Snow Sisters Page 3

‘Well, I have. Don’t freak.’ Meredith gave a mock shiver. ‘It’s a bit creepy, mind, dust and billions of spiders. Rats too, probably.’ She pulled a face and grinned again. ‘And there’s one of those dressmakers’ dummy things up there too, without a head. I thought it was a ghost at first, except everyone knows you can’t actually see ghosts.’

  ‘How many times?’ Verity tried to control her annoyance. ‘How many times have you been up in the attic?’

  ‘Oh give over, Verity. I was bored and you did tell me to find something to do.’ Meredith placed her hands on the wooden box. ‘It was under a dustsheet, in an old wooden trunk with a pile of moth-eaten clothes.’ She hooked a finger under the catch. ‘Look.’

  With another, slower flourish she opened the lid revealing a sewing box lined with faded paper the colour of a robin’s egg. In the top lay a shallow tray divided into compartments with a silk pin-cushion in the centre. In each of the sections lay a collection of sewing aids: a tarnished silver thimble, ivory-handled tools; a cloth measuring tape in a case hand-embroidered with flowers, and a pair of scissors with mother-of-pearl handles.

  Meredith lifted out the tray and underneath Verity saw reels of faded thread, another tape measure in an ornate brass barrel, scraps of lace, trails of ribbon and a felt needle case. Cards of cloth buttons, black metal hooks and eyes dotted with rust marks; small skeins of embroidery silk and wool in neat, washed-out bundles.

  Running her finger over a piece of cream lace as delicate as a snowflake, Verity swallowed. The hairs on her arm stood on end. ‘Oh my days, Meredith, this is amazing.’

  ‘I know.’ Meredith reached deeper into the box and like a conjurer pulling a rabbit from a hat, produced half a dozen little red flannel hearts in various stages of construction, some stuffed with kapok, each one showing tiny, immaculate stitches. ‘Aren’t they incredible? When I picked them up, they made me go all shivery.’

  Although the flannel was faded it was still possible to sense the vibrancy of the original colour. The little hearts lay in Meredith’s cupped hands like old-fashioned Christmas tree decorations.

  ‘And wait until you see this.’ Meredith laid the hearts to one side and lifted out a folded piece of cloth. Before she opened it, she gazed at her sister with a look of such seriousness Verity’s heart skipped a beat.

  ‘It’s her.’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘The mad girl.’

  ‘Meredith, what on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘The girl Nain told us about, the one who lived here. You remember.’

  In a moment of recollection, Verity did.

  Once upon a time, they say a sad, mad girl lived in this house…

  Nain had told them the story as if it were a memory, although she said no one knew for certain if it was true. Her mother had told her – and everyone knew Dilys hadn’t been the full shilling, God rest her soul.

  ‘It’s a bit unkind to call the poor thing mad though,’ she’d said. ‘In those days, well, things were different. Dreadful, really. People had a peculiar attitude to anyone they decided didn’t fit in, or were troublesome or a bit twp. It wasn’t uncommon to send them to asylums.’

  As Meredith unfolded the fabric, a picture emerged – a pattern of cross-stitched images: a tiny house, a cat and a row of birds each one perfectly rendered in a meticulous hand. Below them, the letters of the alphabet in a neat line, followed by the numbers: zero to ten.

  ‘See,’ Meredith whispered, ‘it’s her name.’

  Beneath the pictures and the letters and numbers, Verity gazed at the words, equally beautifully worked in faded wool and intersected by crosses: Angharad Elen Lewis X Age 9 Years X 1870.

  I was not, it was agreed, a pretty girl.

  There was a wideness to my eyes that made people uncomfortable. I had uneven teeth and flat, brown hair resisting the tightest of curling rags; a girl who ripped her gowns and lost her gloves, whose bonnets slipped and revealed too much of her disobedient hair.

  As a child, I slept badly and this too was viewed as a flaw. When I was five, Cook suggested fresh air. Against her better judgement, Mama agreed. One full moon night the first moths appeared: fluttering against the lampshades scattering silver dust from their wings. I was enchanted by them and straight away began to settle. Neither my mother nor the maid had any idea why, in the morning, they sometimes found moths in my bed.

  Learning to sleep was simply one of a list of things expected of me. My life was ordered by wretched rules concerning gloves and hemlines and hair, decorum and a mantra of manners.

  And not asking to go to school.

  My duties were plain and prescribed, my enjoyments inconsequential. The linen handkerchiefs my mother insisted I hem bored me witless and set my eyes squinting. My sewing rarely came up to her exacting standards. And when she discovered the flannel hearts I’d started fashioning, her eyes stopped their darting and alighted on me and the air in the room fell still.

  Frippery she called them and forbade me to continue. I enjoyed making them – they were bright and cheerful, like a robin’s breast and as comforting. If I held them close to my own heart, I could hear my blood and know I was alive.

  I sewed the hated handkerchiefs in public, and my hearts in secret.

  Four

  ‘Do you think we ought to tell someone?’

  Meredith was horrified. ‘Are you crazy?’

  ‘What if it’s valuable?’

  ‘What if it is? I don’t care. It’s not like I’d want to sell it.’ Meredith was adamant and already establishing ownership of the box. ‘We can’t tell anyone. It’s a secret, Verity, it has to be. Allegra will take it off me. Or she’ll make it a massive thing and it won’t be mine anymore. She does that, you know she does.’ Her gaze became beseeching. ‘She can’t bear to be left out.’

  Verity couldn’t argue with that. Allegra intruded, not like a normal parent, checking to see if homework was done or did they want her to read a story or brush their hair. What she wanted was their secrets, so she didn’t feel left out and could make them about her.

  Verity sighed. ‘All right, although we ought to tell Nain, it’s still her house. And if you’re right about it belonging to…’

  ‘Of course I am. It’s her name. God, Verity, don’t be so feeble.’

  ‘Don’t call me that.’ Verity had the strangest feeling she was out of her depth.

  Meredith snapped back. ‘You’re jealous because you didn’t find it.’

  ‘All right, all right; don’t let’s fight. I just think it might be important.’

  Meredith picked up one of the flannel hearts and held it in her hand. ‘Of course it’s important.’ She swallowed. ‘See? Look at my arm?’ The pale hairs on her skin stood on end.

  ‘I was meant to find it. It’s a sign.’

  Verity stared at her sister. ‘Don’t, Meredith.’

  ‘Don’t what? How do you know? And even if it’s only an old sewing box, I found it and I don’t want you to tell anyone, including Nain.’ Her mouth pursed. ‘It’s – non-negotiable.’

  Verity had no problem with secrets, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to encourage Meredith in what was beginning to sound like one of her obsessions.

  ‘Promise me, Verity.’ Meredith was looking mutinous. ‘You can’t say anything.’

  ‘All right, I won’t.’

  ‘Oh, you’re the best sister ever.’ Meredith clapped her hands together like a child half her age. ‘Shall we have a proper look?’ She began emptying the box, examining each item in detail. ‘Be careful mind. I want everything to go back in order.’ She picked up a square of yellowed lawn. ‘Look at those stitches. Is it a handkerchief? How could you see to make stitches so small? And imagine having to sew hankies?’

  ‘Imagine having to sew, full stop.’

  ‘Do you think she went to school?’ Meredith fingered one of the flannel hearts again. ‘Or did she sit in her room all day, making these. Maybe they kept her locked in the tower.’

  Ver
ity smiled. ‘I doubt it. She might have had a governess though. Girls did in those days.’

  ‘And that’s why she went mad.’

  ‘Don’t be soft.’

  ‘Well, I would; having some rumpled old spinster teaching me Latin.’ Meredith arched her eyebrows, adopted a faux accent. ‘Or how to play the pianoforte,my dear.’

  ‘Idiot. A girl in the 1870s wouldn’t have learned Latin.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Most of them weren’t that well-educated.’

  ‘A bit like us then.’

  Verity nodded. ‘Exactly like us.’ She ran her finger across the embroidered sampler. ‘Don’t you sometimes wish we could go to school?’

  ‘No way! I’d rather have a governess. You could escape from one of those. School would be horrendous and I never want to go.’ Meredith refolded the handkerchief. ‘It would be a nightmare. Allegra wouldn’t buy us the right clothes for one thing; we’d be freaks and no one would speak to us.’

  ‘Doesn’t it bother you that we don’t know anything? We’re quite ignorant, you know.’

  ‘No, we aren’t. We know loads of stuff. Well, I do.’

  Verity didn’t believe they knew anything. ‘Speak for yourself. Most of the time, I feel like a total idiot.’

  ‘Silly, you’re clever as anything.’ Meredith began folding the sampler. ‘Nain always says you’re the smart one.’

  ‘Well, if I am, it’s down to her. She’s the one who made sure we learned to read and write and do our sums, not Allegra.’

  ‘I know.’ Meredith tucked the sampler into the box. ‘You can’t ever suggest it though, Verity.’ She paused. ‘School isn’t only about the clothes.’

  Verity said nothing. She understood her sister’s ambivalence mirrored her own, in that it was about the scrutiny of her peers. Unlike her sister, Verity knew she would find a way to cope with school because secretly it was what she longed for. Meredith’s fear ran deeper. Singular and quirky, she inhabited a world largely of her own making – one she instinctively knew might make her the subject of ridicule and mockery.

  ‘You promised.’

  ‘I didn’t, actually.’ Verity raised her hands. ‘Oh, don’t worry; I shan’t say anything but we can’t go on like this forever, Meri. We’ll grow up completely thick and unemployed.’

  Meredith began putting the contents of the sewing box away. ‘I don’t want a job. I’m going to be a writer.’

  ‘That’s a job, ninny. And you need to be able to spell.’

  ‘No you don’t. You write it down and people check it for you. It’s called editing.’

  Laughing, Verity found a mixing bowl, took a bag of flour from a cupboard and dumped it on the table. ‘Okay, you win. No school.’

  ‘Right answer,’ Meredith said. ‘We’ll grow up illiterate and take rich lovers so it won’t matter.’

  Verity reached for the measuring scales. ‘I shan’t. I’d rather die. I’m never getting married either.’

  ‘Well, as I shan’t fall in love, that’s both of us on the shelf.’

  ‘How do you know you won’t fall in love?’

  ‘Because nobody with a brain cell believes that true love’s kiss rubbish?’

  ‘I thought you loved fairytales.’

  ‘That’s you.’

  ‘No, I prefer myths.’

  ‘You’re such a pedant, Verity. And yes, I do like fairytales; so long as they don’t have dopey princes in them.’

  ‘Yes, it’s always the princes who mess things up.’ Verity wasn’t overly romantic, even so she did think if the kiss came from the right person it could turn out to be perfect.

  ‘I’m going to put this in my room.’ Meredith closed the lid on the sewing box, picked it up and hugged it to her chest. ‘I’m going to take care of it. And take care of her.’

  ‘It could be nothing.’

  ‘It’s something, Verity. I know it is.’ She held the box tenderly. ‘And don’t forget – no telling.’

  Verity reached for the blue eggs. ‘Okay, I told you, I promise. About all of it. Go on, then come back and help me make a cake. At least it’s one thing we’re good at.’

  ‘And then I’ll let you take me to the beach.’

  ‘Well, aren’t I the lucky one.’

  Meredith’s eyes sparkled. ‘If you keep my secret, I’ll stay on the beach until the sun goes down.’

  Five

  There they are.

  From the window of her untidy bedroom, Allegra could see them, trailing along the beach. It would have been Verity’s idea; dragging her sister out in the freezing cold.

  Over the years a path had been worn through the grass. It led from the edge of the garden where a great fallen oak tree the girls called the lookout lay, sloped down the field to a wooden stile and a ledge marking the beginning of the beach. A grey cliff reached toward the shore. As a child, Allegra had been afraid of it: her mother told her it was a dragon and the idea gave her nightmares.

  She’s still ruining my sleep, always nagging me about something, as if I’m incapable of looking after her precious house.

  Gull House oppressed Allegra; her mother’s unspoken assertion that she remained its mistress irked.

  All shecares about is this dump, and her brother. If she loves me like she says, it’s not the way Pa loved me.

  When her father died, Allegra had been distraught. She was seventeen and too young to deal with the death of a man she adored, and who adored her back.

  It was the first abandonment but not the last.

  Two years later, when Idris came on the scene, Allegra fell hopelessly in love. Idris was a loner and she, lonely.

  He was shy at first and it had been endearing. They met in a clichéd moment you couldn’t make up, in a record shop in town. She was listening to Ketty Lester singing Love Letters and when he asked her why, she said why not and he laughed and called her a romantic.

  His eyes were as blue as the sky and her insides twisted as if they’d come undone. Quickly inseparable they wandered along the cliffs, across the beach below Gull House where they wrote love notes to one another in the sand.

  She had wanted to be married in church. Idris wasn’t a churchgoer; he said it would be hypocritical. It was the one and only time he won an argument with her. As a protest, she decided to get married in red. Everyone who knew her said it was a terrible idea. Red was for danger and debt and martyrdom; it tempted fate and tasted of rust and blood. Allegra was headstrong, and furious at being thwarted. And in any case, she knew better.

  Ignoring the warnings, she stitched her wedding gown at night by candlelight. In the shadowy light the silk appeared darker and she sewed her tiny secret stitches, not noticing when she pricked her finger or the blood as it turned into invisible stains. On her wedding day the sun shone bright as hope. Allegra’s hair and dress glittered like fire and rubies and people found themselves digging out their sunglasses.

  There was no honeymoon; nothing memorable to mark the day, only a blood red dress and a pearl ring so small it didn’t fit.

  She hadn’t thought she minded.

  Twisting the ring round her little finger, she tasted old tears on the back of her throat.

  You left because my love was too much for you. Because you weren’t man enough.

  From time to time a different man would cross her path and be invited in. Allegra would decide to give love another chance, until love let her down again.

  Men were cowards and all the same.

  Rolling a cigarette she struck a match and focused on the rock face – saw it for what it was – full of the kind of colours only an artist could see: gold, rust and sparkling quartz; slate grey and purple.

  Art’s real. It’s the only thing I need.

  Today the sea was full of colour too – steely blue threaded with bands of amethyst – storm colours more suited to winter.

  It crossed her mind Verity might be right about the snow. Allegra disliked snow. She wanted to be warm and rarely was; she was t
oo thin.

  She couldn’t help wishing her elder daughter wasn’t so prosaic.

  They’re obsessed with it. Every year the same: when’s it going to snow?

  Pulling her shawl closer, she shivered. Watching the girls, heads bent close, whispering like little birds, Allegra felt left out of whatever conspiracy they were surely conjuring. Cigarette smoke trailed from her mouth and she stroked her neck, her breath dry in her throat, and coughed.

  It isn’t normal. Daughters are supposed to tell their mother everything.

  She watched the way Verity walked across the pebbles, her head tilted, the way his used to, and an old scar bruised the edge of her heart.

  Allegra didn’t understand Verity one bit. She had expected a firstborn daughter to look like her, admire her and want to share clothes and secrets. Verity looked too much like Idris, and when Meredith was born – the image of Allegra – she wondered if a trick had been played on her. From the beginning, Verity claimed her sister. At night, if Meredith had a bad dream and woke up, she ran along the landing to her sister’s bedroom and crawled in beside her. Allegra experienced a jealousy that burned and left blisters on her heart. The following morning Meredith would always tell her mother about the bad dream; Allegra would stroke her hair and try not to mind it was Verity who had dried her tears.

  Verity ought to tell me when Meredith has nightmares: send her sister to me.

  Although she rarely said so in words, Allegra sensed Verity questioned her about everything. Her blue eyes sometimes held scornful lights. The scent of Verity was sharp as lemons; dusty as old feathers and dried-up roses. Once she saw which of her daughters smiled the most and admired her – the one who smelled of honey and stars – Allegra transferred her expectations from her eldest to her youngest in the blink of an eye.

  She stubbed out her cigarette; cleared her throat and turned from the window.

  I am afraid of the sea.

  It wasn’t always that way.

  Occasionally a maid would be instructed to take me (and my brother if he was at home) to the beach. These outings were an escape from Mama and her constant supervision. At one end of the beach the cliff unfolded in a rippling curve, a great primordial creature reminding me of a dinosaur or a dragon.