Midwinter Break Read online

  MIDWINTER BREAK

  Bernard MacLaverty

  W. W. Norton & Company

  Independent Publishers Since 1923

  New York • London

  for all the grandchildren

  MIDWINTER BREAK

  In the bathroom Stella was getting ready for bed. Gerry had left the shaving mirror at the magnifying face and she was examining her eyebrows. She licked the tip of her index finger and smoothed both of them. Then turned to her eyelids. She was sick of it all – the circles of cotton wool, the boiled and sterilised water in the saucer, the ointments, the waste bin full of cotton buds.

  She said goodnight to Gerry and, on her way to the bedroom, passed their luggage in the hall. She switched on the late night news on the small radio beside her bed and got into her pyjamas. Quickly, because the bedroom air was cold. She saw no point in paying good money to heat a room all day for a minute’s comfort last thing at night.

  Before getting into bed she turned off the electric blanket. Now and again she’d fallen asleep with it still on. By the time Gerry came to bed she felt and looked awful. ‘Like fried bacon,’ was the way he described her.

  She loved this hour to herself – this separation at the end of every day. Her hot-water bottle, the electric blanket, the radio voices. Gerry, out of action, in another room listening to music on his headphones. Having a nightcap, no doubt. Or two or three. The storm doors locked, the windows bolted. The place safe. Sometimes after the news she read for a while in the silence. The sound of a page turning. The absence of talk. But of late she’d been too tired to read, even to hold a book. Hardbacks were out of the question. There was a tipping point when she knew she was going to ‘get over’. Her head would go down on the pillow, her hand creep out from under the covers to get rid of the book or to switch off the radio. The duties and the menus and the lists melted away. Responsibilities were such that nothing could be done at this hour. They were hidden behind a curtain but would return with a swish first thing in the morning. And before she knew, she was sound asleep.

  Her insomnia, if it came, happened in the middle of the night. Anywhere between three and six she could be seen curled on the sofa sipping hot milk, nibbling a biscuit. And her wakefulness could continue for hours. In bed or pacing the floor. At such times her worries and angst were on full display. Magnified, like the mirror. A worry in the wee small hours was a different beast entirely to a daylight worry. And that would keep her awake. Maybe she would get over again in an hour or two but there was no guarantee.

  There was a blast of music. Her eyes opened. What in the name of God . . .? She closed them again, compressed them. Burrowed her right ear into the pillow. Pulled up the duvet to cover her other ear. But still the music pounded. What in the name of God was he up to?

  Gerry sat staring ahead. The television was off and the place silent. There was a cone of light above his head which left the rest of the room in darkness. He considered the sofa a defensible space. It had a concavity which fitted him exactly. Everything he needed was to hand – favourite books – music and film guides, CDs. His architecture books were shelved in the study. In the bathroom Stella had just gone through her pre-bed routine. He heard the snap of the bolt as she came out.

  ‘Goodnight,’ she said. She came to the end of the sofa smelling of toothpaste and finger-waved a little before going. ‘Don’t forget we have an early start.’

  He waited until he heard the bedroom door close then went to the drinks cupboard. In the kitchen he filled the Kilkenny jug. Back at the cupboard he poured himself a whiskey in his favourite tumbler and topped it to the brim with water. He liked the heaviness of the Waterford crystal, the heft of it – it made the drink feel more substantial, more potent. He went back to the sofa and set the drink on the bookshelf. It glowed yellow in the light. The shelf was lower than the arm of the sofa so that if his wife came in again she would not see it. Not that he was trying to hide it from her – he would say to anyone and everyone, ‘At night when Stella goes to bed I have a substantial dram and listen to music.’ But with the glass out of sight she could not see the volume. For her, a small glass of wine with a meal was ‘a sufficiency’. And good for the heart.

  The central heating was set to switch off at Stella’s bedtime. The radiators ticked as they cooled. The place creaked and the wind moved outside. He smelled the flowers on the table. Stella had bought stargazer lilies and now that it was night they were sending out their fragrance. He sipped his drink. It was unlike her to have flowers that would waste their sweetness on the desert air when they were away.

  He chose a CD. His headphones were marked L and R but the letters had all but worn away. He slid them on. Although the music came loud and utterly clear he turned up the volume. He drank again, lowering the level, savouring. The whiskey was gold and the facets of the cut glass, silver. It would make him sleep – give him a good night’s rest and he’d be ready for action in the morning. There was nothing worse than setting off on holiday feeling lousy. Of course he would need another couple of these to get him over.

  Headphones cut him off from the real world and, sometimes, even here on the sofa he felt vulnerable. Anybody could slip into the room behind him – even though the front door was locked and all the windows bolted. Was it another leftover from Belfast? Loyalist murder gang kill retired Catholic architect in Scotland. He could be garrotted from behind. So much for defensible space. He turned up the volume even higher. It was a wonderful noise – with the horns going full blast and the kettledrums thudding. He congratulated the composer and the musicians with frequent sips from his drink. Then there was a violent flashing. For a moment he thought it might have been lightning – or an explosion.

  ‘Gerry.’

  He looked up. Stella was in the doorway in her dressing gown, her hand on the light switch.

  ‘Sorry,’ Gerry shouted above the din of the music. ‘My fault.’ He jumped to his feet and snatched the headphones off. It had happened before but even he looked startled at the volume in the room.

  ‘Holy fuck.’ He bent over and switched off the main loudspeakers.

  ‘I don’t know which is worse – that expression or the racket,’ said Stella. ‘If you want to end up living on your own you’re going the right way about it.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t realise.’ The room went silent except for the tinny sounds coming from the headphones around his neck. ‘I didn’t know . . .’

  ‘You’ll damage your hearing. Next door’ll be in to complain. It’s half twelve,’ Stella said. ‘And we’ve an early start.’

  ‘Everything packed?’

  ‘What are you talking about? I was trying to sleep.’

  ‘How long were you standing there?’

  ‘A minute or so.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘You wouldn’t have heard,’ she said. ‘Didn’t want to give you a fright, maybe a heart attack. Then I’d have nobody to go on holiday with.’

  ‘I’ll not be long,’ he said.

  She went back to bed. He poured himself another whiskey.

  ‘Just a smidgen.’

  But he poured another smidgen on top of it. Two smidgens make a bigger smidgen. The world seemed to recognise only drunk or sober. What about the in-between – the spectrum, the subtle gradations? The first drink brings a little distancing – a concentration on another world – an ironing around shirt buttons, a smoothing of wrinkles. Stella would laugh at him. ‘You never ironed a thing in your life – you’d only burn yourself. To say nothing of the shirt.’ But he had ironed enough to know. The sharp prow nosing around, the material flattening in the heat. More drink and he began to soar. To spread his wings, rising on the thermals of the first couple of glasses. Later he unleashe
d what was tied down. Freed what was trapped. He began to listen sharper. To see more. To love better. Tomorrow – they were off again. A midwinter break. How privileged! Despite having retired years ago, his life was punctuated with visits to places around the world which seemed like holidays. A talk here – a paper there. Architectural jurist, receiver of honours, a taker-up of freebies. And most of the time he insisted on having Stella with him.

  * * *

  He wakened. Almost pitch-black, but not quite. His mouth was dry and his nose cold. His eyes adjusted. There was a faint outline of the pulled curtains – outside a little less darkness. It would be somewhere between five and seven. Every time he woke it was the same stupid debate – would he or would he not get up for the bathroom? He knew he wouldn’t get back to sleep if he didn’t. He eased the bedclothes to one side, sat up and took a mouthful of water. The bedroom was like a fridge. The sound of Stella’s steady breathing. He inserted his feet into his slippers and stood. Sudden chandeliers in the darkness. Only for a second. Jesus – he thought they’d gone away. Spiders of light, sparks, flashes. A prelude to a stroke. He backed out of his slippers and lay down again beneath the duvet. They could be something else. The result of too much drinking? How much was too much? He knew he was doing himself harm. After Hogmanay he’d made a resolution to give up. But not yet, O Lord, not yet. He’d told his optician about the sparklers the last time she’d tested him for replacement glasses. Left them at his backside somewhere and even though he’d stuck a label with his name and address inside the case, nobody’d had the generosity to send them back. What use would they be? All glasses were bespoke. If somebody else wears his glasses they won’t see a bloody thing.

  ‘Better or worse?’ the optician asked.

  ‘Better.’ Another lens inserted.

  ‘Better or worse?’

  ‘Worse.’

  No matter what, it would be another hundred and twenty quid.

  ‘If you could rest your chin here . . .’

  ‘On the chin rest?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The stare into this woman’s eyes, the fear that she would smell his old man’s breath, being only inches away. Glimpsing his own retinal veins like blood-red winter trees. Déjà vu the confessional – the lowered light level, the proximity of the listening face. How long has it been since your last eye appointment, my child? Alone or with others? Better or worse?

  The optician dismissed his worries about the chandeliers – everybody gets them at your age, she said. It’s when you stand too quickly.

  He still needed the bathroom. Rising from the bed, slowly this time – no fireworks to speak of – shuffling forward, finding the door. He knows how to walk his home in the pitch-dark. Turning the handle in such a way it would not click and waken Stella. He walked along the hallway avoiding the packed and ready cases. The air in the bathroom was so cold it stung. The heating was normally set to come on at eight. But her ladyship would have turned it off because they were going away. No sense in heating the place just to leave it pleasant for the burglars. Breakfast in your overcoat with the fog rolling off your tea. As he drained into the bowl he closed his eyes and continued as far as possible to remain asleep. Maybe his doctor would have a different story to tell. ‘Yes, light spiders are inevitably precursors of a stroke. Hypochondriacs die too, y’know.’

  He pressed the flush and headed back along the hallway. A faint glow came from behind the study door. The place was dark except for the winking coloured lights of the router and the various add-ons and extensions. Like a fairground. Their mobiles charging side by side. Stella must have been up earlier when he was in his first sleep. He sat in front of the screen. She had been online checking something and had not closed down properly. Very bad, she was, at covering her tracks. There was an unpronounceable name on the screen superimposed on a lawn surrounded by trees and houses in sunlight. In the middle of the lawn was a religious statue. Looked a bit like the Sacred Heart. Beneath it the words, ‘It can be difficult sometimes to find the gate but when you do, walk through and you will find yourself in another world.’

  Because they were going away he shut down the computer. Then all was cold and dark. He shivered and rose from the chair.

  In the bedroom the breathing was long and slow. He walked around to his own side. In his absence she had moved to the middle. The warm cave, with the person lying soft at its centre. His pillows seemed to fall naturally into the gap between his cheek and shoulder. The cave was redolent with cotton smell. He aligned himself to her. Her heel to his instep, knee to back of knee, bum to lap. They were as soft, stacked chairs. Momentarily the steady breathing stopped. She was aware of his arrival and softly ground herself backwards against him. In response he put his arm over her. Her pyjama jacket had ridden up and his now cool fingers accidentally touched the scar on her stomach. Hollow like another navel, a skin pucker. With another one behind her to match. Marked fore and aft, she was.

  ‘Move over,’ she said.

  Both of them paced the flat in their coats looking out for a taxi. It was a large Victorian tenement with stuccoed ceiling roses and egg-and-dart cornices. When they first moved in Gerry had said the ceilings were high enough to keep giraffes. It had been built on a corner so that it overlooked two streets. There was a small narrow garden with bushes and green ground-cover around the perimeter. Stella had brought back plants from her walks in the woods – she thought nothing of carrying a soup spoon and a plastic bag with her. A bunch of her snowdrops had just come out. Later there would be imported bluebells and daffodils.

  Gerry was in the bedroom inspecting the glass telltale affixed to a crack in the wall. It was claimed the building was subsiding because of old mining works. There were normal settlement cracks where inner walls had moved relative to outer ones over a century. At such junctions the wallpaper had been pulled into sags and wrinkles. ‘A bit like ourselves,’ Stella had said. ‘It’s not only dogs that get to look like their masters.’ Occasionally in the night there was a trickle of mortar, between the wall and the window boards. Chimney debris and soot sometimes appeared on the tiled hearths in the mornings.

  ‘Well?’ Stella came into the bedroom. ‘Any sign?’

  ‘No movement. Look for yourself.’ He pointed to the telltale.

  ‘I meant – of the taxi. I wouldn’t know from that thing if there’d been an earthquake or not,’ said Stella.

  ‘Do you have the passports or do I?’

  ‘Everything’s in your shoulder bag,’ she said. ‘Where you put it.’

  The taxi was now six minutes late.

  ‘If I was going to some boring architects’ meeting it’d be five minutes early.’

  ‘Calm yourself, Gerry.’

  He pulled everything out of the shoulder bag and set it on the bed while she looked on. His mobile, passports, tickets, both his and hers, cheque cards, medication. She checked in her leather handbag for her washbag, purse, eye drops, artificial tears, a half-packet of Werther’s Original, the wallet of family photographs, her Filofax, her mobile.

  ‘Jesus – the Filofax?’ Gerry rolled his eyes.

  ‘For phone numbers,’ she said.

  ‘Who do we know in the Netherlands?’ She ignored him and went on stirring the depths of her handbag.

  ‘We know people here but not their phone numbers. Emergencies happen. Did you remember your shampoo?’

  ‘And conditioner. All measured. Twenty-five ml of each. Dandruff-free terrorism.’

  ‘What’s the limit?’

  ‘You can take a hundred.’

  He was wearing a red angora wool scarf knotted at his throat. He looked at himself in the full-length mirror.

  ‘Somebody said I was flamboyant wearing this.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t like flamboyant.’

  He went to the cloakroom and found a navy scarf. Back in the bedroom he looked at himself.

  ‘Midway between flamboyant and dreary,’ he said.

  Stella held him
at arm’s length.

  ‘You could try another knot. An Oxford, maybe.’

  ‘Do knots have names?’

  ‘The splice. The hitch?’

  ‘That’s the language of the building site.’ She undid the knot and began to tie another, more elaborate one.

  ‘I can’t do it on you – only on myself.’ She turned him around to face the mirror, stood behind him on tiptoe.

  ‘Down a bit,’ she said and pressed on his shoulders. He bent at the knees and remained that way until the knot was tied.

  ‘You know all there is to know about the language of the building site, Gerry.’

  ‘It’s my fucking profession.’ He began to fiddle with the scarf, pulled the longest leg and the knot fell apart. He tied it as he always did.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ she said and walked away.

  ‘I’m going to phone that taxi.’ He went into the study and picked up the receiver.

  He heard the sound of hoovering. He looked out into the hallway. Stella was pushing the upright vacuum cleaner to and fro across the carpet. She saw his head poke out.

  ‘It’s on its way, sir,’ Stella shouted.

  The voice on the phone said, ‘It’s on its way, sir.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Gerry put the phone back on its cradle. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘There was just a black bit of I-don’t-know-what there.’ She nodded to the carpet. ‘They say that every time.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s on its way, sir.’

  ‘So you want to have it nice for anybody breaking in?’

  Stella switched off the whine and wound up the lead. She went into the front room and came out with a black plastic bag in one hand, a bunch of stargazer lilies in the other. She thrust them into the bag and tied the neck.

  ‘Put them out,’ she said. Gerry did as he was told. He went once again to look out the window.

  The taxi dropped them miles from the main terminal. When they asked the driver why there, he said, ‘Regulations. Since the airport was car-bombed.’