The Frozen Lake: A gripping novel of family and wartime secrets

Sometimes one of them took the ride alone, lying flat, face only inches above the flying snow. Alix tumbled off after one such trip, and lay laughing in the snow, Lidia forgotten, feeling cold and wet and happier than she could remember being since … since goodness knew when; she couldn’t remember when she last felt like this.

Edwin hauled her to her feet. ‘If you lie there, you’ll catch cold, and you know how much Grandmama hates anyone sneezing.’

Alix brushed the snow off. ‘Why is she never ill?’

‘She has migraines.’

‘Hardly ever. Only when she’s severely vexed, and since she makes sure everyone does precisely what she wants, she rarely is.’

Edwin paused in the act of creating a large snowball in his gloved hands. ‘Do you know, that never occurred to me, about her migraines coming on when someone has crossed her? I must say that as soon as Lipp starts pursing her mouth and muttering about m’lady’s twinges, I run for cover.’

‘You can, of course, to Lowfell. And I suppose Grandpapa just shuts himself away in his study as he always has done. One thing you have to say for Grandmama, she doesn’t look for sympathy when she’s laid up with a headache.’

‘They say migraines are devastatingly painful.’

‘And admitting pain is a sign of weakness.’

Edwin gave her a direct look. ‘You should know about that. You’ve inherited exactly the same stoicism, only with you it’s anguish of the spirit you won’t own up to.’

Startled, Alix ducked his snowball and began to gather one of her own. Was that true? She didn’t care to think she might be like Grandmama in any way. Did she refuse to admit that she hurt? Yes, she supposed she did, preferring to lick her wounds in private and to draw down the shutters between herself and any well-wishers, however kindly their intentions.

She chucked the snowball at Edwin with unusual force, leaving him protesting and laughing and shaking the snow off his shoulders. ‘You wretch, it’s gone down my neck. Hold on there, and I’ll give you a taste of your own medicine.’

‘You have to catch me first,’ said Alix, sliding and slipping down the hillside to escape his long arms.

Eyes and cheeks glowing from their exertions, they went in through the back of the house, leaving their boots in the flagstoned passage. ‘I’ll come up and collect your wet things, Miss Alix,’ Phoebe called out as they padded past the kitchen in damp socks, leaving a trail of fat footprints.

Rokeby was hovering in the hall. ‘There’s a letter for you, Mr Edwin, sent up from Lowfell.’

‘Thank you,’ said Edwin, more concerned with his cold feet than a letter. He had no expectation of it being from Lidia, and nothing else could stir any great interest.

Perdita came thumping into the hall, her face pink with the cold air and indignation. ‘Golly,’ she said. ‘Grandpapa was going on about the Grindleys, for Rokeby says Roger and Angela are there, and I said I wondered if they’d taken that terrifying stuffed ferret out of the downstairs lav, because Angela made a row about it last time she was at the Hall, and Grandmama heard me and really laid into me. I mean, what’s so awful about mentioning a stuffed ferret?’

Alix wasn’t paying much attention to Perdita; she was too busy watching Edwin’s face as he read his letter.

‘She treats me like a baby; I don’t see why she should. Alix, you aren’t listening to a word I’m saying.’

‘You’re the last of the brood,’ said Alix. ‘Children, grandchildren, all living here, all under her thumb. It won’t last into another generation, we shan’t bring up our children here, so she’s making the most of her crumbling power.’

‘Edwin might live here. When Grandpapa dies, although I bet he’ll go on for ever, and I hope he does.’

‘Can you see Edwin living at Wyncrag without Grandpapa, if Grandmama were still alive? Not if he had a grain of sense. It isn’t bad news, is it Edwin, you look stunned?’

‘No, no, not bad news at all.’ Edwin stuffed the letter back in its envelope and turned to the waiting Rokeby.

His eyes were alight with joy; what was there in the letter to make him look like that? Alix asked herself.

‘I need to send a telegram. Urgently.’

‘What’s he so excited about?’ Perdita asked Alix, as Edwin rushed towards the library. ‘He’s gone quite pale. Do you know who that letter was from? You look a bit pale yourself.’

‘Do I? A trick of the light. Ask Edwin later, I don’t think he wants to be bothered now.’ It must show, she thought, the sharp face of jealousy, the knowledge that whoever wrote that letter – Lidia, sure to be – was close to Edwin in a way that she, his twin, never could be. And that, with this new relationship, there would be a distance between her and her brother. Quite hard to accept that, after nearly twenty-five years. She’d come to think it wouldn’t ever happen, as girlfriends came and went out of Edwin’s life, and none of them made any real difference.

Had she considered for a second how excluded Edwin might have felt over the last few years when she’d been so wrapped up in her own love affair? She didn’t think he’d minded, he’d had his work, his own interests, and perhaps with their strange gift of knowing how each other felt, he’d known, even before she had, that John would leave her, that he wasn’t going to become part of her life on any permanent basis.

It was that strange link between them that made her realize now that Lidia was not the same as his other girlfriends. He’d had flirtations and friendships, and even one more serious affair, but none of them had got under his skin the way this woman had. In which case, his falling in love with her would make a tremendous difference to Edwin and therefore to herself.

A refugee. What kind of a refugee? She thought of those blank faces staring out from blurred newspaper photographs of dishevelled ship- and train-loads. Faces blank because beyond despair. What had Lidia gone through, what might have happened to her family, friends? Was she grieving for a lost life in another country, was that why she wouldn’t have Edwin, had she worn out any capacity for new feelings?

And why had Edwin fallen so much in love with her, and why did she reject him? It was a tease’s trick to refuse to marry him and then to write letters that brought brilliance to his eyes and sent him rushing to despatch telegrams. Perhaps Lidia was coming north, after all. And wouldn’t that just spoil Christmas and the frozen lake, for all of them. For her, because she’d been longing to have Edwin to herself. For the whole household, if Lidia turned out to be as unsuitable as she sounded. No one more fierce in her intolerance than Grandmama, no one less happy to accept an outsider as a husband or wife for any of her family.

Edwin flew back across the hall, his shoes ringing out on the tiles. ‘Just off to the Post Office.’

‘We’ll come,’ said Perdita quickly. ‘Won’t we, Alix? I want to see what the ice is like over on that side of the lake.’

‘Be quick then,’ said Edwin. ‘There’s not a moment to lose.’

Alix sat beside him in the front, and Perdita squeezed herself into the tiny space behind the seats. ‘Jolly uncomfortable in the back here, you ought to get a bigger car.’

Edwin concentrated on getting his car safely over the ice lurking at the entrance to the drive, and out on to the narrow, twisting country road that led to the ferry. ‘I was going to ask if you both wanted to come to Manchester tomorrow. I’ve got some business there, and you’ve got shopping to do. But if you’re going to be rude about my car, Perdy, then the invitation’s withdrawn.’

‘I long to go to Manchester, and Ursula breaks up on Friday, so tomorrow would be perfect,’ said Perdita. ‘But can we take a proper car, please? I’d be bent double for good if I went all the way to Manchester like this, fit for nothing but the freak show.’

A carter coming the other way stopped his horse to tell Edwin that the ferry wasn’t running.

‘Frozen solid, no point in breaking the ice and heaving her out, not any more. You’ll have to go around the head of the lake, Mr Edwin.’

Edwin thanked him, cursed, and backed carefully into a gateway thickly rutted with frozen mud.

Half an hour later, they drove over the humpbacked bridge and drew up outside the Post Office. Her brother and sister dragged Perdita from her wedged position, and she stood beside the car shaking herself like a horse.

Edwin vanished into the Post Office. Alix and Perdita walked down to the lakeside. A few intrepid skaters were on the ice, not venturing beyond the rope barriers with their signs saying DANGER THIN ICE. A troop of children were sliding ecstatically over the frozen surface, under the watchful eye of PC Ogilvy. Perdita waved to him, and he slithered in a stately fashion towards them.

‘Hello, Jimmy. How’s the ice bearing?’

‘Coming along nicely, Miss Perdita.’

‘Can we skate all across the lake?’

‘Wherever you like, so long as you watch out for the soft patches where the Wyn flows out, it doesn’t ever freeze right over there. I’ll be taking those signs down come tomorrow morning. And I reckon now it’s holding, it’ll be solid for a good while, no one’s forecasting a thaw for the foreseeable future.’

Edwin came out of the Post Office. ‘That’s done,’ he said with great satisfaction. He caught sight of Alix’s face. ‘Feeling the cold, old thing? You’ve gone soft spending all that time in London.’

THIRTEEN

Hal didn’t recognise the chauffeur.

He hadn’t expected the motor car to be the same one, but who was the man standing beside the gleaming Delage? What had become of Wilbur? He was a young man still, Hal’s contemporary, a partner in first boyish and then youthful forays up fells and into the old lead mines and out on the lake. And the uniform, no Grindley chauffeur had ever worn a uniform like this one except on the most formal occasions. Was Hal’s arrival at the railway station a formal occasion? He thought not. Yet here was this dark-jowled man with guileless brown eyes touching his hat and asking him in an accent that owed nothing to the north of England if he were Mr Henry Grindley.

And that gave him a jolt. No one had called him Henry for more than fifteen years, and not often before that; only headmasters and strangers. He had been Hal to everyone since he was a baby.

The chauffeur helped the porter load Hal’s luggage into the boot of the car. Then he opened the rear door for Hal, saluted, and took his place behind the steering wheel.

It felt odd, to be in these familiar surroundings but sitting in the back of a car behind straight grey-uniformed shoulders, instead of sitting beside Jerry Wilbur, or even pushing him over to take the wheel himself.

He leant forward. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Parsons, sir.’

It seemed unlikely, but Hal let it pass. ‘Where’s Wilbur?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

‘You do know who Wilbur is.’

Or was, had something happened to him and no one had bothered to say? Nanny would have written to him about it, she wrote him regular if indecipherable missives in a spidery hand. Recent letters, now he came to think of it, had mentioned Changes at the Hall. These Changes, he gathered, were not for the better, at least not according to Nanny. Since she was pure conservative from the starch on her cap to the tips of her sensible shoes, he hadn’t taken much notice of her grumbles. Peter’s new wife would be bound to make changes, new wives always did. He had had plenty of experience of new wives in America, where his friends of both sexes dipped in and out of marriages with astonishing ease.

‘I heard of Wilbur, yes. He drove cars before me.’

So Wilbur had left. Hal felt a moment of dismay; how many others of his friends would still be there? It hadn’t occurred to him, but fifteen odd years was a long time to expect everything to be the same. He had changed out of all recognition, so he couldn’t seriously think that at Grindley Hall everything would be just as it was. How childish, and how childish was his disappointment at not being greeted by Wilbur.

‘Where are you from?’ he asked the chauffeur.

‘Spain. I am from Spain.’

Best not to enquire further. The fellow might be a republican or a follower of General Franco, and Hal had no wish to pry or offend. Strange that he hadn’t opted to stay and fight for whichever side he favoured.

‘I have no sides in Spain,’ the man said, as though he had read Hal’s thoughts. ‘I have family, uncles, brothers fighting on both sides, this one hates priests, that one is all for Franco. So I leave. Is better, then at least my mother has one son left alive to bury her when she grows old and dies, one son who is not crazy in his head and fighting for crazy men.’

‘So now you work at Grindley Hall.’

The man gave an expressive shrug. One is lucky to have any work.’ He was silent for a moment and then burst out in an unexpected and infectious guffaw. ‘I feel at home. In Spain, my family fight each other. Here, in cold England, I find also that families fight each other.’

Hal didn’t want to know. He sat back in his seat, looking out into the dusk, and the Spaniard, probably regretting his outburst, stayed silent as he drove expertly along the wintry roads. It was a half-hour journey from the station, but it only seemed minutes before they were driving through the sweep gate to the Hall, the stone Grindley griffins perched on either side atop the gateposts. Hal had once suggested that a pair of lavatory seats would be a better emblem for the family; they hadn’t found this amusing. Grindleys as a whole resented any humour directed at the source of their wealth.

The drive was neater than he remembered, the gravel swept clear of snow and crunching loudly under the wide tyres. Hal looked up at the familiar façade of the house where he had been born, not sure if he felt pleasure or misery at seeing it again. The huge front door swung open as the car drew up, and a maid in formal black dress and starched pinny and cap came out to stand at the top of the steps.

Hal didn’t recognise her either, nor the smart uniform. Hall maids in his day were a comfortable lot, duly clad in morning or afternoon uniform, but never looking as pressed and trim as this young lady. She looked straight through Hal and told the driver to take the car around to the back and unload the gentleman’s luggage straight away.

‘Mrs Grindley is upstairs resting before dinner,’ she told Hal as she followed him into the black-and-white chequered hall. ‘Mr Grindley will be home at half past six. Tea has been served in the drawing room, Mr and Mrs Roger Grindley are there, they have just arrived. It is this way.’

‘Thank you, I know where it is,’ Hal said. He crossed the hall and opened the fine white panelled door into the drawing room. He stopped inside the doorway, looking around in surprise. There had been something different about the hall, although he hadn’t been able to put his finger on it. Now it came to him, where were all the stuffed animals?

The drawing room ran from the front to the back of one side of the house, a long, wide room with windows leading on to a terrace. Gone were the heavy damasks, the patterned carpet, the heavy armchairs and sofas; gone most noticeably were the stuffed bear with a tray in its paws, several noble stags’ heads, the pair of stoats glaring at each other from two branches, a bewildered owl, and the fox with his head turned as though politely surprised to find the hounds upon him.

The parquet floor gleamed at his feet. Fine Persian rugs were placed here and there. Two deep sofas with plain dark pink covers faced each other across the fireplace, other chairs were in lighter shades of raspberry and looked thoroughly uncomfortable.

‘Good God,’ he said before he could stop himself. ‘Interior design comes to Grindley Hall? I don’t believe it.’

His remark was greeted by a peal of laughter and he looked over to the sofa, where a tall, fair woman, still laughing, was standing up and holding out her hands. ‘Hal, my dear! How distinguished you look, I don’t think I would have recognised you.’

‘Angela,’ he said, kissing her warmly on both cheeks. He was shocked to see the lines around her eyes. How old was she? Late forties, must be, but it wasn’t merely years that had added a strained look to eyes and mouth. If he were any judge, that was tension, not age. Well, being married to Roger would hardly be a bed of roses.

‘Good to see you, Hal,’ said his brother.

Roger hadn’t changed, Hal thought as they shook hands. He was heavier, but had the height to carry it off, so didn’t yet look portly. The main difference was in his air of success and prosperity; that was what advancement in the law had done for him. He dimly remembered a line in one of Nanny’s letters.

‘Aren’t you a KC now, Roger?’

Roger nodded, a satisfied look on his wide, handsome face. ‘I took silk more than five years ago. I thought Peter would have told you.’

‘I travel about so much,’ said Hal apologetically. He should have written, of course he should, only he never did write to his brothers. And of course becoming a KC was a great step for a lawyer, but it had seemed of no great importance in his theatrical world far across the Atlantic.

A much younger woman than Angela, but with the same fair complexion, had been standing by the window.

‘You can’t be Cecy!’

‘I am. Hello, Uncle Hal.’

‘Good heavens, Cecy. You were all legs and pigtails last time I saw you.’

There was a silence. Angela broke it with a polite enquiry about his voyage – what a time of year to brave the Bay of Biscay – had it been very rough – had he been staying in London, Peter had said his ship was due two days ago – had anyone shown him to his room?

‘I didn’t give the maid a chance to,’ Hal said. ‘What happened to Wilbur, Roger?’

‘Wilbur? Oh, the chauffeur. He went into the army, I believe. Eve found this present man, he’s some sort of foreigner, I shouldn’t care to have him in my employ, he looks rather a ruffian. However, Eve says he’s cheap and drives very well. Peter leaves all the staff side to her. You’ll find quite a few changes. Bound to, after so long.’

Silence again. It occurred to Hal that the stiffness of the atmosphere was not caused by his arrival. The tea tray stood untouched on a low table beside the fireplace. Whatever Roger’s family had been doing, it wasn’t taking a welcome cup of tea after a long drive. He could see that Cecy was eager to leave the room, she was sliding unobtrusively round behind the sofas towards the door.

‘Where are you going, Cecy?’ her father asked in a cold voice.

‘Upstairs. To dress. My frock needs pressing, I’ll have to ask the maid to do it for me. She won’t know which one I’m wearing tonight.’ With that she made a positive dash for the door and was gone.

‘Children,’ Roger said grumpily. ‘You never married, I suppose, Hal.’

‘No,’ Hal said.

‘They’re the very devil. One minute all dimples and not much of a nuisance to anyone, and the next causing no end of trouble. I’ll see you at dinner, then,’ he added, making for the door.

‘What’s Cecy up to?’ Hal asked Angela, who had sat down again. She picked up a glossy magazine and began to flick through the pages. ‘Has my niece taken up with some undesirable man?’

‘That would be simple,’ Angela said. ‘Unsuitable boyfriends are child’s play compared to a career as far as Roger is concerned.’

‘Career?’

‘Don’t ask. Medicine, I’m afraid.’

‘Cecy’s doing medical training? Training to be a doctor, not a nurse? Sorry, no need to ask, not with her being your daughter. Good for her.’

‘I agree with you, but Roger never liked the idea, and he knows that Peter will have a go at him about it, he thinks it’s rather lax.’

‘This is Peter as head of the family, I take it?’

‘It’s a role he plays more and more.’ She put the magazine back on the table and stood up. ‘I really do have to go and dress.’

‘Tell me one thing,’ said Hal. ‘What happened to the menagerie?’

‘The menagerie?’

‘The stuffed creatures.’

‘Oh, the stoats and those poor, sad-eyed deer. Eve doesn’t care to have dead animals around her. So down they came and out they went. I couldn’t approve more. There was a wicked-looking ferret that had come to roost in the downstairs cloakroom. When I told Peter it was playing havoc with his bowels, he wouldn’t speak to me for a week. I was quite right, however. He used to disappear in there for hours with a pipe and the paper. No longer, and he’s lost that costive look he had.’

Hal held the door open for her. As they crossed the hall, the front door flew open and a red-faced schoolgirl in a thick navy overcoat stumped in, a satchel hanging off her shoulder, a hockey stick in one hand and a bicycle pump in the other. She was yelling as she came in, shouting out to Simon to jolly well come down right now and apologize for swiping her pump, the one that worked, and replacing it with his duff one, a foul trick to play on her, she finished with a triumphant roar.

She stopped, drew breath, saw them standing there and bounded towards them. ‘Aunt Angela, you’re here. Has Cecy come with you? I’m so late, all because I had a flat tyre and rotten Simon switched the pumps.’ She stared at Hal with undisguised interest.

‘This is your Uncle Hal, Ursula.’

Hal looked at the girl with more attention. So this was Peter’s youngest. Of course she was, he thought with a sudden pang. Of course she was: now that the redness of her face was fading, he could see the likeness. ‘You’re very like Delia,’ he said.

A blast of icy air at his back as the front door opened and shut again, and he turned to see his oldest brother regarding him with cold eyes as he pulled off his leather gloves.

‘That’s a name we don’t ever mention in this house,’ Peter said curtly. ‘Ursula, what are you doing hanging around in your school clothes? Go upstairs and change at once.’ He turned to Angela. ‘Ha. Roger’s here, I take it?’

‘Aren’t you going to say hello to Hal? You haven’t seen him for nearly sixteen years.’

From Peter’s expression, he could quite happily have gone another sixteen years without seeing his youngest brother.

‘You’re looking very well,’ he said, smoothing back his fast-retreating hair with his hand as he eyed Hal’s hair, short but undeniably thick.

‘So are you, Peter. I’m glad to see you again.’ Which Hal was, despite his brother’s aura of barely controlled ferocity.

‘I’ve made it an absolute rule,’ Peter was saying in a loud voice, ‘that we do not under any circumstances talk about Delia, especially not in front of the children. As far as they are concerned, she might as well be dead. She is forbidden to have any contact with them, with the full consent of the court, I may add. They know how wicked she has been and have no wish at all to have anything to do with her. It shouldn’t be necessary for me to explain this to you, anyone with a modicum of tact … Well, I dare say it’s all very different in America.’

‘There’s a lot more divorce over there, certainly.’

Peter winced at the word. ‘That will lead to their downfall. It’s monstrous what women get away with these days, it goes against nature and against every finer feeling. These so-called modern women are no more nor less than whores. Excuse me, Angela, it’s not a word I should use in front of you.’

‘It’s not a word you should use of your ex-wife,’ Angela said under her breath as she stepped past Peter and made for the stairs.

Hal wasn’t too sure about Peter’s finer feelings, and he was deeply shocked to hear his former sister-in-law spoken of in such harsh terms. He held his tongue. He was here because of the frozen lake, nothing more, and he would avoid quarrelling with either of his brothers if he could help it.

He thought about his two brothers as he followed the maid up the elegant staircase. Why had Angela, with her intelligence and caustic wit, ever married Roger? He had been good-looking, that had had something to do with it, and perhaps the growing career at the bar had seemed to promise brains and a certain worldliness. More astonishing was that ultra-conventional Roger should have fallen in love with a woman doctor, of all people. Roger as a young man, and no doubt to this day, resented women having the vote. He had never made any secret of his views.