by Rosie Thomas
‘You can’t know. You haven’a so much as glanced at this map.’ Impatience sharpened Ann’s Scots accent.
They were all staring at her. Understanding flickered in Jinny’s eyes.
‘Nancy’s right. She knows.’ The other two looked startled but Jinny hurried on to cover the moment. ‘Let’s go. I need a cup of tea.’
She wheeled her machine aside to let Nancy take the lead. Nancy pedalled up the hill, through the soft and welcoming landscape, until she reached the gate in the hedge. Here were the shady elms, and a long slope of grass leading to a flat expanse on the bank of a stream. It was an exquisite spot. She gave a long sigh of happy satisfaction.
‘I’ll be blowed,’ Ann Gillespie muttered.
They charged down the slope to the bank. Lion hit a rabbit hole and pitched off his cycle, rolling downhill amidst thistles, tumbled bags and hoots of laughter.
Two small green canvas tents were quickly erected with a wide expanse of rough grass between them.
‘May I?’ Lion called once this was done, and at a nod from Jinny he set to work with the Primus. A billycan was boiled and tea spooned into it. Jinny pulled off her boots and perched on the bank to soak her hot feet in the stream. She drank the tea Nancy gave her.
‘I think this is the very best campsite I have ever seen, on the best cycle trip, and the best mug of tea I have ever tasted.’
‘I know,’ Nancy agreed. Happiness and eagerness ran through her veins like quicksilver.
The haze disappeared as evening approached and the clear sky turned lavender and then deep indigo. Nancy and Lion waded the stream and rambled uphill to collect wood for a fire. They kissed in the shelter of a tiny copse.
When they eventually made their way back to the camp Jinny and Ann had returned from the village with bread, and bottles of beer that were cooling in the stream. Twilight gathered under the elms sheltering Jinny and Ann’s tent. Lion made a fire and Nancy fried sausages and bacon on the Primus. Ann lay watching them, her head resting in Jinny’s lap, the two women still for once. Jinny absently stroked the red-gold hair and stared into the flames.
Nancy handed out the two tin plates of food and she and Lion shared the frying pan. Ann mopped her plate with a chunk of bread and Lion raised his beer bottle.
‘Friends,’ he toasted them.
‘Friends,’ they responded.
It was dark now. A fingernail moon hovered at the crest of the hill.
‘What was that about?’ Ann suddenly asked. ‘That business earlier, about knowing the way?’
Nancy reclined against Lion who was propped up by his khaki rucksack. His shoulder and thigh were warm and solid.
‘Annie,’ Jinny warned.
But the darkness felt safe, and her friends’ faces in the coppery firelight showed no hint of judgement.
Nancy said, ‘It’s all right. I see things sometimes. I don’t know how or why. Jinny knows about it because I talked to her during the war, when we were on LAC duty.’
A bat sheered through the darkness and vanished over their heads.
‘Things?’ Ann doubtfully echoed. The imagined world was not her natural territory. Lion said nothing, but his protective arm tightened around Nancy and she believed that all would be well.
‘People, and places. I had seen this spot before, inside my head, and so I knew how to get here. I felt it was good and I was right, wasn’t I?’
‘It was described in the club newsletter,’ Ann pointed out.
Nancy smiled. She had never seen the newsletter. ‘I don’t know what my Uncanny is. That’s what I call it. I don’t know how to explain it. When I was younger it used to disturb me, but lately I don’t mind. Today’s the first time it’s been useful, I must say. Long ago somebody told me that I am a seer.’
Lion stirred.
‘Who was that?’
‘Your godfather,’ she admitted.
‘Yes, it sounds like him.’
Ann’s scepticism was unalloyed. ‘A seer? What on earth do you mean?’
A branch fell into the heart of the fire and a plume of sparks flew upwards.
‘I suppose … I mean that there are more dimensions than are commonly acknowledged or measured. We can’t understand everything that balances this world, let alone what lies beyond it.’
Nancy didn’t want to sound like Mrs Bullock Dodd. She could feel Lion listening with delicate attention while Jinny squinted at the fire through the glass prism of her empty beer bottle. Only Ann was combative, and Nancy wanted at least to shake her friend’s disbelief. The sky was spread with a veil of stars and she felt a moment’s unison with an infinity she couldn’t quite comprehend. Each of them owned their separate truths. On this important night in her life she didn’t feel it was her place to deny the ghost of the little girl, or the animation of the planchette at Whistlehalt, or even Lawrence Feather’s conviction that had so troubled her adolescence. Mrs Bullock Dodd probably had her role too.
Ann persisted, ‘Why assume we can’t understand everything? Certainly we don’t yet, but science makes progress. Take Darwin or Edison, or think of aspirin or vaccination. Mumbling about the great unknowable is deliberately wrapping yourself in a cloak of primitive ignorance.’
Her indignation was partly for effect. Jinny propped herself on one elbow.
‘Ann Gillespie, I do love you.’
Nancy sat upright.
‘All right. Hold my hands. Let’s try something.’
They shifted to one side of the embers and sat in a circle with their hands linked. It seemed to Nancy that energy raced between them, even as she remembered one of her father’s stage illusions that had turned on the creation of an electrical circuit.
‘Are you sure?’ Lion asked.
Nancy was compelled now.
‘Yes. Close your eyes.’
Lion’s hand seemed very large, Ann’s was smooth and cool. Nancy let her mind float free.
‘Is there anyone there?’
Soft air with the scent of mist in it drifted off the stream. There was no sound except running water and the rustle of leaves.
‘Is anyone there?’
A small voice spoke to her. ‘I am here.’
No one else moved. It seemed they didn’t hear it.
‘What is your name?’
On either side of her Lion and Ann shifted a little.
‘Martin,’ the voice said.
‘Who do you want to speak to, Martin?’
Ann’s hand jerked and then gripped Nancy’s so tightly that the finger bones cracked.
‘My sister,’ the voice said.
‘Who is your sister?’
Ann snatched her hand away. She drew up her knees and circled them with her arms. She was visibly shivering.
‘Stop it. That’s enough.’
Nancy felt her certainty drain away, to be replaced by bewilderment and the clasp of nausea. The night was chilly. Jinny put her arm around Ann’s shoulders.
Nancy whispered, ‘What’s happened? Who is Martin?’
Ann almost spat. ‘Don’t be cheap. You got the effect you wanted, all right?’
‘Hush, darling,’ Jinny implored.
‘I don’t understand’, Nancy said humbly. ‘I heard a voice. It might have been a young woman’s or a child’s.’
A silence followed. Ann rose on to her knees and stared into Nancy’s eyes, then cupped her chin and twisted her face towards the firelight in an attempt to read her expression. At last she seemed mollified.
‘Martin was my twin brother. He died of rheumatic fever when we were six years old. I was very ill too, but I recovered. My mother blamed me for being the survivor.’
‘She didn’t. You just think that,’ Jinny murmured.
‘How do you know about him?’ Ann demanded. ‘Did Jinny tell you?’
‘No,’ the two women said together.
‘It’s just how it is,’ Nancy said. ‘I’ve never summoned it up quite so deliberately. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I
would never have prepared such a revelation on purpose. Please believe me.’
Lion stirred the ashes to a brighter glow and piled on some dry twigs. There was a cheerful snapping as yellow flames licked up. Then he rummaged in his rucksack and produced a battered pewter flask.
‘Look what I’ve got. Whisky.’
Ann put out her hand and took a long gulp. She wiped the neck of the flask and passed it to Nancy.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘I am sorry too. I was piqued that you didn’t believe me, and the night was so beautiful after a perfect day, and I suppose I felt confident.’
Was that the supernatural ingredient? Confidence?
Ann’s laugh sounded harsh. ‘I still don’t believe you. There is always a rational explanation.’
‘Or maybe an irrational one?’ Lion suggested.
The moment was past, although Nancy still heard the echo of a small voice.
Martinmartinmartinmartin
Lion drawled, ‘If it is all the same to everyone, I think I shall propose bed. It’s not too early, is it?’
They withdrew across the field and only when they lay down together under the green canvas shelter did he put his mouth to Nancy’s ear.
‘What the dickens?’
She had done nothing wrong although she was sorry to have upset her friend. She knew that the Uncanny did not always control her because she had been able to control it, but she had learned something new – in future she would have to be more guarded about what she saw or heard.
‘We can’t know everything,’ she said simply.
Lion seemed ready to abandon the subject.
‘I know one thing.’ It was too dark to see anything but she felt his mouth against her cheek.
‘What’s that?’
‘You are beautiful. And I want to make love to you.’
‘That’s two things.’
‘So it is.’
Until this moment she had been unsure whether she would really let him or not. To want to be modern, as free and passionate as her friends and her cousin, was one thing but the memory of Gil Maitland interposed itself, crystalline as if it was etched on glass, minutely separating her from Lion.
He ran his hand over her hip to her breast. At once her skin seemed thinner, her limbs alive with electrical impulses. The perfume of damp canvas and crushed grass swept through her, but she didn’t fear the return of the Uncanny. Everything on both sides was hers to explore, and the awareness of that was suddenly more intoxicating than a dozen of Freddie’s gin martinis. Involuntarily she lifted her hips and Lion continued his explorations.
She yielded and slowly the glass misted and dissolved. Gil Maitland’s shadow was dispelled by Lion’s warmth and urgency. To her surprise Nancy discovered the same urgency. They undid each other’s buttons and laces, alternately laughing and groaning at the obstructions.
Nancy was astonished to discover the heat of another body with its unfamiliar contours of skin and curling hair and bunched muscle under her fingertips.
There was no going back now. She didn’t want to go back.
‘Hold me,’ Lion ordered. ‘Like this.’
She did as she was told, with pleasure.
‘And now like this, with you.’
‘Ah. Oh.’
‘Do you like it?’
As with the gin martini.
‘Yes.’
‘More?’
‘Please. Yes.’
It felt wonderful to find no impediment to their hands and mouths.
‘Move your legs, so. You could wrap them around me.’
In some corner of her mind she was thinking, at last. This was sex. It wasn’t ethereal or transcendent, as she had innocently assumed it would be. Under Lion’s tutelage it was – comically – more like a form of calisthenics directed by a good-humoured gym master. Their wriggles and gasps were broken up by surges of laughter, yet the urgency always returned. The conclusion for Nancy when it came was startling.
‘Was that all right?’ he enquired, politely. When she told him it was very much all right she caught the glimmer of his triumphant male smile.
‘Good. Now me.’
She liked this almost as much, even though he retreated as it was happening into some realm of his own. Quite soon he groaned, and withdrew in the nick of time. She held him in her arms and knotted her fingers in his tangled hair, and she was swept by a feeling of sweetness and intimacy that she was sure must be close to love. She smiled at herself. There was no need to equivocate, surely. It was love.
Today and over the past weeks Lion had crept into her heart, and looking back it seemed that she had been wrong and wilful to deny him that place in order to nourish a fantasy. Now she had given herself to him, to a good man who wanted her, and he had given himself in return, it seemed there was nothing else to wish for. It had been easy, after all. She smiled again, with her head resting against his chest. She could hear the steady drumming of his heart.
‘There,’ he murmured. ‘Are you happy? Because I am, you know.’
Two more idyllic summer days passed. They cycled miles of lanes buried deep in the Weald, filling their water bottles at village pumps or stopping at pubs to drink beer and eat ham sandwiches. Some of the people they met stared at Jinny in her breeches, but no one said anything.
‘Is this the way, Nancy?’ Ann joked when they reached a crossroads, but there was no further mention of the im-promptu seance.
On Monday evening they returned in a wide circle to the halt in the apple orchards, and contentedly waited on the deserted platform for the train. Its approach was heralded by a banner of white smoke trailing over the laden trees on the horizon.
The two couples parted at Charing Cross. Jinny and Ann were going home to the pair of rooms they had taken in a red-brick block close to Shaftesbury Avenue. After the others had wheeled away the third bike, Nancy and Lion stepped into each other’s arms.
‘I wish we could go home together too,’ she sighed. She didn’t want to relinquish him, even for a moment.
‘I know.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘Letting you go is a bit of a wrench, I must say. It was a splendid weekend, Nancy. Thank you.’
They made arrangements to meet again, and went their separate ways.
As soon as she was alone Nancy realised that her arms were sunburned and her long hair was a tangled mass. She hadn’t given her appearance a thought for two whole days and now women in hats were looking askance at her. Reflecting on how hot and grimy the city was after the fresh Kentish lanes, she hoisted her bag and began to walk. Progress on foot was plodding after the freedom of spinning along on two wheels and in the end she queued for a bus. There were plenty of holidaymakers spilling out of the pubs at the end of a day’s drinking, and many of them were boisterous and ready to pick a fight. She was tired after the experiences of the weekend so she stood quietly and kept her eyes on the floor. It was a relief to reach the Angel and walk to the mouth of the tunnel where the canal emerged as a tongue of black water.
Looking towards the house she was shocked to see that the steps were piled with haphazard towers of loaded crates. From a box at the top protruded a blackened saucepan and the favourite doll that resembled Suzette.
She ran the last few yards, her bag thumping against her hip.
‘Pa? Ma? Are you here?’
There was evidence of further upheaval in the hallway. Books teetered in uneven heaps and rows of old shoes marched up the stairs like an invisible army.
Eliza was in the drawing room. Furniture had been pushed aside and shelves ransacked.
‘Ma, what’s happening?’
Her mother stared at her. Her hair hung in disordered hanks and her pupils had shrunk to pinpoints. Her face shivered and then crumpled as sobs overcame her. Between the convulsions she gasped, ‘The house. Your father has sold our home from under our feet.’
Nancy supported her in her arms, her mother’s body pathetically fragile after Lion’s breadth and weight. She
knew at once what must have happened. The choice had come down at last to the theatre or the house, and Devil had inevitably chosen to save the Palmyra.
‘Where is he?’
‘I don’t know. I never want to see him again.’
‘Neelie?’
‘Upstairs. What can we do?’ Her mother grasped her hands.
‘We’ll think of something. Come here, sit down.’ Eliza’s legs seemed on the point of giving way. Limp as a puppet she flopped into a chair that Nancy set for her. They sat knee to knee until the sobs died into ragged gulps and slowly subsided.
‘Thank God you’ve come home,’ she hiccoughed.
Guilt twisted in Nancy. ‘I’m so sorry, Ma, I should have been here. Will you be all right for a minute if I go downstairs and make you a cup of tea?’
Nancy hurried down to the kitchen where she found Devil. A bottle of beer stood on the table in front of him but he seemed sober.
She tried to speak evenly, but she was furious to think that he would put her mother and brother out into the street in order to save the Palmyra.
‘What’s going on? You can’t sell our house. Why are you doing this to Ma?’
Devil’s black glare sliced like a knife blade. ‘There’s no choice. She took the news badly, of course. Started tearing down pictures and screaming. I had to call Vassilis to her in the end. He’s just gone.’
‘It’s true?’
‘I am afraid so. I’ll rent another house for us, Zenobia. It won’t be too bad. The theatre has to go on, don’t you see?’
She was boiling with anger. ‘No, I don’t see. This is our home.’
Devil dropped his head into his hands. Grey hair stuck out in tufts between his fingers.
‘The Palmyra has been the work of my life. Devising new illusions and building the apparatus. Rehearsing and performing. Carlo and me, your mother, the stage and the audiences …’ He broke off. Devil almost never spoke of the dwarf who had once been his partner. She softened a little and took a step forward, placing her hand on her father’s shoulder. She could smell the glue and sawdust of the workshops, and the greasepaint and heated dust and human sweat of the theatre itself. Nancy recognised how powerfully the memories of the past and the desire to maintain the theatre’s life ran in her father.