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

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Rokeby.’

      ‘Welcome back, Miss Perdita.’

      ‘I’ll just take her around to the stables,’ Edwin said. ‘Get someone to come out for the suitcases and things, will you, Rokeby?’

      The butler bowed, and escorted Perdita into the hall. A fire was lit at one end in an enormous fireplace, and the wall lamps, huge nineteenth-century mediaeval torches, threw light on to the upper part of the walls, where antlered heads twinkled with tinsel and tiny bells.

      ‘Aunt Trudie’s been at work,’ said Perdita, looking around her. ‘Cheers those gruesome old heads up a bit, don’t you think?’

      ‘Miss Trudie has achieved a very festive touch,’ said Rokeby, his lips sealed on the subject of the chaos that eccentric lady had caused while touched by the Christmas spirit. Great branches of firs and prickly bundles of holly had been deposited in the Herb Room, a vast, stone-flagged room off the kitchen where the dogs were fed and any untidy work was done on the worn wooden table that ran down its centre. The gardener and his two assistants had been pressed into service; one of the maids, who had deft fingers, had been summoned from dusting duties to make paper flowers; Eckersley had been sent in the large car to buy all kinds of gaudy delights from the nearest Woolworth’s, and even he, Rokeby, had been instructed to make good use of his unusual height and climb up and down ladders to affix garlands and streamers in various inaccessible places.

      ‘Everyone has gone up to dress,’ he told Perdita. ‘Your trunk has not yet arrived, I dare say the weather has caused some delays.’

      ‘Oh, I’ll find something. I’d better get a move on, though, I don’t want Grandmama in a temper on my first night home.’

      ‘No,’ agreed Rokeby, with feeling. ‘Miss Alix is upstairs, she arrived a little while ago and went straight up.’

      Perdita’s face lit up. ‘She’s here?’ She made for the stairs and started up them, two at a time.

       NINE

       Wyncrag, Westmoreland

      Alix stood at the top of the second landing, watching Perdita’s rapid ascent. As she reached the last few steps her sister hesitated, looking upwards, her face uncertain. ‘Alix? Is that you?’

      ‘Hello, Perdy.’

      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

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