The air was scented with the heavy sweetness of flowers from the college garden, and with the perfume of girls, and the warm, slightly rotten smell of the vegetation at the edge of the water. Chris moved more slowly, and finally stopped altogether, at the corner of the boathouse, not quite sure why he’d stopped, not quite sure of anything, but intoxicated by something.
He stood looking back across the water, watching the dancers on the wooden floor by the bandstand, swaying to Blue Moon. From this distance they looked not offensively upper-class but tiny, glamorous figures, handsome men in black and white and beautiful girls in coloured gowns, like some old-fashioned dream of elegance and grace.
They looked even more striking because of the vast darkness that surrounded them, as if they were the last people left at the death of the universe, and they knew it, but they were dancing anyway, because they were human, and because the best way of being courageous was, at that moment, to dance. The distant words came over the water, and Chris stood there entranced while the old song unwound, while the saxophone wailed like a ghost, while the dancers swayed. He knew he’d remember this moment for the rest of his life.
Then he turned away from the boathouse to go back, but stopped, because there were footsteps coming along the path. Someone was running towards him. The darkness among the shrubs and bushes was intense, but there was a glimmer, and there suddenly appeared before him a terrified girl in a white ball gown.
Her dark eyes were wide, her delicate shoulders were trembling. She cast a glance back over her shoulder, and he heard stumbling feet and male laughter from a little way back. The line of her throat in the faint light from across the lake was enough, on its own, to make him fall in love.
‘Someone chasing you?’ he said quietly.
She nodded. Short dark hair, bare slender arms, those wide terrified eyes…He was lost.
‘Go round there, in the boathouse,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep them away.’
She darted past, so close that he could smell the scent she was wearing. She vanished around the corner. He stood in the path, waiting for her pursuers, perfectly at ease, perfectly confident.
Within a few seconds they were there, and then they saw him and stopped: three young men in dinner jackets and black bow ties, one clutching a champagne bottle, another smoking a cigar, all drunk.
‘Look, Piers,’ said one, ‘she’s changed into a chap.’
‘Do him anyway!’ said another, lurching forward a step, but the third held him back. He was the one called Piers, and Chris could see that he was fair-haired and handsome.
‘Who the hell are you?’ he said.
‘Not dressed properly,’ said the one with the cigar.
‘Chuck him in the pond,’ said the one with the bottle. ‘I would.’
‘I’m a lighting technician,’ said Chris. ‘I’m checking the lights down here. That’s who the hell I am. OK?’
‘There aren’t any lights down here.’
‘They’re not on yet, are they?’
The three of them stood there, uncertainly.
‘Well, anyway…’ said the cigar smoker. ‘Anyway, if you’re a technician, you ought to keep out of sight, I reckon. You don’t pay a hundred pounds to see a lot of bloody workers slouching about…’
‘Where’s Jenny?’ said the handsome one suddenly. ‘Have you seen a girl coming this way?’
‘No.’
‘Bloody liar,’ said the champagne drinker. ‘She couldn’t have gone anywhere else. You must have seen her.’
‘Don’t tell me what I must have seen. I’m doing a job here. I haven’t got time to waste talking to people like you,’ Chris said. He was ready to fight them if he had to, and they must have seen it, because they began to move away.
‘Cocky little sod, isn’t he?’ said the one called Piers, the handsome one.
‘Oh, shut up, Piers, for Christ’s sake. Look, you, technician chap, we’re looking for a girl in a white dress. She’s—’
One of the others plucked at his sleeve and whispered. He went on:
‘She’s not well. She’s had a spot too much to drink. She could hurt herself. You sure you haven’t seen her?’
‘Perfectly sure. I heard her, though.’
‘I thought you said—’
‘I said I hadn’t seen her,’ said Chris. ‘I heard someone running a minute before you turned up. Along the path, that way.’ He pointed away along the edge of the lake. ‘And she didn’t sound drunk, she sounded frightened.’
‘Yes, well, she’s not quite, you know…’ Piers tapped his forehead. One of the others snuffled with laughter.
Chris stood perfectly still. After another moment or two, the three young men began to move on.
‘Bloody rude, you know. We should have chucked him in the pond.’
‘I’m sure there weren’t going to be any lights down here…’
‘They should either keep out of sight or be dressed like servants.’
‘Stupid little bitch. If she’s gone and…’
The rest of it was swallowed by the bushes and the darkness.
When he was sure they’d gone, Chris moved along the side of the boathouse to the front. It was a small place, big enough to contain two punts, perhaps, with a narrow wooden walkway around the inside.
He stood in the entrance and looked in. It was very dark, but he could see the glimmer of her white dress at the end. It looked as if she were seated on the planking.
‘It’s all right, they’ve gone,’ he said softly.
She said nothing. Thinking she might not have heard, he moved in towards her. He remembered what one of the young men had called her.
‘Jenny? Is that your name?’
Still no reply. He stood still, halfway along the side of the boathouse, peering closely to see if she was all right. Had she fainted? They’d said she was not well, she’d had too much to drink. She hadn’t seemed like that, and when she’d brushed past he’d smelt her beautiful scent, not drink. But could she be ill?
He was perturbed now.
‘Jenny? Are you all right?’
He stepped on the planks at the end of the boathouse, and with a faint rustle of fabric, she fell forward, slowly. It was horrible. She was headless. He nearly cried out in terror, but then realised that it wasn’t her: it was the dress. She wasn’t in it. She wasn’t in the boathouse at all.
He stood trembling, waiting for his heart to stop thudding, and then stooped and picked up the dress, crushing the stiff fabric to his face, breathing in the scent he remembered. Then he put it down gently and looked around.
He was full of apprehension. The first fear of horrible death was replaced by another: was she mad, as Piers had implied? Had she taken the dress off in order to slip into the water and drown?
She certainly wasn’t in either of the punts. The wooden bottoms gleamed faintly under the sheen of an inch or so of water. And she wasn’t in the lake, as far as he could tell, though if she was under the punts or tangled in weed he wouldn’t have known.
Now what should he do? Raise the alarm?
Yes, of course, and right away.
But no sooner had he begun to move than he saw what he’d missed a minute earlier. There was a door in the far wall of the boathouse. She wasn’t necessarily in the lake after all.
A step or two, and he had opened it. The hinges were oiled; he and the three pursuers wouldn’t have heard if she’d opened it and crept away. He stood outside among the tangled bushes and paused, uncertain. It had somehow become comic now, like blind man’s buff. If she wasn’t drowned under the dark water she was hiding in the dark bushes, without her dress. But why take it off? Because it showed up clearly in the gloom, and it rustled. It made sense.
He didn’t know what to do. If he did raise the alarm, it might be embarrassing for her.
‘Thanks,’ whispered a voice from the dark.
Then he did jump, so much so that he banged his elbow on the edge of the door. There was a giggle.
; ‘Where are you?’ he said.
‘Never mind. Have they gone?’
‘Yeah. I think. D’you want me to go back with you in case they’re hanging around?’
‘No. I’m not going back.’
‘Oh…’
Her voice was low and soft, and her accent was northern. It was the most expressive sound he’d ever heard.
‘Why were they after you?’ he said into the silence.
‘Why d’you think?’
‘You don’t mean…Look, where are you? I can’t talk to you like this.’
‘You’re doing all right. But you’re going to have to go now.’
‘Can’t I help you?’
‘You have.’
‘But they might come back!’
Silence.
‘Jenny?’
Silence.
‘Jenny, my name’s Chris. Where do you live?’
Nothing. A silence as if she’d never been there. In the distance the band was playing another song, and somewhere in the green depths of the college grounds, a nightingale was singing, but Jenny was invisible and silent. Had he dreamed her voice? No, for he wouldn’t have dreamed that Yorkshire accent, and he would have dreamed an answer.
So she was real. And alive. And it was (in the dim light, he peered at his watch) twenty-past twelve.
‘I’ve got to go and work,’ he said to the emptiness. Then, self-conscious, but knowing that he’d be untrue to everything that had happened if he didn’t put the feelings into words, he said, ‘Jenny, you’re beautiful. I hope I see you again. If I don’t, I’ll never forget you, I promise.’
Then he stepped away from the boathouse and felt his way through the thick bushes until he found the path again. He looked back and saw only meaningless shadows, patches of silver, patches of black. She might have been anywhere or nowhere; close enough to kiss or so far away that she’d heard nothing of what he’d said.
The dancers on their little square of light were clapping. The band struck up another tune, and the words came clearly over the still water, singing of moonlight, and trouble, and love.
PHILIP PULLMAN is the author of the internationally renowned His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass, winner of the Carnegie Medal (England); The Subtle Knife, winner of a Parents’ Choice Gold Award; The Amber Spyglass, the first children’s book ever to win the Whitbread (Costa) Book of the Year Award; Lyra’s Oxford; and Once Upon a Time in the North. Philip Pullman’s other books for children and young adults include The Scarecrow and His Servant, Two Crafty Criminals!, I Was a Rat!, Spring-Heeled Jack, Count Karlstein, The White Mercedes, and The Broken Bridge. He is also the author of the award-winning Sally Lockhart mysteries: The Ruby in the Smoke, The Tiger in the Well, The Shadow in the North, and The Tin Princess.
Philip Pullman lives in Oxford, England. To learn more about the author and his work, please visit hisdarkmaterials.com and philip-pullman.com, and follow him on Twitter at @PhilipPullman.
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