Chaplin & Company

by Mave Fellowes

  I am sailing, I am sailing, home again, ’cross the sea.

  The sound of the voice was embarrassing: it was warbling and thick. It sounded as though it was struggling in her throat. But as she went on the voice straightened and came out in a line, thick still but steady, and holding the notes. I am sailing, stormy waters, to be near you, to be free. Vera began to sway, nudging Odeline further into the corner with her soft shoulder and cushioned hips. The shellsuit rustled as she swayed. I am flying, I am flying, like a bird, ’cross the sky. Ridley looked at Vera as he sawed the bow back and forth. Everyone looked at Vera – none of them seemed embarrassed at the voice, at her appearance.

  I am flying, passing high clouds, to be with you, to be free.

  Odeline twisted to look down at Vera next to her and saw how her face lifted up as she sang, how her forehead furrowed as she pushed each note out and took deep breaths in between. The light from the porthole lit up the wisps of hair around her face like fine, fiery wickerwork. She looked beatified, a saint in one of the stained-glass windows of Arundel church. Odeline could not help being glad for Vera then – she seemed to have forgotten all of her heaviness in this moment. She looked as though she had forgotten where she was. She was singing to someone somewhere else.

  Can you hear me, can you hear me, through the dark night, far away. Philip started to sing the song too, and Angela. They knew the words. I am dying, forever trying, to be with you, who can say. More people joined, swaying in time with Vera. Can you hear me, can you hear me. Then the badger-haired man stood and slowly pulled his accordion open, meeting Ridley’s note with his own. He played as if the machine were an extension of his breathing chest, stretching the thing out and then pushing it back in, rising and falling. His head thrown back, hitting the keys with his fingers. Ridley with his fiddle stood up to face him. They played and the others sang and swayed. The two girls were slumped against Angela, who had her arms lifted above their heads, waving from side to side as she sang.

  On the way home Odeline asked to steer and Ridley let her. It had been difficult to maintain the eyeline along the roof of the boat because of the wheelbarrow, logs and other things strapped to the top, so her navigation had not been as accurate as during the lesson. Also it was dark and there were distracting noises on the water. But Ridley said they were only birds. He leant back against the rail beside her and she copied him, letting it support the small of her back. His patterned neck was silver in the moonlight and its shapes were slightly pronounced under the skin, like braille. He occasionally guided the tiller back on course. At one point his hand bumped hers and shot a shivering line up her arm.

  Odeline had felt like talking, just talking and talking. She wanted to know what Ridley thought of her performance. ‘I thought it was very impassioned,’ he said.

  Impassioned. ‘What else?’

  ‘Very pure, very concentrated. You looked as if you had completely transported yourself. It was really good.’

  ‘Do you think everyone thought so?’

  ‘Oh, without a doubt. Didn’t you hear them clapping?’

  ‘It was my first mime performance in public.’

  ‘Really? Well, you looked like a pro.’

  ‘I was Bip, the Birdkeeper. Marcel Marceau.’

  ‘I remember that one from the film reels.’

  Vera had been silent the whole way back, sitting in the dark. She left them to their conversation. Odeline was aware she was talking more freely than she ever had before. She noticed that the sentences came out easier, and it didn’t feel necessary to practise what she was going to say in her head before saying it. She wanted to tell Ridley about her father. ‘Shall I tell you a secret?’

  ‘Please do.’ She saw his mouth open into a smile, teeth and eyebrow rings glinting in the moonlight. He nudged the tiller back to the straight position.

  ‘My father is a famous performer. Odelin the Clown. I’m going to perform with him one day.’ She saw Vera turn to listen. ‘One day soon in fact. I just need to find him.’

  ‘You don’t know where he is?’

  ‘He tours with the Cirque Maroc. I’ve contacted him through various circus channels. I’m just waiting for my letters to reach him. Its takes a while, you know, when someone’s on the road.’

  ‘Oh, don’t I know about that. Letters take about a year to get to me.’

  ‘A year?’

  ‘Well, months perhaps. I make sure some letters never catch me up. The typed ones, for example.’

  ‘Typed ones?’

  ‘Official stuff. I can’t be doing with that. I travel light.’

  ‘Are you on the run from the law?’

  ‘Ha!’ He threw his head back and grimaced at the moon. ‘You make it sound so romantic.’

  During the journey she felt her body split away from her mind and it had brought strange feelings. Her shoulders wanted to be close to Ridley as they stood together by the tiller and her free arm gesticulated as she talked in the hope of brushing against his. These feelings weren’t unpleasant but they were alarming – her body had never acted of its own accord like this. It had always been subject to her mind and obedient to its plans. Now it seemed to have leanings of its own which could override everything else. She didn’t know what it would decide to do next.

  When they reached Little Venice, Vera stepped off the boat and said thank you to Ridley and goodnight to them both before walking away under the bridge. Odeline was annoyed that the journey had come to an end. She wanted it to go on and on. Ridley collected her prop box from inside and lifted it on to the towpath. Standing on the path she said thank you and then, without practising the move in her head, leant forward and pushed her lips on to his. In the half-second that their lips were touching she became aware, for the first time, that she was taller than him. Then her whole consciousness flooded to her lips and to the sensation of their mouths pressing like two cushions against each other, the uncomfortable prickle of his stubble framing it. And then she was aware of his hands on her shoulders, tilting her back to upright, and the view of him smiling as her face came away.

  He said goodnight very quietly and stepped back on to his deck. She towed the prop box back to her boat feeling that the dress rehearsals were over and her life had finally begun. Back in her cabin she became aware of a sudden terrible hunger and had eaten an entire packet of crackerbread with cheese slices, a cereal bar and a tin of tropical fruit pieces. She had felt wide awake, but lay herself on the bed anyway, and within a few moments had fallen into a thick sleep.

  This morning seems as blessed as the night before, with the light filling the cabin like a new beginning. Odeline doesn’t bother to check the clock. She doesn’t bother to make a plan for the day. It is Sunday – the British Waterways Office is closed, the entertainment agency answering machines will be on. There are no jobs to do. She is a magnet for good things – she will just walk around and let them happen.

  She pulls her nightdress over her head and wriggles out of it. Pulls on the underpants which are on the floor next to last night’s outfit, and the trousers beneath them. She puts on a white vest with her red braces and a waistcoat, leaving the wing-collar shirt – it is too cumbersome. Today she wants to feel light on her feet. She slides her feet into the brogues and ties the laces in a double bow. She goes to the bathroom and looks at herself in the mirror above the sink. The bathroom lamp is still broken but sunlight from the porthole hits one side of her face, dramatically. She puts her hands casually in her pockets, tips her head to the side like Chaplin’s Little Tramp and allows herself to smile. It looks new on her lips. She remembers Ridley’s wide smile.

  When she opens the cabin doors brightness floods in and she feels the heat hit her. But when she gets up on deck and looks around for the Saltheart, it is not there. She looks both ways. He has gone. Again. There is just the wide-bowed rubbish barge chugging along the canal towards her, its curved bowl giving an insolent black grin.

  She kicks the side of her boat. Why does he have
to disappear every time she makes a connection? Slippery, non-committal, he’s a featherweight.

  Then she remembers the orange drink in the plastic cup, all those sips, and wonders if, last night, she had in fact made herself ridiculous.

  This thought nags at her all the way to the barge cafe. Vera stops wiping the counter and motions her to a stool on the other side. ‘A special hot chocolate for the star of the show,’ she says, taking a can of whipped cream from behind the microwave.

  Odeline sits on the stool. ‘The star?’ she says.

  ‘You are a very talented girl, Odi,’ says Vera, nodding. ‘Big talent.’

  Odeline practises the smile again.

  ‘You will go far. I know it.’

  ‘Your singing was very good as well,’ says Odeline. The compliment feels strange in her mouth, but she is grateful for Vera. She decides that Vera is probably a very good judge of things.

  John Kettle appears in the doorway. This is the first time she has set eyes on him since they returned from the hospital. His shoulders are slumped and he is wringing his hat in his hands. His grey hair is overgrown and swept back, part of it sticks up from the top of his head like a crest. He looks old. ‘Hullo,’ he says, mashing his face into a grin. ‘Good morning, ladies.’ He smiles frantically at them both.

  ‘Hello,’ nods Vera, ‘nice to see you.’

  Odeline takes out her notebook and opens it.

  ‘Hullo, Odeline.’

  ‘Hello, John Kettle,’ replies Odeline, looking down at her book.

  ‘Odi,’ says Vera, softly.

  Odeline turns her head to the doorway and says, flatly, ‘Hello, John Kettle, how are you?’

  ‘Doing well,’ he beams. ‘Ever so well. I’ve really cleaned up the boat, you know.’ He says it like they should be impressed.

  ‘I noticed,’ smiles Vera, indulging him.

  ‘Well, I’ll see you ladies later.’ Odeline hears his voice break. ‘I’ve got a meeting to go to.’ Odeline watches him walk off, chaotically, sees him knock into a table as he goes, not noticing the pepper and salt grinders that topple and slowly roll off the table. His whistling echoes from under the bridge.

  When she turns back round Vera is looking at her in that way she does, her eyes crinkled with amusement, and this annoys her. So she asks, ‘Why didn’t you want to sign your name on the forms when we were at the hospital?’

  And Vera’s smile goes, as she knew it would, and the air between them chills. Vera gets down from her stool and starts, in silence, to clear away the tea things into the sink and then goes outside to rearrange the table John Kettle has knocked. She doesn’t make eye contact on her way out. Odeline sits at her stool feeling like a tall tree in a blizzard – the silence is very confusing to her. She doesn’t know what to do in this situation. She doesn’t know whether she has discovered a terrible thing, or done a terrible thing herself. She steps down from the stool and, looking straight ahead, walks out past Vera, who is bending over the table with one hand holding her side like it hurts.

  When Odeline gets back to her boat she sits on her bed and tries to push down the panic that is flapping around inside her. She knows Vera is hiding something. She behaved suspiciously at the hospital, and she has never said where she goes at night when she shuts the cafe. What if she is a convicted criminal? What if she has connections with the shady East European organisations she read about in Behind the Curtain: the Stasi, the KGB? What if Odeline is arrested as her accomplice and sent to prison? Is she being followed? She has heard that you have to share cells in prison – she could never rehearse in front of some criminal. How many years do you serve for being an accomplice?

  She gets up and begins to straighten the Marceau reels on the portholes. If Ridley was here he could defend her. She hears a quiet knock at the cabin door and freezes, perhaps she should pretend she is not here.

  ‘Odi, I am sorry. You deserve an explanation. I can explain it all.’

  Odeline goes to the door and unlatches it. Vera is on the deck and looks extremely apologetic: she doesn’t look like a criminal. But Odeline steps out into the open to talk to her just in case. They perch opposite each other on the low ledge around the side of the deck – Vera’s fat hands gripping the edge, Odeline’s long legs bent upwards either side of her like a grasshopper – and Vera begins to explain her situation.

  EIGHTEEN

  Eighteen months ago I am working as an English teacher at the secondary school where my father is headmaster. He has been headmaster for twenty-one years. He and my mother are well-known figures in the town, and respected. They are old-fashioned people. Like many in their generation, they may be holding some prejudice from twenty, thirty years before, but they never speak this in public. They would never cause an offence. They are peaceful people.

  It is unusual for a woman to hold an academic post, but my parents encourage me to study and then to take the job. My younger sister does what most girls do, and marries after school. She has always been in competition with me I think – she is pleased to beat me to a wedding. But marriage and children do not feature in my plan. I want to concentrate on my English studies and earn enough to travel. I want to see Paris, Berlin, Rome, Amsterdam, and, most of all, London. My parents have never travelled beyond the borders of our country and they think it is a wonderful ambition for me. They say they want a postcard from every capital city in Europe.

  Three years ago, the President dies, and after that frictions start to grow – along the old lines. Resentment from a generation ago. Angry words in Parliament become insults spat in the street, graffiti on the doors of shops and houses, brawls in the bars after dark. The spark is hate. It carries and burns. It rages. There is a new vocabulary, talk of pride, rights, blood, a homeland, and this language is growing more and more normal. Tomo, my brother-in-law, brings it into our house. He tastes the words on his tongue as he speaks them. My seven-year-old niece is using these words. People march on the streets with flags, singing old nationalist songs that half of them have never known and have to learn from scratch. They relish the hatred. They pass it on. They allow their fifteen-year-old sons to sign for military service. These boys just do not turn up to class one day. In total a quarter of my senior class leaves school early to join the army.

  Others of my students are enlisted as local vigilantes. Children help set fire to shops belonging to their classmates’ parents, and force neighbours, who they have lived beside all their lives, to leave their homes.

  My parents do not approve of what is happening. They do not hang a flag from their window and they never go to a demonstration. Tomo brings his angry talk to the dinner table: he comes home full of joy at the story of someone losing their business, or the vandalism of a religious house, but my parents do not respond. My mother might offer more potatoes around the table and my father might change the subject to work.

  ‘You know, Vera, I am reading about a new syllabus they have introduced in France.’

  What my parents say to each other in private, I never know. With my parents these things are always unreadable to me.

  Eighteen months ago there is a riot at a football match on the outskirts of town. Hundreds of people are injured. Many shot or stabbed, or teargassed by the police, who are thought by Tomo and his friends to be with the other side. He comes home that night boasting that he has ripped out a stadium seat to hit a policeman. He is covered in blood and has his nose punched in. Never has he looked so happy.

  After this things are getting worse. Some people from the town have a relative killed in the riot and they hear that my brother-in-law is boasting about how many he has punched. It is also known that my father has been involved in the old protests, in the 1970s. People think my family need to be taught a lesson.

  On winter mornings, my father goes to warm the car engine before driving us to the school. So, on this morning, when I leave the house, he is already sitting in the car on the other side of the road, with the engine turning over. He is looking straigh
t ahead with his hand on the wheel, as if he is driving. There are insults scratched into the bodywork of the car, obscene words and shapes. A back window has been smashed in but hangs there, lines spreading from the smash in a cobweb. The wipers are stolen and broken stumps poke out from the base of the windscreen. I get into the car. My father releases the handbrake to drive. He does not say what has been done and so neither do I. He drives as if nothing is different to yesterday: slowly, steadily and talking through my timetable for the day. When we arrive outside the school he pretends he does not see all his students looking at the words and shapes on his car. It must be a humiliation for him, but he does not show it. He takes a few moments to comb his hair and moustache in the mirror, polish his glasses, wish me good luck for the day, as usual, and then we both go into school. I miss assembly that morning and so this is the last time I see my father.

  My mother comes to the school at lunchtime and together they drive to the next village, where her brother, my uncle, has a garage. They have arranged to have the car fixed and take the bus back into town.

  On the way to the next village, the car skids and rolls down a bank. My parents, they are both killed. When my uncle looks at the car afterwards, one wheel is very loose and he thinks the vandals might be removing it. But also it is raining, and perhaps my father cannot see without the windscreen wipers.

  From the moment I hear of the accident, my parents are no longer belonging to me. People straight away begin to tell me what to do. I have to make sure the people who murdered them are punished. My parents are martyrs to the cause of independence. I should write to the President to have this recognised. I should organise a memorial to them in the municipal square.

  I can do none of these things. I cannot cry but I feel like I am fat with tears. I feel like I have sunk, I am sitting at the bottom of the ocean, my head is full of water.