Dancing on Coral

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Dancing on Coral Page 9

by Glenda Adams


  Lark nodded. “A party. All night.”

  “That American?”

  Lark nodded again.

  “You weren’t the only girl, were you? You know what people say about one girl with many men.”

  “There were millions of men, all dancing naked.”

  “Lark, please, language. I have to care about your dignity, since you don’t seem to. I don’t want you to find yourself in a situation you’ll regret later.” She dumped a couple of handfuls of oats into the water. “Of course, the Americans saved us from the Japanese, and we are grateful, but when is this one going back to his own country?”

  “Soon,” said Lark. “Lucky devil. You won’t have to worry about him and me.”

  “Please, Lark.” The hammering suddenly started up in the basement. “Go down and tell him his porridge is ready.”

  Lark was at the Wynyard ramp with Tom’s camera around her neck. She stood at the bus stop, and waited, ready for the kidnapping.

  A schoolgirl in a navy blue uniform, carrying a Globite school case and reading a little brown book of Vergil, emerged from the underground ramp and stood at the bus stop, a short distance from Lark. Donna Bird. She put the case on the ground between her legs and flicked her braids over her shoulders, looked at her watch, and continued reading. A dozen or so people were waiting for a bus.

  A car—Lark recognized Perce’s car—with mud over the number plates cruised along the curb. A young man in a suit and hat leant out of the front window, and whistled at the schoolgirl. “I have some very special lollies here in my coat pocket, girlie, want some?” It was Perce himself.

  Donna Bird read on, as if she was not sure that the man was addressing her.

  “Do you want a ride? We can take you where you’re going.”

  Donna Bird looked up, peering through her spectacles, as if she had not yet understood. “What?” she said, stepping forward, as if they had asked directions from her and she was going to help.

  A woman waiting near her took her arm. “Just ignore them, dear.”

  The car came to a stop. The front door opened and Perce got out—he looked like a clerk or a bank teller. And he was wearing shoes and socks for the occasion. The other two young men in suits got out from the back—Lark recognized them as members of Donna Bird’s entourage—and rather slowly, calmly, they took a few steps to Donna Bird’s side. Perce, awkward in his shoes, or else still reeling from the night before, tripped on an irregularity in the cement and fell right against Donna, and the two of them fell to the ground. Lark took her first photo, waiting until their faces were turned away so that they could not be recognized. The other two hauled Donna and Perce to their feet, pushing the woman aside, then, letting go of Perce, who swayed a little unsteadily, they pulled Donna, kicking and shrieking, to the car. Lark took her second photo.

  The men pushed Donna into the back seat and jumped in after her. Perce picked up Donna’s school case and the Vergil and fell into the front seat. The car drove off. The good citizens at the bus stop had just comprehended what had happened. The car turned up Margaret Street and disappeared.

  “I don’t believe it,” cried the woman, who had been thrust aside.

  “I couldn’t read the number plate,” said a man.

  “She was reading Vergil,” said another. “I saw the cover of the book. That will help find her.”

  “I didn’t see her school tie,” said the woman, “did you?” She had turned to Lark. “Did you recognize the uniform?”

  Lark shood her head.

  “The Vergil will help,” said the man who had recognized the book. “There can’t be that many students at high schools in the city reading Vergil.”

  “She has photos,” cried an onlooker.

  “We have more perverts in this country per head than any other country,” said the woman who had tried to save Donna Bird.

  By then a policeman had been found and everyone clamored to tell him the story. Lark wound the film off and gave it to the policeman. Then she disappeared, leaving the upset crowd and the policeman.

  The Herald and the Daily Mirror used Lark’s photos on the front page the next day, with the story of the kidnapping. Lark was referred to as the mystery photographer, and there was an appeal for her to step forward. And although every Latin class in the city appeared to be reading Vergil, no student of Vergil was reported missing. No one at all was reported missing.

  “But why the kidnapping?” Lark dared to ask later at Tom’s. She had thought it was a silly idea, although beautifully executed, like a scene in a movie, even with Perce’s clumsiness.

  Donna Bird sniffed and shook her head at Tom to indicate her amazement at the question. “I think it’s time for the Big J,” she said, then to Lark, “Jay, jay, joke. You’re really coming along. You realize you have broken the law, don’t you? Deceiving the police.”

  “We just wanted people to be aware that this is a country of weirdos,” said Tom. “And we wanted to show how easy it is to manipulate the press. If we can do it, Larkie, manipulate the press, then everyone already does it—and that means our government, all governments, any group that wants to exhibit itself.” Tom spoke gently. He even patted Lark’s head, with Donna and the others watching.

  “Did you say manipulate? Did you say exhibit?” said Perce, making a big show of undoing the rope around his trousers.

  “Yes,” Tom said, responding to Donna. “The Big J, the Really Big J. The world is our text, as you like to remind us.”

  “I’m leaving,” Tom told Lark. “Back to the U. S. of A.”

  Lark had finished her final exams. She was finally free. “So?” she said glumly. “I’ve been expecting you to leave for months.”

  It was dusk and they were walking along Lark’s beach while Tom took photographs of objects found in the sand. Lark was wearing a pair of Black Watch tartan Bermuda shorts, and was aware that people turned to look at this outlandish item of clothing.

  “I’ll be leaving one day soon, too,” Lark said. “We all do. Sooner or later. One way or another.”

  Tom looked at her, as if he were deciding something. “I think you’d better come to New York, Larkie. Come on.”

  “Me?” Lark said, then as if putting him to some kind of test, “Why don’t you ask Donna Bird?”

  “She’s already going to New York. She’s going to be a critic of society there. And it’s time for her to see Manfred again. She hasn’t seen him for a couple of years. She has a new half-brother.”

  “You’ll have her for company,” said Lark sulkily. “And I don’t know anything. You said so yourself.” But Lark was in love with Tom, she thought it must be true love, and she was only waiting for him to tell her he loved her, or something close to it.

  “You don’t know much,” said Tom. “Your mind is unformed. But I could teach you.” He squatted down to photograph a sea gull that had followed them along the water’s edge.

  “I don’t think I have enough money for New York. I’ll need to be able to last for several months once I’m there. I don’t care about having the fare back.” Lark lay down on the sand.

  “Donna Bird has found the cheapest way. That ship, the freighter. The Captain knows her father. I’ll have to fly, of course. But you could go on that ship with her. Save some money. It’ll be a form of active transport—you will be the material being transported from here, the outside, through the plasma membrane, to the inside, that is, New York.”

  “Donna Bird doesn’t like me.”

  “You mean you don’t like her. She’s an interesting person. One of a kind. And she wants you to travel with her. She’d be the only passenger, otherwise. It’ll give me time to find you a cheap apartment in New York, have it ready for you.” Tom pulled a letter out of his pocket. “From Strange but True,” he said.

  “Money?” Lark patted the sand beside her. She wanted Tom near her.

  Tom shook his head. “I don’t think you have any choice about leaving.”

  “No choice?” The que
stion and answer method had become routine for Lark.

  “They noticed it was the same bus stop in the background of the photos for all the stories we sent them. They’re suing us.”

  “Us?” Lark propped herself on one elbow.

  “You, me, Donna. You had the photo credits, remember? I think it’s really time for you to leave.”

  Lark stared at the horizon.

  “A ‘petit chalutier,’ perhaps?” Tom asked. “You’d be off the beach, you know. It’s what you want. And it will be the beginning of lesson number three, getting your feet wet in the real world.”

  “But do you love me?” Lark asked.

  “Love?” Tom snapped another sea gull. “Of course. Sure. Love is a good thing all around.” He turned his camera on Lark and took her picture. “You have an interesting face. When you’re old, you’ll have interesting wrinkles.” Lark turned away. “Don’t worry, I’m out of film. I didn’t get you.” He sat beside Lark and put his arm around her. “You do know, don’t you, that you can’t possess another human being. That would be murder. Murder by osmosis. Diffusion.”

  The Watters were eating dinner.

  “So you’re home tonight,” said Mrs. Watter. “At least there’s poultry. There’s enough.”

  “I’m going,” said Lark.

  “This bird is tough,” said Henry Watter. He looked up. “She’s finally going?”

  “To New York,” Lark said.

  “What do you want to go there for?” Henry Watter asked. “England’s the only place.” He chewed at his food, looking at each piece on his fork before he put it in his mouth. “Tough old bird. Just like your mother.” He chewed for a moment. “You don’t even know the fifty states, let alone their capitals. You don’t even know the stations on the railway line from Chicago to Detroit.”

  “I can say the states in alphabetical order,” said Lark.

  “It’s that American boy, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Watter.

  Lark shook her head. “I always meant to go. And I finished my exams. I did what you wanted.”

  “Well, at least we finally got rid of that rooster,” said Henry Watter, chewing. “Next, those ducks.”

  “And you’ll get married, of course. Here? There, I suppose. But small weddings can be simple and dignified.”

  Lark shrugged. Tom had said nothing about marriage. But it seemed possible. He liked her, liked having her near him.

  “Just like a war bride,” said Lark’s mother. “I remember them after the war, so excited to be going away. I wanted to go, too. I was already married, of course. I just wanted to go away.”

  “No more crowing in the middle of the flaming day,” said Henry Watter. He looked at Lark. “I chopped its damned head off, you know. We’re eating it.”

  “Please, Henry, language,” said Lark’s mother.

  “Throw me the gravy,” said Henry Watter.

  “Please, Henry, pass,” said Mrs. Watter, handing him the gravy boat. She stared out the window. “I used to go down to Pyrmont to see the boats off and throw streamers to all those soldiers and their war brides, sailing off across the Pacific at the end of the war. We’d hold onto the streamers as if we might be taken along, too.”

  Henry Watter held the gravy in the air, making it sail along, up and down, like a toy boat on the sea. “‘Take the current when it serves,’” he said.

  “Henry, please, manners.”

  “J. Caesar. A self-made man. Like N. Bonaparte. Self-made men,” said Henry Watter. He stood up. “‘And so to bed.’”

  Mrs. Watter stood for a moment at the table. “I think I’ll just make a cup of tea, then, and sit for a minute before doing the dishes.” She put the kettle on and came back to sit down. “We even thought the men going off to war were lucky to be traveling,” she said softly. “When I was a little girl, I was taken down to the Quay to wave them off to Gallipoli, as if they were going on a holiday. It was very jolly. And only much later did we learn what Gallipoli really was, that Churchill and our own government had manipulated us, lied to us, betrayed us.”

  Lark’s earliest memory was a picture in the newspaper: an Australian, a prisoner in the Changi camp in Singapore, was about to be beheaded by a Japanese holding a sword. He was kneeling, his arms tied behind his back, his head bowed. To spare the soldier’s family at home, the soldier’s face had been blacked out.

  “Nevertheless it’s lucky we got the bomb first,” called Henry Watter from the bathroom.

  Lark’s mother brought in the teapot. She shook her head. “Sometimes,” she whispered, “I have absolutely no idea what he’s talking about.” She sat for a minute, sipping her tea. “Perhaps he’s upset about your going off and getting married, to a foreigner. He doesn’t take change easily. At least you have your degree. You have more than I.”

  Lark helped with the dishes, then went to her room to begin packing for the voyage.

  Henry Watter knocked on her door and glanced to the left and right along the hallway before he stepped in. He was turning the pages in a book of puzzles. “Here,” he said, sitting on the clothes Lark had laid on her bed. “This’ll stretch your brain,” he said. “You’ll need it, when you go, a stretched brain, especially among those Americans. They’re quick. You’ve got to be able to manage on your own.”

  Lark pulled the clothes out from under Henry Watter.

  He began to read: “‘Asher, Barker, and Carson work on a train which makes a daily run either from Detroit to Chicago or Chicago to Detroit, both via South Bend.’ This is useful already, Larkie, listen.” Lark was opening one drawer after another. “Listen.” And Henry Watter stopped reading until Lark stood still and listened to him. “‘The three men live in the three cities mentioned. Their jobs are conductor, dining car waiter, and guard.’” He held up his hand, in case Lark was about to protest. “‘Three men with the same last names, Mr. Asher, Mr. Barker, and Mr. Carson, who live in the same three cities, are regular passengers on the train. The passengers are an architect, an attorney, and a chemist.’ You see, Lark, how already you have learned a great deal about American society just by listening to these few sentences.”

  “I know, for instance,” said Lark, “that South Bend is one of the stops between Chicago and Detroit, and that they say attorney instead of solicitor. Is that what you mean?”

  “‘For each man, find his occupation and the city in which he lives, remembering that one, no railroad employee lives in the same city as the passenger with the same last name; two, the dining car waiter and the attorney are neighbors; three, Carson lives between the conductor’s and Mr. Barker’s cities...’”

  “It’s torture, what you do,” said Lark.

  Henry Watter closed the book, keeping one finger marking the page. “I’m only trying to help. If you did one of these brain stretchers a day, you’d be in excellent shape. Nothing would stump you. And you’d keep your brain in good nick.”

  “I’d be like you?”

  Henry Watter looked down at the book, slumping, hurt. “If I’d been doing these all along, I would have won that trip on Jack Davey. My brain wasn’t in shape, not limber, not supple.” He spoke quietly. “I was only trying to help you. You’re the one who’s going, you see.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Lark, “leaving you here alone. But I have to go.”

  “I’ll be going one day, too,” said Henry Watter. He sniffed and sat up straight again. “When I’m ready.” He reopened his book. “‘Remembering that four, the architect and the guard do not live in the same city, and five, the guard has the same name as the passenger who lives in Chicago.’”

  Lark sat beside him. “It’s too hard for me. I don’t have your brains.”

  “It took me five minutes,” said Henry Watter. “Do you want me to tell you the answer? You’ll never get it, not with your terrible concentration.” He stood up. “I have just had an idea for a new project, and I have to go and work on it, my piece of resistance.”

  Lark dreamt she was waiting for a New York subway t
o whisk her off to an unknown destination. When the train hurtled into the station, it bore the sign, “Beware the deadly gases of Atmium and Thomium.” It was definitely her train. She had to board it, although she had no gas mask, despite her sense of impending doom.

  Lark visited Solomon Blank’s mother. Solomon’s letters to Lark had stopped altogether some months before.

  “So you’re going?” Mrs. Blank said. She described Solomon’s successes in Champaign-Urbana and the successes of his fiancée. “You didn’t know? He is getting married,” she said, “to a really beautiful American, statuesque, but blond. Real yellow blond, long, natural of course, not pale and short, like yours.” She went on to describe the luminous lives of Marshall, Ellice, and Gilbert, now in London, Copenhagen, and Rome. “They are all devoted to me,” she said. She reached into the drawer of the telephone table and extracted letters and photographs. “Solomon is contributing an article to a scholarly journal. His fiancée is a lovely girl. They plan to have four children, one after the other. They are so happy. They write regularly, once every month or two.”

  Lark read the letters, regular tales of regular doings. Solomon’s handwriting had not changed in the slightest. No doubt he was indeed terribly happy, as happy as she intended to be.

  “Write down his address. They of course will be moving to a house, four bedrooms they have in mind. The two youngest children will have to share a room, when they come along. Solomon and his fiancée would just love to see an old friend from Solomon’s early days. And of course, I may never see them again. It is so expensive. And I am old now. My traveling days are over. But they are devoted to me.” She pushed a pencil and a piece of paper at Lark. “Oh, I was forgetting. I didn’t offer you anything. Do you want a cup of tea, or will you just not bother?”

  When Lark saw Donna Bird creeping up the gangplank of the little freighter, she felt a certain dread and a regret at having agreed to take this ship to New York. Tom had insisted that it would be good for her, and she knew she should save the money. But Tom had flown off to America already, and here was Donna Bird escorted by her followers. F.X. strode a little ahead of her, in his polished black shoes and his blue suit, with a red tartan waistcoast, holding aloft his black umbrella to protect her from the sun. “Cleopatra boards her barge,” he announced. Perce danced a little behind in his bare feet. He had undone his rope belt and tied one end of it to Donna’s wrist, as if he were her pet monkey. End of Tether carried the Globite school case that Donna Bird had used in the kidnapping.

 

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