The Snow Globe Read online

  “The Embassy? . . . Tonight? . . .”

  “Ah, sounds like an emergency at the embassy,” whispered Noonie. “Is she very involved there, Mabel?”

  “It’s a club, Mother . . . a nightclub.”

  “No, ’fraid not . . . ’Fraid so . . . Yes, tricky . . . I wish . . . And you, darling . . . Good-bye.”

  Iris sat back down and glanced to her mother: “Awfully sorry. About the telephone, I mean.”

  “You must tell the people at the embassy to send you a telegram in future,” said Noonie. “The telephone line needs to be kept clear for emergencies. Isn’t that right, Mabel?”

  “Oh my, I almost forgot to tell you all,” said Lily, coming to. “I’ve decided to go with lilac for our guest bedroom. It goes with the fabric I’ve chosen and I’ve always adored that color. Miles says—”

  “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go to bed now,” said Daisy, interrupting her sister and standing up. “I’m sorry about earlier. It was . . . completely irrational. I don’t know what came over me,” she added.

  “Emotions are far better out than in,” said Dosia. “I’m a fervent believer in free expression . . . And I don’t in the least blame you for wanting to slap my brother. I’ve longed to for years. In fact, there are very few men I’ve met that I have not wished to slap,” she added, winking at Daisy.

  Everyone laughed, including Mabel, who beckoned Daisy over to where she was sitting and then took hold of her daughter’s hand. “Let’s say no more about it. But perhaps it would be nice if you went and bid your father good night. I think he’d like that.”

  It was close to midnight and Mabel had been at her desk for some time when her husband opened the door of her lamplit boudoir. It was a small, cluttered room with lace-draped French doors leading out onto the garden, situated on the eastern side of the house, next to the morning room and opposite Howard’s study and the billiard room.

  Mabel stared back at her husband’s bewildered face. “I’ve told you, Howard, I have absolutely no idea. I rather think you should know what you did to upset her, not me. Did she come and say good night to you? I asked her to.”

  Howard shook his head.

  “Well, you must have done or said something.”

  He appeared to be genuinely mystified. He looked tired and, Mabel noted, rather hurt.

  “We had been chatting . . . about nothing in particular as I recall, wishes and secrets . . . the usual sort of Daisy stuff . . . ,” he began hesitantly, remembering. “Then she went off to fetch me some ice. I thought she was taking a while, and then . . . when she returned, well, you saw.”

  “Perhaps it was that. Perhaps it was the fact that you sent her off for ice,” Mabel suggested with a shrug of her shoulders. “You know how she disapproves of people drinking.” She cast her eyes to the clock on the wall and then to her paper-strewn desk. It was much too late for any inquisition. “You of all people should know by now how emotional—dare I say passionate—we women can sometimes be.”

  “And what do you mean by that?”

  “My dear, think of your own mother . . . your sister, your daughters . . .” Mabel went on, taking care not to include herself in the lineup. “I’m quite sure it’ll all be forgotten in the morning . . . and she’ll explain, apologize. And if not, well, you must ask her directly why she behaved toward you in that way.”

  Howard nodded. He bent down, kissed his wife’s forehead. Mabel watched the door close; she listened to the sound of his footsteps fade. “Good night, Howard,” she whispered. Then she closed her eyes, inhaled deeply and reminded herself not to dwell on him or on the past. It was Christmas, another family Christmas, and they had to get through it. She had to get through it. And this year she had a special surprise for Howard.

  She smiled and returned to her lists.

  Benedict Gifford was to be collected from the 12:26—along with Lily’s husband, Miles; which would make them nine for luncheon . . . and dinner—or eleven, if Patricia and Bernard Knight made it through the snow. Then she remembered: Reggie. “Ten . . . or twelve,” she said aloud, relieved.

  Aside from meal plans, numbers and menus, there was on Mabel’s small desk a list of Christmas presents—those wrapped marked with a capital W, the initials of the recipient next to each item. There was a list of rooms allocated to guests with dates in and dates out and notes on specific needs—such as Miles’s desire for coffee instead of tea to be brought in to him at eight, and her mother’s need for a chamber pot (to be emptied each morning). There was a “Laundry” book, a “Mending” book and a “Dressmakers & Tailors” book, a ledger for staff wages and another for general household expenditure. There were invoices, paid and unpaid and pending; and invitations, and RSVPs, and postcards and letters—from friends, from family and from charities dependent on her support.

  This was Mabel’s life, or had been, once. Because many of those books and habits—though Mabel hung on to them, perhaps in denial, or in longing for what had been and waiting for its return—were, in truth, redundant and quite unnecessary. The number of servants at Eden Hall had late one summer and in a matter of weeks dropped from fourteen to seven, then to five. Of the seven men from Eden Hall who’d gone off to fight, two had survived, but only one had returned there to work. And regular houseguests—those vibrantly colored Saturday-to-Monday creatures who had spilled out of cars and into the house, filling it with noise and laughter—were, too, a thing of the past. The war had silenced the party, and now it was simply too costly to live like that.

  When Mabel finally rose from her desk, she turned off the lamp, paused by the window and pulled back the curtains. Snow continued to fall, blanketing the contours beyond in ever-thickening white, creating newly fat shapes of the topiary and specimen trees. From where she stood, Mabel could see the light of Daisy’s room, burning so brightly that even through the veil of falling snow it appeared for a moment as though the window were open. Briefly, Mabel wondered what her youngest daughter was doing. Hopefully collected, hopefully composed, she thought, moving away.

  Climbing the stairs, Mabel ticked off and added to the list in her head: rooms and beds still to be aired . . . clean towels and new cakes of soap to be put out . . . At the top of the stairs she paused and thought for a moment of looking in on Daisy. But it was late and she was weary, and she simply could not cope with any more histrionics. Furthermore, it was, she knew, only the very beginning of a potentially hazardous week. As she passed her husband’s bedroom door she could hear the low rumbling from inside, picture him lying on his back, mouth open. He hadn’t always been like that, she thought, and a glimmer of a younger Howard fought to break through in her memory. She pushed it away. There was no point in remembering, not now. It had been too long, much too long. Excluding the cursory kisses of their weekly hellos and good-byes, and the others reserved for special occasions and birthdays, Howard had not touched her in years, and she tried to remember how long, exactly, it had been.

  Hanging her dress away, closing the wardrobe door, Mabel sought to recall the last time. She stretched up her arms, pulled on her nightgown, feeling the silken fabric fall over her naked body like gossamer in a spring breeze, and slowly moved to the bathroom. She raised her eyes to the face in the mirror: the dark curls now silvering at the temples; eyes once bright now dull; the lines around those eyes and the other lines—running from either side of her nose to her mouth, her chin. Time, not Howard, had taken her and made her his, she thought. She pressed the two tiny slivers of soap together in her hands, turned on the taps and washed away the threat of tears. Then she picked up the rough towel and held it to her face.

  “Six years,” she said finally, turning back the voluminous eiderdown. Six years, she thought, climbing beneath the cold linen and pulling up layers of blankets. She stretched out an arm, pushed a switch and turned onto her side, rubbing her feet against the warm hot-water bottle at the end of the bed, wrappi
ng her arms around herself, remembering.

  Howard, once so dashing, so attentive and in love with her, had all but vanished from her life. Now she and her husband were more like business partners, running a home, a family; making the day-to-day—or rather, week-to-week—decisions about that place. He came; he went. Inevitably weary. But he had not always been like this, she thought, her heart lurching once again.

  At first, she had blamed her husband’s neglect on the war. Not that Howard had gone to the front, thank God. He had escaped that horror because he and his business were deemed necessary, and because he’d been too old anyway, even then. No, she had blamed the war simply because it was blamed for everything: from a general collective malaise to each individual shift in attitude. It’s because of the war had been said by so many and for so long that Mabel came to believe it was also in some way responsible for the state of her marriage; that the profound anxiety of those long dark years had eked away Howard’s love for her.

  She could, she thought now, have allowed him some sort of reprieve, perhaps, then. But their estrangement had continued. And all this time, all these years . . . untouched . . . smiling at late arrivals, smiling at early departures, smiling at telegrams to say DELAYED; smiling back at the children, alone. All the time hoping, hoping that this year—this month, this week, this night—he might come to her, reach out to her and love her once more. Through six springs, six summers, six autumns and winters, she had waited . . . Or had she? Five, she corrected herself, smiling and closing her eyes.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, Mrs. Jessop was also counting: “Half a dozen guinea fowl, four brace of pheasant . . . makes eight . . . three rabbit, four pigeon, two goose, one turkey, one ham.”

  She would get Mr. Jessop to pluck a few of the birds and skin the rabbits first thing, make a fricassee . . . get Hilda on to the ice cream for the peach melba while she made the meat loaf and pastry for the pies: two ham and egg and two pigeon. But four pigeons wouldn’t do, wouldn’t be enough . . . She’d have to send Stephen out with his gun again. But no, Stephen would be needed to clear the driveways and then for chauffeuring from the station. And she couldn’t ask Mr. Jessop, because that was what had set him off the last time: the sound of the gun or the feel of it in his hands—she could never be sure which it had been.

  Mrs. Jessop’s husband didn’t say much. In fact, he had barely spoken since returning from the war. And though at first, it had been queer to be with someone so silent, Mrs. Jessop was long used to it now, and long in the habit of improvising during their one-sided conversations, answering any questions she (and others) posed to him for him. And he was a very agreeable sort. And he adored Stephen, and Stephen was ever so good with him, so patient and gentle and caring.

  Mrs. Jessop had long since hung up her apron and sat next to the range, still warm, in a wheel-back chair. Beside her hung a variety of long-handled copper pans and ladles and skimmers and large spoons—slotted and wooden. A toasting fork and two flatirons stood on a rack in front of the range, along with the old bellows she still liked to use, and hanging below the knife box were the old snuffers and scissors for candles.

  These hard objects were a queer source of comfort to Mrs. Jessop, and she liked to look at them. They hadn’t changed, and they reminded her of her childhood, that time when she’d worked in the fields, harvesting and haymaking from dawn till dusk with her grandfather and grandmother, her parents and siblings. At seven years old she’d been driving small birds from the turnip seeds; scattering off rooks from the peas; waving about a stick tied with a white handkerchief; working from six in the morning until nine at night.

  Mrs. Jessop liked to remember. She liked to sit there at that time of night, when she didn’t have to share the kitchen with anyone else, when the only sounds were those reassuring creaks and clanks and shudders of pipes or floorboards, or the drip of a tap, and now the intermittent whirring of the new refrigerator in the scullery. Not that she was at all sure of that, mind you. In fact, she had only just sat back down from checking on it, staring at it from the safe distance of the scullery doorway, when it had started its strange juddering again and given her a fright. Well, they’d managed for enough years without one, and the use of electricity to keep food cold didn’t make much sense to her; an unnecessary expense, in her opinion. But folk seemed caught up with newfangled gadgets these days, and they were advertised all over the place, even in True Love-Stories. Fair enough, she had said to Mr. Jessop, if you have that much money to burn, and he had agreed with her, had nodded—in that way he always did.

  Hopefully no one would ever suggest replacing the range, she thought, glancing to its blackened facade. Three sturdy doors—two eyes and a nose—looked back at her beseechingly, like a familiar old face threatened with extinction. It would be over her dead body. Nobody in their right mind would cook with electricity. She certainly would not. And yet, it seemed to her as though the world wouldn’t stop until it had changed everything. And for no need. More money than sense, she sometimes thought, because you could buy almost anything these days, even ice cream. She preferred her own, using the old wooden ice cream maker, where you put the chopped ice into the outer bowl and the cream, sugar and other ingredients in the inner bowl and then turned the handle, slowly, over and over, until the cream was gelled—the way she had been taught all those years ago.

  Mrs. Jessop’s thoughts continued to drift. Plagued by nostalgia, she more than hankered for the past. It was to her like the iridescent tip of a dragonfly’s wing hovering in the long, sultry summer of her memory. She wished with all of her heart to be back in that place, to feel the warmth of the sun on the back of her young neck once more, to catch a glimpse of him once more.

  “Michael,” she whispered.

  One of the reasons she liked to be alone in the kitchen at this time of night was so she could think about him and sometimes say his name out loud. Everybody liked to do their thinking in private; it was the only way to think properly, and certainly the only time she could. If she had been at the cottage with her husband, well, she couldn’t have thought about Michael, because it would have been disloyal . . . and he might see her smile or something and wonder what she was thinking about, and then she’d have to tell him because she didn’t believe in lying and it would very likely set him off on one of his turns, and she didn’t want that. No, it was always better to think about Michael in private.

  Whenever Mrs. Jessop thought of that time, and of Michael, it was impossible for her not to remember her cousin Nellie and Mr. Forbes. She cast her eyes over the table—already laid for breakfast, over the assortment of eggcups and teacups and plates, the image in front of her transforming itself to a smaller table, a basement kitchen and Mr. Forbes holding the tiny infant in his arms. He was ever so good with babies, destined to have a few, at least. Destined to be a father, she thought. No, he was not a saint, but he was a good man at heart.

  “All in the past,” Mrs. Jessop murmured.

  But the past almost always came calling at this time of night, and in the roll call of lost names Mrs. Jessop was tempted always to remember the others, those who had once been with her at Eden Hall. She began to go through the names in her head and then stopped. She didn’t want to get maudlin; it was Christmas, and they were in a better place now anyway. But it was hard not to think of them at this time of year, and hard not to see and hear them, too: the ghosts of the kitchen and servants’ hall. And yet so much had changed, so many had gone, that that time often seemed like a dream to Mrs. Jessop. As though she had imagined it all. As though she’d imagined him, Michael.

  She smiled, closed her eyes . . .

  The sun had been high in the sky, the grass long and filled with buttercups and poppies. She could hear the stream, the sound of bees, nothing more. Nothing more. He said, “This is perfect.” He said, “You’re perfect.” He said, “Remember this always.”

  She had not imagined him: She had known grea
t passion once.

  The clock on the wall chimed the half hour. The house was silent; everyone asleep, she thought, easing herself to her feet. The pain in her hip was always worse at night, and she had been sitting in that chair for far too long. The pipes let out another shiver, swiftly followed by a loud judder. She hoped they wouldn’t freeze and burst again. She straightened herself with a grimace, cast her eyes about the room, then tilted her head, listening for a sound from the scullery. But the machine, too, seemed to have at last gone to sleep, and so she turned off the electric light and headed down the passageway to the back door, reminding herself in whispers about tasks for the morning.

  It was still snowing when Mrs. Jessop stepped into the yard with her flashlight, and as she pulled her shawl up over her head she saw the light in the window of the coachman’s flat. She smiled. She was lucky to have them both, she thought: one, asleep no doubt but alive; the other, wide awake and up to who knew what. It is what it is and that’s that, she said to herself, closing the door of her cottage.

  “Dear Daisy,” Stephen wrote, and then paused. He still wasn’t sure how to put into words what he wanted to say, and the nips of malt whiskey, which had set him off wanting to write the thing in the first place, now blurred the words on the page as well as his thinking. He heard the clank of a door down in the yard and lit another cigarette.

  He wondered where she was, what she was doing at that moment. Asleep, he imagined: fast asleep and dreaming . . . Maybe dreaming of him, he thought, allowing himself an indulgence that curved the corners of his mouth up into a weary smile. Oh, to feature in one of her dreams. That alone would be enough. Yes, that would be enough to keep him going for . . . for a whole year, at least. And how could he expect anything more?