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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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, СКАЧАТЬ