Winter’s Children (26 page)

She didn’t understand why she had a yellow face, and when she was sick it came up green and she felt sore all over, but Mum sat with her until day became night and it all went fuzzy.

There was a little boy with a silver waistcoat who sat in a chair by the fireside smiling at her. She wondered if he was one of her school friends and asked Mum who he was.

‘What little boy?’ she smiled. ‘You’re imagining things. It’s just the fever.’

‘No, I’m not, I can hear them playing tag upstairs, calling out … but he sits by the fire watching me. He says his name is William.’

Mum looked at her and felt her forehead. ‘I’ll get you some more medicine. You’re very hot. We’ve got to take you to the hospital to make you better. I know it’s a long way away but we’ll come to visit you when they allow us.’

‘I don’t want to go away … can’t I stay here and play with the children?’

‘There are no children, love. It’s all in your head. Now get some sleep and it’ll make you feel better. Good night and God bless.’

Grown-ups were funny, they couldn’t hear things properly. How could Mum not hear the upstairs children calling out to her, ‘Come and play with us’? Now her bedroom was filling up with playmates, smiling, children in funny dresses and caps peering down at her. It was lovely to see the room swimming with swirling figures and brightness, and suddenly it was easy to jump out of the bed to play with them …

It was a backward spring that year, everything late and stunted and a poor harvest of lambs. Nora didn’t venture far from the farm. She wasn’t fit for company and folk left her alone to get over the loss of her kiddie in her own way. They weren’t being cruel, just standing back to let time help her come to. She took to riding out to watch their new stock, glad to be alone with her thoughts. One minute Shirley was the centre of her life and then she was gone, leaving a gap in her heart nothing would ever fill. Tom got on with his jobs and said nothing much. There was nothing to say, but he did insist they made an appearance at one of the local markets at Skipton Auction Mart in June for a change of scene.

It was a farmer’s world but there were plenty of sideshows for the womenfolk, selling farming equipment and local produce. There was a parade of some decent horses to view. He left her to wander around among strangers who didn’t know her sorrows. She was fine until a hand touched her sleeve. She spun round to see the one face in the world she dreaded meeting again. It was Klaus.

He was dressed in a tweed jacket and old cords. His face was tanned with the sun. She turned from him but he grabbed her arm roughly. ‘No, don’t leave! I knew you would be here.’ He paused and whipped off his cap. ‘I know about Shirley. A man in the camp who works near Wintergill, he told me. I’m not going back to Germany. There’s no one to go for. All I want is here now. I’ve got a job on a farm near Lincoln … no hills, no snow, with a proper cottage … We can start again.’ He was smiling, those eyes piercing hers.

‘We?’

‘You and me … begin again, a new life. Come with me.’

Nora stared at him as if he was a stranger from Mars, stepping back. ‘Why should I come with you?’

‘Because we are one people,’ Klaus was struggling to express his feelings, gripping his cap. ‘I will work hard for us—’

‘Stop! Stop right now. Have you forgotten our Shirley?’ ‘It was terrible what happened. There will be other
Kinder—
‘

‘She died because she saw us in the wood and ran on thin ice. We killed her, you and I, as if we had drowned her. It was our doing … How can I ever live with you after that?’

‘But you don’t love your husband.’ He was pleading with her but she shook her head.

‘Who are you to say that? There’s love that’s like fireworks in the night, a burst of flame and then nothing, and there’s love like the steady slow burn of a candle – another sort of love between man and wife. I have to stay with my little girl now. I won’t be leaving her alone in the churchyard.’

Klaus shook his head. ‘No, no! She cannot stop our love. She is dead, nothing more we can do for her, but I am living.’

‘She already has. I will never leave her.’ ‘I don’t understand …’

‘How can you? She’s not your child but, God forbid, one day you will know what it is to have the heart ripped out of you.’ There was nothing else to say as she dragged herself from the sight of him.

‘Lenora!’ He was calling but his words fell on deaf ears. He didn’t see the tears streaming down her face as she walked away.

Nora waited until Tom had gone to church. It was the quiet end of the Sunday morning. No one else was on the farm. The roast was in the oven, the apple pie waiting in the larder and in front of her was the bottle of sherry and the aspirins. She sat staring at the bottles while the wall clock clicked away the minutes. The answer to her misery was staring back at her if she could only swallow the lot, but not here, not in the sacred place where Shirley died. She would not pollute her memory.

Shoving on her farm mac and sticking the bottles in her poacher’s pocket, she made her way down to the copse, the scene of the crime, to the very place where she had betrayed all her principles. She didn’t deserve to live now. Tom would find another wife once the hoo-ha died down. They would put it all down to sadness and depression. How could she go on living without her little child?

She was too ashamed of herself. Klaus had gone for good. He was part of the past now. Sitting with her dying child, pleading with the gods to bring her back from the brink, she would never forget. It was as if she’d woken up from some drunken dream into the sober chill of the morning. There was nothing to live for now but a lifetime of guilt and regret. How could she carry the heavy weight of shame and deceit from Tom? Better to end it all now and be done with it.

She sat down against the trunk of a tree, hidden from view. This was a peaceful place to end her life. It was that time of late summer when the birds were chattering, the leaves just curling from a vibrant green canopy into a silvery grey: beech, oak, rowan and ash. Life in the wood was going about its business as usual; after the rain the sun, after the snows, the spring, and then she heard Shirley singing that new hymn in the Sunday School Anniversary concert. ‘Glad that live am I, That the sky is blue … Glad for the country lanes And the fall of dew …’ Her voice was singing and ringing through the branches, clear and bright, and she recalled how proud she’d been to watch her daughter in her special white dress singing her heart out on the chancel steps …

Then in the very remembering she understood that death would be the easy way out of her pain. Her punishment must be to go on living and to make something out of the rest of her life. She must pay back Tom, the farm and Shirley for her terrible betrayal somehow.

She found herself scrabbling in the soil to bury the bottles. Their existence was an indulgence, like Klaus had been, and a part of her heart must be buried alongside them. Nothing like this must ever happen again.

Understanding

 

‘Shirley slipped away from us before we could find out what was wrong,’ Nora cried as the tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘The doctor did his best. He thought it was meningitis but it wasn’t. It was something you catch from muddy water.’

‘Weil’s disease,’ Nik replied. ‘Wherever rats live there’s danger.’

‘I killed her as surely as if I’d held a gun to her head.’ Nora held her head in her hands.

‘It was bad luck she fell in and drank dirty water,’ Nik replied, patting her on the shoulder.

‘Bad luck my foot. What I did was shameful. I can’t believe it was really me. I must have been crazy but I loved that man … When Shirley died I nearly ended it with a bottle of aspirin.’

‘I’m glad you didn’t or I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale … I wasn’t by any chance … you know … me being Nikolas … with you and the POW making hay while the sun shone?’

Nora smiled through her tears. ‘Of course not. You came years after. You were born on St Nicholas’s Day and named after him. I never even thought of that connection. Tom wanted us to try again but I kept putting it off. I really didn’t want another kiddie, not after what happened. I just wanted the one I’d lost. How could I deserve another chance to bring life into the world? I thought I’d got away with it but out you popped. When you were born a lad, I was that relieved and Tom was delighted. You were always his boy and I didn’t interfere.’

‘Did my dad ever suspect?’

‘I’m not sure. He was either a saint or a fool to take such risks. It was he who insisted I give Klaus those lessons alone. He was too trusting. That’s why, if I’m honest, I’m glad to see the back of that Side Barn. Too many memories. I’m not proud of what I did then but it felt so important at the time.’ Nora rose stiffly, not looking at her son. ‘So now you know how it was … I’m not making any excuses, except that I was young, full of silly dreams and bored by the sameness of all my chores. I was bowled over by a handsome face, all the sadness of war and a lost young man. There were no agony aunts to advise us about the power of physical attraction. We never talked about sex. I should have known better but I wanted him and I had him.

‘Nowadays no one bats an eyelid at taking what they want. Go for it, they tell the young ‘uns. Take what you want and enjoy it, but not in my day. We were brought up on the full St Augustine edict: “Take what you want but pay for it.”

‘I never set out to commit adultery, to be so feckless and shameless, but I was still a child at heart, a girl full of romantic notions. He was my little rebellion. It was a crazy whirlwind romance that came from nothing back to nothing, leaving devastation in its wake. Shirley died because of it and I have never forgiven myself for that.

‘How many nights have I sat scratching her name into the fingers of ice on the windowpane, looking out across the snowfields in moonlight, wondering if she ever forgave me? Then I’d look down at the worn peg rugs and the washing tub and I knew that I was bolted to earth, nailed down by duty and loyalty to Wintergill farmhouse and all who slept therein for the rest of my life.

‘The fire of that loving has never been entirely snuffed out. Its embers remain, stirring up memories when I sit by the firelight. I’ve often wondered if Klaus’s still alive somewhere. Don’t begrudge me that German Christmas long ago. Who was it who once said that lost loves were always the longest lived?’

‘Why do you always think I’m criticising you?’ Nik argued. ‘This is the first time we’ve talked like this. It’s hard sometimes to remember your parents were once as silly and young as you were. Now you’ve told me your story, it makes so many things clearer … why you never talked about my sister or took to Mandy. You saw through my wife when she fell for Danny Pighills, didn’t you?’

‘It takes one to know one, son. I could see their infatuation growing and I couldn’t warn you what was happening under your eyes.’

‘You let me down there.’

‘I was trying to protect you. Dad thought I was being harsh. I’ve done wrong to shut you out of all this. You never asked to be born, and somewhere in my heart I was afraid of losing you too.’

‘It’s OK now. No point in going over what we can’t change. It’s what’s going on now that matters. But I’m glad you’ve come clean on Shirley. I always felt I wasn’t good enough.’

‘Nik, you’ve been everything a son could be to your dad and me.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me all this before?’ ‘Because I’m ashamed of it and didn’t want you to hate me.’

‘Hate you? Why? For being human and failing to live up to your own high standards? Look at me … we’re both in Dicky’s meadow now. Fighting about it won’t solve anything but together we can give Bruce Stickley a run for his money. Don’t ask me how but we’ll get by.’

‘I don’t want to get by … I want to retire.’

‘I know, I heard you first time. There has to be a way for both of us to make it happen.’

‘Well, you’d better ask the Christmas Fairy then,’ Nora muttered. ‘‘Cos I’m clean out of ideas. If this run of luck carries on, we’ll all be out on the street by New Year.’

Nik tried to busy himself making phone calls but nothing was going to happen until after Christmas. It was as if the whole world was grinding to a halt for two weeks and he was trapped here in limbo, feeling helpless. His mother’s confession had shocked him more than he could admit. He was trying to stay cool about her affair but it hurt none the less. The sex lives of parents were something mysterious and uncomfortable to his generation. He’d never seen either of them naked, or showing any signs of physical affection to each other. Now he knew why. Dad must have known what was going on and let it run its course, surely?

He looked at the sepia portrait of his mother on the windowsill with fresh eyes. Why had he never noticed the sparkle in her eyes, her flawless skin and high cheekbones? She was quite a looker in her day. No wonder she attracted attention. It was this farm that had ground down those looks, sharpened her features and dulled her eyes. She’d stuck it out because that was what you did – not like Mandy, who lasted barely three years before making her escape.

He stood staring out of the window. Who would want to live here above the snow line, miles from company, with only worry and hard work as a reward? None of his past girlfriends could stomach the smells or the chores for more than a weekend or two. Now he’d got nothing to offer but the hope of restocking: just more of the same. If only he could magic some extra cash to smarten the place up a bit, but it had all gone on the barn conversion and overdrafts.

He noticed the Partridge girl in the Puffa anorak chasing the dog in the field. Poor kid, it wasn’t going to be much of a Christmas for them, not after last year. He was surprised they’d stayed on.

Kay Partridge was no longer a mystery to him. Since the funny business on the lane after the quiz, when she’d seen him shaken up and he’d listened to her story, he was finding her good company. Now they were all going to be under one roof and Christmas was round the corner. Suddenly he was warming to the whole idea!

Mistress Hepzibah stirs. The season is upon us once more, she sighs. Danger is still nigh. Blanche has tried her worst and now they are all safe under the thatch, her will is thwarted but all is not well with the master. There is sadness like smoke fumes wafting through the house, choking out the chance of yuletide noise and merriment. This be a house of gloom, and the young maid will make mischief if not chastised and set to honest work. Why does she lie abed, not busy with spinning wool or at her sampler? Childer are never too young to be set to work in the dairy, the kitchen or reading their horn books. Idle hands make mischief, methinks …