That Winter

(published in Signals 3 - a London Magazine Anthology of Short Stories, 2000)

When my father fell he cut open his head and I found him semi conscious with blood in rivulets down his white shirt. I was eleven, it was before Christmas, late November 1965.
Mrs Dunnett worked extra days, baked cakes and made casseroles for our supper. I don't think she liked you much, mother, but she loved my father, in a strange, almost feudal way. The vicar came, bringing copies of The Spectator and Punch. Bill Cranham, our gardener, was always dropping in with extra flowers, home made chutneys, or parsnip wine, his speciality.
Over thirty years later, writing in my study at the top of the house in Hackney, I am cold. I often sit in the dark, watching the hot wax form and shape in the red liquid of my magic lava lamp. On the empty black of the computer screen my mother's spectre begins to play, like a relaxed, lazy body after a long sleep.
My father, who was much older than my Mother, was very ill. Of course, he was well insured and went into a nursing home in Windsor for three months. It was a form of arteriosclerosis and there wasn't much they could do in the long term.
Then Mother had one of her big ideas: 'Ronnie is coming over from Hollywood, he's filming and wants a decent place to live while he's here - it's urgent, shooting starts next week - and the film company will pay a fortune, a little nest egg for us, darling, and it'll help daddy, everything is so expensive.' As if you cared!
But there was no stopping now and you played to perfection the part of the deeply supportive young wife. When that fat American lawyer came down from London with the legal papers you looked stunning. The bare trees in the garden shook their heads in the wind as you stoked the fire in the drawing-room. I don't remember if you took up his invitation to dinner.
It was ten days before Christmas. A small van of our things followed you and me in the pink Alfa-Romeo Spyder and we were off to a house in Egham for three months. I hadn't spoken to you for the last day.
I grip the side of my desk and light a candle against the dark.
It was a big, ugly, gabled house near Egham station. There was a large front door and bow windows on both sides. There were steps going up the side of the house. We were going to live in the top two floors (which had been empty for a few years) and had to climb up the cold granitey stairs with little white diamondy flecks in them that used to wink at me and say, 'I told you so, I told you so.'
The Ranikar sisters owned the house. Miss Louise and Miss Marjorie were spinsters, 'in their fifties' mother said. Their father had been the local chemist. They were both dressmakers (they'd even made a dress for the queen) and were always making things for my mother.
Miss Marjorie made us tea. She held my hand, 'What a lovely boy,' she said and stroked my hair, 'we do want to make you happy while you're here.' She wore shiney, dark red lipstick and black framed oval glasses with fins at the sides that made them look like they wanted to take-off.
Miss Louise showed us to our part of the house. She was round and all her flesh was podgy white like a ball of aereated dough. I followed her up the outside stairs and her bottom was so wide that I couldn't see anything but the check pattern on her black tweed skirt which billowed up behind like a giant vacuum-cleaner trying to suck me up. She smelt of Tweed soap. My mother made little jokes with her. I hated my mother then and when we got to the top of the stairs I wanted to push her down, to die on the hard, ugly concrete but my nerve failed at the last moment.
It is dark in the study as I write, the reading lamp over the desk, and my hand trembles because you are now fully downloaded. Your forefinger commands me to follow you ...
Egham, Surrey, was only seven miles from Chobham but closer to London and London airport. Coming down from Waterloo, Egham was the first place that promised a different world from the London suburbs. But it wasn't real country. Egham was between things. Egham was nowhere. Miss Louise showed us the many rooms, squashed and dark, except for the sitting-room which had a large window that looked towards Royal Holloway College up the hill in Englefield Green.
'There used to be cows in that field,' Miss Louise pointed from the front window, 'until a few years ago.' Now it was drab playing-fields with swings, slides, roundabouts and football pitches.
All the houses in the road were close together. As I lay in bed on the first night, in my bedroom on the third floor, I couldn't breath because the houses on either side were squashing me. Beneath us I feared the two strange ladies were scurrying around on the ground floor listening for our noises. I heard mother make a lot of phone calls.
'It's only for a few months, darling,' Mother said at breakfast in the dark, gloomy dining-room. But already it felt like forever. The rain threw itself against the windows on that first morning, then subsided, and charged again in the next pelt of wind from the dark, curling sky. The wall in the dining-room looked damp but mother said it was only nicotine stains. When I tried to think of my friends, or great-aunt Em, or aunt Julia's house in Virginia Water, I could see nothing ...
Although it is 1a.m., there is never sllence in Hackney. The scream of a woman, the toneless ranting of a dosser, the amplified sound-system from some cool black kid's car. But never the quietness of death or fear in the air, the low, dull sound I heard for the first time when I stayed in Egham that winter.
He came round on the second evening to see you. Alfred Novak, a businessman, who did work for my father's film company, stood on the steps with flowers and chocolate. 'And how is your father, Simon?,' he asked as an afterthought after he had mauled my mother. He was an ugly, thick set man who had won an Iron Cross on the Russian front.
'How lucky,' Mother said as she poured them more drinks, 'Alfred is in England for Christmas.' I went to bed and heard their laughter grow more raucous. I wondered how my father was. My mother hadn't mentioned him much since we came to Egham. I hadn't seen the funny ladies all day which made me afraid because they could be anywhere. The house rattled as the trains swept passed.
We bought a Christmas tree but all our old decorations were at home. Mother bought new ones from Caleys in Windsor. She asked me to decorate the tree with her but I couldn't. Instead, I went to my gloomy bedroom and set up my Scalectrix. Then I raced both cars at once, a controller in each hand. Novak had a Porsche, I had a Brabham. I crashed him at over one hundred miles an hour on the worst corner at Silverstone.
On Christmas Eve Miss Louise and Miss Marjorie asked us down to their musty flat for drinks. Louise was wearing the same clothes as before but Miss Marjorie had on a black cocktail dress and smoked a menthol cigarette through a long gold cigarette holder. She kissed me on the cheeks and brushed some crumbs from my blazer. 'And his socks need pulling up,' she said. As she bent down her long red fingernails pinched my leg. 'There,' her lips pondered, caressing my knee. Mother laughed, 'What service for little Lord Fonteroy!'
On Christmas morning we went to see my father. He pretended to be cheerful and had beautifully wrapped presents to give us. I so missed not having our Christmas morning breakfast (we made smoked salmon, scrambled eggs, ham that we'd cooked ourselves, champagne cocktails, which I knew how to mix. Then we laid everything out for mother and any other guests ... ).
Mother and I returned to Egham but everything was flat like an ordinary day. Mother sprayed herself with Blue Grass and we opened our presents, which made me sad, then Novak arrived and mother made coffee. We sat by the tree and Novak said he had some interesting German games to play in the afternoon.
Mother and Novak drank and laughed more wildly as the day went on. I was pleased when it grew dark. Miss Marjorie came up with a present for me and left a mark of lipstick on my cheek. Her breath smelt of cigarettes and gin. She said if I was bored I could play cards downstairs with her and Miss Louise. I watched the day like a film. I was pleased when it was over and I went to bed. I didn't believe I was ever going home.
Its 2 a.m. but I can't sleep. Beneath the tinsel of the world there was a deep, black pool. I stood like a virgin on its edges that Christmas. I touch the paper weight and silver cigarette box. All round my study, objects, paintings, Victorian furniture, sturdy, real, something to cling to ...
The new term began at my prep school in Windsor.
Mother drove me in the mornings and in the afternoons I came back on the train from Windsor and Eton Riverside station, changing at Staines. Towards the end of January most mornings began in icy fog. Miss Marjorie often drew back the net curtains and waived at us. One morning she rushed out in her dressing-gown, told us to drive carefully and said how much she was enjoying having a young man around the house. Mother laughed. When I got home that day mother was out and Miss Marjorie was in our sitting-room smoking a cigarette. 'I'm going to cook your tea, Simon, is there anything special you fancy, you handsome boy?' I noticed her black bra beneath an unbuttoned lacy black shirt and her breasts were like firm conkers when she bent over the cooker.
On the corner of the square are two regular prostitutes waiting for trade, a beautiful red haired girl and a large, busty girl with a short yellow mac. They are here most weekends. Their presence is a great comfort. It seems an odd place to stand, far from the throbbing highways of Stamford Hill, of middle aged men in tatty, sperm-stained saloon cars.
I arrived back one afternoon at the beginning of February and Miss Marjorie drew the net curtain and smiled at me, her lips pressing on the glass. Upstairs mother was crying in the sitting-room while Novak looked out of the window. 'Leave us to talk, Simon, leave us, darling.' Outside it was dark and foggy.
Novak left, talking loudly, his horrible German voice like wine glasses crunched by stormtroopers. Mother went on crying and I cooked myself baked beans on toast. I ate them with her in the sitting-room. When I'd finished she hugged me very tight to her breasts, 'how unfair life is' she said and went on crying.
When I lay in bed that night the whole house creaked with fear and death. I skittered into sleep as a hundred eyes peered at me from the woodwork.
I woke in the night as a hand touched mine. 'Don't worry about mummy, Simon, don't feel lonely.' A woman in a black nightdress sat on the edge of the bed and put her hand on my arm. A fervid yellow light rubbed its tongue against the window. Her lipstick glistened.
In the morning there was only the smell of perfume in the room. Mother cooked me an egg for breakfast but was too sad to talk and I said nothing to her. In the next few days of going to school in the fog and trying to work hard - in the afternoons we went on cross country runs because the ground was too frosty for rugby - I seemed to forget what had happened.
On the first Friday evening in February I returned from school and mother had dressed up. 'I'm sorry,' she said and burst into tears. 'I will not be seeing Mr Novak again.' She made a lovely supper, fish stew, mashed potatoes, homemade chocolate gateau, coffee. She lit a real fire and we played cards and laughed. My mother was so beautiful. Then we watched Steptoe and Son, and she held me very close to her. She had a few drinks and began to cry as she hugged me. 'We must stick together, my darling boy.'
'I know,' I said, 'I know.'
In the night there was an image of a woman by my bedroom door. I believe I am dreaming as it comes towards me, touches my knee, pulls down the covers and says, 'I am so lonely, so afraid,' gets into my bed, hugs me, strokes me, holds me hard against the flimsy black nightdress.
In the morning there was only the smell of perfume.
Mother cooked me bacon for breakfast.
In the second week of February snow began to fall without cease for two days. The snow thickened. The world was whitened and hushed. I could not go to school. Mother loved 'weather'. We dressed up and trudged through the snow to aunt Julia's house in Virginia Water. Through the roads, paths and fields our footprints made connections again to my real world. Ronnie finished his filming and returned to Hollywood. We returned to Chobham in March when my father came out of his nursing home. We had a party.
Outside, a light wind is rearranging the litter, leaves and dust.
The two prostitutes are picked up simultaneously. One seems to turn and look up at my window, smiles through luscious, dark red lips and slips into an MGB. The second lowers her large, soft, white curvaceous body into a rusty BMW I watch the cars set off in convoy until they disappear at the corner. Under the street lamp a small gathering of sweet wrappers momentarily circles as if in dance. My body glows with warmth.
(My mother never visited my room again.)
That winter has come to this. I turn to the black computer screen. I see a flutter of snowflakes. In the deep of the screen my mother is dappled in snow, walking along a country lane between two lines of elms. She stops and turns as snow falls silent from the brilliant leaden sky. She is young again and very beautiful. She clasps her hands as if in prayer. A single snowflake rests on each finger of her gloves. My mother smiles directly at me and disappears. Only the snowflakes on her gloves remain, growing in brightness and complexity as I gaze in wonder.

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