A Song for Ella Grey

by David Almond

  “Oh.”

  “Yes.”

  We walked on.

  “Is that what it’s like with Sam?” she said.

  “You’re joking.”

  We giggled softly together. Lovely Sam. Mr. Muscle.

  We came closer to our homes.

  “It’s like I’m not there,” she said. “But it’s like everything is in me. It’s like I can’t explain…” She suddenly crouched down and touched a daisy growing by the concrete path. “It’s like I’m this daisy and it’s like the thing that’s in the daisy is the same as the thing that’s in me. The thing that pushes it up from the earth and pushes the petals out and makes the pollen glow. It’s like the thing that pushes the song out from those birds and makes them spread their wings and makes the salmon swim and…Oh, Claire, how the hell do I know?”

  I laughed, and crouched beside her.

  “It’s like a feeling,” she said, “and it’s like a sound, and it’s like being me but being nobody and being everything but being absolutely nowt at all!”

  She took my hand and touched my fingers to the daisy.

  “It’s like being in love with this bliddy daisy, Claire. It’s like being in love with the bliddy river and with the bliddy sky. How crazy is that?”

  “Maybe it’s wonderful,” I murmured. “It’s maybe what first love is really supposed to be like.”

  “Is it? I don’t know. I’ve only been with him for a little time but I know we’ll be together always and we’ve always been together always.”

  I took a breath. I took her arm and guided her to her feet.

  I took another breath.

  “Ella,” I started. “I wonder if you should…”

  She pressed her fingers to my lips.

  “No, Claire,” she said. “Don’t say that.”

  “Don’t say what?”

  “Anything that stops it, Claire. Anything that makes me doubt.”

  SIX

  How did the weeks pass by? In the way that all time passes by. In seconds that turned to minutes that turned to hours that turned to days that turned to weeks. Time passed by in routine, in work, in drudgery. In descending into sleep by night and rising to the light by day. In waking, washing, dressing, eating, drinking, brushing hair and cleaning shoes, in checking school bags, in walking along the riverbank on schooldays with a single friend and entering the stream of others to pour yet again through the metal gates of Holy Trinity. In being on time, in being prepared, in walking in an orderly manner through the corridors. In being cheerful and cooperative and polite. In attending to the teachers. In listening to Krakatoa snap and inform and speculate and bore and occasionally illuminate and grumble and groan. In reading Milton, Herrick, Donne. In making notes and writing essays and doing hour after hour after hour of homework. In showing that we were diligent students who wished to do well. In showing that we were modern young adults who understood their world, who knew what was expected of them, who were realistic but ambitious, whose future prospects were deeply important to them. In showing our parents that we were all they could have wished for, that we wished to achieve all that they wished us to achieve. We were fine young people. We were civilized and industrious. We should be rewarded with a time of play. We deserved to be allowed to go together at half-term for a break on Bamburgh Beach.

  I was extra nice to the Greys. I shook my head in astonishment with my parents at the wonders Orpheus had performed in our kitchen that night. I agreed with them that yes, it was marvellous that I was beginning to come upon such interesting people in my life. Yes, I told them, maybe I’d meet him again when we travelled north to Bamburgh. Yes, I’d pass on their greetings. Yes, I’d be sure to invite him to visit us again. I’d tell him he was always welcome at our door.

  And I gathered with my friends on the grass beside The Cluny. And we whispered our excitements, as always, and we broke into music and song, as always, and we yearned to grow much older and to be forever young, as always always always.

  And when I woke alone in the dead of many nights, I tried to calm my fears, and to still the thuds of weird dread. I tried to tell myself that this was all just a playful thing, a kind of game, a teenage fantasy. Why shouldn’t Ella have a mock-wedding? Why shouldn’t she, and all of us, have a day of daft joy?

  And I found ways to tell myself that it was all just stupid, anyway. Orpheus himself was the fantasy. Ella said he’d gone off wandering again, and that he’d meet up with us again on Bamburgh Beach.

  I laughed at this inside.

  It’s all ballocks, I whispered to myself. He won’t turn up. He’s duped us, charmed us, tricked us. He’s just a traveller, a singing tramp. He’s gone forevermore. Thank God for that. Good riddance to him. Go to Hell, Orpheus. And leave my lovely friend alone.

  I went with her to Attica Vintage Clothes in town. We spent an age going through the rails. She found a pale green silk dress with the label torn out that could have been Biba. I bought a black dinner jacket with a shining satin collar from about fifty years ago, and a pure white smock to go beneath. I bought black shoes with ribbony straps that curled up around my calves. She said she’d go bare-footed. I bought a black mesh hat whose veil angled down across my eyes. She said that I looked stunning and that her own head would be bare, except for those tender pink flowers that flourished in the dunes.

  Angeline wrote wedding music to play on her guitar. Michael and Maria bought bottles of Tesco fizz. They found some bottles of retsina in Fenwick’s. Angeline made a chocolate wedding cake. We stocked up on cheap wine and beer. We all made cards. Sam found an old copy of Paradise Lost and ripped its pages into confetti.

  James took to lining his eyes in black, to wearing mascara, to shrugging at our smiles, and blushing as he looked down and whispered, I know, I know.

  I bought a new notebook in the cheap stationery shop in Grainger Market, a lovely thing with red Italian marbling on the cover. I tried to write poems in celebration of my friend, tried to stop my words from swerving into gloom. I found myself stealing lines and images from Donne. I must not weep. I would not lose my friend. She may go off for a time from me, but she’d return, as when a pair of compasses is closed and the points meet up again. We would be forever joined, whatever happened with her Orpheus.

  Remember me, Ella, I wrote. I am the one who is true.

  On the first Saturday of half-term, we took the X18 from Haymarket Bus Station.

  We sat at the back, all the friends, all the hipster crew.

  I sat with Ella. We held each other’s hands, as we had ever since Miss Simpson’s class. We passed the black war memorial with the angel bowing down towards the desperate soldiers. We passed the university, where many of us thought we might end up. We drove past the town moor with the herd of unmoving cattle on it. We watched the houses of the city, the offices, the shops, the swimming pool, the library. Traffic and walkers headed back to where we’d come from.

  We moved out from the city on the Great North Road towards the empty spaces of Northumberland.

  Ella squeezed my hand. I leaned close to her.

  “Farewell, my ordinary world,” she said.

  SEVEN

  We sang songs from childhood as we headed further north.

  My bonny lies over the ocean.

  Nobody seemed to mind. We sang sweetly, good-humouredly. We were nice young folk, no bother to anybody. Some little boys sitting with their mothers sang along with us.

  The day was fine, sun shining on the fields, breeze making the tips of the trees dance. We left Tyneside behind, we crossed the ancient healed coalfield, we saw the sea shining. At Amble, bright boats danced their way to Coquet Island. Beyond here, the road followed the coast, and the beautiful places started, the places of dunes and castles and long white beaches. Sparkling rivers danced to the surging sea. There were stone-built harbours, and little natural harbours called havens. Fishing boats rested on shingle and lobster pots were stacked up by black timber sheds. Orange nets were stretched out across t
he rocks to dry.

  We whooped and pointed through the windows as we went through Seahouses.

  “Oh, I used to love this place!” called Michael.

  “Fish and chips from Coxons!”

  “Those boats from the gift shop made out of shells!”

  “Yeah! And rocks shaped like walking sticks and full English breakfasts!”

  “And sugar dummies!”

  “And mermaids made of sea coal!”

  “And that ice-cream shop there!”

  “And look! The kipper man!”

  We twisted in our seats as we drove on, to look back and remember until we could see no more.

  And then the miles of dunes right by the road, and the Farnes stretching away across the sea, and then the great red castle on its rock above Bamburgh village, and the thrill of arrival, the thrill of hauling out rucksacks and bags from the bus, and walking in a happy crew down The Wynding to the beach, and the sound of the sea, and the scent of it, and gulls screaming above.

  EIGHT

  We went to the place we’d been before. We put our little tents up in the dunes. We made our fire. We went plodging in the sea and searching in the pools. We drank wine and we sang. No sign of Orpheus that first day. I was so pleased that we were still free. Time passed and I danced with Ella arm-in-arm and cheek-to-cheek beneath the gathering stars. Our feet shuffled through the delightful sand. The Longstone lighthouse light swept across her, showing her and obscuring her, showing her and obscuring her.

  “You’re so beautiful, Ella,” I told her.

  I tried to tell her more, but the words I had were not enough and the sounds came out as useless gasps and murmurs. I just held her close, closer. I ached to protect her from all darkness, all pain, and all death.

  She shifted away when I asked if she’d like to sleep in my tent tonight.

  “No,” she told me. “Think it’s best if I’m alone. Have this sense that if I whisper his name, if I make myself dream of him, then he’ll know exactly where I am and where to come.”

  She kissed me. I sighed, and maybe she heard the trouble in my sighs. She hesitated a moment.

  “I don’t think you understand yet,” she said.

  “Understand what?”

  “How much I love him, Claire. And how much he loves me.”

  “But…”

  “We would do anything for each other.”

  “But…”

  “Maybe you can’t. Maybe nobody can unless they’ve known it for themselves.”

  “But…”

  “It’s stronger than anything, Claire. It’s what keeps the sea flowing, what keeps the stars shining, what keeps us all alive.”

  Sparks rose from the fire and shooting stars fell down.

  “One day you will,” she said. “You’ll meet your own Orpheus and thud, you’ll fall. Night night.”

  “Night night, Ella. Love you, Ella.”

  “Love you, too.”

  She carried the glow of the fire on her back as she stepped into the dunes.

  I looked up into the night, but without Carlo, none of us could name anything except the simplest constellations, those we’d known since we were bairns.

  Sam was sitting by the rock pools. He said he’d seen a fish that seemed to shine.

  “Luminous,” he said.

  I watched with him. Yes, a little flicker then another.

  “Do you get such things as glow fish?” he said.

  “Dunno.”

  “Me neither. God, sometimes I feel so bliddy thick. Look, there it is again.”

  “Aye.”

  “Weird.”

  I leaned on him.

  “Do you want to come to my tent tonight, Sam?” I said.

  “Aye. I do.”

  “Howay, then.”

  We made love, or what was known as love.

  Afterwards I lay awake.

  I tried to hear Ella’s whisper but the only gentle sound I could hear was the hesitant sea.

  I whispered her name.

  “Here I am,” I whispered. “I’ll always be here. You’ll always know where to come to find me.”

  “What?” grunted Sam from his heavy sleep.

  “Nothing,” I told him. “It’s OK.”

  I stroked his brow. His breathing deepened again.

  “Ella,” I breathed. “Ella.”

  I must have slept, because I woke. Still he wasn’t there. None of that early-morning singing and playing that I’d heard before. Thank God. So maybe we would get through all of this without him.

  Ballocks, it was all just ballocks. Ha!

  I crawled across still-sleeping Sam and went outside.

  We had bacon sandwiches in massive bread buns. We drank huge mugs of tea. I took some to Ella, but I looked into her tent and she was as still as death. I caught my breath. I lowered my ear to her as my parents told me all parents do when they have their first baby, to make sure the mysterious thing is still alive. She didn’t move, she hardly breathed, but yes she was alive.

  The boys played war games in the dunes. We girls sat with our feet in the pools and talked about boys. We thought we saw dolphins. There was one great dark thing rolling in the waves that Angeline said must be a porpoise. A couple of seals popped up and down again.

  I leaned back and ran my fingers through the sand. I recalled Dad’s voice, from years ago, when we sat on a beach like this and he opened my palm and placed a single grain of sand on it.

  “Touch it,” he said, and I touched.

  “Now look at all the grains of sand around us,” he said, and I looked.

  “There are as many stars in the sky,” he said, “as there are grains of sand on all the beaches of the world.”

  My mind reeled at the idea, as it had done then.

  I repeated to the others what he’d said.

  “Can that be true?” said Maria. “That can’t be true.”

  “It can be,” I laughed. “Count them and you’ll find out.”

  “One, two, six, nine hundred and eighty-three zillion. Yes, it’s true!”

  “If it’s true,” said Angeline, “how big is everything?”

  We looked together into the empty endless blue.

  “If it’s true,” said James, scattering a handful of sand across the sand. “How small are we? And where would we be, on this beach?”

  No way to know. Time kept on passing by. No sign of Ella, none of Orpheus.

  The air warmed as the sun rose higher. We exposed our skin to it. We lay on the sloping sand beneath the dunes. This is what we had wanted, through all that dark winter, through all those weeks of dull routine and working working working.

  I swam with Sam. We floated hand-in-hand. We laughed: this bliddy sea, never any different from bliddy ice.

  “Italy!” we laughed. “Greece! What a joke!”

  “The North!” I hooted. “It’ll always be the frozen bliddy North!”

  We swam and ran back to the fire and leaned right over it.

  Michael saw them first, at the far end of the beach, coming out of the shadows of the castle. He shaded his eyes with his hand.

  “It can’t be,” he said.

  A little group of them, carrying sacks and boxes.

  “Can it?” he said.

  Hard to make them out at first. There was sea spray around them, sparkling in the sunlight. We didn’t want to make them out, didn’t want them to be who we thought they were. But they came closer and became clearer.

  “It is,” said James. “Bliddy Bianca and her lot.”

  “And Carlo,” groaned Angeline.

  Bianca started jumping and waving, like she was amazed and overjoyed to see us. She dropped her rucksack in the sand and ran to us like we were long-lost friends.

  “It’s you!” she said. “Fancy seeing you lot here!”

  She laughed.

  “This is a turn-up, eh?”

  She kept on laughing at our silence, our surly greetings.

  “What a shame for you,” she
said.

  She came around the fire to me.

  “Diven’t worry,” she said. “We’ll not spoil your fun.”

  She looked towards the dunes.

  “So where’s the bride?” she asked.

  She scanned the beach, the sea.

  “And where’s that bliddy gorgeous groom?”

  She touched my shoulder.

  “Diven’t look so fed up, Claire. We heard the whispers. We’ll be not a bit of bother. Just ignore us. Pretend we’re not here. But, Claire,” she whispered. “We couldn’t miss this for the bliddy world!”

  She turned to the others.

  “Crystal! We’ll set up camp over there! We don’t wanna be in the way of these good folk!”

  She ran back to them. They dropped their things thirty yards or so away from us. Carlo unrolled a single big blue tent that they set up awkwardly at the edge of the dunes. They made their own fire, started cooking sausages and beans. They got out bottles of vodka. They set up some speakers and played fast hard music. Pretty soon they were dancing wildly, bumping into each other, grinding against each other, screaming with laughter. They took no notice of us. Bianca took her top off and ran down to the sea with her breasts bouncing. She screamed as she went in thigh-deep, then wildly ran back out again towards their fire.

  I went to Ella’s tent. Still dead still. Still fast asleep. I went back to the fire and tried to write in my new notebook. Nothing came. I wrote about Bianca and her friends. All of them were half-naked now. Carlo was dancing in flowery shorts. The girls kept hooting with laughter, thrusting themselves at him.

  This is a good thing, I wrote. He won’t turn up with this lot here. Be wild, Bianca. Be crazy. Keep Orpheus away.

  Midafternoon there was a burst of sudden screaming from the dunes. Bianca was up there, with Crystal and Carlo.

  “Go on!” yelled Crystal. “Do it, Carlo! Yes! Bliddy yes!”

  They ran back to the beach, the three of them, grunting with excitement and disgust.

  Bianca ran towards us. Two dead adders dangled from her hands. Her eyes were wide with horror.

  “I went to pee!” she said. “And these were there! Snakes! Bliddy snakes!”