where Scott and his men had been in 1902. We ventured to other parts of the world, places that Father had been with his ships, but none was so exciting as the South Pole, still out of reach to man, now only by a few degrees. Sometimes we played Nansen and Amundsen, racing in their ship, the
Fram,
against the British, to the ends of the Earth.

Mrs Horton, our elderly housekeeper, placed the cocoa tray on the table in the window, spilling a little as she set it down. We wished her goodnight and she left. I put away the huts and penguins and began to fold the map. It was very large and complicated. I almost disappeared underneath it, but Mother took the corner and helped me. Father, who always had to be Captain Scott but tired quickly, settled into his armchair. I, Ernest Shackleton, curled up by the fireplace with my book,
Unpleasant Tales for Girls,
or some such thing that I liked, but I didn't read it. I watched my older sister at the piano and I listened to her.

Frank Black, who had been playing Wilson in our game, retreated to the cosy corner at the other side of the fireplace with his cocoa. Handsome Frank, with dark eyes like raven's wings. He was our neighbour and had come for tea and to congratulate Catherine on her success, then stayed to hear her practise. Mother always said that he was in love with Catherine and the music was his excuse to be near her. He would be a very good catch, said Mother, though not yet because he was going up to Oxford in the autumn and would not want to marry before graduating, which was just as well because Catherine had no idea how to be a wife yet. Frank studied with the same piano tutor as Catherine and I but did not have her extraordinary talent. They played duets some afternoons and Catherine was always stopping for Frank to go over his part. She helped him when he got stuck, but gently and quietly so that he wouldn't feel ashamed. He was clever, though, and great fun when we played our games. I longed for him to marry Catherine so that I could have him as my older brother. I liked him to come exploring with Father and me for Catherine never joined in, and Mother was always in and out of the room so spoiled the progress of the expedition. Tonight, though, Frank was as bad as Mother. He seemed more interested in my sister than in the South Pole.

Catherine played Bach's Concerto no.7 in G minor.

Father slipped a bookmark into his atlas and let it close on his lap.

Mother's lips made a thin, tight line. Mother saw no point in so much piano playing.
It's unhealthy for the mind
, she used to say.
Catherine will become imaginative.
She insisted that Catherine accompanied her to the Waifs and Strays Needlework Society and on visits to our neighbours, though Catherine hated at-homes and fumed about the pointless and tedious conversations of silly wives. She was a dreamy girl, my mother used to say, but must learn to stay awake. I did not mind visiting at all and was always willing to hand round the cakes when we had guests at home. I enjoyed entering other people's homes, seeing their things, and listening to adult conversations, but because I was quite good at it I was rarely required to go. It was Catherine who needed the practice and routine lest she go the way of our neighbour's niece, Margaret Mott.

Poor Margaret Mott. I had forgotten her. Mother had found her wandering half-naked in our garden one afternoon and could not get any sense from her. Margaret had a beautiful singing voice and was trilling to the birds in the trees when Mother came out to see why the gate was open. Margaret was just a few years older than Catherine but, after Mother had wrapped a cape around her goose-pimpled body and taken her home, Dr Sowerby sent her to the asylum so that she could have a rest. We never heard of Margaret again, but the vague threat of the asylum was with us from that day. Mother taught Catherine practical things so that she wouldn't become like Miss Mott, infected in the imagination by too much music. Catherine had to learn how to knit pretty animals to sell for orphans and how to pour from the teapot in such a way that the tea streamed into the cup without making a vulgar sound.

I gazed at Frank's feet. Now that the expedition was over, he was quiet. His shoes appeared to be politely still and evenly placed but then I noticed that they sometimes twitched and shifted with the music. In the andante the toes leaned forward, just a little, as if to listen more intently.

‘So it's up to Oxford then, young Frank, and then into the law like your father, I suppose?'

‘Yes, I certainly hope so, Captain Farringdon. I'll go to the Bar if I can.'

‘Now that will please him.'

Frank was not telling the truth to my father but trying to impress him. He had told Catherine and me that he was going to be an artist and the studying was just to keep everyone happy in the meantime.

Catherine reached the end of the movement and paused. Stray hairs caught the lamplight and glowed red, little wires lit up around her skull. Her long, freckled fingers rested on the keys like leggy insects, then skimmed away again to turn the page.

When the music reached the fifth or sixth line and I felt safe inside it, I turned to peek through the gap in the curtains at the garden and watched rain land in puddles on the gravel path. The music played around my ears like the patter of falling water. The wind grew high and the notes tumbled and sliced through the air to touch my skin. When my sister was at college, I would go to Kensington and visit her there.

‘Catherine,' I blurted, ‘when you are famous I shall come to hear you play at the Royal Albert Hall and shall take a box near the stage so that you'll hear me shout
encore.
I'll wear a red silk dress so that you will see me easily. It will be wonderful.'

‘Grace, you have such an imagination.' She smiled at me, glanced down and the smile stayed in her eyes and on her lips. I was glad that I had made her happy. ‘But I'm most likely to be a teacher or an accompanist. That's what musical ladies usually do.'

I jumped up and perched beside her on the piano stool.

‘Has he made up his mind yet?' I whispered. ‘Will you go even if he won't let you?'

‘I'm playing as well I can, to persuade him. If he won't pay for me then I won't be able to go and the concert at the Albert Hall will certainly never happen.'

‘No. Of course it will happen, Catherine. Of course he must pay.'
If it doesn't happen,
I thought,
what will?

Catherine turned the page of her music and I returned to my corner as she resumed. Her hair came loose and a thick strand obscured the side of her face. She tossed her head to move it and more hair came down.

‘Stop,' cried Father. ‘That's enough.'

Catherine's fingers snapped back from the keyboard. She stared at my father, who appeared to be struggling for breath.

‘Are you all right, Herbert?' Mother shut her book and lifted herself from the settee, ready to run for his medicine.

The final notes twisted in the air, then dissolved.

Frank's feet shot back behind the fireplace and disappeared.

‘Yes. Yes, I am perfectly all right.'

‘What is it then?'

He opened his mouth but only a wheeze came out.

‘Should we send for the doctor?' asked Catherine.

‘Perhaps it is the heat,' I said.

‘It is not the heat,' my father replied, at last. ‘It was the music.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Catherine. ‘I know I have played this much better. I shall be all right, though, if you'll just let me get to the end. Why—?'

My father stood, reached for the piano music and closed it.

‘I'm sorry, my dear. You played beautifully. I couldn't fault a note or a phrase. You are perfect. You always are.'

‘Then I must go on, Father. I don't like to leave a piece incomplete. It's disrespectful to the composer and it leaves me feeling all wrong. Please.'

My father lowered himself to the piano stool and landed heavily beside Catherine. He adjusted the knees of his trousers, tweaked the tips of his moustache.

‘And it's easier for me to play if you are not sitting just next to me.'

‘But it isn't fair of me to do this to you. Whatever was I thinking to let things come so far? You're not going to the Royal College.'

Catherine stared at him. I thought she might cry. She put her hand to her cheek to hide her face from Frank.

‘It isn't quite right, dear. You're such a charming, pretty girl. When you play in public, people will be – looking at you.'

‘Of course they will, Father. I can't very well sit behind a curtain.'

‘But we won't always know who they are or what they're thinking about you. You have dreams of playing to hundreds of people in grand concert halls, but your music is for us, your family.'

‘But listen—'

‘I've always said that I couldn't survive an evening without your music, and I mean it. That is why God gave you this talent and made you a woman.' Father's sentence ended with a snap.

‘The Royal College didn't mind that I'm not a man. I showed them that I'm good enough.'

Father patted her hand. ‘Catherine, we know that you are the best young pianist in London. You have nothing to prove to us. There's no need for you to go to the college. You would hate it. You'll stay here and play for me and we'll be happy, as we have always been happy.'

Catherine wiped her handkerchief across her brow and shook her head.

At the prospect of tears, Frank rose to his feet. He gave a slight bow. ‘Thank you for this evening. Catherine, thank you for playing so beautifully. I trust this will be resolved and you'll soon be on your way to college.'

No one answered him.

‘Why can she not study music?' I asked. ‘Even if she doesn't give concerts or work in music? At least she should go to college.'

‘Of course she may study music, Grace. I'm not such an ogre as to stop a girl playing the piano. But she cannot study at a college where it is all about preparing to play in public. College is for people who are planning careers. That's the point of it, you see. It would just build the girl's hopes.' He looked around the room for support. I fixed my eyes on the ceiling. ‘Does it not seem indecent to all of you? Grace and Catherine have tried to blind me, with their romantic ideas of colleges and concerts. The reality is not so pleasant, I'm afraid.'

‘She will be a bird in a cage if you keep her here.' Frank spoke up from the doorway. His hands were clasped firmly in front of him and his expression was angry, but his eyes darted quickly from Father's to Catherine's to mine so I knew that he was frightening himself.

‘Frank,' said my mother, quietly, ‘it's not as though we would put our daughters on the stage in the theatre, and a concert is not such a different thing from a play, after all.'