The Ballroom (16 page)

As dawn began to break and still she had not slept, she turned to the window, where the dark blue of night was lightening, and small birds dipped and rose across a pink-streaked sky.

She should be out there. Not waiting in here. There was no use, anyway, for a letter from him.

He didn’t know that she could not read.

The day was close and sticky. Behind the iron bars, the window of the day room was open a tiny way, but no breeze seemed to come through it. The heat played tricks, rising from the ground in wavy lines, which danced as though they might be people.

The only truly moving things were two small birds, who had their nest up above the window: a rounded cone of mud with an opening like a surprised mouth. The weather didn’t seem to bother them at all; they were tireless, making journey after journey, each time coming back with something new: a piece of twig, a beak full of earth.

Once, in the middle of the afternoon, a figure of a man did walk across the edge of the fields, wobbly in the distance, and Ella rose from her seat, hands pressed against the glass. But the man did not turn or come close to the buildings, and she saw he pushed a roller before him and was there to press the grass flat.

She put her thumbs in her palms to grip them. Behind her, the women’s chorus was louder than ever:

‘
Setmeonfire! Setmeonfire! Fireiscoming. It’scomingcoming.
’

‘
Andthedevil’shere.
’

‘
That’swhattheysaid. Burn out the devil. Burn him burn him.
’

‘
Oh! Oh please! Oh please help me!
’

‘
Why will you not? Will you not?
’

She put her hands over her ears and pressed them so all she could hear was the whoosh of her blood.

She was like them. She had made it all up: his touch on her back, his mouth. The words he had spoken. She had been in here too long and now she was mad. She made things up to make things better, and no one was coming to find her at all.

You are too pale. It’s not fair.

He only said that because he pitied her, because she was trapped.

The close afternoon wore on, sagged and stretched to snapping all at once. Eventually, she leant her head against the hot glass and dozed.

She woke to a scratching at the window. He was there – pushed almost flat against the wall, holding a folded piece of paper towards her. Her breath caught in her throat. Their fingers grazed as she took it from him. She said nothing, and nor did he speak but touched his hand once to his forehead and then was gone, running in a low crouch along the buildings until he disappeared from view.

She pushed the letter down the front of her dress, heart hammering. Behind her, everything in the room was as it was before: Clem reading her book, most of the other women sackless, slumped in their chairs, mouths open, asleep. When she stood, her legs felt full of a strange, sluggish liquid, heavier than blood. Somehow she managed to reach the nurse on duty. ‘Can I go to the toilet, please?’ Her words seemed to hang, heavy and dangerous in the air, but the nurse just waved them away with a lazy hand.

The toilet block was empty. The thin paper of the letter was already damp from her body when she pulled it out. Something dropped into her palm as she opened it: a yellow flower, the colour of it startling, like a messenger from another world. She brought it to her nose. Brushed its petals back and forth with her fingertip, then placed it in her lap and opened the letter properly, blood pounding as she searched the page. There was her name, Ella, written at the top, and the letters that made up his name at the bottom, but she could make out nothing of the jumble in between. She put her head in her hands, felt the dull throb of her heart.

There had been one hundred of them in a class, and she was always so tired, working in the mornings and school in the afternoons, or school in the mornings and working in the afternoons. She sat at the back and her eyes were bad and all she ever wanted to do was to close them and sleep.

No one had noticed her much.

She knuckled her eyes with her fists. When she lifted her head, she knew what she had to do.

She went back into the day room and wove her way over to Clem.

‘Clem?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Will you read something to me?’

‘From this?’ Clem flicked the page of her book.

‘No, from a letter.’

Clem looked up from the edge of her eye. ‘
Your
letter?’

Ella nodded.

‘From whom? One of your family?’

‘No … from someone else.’

‘Well … why don’t you read it yourself?’

‘I can’t.’

Clem looked up properly then. ‘Ah,’ she said, closing her book and tucking it under her arm. ‘I see.’ She tilted her head to one side, as though Ella looked different somehow. ‘Can you not read at all, or only a bit?’

‘Not much.’ Ella shrugged. ‘My name. A few other words. Hardly anything really.’

Clem’s face contracted, as though in some sort of pain. ‘You poor thing,’ she said. Then, ‘Of course. Hand it over then.’

Ella pulled the tightly folded square from where she’d hid it in her sleeve. ‘Thank you.’ She passed it to Clem’s palm. ‘But … please.’ Her eyes scanned the attendants on duty. ‘Please just … put it in your book. Quick, so as no one sees.’

Clem nodded and did so, smoothing it with her hands and closing the book a little to hide it as she read.

Ella took the place beside her, seated forward, watching Clem’s eyes, the way they moved from one side of the page to the other, her bottom lip, held between her teeth, which she rolled back and forth as she read.

She wanted it to be her, taking her time as Clem was doing, letting her eyes roam where they pleased over the page.

When Clem had finished reading, she didn’t look up straight away; instead, she stared at the bottom of the letter for a long while as though trying to understand what was there.

‘
What?’ She couldn’t wait any longer. ‘What does it say? Is it bad?’

‘It’s from a John.’ Clem looked up, her eyes narrowed. ‘Which John is it?’

‘Why? Tell me. Is it bad?’

Clem shook her head. ‘No, it’s not bad. It’s just …’ she gave a quick smile, ‘… surprising, that’s all.’

‘
Please.’ Ella could hardly catch her breath. ‘Will you just …
read
it to me?’

‘All right,’ said Clem, and began to read.

Dear Ella,

I have not known how to begin this letter and so I begin by saying that I feel badly that I and the other men are outside in this weather while you and the women are not.

There is a flower in here as you can see. They are wild these flowers and do not grow in the beds that are tended and clipped so carefully growing instead in the grass that will be cut to make hay. They make a great display in the fields so that the fields seem almost to be made of gold. Yesterday Daniel Riley who is somewhat of a friend of mine (you will know him I think a strong brown-haired fellow – his skin covered with ink) took off his shoes in the morning. He unlaced his boots and put his bare feet on the grass and laughed as he did it – he has a laugh that would burn the hairs from your head if you caught it sideways – and I followed him and did the same.

The feeling made me think of when I was a boy when I walked with my boots tucked under my arms to save them from the road.

We walked with our boots in our hands and our feet in the dew. The attendants did nothing. They are lazy in this heat I think. Soon it will be time for the first cutting of the hay. It grows high already and is as I said gold. Though there are other colours too but the gold is the best of it. I think they are most beautiful just before they fall.

I will stop now and send you best wishes

John

His words coloured the air. She wanted to hear them again, more slowly this time. Wanted to imagine her own hot feet bootless in the damp green of the dew. But Clem was already folding the paper up.

‘Open your palm.’ Clem put the tight square of the letter back in there. ‘Now.’ She clasped Ella’s hand into a fist. ‘Which one is John?’

‘He’s … Irish. He … dances well.’

‘My goodness.’ Clem let go of her hand. ‘
You’re
a dark horse.’ She became thoughtful. ‘He
is
a good dancer,’ she said quietly, ‘but who would have thought he could write like that?’

A burning started up in Ella then, deep at the base of her spine, and her eyes raked Clem’s face, but then she remembered the doctor, and the way Clem looked at him, the way her face turned red when he spoke to her, and the burning eased. ‘Clem?’

‘Mmm?’

‘Will you help me?’

‘Help you what?’

‘To write back?’

‘Yes.’ Clem’s eyes were alive with mischief. ‘Oh yes. I should think I could manage that.’

T
HE MOWER – A
strange, ungainly contraption – was harnessed to two of the shire horses. A farmer clambered up to ride on the saddle, and the machine bumped off across the ground, its blades turning behind it. The riot of colour that the meadow had become – buttercups and cornflowers and poppies – was felled in seconds, and the men followed behind with their rakes. John moved along the swathes, spreading the cut grasses across the field to dry.

He had been a fool.

It was not the writing of the letter. That was all right, or all right enough once he had begun it. It had taken a few attempts – a few crossings out and wasting of the paper he had pulled from the back of books – but once he had managed to begin, it came easily enough. No, it was not the letter. It was the delivering of it that had been madness.

What can you see?
he had asked her – as though it were the easiest thing in the world for him to go where he pleased. As though he were the postman himself.

And yet her face when he had said he would. Startled, as though astonished anyone would do such a thing for her.

And foolish or not, he was bound to it then.

He had done it when a break was called. Had to ask Dan the way, who raised his eyebrows and told him, a path through the wood, then a secluded lane, and then the stand of trees that edged the playing fields.

From there you see the women’s side.

And John had taken the path, and hiding behind a great sycamore, lungs raw from the running, had seen the women’s wing for the first time – the mirror image of his own, stretching three hundred feet or so wide. Somehow he had done it: had found the trees she spoke of, found her framed in her window, managed to slide the letter through the tiny gap, deliver it into her hand, run back without being seen.

Ten minutes. No more. But it was there still, the feel of the running in his lungs and limbs. The shock of it.

The foolishness.

As he raked the grass, he saw there had not been enough rain after all. What greenness was in it gave itself up quickly to the sun, and what remained was thin and brittle. The horses would not eat well this year. He said the names of the grasses in his head – the thick fronds of
féar caorach
, the stumped cat’s tails of
féar capaill
, and
féar garbh
, with its reddish feathers – but still his mind would not calm.

There was this business of the flower. He should never have put it in there. He was a fool for that too. If a man gave a woman a flower it meant he was courting her, and he was not courting her and did not wish to be mistaken for one who was.

It only took a day for one side of the grass to dry, and then it was turned and given a day for the other, before being shovelled into the small humps of cockeens, and once they were fully dry, the men were set to building haycocks. John and Dan worked together. They were fast and knew what to do, how to build the field cocks tall and wide, the height and a half of a man; how to twist and draw the
sugans
, the hayropes, to secure them, weighting the fragrant loads with heavy stones in case a wind should come. But no wind came. The days were dry and breathless.

He gave himself to his work, and his mind quietened.

He was at home here, out on the land; had made the same movements since he was a boy, in him so deep they were a natural thing. Had stood in fields in sun and wind and rain, hands chapped and callused from the scythe and the ropes. In Ireland, he would have checked the sky continually for the clouds that came from the sea, but there was no need to do so here. The ground was parched and the cows were fretful, their udders hanging slack. The air filled with the sweet burnt smell of the mown fields.

The heat grew, and the mower unearthed things that had been hiding in the long grass. You had to be quick, to save what needed saving: a shilling piece, flashing briefly in the afternoon sun, a thrush’s nest full with five pale-blue eggs. Creatures fled in all directions from the machine – mice and snakes and rabbits and rats. But most of them sheltered in the diminishing patches of grass, and when the last patch was left, the farmers let their dogs free. The terriers ran squealing and yapping in delight, emerging bloody-muzzled and crazed with killing.

Once, in the hot, still afternoon he came upon a creature that had not run in time, a hare with a slashed belly, wild eyes staring as its body panted with fear. John knelt by the dying animal, its hot entrails splayed on the ground. He stroked it briefly with his fingertip and then he broke its neck.

There were plenty of men out here now – every man that could be useful, it seemed – and as he and Dan worked, forking hay or throwing and lashing the ropes, Dan cast glances over the other men, juggling names: ‘The one who thinks he’s Jack the Ripper, the one with the hobble, the fat one from the fitters’ ward … they’ll be good pullers,
chavo
, what do you say?’

‘Aye,’ said John. ‘Good enough.’

A Sports Day was coming. Coronation Day. The men were set to pull a rope against the male staff, a
tug of war.
Dan had already anointed himself the general of this war and talked of little else. When he had done with his lists, he sang, sea songs, shanties, to help with the pull: