A Song for Ella Grey

by David Almond

  And even now, with the others beside The Cluny, it was like I wasn’t there. I still had that weird dread. I wanted to be with Ella, only Ella. But she loved being with the others, not having to try too hard with anybody or anything, being lovely dreamy Ella, singing along, dreaming along. It was like she wasn’t there, not really, like she wasn’t anything, like she was just an empty space, waiting to be filled by something, by anything.

  And it’s like I was nothing, too, like I was waiting, too. But mebbe that’s just how it is when you’re young. You’ve got all these weird forces in you, but you feel unsatisfied, empty, unfinished. You feel like everything that matters is a million miles and a million years away, and yes it might come to you but no it bliddy mightn’t. It’ll be like an unreachable constellation of stars. And nothing will happen, ever. And you’ll never be anything, ever.

  I wanted to stop myself thinking at all. I wanted to sing with the others without thinking about being myself singing with the others. I wanted to sing like sweet Ella did.

  I kept up my thing with Sam. We slept a couple of nights together at his house. It didn’t really mean much. His parents didn’t seem to mind much. I wanted to love like him.

  Push push push push! Come come! Lovely! Sleep.

  But how can you turn yourself into something you want to be when you’re already what you are?

  I tried to work, to write my essays. I tried to lose myself in thinking and writing about Donne and Milton. But my thoughts and words kept slipping, slithering, sliding back to thoughts of Ella, of Orpheus and Ella. They were already tangled together in my mind.

  “Is everything all right?” Mum asked one day.

  The holidays were almost over. School loomed on the horizon. The undone work was heaped up in my bedroom.

  “Aye,” I said

  “All OK with your mates?”

  “Aye.”

  “And Sam.”

  I shrugged, nodded.

  “Aye.”

  She smiled. I think she knew how it was with him.

  “Then why all this moping about?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Dunno! God, how youth is wasted on the young!”

  She cuddled me.

  “You, madam,” she said, “take things far too seriously. You’re young. Be young. You’ll never have it back again, you know. Go out! Be free!”

  “I’ve got to work,” I said.

  “Work?”

  “Those essays, Mum.”

  “Essays! They work you far too hard. If I had my way there’d be no school from spring to autumn. What kind of essays?”

  “Love.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve got to write about love.”

  She flung her hands up in despair. She burst out laughing.

  “Hell’s teeth, that says it all! What’s the point of getting the young to write about love? They should be doing love!”

  TWELVE

  Ella helped. Yes, she was a dreamer, but she had a way of doing her work without any fuss. She didn’t understand the struggles that some of us went through. If you had to write 1,500 words you wrote 1,500 words. You put one word then another then another then another. You said the things that Krakatoa said you were supposed to say. You didn’t think too much, and didn’t expect too much. You handed the work in on time. You ended up with a B or a C or a very occasional A, and no matter what Krakatoa or your parents said, that was more than good enough. You certainly didn’t waste your precious energy yearning for A stars. It was easy. So why the fuss? Why the stress?

  She finished her work well in time. Then she came to my room to help me. She sat on my bed while I sat at my little desk.

  “Just do it, Claire,” she said. “Nobody else is going to, so just do it.”

  She filed her fingernails. She hummed a few tunes.

  “By the way, the Greys are now firmly wrapped around my finger,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “Really. I showed them four essays, all neatly printed out. They were all stapled, with title pages and word lengths, each neatly tucked up in its own transparent plastic wallet. That’s the kind of thing that really impresses them. The Earthly and the Divine: An Essay by Ella Grey. 1,523 words. They just love it! I read them a bit where I blather on about the music of the spheres and Plato’s Theory of Forms. Remember? That stuff on Krakatoa’s handouts? Anyway, it bliddy bowled them over. ‘Oh, Ella, that’s so lovely! How on earth do you know such things? See? You can do anything when you set your mind to it. Oh, we are so proud of you!’ ”

  I told her I was proud of her as well.

  “Ha!” Then they went on to the reminiscing, which always helps me to get what I want. They told the tale like they always tell it, as if I’ve never heard it all before. The baby in the basket on the hospital steps in the deep midwinter. How they became excited straight away. How they rushed to the adoption office. All the interviews, all the agonizing, all the praying, all the hoping, all the forms. But it was all for the best because look at this beautiful bright young woman, and look at these two happy parents! They got the photos out: me in the basket, me in their arms with the nurses and doctors all around. And the cutting from the Chronicle: “Who Could Abandon Such a Lovely Thing?”

  “It’s true,” I said. “Who could abandon a thing like you?”

  She shrugged.

  “Anyway,” she said. “Looks like I’ll be at the beach next time, and looks like I’ll be able to kip at yours again.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. See the benefits of getting essays done? So get them bliddy done.”

  I stared at my blank page.

  “D’you think you’ll ever find out?” I said.

  “Eh?”

  “Who it was that left you there? Why they left you there?”

  “Not now,” she said. “But I guess I’ll always find myself looking at the people on the street, thinking that could be her. Or it could be that couple there. But I know they could be anywhere. They could be dead. And then sometimes I forget it all, and just think the Greys are my proper parents.”

  “That’s mebbe for the best.”

  “Aye, it is. And I do love them, even though I moan about them.”

  I wrote my title: “The Earthly and the Divine.” I groaned. I stared into space.

  “I’ve been having these dreams,” she said softly.

  “What kind of dreams?”

  “Dunno. Dunno if they’re mad.”

  “All dreams are mad. Tell me.”

  “Been having them these last few weeks. I hear voices, the voices of my parents, singing me to sleep.”

  “Your real parents?”

  “Yes. I don’t see them, but somehow I know it’s them. And I feel them holding me, like they never want to let me go.”

  “Are the dreams nice, or…”

  “They’re lovely. And they get all mixed up with the Orpheus dreams. I hear him singing as they hold me, like he’s coming closer, like he’s trying to find me…And I call out his name to bring him to me…”

  “Weird.”

  “Aye, weird. I’m weird!”

  She drew her nail file over the cuticle of her thumbnail.

  “Ha!” she said. “Mebbe the Greys are right. They got themselves a fairy child.”

  THIRTEEN

  Sunday night before school started again, we went down to The Cluny. Everyone but Carlo was there. He’d given up on us. All of us were glum.

  “The gates are slammin’ shut!” we sang.

  “The shutters are clankin’ doon!”

  “The prison house awaits us aal!”

  “And Krakatoa!”

  “Aaaagh!”

  “Bianca!”

  “No!”

  “Crystal Carr!”

  “Aaagh! No!”

  We giggled and drank cheap wine.

  “Been great, though, hasn’t it?”

  “Aye!”

  “And we’ll go back again.”

  “Yea
h!”

  “At half term!”

  “Yes!”

  “So not too long to wait.”

  “And this time you’ll be staying, Claire!”

  “I will.”

  “And Ella will be there.”

  “Oh yes, she will be there.”

  “And Orpheus will return!”

  “Oh yes,” whispered Ella at my side. “He will return. I will be there.”

  We broke up early, headed home early. Homework to check, schoolbags to pack, sleep to be got. I walked with Ella. When we were alone, she took my hand and turned me back again, following the path alongside the Ouseburn.

  Couldn’t see in the falling dark if she was smiling.

  “What we doing?” I asked.

  “Just follow me. Want you to do something with me. Won’t take long.”

  We came to where the water flowed through its locked gateway from below the city. The place was darkened by the banks around it, by overhanging trees.

  “Take your shoes off,” she told me. “Roll your jeans up. Go on. Just for me.”

  I laughed and did as she asked.

  “Now be still.”

  Below us the water caught the lights of the stars, of the city’s glow in the sky, of the lights in the windows of The Cluny. It glittered and swirled.

  “That water’s come from everywhere,” she said.

  “Eh?”

  She put her finger to my lips.

  “Hush, Claire.”

  Now her face was close to mine. She closed her eyes.

  “Water,” she whispered.

  She spoke as if the words were flowing out of her, as if she just spoke them as they came to her, as if she was in a dream, and I held my cheek to hers so I could feel her close and feel the vibration of the words as they ran through her and ran through her.

  “This water’s come from everywhere. From in the hills, the Cheviots, the Simonsides, the Pennines, from little springs high on the moors, from spouts in the rocks and streams in the fields and it flows downhill and gathers strength and mixes and accumulates, and flows and flows, across the land and under the city and under our streets and homes and it flows out here through its gates and it keeps on flowing and it’ll flow down The Tyne to mingle with the sea and it’ll be lifted again and it’ll fall again as rain and flow again across the land and under the city and under cities all across the world and it’ll flow out through these gates and through all the gates like these…”

  She paused. She smiled. She moved her face away from mine.

  “We learned it in primary school. Remember? In Miss Bates’ class. The Water Cycle. Sea to sky and sky to earth and earth to sea and sea to sky and on and on and on it goes and when it will stop nobody knows. I thought I understood. But now I really do.”

  She put her finger to my lips again.

  “Now listen to it, Claire. Yes. Listen to how it gushes and trickles and flows. But listen as well to the music it makes as it comes through the gates. Can you hear them vibrating?”

  I listened. I couldn’t.

  “Are you OK?” I whispered.

  She smiled.

  “Yes. Just a wee bit cracked.”

  She stepped onto the steel ladder that led down a concrete slope to the water. Then she stood in the water and her face bloomed in the dark as she looked up at me.

  “Come on, Claire,” she said.

  I stepped down and stood beside her. The water wasn’t even knee-deep. There was that sour sickly smell to it. All kinds of rubble and litter on its bed. She waded through it towards the gates. I followed, moving my bare feet tentatively. Tried not to think of the litter and filth and trash that were often trapped in the bars of the gate. Tried not to think of rats and fiends and monsters. She took my hand and drew me to her, then she touched my fingers to the bars.

  “Feel it?” she whispered.

  Yes. I felt how the bars vibrated with the endless flowing of the water over them.

  “And hear the music they make?”

  Did I? I felt and listened. Yes, a humming, a faint droning that mingled with the sound of the water’s flow. I felt and heard the chinking and rattling of the chains and bolts and padlocks. I heard the tip tap of the warning sign.

  She came close against me again.

  “The gate is like his lyre, Claire,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Yes. And like your phone.”

  “My phone?”

  “When I heard him on the phone, it was like I heard everything, Claire. That there was something coming through him and through the lyre and through the phone and into me. And now it’s coming with the water through the gate. Listen to it. It is him.”

  “What is?”

  “Everything. The water and the music it makes. The music of everything. It is him, and we were with him for a little time.”

  “Oh, Ella!”

  She heard the concern in me.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I’m not going crazy. And, Claire, it ties up with my dreams.”

  “Your dreams.”

  “Of before the Greys. I’m all alone in a dark damp place with music in it. I hear their voices, his so deep and hers so sweet. I feel them holding me and never wanting to let me go. I hear music flowing like water.”

  “But, Ella, that could be anybody’s dream of how anybody started. It’s just the bliddy womb!”

  “It’s different. Orpheus makes the dream clear. The music in the dream is him. The music in everything is him. Look at us, Claire.”

  “What do you mean, Look at us?”

  “Look how we’re standing in the water. Listen how it flows across our legs. Listen to the sound it makes as it flows across us. Can you hear?”

  “Yes, but it’s just what happens when…”

  “It’s him, Claire. Be still, and listen. We are his lyre. He plays his music and sings his songs upon us.”

  “Oh, Ella.”

  “I’m not mad. I feel like I’m just starting to wake up.”

  “Oh, Ella.”

  “I’ve known him before, Claire. And he’s known me. He’s known all of us. You have to believe it.”

  I could say nothing. We stood there in the water, at the place we used to run screaming from because of childhood nightmares, and now we stood there like it would bring some kind of bliddy grace.

  Her eyes shone bright, reflecting the rising moon.

  “Oh, Claire,” she gasped. “He’s on his way. I know it. He’s nearly here.”

  FOURTEEN

  And he came on a Thursday morning, in the middle of Krakatoa’s lesson, a couple of weeks into the new term. There he stood, in the shimmering at the edge of the schoolyard, and she went out to him and walked away with him, and the tale of the two of them, the tale of all of us, suddenly leapt forward, and we had to hurry to keep up.

  ONE

  “He wants to marry me, Claire.”

  “What?”

  “He says in all his travelling, he’s never met anybody else like me.”

  “And who the hell have you met?”

  “Nobody. But he says the same as me—that he’s known me always.”

  “And you’re only seventeen!”

  She giggled. She shrugged.

  “I know, Claire. It’s crazy.”

  “Then what…”

  “But it makes a weird kind of sense.”

  “Sense?”

  “It’s like he understands me, like nobody ever has before.”

  “Hell’s teeth, Ella!”

  “He does! And I feel like I exist more than I ever have before.”

  “But it’s…”

  “It’s what?”

  “It’s infatuation! It’s just because he’s charmed you.”

  “It’s not. It’s impossible to explain, but I feel it, Claire. I feel it.”

  We were in my room. She’d been with him all that day, ever since jumping out of Krakatoa’s lesson. She said they’d been just wandering here and there. Just talking
, just dreaming. They’d walked right down by the river to where it flowed into the sea at Tynemouth and they walked all the way back again. Sometimes they’d stopped and he’d played the lyre and he’d sung.

  “And you were right,” she said. “The birds flew down. Fish were jumping in the river. A couple of dogs followed us everywhere we went. It was like they all loved him, Claire. All the beasts, all the birds. Once I looked at the river and thought that even that was changing its course to flow towards him. It was like being in a dream but the dream was real.”

  “Jesus Christ, Ella. It is a dream.”

  “But you said the same things yourself. You said you saw them happening.”

  I took her by the shoulders. I wanted to grab her by the throat.

  “But marriage, Ella.” I laughed out loud. “And it’s hardly as if the Greys are going to say, ‘Oh yes, Ella, that sounds absolutely bliddy fine to us.’ ”

  “It’s all right. They won’t need to know.”

  “What?”

  “It won’t be one of those boring stuffy wedding things.”

  I sighed. I waited.

  “He said we don’t need all the trappings—priests and churches and registrars and all that stuff. It’ll be a true coming-together of bodies and souls, like it was in the past, before everything got caged by rules and regulations.”

  She kissed me.

  “It’ll be lovely, Claire. We’re going to do it on Bamburgh Beach. At half-term, when we’re all there. Afterwards we’ll meet up in secret when we can, then when I’ve left school we’ll be together properly. We’ll go wandering together. Ella and Orpheus. Orpheus and Ella.”