The Frozen Lake: A gripping novel of family and wartime secrets

Perdita came slowly up to the top of the staircase, leaning against the wide polished banister rail as she eyed her sister up and down. ‘You’ve changed. You look quite different.’

Her voice was brusque, but Alix knew that it was shyness. ‘So do you, you’re so tall, Perdy.’ And then she gave a spurt of laughter, ‘Lord, that’s the school tweed suit you’re wearing, gracious, I’d forgotten how awful it was.’

Perdita lost some of her shyness and grinned. ‘Isn’t it? In fact, this was yours. It’s a bit tight on me.’

‘You’ve got a bust, which is more than I had at your age. Do you still have to wear those vile green divided skirts for games?’

Perdita nodded.

‘You’ll have to change for dinner,’ Alix said, suddenly practical. ‘In about five minutes if we aren’t to be late. I don’t suppose Grandmama is any less of a stickler for punctuality than she used to be.’

‘No, she isn’t. Oh, help!’ Perdita flung herself through the door of her room.

Alix followed her in. ‘I’ll give you a hand with hooks, if you like.’

Perdita’s room was large, as were most of the rooms at Wyncrag, and heavily panelled; their great-grandfather must have cut down half a forest to satisfy his love of panelling when he was building the house. Underfoot was a thick carpet. All the bedrooms were carpeted, for which the occupants were thankful during the long, cold winters. Winter curtains, velvet, lined and interlined until they could practically have stood up without support, hung across the big windows. The marble fireplace had a fire lit in its grate, but it hardly took the chill off the room.

Perdita bent down to take her shoes and stockings off, then stretched out her frozen feet towards the fire. ‘The trouble is, one has almost to toast them before they feel warm, especially after being in Edwin’s car.’ She rubbed them for a few moments before padding over to the immense mahogany wardrobe. She flung open the doors and stood gazing at the clothes hanging within, each garment covered with tissue paper shawls and smelling of lavender from the little bags tied to each hanger.

‘Lipp?’ Alix asked. It had to be; lavender and Lipp went together at Wyncrag.

‘Lipp,’ Perdita said, as she dragged a dark blue frock off its hanger, and laid it on the bed, a hefty four-poster with a high mound of a mattress. She struggled out of her suit jacket, blouse, vest and liberty bodice, and took off her half slip and tweedy skirt. Then she rummaged in the top drawer of a chest of drawers and found a brassière.

‘That’s pretty,’ Alix said. It seemed an unlikely item of underwear for Perdita to own; she could make a good guess at just how few pretty things her younger sister was likely to possess.

‘It was a present from Aunt Dorothea, Grandmama doesn’t know about it, although I suppose she will now if Lipp’s been snooping in my drawers. I shall have to hide it.’

‘You couldn’t have taken it to school, of course.’

‘Goodness, no; brassières are banned at school by Matron on grounds of immorality and frivolity.’

She hunted for a pair of stockings, not silk, Alix noticed, but at least not quite such a dreary colour as her depressing brown school ones. A long slip completed her underwear, and then she heaved the dress over her head.

Alix got up and went over to do up the back, as Perdita looked doubtfully at herself in the looking glass inside the wardrobe door.

‘Oh, well,’ was all she said before thrusting herself into a shapeless evening bolero, charcoal coloured, with metallic threads.

They were at the door just as the gong went and Rokeby’s voice boomed up to them with his announcement of dinner.

The dining room at Wyncrag was long, high, and lit only by candlelight. Lady Richardson considered dining under electric lights vulgar. There were two fireplaces, each with a roaring fire. Alix knew those fires of old; if you sat near them you roasted, and your face went red; if you sat further away you froze and your arms developed goose pimples. Her grandfather gestured to her to come and sit beside him. His wholehearted welcome to her earlier on had in itself made the journey worthwhile, she thought, as she gave Aunt Trudie an affectionate smile. He had been so very pleased to see her. Unlike his wife.

Alix had been thinking about her grandmother as she travelled northwards. When the other two passengers left the train at Crewe, wishing her a happy Christmas, she sat alone in the first-class compartment of the Lakeland Express, wondering whether Lady Richardson would show any pleasure in seeing her again.

No, she shouldn’t expect a warm welcome, not from Grandmama. She released the blind at the window beside her seat and looked out at the darkening wintry scene. Snow-clad hills were illuminated by brilliant starlight; she heard the shrill whistle of the locomotive as it took a curve, its wailing sound floating out into the remote whiteness of the landscape. The train sped past a village, a square church tower visible for a moment before the train plunged into the darkness of a deep, rock-sided cutting.

The window blurred with smoke. She pulled the blind down again, and sat back in her wide, well-upholstered seat, reaching up to switch on the light over the empty place next to her. Half past five; nearly two hours to go. She shut her eyes, listening to the steady tuppence-three-farthings rhythm of the train. Her eyes stayed closed, the book on her lap slipped to the floor, and she sank into a dreamy half-awake, half-asleep state, her mind filled with images of hills and snow.

The sound of the compartment door opening roused her, and the cheery, ‘Just coming in, Miss Richardson,’ spoken in the familiar accent of the fells and lakes, told her she was home. ‘It’ll be a few minutes yet,’ he added, as she jumped to her feet. ‘No need to hurry.’

There was every need to hurry. She didn’t want to miss a minute, no, not a second, of the ice-world lying outside. She gathered together her possessions, picked up the book from the floor, paused in front of the mirror to tidy her hair under her hat. As the train pulled into the curve of the platform she stood in the corridor and tugged at the thick leather strap to let down a window. The dark air rushed in at her, arctic cold, but so fresh and clean that she wanted to gulp great mouthfuls of it, to rid her lungs and head of the smoke and fret of London. The gloom and sour, smoky smell of Euston lay in another dimension, surely not inhabiting the same world as this.

Then through the murk of steam she saw a short, stocky, bow-legged figure in gaiters advancing along the dimly lit platform through the little throng of waiting people. Eckersley, in his gaiters, his chauffeur’s hat slightly askew, his weathered face breaking into a smile at the sight of her.

‘Eckersley, oh, it’s been so long!’

‘Too long, Miss Alix, and we’re right glad to have you home. Is that all your luggage with the porter there? I’ve got the motor car just outside. Hand that suitcase to me.’

If only Grandmama’s greeting had been half as friendly. She had dutifully gone up to Lady Richardson’s room soon after her arrival, to be received with perfect, frigid courtesy. And Alix knew, without a word being spoken, that her grandmother wholly disapproved of her elegant new persona and what it said about her life in London.

It was now Perdita’s turn to greet her grandparents, and Alix could see the stiffness in her young body as she clumped in her heavy shoes to Grandmama’s end of the table.

‘Good evening,’ she said, bending her head to receive her grandmother’s chilly kiss.

‘You were extremely late back from Yorkshire, Perdita. I was concerned.’

‘Here we go,’ Edwin said under his breath as he slid into his seat and gave Aunt Trudie a conspiratorial smile. Then he turned and grinned at Alix.

How lovely it was to see him again, his dark hair falling across his forehead as it always had done, his long fingers crumbling his roll, his grey eyes, the mirror of hers, alight with pleasure at the sight of her.

Grandmama’s attention had turned from Perdita to her grandson, and it was clear to anyone who knew her that, although her voice was calm, she was, in fact, very angry with him.

‘I can’t say how distressing, Edwin. In the dark, and the snow, you and Perdita, with no older person there. It’s most inappropriate.’

‘What’s inappropriate about it? We’re brother and sister, not a couple out on a romantic tryst. And I am twenty-four, not some boy scout who’d panic at a bit of snow.’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘Good evening, Edwin,’ said Sir Henry, coming to his rescue. ‘Rokeby, stop hovering about and pour Mr Edwin a glass of wine. Edwin, you look cold. I’m afraid the central heating’s not working properly tonight,’ he went on, clearly keen to distract his wife’s attention from the iniquities of her errant grandchildren.

Wyncrag had central heating throughout the house, an extraordinary luxury that scandalized neighbours who used no form of heating except coal fires. Warm passages and bathrooms and bedrooms were considered soft and un-English. However, Sir Henry had travelled, and appreciated the warmth in some of the North American houses he had visited. It came as a welcome novelty to him to step into a hall or a bathroom and not find the temperature dropping by several degrees.

‘Poor quality coal, playing the devil with the furnace,’ he said. When the miles of piping he had had installed in every room and passage carried a stream of hot water as intended, the house was a haven of blissful warmth. But the advanced system battled against a temperamental furnace that produced water that was either too cold, or almost boiling hot. ‘Hardens are delivering more coal tomorrow, and they can take the rest of this load away, I never saw such stuff. Can’t think where it came from; it certainly isn’t fit for household use.’

Soup was served. Trudie, looking particularly vague, began an anecdote about the dogs, the tension eased. Then Lady Richardson noticed for the first time what Perdita was wearing. ‘What have you got on, child? You look like something out of the orphanage.’

‘Sorry, Grandmama,’ said Perdita, concentrating on her plate. ‘It doesn’t seem to fit very well, and I didn’t have time to look for anything else.’ She reached out to flick at a candle that had a guttering flame, and there was a loud ripping sound.

‘Oh, dear, I think the sleeve’s coming off,’ she said, lifting her arm to inspect the damage.

‘Perdita!’

‘I’ve grown rather a lot.’

‘She has,’ Edwin said. ‘I hardly recognised her in the Minster.’

‘My feet have grown, too,’ said Perdita. ‘My school shoes are awfully uncomfortable. I seem to be growing out of everything.’

Lady Richardson was disapproving. ‘I think it’s most unsuitable for you still to be growing at your age. I’d reached my full height by the time I was twelve. Tomorrow, we shall look through your things, Perdita, and decide what can be done about your frocks. Lipp may be able to lengthen them and let them out.’