Chapter Eleven 1895 #5
He drank glass after glass of brandy as his mind turned in circles.
There was nothing in particular he needed to do just then, but he was certain he ought to do something.
It felt as though the four walls of his very self had been undermined, and were crumbling.
Skirting the edges of panic, Toby fetched his notebook of Hallewell symbols and tried to make some new sense of them.
But it only made him homesick for a place and time that no longer existed, and could never be returned to.
It only made him angry with himself for trying.
He was surprised, an hour later, to find the brandy bottle empty.
The wind had whipped up and more snow was falling.
He crammed his hat on to his head, and went out to buy another.
Towards the end of February, Toby risked a journey down to Hallewell.
The weather was unrelenting, and the village had been largely cut off for weeks, but Mona had caught a cold that she couldn’t seem to shift, and David was worried.
It had been two years since Toby had seen them; his visits inevitably saddened them all.
He was riddled with guilt about it nonetheless, and thought he ought to tell them in person about the end of his engagement.
So, he negotiated three days away from work, and caught the train.
He had to walk the four miles from Semley station to Hallewell – only an idiot would risk their horse on the steep hills in between.
It took him over two hours, and he arrived exhausted, chilled to the bone, but still felt a sparkle of recognition as the castle came into view against the flat grey sky.
A nameless longing from somewhere so deep inside him he couldn’t root it out.
London was home now, he told himself firmly; childhood was long gone.
His father hugged him with brief vehemence, and Toby went upstairs at once. Mona was propped up on pillows but fast asleep. He sat down beside her, shocked by how old and ill she looked. When he took her hand gently, she woke.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘What’s all this? It’s not like you to take to your bed.’
‘Dear Toby. You shouldn’t have travelled in this weather! I’m fine.’
She smiled wanly, but her chest wheezed, and she struggled not to cough.
‘Then get up, lazybones,’ he said.
‘I will. I will now that you’re here.’
‘I’m teasing; you must rest. But I should warn you, Dad and I plan to cook supper. And whatever we create, you must eat it – and praise us for it.’
‘I’ll be sure to.’
‘Sole meunière, I thought. Perhaps devilled kidneys, or ham rissoles.’ He stood up, straightened his jacket. ‘Or possibly cheese on toast. Go back to sleep. I’ll bring some tea up in a while.’
‘Thank you, Toby. Thank you for coming to see us.’
Toby hated himself for that. Hated that she was grateful for his presence.
He and David muddled through in the kitchen, and managed to produce a supper of various things on singed toast – cheese, tinned pilchards, bottled tomatoes – followed by jam tarts donated by a neighbour, which they warmed and had with condensed milk.
It wasn’t at all bad. Toby took regular pulls from his hip flask, as covertly as he could.
The brandy gave him the cheer he needed in that sad, quiet house.
He hoped that, at some point during the visit, it would give him the courage to tell them about Lily.
When his father caught him in a swig and frowned, Toby offered it to him.
‘No, thank you, son,’ David said evenly.
‘Keeps me warm in this godforsaken weather,’ Toby said, as lightly as he could.
‘No. It brings the blood to your skin, and cools you all the quicker. The heat is an illusion.’ Toby put the flask away and was more careful not to be seen from then on.
Next day, he caught up with a few friends in the village, boys he’d grown up with, and heard about a skating gala that night, to which half the village was going.
‘You go,’ Mona said. ‘Dress warmly! David – why not lend Toby your old greatcoat?’
David went off to fetch it.
‘You’re sure you don’t mind?’ Toby said.
‘Go and have fun,’ Mona said. ‘How I miss your smile!’
‘I still smile, Mum.’
‘Not the way you used to.’
David reappeared with the coat bundled under his arm. It dated from his army days, weighed a ton and stank of lanolin, but it was the warmest thing any of them possessed. He shook it out, scattering a confetti of dead moths.
The skating gala was held between Shaftesbury and Hallewell, on fields where the River Nadder had flooded and then frozen.
The idea was to help the poor and raise morale; the entrance fee would be distributed to those in poverty, and men without work were employed as stewards, ticket sellers, putters-up of bunting and lighters of the naphtha lamps that were strung about on wires.
They gleamed in hundreds of eyes as the daylight failed and the races finished, and a general melee of public skating began.
Those who hadn’t had a square meal in weeks clustered around a tent where a whole sheep was roasting over coals, alongside steaming vats of soup.
A full moon rose, as cold and unfeeling as the frost.
Theo walked the two and a half miles with Ralph and Audrey, with her skates slung over her shoulder and her spirits rising to be outside at last. She hadn’t been beyond their own garden wall since well before Christmas.
They all three wore multiple layers of wool, from their stockings to their ears, but still the cold crept in wherever it could.
Theo yelped when she slipped, grabbing at Audrey’s arm, but they were so well padded by their heavy skirts that it didn’t hurt at all to whomp down amongst the skeletons of cow parsley and thistle.
‘It is wonderful to hear you laugh,’ Ralph whispered in Theo’s ear.
They met the Abbotts by one of the tents, and toasted to visions of the not too distant spring.
Audrey had never skated before. She had fun at first, but soon grew tired of staggering about, splay-legged.
Theo and Ralph left her at a church stall with a cup of mulled cider and skated away, arm in arm.
They gradually made their way to the furthest corner of the field, where the lamplight barely reached and there was only the moon to see by, as silver as the ancient coin in Theo’s pocket.
There, the Nadder narrowed between its banks, still frozen as it headed east.
Ralph peered along the dark river. ‘We can’t go much further.’
‘Just a little,’ Theo said.
She was drawn to that icy pathway, disappearing into darkness; tunnelling through sleeping trees into the hidden kingdom of foxes and mice.
For the first time in years, excitement spread through her – that yearning to take a path leading who knew where.
Unseen wings beat overhead, and some wild part of Theo longed to steal away; to disentangle herself from the human life she’d been given, and swap the bed in which she was so often confined for a burrow of dry leaves out in the cold, clean air.
Ralph caught her hand to stop her.
‘That’s far enough, my love. We cannot trust the ice.’
The excitement flickered out. Theo looked back to see Ralph’s face soft with desire, and her pang of dismay bordered on anger – that he could love her, yet understand her not at all.
She’d needed the distance; a moment of otherness.
She took his face in her hands, caught in an upswell of a feeling she couldn’t name.
It might have been affection, or simply sorrow, but as he kissed her she thought, for the first time, that perhaps she did love him, in some way.
He was the father of her children, and to love them was to love him, at least in part.
Holding her hand, Ralph returned them to the light and noise of the crowd.
‘Let’s find Audrey, and get ourselves a hot drink,’ he said. ‘Then perhaps home, to a fire and warm blankets?’
‘You go ahead; I’d like to skate for just a little longer.’
Ralph frowned.
‘A minute more,’ she said. ‘I will come and find you.’
‘Well, do be careful.’
Theo pushed away, two strides, three, revelling in the sudden freedom of leaving Ralph behind.
And in the next instant she saw Toby. The familiar turn of his head, his dark eyebrows, the smile – so precious – that creased his cheeks.
A flash of teeth in the darkness, arms spread for balance as he skated away and the crowd closed around him.
Theo’s heart kicked, and without a thought she set off after him.
He was there, if she could only reach him.
She stumbled and was bumped; rebounding from strangers who reached out to brace her.
Steady on, miss; careful there. She stared at the place up ahead where Toby had been, and where he had vanished.
Eyes darting from face to face, with a mounting sense of loss, until she was at the other edge of the ice and wondered if she’d imagined him – seen an echo of him in the face of a stranger, wearing a battered old army coat.
It had been over five years since she’d seen him. Tears ached in her throat.
Ralph caught her arms. ‘Theo? What on earth made you take off like that? And crash about like a fool?’
‘I thought I . . .’ Theo was still looking around. Still looking for him. ‘I thought I saw somebody . . .’
‘Somebody? Who?’
She caught herself, realising how close she was to betraying too much. But it was too late.
Ralph stiffened. ‘Somebody from Hallewell? Toby Meriwether, I suppose?’
His gaze became a glare and Theo went hot with guilt.
‘No, I— it was . . . somebody else.’
‘I see.’ Ralph did not blink. ‘Who, then?’
‘Just . . . somebody I used to know, when I was little.’ She snatched a name from the air: ‘Jeanette.’
‘Jeanette who?’
Theo took too long to answer. ‘LeRoy.’
‘Please don’t lie to me, Theo,’ Ralph said quietly. He tightened his grip on her arms, and she turned her face away. ‘Was it him? Did you speak to him?’
‘No.’
‘But you obviously wanted to.’