Murmuration

by Robert Lock

  “I find it hard to determine on which side of the argument you stand,” he complained. “Are you saying you agree with me, Kate?”

  She smiled slightly. “A prudent wife will always agree with her husband, my darling.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Indeed it is. However, you are a man, George Parr, and will always look at the world through a man’s eyes. Certainly I would not want you to look at me through any other.”

  George was shocked. “Katherine!”

  “But,” she continued calmly, “you will necessarily observe things differently, and that is only right and proper. Take the pier, for example.”

  “The pier?”

  “I think it illustrates my point perfectly. You, my darling, doubtless regard the pier as another example of our society’s wonderful engineering skills. Its iron and wood have been tamed and turned into something useful. The sea and the beach have been conquered, the engineer’s legacy assured. I, on the other hand, look at the pier as it emerges and wonder about all the hundreds of people who will one day walk along it, who will laugh, and cry, and do all the other things that make us unique. What will it see, George? What will the pier see?”

  “I think you do men a disservice, Kate. We are not completely insensible to the…” he delved for the correct word, “soul of a structure, and what it might mean to the people who use it.”

  Katherine looked up at her husband and noticed for the first time that his dark sideburns now contained one or two flecks of grey in front of his ears. These minuscule signs of time’s passage made her feel, for one horrible moment, immensely sad; was George Parr destined for disappointment in life? To be denied fulfillment in his greatest ambition?

  “Do you see it?” She asked, pointing out to where the furthest pile was being driven.

  “See what?”

  “The pavilion! Our engineers love to finish their piers with a splendid pavilion, all domes and turrets like an Indian palace. And whose name is posted there, top of the bill? Why, Georgie Parr of course! The pier has made you famous, my love.”

  George strived to extrapolate the struts and latticework and beams already assembled and imagine the rest of the structure reaching out, forever to impose its form on the horizon’s as yet unbroken parallels, but the resulting mirage, a translucent and flimsy construct that danced before his eyes like a trick of the light, could never have borne the weight of a pavilion or theatre. It lingered for a moment, little more than a spider’s web, until a gull’s harsh scream overhead broke the spell, and there was only sea, and sky.

  “You can see further than me, Kate,” he said, unable to disguise the self-reproach in his voice. “Finding a space in the halls for the following week taxes my mind to its limit.”

  “Then you must hire an agent,” Katherine determined, “so that all your efforts are brought to bear on your act.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “If there is an agent to be had who does not require payment then I shall take him on immediately.”

  Katherine swivelled the parasol so that half of it was behind her husband’s head and half hers, effectively shielding them from anyone on the promenade. They were enclosed in a diffusely lit microcosm, its only window facing out to the expectant sea. “George Parr,” she began, all playfulness gone from her voice, “the man I married was determined and ambitious, a fighter to the last. If he has departed then I see no reason why I should remain either.”

  George was stunned. The railing beneath his hand felt suddenly red-hot, forcing him to relinquish his grip. “Are you saying—”

  “George, look at me.”

  He focused on her eyes, and saw in them such love and belief that he came close to tears.

  “We have no money,” she stated, “and that is perfectly fine. Our home is a succession of small rented houses with peeling wallpaper and blocked chimneys, and that also is perfectly fine. My father has not spoken to me properly since I went against his express wishes and married what he described to me as a ‘music hall clown’, and that, too, is perfectly fine. What I cannot countenance is your surrender, my darling George. To abandon your dreams now, when I know they are within your reach, would be not only a huge loss to the theatre, but also a betrayal of my faith in you. You are funny, Georgie Parr. Do you not hear the laughter? Are you struck deaf on stage?”

  He took a breath. There was a sharp edge to the air, the iodine clarity of seaweed, that caught in his throat, and in that moment George understood that his destiny lay here, in the resort, performing on the pier above the waves. “Do you know, I distinctly recall an encore at Clerkenwell last month, and I am almost sure it was for me!”

  Katherine giggled. “Of course it was for you! I remember when you came home, you were so excited you couldn’t sleep.”

  “Ah, a most unfortunate bout of dyspepsia, as I recall.”

  “That’s better!”

  “I think this sea air agrees with me,” George said, taking another deep breath. “It has the same effect as a good wine.”

  A rhythmic squeak was approaching from their left. George and Katherine turned to see an old man being pushed along the promenade in a wicker bath chair. A thick rug of dark blue wool almost totally enveloped what was clearly a desperately thin body, but his hands, which were draped limply on the chair’s tiller like two white gloves, seemingly retained strength enough to steer while his nurse pushed from behind. A tweed deerstalker hat, ear-flaps down, sat loosely on his head, which was as pale and mottled as his hands.

  As the chair drew level with them George touched the brim of his bowler hat and Katherine smiled sweetly. The old man lifted the index finger of his right hand, indicating to the nurse that he wished to stop, a request she complied with immediately.

  “A beautiful day, sir,” George noted.

  The old man’s eyes moved slowly in their sockets, a cautious investigation of some visionary quadrant bounded by illness or weariness, as though to assess for himself the accuracy of George’s observation. “A beautiful day,” he confirmed, in a voice as thin and translucent as tissue paper.

  “George Parr, sir, and this is my wife Katherine.”

  “Francis Delahay,” the old man replied.

  “We were just remarking on the quality of the air,” Katherine said. “Are you visiting the resort as part of your recuperation, Mr Delahay?”

  The old man’s breathing, rapid and so shallow that it hardly moved the blanket on his chest, quickened slightly. “I fear… matters are somewhat… advanced… for even the… sweetest of air to… ” The natural rhythm of pauses between breaths lengthened as he searched his mind for the right word. “… effect any… lasting… recuperation.”

  “Our apologies, sir,” George said, embarrassed by Katherine’s unwitting faux pas. “My wife did not intend any discourtesy.”

  Francis Delahay raised one hand slightly to dismiss the apology. “I have… been given… quite some time… to become accustomed… to my illness. It is as… familiar and aggravating as… a family member.”

  Katherine knelt down beside the bath chair and laid her hand lightly on top of the old man’s bloodless appendages. The nurse was so astonished by this gesture of intimacy from a total stranger that she let out an audible gasp, but Francis himself seemed unperturbed. Indeed, the ghost of a smile flickered across his face.

  “Your hand… is warm,” he noted.

  “And you, Mr Delahay, are a brave and kind man.”

  The nurse, somewhat mollified by her charge’s reaction, made a show of arranging his blanket. “Mr Delahay was an officer under Lord Nelson,” she informed them proudly in a broad West Country burr. “Fought at Trafalgar, he did.”

  “Trafalgar! Then you are indeed brave.”

  Again the dismissive lift of the hand. “I was… a terrified… midshipman… on the Tonnant.” Francis’ pale blue eyes, so absent they seemed to look out from another age, drew to some semblance of focus at his accurate French pronunciation of the ship’s name. “The
gunners… knew what to do…Captain Tyler… had drilled us… mercilessly. They had little need… of me.”

  Katherine looked up and addressed the nurse. “Have you looked after Mr. Delahay for long?”

  “Nearly two months,” the woman stated proudly. “Mr Delahay’s family took me on as sick nurse from the Westminster Training School, and I’ll be with him to the end, whenever the Good Lord deems it fit.”

  “In that case… ” her patient remarked, “my dearest Miss… Winterbottom… pray do not… unpack… your summer clothes.”

  George, Katherine and the nurse exchanged the briefest of glances, which nonetheless communicated, in the fullest terms possible, their admiration for and sympathy with this man, still capable of self-deprecating humour even when fully aware of his impending fate. Perhaps it was simply a defence mechanism, a show of bravado in the face of death, but Francis Delahay’s spirit shone from within the failing husk of his body and rendered every detail of the resort sharper and more precious. The sun glittering on a ruffled sea; the scarlet diamond of a child’s kite weaving a pattern of delight on the blue sky; the salty tang carried on the wind from a whelk-seller’s cart, all made beautiful by one man’s valedictory excursion. Even the growing limb of the pier, which Francis Delahay would never see completed, appeared more solid, as though by acknowledging his own destruction the old sailor had granted the accretion of wood and metal a blessing. ‘I take my leave,’ he was, in effect, saying, ‘but you must stay, and give many more people an afternoon like this.’

  Katherine gave his hands the lightest of squeezes, imperceptible to anyone but its recipient, and stood up. “Enjoy the rest of your promenade,” she said.

  “Godspeed, sir,” George added.

  Mr Delahay closed his eyes and nodded, seemingly exhausted by their brief conversation.

  “He tires so easily,” Miss Winterbottom explained, tucking in the blanket so tightly it seemed as much restraint as comfort, “but thank you for your kind words.” She glanced up at them. “Do you live here?”

  George looked at his wife, who raised her eyebrows in an exaggerated expression of amusement. “We hope to,” was his cautious reply.

  “It is a lovely place,” the nurse said, returning to her position behind the bath chair. “There’s something about the seaside, isn’t there?”

  “Indeed there is,” George concurred. But what? What was it behind the nurse’s vague perception that created the resort’s magic? Could it be bound up in the geography, the dynamism and uncertainty of the frontier? Did having your feet planted securely on good Victorian engineering allow one to better contemplate the stark mirror of an ungovernable ocean?

  Miss Winterbottom set off with little more effort than that which would have been required had the bath chair been empty, and yet, despite the flimsy nature of its contents, the chair carried with it the ballast of a good life, a life played out as much on the sea as on land. Perhaps this was why former Midshipman Delahay could regard his imminent annihilation with such equanimity; a lifetime’s intimacy with the sea, its benediction of safe passage over so many years, had given him a sense of perspective barely glimpsed by those who contemplated the waves from the promenade. Maybe the pier, which in many ways was a vessel of sorts, would offer those who stepped aboard some fraction of his insight.

  George watched the bath chair and its attendant squeak grow smaller, quieter, until it was obscured entirely by a horse-drawn bathing carriage being guided towards the beach. “Trafalgar!” He exclaimed. “Imagine being able to say that you fought at the Battle of Trafalgar!”

  Katherine returned her hand to the crook of her husband’s arm. She was sure Francis Delahay thought of the battle in far less romantic terms than did George, but she realised that to point this out could easily jeopardise all her efforts to instill in him a more optimistic outlook. She decided instead to impart a piece of information that, for the past month, she had kept secret for fear of any celebrations proving premature. Now, however, Katherine was sure of both her condition and its relative stability. The flutterings of a waning life that she had felt through the veteran sailor’s skin had somehow resonated with the stirrings of the new one within her, as though Francis had urged her to take George into her confidence.

  “I’m pregnant, George,” she said. “Shall we walk a little further?”

  Zlatka

  Almost six months had elapsed since their trip to the seaside, and now George was back plying his trade on the stages of London. In Islington the Collins’ Music Hall audience were being particularly raucous and unforgiving that evening. Those in the gallery, which traditionally housed members of the public with an inclination to voice their opinion about the turns, had concocted a series of put-downs and heckles that, though undeniably trenchant, were also offensive and cruel. Their latest victim was the girl currently on stage, a contortionist from the Far East who had burst into tears in the middle of her performance. George, watching from the wings as the next act on, felt some sympathy for her, though this was tempered by her obvious understanding of her tormentors’ vivid anatomical references, making him question her claimed Siamese origins. But then, he admitted to himself, all of us who step on to these boards are, to some extent, a fiction, constructed to better clothe the bones of our act. If this young woman said goodbye in a broad East End accent to her Limehouse family as she left for work in the afternoon, and yet the moment she stepped through the stage door of a theatre she became the ‘Silent Rubber-Limbed Disciple from the Golden Temple of Chiang Mai’, then what did it matter? Music hall audiences were, by and large, all too familiar with the mundane; what they wanted… what they demanded, was to be transported to somewhere extraordinary, and if this required a degree of credulity that was unlikely to be countenanced in everyday life then they were more than willing to give it, if that act then repaid their trust with a few minutes of laughter, wonder or song.

  To her credit, the contortionist wiped away her tears and carried on, hooking one leg round the back of her neck and then gradually raising herself on tiptoe whilst balanced on a small three-legged stool. Whether it was a gesture of support for her resolve, appreciation of the pose, or a combination of both, the contortionist received a generous round of applause. Even the gallery audience fell silent, a truce that disconcerted George somewhat as he imagined them re-grouping for another assault on the following act.

  A hand landed on his shoulder and gripped him tightly. “Damn near see straight down Cock Lane when she does that, eh Mr Parr?”

  George smiled. He did not have to turn to know who had whispered the lewd comment in his ear. “You have the morals of a sewer rat, Henry Dickinson,” he replied.

  “Ay,” the stagehand conceded, “but still, a tumble with the likes of madam there’d be an experience, don’t you think?”

  The contortionist had replaced the stool with a velvet-covered block. This heralded her final and most extraordinary pose, meaning of course that George would soon be following her into the cold and unforgiving limelight. He felt his heart begin to beat more rapidly, and he fiddled nervously with the cheap satin of his cravat, which had unaccountably begun to scrape against his neck like sandpaper.

  Settling herself stomach down on the block, the black-haired young woman began to arch her back, at the same time slowly raising both feet, curling her legs until she could reach backwards and catch hold of the ballet pumps, thus forming an almost perfect ‘O’ shape of body and limb. George found himself staring at the gently curving mound between her legs, pushing against her tight-fitting suit as she brought her feet lower and lower until they rested on the block on either side of her head. He tried to put the stage hand’s comments from his mind, but there was a frankness about the contortionist’s display, an eroticism that could not be denied. He imagined kneeling in front of her, ripping open the cloth of her suit to allow him access. How dark she would be, a coarse and vigorous blackness so unlike Katherine’s soft pale brown. What would it be like to enter her while h
er body, both internally and externally, was so tautly coiled?

  Satisfied with the positioning of her feet, the contortionist paused for dramatic effect, taking in several deep breaths as though preparing for one last supreme effort. The orchestra drummer began a slow crescendo on the snare, and from his position behind the curtain George could sense the audience draw closer, quieten, until the hiss of the limelight burners could be heard. The contortionist shifted slightly, manoeuvring her arm backwards, wincing as her shoulder-blade became more and more prominent until, with an audible crack, her right arm angled up behind her head and she grasped her left knee. There were gasps and several noises of sympathetic discomfort, but the girl was not finished. The drum grew more insistent. Gritting her teeth, the contortionist began the same process with her left arm, but this time when the pop of dislocation echoed round the theatre she let out a thin wail of pain. Breathing heavily now, and shutting her eyes for one last supreme effort, she inched her hand closer and closer, fingers trembling with the effort, until at last she clasped hold of her right knee. Tilting back her head triumphantly, her smile directed at the auditorium was the perfect combination of accomplishment tempered with the suffering required to achieve it. The orchestra gave her a climactic hit and the audience burst into vigorous applause, including a scattering of whistles and shouts.

  As the applause continued the girl began to disentangle herself, resetting her arms with little more than a sort of rotational shrug, straightening her back and rising off the block until upright, banal, even, she gave a slow bow that did not stop at ninety degrees, or one hundred, or one hundred and twenty, but simply carried on, her body closing together like the victim of some invisible instrument of torture. When her forehead touched her shins the applause redoubled, but the contortionist knew not to hold the stage and risk losing the audience. In one graceful movement she straightened again, gave a final, more conventional bow and hurried into the wings. As she passed George the smell of her filled his nostrils, a potent combination of musky perfume and sweat that, to his alarm, aroused him in a far more guttural and brutish manner than ever his Katherine could have done. Her feral odour was like a physical affirmation of the stagehand’s coarse remarks. George felt intoxicated and ashamed, attracted and repelled in equal measure, but no matter how he tried to picture Katherine’s clear blue unswerving gaze all he could really think of was the contortionist’s slightly hooded brown eyes as she glanced at him in passing. There had been little or no emotion in that glance, apart perhaps from the natural empathy of a fellow performer, and yet there was something quite beguiling in this absence. It spoke of simplicity and detachment, an unequivocal eroticism.