This Cold Country (33 page)

 

MAUD LAY HALF
awake; she was not unhappy, day and night had little difference for her now.

During the day, although she rarely spoke, she listened to human sounds, sometimes comprehending the significance of the words or noises, sometimes not. Philomena alone understood that it was not senility, but a lack of interest, of relevance, that caused Maud to close her eyes or to allow them to glaze over while she was being told something of importance to the speaker, of interest to everyone else. She felt herself, more and more, a separate entity from the rest of the world, spinning as though she were in a separate slow orbit. She cared about the firefighters in Belfast. Although she had not spoken a word while Philomena recounted the day's news, she had blinked several times and made a gesture that only Philomena would have understood to be a nod. She cared that her grandson was missing, missing in a confusing, unofficial way; she cared that his cousin James—her great-nephew—was dead; she cared slightly less that soon she would die. But caring didn't make her interested—
It doesn't make any difference,
she half consciously thought, pleased to be able to find the words. Already incipient death was making her see all life, all humanity, as part of a precise but too large to comprehend pattern; already nibbling at the part of her brain that stored her vocabulary. There were times when she would have liked to say a word to encourage more details, to show a moment of affection, to correct a mistaken assumption, but more and more she feared her inability to carry the clearly thought reply or sentiment from her mind to the spoken word.

At night she listened to sounds that seemed as clear and easy to understand as many of the words spoken to her during the day. That night there was an owl and, in the distance, a vixen barking. The sounds made Maud happy and for a moment full of hope.

“Fox,” she said, not able to find the sound for “vixen.” She felt as though there might be someone in the room who could hear her. If not, it hardly mattered; it merely gave her an opportunity to try her voice and words.

“Fox,” she said again, a little louder. The first attempt far too low for Philomena, her most probable companion, to hear.

There was no reply and Maud turned her head slowly, careful of her stiff and rheumatic neck, toward the armchair beside the fireplace. The fire had become so gray that it was difficult for her to make out the dark outline against the pale chair.

“Philomena,” she said as loudly as she could, “wake up; it's the middle of the night. You should be in bed.”

There was no reply; Philomena did not move.

“Philomena, wake up. And put some turf on the fire—it's almost out and it's smoking.”

Philomena did not move. It occurred to Maud that it was possible that Philomena had died. She was more fond of Philomena than of most people, but the thought she might be dead did not seem sad. Soon they would all be dead, she herself sooner than most.

 

DAISY WOKE GASPING
from a dream. In it Heskith had been killing her, holding her down with one hand, smothering her with the other. The hand that he held over her mouth was covered with the sheet and maybe the blanket. Daisy knew she was being killed and she was not struggling or contesting his right to extinguish her life. Then, it seemed, there was a moment of unsureness, of wondering why she could not feel the skin of his palm over her face, why the coarse linen sheet was between them, and a horrified suspicion that it was not Heskith, but Edmund masquerading as Heskith, concealing the essential taste and smell of him, who was killing her—she did not have the sense that it was a murder although she knew it must end in death—and she started to struggle.

She woke gasping for breath and sweating with fear; her heart was pounding and she felt the sick rush of adrenaline in her stomach. Sitting up in bed, she waited for the more extreme sensations to pass, and it was a second or two before she realized she was not able to draw in the deep breath of cold, clean air she had anticipated. The room was full of smoke.

Daisy jumped out of bed. Without thinking she might be wasting time, she slipped her feet into her bedroom slippers, wrapped herself in Patrick's schoolboy dressing gown—it had P. NUGENT embroidered in red on a name tag inside of the collar—ran across the room and opened the door onto the landing. The smoke was thicker.

“Help, Edmund, fire, fire!” Daisy's voice—she had not taken much of a breath—was not loud but should have been loud enough for either Mickey or Edmund, whose rooms lay off the same landing, to have heard her.

“Mickey,” she shouted, more from good manners than because she thought him the one to deal with the crisis, as she pounded on Edmund's door. There was no reply, and understanding that her hesitation was ridiculous, she opened the door.

“Edmund, Edmund, there's a fire, the house is full of—”

But Edmund's room was silent. The curtains were open—Nelly had forgotten to draw them, or to turn down the bed—and there was enough moonlight for Daisy to see the bed had not been slept in. If Edmund was, as he undoubtedly was, in Corisande's room, then she should wake Mickey. Banging a little harder with her fist on his door—why did she assume he was a heavier sleeper than his brother-in-law?—and opening it a little more quickly since she had no reason to think Mickey would not be alone, Daisy found herself in another unoccupied room. Mickey's bed, unlike Edmund's, had been slept in, the sheets rumpled and the blankets hanging off the bed as though Mickey had had violent dreams. Or perhaps he, too, had been woken by the smoke. If so, where was he? What was he doing?

Daisy started toward Corisande's bedroom. Then she paused, thinking it likely that Mickey had gone first to rescue his grandmother before raising a general alarm. The choice illogical, but not out of character.

Opening the door to Maud's bedroom quietly, Daisy crept into the room.

“Mickey,” she whispered, not wanting to frighten Maud before she knew what she was supposed to do.

“He's not here, I heard him go along the corridor about an hour ago,” Maud said calmly; the first words Daisy had ever heard her speak.

Along the corridor? An hour ago? To Corisande's room? Had Mickey woken up, found the house on fire, and decided to alert Corisande and Edmund? And had the three of them decided to leave Maud and Daisy to perish? Or were Corisande, Mickey, and Edmund, oblivious to the danger, indulging in a midnight feast? Without her, she thought, with a little pang.

“I'll be back,” Daisy said, keeping her voice calm and instinctively feeling no need to tender an explanation. Turning to leave, she saw, in the dim light—it was closer to dawn than she had imagined—the dark gray outline of a form in the armchair beside the fire. What was Philomena doing there at that hour of the night? Had she not gone home? Or had she come in early? If so, why hadn't she lighted the fire?

“Philomena?” she said tentatively.

“It's no use,” Maud said, in the same calm articulate tone. “I think she's dead.”

Daisy began to wonder if this were not part of an unusually vivid nightmare. For a moment she considered screaming, since that was the way she had, as a child, woken herself; the struggle to emit even the faintest sound usually enough to return her, terrified, to the waking world and her dark bedroom. Instead, finding herself in what seemed to be a deserted, probably burning, house, her only companions an old, dead servant and an invalid she had, up to a moment before, assumed to be partly or completely senile, she tried to act decisively.

“We need to get you downstairs,” she said, crossing to the bed. “I think the house is on fire.”

“Yes,” Maud said, just as calmly. “It's a chimney fire. Smoke has been coming up all night.”

“But, why didn't—sorry—” Daisy broke off, horrified that Maud had lain awake for hours, aware that the house—her house—was burning slowly, unable to move or call out loud enough to get help. Her own reassuring “I'll be back” didn't seem quite adequate now.

“Let's get you downstairs,” Daisy said, crossing to the bed. “Then I'll find Mickey and Corisande, then I'll come back for Philomena. I think there's plenty of time.”

It seemed important, now that she knew Maud was sentient, to explain exactly what was happening; at the same time, Maud's calm gave Daisy the illogical reassurance that she was in the presence of an adult. She paused a moment by the bed, looking down. Maud was frail, tiny-boned; she must have been a small woman even before she had faded and shriveled. Daisy was a strong girl; she had no doubt of her ability to carry Maud downstairs, but she was not sure how to do so without hurting or frightening her. She pulled the heavy, slippery satin eiderdown off the bed, better to assess her task, and Maud shivered. Knowing that now was not the time to try to dress the old lady, Daisy started to wrap her in the sheets and blankets in which she lay. She discarded the pillows and tugged at the undersheet and blanket in order to wrap Maud more fully, deciding that when she had brought her downstairs and possibly outside, she would return for coats, shawls, and blankets. The sheet came loose easily enough, but the underblanket caught on something as Daisy tugged at it. Letting go of Maud for a moment, she lifted a corner of the mattress to unhook the blanket from the spring that caught it. It took her a moment to free it; she was aware she was wasting time and it made her clumsy. The washed-out flannel blanket had caught because there was a solid object wrapped in it and pushed between two of the coiled metal bedsprings. Once she could see the problem, it was easy for Daisy to free the wrapped object and then the blanket.

Surprised to find herself with something apparently secret, and not belonging to her, in her hand, Daisy hesitated, confused. But Maud, quicker than Daisy could have imagined possible, whipped the flat package, loosely wrapped in a piece of old white silk, away from her. She unwound the silk, which Daisy had the impression was intended to keep the box she now revealed closed rather than to protect it. The box was flat, a dull worn black, the hook that should have secured it broken. Maud opened it a little, as though to make sure the contents were intact, and Daisy caught a glimpse of a strand of fat pearls before the old lady closed it again. Glancing slyly at Daisy, she tucked the case and the hand holding it under her shawl and waited to be rescued. Daisy continued to wrap Maud into a warm bundle so that she could carry her downstairs.

She was almost at the door of the room, Maud light and limp in her arms, her head, like a baby's, against Daisy's shoulder, when Edmund arrived.

“The house—” he said. “Well done, Daisy, I'll—” and his eyes flicked to Philomena's motionless form.

“I—Aunt Maud,” Daisy said, the question of how to refer to the old lady solved by the urgency of the moment, “Aunt Maud thinks she's dead.”

Edmund's expression did not change as he quickly moved to the armchair and lifted Philomena's face, pressing two fingers against her neck as he did so.

“Yes, I'm afraid she is.”

Edmund hesitated, looking down at Philomena.

“Perhaps—” Daisy murmured.

“Yes, of course. Sorry,” he said, and carefully took Maud into his arms.

Daisy preceding him, and holding up the trailing ends of the sheets he might have stepped on, they went quickly down the stairs. Daisy wondered what they would do with Maud once they got her downstairs; Edmund, without hesitation, carried her into the drawing room and set her on a sofa close to the French window that opened onto the conservatory.

“It's not the warmest seat in the house,” he said cheerfully, “but it makes it easy for someone to break in and bring you out, if it's necessary. Not that that's going to happen, of course.”

Maud, who to Daisy, didn't look as though she needed reassuring, looked about her.

“Corisande changed the slipcovers,” she said. “No one told me.”

Daisy thought Corisande might have quite a lot of explaining to do. She wondered if new slipcovers had been an overdue necessity or, like the dressmaker bills, an investment in Corisande's future.

“Good girl, Daisy,” Edmund said. “Right, let's wake the others, and the maids, get help, and maybe take a few of the better things out onto the lawn. Why don't you telephone and I'll get the others up.”

So Edmund went upstairs and Daisy, standing in the hall, lifted the receiver and wound the handle. No one picked up her call at the exchange, but since it often took minutes during the day for the postmistress to connect a call, particularly if one were so thoughtless as to attempt communication at times when Mrs. Crowe was cooking, feeding her family, or answering a call of nature, Daisy was not at first alarmed by the lack of response. She watched Edmund turn the corner on the landing and he was out of sight before she realized that the telephone exchange was probably closed for the night and she didn't know what time Mrs. Crowe got up in the morning.

Daisy went back upstairs. She asked herself where was Corisande while all this had been going on? Had Edmund left her catching up on her beauty sleep while he went to investigate the now quite thick smoke? Was she packing the contents of the locked desk in her room? And where was Mickey? She realized she had not told Edmund that Mickey was not in his room, and she hurried along the corridor toward the room she assumed Edmund was sharing with Corisande. She paused by the door to the room that appeared to have been frozen in time since 1918. Daisy pushed the door open tentatively.

“Mickey,” she said, entering a little breathless, “wake up. There's a fire—”

But although the top of bed was rumpled, the room was empty.

“I woke Mickey,” Edmund said from behind her. “He was asleep in here—I sent him—”

“The exchange doesn't answer—I think it's closed for the night.”

It was cold on the lawn, and Corisande stayed in the drawing room with Maud. Dawn was breaking. As Daisy went back and forth into the house she could now see smoke coming up between the floorboards. The house, she thought, was a little warmer than it usually was early in the morning, but there was no sign of fire or sound of burning.