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

No, she shouldn’t expect a warm welcome, not from Grandmama. She released the blind at the window beside her seat and looked out at the darkening wintry scene. Snow-clad hills were illuminated by brilliant starlight; she heard the shrill whistle of the locomotive as it took a curve, its wailing sound floating out into the remote whiteness of the landscape. The train sped past a village, a square church tower visible for a moment before the train plunged into the darkness of a deep, rock-sided cutting.

The window blurred with smoke. She pulled the blind down again, and sat back in her wide, well-upholstered seat, reaching up to switch on the light over the empty place next to her. Half past five; nearly two hours to go. She shut her eyes, listening to the steady tuppence-three-farthings rhythm of the train. Her eyes stayed closed, the book on her lap slipped to the floor, and she sank into a dreamy half-awake, half-asleep state, her mind filled with images of hills and snow.

The sound of the compartment door opening roused her, and the cheery, ‘Just coming in, Miss Richardson,’ spoken in the familiar accent of the fells and lakes, told her she was home. ‘It’ll be a few minutes yet,’ he added, as she jumped to her feet. ‘No need to hurry.’

There was every need to hurry. She didn’t want to miss a minute, no, not a second, of the ice-world lying outside. She gathered together her possessions, picked up the book from the floor, paused in front of the mirror to tidy her hair under her hat. As the train pulled into the curve of the platform she stood in the corridor and tugged at the thick leather strap to let down a window. The dark air rushed in at her, arctic cold, but so fresh and clean that she wanted to gulp great mouthfuls of it, to rid her lungs and head of the smoke and fret of London. The gloom and sour, smoky smell of Euston lay in another dimension, surely not inhabiting the same world as this.

Then through the murk of steam she saw a short, stocky, bow-legged figure in gaiters advancing along the dimly lit platform through the little throng of waiting people. Eckersley, in his gaiters, his chauffeur’s hat slightly askew, his weathered face breaking into a smile at the sight of her.

‘Eckersley, oh, it’s been so long!’

‘Too long, Miss Alix, and we’re right glad to have you home. Is that all your luggage with the porter there? I’ve got the motor car just outside. Hand that suitcase to me.’

If only Grandmama’s greeting had been half as friendly. She had dutifully gone up to Lady Richardson’s room soon after her arrival, to be received with perfect, frigid courtesy. And Alix knew, without a word being spoken, that her grandmother wholly disapproved of her elegant new persona and what it said about her life in London.

It was now Perdita’s turn to greet her grandparents, and Alix could see the stiffness in her young body as she clumped in her heavy shoes to Grandmama’s end of the table.

‘Good evening,’ she said, bending her head to receive her grandmother’s chilly kiss.

‘You were extremely late back from Yorkshire, Perdita. I was concerned.’

‘Here we go,’ Edwin said under his breath as he slid into his seat and gave Aunt Trudie a conspiratorial smile. Then he turned and grinned at Alix.

How lovely it was to see him again, his dark hair falling across his forehead as it always had done, his long fingers crumbling his roll, his grey eyes, the mirror of hers, alight with pleasure at the sight of her.

Grandmama’s attention had turned from Perdita to her grandson, and it was clear to anyone who knew her that, although her voice was calm, she was, in fact, very angry with him.

‘I can’t say how distressing, Edwin. In the dark, and the snow, you and Perdita, with no older person there. It’s most inappropriate.’

‘What’s inappropriate about it? We’re brother and sister, not a couple out on a romantic tryst. And I am twenty-four, not some boy scout who’d panic at a bit of snow.’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘Good evening, Edwin,’ said Sir Henry, coming to his rescue. ‘Rokeby, stop hovering about and pour Mr Edwin a glass of wine. Edwin, you look cold. I’m afraid the central heating’s not working properly tonight,’ he went on, clearly keen to distract his wife’s attention from the iniquities of her errant grandchildren.

Wyncrag had central heating throughout the house, an extraordinary luxury that scandalized neighbours who used no form of heating except coal fires. Warm passages and bathrooms and bedrooms were considered soft and un-English. However, Sir Henry had travelled, and appreciated the warmth in some of the North American houses he had visited. It came as a welcome novelty to him to step into a hall or a bathroom and not find the temperature dropping by several degrees.

‘Poor quality coal, playing the devil with the furnace,’ he said. When the miles of piping he had had installed in every room and passage carried a stream of hot water as intended, the house was a haven of blissful warmth. But the advanced system battled against a temperamental furnace that produced water that was either too cold, or almost boiling hot. ‘Hardens are delivering more coal tomorrow, and they can take the rest of this load away, I never saw such stuff. Can’t think where it came from; it certainly isn’t fit for household use.’

Soup was served. Trudie, looking particularly vague, began an anecdote about the dogs, the tension eased. Then Lady Richardson noticed for the first time what Perdita was wearing. ‘What have you got on, child? You look like something out of the orphanage.’

‘Sorry, Grandmama,’ said Perdita, concentrating on her plate. ‘It doesn’t seem to fit very well, and I didn’t have time to look for anything else.’ She reached out to flick at a candle that had a guttering flame, and there was a loud ripping sound.

‘Oh, dear, I think the sleeve’s coming off,’ she said, lifting her arm to inspect the damage.

‘Perdita!’

‘I’ve grown rather a lot.’

‘She has,’ Edwin said. ‘I hardly recognised her in the Minster.’

‘My feet have grown, too,’ said Perdita. ‘My school shoes are awfully uncomfortable. I seem to be growing out of everything.’

Lady Richardson was disapproving. ‘I think it’s most unsuitable for you still to be growing at your age. I’d reached my full height by the time I was twelve. Tomorrow, we shall look through your things, Perdita, and decide what can be done about your frocks. Lipp may be able to lengthen them and let them out.’

‘It doesn’t matter much in the holidays, I shall be in jodhs most of the time.’

‘You won’t, however, wear jodhpurs in the evening, nor do I expect to see you in them for meals. I shall see if any of my old dresses could be made over for you, although I fear you’re too tall.’

‘No, Grandmama, really,’ said Alix. ‘That’s too bad. You can’t ask Perdita to wear hand-me-down frocks. She’d look a perfect fright, now she’s fifteen and nearly grown-up.’

‘Fifteen is very far from being grown-up.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Perdita unwisely. ‘Look at Juliet. We’ve been doing Romeo and Juliet this term, and …’

‘I can’t think what your English mistress imagines she’s doing; it’s not a suitable play for girls of your age. Emotion is so bad for girls.’

‘If Perdita’s grown, then of course she must have new frocks,’ said her grandfather. ‘If the freeze continues, a lot of families will be up here for Christmas and into the new year, and that means parties. At least, it always did in my day. Perdita will need a long dress or two.’

‘She’s much too young for that,’ Lady Richardson said.

‘She’s too tall for anything else,’ said Sir Henry, inspecting his granddaughter with a critical eye.

Perdita was used to people talking about her as though she weren’t there, so she tucked into her lamb and green peas and asked Edwin to pass the water. Then she gave Alix a wide smile. ‘Have you got lots of blissful clothes with you? Edwin said you’d got fearfully smart last time he saw you, only I didn’t believe him. It’s ages since you were here, and then it was all tweeds bagging at the back and dull jumpers. I do love the colour of frock you’re wearing, where do you buy heavenly things like that?’

‘I’d offer to let you try all my clothes on, but you’ve grown so, they won’t fit you.’

Perdita sighed. ‘I’m too big all over, you mean. Don’t spare my feelings, I know it.’

‘It’s fortunate that Alix is here,’ said Aunt Trudie, chasing a pea around her plate. ‘She must know all about the latest fashions, and can say just what we should be wearing.’

‘Alix’s clothes would be entirely unsuitable for Perdita.’ Grandmama’s voice was sharp and Alix felt the familiar twinge of alarm come over her. Only, this time, the severe words weren’t directed at her. ‘Don’t put ideas into her head, please, Trudie. London fashions are all very well in their place, but not here.’

Grandmama hasn’t changed, Alix thought, as she waited for the maid to hand the pudding. Not a jot. Then her attention was centred on the plate placed in front of her. Chocolate pudding, wonderful Cook, serving her favourite on the first night she was back.

It was clear that Perdita liked chocolate pudding, too, but there was no need for Grandmama to be so quick with a sharp comment. ‘Not so much, Perdita, please. Chocolate is too rich for you.’

Perdita swiftly took another spoonful. Kind Aunt Trudie distracted Grandmama with a query about flowers, and she was left to consume her pudding in peace.

When she was a girl, Grandmama must have enjoyed things like chocolate, Alix mused as she savoured her pudding. She couldn’t always have been such a puritan. Family portraits hung on the walls of the dining room, and Grandmama was seated beneath a painting of herself when she was a girl, a vital beauty in a pink silk with a bustle, her hair artlessly up, her dress cut low over her white bosom, a fan in her hand. It had been painted by a French artist, and had, Grandpapa had told her, caused a scandal when it was first hung in the Academy summer exhibition.

‘It wasn’t considered at all a suitable picture of the daughter of a Master of a Cambridge college. It was a true likeness, though, that’s just how she looked the night I met her. At a ball.’

It was strange that Grandmama had never taken down that portrait of herself. No one now would recognise the hawklike woman sitting beneath it as being the girl in the painting. Life had emptied her of joy. She’d had tremendous charm, an ancient family friend had once told Alix, memory gleaming in his eyes. ‘When she was a young married woman, she had so much charm she only had to smile at a man to bring him to her side.’

Alix had never been aware of any charm. Her eyes strayed to the picture hanging on the wall at the other end of the table, a three-quarters portrait of a young man in the uniform of an army officer: Jack Richardson, killed in action in 1917. ‘You have his chin, Perdy,’ she said, nodding her head at the painting.

The silence at the table was absolute. What on earth was there in that remark to make Grandmama look like that? Was she still grieving for her youngest son, after nearly twenty years? They all knew he’d been her favourite; perhaps she would never get over it.

Later, when Perdita had gone yawning to bed, Alix and Edwin found themselves alone at last. Grandpapa was in his study, Grandmama had gone to her room, Aunt Trudie was taking the dogs out for a last run. By unspoken agreement, they headed for the billiard room. It was an old haunt of theirs, not least because it was a difficult room for eavesdroppers, being next to the study and only having one door. It was felt to be off-limits to Lipp’s snooping, although, as Edwin observed, one could be sure of nothing where she was concerned.

Alix had spent enough time in the world to know that Lipp wouldn’t be tolerated in any normal household. ‘Other people don’t let themselves be bullied by their servants,’ she told Edwin as he chalked a cue for her.

‘Other people wouldn’t employ Lipp as a maid. What a monster she’s become.’

‘Grandmama’s eyes and ears and feet.’

It was peaceful in the billiard room with its deep, leather-covered armchairs and sofas, the prints and maps on the panelled walls, the soft carpet underfoot, the subdued lighting, and the green baize surface with the red and white balls gleaming beneath the lamp suspended above the table.

Their voices were low to match their quiet surroundings. Outside the curtained windows, in a white world lit only by the sliver of a crescent moon and the chilly sparkle of winter stars, the silence was absolute; within there was only the crackling of the fire and the click of cue against ball.

‘Grandmama hates Perdy,’ Alix said at last. ‘You never told me.’

‘When you’re here most of the time, as I am, you don’t notice it. Though I was a bit taken aback by the way she treated Perdy this evening, I will admit.’

‘She’s much worse than she was with me, and that was bad enough. We have to do something. It can’t be good for Perdy to be the focus of so much dislike, she’ll grow up warped if it goes on.’

‘Perdy’s tougher than you think, or at least she seems to be. I suppose she’s developed a kind of carapace; well, you’d have to, wouldn’t you? Thank God for boarding schools, that’s all.’

‘And to think that one would live to say that!’ Edwin took up a cue and leant over the green surface of the table.

‘What is it about Jack and Grandmama?’ Alix said. Returning after an absence of three years, three years that had taken her to independence and a sense of the strength of her own judgement, she was struck by how complex a woman her grandmother was. She was also struck by the ability Grandmama had to quell and diminish each member of her family. Each living member, that was. ‘There’s some mystery there; it’s more than just years of grief.’

‘I think it’s much, much better not to open that particular can of worms, Lexy.’

‘But don’t you long to know?’

‘Why she was attached to Jack above all her other children? Not really. He was her Benjamin, and for some reason he touched her heart in a way none of the others did. Then, also, he died young, too young to be a disappointment to her, one supposes. No unsatisfactory bride brought home, no making his own way, no setting up a family of his own to take his affection away from his mother. From all I’ve ever heard, he was a wilful man, unpleasant even, judging by how disinclined the locals are to speak of him – those that remember him, that is. You must have noticed that Aunt Trudie never mentions him, and you just try talking about him to Rokeby and watch him clam up.’

‘So he remains our mysterious Uncle Jack,’ said Alix, giving a violent yawn and laying down her cue. ‘Lord, how tired I am. Off to bed, I think; I’ll leave you to turn the lights out.’ She gave her brother an affectionate kiss on his lean cheek.

‘Sleep tight, Lexy. And welcome home.’

TEN

The Great North Road

By arriving early at his office, and working without a break for lunch, Michael wrapped up the last details of the Pegasus designs by mid-afternoon. He wished a Merry Christmas to his colleagues and to Giles Gibson, cycled back to his digs in time to collect his gear and suitcase and caught the four thirty-five train to Waterloo. He took a taxi from the station to Freddie’s flat off Marylebone High Street.

‘Just in time for dinner,’ announced his friend, stacking his cases beside his own suitcases which were already packed and waiting, together with a pile of books, in his small hallway. ‘I thought of getting tickets for a show, but I didn’t, just in case some demanding calculations made you miss your train.’

‘Waste of money buying a seat for me, the way I feel,’ Michael said, smothering a yawn. ‘I’d sleep through any performance. Where shall we dine?’

They walked to Soho, and enjoyed a leisurely Italian meal at Bertorelli’s. ‘Up early tomorrow, old thing,’ Freddie said when they got back to his flat. ‘Long drive ahead of us, and I don’t suppose the roads will be any too good when we get further north.’

So Michael was ruthlessly woken from a deep sleep at seven the next morning and sat down to a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs cooked by Freddie’s man, who came in on a daily basis.

‘Do stop looking at your watch,’ Michael complained, as Freddie checked the time yet again and refused to let him start on another piece of toast.

‘We’ve got to get on, no point in spoiling the run by getting held up this end in the rush hour.’

Freddie was a car fiend, and his big touring Bentley was his pride and joy. Since he loathed driving in a closed car, they had the roof down, and, togged up in leather jackets and helmets, with scarves around their necks, gauntlets on their hands and stout goggles over their eyes, they drove through the heavy London traffic, heading for Potter’s Bar and the Great North Road.

Despite the layers of protective clothing, they were chilled enough to be glad of a stop for coffee at Baldock. Michael had the big Thermos refilled and they were soon back in the car and on their way to Grantham.

‘I dislike Lincolnshire,’ said Freddie. ‘I never drive through this landscape without wanting to be among the northern crags.’

‘I don’t much like the Fens myself,’ he agreed. ‘Never mind, we’ll soon be in sight of hills, and tomorrow we’ll be on the ice, or at least out tobogganing.’

‘It’s sixteen years since the lake froze completely, they say. I can’t wait to see what it’s like, and to be out there on my skates. I go to the rink in London, but there’s nothing to touch skating out of doors.’

‘I was there sixteen years ago.’

‘What, in Westmoreland? That winter, when it last froze?’

‘That winter.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Twelve. It wasn’t much of a holiday for any of us, for I caught a chill and got pneumonia. We never went back to the lakes after that. My mother didn’t fancy going north again.’

‘So it’s sixteen years since you’ve been there. No wonder you didn’t sound too keen when I rang and put the plan to you. Understandable, if you had a bad time there when you were a boy.’

‘If I didn’t jump at your offer straight away, it was because of worries about leaving my work, that’s all. I’m glad my chief almost threw me out; I intend to spend all the hours of daylight on the ice or on the snow. I’ve been caged up in the office for too long, and I need to get fit.’

The last miles of the journey were slow and tedious, with an icy surface on the dark country roads and the great headlamps lighting up the icy filigree of the roadside hedges, making eerie patterns out of branches and tree trunks. They were more than glad to reach the inn, where a solicitous Mrs Dixon showed them to low-beamed bedrooms with creaking wooden floors and panelled walls hung with faded prints and framed maps and assorted copper items. Fires flickered in the grates, and downstairs, while they waited for dinner to be served, a huge log fire burned in the wide, centuries-old stone fireplace.

The inn was full, and all the conversation was about the lake. ‘Holding splendidly,’ said a middle-aged man with a bushy moustache. ‘Brought your skates, have you?’

‘We certainly have,’ replied Freddie. ‘Out on the ice first thing, just the ticket, isn’t it, Michael?’

Michael was more than half asleep in the warmth of the fire, but he nodded in agreement.

‘Didn’t I read that they had bonfires on the ice last time it froze?’ Freddie said.

‘No good asking me,’ he said with a yawn. ‘I don’t remember much about that winter.’

‘They did indeed,’ the innkeeper said, coming in to summon his guests to dinner. ‘Braziers to roast chestnuts on and warm your hands, and a huge bonfire as well. There were some who skated holding great flaming torches, oh, that was a sight to see.’

‘Sounds rather like the Inquisition on Ice,’ murmured Freddie, as they went in to their soup.

They found themselves sitting at the same table as the man with the moustache, and two young women. He was a solicitor from Manchester, he told them. The young women smiled, and said they were teachers, PT teachers. One of them ventured that she loved winter sports, didn’t he agree the frozen lake was topping?

Nice, ordinary people, thought Michael, as he drank his soup and let his gaze drift around the small dining room. A family sat at the next table, father, mother and two dark-haired sons of about fourteen and sixteen. A fair younger sister was busily making bread pellets and dropping them into her soup, despite her mother’s protestations. An older man, tall and thin, sat at a small table by himself, a monocle in one eye, a book laid beside his plate. Peaceful people, enjoying a respite from work and duties, like himself.

Ordinary people who might soon be plunged into the furnace of war, if what Giles Gibson said were true. Michael wondered if the prospect of war was the cause of the slight feeling of unease that he couldn’t otherwise explain. More likely it was simple weariness after a long, cold drive.

‘They say there’s a glamorous American woman who’s taken a house here over Christmas and the new year,’ announced the young woman next to him. ‘Practically no one’s seen her, but the woman at the Post Office is sure she’s a film star.’

The solicitor laughed. ‘To people in an out of the way place like this, any visiting American is immediately assumed to be a film star. What would a film star be doing here, I’d like to know?’

‘Skating?’

‘Plenty of winter sports in America, my dear. No need to cross the Atlantic for ice and snow. We get excited about it, because we don’t often see weather as cold and frosty as this, but Americans would make nothing of it, take my word for it.’

She looked disappointed. ‘I hope she is someone famous, I’d like to get her autograph if she is.’

‘If she’s famous and over here, I expect she’s travelling incognito, and wouldn’t thank you for asking her for an autograph,’ Freddie said. ‘We’ll see her on the ice in dark glasses and with a scarf covering her hair and face, and shapeless clothes so that we shan’t recognise her legs. All glamorous film stars have lovely legs, you know.’

The young women both giggled at that. ‘She’s got a companion with her, so the woman at the Post Office told me. Her husband, I suppose, but you never know with film people, do you?’

The woman at the next table cast a frowning glance towards them, her mouth pursed up in disapproval. Her sons were listening avidly to the discussion about the American visitor, and she gave them a quelling look before starting up a very dull conversation of her own about whether the scarf she had bought for Uncle Bobbie would prove to be warm enough for such bitter weather as they were having.

After dinner, the solicitor bore Freddie away to the tap for a game of shove ha’penny. ‘I haven’t played for years,’ Freddie said.

‘Good, then I’ll beat you. Better than taking on the locals, they have a way with the ha’pennies.’

Michael wandered into the room that served as bar and sitting room, pipe in hand, and ordered a brandy. ‘And something for yourself,’ he added to the landlord.

He sat down in a settle by the fire, and the landlord joined him in a minute or two, a pewter mug of bitter ale in his hand. They sat in companionable silence while Michael lit his pipe, and then the landlord spoke. ‘We’re fair glad you and Dr Kerr were able to come, Mr Wrexham. We were in a way to being perplexed about those empty rooms. No trouble filling them, you’ll say, in weather such as we’re having, but we’d turned away two visitors, and it’ud look bad if you hadn’t come, and we’d got the rooms spare after all, for they were insistent they’d have the rooms if they weren’t taken, and I’d not be wanting them under my roof.’

‘Why, what was wrong with them?’ Michael asked idly, watching the smoke from the fire curling up the chimney.

‘If you’d seen them …’ The landlord pursed his lips, shook his head. ‘The moment they came in here, looking for me, I thought, aye, now, here’s summat to think about, and if these two men don’t mean trouble, my name’s not Robert Dixon. Very short hair one of them had. Nothing wrong with short hair, but there’s no need to look like you might have taken your own razor to your scalp. Bristly, I’d call it. That was the bigger of the two men. Although it was the other that did the talking. He had short hair, too, but more gentlemanlike, if you take my meaning. And a smooth way of talking. I fancied, just for a moment, that I’d seen him somewhere before, but the wife says no, that was just my imagining.’