by Mary Gibson
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll come!’
‘Good!’ Winnie beamed. ‘Now all we need is to find you a bike.’
‘Ah well, that won’t be a problem,’ Matty said with a grin. ‘Drink up your tea – we’re going round my Sam’s!’
They found Sam in his backyard, sitting on a low stool in front of a metal cobbler’s last, which Matty recognized as once belonging to their father. He was surrounded by at least a dozen pairs of children’s shoes in various states of disrepair. Sam had become so upset by the sight of so many shoeless children in Vauban Street that he’d taken on the task of repairing whatever footwear they had, which were usually only the tattered remnants of uppers and no soles at all. He’d already cut out some soles from a few oddments of leather discarded by Bevingtons’ tannery and was now tacking one, with quick double taps, to the smallest pair of shoes, obviously a little girl’s. He had a mouthful of tacks but now spat them out when he heard Matty’s request.
She wheeled the bicycle out into the centre of the yard, where she paraded it round in a little circle for Winnie’s inspection.
‘You can’t seriously believe you’re going anywhere on that!’ Winnie said, open-mouthed.
‘What’s the matter with it?’ Matty came to a halt and ran her hand down the front tyre as if it were the flank of a horse.
‘What’s the matter with it? It’s a penny-farthing!’
‘Obviously.’
‘You’ll never get all the way to Winchester on it! Matty, it’s a bit late for us to find you a proper bike in time.’
‘‘Bloody cheek! Are you saying my dad’s penny-farthing ain’t a proper bike?’ Sam laughed and came over to show off the penny-farthing. ‘I’ll clean it up, oil the wheels, give it the once-over. If it could get Dad from Hull to London, it can get Matty to Winchester.’
‘Not if she comes a cropper on the Old Kent Road it won’t.’
Matty gave Winnie a sour smile. ‘I won’t! Anyway, I’m taller than Nellie and if she could ride it, so can I! Now get out me way.’ And with one foot expertly on the back bar, she scooted with her other foot and swung effortlessly up on to the seat. Luckily, she’d been wearing some wide-legged trousers – the only ones she possessed, and perhaps a little too elegant, having been designed for a Hollywood poolside.
She took delight in nearly knocking Winnie off her feet as she circled the yard.
‘See, you never forget!’
‘Where d’you learn that?’ Winnie seemed delighted.
‘I taught her when she was a little ’un,’ Sam said. ‘All the kids in the family have been up on that penny-farthing one time or another, but with her height and balance she’s a natural.’
Matty pulled on the spoon break and hopped off, taking a little bow.
‘I don’t know how you’ll manage hills and rough roads? It’ll be bloody hard work.’ Winnie was still unconvinced.
‘You’ll be racing to keep up with her,’ Sam said, nodding his head sagely.
‘Well, I can’t afford a second-hand bike, so it’s this or nothing.’
Eventually Winnie agreed to a few practice runs and, being very slow on her own bike, proved an ideal cycling companion. Soon Matty had the confidence to believe Sam’s predictions that she would be leading the band all the way to Winchester.
*
It was only when the little party of cyclists gathered outside Bermondsey Town Hall in Spa Road early one morning that she realized what Winnie had done. Tom was standing beside a bicycle and she didn’t think he was there to see Winnie off. When he saw her, he looked as surprised as she felt and she nodded a hello, before pulling Winnie aside.
‘Why didn’t you tell me he was coming!’
She felt immediately awkward. Sharing her troubles and her worries about Frank with Tom had gone some way to reviving her closeness to him, but at work he was still her boss and she’d noticed he was careful never to let the conversation drift to their shared past. She really wasn’t sure exactly how far he wanted their rediscovered friendship to go, but she did know it was impossible to imagine going away on holiday with him.
‘Surprise!’ And Winnie gave a mischievous smile. ‘I’ve got my chap with me, so I thought you should have one too!’
Matty drew stares and cheerful encouragement all the way through London, and not only because of her ancient method of transport. Instead of the usual shorts and shirt, she wore the wide, high-waisted trousers with a red silk blouse and matching bandana to hold her waves in place. Just because she was on an outdoor holiday she didn’t see why she had to look like a khaki sack and if she was going to draw attention, she might as well put on a good show. With her drop earrings and red lipstick she did not look the typical cyclist. At one point Tom drew level and shouted up at her. ‘How’s the air up there?’
‘Rare, dear boy, very rare!’ she said in a clipped Gertie Lawrence impersonation.
‘Talk about lying low!’
The reminder of Frank’s possible re-emergence clouded her sunny mood for an instant, but on a day that had turned brilliant with sunshine she refused to accept she must live her life in the shadows. Besides, the threat from the Sabinis hadn’t materialized and though she knew Tom had been in touch with Sugar, no reports had come back. She so wanted to be free, and the further from London they rode the more expansive she felt. Atop her father’s old penny-farthing she realized the exhilaration he must have felt, bowling along half-empty roads, making his own escape from poverty all those years ago. Tears stung her eyes, partly from the warm breeze whipping into her face, partly from the memory of Michael Gilbie, the man she still thought of as her father. How hard he’d worked for his children and how much he’d dreamed. It was only now that she understood how deeply losing Eliza had wounded him and why he’d gone along with the fiction that Matty was his daughter. She was beginning to accept that it wasn’t such a bad thing, to have become his second ray of sunshine – a replacement for the one that had disappeared from his life forever.
On flat ground Matty found Sam’s prediction coming true, she could outstrip the others easily, though she didn’t dare for fear of losing the way, but on hills it was harder and she was glad of the strong calf muscles she’d developed through all those dancing years practising shuffle-ball changes. They broke their journey near a farm outside Crookham and Winnie immediately collapsed on to the grass.
‘Me legs are killing me!’ she complained, rolling over on to her front so that Matty could inspect her ‘biscuit legs’, with their network of varicose veins running up the calves, brought about by long hours spent standing at a bench every day.
‘Perhaps they’ll go down with all this exercise,’ Matty said hopefully, rubbing the backs of Winnie’s legs.
Winnie rolled on to her back and patted her stomach. ‘I’m hoping they won’t be the only thing going down,’ she said, reaching for her saddlebag and the sandwiches she’d packed. ‘I don’t know how you do it, up on that contraption, Matty.’ She offered Matty a meat-paste sandwich.
‘It’s not too bad when you get going – it’s the starting and stopping that’s hardest.’
As the others munched on their sandwiches and drank bottles of cold tea, Matty leaned back on her elbows. Gazing at nothing but a wide blue sky and green fields, listening to the buzzing of flies and the cows’ baritone chorus coming from beyond the hedge, she realized she was happy. For too long her spirit seemed to have been crushed into the smallest of spaces, but today she felt able to breathe.
Her musings were interrupted by Wally, one of their party, who strolled over to where she sat.
‘Giss a go on your bike, Matty,’ he asked. He’d been angling to have a go on the penny-farthing ever since they set off.
It turned out Winnie had not only invited Tom on the trip, she’d also invited ‘her chap’ Wally. He’d been Tom’s boyhood friend and someone Matty knew from her days at the Star, where he’d once been a novelty act. Known as ‘Wally the Wonder Wheel’, he was a trick cyclist
who would ride a unicycle across a slack line stretched from one end of the stage to the other. But like herself, he’d found it hard to stay in work when the old variety theatres started changing to cinemas.
Before she had a chance to say no Wally reached for the bike, which she’d propped against a hedge. She jumped up to stop him, but he’d already started scooting away.
‘Oh bloody hell, no!’ she said, looking round at Tom. ‘I’ll be spending the rest of my holiday here unless he’s improved!’
The others laughed because the thing about Wally the Wonder Wheel was that his act had always been a disaster and he spent more time on the boards than on his unicycle. In the end Bernie had kept him on as a comedy act – the more times he tumbled off the rope, the louder the laughs he got. He’d confided to Matty that he’d recently quit the stage and had found much more success in his new career as an insurance salesman.
‘You’d better run after him then,’ Tom said.
‘Very helpful!’ Matty cracked him on the head as she sprang up and trotted downhill after Wally. Unfortunately, the gradient was a little steeper than he’d anticipated and to her horror she saw him heading straight into the path of an oncoming pale blue coupé, with its cream soft top down, which was taking the bend at speed. She could see Wally fumbling to find the spoon brake.
‘Swerve, Wally! Swerve!’ she called. And in the nick of time, he wrenched the large front wheel to the right, veering off the road and straight into the hedge as the car sped by with a loud blast of its horn. Used to falling from heights, Wally somersaulted into a field of curious cows, leaving the penny-farthing sticking out of the hedge. The others ran up and were just in time to see Wally the Wonder Wheel sitting disconsolately in the middle of a wet cowpat.
‘Walter, you idiot!’
‘Sorry, Matty, is the bike all right?’
‘Yes, but no thanks to you!’
Matty took possession of the penny-farthing and they set off on the Winchester road, but the episode had delayed them and it wasn’t until late afternoon that the square tower and long nave of Winchester Cathedral came into view. They halted on high ground just beyond the town. Matty jumped down while the others stayed on their bikes. The day had been one of intense sunshine and the accumulated heat seemed to radiate off the surrounding fields and trees. Golden, late afternoon light gilded all the green and the cathedral tower itself seemed made of precious metal. Matty’s eyes rested on a sky of rich cloudless blue, wide and seamless. She cast her mind back to Mrs Oliver, bringing up her baby in that gloomy tunnel of a street near Dockhead. At least she didn’t have to watch her child growing up without space and air, or without sights that could feed a growing soul.
She breathed in deeply and suddenly Tom was at her side.
‘I think we’ll have company waiting for us, when we get to Winchester,’ he whispered.
‘Good company?’ she asked, puzzled.
And he shook his head. ‘That blue coupé on the road – I think I know who the driver is, and no, I wouldn’t say he was your idea of good company.’
When they finally arrived in Winchester they were all weary and hungry, but as they wheeled their bikes across the ancient stone bridge that led into the town Matty stopped, enchanted at the sight before her.
‘Is that it?’ she pointed to an old watermill, built on arches spanning the River Itchen. A steeply pitched red-tile roof sat on low red brick walls, punctured by leaded windows. Matty could make out the massive wooden wheel churning at its heart, spewing white water down a mill race towards the bridge on which they stood. Tom had told her they were staying in a youth hostel, which she’d balked at, fearing that at twenty-eight she was too old, but he assured her that youth was fluid when it came to business, and whatever their age the youth hostel would welcome their shillings.
‘Well, I can’t see any other watermills about, so I reckon it is,’ Tom replied.
‘But you said it was disused.’
‘It doesn’t make flour any more, but the wheel keeps turning, just the same,’ Tom explained.
Inside, the hostel was even more of a surprise. It was packed to its substantial oak rafters with bare-kneed boys and girls. Every hiker and cyclist in England seemed to have been lured out by the good weather. There was a large party of noisy boy scouts, a Methodist girls’ club and several Americans, as well as themselves, and the warden informed them the dormitories were at capacity. She was a jolly woman who, as Tom suspected, hadn’t asked for their ages, but perhaps had noted they were older than the other guests.
‘We do have alternative accommodation which might suit you better than the dorms – the boy scouts can be rather boisterous,’ the warden offered. She beckoned them to follow, leading the way through a high-ceilinged common room supported by massive beams which had once formed the lower level of the mill. It was furnished sparsely with tables and some wicker chairs, and from there a tiny back door led into a sun-dappled boat-shaped garden. Matty was enchanted. The garden was actually an island bounded on each side by the River Itchen. One stream thundered beneath the arches of the mill race and the other flowed more sedately round the mill, the two joining at the bridge in front of the mill. It was a pretty place, with a low wall all round and a central flower bed. On either side of the flowers a dozen cot beds had been set up.
‘Six on this side for boys and six on the other for girls,’ the warden explained.
Tom looked enquiringly at Matty. ‘Might be better than a stifling dorm?’
‘A lot better than a dozen noisy boy scouts!’
Matty liked the idea of sleeping under the stars and so she and Tom claimed their beds for the night, but the others, not feeling so hardy, went off to find the dorms.
‘We have cooking facilities, if you’ve brought your own provisions, and there are sinks for washing, but if you want a bracing bath most guests opt for the mill stream!’ the warden announced before bustling off to help the others find their beds.
Tom and Matty leaned on the low wall and looked up towards the mill race, where water frothed and churned as it was forced beneath the arches and on to the great paddle wheel.
‘You don’t think she meant we’re expected to get into that?’
‘I think she did, these YHA types are a tough bunch!’
Matty shivered in spite of the late afternoon sun warming the top of her head as she leaned further over the wall, craning her neck to look into the water’s depths.
*
The jolly warden, as well as suggesting a bath in the mill stream, had told them a moonlit walk to see the cathedral was a must and when Tom offered to go with her, Matty, taken by surprise, felt a fluttering excitement brush her, like a moth blundering blindly against her face. It seemed cruel to squash it but, ruthless, she did exactly that.
‘Oh, don’t worry if you’re tired, I can have a wander on my own.’
But he insisted and as the moon rose they walked through the ancient town until they came to the cathedral, its long many-windowed nave stretched away from them, the moon’s silver disc held aloft on the pointed tip of one of the turrets. Pale light washed down the huge west-front windows and rippled across cobbles to where they stood, looking up.
‘The warden was right, it is lovely,’ Matty said as they began a circuit round the old walls.
‘We can climb the tower tomorrow if you like. You can see for miles.’
‘Oh, I’d like that.’ The thought of being on such a high perch only added to the sense of expansion and freedom she’d felt since they set off from Bermondsey. ‘Can you believe we were in Bermondsey this morning? It feels like another life!’
‘Well, it is. Another life, another world. But you should be used to that – you can’t get much further away than America.’ He hesitated. ‘I never told you that I missed you.’
The heat of the day had persisted into the evening, which was hot enough for Matty to have come out without her jacket. But now a flush of heat spread up from her neck, reaching her cheeks, so t
hat she was glad of the night to hide the effect of Tom’s words.
She was aware of his clear hazel eyes turned to her and the silence hung as heavy as the heat between them. He reached out to put an arm round her shoulders and for a moment she felt the memory of his body, the exact weight of his arm and the solidness of his torso, and then she pulled away. He was right. She had been far away, in another world, another life, and though the old attraction she felt for him was undoubtedly still there, rekindling it would require facing truths about the past three years which surely were better left hidden.
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Tom.’
Immediately he let go, stepping away. ‘Sorry, you’re right, Matty. It’s just...’
‘The moon?’
‘Yes, the moon.’ Tom gave an embarrassed laugh and looked down at her. She studied his face to see if he meant it. His finely shaped nose and high forehead were picked out by the moonlight, the laugh still lingered on his lips, but his eyes betrayed him with the sort of yearning which had once sent her flying to America with its implicit demands, but which now felt part of the unfettered delight that had swept her along on the old penny-farthing all the way from London.
‘It’s been such a lovely day, Tom...’
‘And we don’t want to spoil it...’
‘No.’
They walked back in a silence which didn’t feel awkward to Matty: she was grateful for its allowing her time to think. It seemed fruitless to compare her feelings now to those she’d had for Tom six years ago. Everything since then had conspired to dismantle the Matty she’d been, every certainty that had made her who she was had disappeared and the Matty who’d been put back together was a different person, and perhaps it was time to let the old Matty go.
As they approached the mill she stopped, laying a hand on Tom’s arm. ‘Is that who you promised would be waiting for us?’ And she pointed to a blue coupé, parked near the bridge. As they drew nearer, a man got out.