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

‘It’s a role he plays more and more.’ She put the magazine back on the table and stood up. ‘I really do have to go and dress.’

‘Tell me one thing,’ said Hal. ‘What happened to the menagerie?’

‘The menagerie?’

‘The stuffed creatures.’

‘Oh, the stoats and those poor, sad-eyed deer. Eve doesn’t care to have dead animals around her. So down they came and out they went. I couldn’t approve more. There was a wicked-looking ferret that had come to roost in the downstairs cloakroom. When I told Peter it was playing havoc with his bowels, he wouldn’t speak to me for a week. I was quite right, however. He used to disappear in there for hours with a pipe and the paper. No longer, and he’s lost that costive look he had.’

Hal held the door open for her. As they crossed the hall, the front door flew open and a red-faced schoolgirl in a thick navy overcoat stumped in, a satchel hanging off her shoulder, a hockey stick in one hand and a bicycle pump in the other. She was yelling as she came in, shouting out to Simon to jolly well come down right now and apologize for swiping her pump, the one that worked, and replacing it with his duff one, a foul trick to play on her, she finished with a triumphant roar.

She stopped, drew breath, saw them standing there and bounded towards them. ‘Aunt Angela, you’re here. Has Cecy come with you? I’m so late, all because I had a flat tyre and rotten Simon switched the pumps.’ She stared at Hal with undisguised interest.

‘This is your Uncle Hal, Ursula.’

Hal looked at the girl with more attention. So this was Peter’s youngest. Of course she was, he thought with a sudden pang. Of course she was: now that the redness of her face was fading, he could see the likeness. ‘You’re very like Delia,’ he said.

A blast of icy air at his back as the front door opened and shut again, and he turned to see his oldest brother regarding him with cold eyes as he pulled off his leather gloves.

‘That’s a name we don’t ever mention in this house,’ Peter said curtly. ‘Ursula, what are you doing hanging around in your school clothes? Go upstairs and change at once.’ He turned to Angela. ‘Ha. Roger’s here, I take it?’

‘Aren’t you going to say hello to Hal? You haven’t seen him for nearly sixteen years.’

From Peter’s expression, he could quite happily have gone another sixteen years without seeing his youngest brother.

‘You’re looking very well,’ he said, smoothing back his fast-retreating hair with his hand as he eyed Hal’s hair, short but undeniably thick.

‘So are you, Peter. I’m glad to see you again.’ Which Hal was, despite his brother’s aura of barely controlled ferocity.

‘I’ve made it an absolute rule,’ Peter was saying in a loud voice, ‘that we do not under any circumstances talk about Delia, especially not in front of the children. As far as they are concerned, she might as well be dead. She is forbidden to have any contact with them, with the full consent of the court, I may add. They know how wicked she has been and have no wish at all to have anything to do with her. It shouldn’t be necessary for me to explain this to you, anyone with a modicum of tact … Well, I dare say it’s all very different in America.’

‘There’s a lot more divorce over there, certainly.’

Peter winced at the word. ‘That will lead to their downfall. It’s monstrous what women get away with these days, it goes against nature and against every finer feeling. These so-called modern women are no more nor less than whores. Excuse me, Angela, it’s not a word I should use in front of you.’

‘It’s not a word you should use of your ex-wife,’ Angela said under her breath as she stepped past Peter and made for the stairs.

Hal wasn’t too sure about Peter’s finer feelings, and he was deeply shocked to hear his former sister-in-law spoken of in such harsh terms. He held his tongue. He was here because of the frozen lake, nothing more, and he would avoid quarrelling with either of his brothers if he could help it.

He thought about his two brothers as he followed the maid up the elegant staircase. Why had Angela, with her intelligence and caustic wit, ever married Roger? He had been good-looking, that had had something to do with it, and perhaps the growing career at the bar had seemed to promise brains and a certain worldliness. More astonishing was that ultra-conventional Roger should have fallen in love with a woman doctor, of all people. Roger as a young man, and no doubt to this day, resented women having the vote. He had never made any secret of his views.

Perhaps Angela had thought it would be possible to continue practising as a doctor once she was married, and perhaps it had gone against the grain to give up her medical work, even though she had all the help she needed in the house and nursery. She must have known that after those years away, it would be next to impossible to pick up the threads of a medical career. Let alone deal with Roger’s hostility.

Hal knew all about how Roger got his way, not through forcefulness like Peter, but through persistent nastiness. Faced with her husband’s bad temper and rudeness about her place in society, home, and likely incompetence if she went back into her profession, Angela had no doubt chosen the quieter course.

Only Cecy had then broken out; that was certainly one in the eye for Roger and he would naturally look upon it as a betrayal.

One of the maids will look after you, sir, since you haven’t brought a man with you,’ said the maid as she showed him into the Red Room. ‘Dinner is at eight-thirty, drinks are served in the drawing room from eight o’clock.’

He had half hoped they would put him in his old room, up on the attic floor with windows looking out behind the parapet, but the maid led the way to the Red Room, on the first floor. It had always been a guest room, but, when he was last here, a guest room with the patina of age and wear upon it. Now the paintwork gleamed, and the room had a spick and span, chintzy appearance. Rose-patterned wallpaper matched coverlet and chairs and cushions and the rug beside the bed. He pulled a face, remembering the higgledy-piggledy arrangement of old furniture and faded red damask curtains, and the assortment of china animals above the fireplace.

He picked up one of the thick towels on the washstand, one cream, one green, and went out to find an empty bathroom.

‘I was wondering when you’d find time to pop up and see me,’ said Nanny.

Hal, who liked to soak in a tub, had rushed his bath and dressed in a great hurry before springing up the stairs two at a time to reach Nanny’s domain. ‘You wouldn’t want me to come up here covered in smuts from the train,’ he said, bending down to give her a hug. She wasn’t a small woman, but he felt now as though he towered over her, surely she hadn’t been as bent as that when he went away?

‘Fifteen years and more, it’s been, and that’s a long time at my age, and my bones aren’t as strong as they should be,’ she told him. ‘I tell the doctor my bones can do what they want as long as I keep my wits, and so far I have. And you’ll have been leaning out of the train window to have smuts on you, how often have I told you not to do that? There was a man lost his head going into a tunnel, who’s to say it won’t happen again? Now sit down, there’s ten minutes before you have to be downstairs, and it won’t do to be late, for Mrs Grindley, as we must call her, although it sticks in my throat, gets in a temper if people are late. She gets into a temper about almost everything, you’ll notice that for yourself soon enough. Don’t be taken in, she’s got a will of iron, all the prettiness is like the army lads who go about with twigs in their helmets.’

‘Camouflage.’

‘I know what it’s called, Master Smart,’ she said swiftly.

He had to smile at the old nursery nickname. Peter had been Master Temper and Roger, Master Nastytongue whenever Nanny was displeased with them.

‘Which of them have you seen?’ Her knuckles might look too big for her hands and her hair might be grey and wispy, but her voice was low and sure – and those pale blue eyes were as keen as ever.

‘Angela, and two rather delightful nieces.’

‘Cecy and Ursula. She’s a little minx, that one.’

‘Ursula? She does resemble her mother, doesn’t she?’

‘More’s the pity. It doesn’t make her life any easier, let me tell you. What about your brothers?’

‘Oh, I’ve seen both of them, and left Peter in a rage because I mentioned Delia’s name, and Roger fretting over having a clever daughter.’

‘Fancy Cecy going to be a doctor.’

‘She, too, takes after her mother.’

‘I don’t hold with lady doctors. Never have and never will. Still, there are those who prefer it, and who’s to say they’re not entitled to their choice the same as I am?’

‘Well, Nanny, if there’s a war they’ll need all the doctors they can get.’

‘There isn’t going to be another war. And don’t go suggesting there will be one, or Mr Peter will be in even more of a rage. He won’t have any warmongering talk at the Hall, those are his very words.’

It was typical of Peter to issue an edict like that. Would he be taking the same line at work? Hal doubted it. War brought fat contracts, and Peter wouldn’t be last in line for those.

‘Mr Peter says he trusts the Germans to keep the Bolshies under control,’ said Nanny, clear approval in her voice; she detested Those Reds, as she called them.

‘Daddy’s got it all wrong,’ said a clear young voice from the door. ‘Hello, Nanny. Can you do my frock up for me?’

Ursula came into the room, one hand behind her holding a rather shapeless green dress together. ‘Hello again, Uncle Hal. I thought you’d be here, reporting to Nanny. She’ll want to know every single thing you’ve done since you last saw her.’

‘That could take some time, I suppose,’ Hal said.

‘You mind your tongue, Ursula.’ Nanny fastened the last of the buttons and Ursula straightened herself.