Spirit (47 page)

Bronco said nothing at all, but held her, and looked into her eyes, and tried to live out all the years they had never spent together in a long, concentrated look.

‘Goodbye, Bronco,' she said, kissing him.

Elizabeth and Laura returned to Connecticut from New York late on Monday afternoon the week after Christmas. The house was all shuttered up. It took them until Wednesday to warm the place through, lighting fires in almost every room, and keeping them heaped up with logs. At least Seamus had
cut them a plentiful stack to keep them going through the holidays. Even when the sitting-room and the library were reasonably habitable, however, draughts still moaned through the window frames and under the doors, and they spent most of Tuesday sitting in their overcoats in the kitchen, next to the range.

On Wednesday morning they walked down through the freezing north-westerly gale to Green Pond Farm to see Mrs Patrick. Seamus was there, too, but he had the flu, and his mind was wandering more than ever. Talking and sniffing by turns, he sat by the fire wrapped up to his neck in a thick blanket, his hair sticking out every which way. Every now and then Mrs Patrick had to put down her embroidery and take a large handkerchief to him, so that he could blow his nose.

She made coffee, and they sat around the kitchen table while she worked. She seemed to have aged even more; her cheeks were like withered apples, reddened and roughened by the wind. Her hands were knobby with arthritis.

‘Seamus wasn't so bad till the wind started up; then he caught a chill. The doctor's afraid that he'll catch the pneumonia, so I have to keep him all wrapped up.'

‘Great ugly porcupines,' said Seamus, with a string of dribble swinging from his lower lap, and glistening in the firelight. ‘Snakes rolled into knots. Little fat bears with bristling hair.'

Elizabeth went across to the fireplace and laid her hand on his shoulder. He rolled his eyes up to look at her, but he seemed to be having difficulty in focusing.

‘Those were the snowflakes, weren't they, Seamus?' she asked him.

He squinted at her intently. Then he nodded, and nodded again, as if a bright wave of enlightenment had washed into his mind. ‘The snowflakes. White, white, dazzling white, the Snow
Queen's guards. That's what they were. Great ugly porcupines, snakes rolled into knots.'

‘Little fat bears with bristling hair,' Elizabeth finished, for him.

‘He's been on about that for days now,' said Mrs Patrick. ‘Sometimes I wish you'd never read him that story. It's all I ever get.'

Elizabeth turned to go, but Seamus struggled an arm out of his blanket and caught at her sleeve. His eyes were wilder now, and worried.

‘She's
close
,' he declared. ‘She's very close! Terrible icy-cold! She breathed on the young ones as she passed, and all died of her breath save two. Salt lord mole's eye.'

Mrs Patrick said, ‘I think it's best you leave him now, Lizzie. He gets awful distressed.'

‘All right,' said Elizabeth. She held Seamus's hand and gave him a smile. ‘Don't worry, Seamus . . . it'll all turn out for the better, I promise you.'

Seamus whispered, ‘
Sad the man, mind the man, day after day . . . flowers and clouds, flowers and clouds.
'

They walked back up the snowy driveway. Although it was midday, the landcape lay sunk in a brownish half-light, everything frozen, everything tightly locked. Icicles had formed in the branches of the trees, in the shape of spears and necklaces and starving knights.

‘I've never seen him so bad,' said Laura, gripping her fur collar tightly around her mouth.

‘He's very sensitive to changes in the weather,' Elizabeth told her. ‘He can always feel electric storms coming, or a cold front sweeping down from Vermont. I think he's sensitive to spirits, too. After all, what did Mrs Patrick always say? He was kidnapped by the little people, and taught magic'

‘You don't believe that, do you? That was just something she
used to tell us when were younger, so we wouldn't think that he was loopy.'

‘I don't know . . . I always thought that he could hear things that normal people couldn't. He used to sing songs, remember, and sometimes they had beautiful tunes that nobody had ever heard before. And he always said that he could
see
things, didn't he? Faces looking out of empty windows; old women walking down empty streets; dogs and cats where there weren't any.'

They reached the house, and to Elizabeth's delight she saw Lenny's bright red Frazer parked outside. They hurried indoors and there was Lenny, still wearing his hat and his brown tweed overcoat, poking the sitting-room fire into life.

‘Lenny! It's so good to see you!' She put her arms around him and they kissed.

‘Careful,' he laughed. ‘Red-hot poker. I'm sure glad your front door was open, or I would've frozen solid by now.'

‘Hi, Lenny,' said Laura, reaching up to kiss his cheek. ‘Lizzie thought you were in Hartford.'

‘You don't think I'm going to stay in Hartford when Lizzie's here, do you? Besides, I've got some great news. I met a guy in Hartford who runs a private life-and-pension fund specifically aimed at office workers. It's a great scheme, it really is. It has all kinds of benefits, health-care, loan-back, you name it.'

‘Will you get to the point?' laughed Elizabeth. ‘You're trying to sell me one of your policies already.'

‘Oh, well. The long and the short of it is that the greatest concentration of office workers on the Eastern Seaboard is – where?'

‘New York, of course!'

‘So that's my news. I'm moving to New York at the end of the month. They're arranging an apartment and a new office, and everything's hunky-dory!'

Elizabeth grinned at him. ‘You're really coming to New York?'

‘End of the month, definite.'

‘Well . . .' said Laura, archly. ‘Looks like fate has brought you together again.'

‘That's my opinion,' Lenny agreed. He was looking at Elizabeth more seriously now.

‘How about a cup of something hot?' Elizabeth suggested.

Laura made them three mugs of hot chocolate, and then they sat by the fire. Elizabeth sat close to Lenny, holding his hand, and for the first time in a very long time she began to feel part of somebody else. She could stroke the back of his hand and his skin felt like her skin. She could touch his hair and it felt like her hair, too. She found that she couldn't stop looking at his profile, his long eyelashes and his straight nose, and the firelight-filled dimple in his chin.

They lit cigarettes and Elizabeth told Lenny what had happened to Bronco and Vita, and the way in which they had exorcized Billy.

‘You took mescal?' Lenny frowned. ‘Isn't that stuff dangerous?'

‘Well, there
is
a risk, but not so much if you have somebody with you when you take it, somebody who knows what they're doing, like Eusebio.'

Lenny shook his head and blew out smoke at the same time. ‘I don't know what to say about you doing that. If I'd been there – '

Elizabeth squeezed Lenny's hand. ‘We didn't have any choice. If Billy had kept on pestering Bronco for the rest of his life, he never would have written again. He would probably have ended up killing himself. Besides, I had a selfish motive, too.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Laura, tell Lenny what happened to you.'

Hesitantly, discursively, and without mentioning the worst of what Raymond had done to her, Laura told Lenny about Aunt Beverley and Chester Fell. When she had finished, Lenny said, quietly, ‘I read about that in the paper, two movie producers frozen in their own pool. Me and a couple of the other insurance people were trying to decide what the life-policy liability would be for somebody dying in a freak accident like that. But you think it was – ?'

Elizabeth nodded. ‘I don't think there's any question about it. Anybody who hurts us or upsets us or looks like they're going to get us into trouble – the Peggy-girl makes sure they're never going to do it again.'

‘And you want to track her down, the same way that you and Bronco tracked down his brother Billy?'

‘Think what our lives are going to be like, if we don't.'

Lenny stubbed out his cigarette. ‘It sounds too damned dangerous to me. You don't know what you'd be getting yourselves into. And from what you've been saying, you might not be able to get back out of it, once you're in there. What did that Eusebio say, about people in a coma? I don't want to be married to somebody who never wakes up.'

Elizabeth stared at him with her mouth open. ‘Did you say
married?
'

Lenny flushed so deeply that his face was almost maroon. ‘I – uh, what I meant was, if I was married to you, if I was married to anybody – and they were in a coma – you know, they never woke up – no matter who it was, whether if was you or not – '

He stopped flustering and ruefully rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. ‘I have to admit that I was going to ask you, right after I told you that I was moving to New York. In fact I arranged to move to New York on purpose, so that we could be together. I could have gone to Boston instead.'

Laura crowed with delight, and kicked her slippers in the
air. ‘
He's proposing
to you, Lizzie! He's actually
proposing
! And I'm a witness! I love it, I love it, I love it!'

One of her slippers landed straight in the fire, and Lenny had to rescue it, smoking, with the fire-tongs. After he had slapped it against the hearth and trodden on it to put it out, the romance of the moment had passed. They were all laughing too much.

Lenny sat down, and looked at Elizabeth with a questioning smile. She reached across the couch and held his left hand between both of hers, and smiled back at him.

‘Can you give me some time to think about it?'

‘Of course. I'm sorry it slipped out that way. I feel like such a dope. I was going to get down on one knee, and give you this.'

He reached into his pocket and took out a black velvet ring-box. Laura was beside herself with glee. ‘It's so romantic! I can't stand it!'

Elizabeth opened the box and there was a diamond-and-sapphire engagement ring, sparkling brightly in the firelight. It must have cost Lenny hundreds. She looked up at him, and saw the expression on his face, and it was so warm and hopeful that she melted. She slipped the ring on her finger and said, ‘That's time enough. I've thought about it. The answer is yes.'

He blinked. ‘The answer is yes?'

‘Do you have wax in your ears?' demanded Laura. ‘I wouldn't let my precious sister marry a man with wax in his ears.'

Lenny leaned over and kissed Elizabeth on the lips. ‘I love you,' he whispered. ‘And, thank you. You just made the New York vice-president of Hartford Life and Loan a very, very ecstatic vice-president indeed.'

As he kissed her, a strong cold draught blew through the house. It moaned and whistled at the front door, and stirred the heavy drapes across the sitting-room doorway. It blew into the fireplace, so that the flames cowered beneath the logs, and a
fine cloud of sparks and wood-ash was blown across the hearthrug. It was so cold that Elizabeth felt the hairs rising on the back of her neck, and she shivered.

‘God – what a draught!' she said. It moaned away through the library, almost like somebody invisible, sweeping through the house wearing an icy cloak. They heard the french doors in the library rattling, and the thin shriek of the draught.

‘Somebody walking over our graves, if you ask me,' said Laura.

But Elizabeth sat up, and looked around, and then she stood up and walked to the sitting-room window, and stared out into the gardens. The naked trees trembled, and the wind was blowing snakes across the snow. Elizabeth went across to the next window, and stared out of there, too, looking for any movement in the half-light.

‘Anything?' asked Lenny.

Elizabeth shook her head. ‘Not that I can see. But that doesn't mean that she isn't there. Seamus has been acting up-that's a sure sign that Peggy's around.'

‘Isn't it time you just ignored her?' asked Lenny. ‘Maybe she only comes because you imagine that she's going to come. She might be just as much a figment
of your
imagination as she is of her own.'

‘What happened to Chester and Raymond wasn't a figment of
my
imagination,' Laura countered. ‘Neither was Bronco's brother Billy a figment of Lizzie's imagination.'

‘Seriously, Lenny,' said Elizabeth, ‘I don't think you should get too close to me till we've got rid of this Peggy-girl. Heaven knows what she might do to you. Look at Dan Philips – and the worst thing that he might have done to me is think some suggestive thought. He probably didn't even do that. More than likely, the Peggy-girl was jealous, that's all.'

Lenny said, ‘Lizzie . . . I believe in all of this stuff. I've seen it for myself. I know it's real and I know it can be dangerous. But
you can't expect me to keep away from you, and you can't expect me not to protect you. Anyway – how
are
you going to get rid of her? And when? You're not thinking of taking that mescal again, are you?'

Elizabeth went over to a side-table and took out a small paper package. ‘I brought four mescal buttons back from Arizona. As soon as we can see any sign of the Peggy-girl, I'm going after her.'

‘You could kill yourself.'

‘There's a very slight risk of asphyxiation if I take too much, but Laura will be watching over me, the same way she did in Arizona.'

‘I won't let you do it.'

‘You can't stop me, Lenny. And, besides, there's no other way.'

‘You've agreed to marry me, Lizzie. I won't let you do it.'

‘You won't be able to marry me unless you do. Look what happened when we kissed just now – we had a cold wind through here like the Snow Queen's breath. She could kill birds just by breathing on them, and men just by kissing them.'