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

Perhaps Angela had thought it would be possible to continue practising as a doctor once she was married, and perhaps it had gone against the grain to give up her medical work, even though she had all the help she needed in the house and nursery. She must have known that after those years away, it would be next to impossible to pick up the threads of a medical career. Let alone deal with Roger’s hostility.

Hal knew all about how Roger got his way, not through forcefulness like Peter, but through persistent nastiness. Faced with her husband’s bad temper and rudeness about her place in society, home, and likely incompetence if she went back into her profession, Angela had no doubt chosen the quieter course.

Only Cecy had then broken out; that was certainly one in the eye for Roger and he would naturally look upon it as a betrayal.

One of the maids will look after you, sir, since you haven’t brought a man with you,’ said the maid as she showed him into the Red Room. ‘Dinner is at eight-thirty, drinks are served in the drawing room from eight o’clock.’

He had half hoped they would put him in his old room, up on the attic floor with windows looking out behind the parapet, but the maid led the way to the Red Room, on the first floor. It had always been a guest room, but, when he was last here, a guest room with the patina of age and wear upon it. Now the paintwork gleamed, and the room had a spick and span, chintzy appearance. Rose-patterned wallpaper matched coverlet and chairs and cushions and the rug beside the bed. He pulled a face, remembering the higgledy-piggledy arrangement of old furniture and faded red damask curtains, and the assortment of china animals above the fireplace.

He picked up one of the thick towels on the washstand, one cream, one green, and went out to find an empty bathroom.

‘I was wondering when you’d find time to pop up and see me,’ said Nanny.

Hal, who liked to soak in a tub, had rushed his bath and dressed in a great hurry before springing up the stairs two at a time to reach Nanny’s domain. ‘You wouldn’t want me to come up here covered in smuts from the train,’ he said, bending down to give her a hug. She wasn’t a small woman, but he felt now as though he towered over her, surely she hadn’t been as bent as that when he went away?

‘Fifteen years and more, it’s been, and that’s a long time at my age, and my bones aren’t as strong as they should be,’ she told him. ‘I tell the doctor my bones can do what they want as long as I keep my wits, and so far I have. And you’ll have been leaning out of the train window to have smuts on you, how often have I told you not to do that? There was a man lost his head going into a tunnel, who’s to say it won’t happen again? Now sit down, there’s ten minutes before you have to be downstairs, and it won’t do to be late, for Mrs Grindley, as we must call her, although it sticks in my throat, gets in a temper if people are late. She gets into a temper about almost everything, you’ll notice that for yourself soon enough. Don’t be taken in, she’s got a will of iron, all the prettiness is like the army lads who go about with twigs in their helmets.’

‘Camouflage.’

‘I know what it’s called, Master Smart,’ she said swiftly.

He had to smile at the old nursery nickname. Peter had been Master Temper and Roger, Master Nastytongue whenever Nanny was displeased with them.

‘Which of them have you seen?’ Her knuckles might look too big for her hands and her hair might be grey and wispy, but her voice was low and sure – and those pale blue eyes were as keen as ever.

‘Angela, and two rather delightful nieces.’

‘Cecy and Ursula. She’s a little minx, that one.’

‘Ursula? She does resemble her mother, doesn’t she?’

‘More’s the pity. It doesn’t make her life any easier, let me tell you. What about your brothers?’

‘Oh, I’ve seen both of them, and left Peter in a rage because I mentioned Delia’s name, and Roger fretting over having a clever daughter.’

‘Fancy Cecy going to be a doctor.’

‘She, too, takes after her mother.’

‘I don’t hold with lady doctors. Never have and never will. Still, there are those who prefer it, and who’s to say they’re not entitled to their choice the same as I am?’

‘Well, Nanny, if there’s a war they’ll need all the doctors they can get.’

‘There isn’t going to be another war. And don’t go suggesting there will be one, or Mr Peter will be in even more of a rage. He won’t have any warmongering talk at the Hall, those are his very words.’

It was typical of Peter to issue an edict like that. Would he be taking the same line at work? Hal doubted it. War brought fat contracts, and Peter wouldn’t be last in line for those.

‘Mr Peter says he trusts the Germans to keep the Bolshies under control,’ said Nanny, clear approval in her voice; she detested Those Reds, as she called them.

‘Daddy’s got it all wrong,’ said a clear young voice from the door. ‘Hello, Nanny. Can you do my frock up for me?’

Ursula came into the room, one hand behind her holding a rather shapeless green dress together. ‘Hello again, Uncle Hal. I thought you’d be here, reporting to Nanny. She’ll want to know every single thing you’ve done since you last saw her.’

‘That could take some time, I suppose,’ Hal said.

‘You mind your tongue, Ursula.’ Nanny fastened the last of the buttons and Ursula straightened herself.

‘Five minutes to tell me the news,’ Nanny said. And then, to Hal, ‘I don’t get about so much these days. Ursula acts as my eyes and ears.’

‘Well, Nanny, the ice is bearing,’ said Ursula, sitting down on a pouffe that gave out a whistling sound as she sank into it. ‘That’s the most important thing. There’ll be skating all across the lake before the weekend’s out, that’s what they say.’

Hal propped himself against a tallboy, too big for the room, an item of furniture that he guessed Nanny had appropriated from some other part of the house. Ursula had Delia’s colouring as well as her mother’s features and voice: hair the colour of a copper scuttle, intense blue eyes in a pale face. She even had Delia’s hands, he noticed, as she tucked a lock of her straight hair behind an ear.

He couldn’t keep up with her flow of news. The people she was talking about were strangers for the most part. Until she told Nanny the news from Wyncrag. ‘Perdy’s back, she got back from school last night. Late for dinner, and Lady Richardson ripping her up, saying she shouldn’t be out in a car with Edwin. Her brother, I ask you, why not?’

‘Lady Richardson has her reasons,’ Nanny said. ‘Has Alix arrived yet?’

‘Oh, yes, she came by train, the same train you must have come on today, Uncle Hal. If she’d waited a day, you could have travelled up together. Although you might not have recognised her after all this time. She’s looking fearfully smart, apparently, Nanny. Lady R’s as stiff as a poker with her, and Perdy’s already in trouble.’

‘What has Perdy done?’ Nanny asked.

‘Grown.’

‘Do enlighten me,’ he said. ‘Who is Perdy?’

‘Perdita Richardson,’ Nanny said. ‘Since your time. You should remember, I told you all about her in my letters. Helena’s youngest, born just before Helena and Isabel were killed in America. In a car smash, such a terrible tragedy. You do remember that, surely? It wasn’t long after you’d gone away.’

‘Yes.’ He had written to Lady Richardson, and had received a brief, terse letter thanking him for his condolences. ‘She must have been shattered, losing her son so soon before, and then her daughter-in-law.’

Nanny’s face took on a tight, thin-lipped look, one he remembered so well from his childhood, the face that said, ‘So far and no further; not another word do I have to say upon this subject.’

FOURTEEN

‘Another foul evening,’ Ursula wrote in her journal that night. ‘No one except Aunt Angela is pleased to see Uncle Hal, it must be horrid for him to come home and find he’s about as welcome as a stray dog. I knew Eve was going to be at her sniffiest with him, she was moaning on to Daddy about what a nuisance it was Hal deciding to pay a visit just now, with Rosalind on the verge of her coming out and not needing to be associated with any doubtful characters. Any more doubtful characters, she means, since she feels that Mummy casts a cloud of unrespectability over the household and that it’s hard on Rosalind to be in any way connected with such a person. I don’t think Uncle Hal has any idea why Daddy wanted him to come to the Hall. I think he’s only come because of the frozen lake, otherwise he’d have stayed away. He’ll wish he had once Daddy and Roger start on him about those shares. They don’t think I know anything about it, in which case they shouldn’t talk so jolly loud. And Eve’s awfully cross that they need Hal’s agreement to make the sale, she’s so snobby about him being an actor. How old-fashioned can you be? Some actors are awfully grand. I don’t suppose Uncle Hal is or we’d have heard about him, but he doesn’t look like a down-and-out to me, which is how Eve seems to regard him. He looks jolly successful in my opinion, like someone who doesn’t give a button what people like Eve say about him. And he’s got a mocking look in his eye, I think he finds the whole situation amusing. I wish I did.’

FIFTEEN

Hal walked to Wyncrag after lunch, accompanied part of the way by Angela and Cecy who were going into the village, where Cecy wanted to buy a new pair of skates. It was slow walking on the icy snow, but Hal’s spirits rose as he breathed the cold pure air and looked up at the brilliant peaks set against a winter blue sky. Every stone wall, each field and tree was familiar to him; the years rolled away and he was back in the days of his youth, eager and brimful of expectation and ambition.

He had been set on becoming a great actor, one of the thespians of his generation, he would stun audiences with his interpretations of classic roles, his Hamlet and Macbeth and Benedict would be the talk of London and he would introduce intelligent and appreciative audiences to the complexities of modern works.

It hadn’t turned out like that. How many of the dreams we have at twenty do come true? he asked himself, as he followed the well-known path that led to the Wyncrag drive. He wasn’t walking on virgin snow so the two houses obviously kept up their steady relationship, many other feet had trodden this path since the last snowfall. He was looking down at the gritty frozen whiteness out of a reluctance to look up and see in reality what he could see in his mind’s eye: the extraordinary façade of Wyncrag. When he did look up, he surprised himself. It was as he remembered it, but it looked less real than the images he carried in his head. More like a film set than a massive northern pile. A film set for what? A fairy tale, maybe, with all those snowy turrets. Or possibly Hamlet, with a blond prince prowling the battlements of Elsinore, an enclosed world of darkness and secrets.

‘Come inside, come inside,’ Sir Henry said, greeting him as though he’d been away for a fortnight rather than fifteen years. ‘We’ll get them to rustle up some coffee for us. I was just wondering whether to put some more grit down on the drive,’ he went on, as they walked together towards the house. ‘You’ve missed my young folk, the twins and Perdita have gone to Manchester. The wheels of the car were slipping when they drove off, that’s why I came out to have a look. Of course, I think of them as your contemporaries and they aren’t, they were no more than children last time you saw them, and you’ll never have seen young Perdy at all.’

‘I was extremely sorry to hear about your tragedy,’ Hal said.

‘You wrote a very kind letter, that was good of you.’

‘I liked Neville and Helena, and to lose both of them in one year … Isabel, too. It was hard.’

Hard? Was that little thump of a word all he could find to say about such a loss? Sir Henry’s great loss had been Neville, his son, not Helena of course. Helena had never made her father-in-law’s heart sing at the sight of her, had never turned a grey day into a glorious one, had never sent him on his way on winged feet merely by a look, a smile, a turn of the head.

‘It was, it was hard,’ Sir Henry was saying. ‘But it’s in the past now, it all happened a good while ago and I don’t think about them much. I wish Neville could have been spared, but it wasn’t to be, and no good comes of repining, he was careless, and you can’t be careless on a precipice.’

Hal had to search for words to talk about Sir Henry’s eldest son. Why was it so difficult? He’d liked Neville, dammit. Admired him. ‘He was a skilful mountaineer. It’s a dangerous activity, but I should have thought he was the last person to take a risk.’

‘Mountains are unforgiving, and I dare say if he had to go, he was happy to die among his beloved mountains. He was lucky to survive the war, but his luck ran out when he went off to the Andes. He’d always wanted to climb there. Well, we all have to live our own lives.’ He was silent as he led Hal around to a side door. ‘We’ll go to my study, you’ll want to see Caroline and Trudie, but they can wait until you’ve warmed yourself and told me what you’ve been up to. Friendly welcome at the Hall, huh?’ he said with a shrewd look. ‘Lot of changes there, you’ll find. Your brother’s a fool to have married that woman, but I dare say you’ve already worked that out for yourself.’

Hal laughed, glad that they weren’t going into the drawing room. He wanted time to adjust to being in a Wyncrag without Helena. He cursed himself for a fool, he must concentrate on the here and now, not let memories from all those years ago sneak back into his life. Lord, he’d been so young. That was what accounted for the intensity of feeling that had struck him as he once again came to Wyncrag. A pale reflection of the feelings he had revelled in at the age of twenty, lost in the throes of first love, the not untypical love of a very young man for an older and very attractive woman.

He walked around the panelled walls looking at the familiar architectural prints hanging there. ‘I’ve hardly exchanged more than a few civil nothings with Eve, but no doubt she means well.’

Sir Henry gave him a sceptical look, but said no more as Rokeby came in with the coffee, and greeted Hal with stately courtesy. Hal was delighted to see him again, and impressed by how the years had turned him into the very model of a perfect butler.

‘Sit down, take one of the chairs by the fire,’ Sir Henry said, gesturing to one of a pair of shabby leather armchairs set in front of the burning fire. ‘Stir that fire up a bit, Rokeby,’ he went on. ‘Put another log on, must keep Hal warm, he’ll not be used to our northern chill any more.’

‘I’m not such a poor creature as you think,’ Hal protested. ‘New York can be bitter in the winter, and I go to Vermont for the snow sports most years. It’s cold enough there to remind anyone of Westmoreland in December.’

‘There’s nowhere quite like the lake, though, is there? You feel that, or you wouldn’t be here. Don’t tell me Peter’s invitation was so warm as to make you come back otherwise. He wants you here over a matter of business, I know, but that wouldn’t have brought you on its own, would it now?’

‘No,’ Hal agreed, very glad of the hot coffee into which, without being asked, Rokeby had added a tot of whisky. ‘To keep out the cold, Mr Hal.’

‘This freeze is bringing them all back,’ Sir Henry went on. ‘Alix hasn’t been home for three years, well, she and her grandmother don’t always see eye to eye, but she couldn’t resist the frozen lake. She lives and works in London, you know.’

Hal pulled out his memories of the twins, here at Wyncrag. Alix had been a solemn girl with a sudden smile and eyes too old for her years; Caroline had been very harsh with her, he recalled, strict as though she had been a wilful or wayward child. She hadn’t looked anything like Helena in those days; had she grown up to resemble her mother? He found the thought somehow alarming. ‘Does she take after Helena?’ he found himself asking.

‘No, she favours my side of the family, she’s very like my sister was at that age. Edwin is the one who takes after his mother.’

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