by Cole Morton
‘Y’all right, Miss? Where’s Calvin?’
Danny George swept past, all swagger and poise, and took a seat at the back, legs spread. Sarah knew where the nickname came from, she had been there. Mr Alvin bent over in class to retrieve a book from the floor and revealed the underpants at the top of his trousers. Just a peek, but enough for the class to see they were somewhat grey, somewhat the underwear of a man who lived alone.
‘Them Calvins, sir?’
Danny’s disciples had laughed at that. His status was already sealed. Star striker in the football team, he was going to be a pro, no problem. He’d wear Calvin Kleins all the time then. Real ones, not knock-offs from the market that went grey in the wash.
‘You’ve got me today,’ said Sarah without thinking and she immediately felt Danny staring at her. His confidence was unsettling. His eyes seemed to say yeah right, that would be your lucky day. What had she got herself into? But he looked away, sucking air in through his teeth, and Sarah felt relieved as the rest of the class came in like a crowd storming a palace. Now the babble was at its loudest, with shrieks and calls and the clatter of stuff and scraping of chairs, and it went on and on echoing back off the high classroom ceiling and Sarah thought about calling them to order but she knew this class, she had watched Mr Alvin struggle at times. They’d wind her up if she took them on. So she handed out the worksheets for Sonnet 18 instead and discovered a universal truth of teaching English: that nobody wants to read Shakespeare aloud in class except the show-offs. Danny volunteered to go first, stood up, threw a pose and read the first line with controlled aggression, like an actor in an action movie.
‘“Shall I. Compare thee. To a summer’s day?”’ His eyes were on her the whole time. Then he shrugged and said, ‘Nah.’
His people jeered, Sarah smiled. ‘Thank you for that, Danny.’ She’d got her bearings now and wasn’t going to let him rattle her. This is going to be okay, she thought, although the volunteers dried up quickly and she had to pick readers from around the class. A girl called Kiké – Sarah checked – stood up, but nothing came out of her mouth; tears looked likely, she was trembling, so Sarah invited her to sit down. Another girl was asleep, oblivious to it all.
‘That’s okay,’ said Sarah. ‘Let her be.’
She knew the reason but couldn’t say. Anastasia was the carer for a mother who was very ill, in constant pain and in need of help or company many times through the night, every night. She was struggling – anyone could see that from the poor girl’s ghostly face – and the social workers knew it but nothing was ever done, apparently. Mr Alvin had warned that Nasti – as they all called her – might doze off. There were others like that too in this school. Every school. What could you do but feel for them? So Sarah moved things on and the class quietened after that, as if to let Anastasia rest.
‘Kiké, come here, will you?’
The shy girl in braids stood up, unsure what to do.
‘Come and sit with me.’
So she did and Sarah sat beside her, both of them perched on the front of the desk, facing the class. ‘Do you feel lovely today, Kiké?’
Some of Danny’s boys made highly inappropriate noises but Sarah waved them down, and Kiké said, under her breath, ‘No, Miss.’
Sarah smiled, holding her attention but speaking loudly enough for everyone to hear. ‘You are, though. You’re lovely, Kiké. Are you as lovely as that summer day out there?’ A few heads turned towards the windows, where the sunlight held up ghostly palms. ‘No, you’re much lovelier than that. You don’t blow hot or cold, you’re just right. Some days are so windy they shake the blossoms off the tree, you’ve seen that, right? Some days are way too hot. And summer’s over way too soon, isn’t it?’
Kiké looked at her blankly.
‘Lovelier than a summer’s day. How does that make you feel, Kiké?’
‘Special, Miss. I guess.’
The low, teasing wolf-whistles came again.
‘Well, you are. And that’s what Shakespeare is saying to someone in this poem. You’re lovely, in a way that lasts for ever. Class, who do you think he’s writing to?’
‘His girl!’
‘His batty boy!’
At least they got that this was love. Unfortunately, Sarah then lost them completely. The answers became cat-calls and shrieks and jokes, it all got out of hand and there was a near riot that caused a passing PE teacher to rush into the room and bellow at everyone so Sarah felt as though she had failed, which was true. But she learned lessons of her own that day and didn’t give up. And when Danny and his disciples had gone away and there were only a few stragglers left in the classroom, Kiké came over and said softly, ‘Thanks, Miss.’ She looked happy in a way Sarah had never seen before. That’s it, thought Sarah. That’s why I’m here. But Anastasia was still asleep, face down on the desk, cheek on her pencil case, the last one left. So Sarah went over, squatted down beside her and put a hand on the poor, exhausted girl’s shoulder until she came round, startled and afraid.
‘It’s okay. You’re okay,’ Sarah said. And when the pale, skinny girl was more awake, thrusting her stuff back into a bag, muttering apologies and rushing to get out of there, Sarah said as kindly as she could, still learning and feeling her way: ‘It’s all right. Anastasia, isn’t it? Don’t worry. Listen, is there anything at all we can do to help?’
Twenty-two
The second miracle of Sarah’s life had an edge as sharp as the first. Granny was lying in a bed in the nursing home under a thin, pale blue blanket. Her hands were all red and gnarled, laid out flat as though she had been smoothing things down, making her bed in the morning. Someone had brushed her hair so silver-yellow strands swirled on the pillow around her head. A mermaid, underwater. Her eyes were closed, her mouth open. This is it, thought Sarah, taking her turn at the end of the bed. Just a matter of time. She was a trainee teacher now, in her early twenties, but this was a study day. Granny shivered and Sarah realized she was waking up. Why did she shiver? The central heating was turned up too high – there was a thick odour, the smell of bladders not attended to, bodies wasting away. Through the window, behind Granny’s head, she saw a chestnut tree, branches jostling like the heads and shoulders of a waiting crowd. The memory of the blinding light returned. Sarah felt exhausted.
‘Hello, Granny,’ she said softly, not expecting an answer. Granny had not spoken since her fall, months before. She bent and kissed her grandmother on the forehead. ‘Rest, eh?’
Granny breathed. A little sigh, every time. One more hill to climb, then down the other side. Rolling home. There was a hymn-book on her bedside table. The words stamped on the black leather cover had lost their gilt. Sarah opened the book, releasing the scent of childhood Sunday mornings. ‘Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me,’ Sarah sang softly in that hospital room, surprising herself. Almost not singing, then singing a little louder, then singing to her grandmother. ‘I once was lost but now am found. Was blind, but now I see . . .’ She sang with gathering strength, songs she had not sung for years. Sarah slipped her fingers between the cool, bony fingers of her grandmother and imagined that she began to sing too. She imagined a groan becoming a wheezy, wordless harmony, and she found to her astonishment that this was not just imagination. She felt those fingers squeeze her own and heard a sound.
‘O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder . . .’
Softly, Granny was singing with her. When Sarah faltered, Granny caught the melody. Sarah sang now with purpose and vigour, as if she could drag her grandmother up and out of the bed with the power of the song. But her throat tightened and she stopped. There was quiet. Birdsong. The radiator gurgling. A buzz of applause from a television in a distant room.
Then Granny, so quietly, began a song on her own. ‘O Love, that wilt not let me go . . .’ First line. Page three hundred and fifty-two. Sarah joined her, tentatively. ‘I trace th
e rainbow through the rain.’
They sang together for ten minutes, an hour, she didn’t know. Granny sat up a little, she smiled a lot, and when they ran out of tunes she fell back on the pillows again and hummed notes that tripped and slurred and sounded like hymns even though they were only the faintest of breezes passing through the Aeolian harp of her chest. She got fainter and fainter, until she seemed to have sung herself to sleep.
‘Thank you, love.’
She had spoken, for the first time in months. Sarah couldn’t believe it, but Granny smiled as though it was perfectly natural. There were even more remarkable things to come.
‘I could drink a little soup.’
Granny got stronger in the following hours and days and weeks. She swung her legs out of bed and was wheeled into the garden and walked a few steps herself, out in the sun. The nurses said she laughed a lot but was difficult. ‘Do come forward,’ she told them, as though back in the Scottish Presbyterian revival meetings of her youth, throwing her arms wide. ‘There’s plenty of room at the front here!’ She didn’t know where she was sometimes; but she was happy.
In lucid moments, she gave orders about her forthcoming ninetieth birthday to Sarah’s father. This was important, there were things she had wanted to say but not been able. ‘I want you to sing, dear. In the park. Sing with the birds. Have a drink, too. To your health, not mine. That would be a little pointless, wouldn’t it? Ha! I’ll probably be stuck in here; don’t look at me like that, I’m not an old fool.’ She reached out and held her son then. It was that way round, for the first time in years. ‘You must have champagne. There is so much to celebrate, it has been such a lovely life.’
Twenty-three
They were to gather at the Lido Café beside the Serpentine for Granny’s birthday breakfast, with Bucks Fizz but no Granny. They would ring her and sing down the phone. The morning was fresh, with the hope of serious heat later. Sarah got there early, to walk for a while by the water, which was still. Three swans: a mother and her daughters, one of them white and one of them brown.
‘Excuse me, Ma’am, is this the way to the palace?’
Ma’am? Sarah Jones looked at Jack for the first time then, in the park, with the swans on the lake and footballs flying through the air and airliners overhead and the breeze blowing up and the shouts of children and a woman in bright blue lycra cycling past, and she saw a weird, spindly creature, wearing too much black. Skinny jeans. Bird’s nest hair. Ugh.
‘Hello?’
He was swaying. Standing there with his mouth open. Spaced out. Sarah turned back quickly and walked off. That brought him to life, like a jolt of electricity: ‘Hey, I’m sorry to bother you, Ma’am, please forgive this intrusion, I only ask for a moment of your time; you see I am a little lost, lacking in direction, I need someone to help me get my bearings. Show me the way, so to speak. Would you be so kind? Ma’am?’
He was following her, two steps behind, leaning in, bending round to look into her face. A torrent of words suddenly, hands hacking the air, his eyes wild, his fingers clicking a rhythm to match the rat-a-tat rattle of his language.
‘I am looking for the palace, that is the truth, the palace, yes, but I see I have found a princess . . . would that be an imposition to say?’
‘Yes,’ she said, stopping and looking at him. ‘Yes, it would. And very, very cheesy.’
‘Then forgive me again. Yes. Forgive me. I am a poor boy washed up upon your shores, a stranger in a land far from my own.’
‘You’re American.’
‘This I am. Ma’am. At your service.’
She smiled, but shook her head. ‘Which palace?’
‘Your city is charming. You yourself are charming—’
‘You said. We have many.’
‘I had no idea.’
Already, there was something that both of them knew, but it kept slipping away from him as his eyes lost focus, before they snapped back on her again. He stopped walking, and she stopped to match him without thinking about it, and they stood there on the path by a litter bin and a patch of grass, at a crossroads.
‘Could you tell me, would you mind . . .’
‘Probably.’ Her arms were crossed, her head tilted to one side, a turquoise teardrop set in silver hung from the ear he stared at as if he wanted to kiss her just there.
‘Can you tell me, what . . . I mean . . . what are we talking about?’
‘Palaces,’ she said.
‘Ah. I knew that.’
‘Then why ask?’
‘About palaces. There are many. Locating them, you see, this is the issue. My issue. I am meeting friends later. At the palace.’
‘You need to tell me which one.’
‘Soccer. Not soccer,’ he said as if to himself.
‘What?’
‘I am not a fan of that sport, although of course I do see why others are, please don’t be offended if you are one of them, but I am not in a particular hurry to see Crystal Palace. The main attraction there burned down a long time ago, I believe. I don’t have a passion for the Duchess of Cambridge either, unlike some of my fellow countrymen, so Kensington Palace does not particularly interest me. I’m looking for an upgrade on that.’
‘You know your palaces.’
He laughed. ‘So it would seem.’
‘You were having me on.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘Pulling my leg.’
‘Yes. In a way. So, Bucking-ham Palace. But which way?’
‘That way,’ she said quickly, pointing to the right-hand path, the one that would lead to Hyde Park Corner, Constitution Hill and ultimately the palace. ‘It’s quite far.’
‘I’m obliged,’ he said.
‘No problem.’
‘I’m delighted.’
‘Okay.’
‘I’m enthralled,’ he said.
‘Are you now?’
‘Utterly. Entranced. Beguiled. Enchanted.’
‘Right.’
‘Bowled over. Knocked for six. Gobsmacked. Is that right?’
‘I don’t know. What are you saying?’
‘You’re . . . let me get this right . . . a bit dishy.’
Sarah laughed and turned away, stepping on to the forbidden grass.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Jack. ‘Is that wrong?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Well, yes. Where did you get it from?’
‘A gentleman I met in the pub. A senior. What I mean to say, Ma’am, and I hope you will forgive again the intrusion here, is that I am transfixed at your beauty, mesmerized by your grace, seduced by your presence, even though we have just met I feel—’
‘Does this usually work?’
He looked hurt. ‘What?’
‘This . . . crap.’
‘Nicely put.’
‘Thank you. Does it?’
‘No,’ said Jack quietly, sounding confused. ‘No, I mean I don’t know. I don’t usually . . . look, forget it, okay? Forget it. I’m outta here. Mistake. My mistake.’
‘Don’t be angry,’ she said, as he strode away, and she found herself calling after him. ‘What’s your name?’ He kept walking, but she put a hand on his shoulder and the boy stopped suddenly as if arrested. Or electrified. ‘My name is Sarah.’
They kissed for the first time a few hours later, in the half-light under the branches of a tree near the Italian Gardens. He had walked beside her and talked too much at her and tried to make her laugh, then he had made her laugh – at his accent, just like in the movies – and then he had waited while she went into the café to see her family. Two hours he had waited on that bench. More. He thought she would never come, but he could think of nothing better to do than to wait for her, just in case. She was startled to see him still there, this startling boy with the motormouth and the daring eyes, but she also saw that he was ca
lmer now. If he had been on something earlier, the effects of it had gone. And then they were alone again and walking, for such a long time, who knew where, to the palace first, because he was a tourist after all – and she wanted to be sure that he actually was calm, not dangerous but as cute as he seemed and that the glimmer of something was real – then they went back through the darkened park, around in circles and she was stopping and kissing him, to both their astonishment.
‘Sarah!’
Jack said her name like a man seeing a marvel for the first time. For a second they were in symmetry: each touching the other’s face with their right hands, then the left hands joined. Their bodies moved closer. They kissed again. Sarah closed her eyes and the spirit moved across the face of the waters. Let there be light. From then on, as if it had always been meant, Jack and Sarah were together.
‘I thought you looked a bit of an idiot,’ she said as they walked hand in hand on the way to the station that night.
‘Thank you, Ma’am.’
‘No. Well. I thought you must have something to hide. Nobody wears that much black except a priest. Do you? Tell me.’
‘Do I what?’
‘Have something to hide.’
He stopped and bent low like an Elizabethan courtier, sweeping away all objections with the back of his hand. ‘Nothing. Not from you.’
And at that moment – for that moment – it was true.
‘What do you dream of doing?’ His voice was close, quiet; she felt his breath on the back of her neck. Sarah was lying on her side on the dog Tutu’s old tartan rug, a month after they met. They were under another tree: this time a solitary, wind-bent cedar on Haven Brow, the first of the Seven Sisters. Seven hills in a row by the sea but cut in half all the way, making for a rollercoaster ride of a walk across the tops, with a sheer drop always to one side. From the beach at the Gap they had looked ahead and seen them there like seven women shoulder to shoulder, shawled in green with veils of white, looking out for a lost ship. Jack lay behind Sarah on the grass at the summit with his groin close to her backside and she was trying to ignore what she could feel going on back there.