Free A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore

bare on a white sheet. Powdery dust of calamine came off on the sheets, and Kate said she would tie my hands if I didn’t leave the scabs alone. But I was sure that was later.
    ‘You did. It must have been then, or we would have gone. You know Grandfather. He would have made us,’ Rob insisted.
    But I knew I’d been well when my father died. For a while I forgot his face but I still felt his hand as he pushed back my hair which was like my mother’s hair, flaring up to the brush like hers. I smelled medicine and roses. I was back in that day when I took Rob’s hand and we walked away from our father, leaving him on the path with Miss Gallagher. We did not turn round even when we heard the little whining noise he made in his throat.
    I had seen him so often in my dreams, as often as I saw the dead man with his white-rooted arm bouncing down the stairs. Once I dreamed that white violets grew out of his arm and I picked them to give my grandfather. I felt the hairiness of violet stems between my fingers. But the mark of the hoof was in my father’s flesh. It was embedded in his forehead and it moved when he smiled at me. ‘Tuesday, perhaps?’ asked Mr Bullivant. ‘Yes,’ I said. I didn’t mind seeing the plans for his cherry orchard, if Rob would come too. I would make him. The long white table glittered and flashed. All down it people were lifting their silver knives and peeling their fruit. Our fine William pears had been unwrapped from the brown paper which let them sweeten without rotting, and now they fell into grainy yellow slices on the plates while the juice ran down on to the napkins. Only a silver knife would cut the fruit without browning it. Each golden pool of sweet white wine shuddered in a crystal glass. Voices tapped and rang and I saw Livvy’s beautiful shoulders arch above the white satin that looked greenish under the candelabra, as if she had water pouring from her.
    ‘Yes,’ I said again, ‘I’d like to see them,’ and Grandfather tumbled another handful of cracked nuts into my hand. They tasted like white meat. Grandfather and Mr Bullivant smiled at one another, but their smile was about me; it did not include me. In the next room band music dipped and swooped excitedly, waiting for us to open the double doors of the dining-room and stream out in our couples, our hands warm and sweating from the wine we’d drunk and our bodies looser than they had been, ready to mould to one another. They were playing ‘Solitude’ again. Before I could sleep there would be hours of dancing.
    ‘More kidneys?’ Rob asked, lifting curls of bacon and tonging them on to plates. Coffee smoked against the light. There had been a hard white frost again and the skin of ice on the lake was thickening. If this went on we would be skating by the end of the week. I wanted to go down and test the ice to find out how it was bearing, but I would wait until the house was empty or I’d have a crowd of them, eager and red-faced in the frost, streaming out of the house behind me like hounds, talking of skating-parties and ice-picnics. It was ten-thirty and our guests were still coming downstairs, their faces small and wan in the daylight. The men looked as if they had just dipped their heads in buckets of water to get the wine out of them. They jostled politely by the sideboard, spearing kidneys and sausages. Kate came in and out, slapping down pots and stirring the porridge where skin had formed. She put down a jug of thick yellow cream, wrinkling her nose as if to say, ‘You can eat it. I wouldn’t.’ She stood there, fresh and strong, with her arms folded, looking as if she were laughing at them all. I longed for them to be gone and us to be alone again, the way we were.
    ‘Cheer up,’ Rob whispered, ‘they’ll all be gone by the 12.40.’
    They were leaving already. Grandfather had ordered the station fly and John was coming round with the trap. A group of the young men had volunteered to walk across the field