Odette

by Jessica Duchen

  At the wheel, Mitzi, awkward on the wooden seat, felt the pedal’s resistance under her foot and the clamminess of the clay on her hands. The lump would not centre. The more she pulled and pushed at it, the more reluctant it was to cooperate. ‘You made it look so easy.’

  ‘You’ll get it. Take your time.’ He leaned over and clasped his hands over hers, warm above the cool clay. Mitzi’s foot on the pedal accelerated and the wheel began to spin merrily.

  ‘Slower,’ suggested Rob. ‘Then, like this… add a little water…’

  Mitzi let Rob guide her hands and the clay until the lump sat plumb in the centre of the wheel, spinning like the world itself.

  ‘Now make a hollow. Both thumbs, again not too hard.’

  She pressed down, anxious, but the clay stayed on centre and, as she gained courage to mould it as Rob had, it began to move with her and shape into walls, albeit thick ones. She started to pull upwards; there in her hands she saw the embryo of a pot. Fired with enthusiasm, she pulled harder. The clay toppled.

  ‘Never mind, you were doing fine. The thing is not to try too hard. Just let it happen.’

  ‘Mm-hm.’ Mitzi stood up. ‘I’m not too good at that.’

  ‘You did really well. Let’s have a coffee and you can try again later.’

  Mitzi, mystified by the whole process, scraped the clay from her hands over the sink. ‘I don’t know how you do it. It feels impossible.’

  ‘Just lots of practice. Did you like it?’

  ‘Yes… it’s soothing.’ The smell of the watered clay, its smooth, thick texture, the turning and turning of the wheel, had drawn her into a pleasant whirlpool.

  ‘A lot of my Wednesday class say it’s therapeutic. That’s one thing that made me start in the first place.’

  Mitzi couldn’t imagine Rob needing anything therapeutic. If someone spent half his life creating wonderful shapes with part of the earth—

  ‘How’s Odette?’ Rob asked. Mitzi’s balance, like her pot, swung into ellipse.

  While he made the coffee, she explained the latest developments, standing in the kitchen with her back to the plant-crammed windowsill. ‘It’s so good to have someone to talk to about it,’ she added. ‘I feel better just being here.’

  ‘Good.’ Rob smiled as much to himself as to her. ‘I feel better having you here too. I got you some real coffee, by the way.’ On the sink stood a large packet marked ‘Extra dark roast’.

  They drove up to Branswell in Rob’s Mini. From a distance, parking on the street, the place seemed quiet enough; but in the drive three small electric trucks with tarpaulin-topped floats behind them were ready and waiting, and inside, the hall and entrance were teeming with dressed-up children and frantic adults.

  ‘There you are!’ A frazzled-looking dark-haired woman dived towards Rob. Three fairy tale characters were pulling at her coat from different sides. ‘Rob, next time you have a “good idea”, just remind me what this one was like…’

  ‘I don’t know what you were thinking,’ grumbled a nearby grandmother, watching two small charges flinging themselves around in Spiderman costumes. ‘It’s Christmas. How is this the time for pagan myths and legends? How can you have Sleeping Beauty and a bunch of ancient Egyptian gods on show, at Christmas? What’s happened to the nativity play?’

  ‘It’s the same thing, basically,’ Rob said. ‘If you think about it, “Sleeping Beauty” is a resurrection story.’

  The grandmother froze in front of him, apparently lost for words.

  ‘It’s the perfect time,’ Mitzi chipped in, to comfort her. ‘Everything’s magical at Christmas. And look, the sun’s coming out.’

  ‘Mr Winter! Mr Winter!’ Small versions of Red Riding Hood and the Wolf rushed up to Rob, grabbing a hand each. ‘Our mum made you some cake!’

  ‘Hannah! Olly! Say hello to my friend, Mitzi.’ Rob smiled as they pulled him along. Two huge pairs of ten-year-old eyes fixed on her. She smiled back, aware of school corridor smells around her of poster paint, paper and gym shoes, navigating her way between an Egyptian god with a blue face and golden cloak, a Native American chieftain wearing a substantial headdress of feathers, and a grumpy fairy in a tutu wielding a tinsel-tipped wand.

  ‘Who are you being?’ Mitzi asked the chieftain.

  ‘I’m Hiawatha, of course,’ he growled – as if astounded that she might not know.

  For each of the three floats, the children had prepared a tableau showing a different story. Tarpaulins were poised above them in case of rain and on each float, near the children, sat an unobtrusive camping heater – but now the last clouds were drifting away, leaving a light blue sky to accompany the remaining scant hours of daylight. As 2pm approached, yells of ‘Jack, come here!’ and ‘Grace, for the last time, stop that!’ issued while the teachers tried to round up everybody to begin the procession.

  The first float was unmistakeable: a long-haired little girl stretched out on a couch improvised from planks and a bedspread, with a reluctant boy kneeling beside her, while the still-scowling fairy held her wand over them, poised between potted plants representing the enchanted forest. Next came a scene that would show a group of ancient Egyptian animal-headed gods grouped around Ra, the Sun God – when Anubis and Osiris stopped fighting and got aboard, that is; as yet, only Bast, the cat goddess, was there, wearing a pair of furry ears on a headband and grumbling to her father that she wanted to go and play football. On the third truck, Hiawatha and his Minnehaha posed at the centre beside a sizeable dreamcatcher and assorted wild animals and birds; an eagle was protesting as his mother tried to clip on his beak. The sound of recorders and clarinets squealed through the mayhem as the school band assembled, alongside the rest of the children in their costumes.

  ‘I wonder what Odette would make of it,’ Mitzi reflected.

  ‘I wonder.’ Rob put a hand softly on her shoulder.

  ‘The thing is, she’d adore it. She’d think it was all just wonderful. The kids, the stories, all these different places and traditions and everyone pulling together…’

  Mitzi could see everything Odette would have loved. The excitement on the children’s faces, the small drummer proud in his band uniform, the glee with which one Egyptian goddess was trailing a chiffon wrap in the air, the parents’ delight when their charges were at last in place…

  The church clock struck two. ‘Everybody ready!’ yelled the head teacher.

  The convoy began to trundle towards the gates, pulled by the quiet electric vans. The marching band struck up ‘Strawberry Fair’ at a ponderous tempo, and the teachers, parents and Mitzi and Rob gathered to bring up the rear as the parade made its way down the road and into the town. Along the high street, people who had come out to watch soon darted over to join in. Linking arms with Rob, Mitzi moved in step with the crowd around them. To her own surprise, she couldn’t stop smiling. Until recently, perhaps until Odette, she’d have run a mile rather than attend such a thing as a primary school festival.

  Around forty minutes later the procession came to a halt by the stone arches beneath Branswell’s Victorian town hall. Everyone filed inside; there, in the main reception room, a wooden platform and a microphone presided over tall windows and a tinsel-laden Christmas tree.

  ‘Where’s your speech?’ Mitzi asked Rob.

  ‘In here.’ Rob tapped his left temple. He made his way forward through the crowd while the harried headmistress took charge.

  ‘Thank you, everybody,’ she was saying into the microphone, ‘for making today such a triumph for St Thomas’s School. This festival has brought out the best in everyone. Our classrooms have been buzzing with excitement ever since Rob Winter, our lovely pottery teacher who joined us just this year, first suggested a festival of international fairy tales, myths and legends. We therefore have Rob to thank for this happy day. So here he is to tell us about it.’

  Rob bounded up to the microphone and gave the head teacher a kiss.

  ‘Thank you.’ He shifted from foot to foot. ‘I’ll b
e brief, as they say – yes, I really will,’ he added as the crowd tittered. ‘We grow up with fairy stories and they stay with us throughout our lives. I don’t believe, though, that they’re just escapism. I believe that fairy tales, folklore and the traditional mythology of any and every world religion enrich us, help us learn life lessons and allow us to see the magic in our world, all around us, every day. Some people would even say that everything in this world is based on legends and myths – essentially, magical stories.

  ‘Our world is at a crossroads now – which means we can choose to make it the best it can be in the future. Last century was extreme, often horrific in its violence. Many of us dread that what lies ahead of us could be as bad, or worse. With such potential dangers to face, many of us easily mislay our sense of magic. We’ve lost our innocence. We’re cynical, shocked, disillusioned. If we want to recapture our love for living, could it be that we need to recapture the innocence of childhood? It’s difficult, but it’s there for the taking, if only we know where to look…

  ‘Anyway, I shall now shut up, but first I suggest simply that everyone looks for the wonderful tea that’s waiting for us! Thank you.’

  Mitzi clapped with the crowd until her hands tingled. As the parents and teachers streamed to the kitchen to fetch the sandwiches, cakes and urns, she navigated her way to the front to catch Rob. When he saw her, his eyes lit up and he held out both arms.

  Standing in the thronging, echoing hall under garlands of Christmas paper chains, munching fruit cake that almost burned with brandy, Mitzi had little chance to talk to Rob; everyone was congratulating him on the afternoon’s success. The headmistress, though, quickly identified Mitzi as the journalist whose preview had attracted an unexpected influx of visitors from Cygnford, and soon she too was being mobbed, questioned and thanked, while children bounded up to show her their costumes and offer her more cake and pieces of tinsel from the floats.

  By the time the crowd began to disperse, it was pitch dark and well past six thirty. Rob caught Mitzi’s eye across the room; she wandered over to him. Her feet were aching pleasantly and a piece of green tinsel was draped round her neck. Rob wore a paper rose from Sleeping Beauty’s garden in his buttonhole. He extracted it and tucked it behind Mitzi’s ear.

  ‘I loved Hiawatha’s feathers,’ she remarked, strolling back towards the school where the Mini was parked.

  ‘I liked the Sleeping Beauty’s forest. Very exclusive, all that ficus…’

  Talking about the afternoon kept them busy all the way back to Rob’s cottage. There, Mitzi stood in the doorway, stretching her arms and taking deep lungfuls of the clear evening air.

  ‘I think we’ve earned some wine,’ Rob suggested. ‘It’s getting chilly now, too. I’ll light the fire.’

  ‘Why don’t I open some wine while you get the fire going?’

  Mitzi busied herself with the corkscrew and a bottle of purple Bordeaux; the debacle with John was long forgotten while she watched Rob’s big-boned frame and craftsman’s hands in the lamplight, building up logs, chippings and newspaper in the grate. One scrunched-up page was the front of the Cygnford Daily.

  ‘So.’ He sat back on his heels while the flame gradually engulfed the paper’s logo and the story of the mysterious, unidentified corpse. ‘The million-dollar question: what have you said to Harry about Odette?’

  Mitzi described her brother the morning after the ball. ‘It’s impossible. He’ll never believe it, not even when he’s seen her change with his own eyes – though he only said he blacked out and she vanished without her dress. He can’t even talk about it as if it’s real. And now she’s going off to sing in a pub.’

  ‘You didn’t want to go?’

  ‘Somehow I get the feeling she’s finding herself and she wants me out of the way. That’s why it’s so good she’s found a place in the student hostel,’ she added, rather too fast, remembering that Rob must not find out his ‘study’ was occupied.

  ‘Relax, then. Cheers!’

  They drank their wine, watching the flames rise and flicker in the grate. Rob sat on the floor and after a while Mitzi joined him, her back against the armchair. The room was silent but for the crackling of fresh fire; the aroma of red wine mingled with the woodsmoke as the warmth percolated through the cottage. Rob had lit several small lamps, which cast brief pools of brightness into his pitch-dark cavern of books and files. They both smiled at the silence after the rowdy afternoon. Mitzi stared into the blackening logs, the sputtering and dancing of the flames almost as hypnotic as the spinning potter’s wheel.

  ‘Will you teach me how to make pots properly?’ she asked.

  ‘Anytime.’

  ‘Is that how you manage to be so calm and so kind of – well, you’re so self-sufficient…’

  ‘I grow my own spinach and milk the goat every morning,’ he teased her.

  ‘You know what I mean, though. You seem centred; you know who you are, on your own terms. All these weird things are going on around me, but there you are with this clear-sightedness and your pots.’

  ‘I used to be the biggest worryguts in the world, and the pottery certainly helped.’

  ‘Why were you such a worryguts?’ Mitzi gave him a grin.

  Rob smiled, more into his glass than at her. ‘The City job was what so many people were thinking and doing – it was expected of you. But I couldn’t stand it…’

  He’d worked twelve- to fourteen-hour days, he said; saved money, met an equally ambitious woman, married her, grew more and more unhappy. Everything came to a head when, within six months, his wife left him, his father died and he considered swallowing a heap of sleeping pills. ‘But I didn’t – and that was the turnaround.’

  She marvelled at his progress. He’d decided to change his life, rather than throw it away; to stop chasing after things he thought he should want rather than things he really did want. Then came the doctorate, the research post, the job and now the sabbatical.

  ‘That’s amazing,’ she said. Along with the sympathy, though, went uncertainty; his inner self was settled, mature after the turmoil he’d described – but supposing he began to see how insecure she felt? Considering her bereavement and the shock of breaking up with Pete, what if he decided she was damaged goods and not for him? How could she protect herself against being shattered like her own window all over again?

  Rob refilled her glass and lifted his own to clink. ‘To Odette!’

  ‘To Odette!’ Mitzi tried to close the lid over her simmering anxieties. ‘Rob, if you had Odette on your hands, what would you do?’

  ‘Mitzi,’ he said, ‘I have got Odette on my hands. Because you have.’

  Mitzi’s solar plexus seemed to crumble: what extraordinary kindness, something she had always dreamed of and never found, and here he was, beside her, almost too good to be believed, simply waiting for her to give him the go-ahead to embrace her. What had she ever done to deserve such goodness, such caring? She turned to him, put down her glass, and reached out a hand.

  17

  ‘Um,’ said Chris. ‘Are you really going in that?’

  Odette gazed up at him with pleading eyes. Her white dress’s beaded fringes jangled a little as she moved. ‘Is no good?’

  ‘Well—’ Chris felt his ears grow hot. He wasn’t used to expressing views on women’s clothing. Harry should have been there to help, but wasn’t yet back from London. ‘The thing is,’ he improvised, ‘you look sensational… it’s just that we’re, like, in the pub. It’s like a normal evening in the pub, except you’re singing – you see? Let’s go back in and you can find something else. Is Mitzi here?’

  ‘Mitzi went with Rob to festival.’ Odette headed up the stairs; Chris found himself staring at her tiny feet. ‘She is not back yet…’

  ‘So, where do you keep your clothes?’

  ‘I not have many clothes,’ said Odette, pointing into Mitzi’s room.

  Swallowing nerves, Chris opened the cupboard and selected a black lace blouse of Mitzi’s. ‘Wit
h jeans,’ he suggested. When Odette had put them on in the bathroom, he helped her to pin in the back of the blouse. Harry, who should have appeared ages ago, would have enjoyed this. Chris cursed his own ineptitude; watching a girl brush out a cascade of heavenly hair should have been a perfect opportunity. Couldn’t he have stepped forward and offered to brush it for her? Yet all he did, in the accessible presence of overwhelming sensual gorgeousness, was look, drool, and freeze.

  They set out ten minutes later, while the moon was rising over the river and the flat expanse of Solstice Common. As they walked, Chris, hoping he didn’t sound too anxious, tried to explain how pubs work.

  ‘… so you mustn’t expect people to stop talking and listen, because most of them won’t. Tonight we’re entertainers, not artistes.’

  ‘Yes.’ Odette smiled. ‘I never start expecting now. Whatever I expect, I find something else. You know, is strange: everything here is different from my old home. But people are same. They are kind or unkind, sometimes horrible or sometimes funny, and people that I remember from long ago are like this too.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so. I wonder what you’ll make of the crowd tonight.’

  The pub was still beyond what Odette had expected, even with her new principle of non-expectation. She’d thought the place would be bigger, with the audience seated in tidy, quiet rows. As she and Chris went in, past a gaggle of smokers outside, a wave of light and sound struck her with such unfamiliarity that she nearly turned back. The air was stuffy and stank of sweat and something damp and stale.

  ‘Old beer,’ Chris told her. ‘All pubs smell of it.’

  ‘But where is stage?’ Odette was alarmed at the sight of a battered upright piano in the corner, a huge glass of frothing brown liquid perching precariously on top of it. Close by, Stuart was arranging a mass of wires and a set of drums.

  ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. You’ll enjoy it once we get going.’

  Odette glimpsed someone waving to her from just inside the door: Harry, back from his audition in the nick of time. When she caught his eye, he blew her a kiss. She felt blood rush, most unswanlike, to her cheeks and neck.