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

‘I dislike Lincolnshire,’ said Freddie. ‘I never drive through this landscape without wanting to be among the northern crags.’

‘I don’t much like the Fens myself,’ he agreed. ‘Never mind, we’ll soon be in sight of hills, and tomorrow we’ll be on the ice, or at least out tobogganing.’

‘It’s sixteen years since the lake froze completely, they say. I can’t wait to see what it’s like, and to be out there on my skates. I go to the rink in London, but there’s nothing to touch skating out of doors.’

‘I was there sixteen years ago.’

‘What, in Westmoreland? That winter, when it last froze?’

‘That winter.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Twelve. It wasn’t much of a holiday for any of us, for I caught a chill and got pneumonia. We never went back to the lakes after that. My mother didn’t fancy going north again.’

‘So it’s sixteen years since you’ve been there. No wonder you didn’t sound too keen when I rang and put the plan to you. Understandable, if you had a bad time there when you were a boy.’

‘If I didn’t jump at your offer straight away, it was because of worries about leaving my work, that’s all. I’m glad my chief almost threw me out; I intend to spend all the hours of daylight on the ice or on the snow. I’ve been caged up in the office for too long, and I need to get fit.’

The last miles of the journey were slow and tedious, with an icy surface on the dark country roads and the great headlamps lighting up the icy filigree of the roadside hedges, making eerie patterns out of branches and tree trunks. They were more than glad to reach the inn, where a solicitous Mrs Dixon showed them to low-beamed bedrooms with creaking wooden floors and panelled walls hung with faded prints and framed maps and assorted copper items. Fires flickered in the grates, and downstairs, while they waited for dinner to be served, a huge log fire burned in the wide, centuries-old stone fireplace.

The inn was full, and all the conversation was about the lake. ‘Holding splendidly,’ said a middle-aged man with a bushy moustache. ‘Brought your skates, have you?’

‘We certainly have,’ replied Freddie. ‘Out on the ice first thing, just the ticket, isn’t it, Michael?’

Michael was more than half asleep in the warmth of the fire, but he nodded in agreement.

‘Didn’t I read that they had bonfires on the ice last time it froze?’ Freddie said.

‘No good asking me,’ he said with a yawn. ‘I don’t remember much about that winter.’

‘They did indeed,’ the innkeeper said, coming in to summon his guests to dinner. ‘Braziers to roast chestnuts on and warm your hands, and a huge bonfire as well. There were some who skated holding great flaming torches, oh, that was a sight to see.’

‘Sounds rather like the Inquisition on Ice,’ murmured Freddie, as they went in to their soup.

They found themselves sitting at the same table as the man with the moustache, and two young women. He was a solicitor from Manchester, he told them. The young women smiled, and said they were teachers, PT teachers. One of them ventured that she loved winter sports, didn’t he agree the frozen lake was topping?

Nice, ordinary people, thought Michael, as he drank his soup and let his gaze drift around the small dining room. A family sat at the next table, father, mother and two dark-haired sons of about fourteen and sixteen. A fair younger sister was busily making bread pellets and dropping them into her soup, despite her mother’s protestations. An older man, tall and thin, sat at a small table by himself, a monocle in one eye, a book laid beside his plate. Peaceful people, enjoying a respite from work and duties, like himself.

Ordinary people who might soon be plunged into the furnace of war, if what Giles Gibson said were true. Michael wondered if the prospect of war was the cause of the slight feeling of unease that he couldn’t otherwise explain. More likely it was simple weariness after a long, cold drive.

‘They say there’s a glamorous American woman who’s taken a house here over Christmas and the new year,’ announced the young woman next to him. ‘Practically no one’s seen her, but the woman at the Post Office is sure she’s a film star.’

The solicitor laughed. ‘To people in an out of the way place like this, any visiting American is immediately assumed to be a film star. What would a film star be doing here, I’d like to know?’

‘Skating?’

‘Plenty of winter sports in America, my dear. No need to cross the Atlantic for ice and snow. We get excited about it, because we don’t often see weather as cold and frosty as this, but Americans would make nothing of it, take my word for it.’

She looked disappointed. ‘I hope she is someone famous, I’d like to get her autograph if she is.’

‘If she’s famous and over here, I expect she’s travelling incognito, and wouldn’t thank you for asking her for an autograph,’ Freddie said. ‘We’ll see her on the ice in dark glasses and with a scarf covering her hair and face, and shapeless clothes so that we shan’t recognise her legs. All glamorous film stars have lovely legs, you know.’

The young women both giggled at that. ‘She’s got a companion with her, so the woman at the Post Office told me. Her husband, I suppose, but you never know with film people, do you?’

The woman at the next table cast a frowning glance towards them, her mouth pursed up in disapproval. Her sons were listening avidly to the discussion about the American visitor, and she gave them a quelling look before starting up a very dull conversation of her own about whether the scarf she had bought for Uncle Bobbie would prove to be warm enough for such bitter weather as they were having.

After dinner, the solicitor bore Freddie away to the tap for a game of shove ha’penny. ‘I haven’t played for years,’ Freddie said.

‘Good, then I’ll beat you. Better than taking on the locals, they have a way with the ha’pennies.’

Michael wandered into the room that served as bar and sitting room, pipe in hand, and ordered a brandy. ‘And something for yourself,’ he added to the landlord.

He sat down in a settle by the fire, and the landlord joined him in a minute or two, a pewter mug of bitter ale in his hand. They sat in companionable silence while Michael lit his pipe, and then the landlord spoke. ‘We’re fair glad you and Dr Kerr were able to come, Mr Wrexham. We were in a way to being perplexed about those empty rooms. No trouble filling them, you’ll say, in weather such as we’re having, but we’d turned away two visitors, and it’ud look bad if you hadn’t come, and we’d got the rooms spare after all, for they were insistent they’d have the rooms if they weren’t taken, and I’d not be wanting them under my roof.’

‘Why, what was wrong with them?’ Michael asked idly, watching the smoke from the fire curling up the chimney.

‘If you’d seen them …’ The landlord pursed his lips, shook his head. ‘The moment they came in here, looking for me, I thought, aye, now, here’s summat to think about, and if these two men don’t mean trouble, my name’s not Robert Dixon. Very short hair one of them had. Nothing wrong with short hair, but there’s no need to look like you might have taken your own razor to your scalp. Bristly, I’d call it. That was the bigger of the two men. Although it was the other that did the talking. He had short hair, too, but more gentlemanlike, if you take my meaning. And a smooth way of talking. I fancied, just for a moment, that I’d seen him somewhere before, but the wife says no, that was just my imagining.’

He paused to take a good draught of his beer, and Michael sipped his brandy, more than half-asleep now.

‘The long and the short of it was, I said right out, polite, mind you, but definite, as how we were full up and likely to be so right to t’other side of the new year.’

Michael stirred himself, feeling that he was expected to express a proper interest. ‘So what didn’t you like about them, Mr Dixon?’

‘I’ll tell you what I didn’t like, and then you tell me if you think I did wrong. They weren’t wearing those uniforms that have been banned, but I reckon they might as well have been.’

‘Uniforms?’

‘Black shirts is what I’m talking about; they looked as though for two pennies they’d be dressed up in that uniform those Mosleyites like to wear.’

‘Good Lord,’ Michael said, waking up properly. ‘You mean you think they were British Fascists?’

‘I do that,’ the landlord said, pleased with Michael’s reaction. ‘I’ve seen some of those folk, in Manchester, and they’ve got a look to them I don’t care for. Now, you tell me this, Mr Wrexham, in my place, what would you have done?’

‘Oh, I don’t think I’d care to have a pair of fascists in black shirts under my roof, if that’s what they were, and I dare say you’re right. What on earth are they doing up here? It’s a bit off their usual haunts, I should think.’

‘They said they were up here for sport. Skating and that, the same as my other guests. “Toughening ourselves up,” one said. “And a spot of business,” said the other. Well, they didn’t look like men who needed any further toughening, and that’s a fact, and I shouldn’t care to think about what their business might be.’

‘So you turned them away?’

‘I did that. Which is why, as I said, I was that pleased when Dr Kerr telephoned us again, saying he’d take the rooms for himself and for you.’

‘I wonder where they went.’

‘Now that I can tell you. They’ve got rooms at Mrs McKechnie’s up at the top of the town. She’s not so fussy, she’d let to Old Nick himself if he could pay. Being a Scot, you understand.’

‘Well, well,’ Michael said. ‘Let’s just hope they don’t get up to any of their tricks up here.’