Seas of Snow Page 4

  He showed Gracie the sparkling dots filling the sky with luminescent twinkles. The moon shone its golden cream milkiness onto the tops of trees in the distance. Far away, there was the sound of foxes crying.

  The turret – just an ordinary window really – was a vista onto a world of secrets and magic. The sky, midnight velvet, was dense and thick.

  Mary – Mrs Harper – had told Billy that he’d have to let Gracie stay with him tonight – and she joked with Gracie that she’d have to put up with Billy and his smelly feet.

  They laughed in excitement at this very new adventure – Gracie couldn’t ever remember staying anywhere other than home, and Billy was bursting with the privilege of looking after her.

  The lights went down and the two of them chatted up close under the big furry blanket. Downstairs, Mrs Harper was pottering away, tidying up.

  ‘Do you get scared sometimes Gracie, in the night I mean?’

  Gracie paused, looking at him intently. The moonlight was flooding into the room and dappling onto the walls. Her eyes were bright with moonbeams.

  ‘It’s always the big, black shadow, Billy, the raven. He comes to me in my dreams and he looks at me. He won’t stop looking at me!’

  She caught her breath, transfixed with the memory.

  Billy patted her gently on her arm.

  ‘He won’t hurt you, Gracie, it’s just a stupid bird.’

  Billy started to tickle Gracie to make her forget the bird. He’d wanted to tell her about his own fears, how he’d spend hours reliving those treacherous nights, wondering whether his Da was going to survive the War, wondering what he’d do if one day he got asked to fight.

  Billy got scared in the night. Every night. It didn’t help that his Da was away fighting for the first few years of his life. His absence was so real you could touch it. A Da-shaped hole where a Da should be.

  The tickling seemed to be working. Gracie was giggling and the light in her eyes was dancing again.

  ‘I know what would be fun, Gracie – have you ever wondered about boys and girls?’

  Gracie had no idea what he was talking about. She knew boys and girls were different – of course they were! – but she didn’t really know much other than boys grow into men and stink more and have shorter hair and when they’re men have beards sometimes, where girls grow into ladies and smell lovely and have nice long hair. Ladies didn’t grow beards, ever.

  Billy attempted to explain, but crumbled into fits of laughter.

  ‘What is it, what is it, Billy?’ Gracie asked him, beginning to tickle him back.

  ‘Oh Gracie,’ he giggled, ‘it’s so funny, but it’s a kind of secret. Boys and girls have got different bits – want to see? I can show you me if you show me you!’

  Gracie thought this sounded brilliant. She had no idea she was going to learn mystifying things about life this evening.

  Billy pulled down his pyjama bottoms and let her peek inside.

  Gracie squealed as she looked at the wriggly pink worm half hidden in the dark.

  ‘That’s such a funny secret! Have Simon and John got the same thing?’

  Billy nodded, ‘And Da! But Ma doesn’t. I’ve seen. Now show us yours then!’

  Gracie pulled up her nightie and showed him.

  They collapsed into giggles and talked some more and laughed some more and talked some more.

  ‘You two, pack it in, go to sleep,’ Mrs Harper’s voice floated up.

  It made them laugh even harder, with those funny silent ­giggles you get when you’re trying really hard not to make any noise. Punctuated with tiny snorts which made them laugh even harder, it wasn’t long before the two of them dozed off, exhausted with playtime.

  Ripples

  Each little flower that opens,

  Each little bird that sings,

  He made their glowing colours,

  He made their tiny wings.

  Gracie hummed the words of the hymn inside her head. She thought concentrating would help her somehow. But she wasn’t sure it was working. The fear gripped her, constricting her throat as it did before. Surely Uncle Joe wouldn’t hurt her? But the blurriness of her vision was swirling.

  Tiny wings.

  Gracie started. Wings. The bird.

  Joe was standing above her, the shadow of his huge form casting darkness over her. His eyes glinted with the reflections of the water. His mouth was set in a half-smile. The lines on his face seemed thrown into relief like an etching in an old book. The scratchy outline of his stubble was silhouetted against the faint twilight misting through the pane of glass. His nose, horned and stern. Hard. Avian.

  And his stygian black eyes had a deadness to them – the dancing light merely a glittery mask. A patina of life painted over the dullness of death.

  A flicker stirred inside him. He was beginning to ache, looking at her, so pretty.

  Her nipples were small and round and pink. Not developed at all yet – could have been a boy’s. Her hips were slender, her arms softly tawny from last summer. Her limbs stretched downwards. But as she saw him casting his eyes down her legs, she drew them up to her chest and clutched herself, tightly.

  Her tiny hands were whitening from the strain of holding her knees so hard to herself. Her eyes, fixed on him, posed a question he had no intention of answering.

  His hands were clenched, the tension throbbing through his blue veins. Skin rough and scaly. Nails dirty and ragged. She thought about the little mouse, gripped in the talons of a dreadful darkness.

  Blood surged through her head and her heart was beating so loudly it was causing little ripples in the water. The last of the snow was dissipating.

  The wet dewiness of her skin beckoned him. He could sense her excitement. He could see her eyes darkened in want and in need – their greenness masked by the pools of shiny, tarry blackness of widening pupils. He could tell she wanted him …

  She had never been so terrified. The way he was piercing her with his hard gaze, the clenching and unclenching of his huge hands.

  Where’s Mam? she wanted to know. Why hadn’t she come up? Why had she let Uncle Joe come into the bathroom? Panic rose up in her.

  She glanced at the locked door and tried to work out what to do, still clinging desperately to herself, protecting her nakedness as best she could. She had no idea what Uncle Joe wanted, but she knew it couldn’t be good.

  It reminded her of that feeling, trapped inside the cupboard at school. She had no idea why the girls had been so cruel, but the moment she saw them huddling together and glancing her way, she knew there would be trouble.

  Locked inside that small, damp room, she had felt helpless and bereft. Uncomprehending. Frightened. Alone. She had heard the blood pounding through her head on that day, too. And she had just as little clue then as now about why she had been singled out for bad stuff by bad people. Had she done something wrong? She was sure she was as good as can be, but for some reason things kept happening to her. A wave of nausea swept through her.

  She decided she only had three options. She could either leap out of the bath and try to run away; ask Joe to pass her a towel; or lie there and find out what he was there for, what he wanted with her.

  The trouble was, it looked as if he was waiting for something. His face was contorting into different expressions – seemingly in pain one moment and ecstasy the next. He continued to twist his hands, leaving white marks where he had pressed too hard.

  If she tried to run away, he could catch her – most probably would catch her – and who knows what he may do. If she asked for a towel, he would laugh at her, mock her. She could feel the scorn boring into her. If she stayed, she didn’t know what would happen …

  The afternoon light was fading now and the raindrops had become intermittent spits and spots. Razor slashes melted into caressing kisses, rippling in puddles on the terrace. A stillness settled in the garden, and a calmness descended into the room, and in her.

  The old, fragile woman reflected on the young girl�
�s dilemma. An ensnared creature, imprisoned in every sense – and no way out. By that point, not a word had been spoken by either prisoner or jailer. A grim silence presided. The thick fug of anticipation – fear from one, excitement from the other.

  The faded book was still in her gnarled hands. She traced the words again with a bent, twisted finger:

  So you must not be frightened

  If a sadness rises up before you …

  You must think that something is happening with you,

  That life has not forgotten you,

  That it holds you in its hand,

  It will not let you fall.

  The old woman knew that it was this very sentiment that had sustained the little girl in the school store cupboard and later, locked in the bathroom with her uncle. In her heart, she believed she had not been forsaken, that somehow, some way, it would all be alright.

  And then my heart with pleasure fills,

  And dances with the daffodils.

  But right now, it was hard to see a way out. She certainly felt forgotten. And the dizziness that kept sweeping over her made her feel as if she was falling, falling, falling …

  Flowers

  The night at Billy’s was a big adventure, but the next day Gracie’s mother wearily came to collect her daughter. She looked tired. Purple shadows circled under her eyes, and her face looked worn and old.

  ‘Mrs Scott, can Gracie come to stay again please? Please?’ asked Billy, winking at Gracie. She trusted him and loved him more than life itself and, if truth be told, it was rather lonely just being at home alone with Mam all the time. She and Billy had promised each other that they would try to have more evenings like that – more evenings with princes and princesses and secrets and surprises.

  Gracie’s mother looked blankly at Billy and offered a weak smile. ‘I’m sure we can arrange that, Billy, pet,’ she said, softly.

  ‘Now come on, you, let’s get you home, Gracie.’

  Years later, Billy would visit the lavender room, usually with a small posy of flowers. It was Billy who kept her going really, a link to a time when life had moments of real joy. That life was long gone now, of course. A faded memory to match the faded flowers, withering in the glass jar by the window.

  ‘Thank you, Billy, dear, they’re lovely,’ her voice was rasping with the effort of speaking. ‘The daffs are long gone, dear.’

  Billy had brought her a small handful of freesias. Their scent wafted into the room, lifting the darkness of the walls with a momentary freshness. Billy busied himself, emptying the old flowers into the bin and rinsing the ceramic vase out. He ran the tap for a moment and filled the vase almost to the brim, stashing the flowers inside. Yellows and pinks, they were, a perfect spring captured – if not elegantly – then prettily in their new home.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked. Billy had always been so very lovely. She remembered him coming around all the time in those days, the eagerness and exuberance of youth – his voice excitable, his boisterousness exhausting.

  ‘I’ve brought you a newspaper, thought you might fancy a read,’ he said, handing her the paper. It was true, she liked to try to stay in touch, but there was such a wealth of dispiriting stories in the papers it hardly raised the soul.

  These days, they didn’t have all that much to say, but it was touching that he never forgot her, always visited when he could.

  He’d made a very good living and was looking well on it, too. Billy Harper – who’d have thought it – ran his own business now, having worked his way up from sweeping the floor and learning the ropes from scratch. These days he owned a small components factory.

  ‘Now the world needs computers, the world needs me,’ he would say, touching his finger lightly on his nose. He’d ­corner­­ed the market in a particular type of resistors for circuit boards – nobody could make them better, or cheaper. ‘Secret’s in the design, in the imagination of the design,’ he would say.

  Billy was always one for a vivid imagination. He just had to close his eyes and he could invent new worlds, new games, new adventures. In the blink of an eye you would be a unicorn or a goblin or a ballerina – your kingdom, forest or stage unveiling before your very eyes. Dragons and princesses, magic and mystery.

  Where he retained a youthfulness and sunniness, she had become a bird-like shadow of herself. An old woman. Terminally ill and waiting for the inevitable. Bitterness and sorrow creasing in every line across her face.

  His ruddy cheeks burst with smiles, usually, but today, glowed with embarrassment, because he had no idea what to say to her.

  ‘What’ve you been up to?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, you know, there’s so much going on here, so much going on, I can’t keep up.’

  These days, her memory was more and more unreliable. Partly a consequence of the life she had been dealt – she had wanted to obliterate so many memories … And partly the treatment. Such invasive medical procedures were bound to have their consequence. But it was also partly age … she had withered physically and mentally in the last few years. The books were both a solace and a source of torment …

  Her mind drifted away.

  The shadow hovered above her, and she saw Uncle Joe slowly reach for his belt. Eyes fixed on her, he carefully stroked the metal buckle. Backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, it seemed as if he wanted to polish it.

  He began to undo the buckle, let the harsh leatheriness of the strap pass roughly through the spokes. The thud of leather against metal was a sound she would never forget.

  He seemed to hesitate. Was it that he wanted to beat her? She knew that at school naughty children were beaten with a belt. She racked her brains – had she been naughty? Had she done anything that someone thought was naughty?

  Suddenly, she realised with an explosion of recognition that this must all be her fault. Like being locked in the cupboard, like being stabbed with pencils, like being slapped by her mother. It must all be her fault. God must think – somehow – she wasn’t sure how – that she was a bad person.

  She tried desperately to think what she had done that was so wrong. She loved her Mam, she tried hard at school (although spelling was always a chore) and she did her best to be helpful and kind. She said her prayers, even though she didn’t part­­icularly know who God was, really, and she always did what she was told. So what was it?

  Her eyes widened as she wondered at her fate. She watched the big man, familiar and yet unfamiliar, his belt hanging loosely down his sides. She sensed his breath coming fast and heavy. She smelt that old stench of bitter treacliness. Everything about him disgusted her.

  He put one hand inside his trousers and let out a deep, dark groan. His dancing eyes closed for a moment.

  She watched him move his hand up and down inside his trousers, faster and faster. With a sickening dread, she knew what he must have inside there – the same as Billy’s, but different.

  He paused and looked at her, approaching the side of the bath with the stealth of a beast approaching its prey, silently. But this was in full view – she could see him. He could see her. She could hear his breathing … he could hear hers.

  He touched the top of her head, stroking her hair softly. He circled his fingers along her temples, tracing downwards towards her ear. Back to the top of her head, stroking, stroking. Teasing her wispy curls. Stroking, stroking.

  She made herself focus on the petals of the yellows and pinks, shoved carelessly into the small white pot by the sink. Small, perfect, pretty. Spring captured.

  The strains of a musical phrase echoed inside her …

  Each little flower that opens …

  She wasn’t quite sure what happened next, but whatever it was proved to be her lifeline. The bird flew away.

  Myths

  Billy’s visits were something she looked forward to. Sometimes she momentarily lost herself, forgetting who he was or how he knew her. Sometimes she would ask him questions of such apparent obviousness, she would dissolve into embarrassment wh
en she realised what she had said.

  Her face would crease with recognition when the answer came back, the lines etched deep around her eyes and across her forehead searing with age and memory; her eyes flickering with recognition.

  A flash of pain would indicate she’d suddenly remembered something.

  Billy would look at her, barely recognising her. An old woman, a frail, bird-like creature with wizened limbs and a hollow chest.

  Seeing her like that would make him feel so deeply sorry for her. There was nothing much he could do – other than come along from time to time and try to brighten her day.

  The trouble was, there were so many awful memories; seeing her would stir his own thoughts. Usually, for days after his visits, he couldn’t sleep properly. There was too much sadness, too much damage. His own heart never properly healed, probably never would.

  ‘Remind me what those flowers are called, Billy?’ she asked.

  ‘Freesias, they’re called freesias. I remember you used to have them in your bathroom at home.’

  ‘Oh yes, yellows and pinks. I remember. They used to make everything smell pretty, like spring. I think I can still smell them …’

  She inhaled and slowly closed her watery eyes. She would wince from time to time, agony coursing through her body.

  She looked like any other little old lady. Gentle, soft, rather sweet. Her voice trembled as she spoke – it had got progressively raspier with age. It almost sounded as if she was speaking with two notes at once, like the strings of a cello played at the same time.

  Billy reflected that she had been through so much, it was a wonder she had survived this long. Her illness was excruciating, debilitating. Her treatment had been long and extreme. There wasn’t much time left.

  He wondered what she could still remember. Did she sometimes think about Joe? He shuddered at the thought of him. About the old house? About old times?

  ‘Do you want me to read to you? Or would you rather chat today?’