A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore Page B

looking-glass. Every time I looked up I caught sight of myself, with that flat, startled look in my eyes that people have when they have to sit too long to be photographed. When the tea came I would have to pour it out, and the teacups would be delicate. My hands holding them would be big and red. Livvy’s hands would look just right, though they were the only part of Livvy I disliked. They were white, and their tapering fingers had a slight fleshiness, like the meat in a crab’s claw.
    ‘Ah, here we are. Tea!’ said Mr Bullivant. The girl placed the tray in front of him and set out the cups. They were big, shallow, white china cups with a rice-grain pattern in them.
    ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he apologized. ‘I can’t bear fiddling with dolls’ cups.’
    ‘No, I like them.’
    He smiled. ‘I rather thought you would. You don’t strike me as a fiddly person.’
    ‘What are the sandwiches?’
    He pointed. ‘Egg and anchovy – my passion. Don’t feel you have to share it. Cucumber. I thought we ought to have cucumber. And potted beef for Rob.’
    There were almond tarts too, and a dense, nearly black fruitcake with its top covered in glazed cherries, angelica and walnuts. There were the muffins he had promised.
    ‘Would you cut me some of that?’ asked Mr Bullivant. ‘Another weakness, I’m afraid; I eat it with Wiltshire cheese. Look the other way if you like.’
    I cut a big wad of the cake and a piece of the crumbly cheese and watched him pack them together and eat them. The tea was pale gold and fragrant. I thought of Kate’s black tea. Without its kick in her stomach she’d never keep working from dawn to midnight, she said. The heat of food and fire spread down to my finger-ends. I sighed.
    ‘Have you had enough? What about more of these sandwiches – they’re very good.’
    I took a piece of the fruitcake. It was moist and shiny, and much lighter than it looked. I bit into a piece of crystallized ginger.
    ‘We’ll fetch Rob in a while,’ said Mr Bullivant. ‘No need to drag him away from the horses. We’ll have fresh tea later. Come on, we’ll have a look around. There’s a room finished you haven’t seen. My study.’
    My idea of a study was a dark-brown, leathery, smoky room, with light flattened by half-curtained windows. Grandfather had such a study, though it was an affectation: he was much too restless to read. But I was ready to be polite. Everything would be new, at least, and I loved the smell of new leather. We went down a half-finished corridor. The floorboards had just been laid. Everything in this wing had been rotten, he said, it had all had to be torn up. But there was no dry rot, thank God.
    ‘Though of course you can smell that as soon as you step over the threshold. I would never have bought the place.’
    ‘Mmm.’ I thought vaguely of the smell in certain parts of our house. Was that dry rot? If so Mr Bullivant would certainly have diagnosed it. Better not ask.
    ‘Here.’ There was no door handle, but a piece of rope wound round the door kept it from closing. The rope was pale, like ship’s rope. He pulled down a switch and the room sprang into light. It came on in a soft flood and there were pictures everywhere, bathed and glowing. There was no harsh central light, no glare. The walls were a warm, living white. A very pale, slightly worn rug lay on the floor. Tiny unicorns ran on a background which was the colour of woods in April as tree after tree lights into leaf. In front of the long windows there was a chair, quite small and finely made. No rows of books, no tobacco smoke, no studded leather.
    But there were the pictures. They were so alive that they seemed to vibrate on the walls. You could not have had books and heaps of paper in here, because the pictures would have cancelled them out and made them look like dead things. And you couldn’t turn your back on pictures like these to stare at a desk. The wall on my left had two enormous paintings on it. One