(No appologies for the romantic theme. It started off with an idea for a sort of who dunnit and ended up like this. Ho hum. A product of last year's snow.)
The snow fell all day and then all night and, when she woke up the next day, it was still falling.
She sat with the family waiting for it to stop, thinking of Henry and hoping that he would get there on time. All day she watched as the large fluffy flakes swirled, faltered then multiplied until a new blizzard began. The window was banking up with the stuff and even the cat had decided to stay indoors but still she held her hopes high.
At three o clock her mother said that the butcher boy from the village was telling everyone that the last train from London would be the four o clock- the snow was getting too heavy to clear and it was going to be a cold, white Christmas after all. And so, despite the pleading from her mother and sister, she pushed along the lane, the snow compressing in soft crunches as she moved through it until the lights of the station turned the white landscape into a honey coloured glow of hope.
The last train came and it was trudging out of the station in heavy shrugs when she looked down the darkening platform and saw him standing there, just as he had done earlier in the year, with his bags at his feet and his hands at his hips. His cap was quickly coating in the renewed flurries of snow as he looked quizzically at her as if to ask “What have you done? Why did you summon up this white mess during my leave?”
She hardly seemed touch the snow as she walked back with him to the house. The war was now far away, at least for this Christmas, and all her fears could be buried in the cold dark as she hugged his arm and listened to his voice.
At home it was strangely quiet. The tea seemed more reserved than before. The conversation was hard, but she understood as she saw the reluctance in his eyes. The trenches were not a subject for conversation. The hardships were bad for a junior officer like him but much worse for the men under his command and he was not one to pretend that his destiny and theirs was in some way separate. He cared for those who depended on him. He had even said that he truly loved his men and she loved him even more for that.
The silence of the snow was intense during that night. Tomorrow was Christmas and they would go to church before breakfast then settle in for a quiet day as she helped her mother prepare the Christmas meal. She had talked about the family Christmas so many times with Henry that she was convinced he knew the whole routine as well as she did herself but this was their first Christmas here and it all seemed to be filled with unnecessary tensions and difficulties. Her father seemed to be both proud of Henry’s achievements and cross with him, too.
In the church that morning the vicar had gone on and on about the sacrifice that “our young men” were making in the trenches and she had felt Henry stiffen at her side as he had done in the summer when he had last been with them. She had squeezed his hand and they had shared one of those silent moments, when everything around them had disappeared as they focussed just on each other. He had called such times as “telescope moments” because they seemed to cut the distances down to inches and distil minutes into seconds. She loved that sort of feeling and she knew he loved such moments too.
At home things seemed to get harder. Her mother appeared to harbour some secret feeling of resentment towards him; which made it difficult for her feel comfortable as she sat with Henry in the drawing room or when she announced that she was going to go out for a walk with him before the meal was served.
But she needed that time alone with him. She needed to be able to talk freely with him and the longer they stayed in the family home the harder it was to spend any time in private with him or to talk with him at all. It was this damnable war, she kept thinking. This war will be the end of us all. But she kept telling herself to shrug this sort of thinking off. It was going to end soon and if she let these feelings dominate her life she would never be able to keep any sort of sense of hope in her heart – she would collapse within herself before she had any chance of having a good life with Henry. And goodness knows, he deserved something much better than that.
On the path by the river she stood looking at the ragged ice hanging from the river bank and commented on the way the water seemed to flow across the stones in the middle of the river. The water was almost effervescent and appeared to dance across the rocks as if it was reluctant to touch them.
“The river wants to be somewhere else. It is too cold to be here and it wants to pass through as if it has not even touched the ground it has passed across.” She said, and he laughed.
“We have no choice,” He said, “we touch everything and everything touches us.”
She asked what he meant but he just shrugged. Pressing him again, he said, “Everything we see is changed by us and we are changed by it.”
She watched the water going by and imagined that her act of looking at it might change someone’s life further down the river, or, perhaps cause someone to change their life as they gazed into the water of an ocean a thousand miles away.
“How romantic!” She heard him say, then she slipped along the bank trying to catch up with him as he laughed along the way.
That night, as the afterglow of Christmas seemed to calm everyone, her sister turned to her and told her how much she loved her. She said, “No matter what happens, I will always be with you.” And it felt so sudden and final, despite the fact that they had just spent such a wonderful Christmas together.
What sort of premonition does this hold? She pondered the question as she prepared for bed and then sneaked downstairs to see if she could catch Henry before he went to bed.
She had expected he would spend a little time with her father as the two were fond of cigars and brandy or other spirits. Henry had come home in the summer talking about the merits of whisky with her father and she had been pleased to see her father experimenting with whisky as a result. But tonight she was listening out for that silent space that often opens up after an friendly but intense conversation.
She slipped into the kitchen and had just sat down at the table when she heard her father mounting the stairs.
She found Henry in the back room, where they tended to have their meals and where the large windows (now popularly called “French windows”) looked out over the garden.
The snow was no longer large and fluffy flakes. They were tiny flecks of ice drifting across the scene in a meteor shower of dazzling slow motion.
She watched as the sparkling dusting of ice coated everything, even the snow itself, in a light frosting of ice.
“You know I love you.” He said, and her heart felt a sudden release of pressure as she felt immensely good inside.
“Of course, you know I love you too.”
There was silence, then he said to her, “I worry about you.”
“You said this when you came here in the summer.”
“I know. It does not make it easier.”
She wanted to ask when he would be able to come back again but she felt that it was not a good idea.
Then, before going to bed she asked what he thought their future might be like. She wanted some reassurance. She was hoping for a simple answer, an affirmation of their future together, but his reply was vague and ambiguous. He told her that she could always rely on his love... but she would have to rely on her own strength to see her through.
She lay in bed seeing his face, watching her mother and father, feeling her sister’s resentment and her heart seemed to sink into nothingness.
In the morning, the sky from her window had such an intense pale blue that she felt that Henry’s eyes had been stripped of their colour and painted there, from the ground to the distant horizon. The trees were dramatic etchings cut in black lines edged with white and the landscape formed layers of white and dark across the valley beyond the village.
The table was set for breakfast; three places each with plates, cups cutlery and her favourite napkins. The boiled eggs were hidden in the thick towel, as always and the teapot was in its cosy. The fire was warming, too as her sister sat, holding some bread on the end of the long fork, toasting it against the fierce heat of the flames. Her mother came in from the kitchen and smiled at her.
“How are you this morning?” Her voice contained an uncertainty that was also reflected in her eyes.
“I’m fine.” Was all she could muster, but she felt that there was something empty, something hollow inside her.
She got up from the table and started walking to the stairs. By the time she was on the first step she was running. Her mother called something to her but she was already at the landing. She didn’t even knock on the door to Henry’s room. She just burst in, expecting to waken him up; hoping that he would be able to reassure her.
The room was empty.
The bed had been stripped and the bare pillows were stacked up on top of the folded quilt on the chair at the bottom of the bed. The small fire was empty and cold and the room felt abandoned. The small bedside table had a thin coating of dust and the window needed cleaning. Her quick breath form little clouds of condensation as her heart beat quickly. She sat down on the cold bed as her sister entered the room.
The two sat quietly on the bed looking out at that pale blue sky.
“We thought we had lost you.” Her sister said as she leant closer and gave her a hug.
“Did you know his eyes are the same colour as the sky?”
“Let’s go back down stairs, its cold in here.”
“We were going to spend the rest of our lives together.”
“You already feel cold. Come and get something warm to eat.”
“There were only three places for breakfast. I thought he had left during the night the this room is so empty.”
“I know.”
“So cold.”
“I know.”
“When they said he was missing, I felt that there was at least some hope. He couldn’t just leave me like that.”
She stood up with her sister and they walked towards the door.
“I don’t even have a photograph of him and I worry every day that I might begin to forget what he looks like.”
“His mother sent us a photograph last month but you refused to look at it.”
As they walked down the stairs her sister agreed to find Henry’s picture after breakfast. Then they would go for their traditional Boxing Day walk by the river – it had been such a long time since they had gone out together. As they sat quietly eating breakfast the bells began to ring in the church at the bottom of the lane and a cockerel began to crow in their neighbour’s garden.
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