The Wolves of Midwinter Read online

  20

  IT WAS ONE of the fastest weeks of Reuben’s life. Having his dad in residence was infinitely more fun than he’d ever imagined, especially since the entire household welcomed Phil, and everyone assumed that Phil had come to stay. It took Reuben’s mind off absolutely everything else.

  Meanwhile, the house recovered from the banquet and moved towards Christmas Eve.

  The pavilion had been completely cleared by evening on Tuesday, the wooden wind barrier, the tents, and the rented furniture all hauled away. The great marble crèche and stable, with all its lighting and fir trees, had been immediately moved down to the village of Nideck, where it had been set up for the public in the old theater across from the Inn.

  The beautiful lighting of the house—of all its windows and gables—and the lighting of the oak forest remained as before. Felix said the lights would remain until Twelfth Night—January 6, or the Feast of the Epiphany—as was the tradition, and there would be people coming up now and then to wander through the woods.

  “But not on Christmas Eve,” said Felix. “That night the property is dark for us and our Yule.”

  Phil’s books arrived on Wednesday, and so did a venerable old trunk that Phil’s grandfather Edward O’Connell had brought from Ireland. At once Phil started telling Reuben all about the old man, and their times together when Phil was a boy. By the time he was twelve, Phil had lost his grandparents, but he remembered them vividly. Reuben had never in all his life heard Phil talk about this. He wanted to ask all about the grandparents. He wanted to ask about the gift of seeing ghosts, but he didn’t dare to broach the subject. Not now, not so soon, not so close to Christmas Eve, when a veil had to come down between him and his father.

  All this took Reuben’s mind off the faintly disturbing memory of the Morphenkinder at the party, and his driving anticipation for the Yuletide reunion with Laura.

  At breakfast on Thursday, Margon had told them all offhandedly to pay little mind to the “strange uninvited guests” who’d come to the banquet. To Stuart’s immediate barrage of questions, he replied, “Our species is ancient. You know that. You know there are Morphenkinder throughout the world. Why wouldn’t there be? And you can see well enough how we come together in packs as wolves do, and packs have their territory, do they not? But we are not wolves, and we do not fight those who come now and then into our territory. We bear with them until they move on. That has always been our way.”

  “But I can see damn well that you don’t like those others,” said Stuart. “And that Helena, she was frightening. Is she lovers with that man, Hockan? And when you talk about our inherent sense of good and evil, well, I can’t connect it to that dislike. What happens when you hate a perfectly innocent and upright fellow Morphenkind?”

  “That’s just it, we don’t hate!” said Sergei. “We are resolved never to hate, and never to quarrel. And yes, from time to time, there is trouble. Yes, I admit, there is trouble. But it’s over quickly, as it is with wolves, and then we go, finding our own peaceful parts of the world, laying claim to them.”

  “That might be what’s bothering them the most,” said Thibault softly. He glanced at Margon, and when Margon didn’t interrupt, he continued. “We have laid claim once more to this part of the world, and we have an enduring strength which others find—well, enviable.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Margon, raising his voice. “This is Yule and we receive all others as we’ve always done—even Helena and Fiona.”

  It was Felix who brought the discussion to a decisive close, announcing that the guesthouse was now completely ready for Phil, and he wanted to take father and son down now to see it. He confessed that he was mildly annoyed the workers hadn’t had it ready before the banquet, but then he’d pulled them off the guesthouse to work on the party and, well, it just didn’t get done. “It’s ready now for your father,” he said to Reuben, “and I can’t wait to show him the place.”

  At once they went up to collect Phil, who’d just finished his own breakfast, and the three proceeded down the cliff in the light rain.

  The workmen were gone, all the plastic draping and debris had been taken away, and Felix’s “little masterpiece,” as he called it, was ready for inspection.

  It was a spacious gray-shingled cottage with a high-peaked roof and stone chimney. Trellises on the front flanked its double doors where vines would be replanted in spring, said Felix, and the garden beds would be full of flowers. “I’m told that’s how it used to be,” said Felix, “one of the most charming spots on the whole property.” There was quite a little patio now restored in front of the cottage, of old flags uncovered and patched, where Phil could sit out in the spring and summer, and that too would be wreathed in spring flowers. This was the place for geraniums, said Felix. Geraniums love the ocean air. And he promised that it would be spectacular. Giant old rhododendrons grew beyond the trellises in both directions, and when they came into bloom, said Felix, they would be a vision of purple blossoms. In the old days, he’d been told that the house was always covered in honeysuckle, and bougainvillea and ivy, and it would be once again.

  A giant sprawling scrub oak stood just below the house on the edge of the patio and there was an old iron bench circling its immense gray trunk.

  Reuben had seen little really of the building when first he ventured here with Marchent, to a half-burnt ruin surrounded by Monterey pines and hidden by weeds and bracken.

  The little guesthouse hung right on the cliff over the ocean, its large small-paned windows having an unobstructed view of the slate-colored sea. Thick scatter rugs covered the highly polished wide-plank floors, and the bathroom had been upgraded to a marble shower and tub fit for royalty, or so Phil claimed.

  There was plenty of room in the parlor bedroom for an oak rocking chair by the large Craftsman-style fireplace opposite a leather recliner, and a rectangular oak table under the window. The bed was on the far north wall opposite the fireplace with a curved lamp at the head for reading. And a good-sized oak desk facing the room fitted comfortably in the far right corner.

  A wooden corkscrew stair to the left of the front door went up to a huge finished attic. The window from there had the best view of the sea and the surrounding cliffs as Reuben saw it, and Phil might eventually work up there, yes, he said, but for now the coziness of the house proper was perfect for him.

  Felix had picked these furnishings, but assured Phil that he must make the place his own and replace or remove anything that wasn’t to his liking.

  Phil was grateful for all of it. And Phil was comfortably ensconced by nightfall.

  On the desk he set up his computer and favorite old brass desk lamp, and tolerated the newly installed telephone though he said he would never answer it.

  Built-in bookshelves flanking the large fieldstone fireplace were soon filled from the cardboard boxes arriving from San Francisco, plenty of wood was stacked nearby, and the little kitchen was fitted out with Phil’s special espresso machine, and a microwave, which was all he needed, he claimed, to live the hermit life of his dreams. There was a small table beneath the window just big enough for two people.

  Lisa stocked the refrigerator for him with yogurt, fresh fruit, avocados, tomatoes, and all the raw stuff he ate all day. But she had no intention, she declared more than once, of leaving him to his own devices here.

  A faded patchwork quilt appeared on the daybed, which Phil explained had been made by his grandmother Alice O’Connell. Reuben had never seen this before, and was vaguely fascinated that such family relics even existed. Phil said it was the wedding-ring pattern, and his grandmother had made it before she was married. A couple more things came out of the trunk, including a little white cream pitcher that had belonged to Grandma Alice, and several old silver-plate spoons with the initials O’C on the handles.

  And he takes out these old treasures, Reuben thought, that he’s had all these years, and puts the quilt on his bed here because he feels that he can do that now.

 
Though Phil claimed he didn’t need the huge flat-screen TV over the fireplace, he soon had it turned on with the sound down constantly, as he played one DVD after another from a library of his treasured “great films.”

  The rocky paths from the guesthouse to the terrace or to the road were no problem at all for Phil, who had dug out yet another family heirloom from his trunk, an old shillelagh that had belonged to Edward O’Connell. It was a thick and beautifully polished stick with a weighted knob at the end for popping people over the head, presumably, and made the perfect staff for long walks, during which Phil wore a soft gray-wool flat cap that had once belonged to old Edward O’Connell, as well.

  With that cap and staff, Phil disappeared for hours on end, rain or shine, into the broad Nideck forests, often not appearing till well after supper when Lisa would force him to sit down at the kitchen table and take a meal of beef stew and French bread. Lisa went down every morning, too, with his breakfast, though often he was gone before she got there, and she left the meal for him on the counter in his little kitchen while she cleaned the guesthouse and made his bed.

  A number of times Reuben had roamed down to talk to him, but finding him typing away furiously on the computer, he’d stood outside for a while and then wandered back up the slope. Towards the end of the week, Sergei or Felix might be found visiting with Phil, in fast conversation about some matter of history or the history of poetry or drama. Felix borrowed Phil’s two-volume Mediaeval Stage by E. K. Chambers and sat for hours in the library poring over it, marveling at Phil’s carefully written notes.

  It was all going to work out, that was the point, and Felix cautioned Reuben not to worry about it for a single moment more.

  The fact was, the Distinguished Gentlemen all loved Phil and were obviously glad of the one night he did come to the big table for the evening meal.

  Lisa had all but dragged Phil to it, and the conversation had been great, having to do with the peculiarities of Shakespeare that people mistakenly took as representative of the way people had written in Shakespeare’s time, but were not at all typical, and rather a bit mysterious—as Phil so loved to explore. Margon knew vast blocks of Shakespeare by heart and they had fun going back and forth with chapter and verse of Othello. But it was King Lear that fascinated Phil above all.

  “I should be mad and raving on the heath,” said Phil. “By all rights, that’s exactly where I should be, but I’m not. I’m here, and I’m happier than I’ve been in years.”

  Of course Stuart threw out the schoolboy questions about the play. Wasn’t the king crazy? And if he was, how could it be a tragedy? And why had he been such a fool as to give all his property to his kids?

  Phil laughed and laughed, and never really gave a direct answer, saying finally, “Well, maybe the genius of the play, son, is that all that’s true, but we don’t care.”

  Each and every one of the Distinguished Gentlemen, and even Stuart, told Reuben individually how much they liked Phil and how much they wished he’d come to dinner every night, Stuart summing it up with “You know, Reuben, you are so lucky, I mean even your dad is completely exceptionally cool.”

  What a far cry from the house on Russian Hill where no one paid the slightest attention to Phil, and Celeste had so often secretly remarked that he was almost unendurable. I feel so sorry for your mother.

  There was evidence that certain other mysterious people also loved Phil. On Friday evening, Phil had wandered into the cottage, badly stung by bees on his face and on his hand. Reuben had immediately been alarmed and called Lisa in the main house for Benadryl. But Phil waved it all away. Could have been so much worse than it was.

  “They were in a hollowed-out oak,” he said, “and I tripped and fell against it. They were swarming, but fortunately for me, your friends came along, those forest people, you know the ones who were at the fair and the party.”

  “Right. Which people exactly?” asked Felix.

  “Oh, you know, the green-eyed man with the dark skin, that amazing man—Elthram. That’s his name, Elthram. I tell you the fellow is strong. He carried me away from those bees, just picked me up and carried me. This could have been a lot worse. They got me three times here, and he laid his hands on it, and I’m telling you he has some gift. It was really swelling. Not hurting now at all.”

  “Better take the Benadryl anyway,” said Reuben.

  “Well, you know, those are nice people, those people. Where do they live, exactly?”

  “All through the forest, sort of,” said Reuben.

  “No, but I mean where do they live?” asked Phil. “Where’s their home? They were the nicest. I’d like to invite them in for coffee. I’d love to have them as company.”

  Lisa came rushing in.

  Reuben already had a glass of water ready.

  “You need to stay out of that area,” she said. “Those were African killer bees, and they’re very aggressive.”

  Phil laughed. “Well, how on earth do you know where I was roaming, Lisa?”

  “Because Elthram told me,” she said. “Good thing he was looking out for you.”

  “I was just saying to Reuben that they are the nicest people, that family. He and that beautiful redheaded Mara.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever met Mara,” said Reuben, struggling to say this in a normal believable voice.

  “Well, she was at the fair in the town,” said Phil. “Don’t know that she came to the party. Beautiful red hair, and clear skin, like your mother.”

  “Well, stay out of that part of the woods, Philip,” said Lisa sharply. “And take these pills now before you get a fever.”

  On Saturday Reuben went into San Francisco to pick up his gifts for family and for friends. Everything had been purchased by phone or online through a rare-book dealer, and Reuben inspected each selection personally before having each wrapped with the appropriate card. For Grace, he’d found a nineteenth-century memoir by an obscure doctor who described a long and heroic life in medicine on the frontier. For Laura, the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus of Rilke in a first edition. For Margon he had an early special edition of T. E. Lawrence’s autobiography, and for Felix, Thibault, and Stuart fine and early hardcovers of several English ghost-story writers—Amelia Edwards, Sheridan Le Fanu, and Algernon Blackwood—whom Reuben especially treasured. He had vintage travelers’ memoirs for Sergei and for Frank, and Lisa; and books of English and French poetry for Heddy and Jean Pierre. For Celeste, he had a special leather-bound copy of the autobiography of Clarence Darrow; and for Mort a vintage edition of Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables, which he knew Mort loved.

  For Jim, he had books on filmmakers Robert Bresson and Luis Buñuel and a first edition of Lord Acton’s essays. For Stuart, a couple of great books on J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and the Inklings, as well as a new verse translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

  Lastly for Phil, he had managed at last to score all the small individual hardcover volumes of Shakespeare’s plays edited by George Lyman Kittredge—the little Ginn and Company books which Phil had so loved in his student days. This was a crate of books, all clean of markings and in excellent condition, on good paper and with good print.

  After that, he rounded up some newer books to be added to the mix—books by Teilhard de Chardin, Sam Keen, Brian Greene, and others—and then he shopped for some personal gifts for his beloved housekeeper Rosie—perfume, a purse, some pretty things. For Lisa he had found a particularly fine cameo in a San Francisco shop, and for Jean Pierre and Heddy cashmere scarves. And finally he called it quits.

  The Russian Hill house was empty when he got there. After putting all the family gifts quietly under the tree, he headed for home.

  Sunday, he spent the entire morning writing a long piece for Billie on the evolving concept of Christmas and New Year’s in America, since the ban on all Christmas celebrations in the early colonies to the condemnations today of the commercial nature of the feast. He realized how happy he was writing this
kind of informal essay, and how much he preferred this to any kind of reporting. He had it in his mind to do a history of Christmas customs. He kept thinking of those medieval mummers whom Felix had hired for the party and wondering how many people knew that such performers were once an integral part of Christmas.

  Billie wasn’t asking him to take any assignments. (She said she understand about Susie Blakely too many times. These were nudges, reminders, which he came to ignore.) She was pleased with his essays and told him so at every opportunity. The essays gave the Observer heft, she said. And when he found old Victorian pen-and-ink sketches to go with his work, that also pleased her. But she wondered how he might feel about covering the arts in Northern California, maybe reviewing some little-theater productions in various towns, or musical events in the wine country. That sounded very good to Reuben. What about the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon? Yes, Reuben would love to cover that, he said. Immediately he thought of Phil. Would Phil like to go up there with him?

  Two more “employees” had arrived from Europe on Friday, a young woman and a young man, both of whom were designated as secretaries and assistants for Felix—Henrietta and Peter—but by the next day, it was clear that both worked under Lisa at just about any task that was required. They were fair-haired, possibly a brother and sister, Swiss by birth, or so they said, and they said very little of anything, moving about the house without a sound, attending to the wants of everyone under the roof. Henrietta did spend hours in Marchent’s old kitchen office, working on household receipts. Stuart and Reuben exchanged secretive glances as they studied the movements of the pair and the way they seemed to be communicating with each other without speaking out loud.