It’s over, she tells herself. The boys weren’t born or thought of then. The war means nothing to them: it’s something that’s past, and photographs of people they’ve never met. But that’s good, isn’t it? It means they’re living in a better world. Thinking, walking, Iris calms herself. By the time she reaches Whiteladies Road, her hands have quite stopped shaking.
DANCERS’ FEET
AT LAST THE ferry swung out into midstream, churning the grey-brown water. It couldn’t go at full speed yet; he knew that. They still had the pilot on board to steer them through the shifting sand and mudbanks of the Thames estuary. He wondered if he could ask one of the crew about where the pilot would be dropped, but perhaps they would think it was a stupid question. He would just wait up on deck, and watch.
Tilbury was well behind them now. Across the river, in the dirty haze of a late-summer afternoon, that must be Gravesend. He knew they had to pass Canvey Island, and the Isle of Grain, where the Medway joins the surge of the Thames. But by then they would be more or less at sea, and already turning north. He might not even see Foulness Island and its point.
He ran over the names in his mind. He never went on a journey without studying the map first, noting every name. These were the kind of facts he liked, hard-headed but somehow adventurous too. They would pass Shoeburyness. ‘Ness’ meant ‘nose’; he knew that from school geography, when they’d studied the Vikings. He’d always liked the Vikings, with their long, plaited hair, beaked ships and fearsome legends. Now he was heading north, to the land that the Vikings had left behind.
But it had to be said that, to judge from her photograph, his Aunt Karolina looked nothing like a Viking. Prim and plump, she stared out at Robert as if she were already having second thoughts about him as a tutor for her sons. Only a certain broadness of shoulder suggested that Aunt Karolina might be able to row a longship.
She wasn’t really his aunt, anyway, but his mother’s cousin. Which made Lars and Erik … but no, he couldn’t be bothered to work out what that made them. The important thing about Lars and Erik was that they needed to learn English, and he wanted – well, not exactly to teach it to them, of course, but to go to Sweden. To travel. To get away. He was fed up to the back teeth with people droning on about how they used to travel ‘before the war’, and how wonderful Paris had been, or Rome or Berlin – all these places which he knew only from reports of battles on the six o’clock news. He had done nothing and gone nowhere.
His grip tightened on the railing. He’d expected a breeze, now that they were away from land, but the air was as hot and heavy as ever. The journey across London had been the worst part: Paddington to Liverpool Street on the Circle Line, with his palms sweating so much that the handle of his case slipped. He kept checking the names of the stations on the Tube map. He wished he knew London properly. If it hadn’t been for the war, he would have been a Londoner. Instead, from the age of eight, he had been stuck in Devizes.
He could still smell the Tube train. It had stopped for so long between Baker Street and Great Portland Street that he’d been sure he would miss the Tilbury train. Someone broke the thick silence of the carriage to say that the heat had probably made the rails expand. Grumbling, disgusted agreement rippled through the passengers. But it had been all right in the end. He was safe on board, with his tickets, his passport, his English money and his Swedish money. He’d already stowed his case full of winter clothes in the cabin which he was to share with three other people.
‘It’ll be autumn up there already,’ everyone had told him when he was packing. His Aunt Karolina lived two hundred miles north of Stockholm. He had to remember, his mother said, that her house would be quite different from English homes. No open fires; they had stoves in Sweden. His mother looked as if she wasn’t sure that he would be able to cope with stoves. Mothers never really believe that you can do anything, he thought.
The boat pushed on slowly, feeling its way into the deep channel. They weren’t out of the estuary yet, but even so, land was getting farther away. England was going away from him. He would stay up on deck until the last trace of it vanished, and then he’d go below and get something to eat. If there was anything left by then.
Something blurred in the corner of his vision, like a fist coming at him. He flinched, then quickly turned towards his attacker. A bare, pointed foot shot at him, and then away. A fraction of a second later he made sense of it. A girl was standing, holding the rail with both hands, balancing very upright as she thrust her legs out in turn, at right angles to her body. Her head was poised in a way which struck him as unnatural. She was looking straight ahead, as if she didn’t know that she had almost kicked him in the eye.
‘I say, steady on,’ he muttered to himself derisively. Aloud, he said, ‘Your legs are quite long, you know.’
‘Then move out of the way,’ she answered smartly, without looking at him. ‘I’ve got to practise.’
‘Practise?’
‘I’m a dancer,’ she explained, flashing a glance at him which immediately convinced him that it was not true. She was younger than him, he thought. About sixteen.
‘You must get very hot, doing that in this weather,’ he observed.
‘Dancers have to suffer for their art,’ she replied grandly, shooting out her right leg. Suddenly she stopped, bent down and rubbed her calf vigorously through the folds of her skirt. He had never seen a girl wearing a skirt as long and full as hers. It was nipped in at the waist and it sprang out as if she had a dozen petticoats under it.
‘Cramp,’ the girl explained, making a face.
‘You ought to drink a glass of water with half a teaspoon of salt in it,’ said Robert. ‘That’s what we do if we get cramp after a match. Replacing the salt, you know, because of all the sweat.’
She looked indignant. She probably didn’t like him talking about sweat like that. ‘It’ll be all right in a minute,’ she said in a distant voice. ‘I’m used to it. Sometimes, after a long rehearsal—’
In one corner of his mind he was aware that the boat had lost speed again. It was barely moving. At this rate it would never get out of the estuary. The sun looked brassier than ever, and there was a heavy heap of livid cloud at the eastern horizon.
‘There’s going to be a storm,’ he said.
A flicker of alarm crossed her face. ‘I love storms,’ she said immediately.
‘Do you? I don’t. I was nearly struck in one once, after a cricket match. You could smell the sulphur.’
‘Sulphur!’
‘Yes. Like the devil. We all smelled it. We ran like hell.’
‘For the pavilion?’ she asked, as if proud that she knew the right word.
He nodded, even though they’d run all the way into the school building, not trusting anywhere less solid.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Robert Oldland. What’s yours?’
‘Sophie. Sophie … Delacour.’
She was lying again, he could tell. ‘Are you French then?’ he asked.
‘No. Not exactly. It’s a stage name. Most dancers have them, you know.’
The ferry swung slowly to the left: port, he remembered. The engines made a juddering sound, as if someone were trying to put on the brakes. He saw a cluster of people on the other side of the deck, looking down over the railings. He wanted to see, too, but he didn’t want to leave Sophie, who showed no sign of moving.
‘I wonder what’s happened?’
‘It won’t be anything,’ she said indifferently.
The engines grated, changing gear. The ferry shuddered, rattled, then began to move forward. The shoreline looked a long way off now, he thought. He wouldn’t be able to swim that far, even if the oily, swirling water would let him.
‘Have you done this journey before?’ he asked her.
‘Yes, but I don’t remember. I was only little. I was as sick as a dog,’ she said, with a sudden wide, gleaming smile.
‘I’m travelling on my own,’ he said. It felt like the greatest of intimaci
es, as if this were the most important thing about him.
‘So am I,’ she said instantly. She put out a slim brown foot, examined it, flexed it. He hoped she was not going to start kicking again.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘I’ve got an engagement in Stockholm.’
‘A dancing engagement?’
She nodded. He looked at her smooth, polished hair, her fine-grained golden skin. She might be a dancer.
‘It’ll be so cold there,’ she went on. ‘Ugh. I wish it could be summer forever.’
‘I like the autumn,’ he said.
‘I can’t see how anyone could like autumn. All you’ve got to look forward to is winter.’
He thought of the street he walked home along, and the smell of burning leaves from gardens. Some houses would have their lights on already, but the curtains wouldn’t be closed yet. In every house it seemed there was a girl practising piano, with her back to the window.
The shore was vanishing in a pelt of cloud. The sky was growing dark with the coming storm. A woman behind him said, ‘Did you see them drop the pilot?’
He had missed it. Other people had seen it and he had not.
‘Ugh, it’s starting to roll,’ said Sophie.
She was right. The ferry tilted, long and slow and inevitable.
‘I shall be sick,’ said Sophie, clinging to the rail as it rushed back towards her.
‘It’s only because we’re coming out to sea.’
‘So you say.’ Her mouth curved scornfully at him.
‘Look,’ he said, to punish her, ‘lightning. Over there.’ He pointed, and just then another thin seam of lightning split clouds which were suddenly much closer. ‘We’d hear the thunder if the engines weren’t making so much noise.’
‘I hate thunder,’ she said under her breath. ‘It sounds like the ack-ack.’ He glanced at her, surprised.
‘Weren’t you evacuated?’
‘No.’
He was as sure that this was true as he’d been sure she was lying before. Another fork of lightning ran through the clouds, like a finger exploring them for weaknesses. This time he heard the thunder in spite of the engines.
‘How far away is it?’ asked Sophie.
‘About six miles.’
The wind had got up. Some of the hair had blown out of the polished knot at the nape of her neck. People were leaving the deck now, walking carefully as the ferry rolled. A few big spots of rain hit the planks, and then no more. Lightning danced in one corner of the sky, and then another. Thunder growled. Suddenly the surface of the water was pulled up into points of foam. Sophie lurched, and Robert grabbed her arm. A nice mess they would be in if she broke a leg. Or even slid under the railings—
‘For heaven’s sake, hold on to the rail.’
‘You’re not supposed to touch metal things in a storm.’ Her voice was cross but her panicky eyes made him soften.
‘It doesn’t count on a boat.’ He was pretty sure of that. ‘There’s nowhere for it to earth, is there?’
Suddenly the warm, suffocating air fell away from them. The wind whipped Sophie’s skirt around her legs. The thunder banged – really banged, this time – and then the sky emptied on them. The rain stung as if there were pieces of hail in it, and it was cold. Winter had come in a minute. Sophie’s face was running with water. Robert’s clothes clung to him. He gripped the rail with one hand as it slipped under his fingers, braced his legs apart to steady himself and grabbed Sophie as she waltzed past him down the streaming deck. Her body slammed into his and then away, but he had hold of her and he yanked her round so that she almost fell against him. He gripped her firmly.
‘Hold the rail, Sophie! You’re going to get hurt.’
Rain sluiced around them, hissing. They were the only ones left up on deck. He thought that the next time the ferry rolled to its left they could make a dash for the door. Then there’d be the business of getting the door open – it had been heavy, he remembered …
He had his arm tight around Sophie. He could feel her narrow waist inside the skirt. Now the boat was pitching up and down as it hit lumps of water head-on. At the same time it kept on rolling from side to side, tilting farther every time.
‘We’ve got to go below,’ he shouted in her ear. ‘It’s not safe up here.’ She didn’t seem so frightened now. Even her eyelashes were wet with rain, stuck together in clumps. His shirt was so wet it felt like having nothing on, and he was freezing cold and hot with excitement at the same time. He wondered if it was the same for her.
‘I want to stay here. I hate being shut up inside when things are banging outside,’ she cried.
All right, if that was how she felt then he would stay too. He braced himself more firmly, holding the deck, holding the rail, holding Sophie. No storm was going to peel them away.
There was a shrieking noise behind them, like a gull. He looked over Sophie’s shoulder and saw that the deck door was open. Someone was holding it, battling with the wind and shouting a name. A woman in a long, horrible raincoat, with a man bulking behind her. ‘Joan! Joe-wown! Joan! Joe-wown!’
Sophie’s face become expressionless, smooth as wood. Drops continued to pour over her cheeks. If he’d had a cloak he would have pulled it over her head to hide her.
‘It’s them. I’ve got to go,’ she said in a small voice. He felt her take a deep breath.
‘Be careful. You haven’t got any shoes on,’ he said, feeling stupid as soon as the words were out of his mouth. But then he saw that it was the right thing to say. She was suddenly restored, adventuring again in the quick gleam of her smile.
‘Dancers’ feet are tough,’ she said. ‘Just feel this.’ She grabbed the rail tightly, and raised her right foot. Her clinging skirt fell back and he saw the pale skin inside her knee and her thigh. Her feet were brown, with small, polished pink nails. The skin of the arch was wrinkled with cold.
‘Go on,’ she said, ‘touch.’
Behind him the voices brayed again. ‘Joe-wown! Joan! Joe-wown!’
They sounded as if they were calling a dog. But they couldn’t see him or Sophie. Not properly. She was balancing and balancing, holding out her foot to him. For all the ferry’s lurching, she didn’t quiver. He touched her instep. He could feel how warm she was, inside.
‘I can go on pointe in bare feet,’ she said. Her eyes were wide and the pupils big in them. He touched her wet, cold toes lightly. He had no idea how hard girls’ feet were supposed to feel. He took a breath.
‘JOE-WOWN!’ yodelled one of the raincoats again, loud but thin, as if they knew they had already lost her.
‘Good luck in Stockholm, Sophie,’ he said to her. ‘With your engagement, I mean.’ She swung her foot down, stood upright – very upright, like a dancer, and smiled, as if a curtain had swung down on a sound of vast applause. The next instant she had slipped out of his grasp and he turned just in time to see her fly down the tilt of the deck towards the open door.
WITH SHACKLETON
A THUD, A squeal, a pair of hot, tight arms around her neck.
‘It snowed! There’s millions of snow in the garden!’ Clara pulls away, rushes to the window and begins to drag at the heavy curtains.
‘No, Clara, be careful! Wait a minute—’ Isabel slides out of bed. And there it is, the snow lighting the dark garden, heaped on the window ledges. A blackbird flies out of the laurels, breaking loose a shower of snow. There’s not a footprint on the white lawn.
Clara is silent too. How far away last winter must seem to her. It snowed then, and Stephen took her up to the Heath on the sledge. Clara was only five, muffled in scarf and woollen helmet. Isabel had even wound a shawl around Clara’s legs, so the child couldn’t stir.
The sledge’s runners stuck in the fresh snow. Stephen tugged on the rope, the sledge broke free with a jerk, and away they went, Stephen loping ahead, the sledge bounding behind.
Isabel was wearing her new red kimono, with her coat thrown on top. There’d been no
question of her going with them that day. She’d watched them out of sight, and then gone back indoors, sleepy again, yawning as she climbed the stairs. She held on to the banisters. Stephen was always telling her to take more care. He liked to think of her as impulsive, skimming over the surface of life. Perhaps it’s the things we believe about people that make up their charm for us, thinks Isabel. What if Stephen knew the heavy knot of fears that lay coiled inside her?
She’d dormoused by her bedroom fire all morning. Such delicious, luxurious, justified sleepiness. Mrs Elton had brought up her cocoa at eleven. Isabel loathed cocoa as a rule, but all through that winter she craved it. Thick, delicious cocoa, made with the top of the milk. Usually Isabel was embarrassed to be found on her little bedroom sofa, doing nothing. But it was all right on that particular day, and on all those days last winter. Mrs Elton put the cocoa down and announced, ‘There’s a good half-pint of best morning milk in there. And a boy’s just this minute come to clear the steps. I’ll put some ashes down once he’s done, and then you’ll be safe to go out. It looks as if this freeze is going to hold.’
‘Wonderful cocoa,’ Isabel breathed, not because she felt she had to, but because it was true.
‘There’s nothing like milk to build good bones,’ said Mrs Elton, folding her arms and looking down at Isabel as if Isabel belonged to her. And they were off. They couldn’t help it. The irresistible topic swam into view – as if it were ever out of view! – and in they plunged after it.
Isabel had bathed in approval, day after day. She could lie on that sofa for the entire nine months if she felt like it, and there wouldn’t be a murmur. Not even from that she-elephant, Stephen’s mother. Isabel had done what was wanted of her. Her mother-in-law had ‘spoken her mind quite openly’, once Clara turned four. Stephen had always wanted a large family. The Kendalls ran to large families. And naturally Stephen wanted a son to bear his name. Any man would. The fact that he didn’t talk about it meant absolutely nothing. Stephen was far too considerate, but Josephine believed in frankness.
Girl, Balancing & Other Stories Page 22