Winter's End Read Free Page B

companions are not allowed to visit their consolers. And the severe punishment didn’t encourage anyone to disobey: no outings for the rest of the year.
    Helen went straight ahead, turned left at the fountain, and started along a sloping road. As she reached Number 47, she found herself smiling. She knew in advance what happiness she was going to give and receive. She went down the three steps and tapped lightly on the window rather than the door. The panes were steamed up inside. In a moment a small hand rubbed one of them and a bright little face appeared. The child’s mouth opened wide, and Helen could see his lips shaping the two syllables of her name:
He-len!
    A few seconds later Octavo was throwing himself into her arms. She picked him up and kissed his chubby cheeks. “You’re so heavy!” she said with a laugh.
    “I weigh fifty-seven pounds!” said the child, very proud of it.
    “Is your mama here?”
    “In the kitchen. I’m doing my homework. Will you help me like last time? I like it when you help me with my homework.”
    They went into the living room. It was not much larger than the library, but stairs to the right went up to the second floor, where there was a bedroom, and a door at the back of the house led to the kitchen. This door opened to reveal the monumental form of Paula.
    On one of her first visits, Helen had cried her heart out and then fallen asleep in Paula’s arms. When she woke up, she had murmured, “How much do you weigh, Paula?”
    She was only fourteen at the time, and this tactless question had made the fat woman laugh. “Oh, I don’t know, my dear. I’ve no idea. A lot, anyway.” When she hugged you, it was hard to make out where her arms, shoulders, breasts, and stomach were. Everything merged into a sensation of sweet warmth, and you wanted to stay there forever.
    Paula opened her arms now for Helen to snuggle up in them. “It’s been a long time, my beauty.”
    Paula often called her “My beauty” or “My pretty one.” And she would hold Helen’s face between her hands to get a better look at her. Helen had heard herself described as a number of things — emotional, odd, a tomboy — but no one else ever said she was pretty or beautiful. Paula did, and she meant it.
    “Yes, last time was before the summer,” Helen said. “I wanted to wait until December at least, but I couldn’t manage to hold out.”
    “Well, come on in. I’m just making supper for Octavo. Baked potatoes, and there’s some of the pear tart we had for lunch left. Will that be all right?”
    “Couldn’t be better!” said Helen happily. Everything she ate here, far away from the hated school refectory, tasted delicious.
    Octavo was already impatient to get back to his homework. “Come on! I can’t do it on my own.”
    As Paula went back into the kitchen, Helen rejoined the little boy and sat down beside him. “So what are you learning at school, then?”
    “Words that go in pairs for males and females.”
    “Right. Like what?”
    “The teacher gave us the first one. It was husband and wife. We have to write down three more pairs.”
    “Have you thought of your three?”
    “Yes, but I’m not quite sure about the third.”
    “Go on.”
    “Wizard and witch.”
    “Very good.”
    “Bull and cow.”
    “That’s fine. How about the third?”
    “That’s the one I’m not sure of.”
    “Never mind, let’s hear it.”
    “Fox and foxess.”
    Helen found it hard not to laugh. At the same time a deep, strong wave of melancholy swept over her. Did she have a little brother of her own somewhere? A little brother puzzling over his homework? Sticking his tongue out as he concentrated on the past tense of the verb
to do
or a problem like 3 × 2? No, she didn’t have a brother or sister anywhere. Or parents either. She thought of the orphanage where she had spent her childhood, and the autumn day when she left it. How could she ever forget?
    Three grim-looking men push her into the back of a