When Nights Were Cold (27 page)

‘I'm terribly sorry. I'll – I'll take my things and leave immediately.'

‘I'd like to know who you are first.'

‘Of course.' He stands, flustered, and gives a light bow. ‘My name is Peter Nussbaum. I would have introduced myself this morning if your maid hadn't been so protective of you.'

‘You had jolly well better get off my property now, Peter Nussbaum. I know your sort and I don't want you here.'

‘Please. I'm not here to hurt you. I would have gone to a hotel, but I couldn't take myself away once I had seen you at the window, and then it was dark and I didn't know my way. It was so very cold sleeping in the garden, so – so – I didn't break any doors or windows to get in. I knocked a few times but you didn't seem to hear and there were no open windows, so I looked around the front garden and found the key under the geranium pot.'

He looks at me with hope and a certain friendliness.

‘What do you want?'

The man regards me as though he knows me, indeed, as though he is very fond of me and I am supposed to know it. I squint hard as though this will pull him right into my eyes. A name shapes itself on my tongue.

‘Heinrich?' I tilt my head. ‘Is it you?'

He smiles, shakes his head. ‘Heinrich? No. I'm not he.'

The fire is dying. He brought the cold with him.

‘Well, I don't know what to do about this. You can't have the spare bed, I'm afraid. I don't know you and it would be foolish.'

‘I wouldn't dream of—'

‘It's chilly.' I think for a moment. ‘If you want to be useful, you had better fetch more coal and then perhaps we'll sit together a while.'

The request surprises but pleases him. ‘Of course. Where is it?'

‘Outside the back door.'

‘You're very kind. And then may we talk?' He picks up the scuttle and swings it slightly, a playful, uncertain gesture that is almost flirtatious.

‘We'll see. I thought you wanted to sleep.'

‘But I had hoped to talk to you about Cicely Parr. It's the anniversary of her death.'

‘Not yet. Tomorrow is the day.'

He checks his watch. ‘It has been tomorrow for more than three hours.' He glances at me but I do not respond. ‘The coal.'

Off he goes. Now is my chance. I could wake the house, rouse the neighbours and scream for help. At the very least, I can lock the doors and keep him out. Unless – unless he is my friend. Is it possible that we have met before, that I know him from somewhere? Bring in the coal, Peter Nussbaum, and let me see your face again.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Frank thought that I had thrown myself in the Thames out of love for him. Poor Frank. A few days after our meeting he was kind enough to visit my house in order to reassure himself that I was not in locked up in Bedlam. On finding that I had disappeared, he stood before my mother and confessed to our relationship and final meeting. Catherine lurked behind the kitchen door and listened.

‘Is she – in a bad situation?' my mother hissed.

‘No.' Frank stopped to think. He reddened and began to stammer. ‘At least I – no – I'm sure. I don't know but – I'm – no. No, it can't be that.'

‘But why would she have disappeared so suddenly if not? Is it her madness?'

Frank explained that I had overheard her conversation with the doctor and had been frightened.

‘But I just wanted some medicine to help her get better. She is ill, as we are all ill in this house. The hospital could have saved her from herself. Great God, I didn't mean to harm her. Dr Sowerby is a good man.'

Fortunately my postcard had arrived the previous day so, though they did not know my exact location, they knew that I was not at the bottom of the Thames and now they sent Frank packing. Catherine called him a heartless toad and chased him out of the house with a broken umbrella. When she told me this later, it made me smile.

‘If you were both in love, why couldn't you have got married?' I knew Mother's next question before she even asked it. ‘Was it because of me that you didn't?'

‘Or me?' asked Catherine. She seemed puzzled by the whole event and completely cured of her love for Frank, perhaps because she had seen him again and the reality did not match her imagined version, a man who sat beside her on the duet stool and played music all day and night, not some cad who addressed her as though he barely remembered her.

‘In the end,' I said, ‘Frank did not want it and I don't think I did either.'

‘Still, at least he could have hailed you a cab on a dark rainy night like that. It does not reflect well on him that he had to come round here to find out whether he'd left you dead or alive.' Mother fell quiet for a few minutes. ‘And I understand, from his response to a question of mine, that he – he took advantage of you on at least one occasion.'

‘No. That is not what he did.' I would let her misunderstand me.

‘Oh. Then I am greatly relieved to hear it. We shan't speak of it again. And what were you doing in Wales?'

I explained that I had spent a few days alone but did not mention the tent or the outdoors. Even thinking that I had stayed in a hotel, Mother's case for contacting the asylum was stronger now than ever, but I did not feel ill and nor did I believe that any doctor could make me regret my unexpected trip. Thankfully Parr had not written to them, so they knew nothing of my attempt to get to South America, nothing of the incident with the axe. None of it mattered now because Mother had finally decided to get better.

‘We are a family and we must make the best of things. When you were gone, Grace, I was so worried that we might not see you again. I was very sorry that I had asked so much of you, things I could have done myself.'

We sat around the fire and I put my plan to them. At first Mother thought it unpleasant, unworkable and somewhat disappointing, considering I had announced it with such triumph.

‘Lodgers?' she kept saying. ‘Sharing our house with strangers to make money?'

‘We need the money and it will bring new life into the house. It's a beginning.'

‘No, well, I see that we can't go on as we are. At this rate we shall all three end in the asylum or workhouse.' Mother put her feet out to warm them, leaned back in her chair and kicked her slippers off. ‘We used to be a happy family. Do you remember the beautiful evenings we shared in this room?'

Catherine jabbed her chin into her hand, rested her elbow on the arm of her chair.

‘I don't care if we do it or don't do it,' she said. ‘So we may as well. What do we have to do?'

‘You'll arrange it all, Grace, but don't give your approval to anybody until I've interviewed them myself. I don't want fallen women or suffragettes here, just quiet and respectable ladies, like us.'

Mrs Delaney and her niece, Miss Porter, moved in a few weeks later. They were the first in a long succession of temporary residents. I like to think of them as forebears of Mr Blunt and Miss Cankleton. Mrs Delaney was a widow in her sixties who knew the neighbourhood well and was already involved with one of the local churches and its various voluntary groups. She visited the library several times a week and had piles of books in her room. She would sit in the bay window with her feet up on the cushion, and read novels for hours a day. Mother liked Mrs Delaney and they often sat together and talked about some item in the newspaper or gossip from the shops. Sometimes they played cards, long games of rummy that lasted until late in the evening.

Miss Porter was a quiet, closed-up woman of twenty-eight. She illustrated story books and was, according to her aunt, very talented. She worked at the desk in her room and sometimes went to meetings in Bloomsbury. Miss Porter's parents lived in the north of England, so it suited her to stay close to her aunt. I tried to befriend her but she was shy and rarely stopped to talk.

With their rent, we managed to pay the bills.

‘Everything's going bad in Europe,' said Mrs Delaney one evening as I took towels to her room. She had a newspaper open on her writing desk. ‘It says that there might be war. Then what will happen? Thank God I have a niece, not a nephew. Have you got a young man, Miss Farringdon?'

‘No. No I haven't.'

‘Neither has my niece, I'm glad to say. Much for the better. But I don't suppose it will be as bad as all that, if it happens at all. Do you see how that window pane rattles when the breeze blows? Do you think you could have it fixed for me, dearie?'

The news didn't seem to have much to do with us any more. Our house was a new landscape now and we explored it with pleasure and curiosity. Mother was cheerful and hardly referred to her illness, beyond a nagging ache or spot of dizziness. Catherine sleepwalked to the piano once or twice and sometimes shut herself away for a few days at a time, but, on the whole, she seemed much happier than before. She often walked in the park or went to visit the family graves, and occasionally came with me to see Mrs Kenny. At home Catherine was quiet but joined us in conversation and sometimes asked Miss Porter about her illustrations. She did not mention Frank any more.

In July or August we left Sarah in charge of the house and took the train to Margate. It was a hot, blue day so we hired a bathing machine and rolled out into the sea, laughing and squealing because we had not done this for years. Catherine and I dangled our legs in the water – it was bracing – then plunged in and swam. Even Mother donned a costume and took a brief dip, in the hope, she said, that it would do her joints and circulation good. This must have been a few weeks before the outbreak of war, but when I try to recall the moment I learned that we were at war, all I see is a very clear picture of the red spotted handkerchief Mother tied around her hair, the white parasols dotted on the sands, and hot, shining people leaning back into striped chairs. All I hear are Catherine's happy giggles and squawks as she waded into the chilly sea. I feel the warm sun on the side of my face and the salty breeze across my back.

We are in the den together, Mr Nussbaum and I. He tips coal into the fireplace. My eyes travel from the top of his head to his feet and I am disappointed to see what was obvious.

‘No, you're not Heinrich. Heinrich was tall. He was handsome. Who are you?'

He sits in the armchair, rubs his eyes as though he is as surprised to find himself here.

‘Just someone, like you, who has an interest in mountaineering. I own a hotel near Chamonix and I write little articles for newspapers and journals, mostly about the scenery and the weather.'

‘A journalist, then.'

He flaps his hand and shakes his head to gesture that I am flattering him. ‘A hotelier with a hobby for writing. Just now I'm working on something about – well – about you, and so I decided, quite on a whim, to come and find you.'

‘And you broke into my house.'

‘I apologize.' He shakes his head, gives me a crinkled smile. ‘It is unforgivable, I know. But you are always welcome to come to my hotel and stay as my guest and friend. I invite you.'

‘Thank you, but no.'

I wonder if he is real, if I have conjured him from the night with all my memories and nobody to tell. I gesture to the teacups. ‘Wouldn't you like something stronger? I once had a bottle of génépi in the cupboard but I expect it has evaporated by now. There is always brandy.'

‘Do you still go to the Alps?' His face is strange. There is a smile about his lips even when he doesn't appear to be smiling.

‘No, no. I don't go anywhere.'

‘It must be boring. You were an adventurer once, a young woman of the mountains. How can you bear to be shut away like this?'

His eyes search my face in a way that feels warm, kind. It is as though he is appraising a long-lost friend or relative.

‘It is never dull. Sometimes the walk from here to the kitchen is as fraught as a lightning storm on a mountain peak. I can get as far as the post office down the street but that's my adventure nowadays. I'm not the person I used to be. I've changed. It's just – I am often nervous.'

He nods, full of respect.

‘Of course. I understand that. Still, it's a pity to waste time, isn't it? You are hardly old and if there is war—'

‘My housemaid is always saying so.'

And I do feel a kind of unrest when I read the newspapers, the sense of distant fires growing and spreading outwards, of cruelty on the march. I have felt it much recently but have not thought to act upon it.

‘Winifred Hooper. I wanted to talk about her death first, before Parr's.'

It is a shock to hear Hooper's name. The scene plays again, brighter, worse than I have remembered it for years. Locke, Parr and I are tumbling into the hotel. The soft, smooth boy is at the desk, beside the bell. Then all kinds of people surround us with questions and shouting. We are trapped in noise and nobody is looking for Hooper.

‘I shall have brandy,' I say, ‘even if you won't. Would you get it from the pantry? I have some sort of paralysis just now and you seem to have found your way around.'

‘Certainly.' He trots away for the second time. ‘Brandy I'll fetch it. We don't have to talk about the past if it's painful. I'll just sit quietly with you until sunrise.'

No, no. This familiarity, it is his trick. He is some low reporter pretending to like me, or else he is the sort of murderer who slips into your house and makes a friend of you before he bludgeons you to death.

Chapter Twenty-Four

During the first few months of war, we were busy inside the house and I did not pay much attention to the outside. One could not ignore the shops being emptied of food, but we had plenty in the pantry and did not worry too much. I remember a point when the war was all around us but I hadn't seen it arrive. One day there were queues of men at the town hall, the post office. The toy-shop window had filled with dolls in nurses' uniforms, soldiers, guns. Photographs of the king and queen hung in the greengrocer's and butcher's shops. Gradually the streets seemed to empty of the young men I was used to seeing and uniformed soldiers took their places. Mother would scour the casualty lists and read out names she thought we might know or that struck her as being interesting or unusual.