The Ballroom (19 page)

And that was him: the leader of the band. It was too delightful!

Now, when the men had finished their cigarettes and their pipes and drifted back from outside to take their place in the small semicircle of chairs, Charles cleared his throat and spoke. ‘I have something here you might enjoy.’

His hand was not altogether steady as he passed the sheets around. There were some mutters as he hummed tentatively through the first few bars. When he had done so, his fellow players stared, as though he had taken leave of his senses, and Charles’s courage threatened to fail him. But then he thought of the young man in Spence’s and the swinging, easy way he had played, and, emboldened, beat out the syncopation on the top of his music stand. One by one the men took up their instruments.

By the end of the session, when the moths were flapping around the candles and singeing their wings in the flames, and people’s faces were swimming rosy in the candlelight, they had made a fairly decent fist of the piece.

It was, however, a very
English
fist, thought Charles, when the rehearsal was over and he was folding away the music stands. Upright and stiff-jacketed, as though a gentleman’s club had been tipped unceremoniously on to a paddle steamer on the Mississippi. They were far from capturing the true
spirit
of the music, that sense of swinging ease.

They say that Negroes play it best.

He could well believe it. There was something so utterly foreign about the sound. He should try to obtain a copy. Perhaps a gramophone record, if one existed? Perhaps he should ask the young man in Spence’s where he might find one? Or if he might play for him again? Certainly he should return, sometime soon, to purchase more music like that. It was so … intoxicatingly fresh.

He moved around the room, finishing the last of the music stands, humming, extinguishing the candles. When he reached the last one, he paused; catching his reflection in the window glass, in the candlelight his face looked different. The cheeks hollowed, his eyes harder, as though lit by an internal fire.

Good.

Let the fire come. Let it transform him. Let it temper him.

The future was coming. Even here. Even here in this island ship of souls, cast away on the green-brown seas of the moor, even here it would find its way through.

Dear Ella,

This is a feather from a swallow. I believe it must have travelled from Africa. Or so says Dan Riley who knows such things as he was out on the ships and that as he says is thousands of miles from here and a mighty unknown place. A place of jungle and of heat. And yet they choose to build their nests here and return here each year.

They make me think of freedom. But also of home. They put me in mind of my home which was in the west of Ireland which is rocky and full of grey sea and grey sky. But sometimes there is a great softness and greenness to the land there also.

There is something in those birds that makes me think of you. I hope you will not mind me saying so. Something small but wild. Something made for flight.

I will stop now,

And send you best wishes,

John

Ella held the feather in her hand. It was deep blue in colour, almost black, with a round spot of white on it. If she stroked it one way, it was smooth, almost oily, the other way was rougher to the touch.

She looked up, to where Clem was reading the letter over in her head.

‘Which ones are the swallows?’ she asked.

Clem folded the paper and jumped to her feet, handing the letter back to Ella. ‘Wait a moment.’ She went over to the set of bookshelves that were ranged along one wall. There was a row of books there, on the bigger shelves at the bottom, each the same large size and shape and edged in gold. Clem trailed her hand along their backs. ‘This,’ she said, ‘is the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
.’

Ella made her way to join her. ‘What’s it about?’

‘Oh … everything,’ said Clem, ‘that’s the point. It’s extraordinary that they have it here at all, really. I must be the only one who ever opens it. The entries are arranged alphabetically, so …’ she ran her hands more slowly now, stopping at one of the spines, ‘here’s S … but this volume ends at Subliminal Self, and though I’d love to know what that means, for our purposes we need the next book, which begins at Submarine and ends with Tom-Tom, so Swallow should be in here, d’you see?’

‘I think so.’

Clem lifted the book from the shelf and carried it over towards the table. She opened the covers, passing the pages through her hands, as though she were some sort of stage magician, words and pictures flying past until, ‘
That
’s a swallow,’ she said triumphantly, stopping at a picture of a bird with a white throat and forked tail.

‘I know those birds!’ Ella put her hand to the page. ‘There are two above the window over there.’

Clem nodded. ‘They’re everywhere at this time of year. Shall I read out what it says?’

‘Yes!’

‘
The swallow is the bird which of all others is recognized as the harbinger of summer in the northern hemisphere
.’ Clem wrinkled her nose. ‘Harbinger means … a sort of messenger, so, the bird that tells you summer is here.
In summer it ranges all over Europe, whereas in winter it migrates south, reaching India, Burma, the Malay peninsula and the whole of Africa
.’

Clem began raking through the book again. ‘Here,’ she opened it at the front, smoothing the page out, ‘this is a map of the world. You’ve seen one before?’

Ella nodded. She saw a huge room, one wall taken up with a map; they had been ushered in there once a year to be addressed by the owner of the mill. He would point to where Bradford was, and then all the many places that their wool was sent to, picked out with red, looping thread.

‘D’you know where we are then?’

Ella leant over the map, found Britain. ‘There,’ she pointed.

‘Yes. So now,’ Clem said, ‘you must imagine a bird … A bird with a wingspan no bigger than
this
,’ she reached for Ella’s hand, turning it over and opening her palm, then she took the feather, and with the lightest of touches traced a line from Ella’s thumb to the tip of her little finger, ‘making the journey all the way across Europe, down to Africa, or even all the way to India and further east.’

Made for flight.

Ella felt her skin lift as though the wind had passed over it.

For a moment the two of them stood, unmoving, until Ella curled a soft fist over the feather and drew her hand away.

‘I’d love to see India,’ said Clem, moving back towards the book. ‘The highest mountains in the world are there.’ Her hands hovered over the map. ‘This bird has probably seen more in a few weeks than I’ll see in a lifetime. Can you imagine – being born here, right here, in the grounds of this place, and then spending the winter in India, or Africa, and then coming back here, to the very place where you were born, to find a mate? How on
earth
do they do it?’

Later, Ella looked for the two swallows in the eaves outside the window, watching them even more closely now. The thought of them flying all that way, across mountains and seas and returning here, because this was their home – of them knowing how to find it – changed things. It was a new way of seeing; this was no longer just the place where women and men were kept, but the home of other creatures too, ones that had travelled far and still chosen it, because this, above all other places, was the place to bring their families into the world.

The next time they met they moved in silence still, hardly looking at each other, but it was a different man she danced with now. Someone whose insides, she knew, spanned miles, even if his outside was closed and shuttered as before.

Facing him in the ballroom, her eyes only came up to his chin, and so she let them roam over his neck, tracing the dark hairs at the soft fold of his collar, the clear line where the sun-brown stopped and the white of the rest of him began. There were marks of the fields left on him: a stray piece of grass, a trace of dirt. Knowing she could not be seen, she closed her eyes and drank his scent: the heavy sweetness of tobacco clinging to his jacket, the freshness of the outside air, and his own, headier tang beneath, light at his neck, stronger when he lifted his arms, but none of it bad.

When the music finished, he handed her a folded square of paper, which she hid in her sleeve.

After the dance, as they filed back to the ward, Clem sought her out as soon as she could. ‘Have you got it?’ Her eyes were large, her breath coming quickly. ‘The next letter? Can I see?’

Ella shook her head. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Not here. Not yet.’

She wanted to sleep with the letter beside her, just one night, before she gave it to Clem to read.

The letter held a leaf – full-green and fleshy, waxy to the touch. Ella traced the ridge of its spine and the thin lines that came off it. If she held it to the light, the leaf changed, the thin tracery of lines coming clearer still.

She folded it into her dress along with the feather, wrapped in a handkerchief she had stolen from the laundry. It had appeared one day in amongst the grey linen, a white square with coloured flowers sewn at the corner, so lovely she couldn’t resist tucking it into her sleeve. The buttercup, which was turning brown, she put between the pages of the encyclopaedia, in the book of B.

The next afternoon, in the day room, she handed the letter to Clem.

Dear Ella,

At the far side of the field we have just mowed for hay is a wood. I think you cannot see it from your window. I will try to write it so you can picture it. The trees are tall. The wind lifts the leaves and the sound is that of water over rocks.

Beside this wood is an oak. It has low branches and offers good shade and if we are allowed to then we rest beneath it.

Dan Riley has a strange way with trees and this is his favourite – so big it would take ten men to clasp around it hand to hand. He bows towards it. He takes off his hat and waits as though for some signal before he sits.

Do you know says Dan this was the land of oaks Mio Capitane and the oak was the great god of these lands and that this land was covered in oaks like these before we cut them down to make the ships.

And I remember then how in Ireland in the village where I grew up there were few trees remaining but a ballad singer who passed through there every once in a while sang of the land and of the trees that had been cut. There was a grove nearby. There were trees there whose branches you could take to bless a marriage or those that women would tie charms to if they wanted a child or didn’t want a child. Or wanted a man or didn’t want a man. And many other things too. The trees were covered with these hanging wishes that caught the light and wind.

Listen.

Dan puts his ear to the bark and closes his eyes till a smile comes over his face. Listen, he says. We have all forgot to listen.

I put my ear to the bark. I can feel the warm wood the soft brush of the moss.

Can you hear that? Dan says. Wild wood.

Dan says he can speak with trees. But they take a long time to answer. That’s why you have to learn to listen. If we listened he says we could not cut down our friends. Their jokes are too good for that.

Then he laughs his great laugh and I no longer know whether he is telling stories or not.

Yours,

John.

Ella was standing by the window, her hands pressed against hot glass. Ahead of her was the stand of tall trees, the two with their branches growing together. She had watched them as they grew greener day by day, and now they were in the full glory of their leaves.

She had never seen a wood. Trees upon trees. How would it be to lie on the earth – to have nothing to do but lie and look up into the green?

There was a small sound, and she turned to see that Clem had come to stand beside her. She brought her hands up so that they mirrored Ella’s – placing her palms flat on the glass. For a long time she just stayed there, not speaking, then, ‘If I tell you something,’ she said, in a low voice, ‘will you promise you won’t breathe a word?’

Ella half turned towards her.

‘
Promise?
’ Clem’s face was tight.

‘I promise.’

‘The doctor …’ said Clem. ‘The one who plays the violin, and the piano in the day room … What do you think of him?’

Ella looked back at the browned grass beyond the window. ‘He … plays the piano well.’

‘Doesn’t he?’ said Clem, and then her face contracted. ‘He’s lonely. I know it. I can feel it when he plays. Sometimes, when he’s finished, he sits for a moment with his hands on the keys and it’s all I can do not to go to him. Just to touch him. To say I’m here. That I’m living too. That he’s not alone.’ She was quiet, and there was only the high, fast sound of her breath until she spoke again. ‘Have you ever been with a man?’ she said.

‘No.’

‘Neither have I.’ Her hands whitened. ‘I haven’t even been alone with one. Except for the teacher when I was young, and I don’t want to think about that.’ She leant forward, her breath misting the glass. ‘Sometimes though, when I’m in the ballroom, and there’s someone who has touched me gently, and knows how to dance – the big man with the tattoos – it was him the other day. I looked at him and I thought – what would it be like? What would it be like to be with you? And I imagine it. In that moment I imagine it. And it’s not ugly,’ she said. ‘It’s not.’

Ella turned to her.

‘But mostly,’ said Clem, ‘I think of him. The doctor – of his loneliness. And then I think – what am I thinking of
him
for? There are better, finer things to do with a life than think about
men.
’ Her voice faltered and dropped. ‘But there are women who die, aren’t there, without ever knowing what it feels like. Women in here, in the chronic wards, who will die without ever knowing that. Sometimes I think that will be me. That I’ll wither and rot before anyone knows any part of me.’