‘Do you keep them by you still?’ Chips asked after his third tumbler of whisky.
Gerald nodded.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Where they’ve always been.’
‘Who will have them after you?’
A shrug.
‘Don’t know. Haven’t thought. Maybe a museum. Couldn’t say.’
‘You know we ruled that out,’ said Chips, raising the glass to his lips. He was a tall man, somewhat stooped now, but wiry, as if his muscles had not lost their flexibility and strength.
‘And you?’ Gerald asked. ‘And the others?’
Chips shrugged.
‘They’re happy for you to hold on to them. But you’re getting old; we’re all getting old. It’s time to find a keeper. We’ve talked of this many times before. We have to talk of it now.’
Gerald looked at his old friend. So many years had passed, it was hard to believe how close they had grown during the years of fighting. They’d stuck together, all of them, through the gross inhumanity of the war and its dreary aftermath. Someone had nicknamed them The Invincibles; but after Leary was killed by a landmine, the name had dropped out of common use.
‘Do you mean tonight?’ Gerald murmured. ‘I thought perhaps to wait until the festivities are over. Till they all leave. Maybe Donaldson will come after all. Skinner possibly. They were both invited. The roads have been blocked, they may not have made it through. You were lucky.’
Chips ran a hand over his cheeks, his fingers scraping the stubble. He’d worn a beard when he was younger, but shaved it in middle age, once it started to show traces of grey and white.
‘What about the girl?’ he asked.
‘Girl? Which girl?’
‘Don’t be provocative. The one I saw tonight. You know perfectly well which girl I mean.’
Gerald nodded.
‘Sometimes I forget. There have been so many girls. In any case, she isn’t a girl, not any longer. She’s a grown woman. You can’t have missed that.’
‘Does she know?’
Gerald poured a little water into his glass and sipped anxiously. His liver had been playing up recently; Doc Burns had told him to ease up on the spirits. He shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not yet. Haven’t told her. She’s not ready yet. When the time comes, old boy. You know that.’
Their cheeks flushed, their hair coated in rime frost, their breath become plumes of mist against the lamplight, the guests returned to Woodmancote Hall. They came in groups of two and three, laughing, chatting earnestly, full of Christmas spirit. Ethan escorted Sarah again, and she held on to him tightly, her arm locked through his, fearful of a spill in the oversized Wellington boots she’d picked up for the walk. Her head was filled with carols and her lips, when seen in the light, were blue with cold. She talked volubly, answering his questions, piquing his curiosity. They spoke of books and films and journeys, of parents and cousins, of the numerous times their paths had almost crossed. It was too soon to speak of his dead wife or her brother, committed to a mental hospital at twenty-one and unlikely to leave it. By some instinct grown of adversity or conscience, they knew there would be time for all that later.
Indoors, there was much puffing and panting and stamping of frozen feet. Compacted snow fell on doormats and began to melt.
Senhora Salgueiro had warmed mince pies and set out mulled wine in the drawing room. The adults crowded round the table, ravenous from cold and the rigours of standing so long on the uncarpeted stones of the church. The older children, who had accompanied them, were sent straight off to bed, where hot pies, ginger beer, stockings, and fitful sleep awaited them.
The adults, with less to buoy them up by way of anticipation, felt the effects of age, overeating and a late hour more keenly than their offspring. For all that, sitting round a twinkling Christmas tree in such fine surroundings and in what was, for the most part, good company acted on their sense of nostalgia. They wanted sleep, yet were driven to prolong the moment. One by one, they gave up the struggle.
Ethan showed Sarah upstairs to her room.
‘Thank you, Ethan,’ she said. ‘You’ve been very kind to a poor relation.’
‘Sarah,’ he chided, ‘I’m a policeman, not a banker.’
‘That may be, but I’m an academic, and that means poverty, as in church mouse.’
It was the first time she’d said anything about her work.
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘I only finished my PhD a few years ago, so I’m a lowly lecturer with dismal prospects. I might get a readership when I’m fifty, if I’m lucky. Now, with your permission, I’ll retire to bed. To be truthful, I’ll crash out. And so will you. Which means Father Christmas won’t visit us.’
He leant over and kissed her lightly on the cheek. She blushed and said goodnight before slipping into her room.
It is not known if Father Christmas arrived that night, for the house was woken prematurely, at about five-thirty, by a piercing scream, followed by a series of screams that descended in the space of several seconds to mere sobbing and, at last, to silence. In their rooms, all but the most heavily sleeping of guests sat bolt upright in bed. Ethan was the first to his feet and the first in the corridors.
The screams, he was certain, had not come from any of the rooms in his immediate vicinity nor, indeed, from the attic floor at all. They had been located somewhere below, on the second floor. Wrapped only in a light dressing gown and shivering in the bitter cold, he hurried for the narrow staircase. As he started down it, he heard other doors opening in the corridor behind.
As he came through the doorway that led onto the floor below, he became aware that a commotion had begun. Several of the bedroom doors stood wide open, and half a dozen guests, all men in pyjamas or dressing gowns, had gathered round a sobbing woman. Mrs Salgueiro, her hair in curlers, her quilted housecoat wrapped tight against the chill air, was being comforted by Ethan’s father. From time to time she would exclaim in Portuguese, ‘Ai, que medo! Que susto! Os pobres homens!’ then recommence her sobbing.
Guy Usherwood, not knowing what to make of these utterings, sighed with relief when he saw his son coming towards them.
‘Father, what’s going on?’
‘Don’t know. I can’t get the woman to speak in English. She’s had a bad turn, that’s obvious. Look at her: she’s as white as a sheet and shaking all over.’
At that moment, another door opened, and Sarah stepped into the corridor. She was wearing a black gown trimmed with gold, and her hair was sticking up in post-slumber spikes. Seeing what was amiss, she went up to the weeping woman and put her arms round her, uttering soothing words, trying to calm her.
Bit by bit, the sobs subsided, and the senhora came a little to herself.
‘Senhor Usherwood! His friend. No gabinete…in study. Please…’
She burst into tears again, putting her hands to her face, as though to cover her eyes from some dreadful sight.
Ethan’s father, the most senior family member present, made to enter the room, but Ethan stopped him.
‘Dad, it’s obvious something’s wrong. Grandfather may have had a heart attack. I’m more used to this sort of thing than you. Let me go in first.’
His father hesitated, then backed off. Ethan put a hand on the doorknob and turned it reluctantly. If something had happened to his grandfather, it would cut him to the heart. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him.