Seas of Snow Page 9

  ‘Do you think …’ she began, pondering whether or not to raise an idea she’d had. ‘Do you think maybe I should tell Mr Hall at school? Maybe he could …’

  Before she was able to finish her sentence, her mother interrupted, sharply.

  ‘No, Gracie. No. This is family, pet, we mustn’t involve other people.’

  ‘But what about Billy, and Mr and Mrs Harper?’

  ‘It’s not the same, pet. The Harpers help us because they’re our neighbours. But we don’t talk about things like this outside of the home. You don’t understand, Gracie, and why would you? You’re just a little girl. There’s so much I wish I could talk to you about, pet, and one day you’ll understand. For now, we have to make do, and I promise …’

  At this, she trembled slightly and stifled a sob. She mumbled something quietly to herself. ‘We are bonded, you and I, we are blood.’

  Then louder, to Gracie, ‘I promise I will do everything I can to make sure he doesn’t scare you again.’

  She began to look a little wistful, as the tears moistened her cheeks.

  ‘He used to be so handsome, Gracie, and he had such a gorgeous voice. You would have loved him, back then.’

  But ‘back then’ was a long time ago. Gracie wondered what her Ma and Joe had been like, before things went wrong in Joe’s head. Or whether, deep down, he had always been cruel. Always been dark and hard and … she struggled to think of the word … evil?

  The thought hung heavily, wordlessly, and she sighed, a shudder of memory coursing through her veins.

  There was no use trying to understand it – there must be things her mother was protecting her from to allow this monstrous man into their home. The world shouldn’t know.

  Not for first time, she reflected on the strange cleanness of their house in contrast with the vileness of what happened inside.

  Over time, she began to associate that smell of cleanness with his attacks. For every time he lashed out and destroyed something, hit something, broke something, Ma would recover herself and set to with the Jeyes and Harpic. Scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing. Until surfaces gleamed and a chemical odour pervaded the atmosphere. Spotless, like one of those dream homes you saw in pictures. Only this house was a dream that never was.

  So back to school then. Gracie decided all she could do was get through things day by day … Even Tish and Jo and their pathetic bullying would seem child’s play in comparison to … yesterday.

  She felt convinced what happened had been some sort of test. And she was desperate to work out if she had passed it. For now, she was going to get ready for a different sort of test, a far less scary one. To her surprise, she found herself chuckling inside at the absurdity of it. Somehow a school spelling test seemed to fade into insignificance. How things change in a day! Last week the idea of learning how to spell ‘rhododendron’ and ‘separate’ and the other stupid words on the list felt like a horrible kind of torture. Today, it felt like something she welcomed, to take her mind off … other things.

  School had a rhythm and a normality that felt safe and nice. Lessons came and went, breaks and lunchtimes were packed with routine activities like singing and extra PE and home economics. She was getting really good at cooking. Although the grown-ups always talked about the restrictions of rations, there were loads of things you could do with powdered eggs and powdered milk. She thought for a moment about the things she liked making. Eggless cakes were a specialty of hers. She could whip up a Mock Fishcake (the name made her giggle) using anchovy sauce for the fish flavour. She wasn’t completely sure whether she had ever tasted fish, but she liked the saltiness of the Mock ones. Her absolute favourite recipe was for Potato Floddies with their yummy dripping-crunchy edges.

  Cooking aside, her main hobby was reading. And that fledgling passion, embroidery, was something she never went back to.

  It came up that first day back.

  ‘You haven’t finished this off, Gracie,’ said Mrs Peston. ‘Can you offer me any explanation or would you like to take two detentions this week to make time to do it?’ Gracie ummed. She wasn’t sure what to say. So she said a version of the truth.

  ‘I’m really sorry you don’t like it, Mrs Peston, but I made it for my Ma and she thought it was lovely. I’m not very good at embroidery, Mrs Peston, and I spent hours on this one. I even got my friend B …’ she stopped herself blurting out the name because she realised it wouldn’t help Billy’s credibility for the whole school to find out he knew how to embroider. ‘I even got my friend to help show me what to do, but this is as good as I could make it. But I love knitting and stuff. Could I make another project for you, a knitting project? I promise to try ever so hard.’

  Mrs Peston looked at the curious earnestness of the young girl before her and paused for thought. It wasn’t like Gracie not to try her best, and it wasn’t like Gracie not to finish something off beautifully. Perhaps embroidery really was something she couldn’t do. Gracie had never let her down before, so she resolved to make an exception.

  ‘Okay, pet, you’ve talked me around. You can leave the embroidery and give it to your Ma as it is. But I want you knitting your first jumper within a month, within a month, you hear me?’

  Later, her own words echoed back at her. ‘Could I make another project for you, Mrs Peston? Could I fetch your bags, Mrs Peston, could I kiss your arse, Mrs Peston?’ sang Tish and Jo together.

  ‘God, you are such a little creep, Pastie Gracie. Teacher’s pet! Teacher’s pet! Teacher’s pet!’

  Gracie let the chants wash over her and realised they didn’t hurt nearly as much as they used to. For the second time that day, Gracie found herself surprised. She realised she actually felt sorry for those two.

  In the past, she had always tried to reason with them, explain stuff, get defensive.

  This time, she sighed theatrically loudly and sauntered off, without so much as a glance.

  ‘Teacher’s pet! Pastie Gracie!’

  The two kept it up for a moment or two but then stopped and turned to each other, chattering about whatever it is people like that chatter about.

  Gracie found a tree to sit under and pulled her spelling list out of her satchel, contemplating the unexpected blessings of the day.

  ‘R…h…o…d…o…d…e…n…d…r…o…n.’ She repeated it over and over until she got it. The bell went before she had time to realise the whole of lunchtime had passed and she hadn’t even eaten her sandwiches.

  Secrets

  It was nearly time for Billy to go. The room was beginning to feel constricting, not enough air, and there had been more than enough emotion that day.

  ‘Would you like me to read to you this evening?’ he asked, half-hoping that just this once he could make an early retreat. Of course, he felt terribly guilty about feeling this way. After all, he felt sorry for her. He had his health and his fitness and his business. He’d even managed to find love, belatedly, although he hadn’t been able to tell anyone about it. Not even her.

  She would be shocked, he was sure of it. And his brothers would tease him mercilessly – yes, they still counted him as the runt of the litter all these years on … His father had died many years before … and his Ma was too old and frail. She would be devastated. He couldn’t put her through that.

  But he smiled softly to himself, thinking of the worn, crinkly face of the lovely man who had shown him light and comfort over the last 15 years. Aidan worked at a bank, nice respectable job, but he cut a dash every day with flamboyant pinstripes and natty cravats. He was immaculately groomed, and he was gentle and kind.

  They would sit in companionable silence together in the ­evenings, Billy poring over his log books and dreaming up esoteric new designs – delving into the depths of that famous imagination to see if he could come up with something that rivalled – or even eclipsed – his brilliant invention, the engineering component he had lovingly crafted as a young man.

  Thirty years on and he never had.

  Aidan would sit on
his favourite armchair, still perfectly suited and booted, immersed in whatever book had caught his eye from reviews in the Observer and the Times Literary Supplement.

  They would most often have music on in the background. Bach, usually, or perhaps a touch of Mahler. Aidan had introduced him to all that stuff. Personally, Billy was happy with a bit of Sinatra, or even, for a more modern twist, a touch of Enya, or even a dash of Pet Shop Boys – but he felt warm and cosy with Aidan there, and the old-fashioned notes were perfectly inoffensive.

  They would take turns cooking for each other, and natter about their respective days. Billy always had some adventures to relay – even the journey into work could be spun into an adventure in Billy’s world … a tale from the lunch queue, a funny conversation overheard and taken out of context. He was still the mad inventor of joyous stories which endlessly entertained his companion. Dragons and princesses tended not to feature these days, but there was no end of laughter and fun. The companion may have changed but there was still love and laughter in his life.

  Aidan was quieter, calmer, but in that Jeeves and Wooster way he had he would bellyache with the best of them when something tickled him. Then he would roar with laughter.

  They were good together. It wasn’t a particularly conventional coupling, and neither shared their happy secret with family members, but they had a small group of friends for wine and supper. It was a most satisfactory arrangement.

  And through Aidan, Billy had been able to grow to appreciate the poetry that had meant so much to Gracie. He learned to hear the cadence and rhythm of the words, to spot the themes interweaving like spun silk, not just through individual poems but through swathes of letters and works. The spark of light poets like Byron and Wordsworth ignited in every syllable meant each and every word was illuminated in a new, unexpected relief. Poets could weave words together with such beauty, such magic, like a word puppeteer – making them dance and sing and move seemingly without effort. Their phrases could inspire tears of sadness and lift the spirits with a burst of joy – all within a stanza.

  Billy couldn’t quite understand how those poets worked their magic – hardly anyone could, to be fair – but he had grown, in time, to feel the beauty of their work in the depth of his being.

  At first, he had read the words as if they were merely a collection of – well – words. But with Aidan’s expert guidance (he really was rather brilliant at things like that), he developed a personal understanding and could feel an emotional connection.

  But today, he wouldn’t be reading. ‘It’s alright, thanks, dear Billy. I’m a little tired today and feel I need to rest.’

  Billy smiled kindly at the worn, ill shell of a woman and wondered how long she had left. She had been so weak and debilitated for such a long time. He shook himself and forced an inward apology on himself. Gosh, how terrible to think that, he chastised, silently.

  He bade her farewell and kissed her lightly on her forehead. She reached up and touched where he had placed his lips.

  ‘Dear Billy,’ she said, barely audibly, and smiled with her watery eyes.

  The weeks were passing with a pleasant monotony at school. Gracie grew to enjoy the regularity of it, the timetable. Sometimes she would spend hours drawing up the latest schedule of lessons, colouring them in pretty colours and – of course – colour coding all the different subjects.

  She discovered she was particularly good at English – everything about it, really. She particularly loved reading, she realised. When you read, you could be whisked away into your imagination and escape whatever realness was around you. If it was a good book, you’d be lost for hours, living the story with the characters, feeling their feelings, a silent witness to their lives. There was something deliciously intoxicating about squirreling yourself away for a while and letting your thoughts take flight. The author would be there to guide you gently, maybe hold your hand now and then, but you were doing the hard work of bringing the stories to life.

  She felt the same about reading poetry. But poems were more magical somehow (well, good ones were), and they needed you to concentrate really, really hard. Not to get the top layer, of course, it was easy enough with Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Byron and that modern poet John Betjeman to skim the surface and get the gist. And even the surface layer would take you off to new places, new ideas. But to really feel a poem, you needed to learn how to peel back its layers, like a rose, and examine each petal in detail to reveal its secrets. You would peel and peel and peel away and – phish – another lunchtime would be over, another bedtime would come.

  Of course the trick was to get so used to the peeling process that it would become automatic, so that even when you started reading a poem for the first time, the organic whole would ­separate out and reconstitute itself as you were reading. This was the really magic bit. The bit Gracie wallowed in and loved. The rose would peel back its own layers all by itself, and slowly fold back into itself, all the while under your touch. A bit like you were a conductor of an orchestra, playing a soft and gentle tune. Hardly without anyone realising, you were encouraging it along, teasing out its melody and its tones. Shaping it. Moulding it.

  So you would see the threads and the themes, observe the colours and the sounds and the scents, hear the syllables of emphasis and sense their meaning by their weight. By reading out loud, you would hear new secrets revealed, as you listened out for repetitions and sounds and echoes, sometimes softly rippling beneath the surface, other times crashing rhythmically from line to line. It was only by reading aloud that you could spot lovely tricks the poet would hide from view if you scanned it on a page.

  Gracie had no idea where her passion for literature came from. It’s not as if her Ma was a voracious reader, although she seemed to like dipping into old favourites like Brontë and Austen and Thackeray from time to time. And on a good day, they would find bits and pieces to read out loud to each other. Those precious, special times were all too rare these days. But when they did happen, they were cherished by both of them. And they would wonder why they didn’t do it more often. But then life would get in the way and the weeks and months would drift by without another reading session.

  As for Billy – well he certainly didn’t spend hours with his nose in a book. The very idea made her chuckle. He wasn’t the kind of person that liked to ‘waste time’ as he called it, when there was so much playing and inventing to be done. Dear Billy, she thought, he really was the tenderest, sweetest person she could ever hope to meet.

  A few days after … it happened, Billy came round for Gracie.

  ‘Gracie!’ her Ma called, ‘Billy’s here. Do you want to go for a walk?’

  She heard her mother call up, and she looked up from her book. She was buried in Great Expectations and was wallowing in Pip’s latest exploits. Pip was helping her escape, and a very good job he was making of it, too. She wasn’t sure how long she had been adventuring with him, but she realised shadows were casting across the room and it was late afternoon.

  She pottered downstairs, deciding it was time to talk about it. But she wasn’t prepared for the overwhelming rush of emotion that would descend on her at the sight of Billy.

  She had been so good, so strong, refusing to let school or her Ma or the memory distract her from her mission of pretending everything was alright.

  But one look at Billy and she collapsed into tears.

  He rushed over towards her and stood, awkwardly, not quite sure whether he should touch her or wait for her to recover. He put one arm around her, tentatively. She wrapped both arms around his waist, clasping him hard. So he hugged her back, not even quite knowing what was wrong yet, but sensing the enormity of what was to come.

  The jagged tears came fierce and hard, soaking his shirt. He didn’t mind but didn’t know what to do, other than stand there in the hallway, patting her gently. She let out little gulps of breath and sounded like a wounded animal that had been pricked by a thorn.

  As her small body convulsed in tears
, he caught sight of a shadow on the floor, and realised it was the silhouetted remnants of what was once a flower, scarcely more than a thorny stem – its petals thrown roughly aside. It brought into sharp relief the ­violence and the destruction of that day. He hugged her tightly.

  Gracie’s Ma let out a slow groan of despair. Billy looked at her, noticing how overcome she seemed by the raw emotion she was witnessing in her daughter. It’s true that until this moment, Gracie had been so composed, so very grown-up about what had happened. Of course, she hadn’t told either of them the details of what had happened, not yet, at any rate.

  Billy had felt so proud of the way she had bravely coped these last few days and couldn’t help but feel her Ma was thinking the same.

  But deep down, he wondered whether seeing her now, ­quivering with heart-wrenching tears in his arms, the scale of the hurt little Gracie must be feeling would start to affect her. Affect her enough to do something about the dreadful situation they were in. How could she put her own daughter through something like this? Why wasn’t she doing anything?

  Billy secretly believed Gracie’s Ma was wanting Gracie to be able to cope, to pretend everything was okay, because if she pretended, it meant they could live in a bubble of silent conspiracy with each other. Then, when the time came, they would be able to cope, together, with whatever Joe did next. That was what he thought she wanted to happen. He got carried away with the idea. Maybe she wanted that bubble to scoop them both up and protect them with strength and silence. Maybe she wanted to be able to put all this behind them, forget it ever happened. Billy thought if Gracie’s Ma had her way, she’d want to slam the door shut on it, forever. And carry on as if nothing out of the ordinary has taken place.

  ‘Oh Gracie,’ he murmured, her convulsions subsiding. Then to himself, ‘How am I going to help you if your own Ma won’t?’

  Gracie and Billy walked outside, hand in hand. She was 14 now, he almost 16, but there was still something charming and innocent about the picture they made together. Gracie’s Ma glanced at the black-and-white photograph on the mantelpiece. She didn’t have many photos, but that one of the two of them had pride of place. They were much younger then, and were setting out together on one of their adventures. Today, they were walking away with a heaviness in their hearts. Back then, there was only joy and expectation.