Spirit (2 page)

‘I'll bet she's eaten
all
the frosting,' said Laura, cross ‘already. ‘I'll bet it's strawberry and I'll bet she's eaten all of it. I'll bet she's even sucked the spoon.'

Elizabeth didn't say anything. She felt it would be spiteful to say anything. But she knew that Peggy was mommy's little special darling, and sometimes when mommy was laughing and playing with Peggy it made her feel old and tall and rather plain, and not exactly
unwanted
but resentful of having grown up.

They reached the snow-covered steps that led back towards the front door, and it was then that they saw the footprints.

‘Footprints!' said Laura.

‘They're ours,' said Elizabeth. She remembered how Pooh and Piglet had walked around and around in the woods, becoming more and more alarmed at the discovery of their own ever-multiplying tracks in the snow.

But Laura frowned and said, ‘No, they're not, look, they're too small and it's only one person.'

The footprints were already clogged up with falling snow, so that they were little more than dimples. When they looked more carefully, however, the girls could see that they came around the front of the house and down the steps. After she had disappeared around the corner, Peggy must have hidden behind the bushes until Elizabeth and Laura had passed her by, and then doubled back.

But where was she now?

Standing on top of the steps, the girls tried to make out the line of the footprints across the luminous white garden. They were slurred, the footprints of a small hurrying child, and there was no doubt where they were heading. Across the garden, diagonally, and straight towards the swimming-pool.

The snow was so thick that it was impossible to tell that there was a pool there, except for the two white-painted metal ladders, about fifty feet apart, and the metal mountings for the diving-board. Father had thought about emptying the pool for the winter but the pump had broken down, and then there had been trouble with the drainage because of all the rain, and by
the time the first frost started it was too late. At least, he had
said
it was too late, but he had been frantically busy with his new series of books called
Litchfield Life
, and he hadn't had very much time for the house, apart from bringing in logs for the fires, logs, logs and more logs.

The girls had skated pebbles across the frozen surface of the pool, and once they had sent Elizabeth's Shirley Temple doll windmilling out on an Arctic expedition. It was after Elizabeth had stepped on to the ice to rescue Shirley that their father had forbidden them to go anywhere near the pool during the winter; or else he'd slap their legs.

But Peggy must have gone near the pool. Her footprints led directly towards it; and about five feet away from the nearer ladder, there was a faint greyish depression, which was quickly being filled by falling snow.

Elizabeth opened her mouth in completely silent horror. Cold snowflakes whirled against her lips and melted on her tongue.

‘Go find father,' she whispered. ‘
Go find father
!'

Laura stared at her. Those wide blue eyes. Then Elizabeth stumbled down the steps and across the lawn, ploughing and hopping through the knee-deep snow. She didn't even look back to see if Laura had gone. Her throat felt completely raggedy-red, as if she had every sore throat of her entire childhood, all at once. ‘
Peggy
!' she screamed. ‘
Peggy
!'

She reached the brink of the pool and almost overbalanced. Only the slightest line in the snow showed where the edge lay. She hesitated, gasping and panting. There was no doubt about it. Peggy's footprints headed unerringly across the surface, and then stopped.

Elizabeth turned around, trying to swallow her sore throat away. Laura had vanished, so father must be coming. The silence was overwhelming. She could have been the only person in the whole world. She looked back at the faint
depression in the snow, and said, ‘Please God, please God, please help me,' in the highest and tiniest of voices.

She grasped the top of the metal ladder, and cautiously trod down into the snow. Much further down than she had expected, the sole of her boot met the surface of the ice. She took a deep breath and gradually put her weight on it, still holding on to the ladder. The ice seemed to be thick enough. She stood on it with both feet, and gave a cautious little hop, and still it seemed to hold her.

She glanced back at the house. There was no sign of father yet. She would have to find Peggy herself. She didn't want to. She was sure that Peggy must have drowned; and she was terrified that the ice would break underneath her and that
she
would drown, too, long before father could get here. But she knew that she had to, Peggy might be clinging on to the edge of the ice, underneath the snow, and how would she feel for ever and ever if she didn't try to save her?

Holding on to the ladder for as far as she could reach, Elizabeth shuffled out across the surface of the pool. The snow was almost a foot deep, so that it came right up to her knees, and over the top of her boots.

She let go of her ladder, and started to slide-step towards the depression in the snow where Peggy's footprints disappeared. She found herself whispering Pooh's song under her breath. ‘
The more it snows (tiddely pom), The more it goes (tiddely pom), The more it goes (tiddely pom) on snowing.
'

She heard the ice complain – an odd, squeaking noise, like two pieces of broken glass rubbing together. She paused, her arms held out wide to keep her balance. She had almost reached the depression in the snow, and if the ice had broken here, then it could easily break again. She cleared away the snow with her feet, and then knelt down and cleared it away with her gloves. Just under the snowflakes, water was slopping, already gelid, more like grey tapioca pudding than water.
Carefully, she cleared all around the hole in the ice, and it was no more than two feet across.

Behind her, she heard her father shouting, ‘Lizzie! Elizabeth! Get off the pool! Get off the pool!'

But she didn't turn around. She had glimpsed something stirring, just beneath the surface of the ice. Something that bobbed and dipped and slowly revolved.

‘
Lizzie
!' her father was calling her – much closer now. His voice sounded almost hysterical. ‘
Lizzie, don't you move
!'

But now Elizabeth was frantically clearing away the snow from the surface of the pool, and wiping the ice with her gloved hands, around and around, like a speeding driver trying frantically to see through a fogged-up window. When it was clear, she stopped, and stared, and said nothing. Because it
was
a window – a window through which Elizabeth could look down into another world, dark and dreadfully cold. A window through which she could see her drowned sister Peggy, her skin as white as milk, her eyes wide open, her lips pale blue. Her curls floated and the fur trimming around her hood floated, languid and slow, as if they were weed, or Arctic sea-anemones.

Most poignant of all were Peggy's little hands, in their pink woolly gloves, which were clasped together, up against her chest, as if she were saying her prayers.

The more it snows (tiddely pom)
.

Her father had reached the edge of the pool. She could hear him, but she didn't turn to look at him. If she turned to look at him, she knew that she would have to obey him.

‘Lizzie!' he called. ‘Is Peggy there? Where's Peggy?'

Elizabeth didn't know what to say.

‘Lizzie, sweetheart, is Peggy there?'

‘Yes,' said Elizabeth. Her voice was deadened by the snowflakes.

‘Jesus,' said her father. He stepped out on to the pool, and
balanced his way towards her. His circular glasses were partially fogged-up, and his grey fisherman's sweater sparkled with snowflakes. A thin, brown-bearded man in his late thirties, intent on rescuing his drowned daughter.

‘Lizzie, where is she?' he barked. ‘Come on, Lizzie, for God's sake!'

Beneath the ice, Peggy smiled and slowly revolved. Elizabeth knew for certain that she was dead. She felt an intense pang of sorrow – so painful that it almost doubled her up. Peggy's face was so near, just inches below the ice; yet she was already so far away. For her, it would always be five past three on Friday, 23 February 1940, and never any later.

Peggy's face was directly below her. Elizabeth paused, and touched the ice with her fingertips. Then she leaned forward and pressed her lips to the frozen surface of the pool, just above her sister's lips.

Her sister stared at her, but didn't blink. The snow fell all around her, as if it wanted to lay a blanket over her, as if it wanted to cover her up.

‘
Lizzie
!'

Her father was picking her up by one arm, swinging her around. She felt her shoulder socket being wrenched.

‘Lizzie, get off the goddamned pool and back in the house!'

She stepped back, just as her father started kicking at the ice with his boot heel; but she didn't climb out of the pool. She stood close behind him, watching him in helpless anguish as he kicked and kicked and kept on shouting, ‘Peggy! Peggy! Hold your breath, darling! Keep holding your breath! Daddy's here!'

It took him only a few seconds to kick out enough ice to reach her. He caught hold of her sodden fur coat and swirled her into the slushy water where the ice had first broken. Her body circled and dipped, one of her arms floated free. ‘Come on, Peggy, come on honey,' he told her, and managed to pull her halfway out of the water, and then roll her on to the ice.

‘Blankets!' he roared. ‘Somebody get me some goddamned blankets!'

He picked Peggy up, cradled her, balanced himself, and somehow managed to skate and slither to the edge of the pool. He heaved himself up on the ladder. He groaned, ‘Oh, God!' Peggy's arms flopped and swung, and water dripped glittering from her fingertips. Her face remained buried in her father's sweater, as if she didn't want anybody to look at her, because she was dead.

Elizabeth's mommy was running from the house, her white baking-apron flapping. ‘
Peggy
!' she was shrieking. ‘
Peggy
!'

Elizabeth climbed rigidly out of the frozen pool. Her shoulder hurt where her father had swung her around. Her father was already surging through the snow, back to the house, with Peggy in his arms. Mommy hurried close behind him, crying ‘Peggy!' over and over.

Elizabeth was crying, too. She struggled her way back through the snow, shivering and cold and shocked, her face a blur of tears. By the time she reached the house, father had already wrapped Peggy in blankets and laid her on the back of the station-wagon. Exhaust smoke filled the driveway, tinged hellishly red from the rear lights. Elizabeth's mommy came out of the front door, her face like a mask of somebody else pretending to be Elizabeth's mommy.

‘Darling . . . we have to take Peggy to the hospital . . . Mrs Patrick is coming over to take care of you. We'll call you later.'

Then they were gone. Elizabeth stood for a while in the driveway, watching the snow fill in their tyre tracks. Then she went back into the house, which was warm and suddenly quiet, and smelled of baking. She closed the front door and went to the cloakroom to take off her boots and her socks and her sodden coat.

Laura appeared, her cheeks watermarked with tears. ‘Peggy's dead!' she gasped. ‘I said drat her, and she's dead!'

The two sisters sat on the stairs, side by side, and cried until it hurt. They were still crying when the front door opened and Mrs Patrick arrived from Green Pond Farm. Mrs Patrick was their nearest neighbour, and she had known the girls since they were born. She was big and Irish, with a fiery complexion and fiery hair, and a nose like an old-fashioned hooter. She took off her coat, and then she gathered the girls up into her arms and shushed them and shushed them, until at last they were aware that her thick green home-knitted cardigan smelled of mothballs and that her brooch was scratching their faces. Much later, Elizabeth was to write in her diary that the consciousness of ordinary irritations is the first step towards coping with grief, and when she wrote that, she was thinking specifically of Mrs Patrick's cardigan, and Mrs Patrick's brooch.

When the girls were in bed that night, the telephone rang. They crept in their nightgowns out on to the galleried landing, and listened to Mrs Patrick in the hallway. The house was much chillier now: the fires had died down and their father hadn't been there to stoke them. Somewhere, a door was persistently banging.

They heard Mrs Patrick saying, ‘I'm sorry, Margaret; I'm really so very sorry.'

They looked at each other, their eyes liquid, although they didn't cry. It was then that they knew for certain that Peggy had left them for ever; that Peggy was an angel; and strangely, they felt lonely, because now they would have to live their lives on their own.

 

 

The following Thursday morning their mommy took them to Macy's in White Plains. The sky was brown with impending snow and Mamaroneck Avenue was brown with slush. Snow-covered automobiles crept this way and that, soft and sinister, like travelling igloos. Their mommy bought them black coats and black hats and charcoal-grey dresses with black braid trimmings. The store was overheated and while she was trying on her coat, Elizabeth felt as if she were going to suffocate. But somehow, the sombre ritual of buying mourning clothes was the first normal and understandable thing that had happened in a nightmarish week, and when they left the store with their packages Elizabeth felt very much better, as if a fever had passed.

Every day since Peggy's drowning had been different, frightening and off-balance. On Saturday and Sunday, nobody had spoken. On Monday evening mommy had silently hugged them and rocked them backwards and forwards and stroked their hair, feeling just like mommy, looking just like mommy. But then she had abruptly dropped them off her lap, and left the nursery without turning back, and noisily locked herself in her bedroom. A few moments of silence had passed while they stared at each other in perplexity. Then they heard her cry out like a wild mink caught in a gin-trap.