World's End in Winter (12 page)

Michael hung the collar on the Christmas tree. Even if Liza did come home today, she might be too late for Dusty.

Carrie and Em and Michael had made a present for Priscilla. It was a little dolls’ schoolroom, because she couldn’t go to school, fitted into three sides of a wooden box. It had matchbox desks, a blackboard and sliver of chalk, toothpick pens which dipped into a thimble of real ink, maps rolled round a pencil, tiny pictures made from stamps, a teacher doll with a bit of Carrie’s hair wound round her head, pupils dressed by Em in scraps of her old gym tunic.

Their father drove them over with it to Brookside. Lester went home, because his mother had threatened him with
the business end of the drumstick over his ear if he was late for turkey dinner. Also he did not like Victor Agnew.

They found the family in the drawing-room in a sea of wrapping paper and ribbon. The sofa where Lester and Carrie had eaten treacle tart in the middle of the night and listened for old Diller and the baby was covered with books and games and new clothes. The marble ladies under the mantelpiece wore necklaces of holly, but looked no jollier. In the French window was a huge tree hung with costly shining ornaments, and lights that flashed on and off in changing colours.

The tree at World’s End was a small scrub pine dug out of the back of the hill, and decorated with strings of popcorn and nuts, painted fir cones, and real candles fixed on with clothes pegs.

Victor took Carrie outside in the snow to watch him hit the new tennis trainer game with his new aluminium racquet.

‘I’m cold,’ she said after admiring him for a while. ’Have a go then.’

She swiped and swatted, but she could not even get near the swinging ball.

Victor took back the racquet. ’You’ve got no eye.’ Carrie went into the house.

While the grown ups had eggnog with rum and nutmeg, Jane made Em play a game with dice. Em did not much like dice games, or any other kind, because it made her sulk if she lost. She lost. She sulked. Jane said she was a bad sport. In this house, that was like saying you were a murderer.

Neither Victor nor Jane had looked at the doll’s schoolroom since Michael carried it in with his stomach and tongue stuck out, but Priscilla was delighted. She sat smiling by the table, and Michael pointed out to her its charms, like a house agent.

‘She is better, isn’t she?’ Mother was drinking eggnog with Mrs Agnew while the men talked sailing in special gruff voices.

’She’s all right.’ Sometimes she talked as if there was nothing wrong, sometimes as if it was hopeless. Which did she really believe?

‘The riding is doing her so much good.’

‘I don’t see any difference,’ Mrs Agnew said in her clear, carrying voice. ’She can’t ride anyway, with the barn gone.’

Michael looked round at her small note of triumph. She did not want anyone else to help Priscilla.

‘I always thought it was too dangerous anyway,’ she said. ’Quite mad.’

’I am going mad.’ Aunt Valentina fell into a chair, shot up as a cat yowled and escaped, sank down again with her doeskin boots stuck out. ’It’s too much. I am going mad.’

Poor Val. She did have bad luck. When she and Rudolf came to World’s End, which was only just often enough to remind everybody whose house it was, she was either chased by the ram, butted by the goat, tipped off the donkey, or had her foot trodden on by a horse. Today when she arrived loaded with Christmas spirit and parcels, with miniature gold angels dangling from her ears, she ran full tilt into Tom carrying a dead dog, Carrie and Em and Michael behind him with candles, chanting.

Val’s Christmas spirit left her in a flash. ’I am going mad.’

The procession went on out of the side door to the place under the weeping willow where dead animals rested, and where Michael had asked to be buried, ’when my time comes’. He had already made his own gravestone, the blade of a broken oar stuck into the ground and painted with the message,
’Micel Fidling. At Rest With His Friends’.

At Dusty’s graveside, Carrie recited a short poem she had quickly run up when he died at noon:

’Here the good old friend of Liza Jones,

A wanderer dog lays down his weary bones.

He mustn’t be forgotten, must he?

For all his name, he was not so dusty.’

When they went back in, Valentina had recovered from the shock of having a dead body carried out as she came in, but she started up again when Dad lit the candles on the tree. The other lights were out, and it looked heavenly, the small pure flames like stars.

But Val screamed, ’Fire! It will catch fire!’

She lunged forward to blow out the candles, and knocked one off the tree. It set light to a piece of tissue paper on the floor.

‘Leave it alone, Val.’ Jerome Fielding put out the small fire with his foot. ’We’ll blow them out when they get lower.’

‘Go ahead, Jerry.’ Uncle Rudolf was genial enough today, though his marble head and stiff back were not made for it. ’The insurance money is worth more to me than the house.’

Aunt Valentina, who hid a kindish heart under stupidity and narrow ideas, had brought presents for everyone.

For Mother, a small gold box. ’Because you like unusual jewellery, having been on the stage.’

‘She doesn’t wear—’ Em began, but her mother shrieked as she opened the box.

‘It’s alive! Oh, my God, Val, it’s alive.’

‘Well, you like pets, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but - oh, my
God’

It was a beetle, about an inch long, with tiny coloured jewels stuck all over it. Round the edge of its body was a thin gold chain ending in a gold pin, to be fastened to—

‘You - you wear it?’ Mother put a hand on her blouse as if she could feel it there.

’Of course. It comes from South America. Living Brooch, they call it. It was very expensive.’

’Generous of you, but—’

’Don’t you like it?’

‘I hate it,’ Mother said in a small voice. She tucked back her hair behind her ears and looked as if she were going to cry.

‘I’d wear it,’ Valentina said. ’I once had earrings which were two little globes of water with tiny fish in them. I’m fond of Nature, you see.’

Tom was trying to get the gold chain off, but it was embedded.

‘What can we do with it?’ Mother could hardly bear to look at the martyred beetle. ’We can’t turn it loose looking like that.’

‘I’ll take it to the zoo,’ Tom said.

‘When is that boy going to get his hair cut?’ Val wanted to know.

After dinner, they sat round a big fire in the front room. Uncle Rudolf and Dad sang a brothers’ duet, in different keys. Michael sang in a tuneless drone, gasping for breath in the middle of words. Tom did three conjuring tricks and forgot how to finish the third.

‘Then I’ll have my money back,’ Valentina said. ’When is that boy going to get his hair cut?’

Nobody wanted Em to sing, but she was persuaded to recite some of the angel’s part she had rehearsed for the school play.

’.. Now while the white Frost King rides through the night,

With eyes of ice and hoary eyebrows white .. ’

Someone laughed and Em stopped and sat down.

When it was the first night of her own play,
Life and Death of a Star,
when the whole theatre rose and shouted, ’Author! Author!’ and she came on stage in a shimmering
gown with an armful of roses as long as a baby ... then, no one would laugh.

When it was her turn, Carrie launched into Masefield’s ’Right Royal’:

’An hour before the race they talked together,

A pair of lovers in the mild March weather,

Charles Cothill and the golden lady, Em.’

‘My sister?’ Michael interrupted.

‘Shut up.’

’Beautiful England’s hands had fashioned them.

He was from Sleins, that manor up the Lithe,

Riding the Downs had made his body blithe..’

It went on for ever.

‘Does she know the whole thing?’ Uncle Rudolf asked nervously.

‘I can do you the whole of
Reynard the Fox
too, if you like,’ Carrie said.

’Right Royal was a bad horse in the past,

A rogue, a cur, but he is cured at last..’

Uncle Rudolf dropped lightly off to sleep.

Carrie’s voice gave out before the end of the poem. He woke, rather cross, belched, and said, ’Time to go, Val.’ Now or never about the barn.

‘Before you go.’ His brother Jerome cleared his throat. ’There’s - er, just one - er, thing.’ He was always lending money and never getting it back. He hated being the one who asked. ’I hate to tell you, but we had a bit of bad luck in the storm.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ Rudolf said frostily. ’I saw it as we were driving in. “Look what they’ve done to my fine barn,” I said.’

‘And I said, “Don’t be angry at Christmas, Rudie,”’ his wife put in.

It did not sound likely, either for Val to say that, or for Uncle Rudolf to worry about a damaged barn, since the whole place had been a shambles before the Fieldings rebuilt it with love and labour.

‘We’ve found a man who can repair it,’ Mother said.

‘Waste of money. I’d rather tear it down and build a modern bungalow to sell at profit.’

It was not for nothing that Rudolf was known as ’The Prince of Plumbers’. His plumbing business had grown to princely size by just such ruthless methods.

‘We’ll get the barn fixed,’ his brother said stubbornly.

‘Not worth it. You don’t need it.’

‘We do, Uncle Rhubarb.’ Michael looked up at him, his tired eyes ringed with dark shadows. ’We’ve got this friend, you see. She’s hankidapped. Like me.’ He raised his short leg. ’She can’t walk, so Oliver and I are teaching her to ride.’

‘Who’s Oliver?’

‘My pony.’

‘It sounds insane. If she can’t walk, she certainly can’t ride a horse.’

‘She can, Uncle Rhubarb.’ ’Don’t call me that.’

‘But it’s too cold outdoors. We must get the barn mended.’

‘Who’s paying?’ Not Rudolf, that was clear. Michael was silent. A tear ran down his nose and he licked it into his mouth.

‘I’m paying.’ His father stood up. ’Ha! What with?’

Christmas, like too many family Christmases that start out quite promising, was ending in a quarrel. T finished my book, I told you.’

‘Your book.’ Rudolf pulled down his long top lip scornfully. ’You’ll be lucky if you ever get a penny out of that.’

‘It’s going to be published.’

‘That’ll be the day.’

They faced each other, as they must have faced each
other long, long ago, when they were fighting small boys.

‘The newspaper will print it.’

’You say so.’

’They say so. They’ve accepted it. They love it.’ In desperation, Dad had to embroider the lie. ’So how do you like that?’

‘I like it very much,’ his brother said with a chill smile. ’Very much indeed. I’ve been thinking for some time - I didn’t want to press you, but now that your book is such a success - I really ought to ask you to pay some rent for World’s End.’

With that disaster, Christmas sputtered out like a spent match. It was given its death blow when Liza’s mother arrived on Boxing Day in her vulgar purple van with ’E. ZLOTKIN, GREENGROCER. YOU WANT THE BEST? WE HAVE IT’ painted on the side. She had gone back to her maiden name of Zlotkin when Liza’s father left her.

She had been in some boozers on the way and was noisier and shinier than ever, and a bit matier than usual.

‘Me and little Hubert just stopped by to bring you the compliments of the season.’

She opened the back of the van and dragged out a blubbery boy, half asleep. ’Remember dear little Hubert?’

Hube the Boob. How could they ever forget? Last summer, Mrs Zlotkin had only let Liza stay at World’s End if Hubert came for the holidays.

‘Same old boring old stinking dump.’ His piggy eyes surveyed the kitchen for food.

‘We’ve got some more puppies and kittens.’ Carrie made a feeble attempt to be nice.

‘Same old stinking menagerie.’

‘I can smell that old dog of Liza’s.’ Mrs Zlotkin sniffed with her fat beery nose.

‘You can’t,’ Carrie said. ’He died.’

’None too soon. She upset?’

‘She doesn’t—’ Carrie began, and Tom put in quickly, ’She’s gone away for a bit.’

’Where to?’

‘A friend. In Liverpool.’ All the family had this habit of spoiling a good lie by embroidering it.

‘Funny.’ Mrs Zlotkin let down her weight on a chair,
kicked off her shoes and picked her teeth with a match.

‘The postmark wasn’t from there.’

’You’ve heard from her?’

‘Could have knocked me down. She never writes.’

‘What did she say?’ Tom tried to sound casual.

’I dunno. Can’t read her writing. She sent me a present.’

’Money.’ Hubert smacked his lips. Money and food were his Things.

‘That’s right. That’s why I came. To thank her. Me thank Liza! Never thought I’d live to see the day. I’d - well, I’d got behind with the rent of the shop, see. I wrote Liza I was worried they’d turn me out. Not that she’d care. I never expected no answer. Certainly not twenty pounds.’

‘Twenty pounds!’ Carrie gasped. ’Where did she get that?’

‘Nicked it, I daresay. Like she used to do when she was short of cash.’

‘Not Liza?’ Carrie looked at Tom, but he didn’t say anything.

‘Why not? For her poor old Mum. I always said she was a good girl.’

‘You said she was bad,’ Hubert said. ’And she is.’

There was an apple on the dresser shelf. He stood on a stool to reach it, lost his balance, clutched at the shelf and knocked the Ant Farm to the floor.

It did not break, but all the tunnels were blitzed, and black ants were coming out of the open top. Hubert screamed, tore at his clothes and rolled on the sofa as if in a fit.
^r

‘They’re on me! I’m crawling!’

Hube the Boob. He was so awful, it was a gift.

When Alec Harvey arrived to eat cold turkey, he saw the purple van and hid in a cupboard till Mrs Zlotkin had gone.

‘Dreadful old bag.’ He came out picking a spider off his hair. ’Old Red Hates her.’