“But she’s—”
“She is only doing as I have told her.”
“You told her to vandalize your own house?”
“No. I have told her not to ignore life’s possibles.”
3
MISS ELIOT DID not Approve of Charles, nor of Sophie. She disliked Charles’s carelessness with money, and his lateness at dinner.
She disliked Sophie’s watching, listening face. “It’s not natural, in a little girl!” She hated their joint habit of writing each other notes on the wallpaper in the hall.
“It’s not normal!” she said, scribbling on her notepad. “It’s not healthy!”
“On the contrary,” said Charles. “The more words in a house the better, Miss Eliot.”
Miss Eliot also disliked Charles’s hands, which were inky, and his hat, which was coming adrift round the brim. She disapproved of Sophie’s clothes.
Charles was not good at shopping. He spent a day standing, bewildered, in the middle of Bond Street and came back with a parcel of boys’ shirts. Miss Eliot was livid.
“You cannot let her wear that,” she said. “People will think she is deranged.”
Sophie looked down at herself. She fingered the material. It felt quite normal to her—still a little stiff from the shop, but otherwise fine. “How can you tell it’s not a girl’s shirt?” she asked.
“Boys’ shirts button left over right. Blouses—please note, the word is ‘blouses’—button right over left. I am shocked that you don’t know that.”
Charles put down the newspaper behind which he had retreated. “You are shocked that she doesn’t know about buttons? Buttons are rarely key players in international affairs.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I meant, she knows the things that are important. Not all of them, of course; she is still a child. But many.”
Miss Eliot sniffed. “You’ll forgive me; I may be old-fashioned, but I think buttons do matter.”
“Sophie,” said Charles, “knows all the capitals of all the countries of the world.”
Sophie, standing in the doorway, whispered, “Almost.”
“She knows how to read, and how to draw. She knows the difference between a tortoise and a turtle. She knows one tree from another, and how to climb them. Only this morning she was telling me what is the collective noun for toads.”
“A knot,” said Sophie. “It’s a knot of toads.”
“And she whistles. You would have to be extraordinarily unintelligent not to see that Sophie’s whistling is unusual. Extraordinarily unintelligent, or deaf.”
Charles might just as well not have spoken. Miss Eliot swept him aside with a single flick of her fingers. “She’ll need new shirts, please, Mr. Maxim. Women’s shirts. And, my Lord, those trousers!”
Sophie didn’t see the problem. Trousers were just skirts with extra sewing. “I need them,” she said. “Please let me keep them. You can’t climb in a skirt. Or, you can, but then everyone would see your underpants, and surely that would be worse?”
Miss Eliot frowned. She was not the sort of person who admitted to wearing underpants.
“We’ll let it pass for now. You’re still a child. But this can’t go on forever.”
“What? Why not?” Sophie touched the bookcase with her fingertips for luck. “Yes, it can. Why wouldn’t it?”
“It certainly can’t. England is no place for untrained women.”
Above all, Miss Eliot disliked Charles’s wish to take Sophie on sudden expeditions. London was dirty, she said, and Sophie would catch germs and bad habits.
On the day of Sophie’s probably ninth birthday, Charles stood her on a chair and polished her shoes while she ate toast with one hand and read a book with the other. She turned the pages with her teeth. Crumbs and spit coated the corners of the paper, but it was otherwise a satisfactory arrangement.
They were almost ready to leave the house for the concert hall, when Miss Eliot stormed in.
“You can’t take her out like that! She’s filthy! And don’t slouch, Sophie.”
Charles looked with interest at the top of Sophie’s head. “Is she?”
“Mr. Maxim!” barked Miss Eliot. “The girl has jam all down her top!”
“So she does.” Charles looked at Miss Eliot with courteous bewilderment. “Does it matter?” Then, seeing Miss Eliot’s hand reach toward her clipboard, he took a cloth and sponged at Sophie, as gently as if she were a painting.
Miss Eliot sniffed. “There’s some on the sleeve, too.”
“The rain will wash the rest off, surely? It’s her birthday.”
“Dirt still applies on birthdays! You’re not taking her to a zoo.”
“I see. Would you rather I took her to the zoo?” Charles tipped his head to one side. He looked, Sophie thought, like a particularly well-mannered panther. “It may not be too late to change the tickets.”
“That isn’t what I meant! She’ll disgrace you. I would be embarrassed to be seen with her.”
Charles looked at Miss Eliot. Miss Eliot’s eyes dropped first.
“She has shining shoes and shining eyes,” said Charles. “That is smartness enough.” He handed Sophie the tickets to hold on to. “Happy birthday, my child.” He kissed her forehead—the once-yearly birthday kiss—and helped Sophie from her chair.
There are many ways, Sophie knew, of helping people from their chairs. It is a very revealing thing to do. Miss Eliot, for instance, would prod you off with a wooden spoon. Charles did it carefully, by the fingertips, as though they were dancing—and he whistled the string section from Così fan tutte all the way down the street.
“Music, Sophie! Music is mad and wonderful.”
“Yes!” Charles had kept her birthday plans a secret, but his excitement was contagious. She skipped alongside him. “What kind of music will it be?”
“Classical, Sophie.” His face was alight with happiness, and his fingers were twitching at the tips. “Clever, complicated music.”
“Oh. That’s . . . wonderful.” Sophie was an unpracticed liar. “That will be so good.” In fact, Sophie thought, she would rather have gone to the zoo. Sophie had heard almost no classical music, and she would have been quite happy to keep it that way. She liked folk songs, and music you could dance to; very few just-turned-nine-year-olds, she imagined, could have said they liked classical music without lying a little.
The performance did not, as far as Sophie was concerned, start promisingly. The piano piece was long. The pianist had a mustache and made the sorts of faces that Sophie associated with being very itchy.
“Charles?” Sophie glanced at Charles and saw his lips were slightly open, and curved upward in an expression of very-listening happiness.
“Charles?”
“Yes, Sophie? And you must try to whisper.”
“Charles, how long does it go on for? I mean, it’s not that it’s not wonderful.” Sophie crossed her fingers behind her back. “It’s just that I . . . wondered.”
“Only an hour, my child, alas. I could live here, in this seat, couldn’t you?”
“Oh. An hour?” Sophie tried to sit still, but it was difficult. She sucked the end of her braid. She curled and uncurled her toes. She resolved, unsuccessfully, not to bite her thumbnail. She was at last on the borderland of sleep when three violins, a cello, and a viola came onstage, accompanied by their musicians.
When they began to play, the music was different. It was sweeter, and wilder. Sophie sat up properly and shifted forward until only half an inch of her bottom was on her seat. It was so beautiful that it was difficult for her to breathe. If music can shine, Sophie thought, this music shone. It was like all the voices in all the choirs in the city rolled into a single melody. Her chest felt oddly swollen.
“It’s like eight thousand birds, Charles! Charles! Isn’t it like eight thousand birds?”
“Yes! But shhh, Sophie.”
The melody quickened, and Sophie’s pulse kept time. It sounded at once familiar
and new. It plucked at her fingers and feet.
Sophie’s legs wouldn’t stay still. She knelt up on her seat. After a moment, she risked a whisper. “Charles! Listen! The cello sings, Charles!”
When the music closed, she clapped until the rest of the audience had stopped and until her hands were hot and blotched with red. She clapped until everyone was staring at the girl with lightning-colored hair and a ladder in her stocking, whose eyes and shoes lit up the whole of the second row.
There was something in the music that felt familiar to Sophie. “It feels,” she said to Charles, “like home. Do you see what I mean? Like fresh air.”
“Does it? Then I think,” said Charles, “we must get you a cello.”
The cello they bought was small but still too large to play comfortably in her bedroom. Charles unstuck the skylight in the attic, and on the days on which it did not rain, Sophie climbed onto the roof and played her cello, up amongst the leaf mold and the pigeons.
When the music went right, it drained all the itch and fret from the world and left it glowing. When she did stretch and blink and lay her bow down hours later, Sophie would feel tougher, and braver. It was, she thought, like having eaten a meal of cream and moonlight. When practice went badly, it was just a chore, like brushing her teeth. Sophie had worked out that the good and bad days divided half and half. It was worth it.
Nobody bothered her up on the rooftop. It was flat gray slate, with a stone balustrade running round the edge. The balustrade came up to Sophie’s chin; people below, looking up, could see only a shock of bright hair, and a bowing elbow.
“I love the sky.” Sophie said it one night without thinking, at dinner. She bit her tongue; other girls laughed if you said things like that.
But Charles only laid a slice of pork pie on the Bible and nodded. He said, “I’m glad.” He added a dollop of mustard and handed Sophie the book. “Only weak thinkers do not love the sky.”
Almost as soon as she could walk, Sophie could climb. She started with the trees, which are the quickest route to the sky. Charles came with her. He was not a “No, don’t; hold tighter” sort of man. He stood underneath her and shouted. “Higher, Sophie! Yes, bravo! Watch out for the birds! Birds look wonderful from underneath!”
4
THE ORIGINAL CELLO Case, Sophie’s Life raft, was kept at the foot of her bed. For her eleventh birthday, Charles sanded away the mildew and bought some paint.
“What color?” he asked.
“Red. Red is the opposite of sea colors.” It was difficult for Sophie to love the sea.
Charles painted the cello case the brightest red he could find and set a lock in it. She stacked her precious things inside, and midnight snacks. She opened it only as a treat, or if she had one of her dark sea-nightmares.
If Sophie had known how important the cello case would prove to be, she would probably not have stored honey in it, which always manages to leak. But she did not know. It is impossible, Charles always said, to know everything.
Charles warned her not to think too much of the cello case. “Be careful not to treasure the wrong things in life,” he said. “We cannot tell if it is rightfully yours, Sophie. You may not be able to keep it; someone may claim it.”
“Yes, I know!” Sophie grinned. “Someone will claim it. My mother will. When she comes.” Sophie spat on her palm and crossed her fingers for luck. It was like a reflex; she spat and crossed them a hundred times each night.
“The case may not have belonged to your mother. It might have been snatched up by her as the ship went down. Women very rarely play the cello, Sophie. In fact, I have never heard of a woman who does. A violin is more usual for a woman.”
“No,” said Sophie. “It was a cello. I know it was. I remember. I remember her fingers on the bow.”
Charles bowed his head in a courteous nod, as he always did when he disagreed. “I remember the ship well, Sophie. I remember the band. But I do not remember, Sophie, any women with cellos.”
“But I do.”
“Sophie, no. The band was made up of men with mustaches and greased hair.”
“I remember, Charles! I do!”
“I know.” Charles’s face was too sad to look at. Sophie scowled at her ankles instead. “But, dear heart, you were a baby.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t remember. I saw her, Charles, I really did. I remember the cello.” The arguments were always the same. How do you make people believe you? Sophie thought. It was too slow and too unwieldy. It was impossible.
“I saw her floating. I did!” She balled her fists. If she had not loved him so much, she would have spat at him.
“And yet, my child, I did not see her. I was there too.” He sighed so deeply that his breath ruffled the curtains. “I know it’s hard, Sophie. Life is so hard. My God, life is the hardest thing in the world! That is a thing people should mention more often.”
Almost every night, Sophie went mother-watching. She snuffed the candle and sat on the windowsill with her legs swinging, watching the mothers on her street go by. The best ones had faces full of wit. Sometimes they carried sleeping children—fat babies, and toddlers with legs stuck out at peculiar angles. Sometimes they sang as they passed by under Sophie’s dangling feet.
On the evening of her eleventh birthday, though, Sophie took out her sketchbook. It was leather, and soft from being kept under her pillow. She drew in it every birthday.
Sophie’s pencil was bluntish, and she chewed at the lead to sharpen it. Then she closed her eyes and tried to remember. She drew a pair of black trousers, worn thin at the knee (“worn at the knee” is surprisingly difficult to draw, but she did her best), and on top of them the torso and head of a woman. She added hair. She had no colored pencils, but she bit at a hangnail and used a little blood to paint it red. Then, with her pencil over the face, Sophie hesitated.
“Oh,” she whispered. And then, “Think.” And then, “Please.” But she could remember only a blur. At last Sophie drew a tree blowing in the wind, and then drew hair blowing across the face.
Mothers are a thing you need, like air, she thought, and water. Even paper mothers were better than nothing—even imaginary ones. Mothers were a place to put down your heart. They were a resting stop to recover your breath.
Under her picture, Sophie wrote “my mother.” Her finger was still bleeding, so she drew a flower behind the woman’s ear and colored it red.
Every night before she went to sleep, Sophie told herself stories in her head, in which her mother returned to find her. They were long and difficult to recall in the morning, but they ended in dancing. When she remembered her mother, she always remembered dancing.
5
MY THE TIME Sophie’s Twelfth Birthday came around, she had almost stopped breaking plates, and the books had been moved from the kitchen back to Charles’s study. Charles called her in there to give her his present. It stood on the desk, a square tower wrapped in newspaper.
“What is it?” It looked the size of a bathroom cabinet, but even from someone as unusual as Charles, that seemed an unlikely gift.
“Open it.”
Sophie tore off the paper. “Oh!” Her breath got tangled up somewhere on the way out. It was a stack of books, each bound in a different-colored leather. The leather glowed, despite the gray day outside.
“There are twelve. One for each year.”
“They’re beautiful. But . . . Charles, weren’t they terribly expensive?” They looked as though they would be warm to touch. Leather like that wasn’t cheap.
Charles shrugged. “Twelve is the right age to start collecting beautiful things. Each of these,” he said, “was a favorite of mine.”
“Thank you! Thank you.”
“It’s the things you read at the age you are now that stick. Books crowbar the world open for you.”
“They’re perfect.” Sophie turned them over. She sniffed the insides. The paper smelled of brambles and tin kettles.
“I’m glad you think so.
Although, if you turn down the corners of the pages like that, I shall have to bludgeon you to death with Robinson Crusoe.”
When she had examined the last one (it was Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and the illustrated plate in the front looked promising), Charles went to the windowsill and came back with a carton of ice cream. It was the size of Sophie’s head.
“Happy birthday, my child.” Sophie dipped in a finger, which was not allowed but could probably be gotten away with on her birthday. The ice cream was rich and sweet. Sophie dug out a chunk with Charles’s ruler and grinned up at him.
“It’s perfect. Thank you. It tastes exactly like birthdays should taste.”
Charles believed food was better eaten in beautiful places: in gardens, or in the middle of lakes, or on boats. “I have a theory,” he said, “that the best place to eat ice cream is in the rain on the outside box of a four-horse carriage.”
Sophie squinted at him. It was sometimes difficult to tell if Charles was joking. “Is it?”
“You don’t believe me?” said Charles.
“No, I don’t.” Sophie struggled to keep a straight face. She could feel a laugh rising. It was like a sneeze; it filled her chest.
“Well, neither do I, to be honest. But it’s possible,” said Charles. “You and I will go out and test it. Never ignore a possible!”
“Fantastic!” Four-horse carriages were, Sophie thought, the best invention in the world. They made you feel like a warrior-queen. “Can we ask to have the horses gallop?”
“We can. Though I suggest that you change into your trousers first. Those skirts are fascinating creations; it’s as though you’ve mugged a librarian,” said Charles.
“Yes! I’ll be quick.” Sophie gathered up her books into her arms. She could only just see over them. “And then?”
“And then we will locate a cab. Very luckily, it happens to be raining.”
Charles, it turned out, was right. The rain lashed against them as they thundered round corners, and made her ice cream run down over her wrist. The rain whipped her hair into wet snakes behind her. It made eating a challenge, but Sophie liked a challenge.
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