The Ballroom

by Anna Hope

Clem snatched for it, almost tearing it from her hand and reading it with ravenous eyes. She did not read it aloud. When she handed it back, she seemed calmer, restored to herself. ‘I’m sure there’s an explanation,’ she said with a smile. ‘I’m sure he’ll be back soon.’

  But as Ella folded it into her dress the letter felt sullied.

  The sky above was blue, deep blue, but it hummed and buzzed, as if the blue were only a sheet and behind it, waiting to be rent free, lay black and boiling weather.

  And the doctor still came every Monday and chose the women to be taken off. And the dog men still came. The doctor still played the piano, and Old Germany still danced while the women were carried away. And whenever the doctor was close, Clem’s cheeks were red and scalding in the heat.

  Sometimes one of the women would beg the nurses to open the windows – just a little more. But the Irish nurse just laughed and shook her head. ‘What do you think this is?’

  One sweltering afternoon, an old woman died. Her neighbour began poking and prodding her and then screaming, and Ella looked over and saw the woman’s sunken face, the mouth open, the flies crawling in and around it and doing what they liked. The nurses came and tried to wake her, and when she wouldn’t wake, she was carried out by the dog men too.

  The only cool place was the toilet block. It was tiled, and the windows were much smaller in there. Ella would take as much time as she could whenever she visited it, splashing her face and her neck with the coldest water she could run, holding her wrists in a full, chill basin, watching the tiny bubbles rise to the surface and disappear.

  One airless day, when it was almost two weeks since she had seen John, she went right to the stall at the end of the row, and once she had used it stayed there, her head held in her hands. She couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear the heat. Nor the heavy clothes they were made to wear. She unbuttoned her jacket, lifted up her blouse and her petticoat, and pressed the length of her bare back against the tiled wall. She stayed there a long moment, feeling the delicious touch of the tiles against her skin. She closed her eyes and saw the land giving way, the cold, blue sea stretching, as a small breeze lifted the hairs on the back of her neck.

  She whipped her head around.

  There was a broken pane of glass in the window above the stall. That was where the breeze had come from. She stayed there, staring up at it for a long moment, then crept to the doorway and looked out. No one in the whole length of the block. She turned back. The window was narrow, but wide enough perhaps for her to squeeze through. She clambered up on to the toilet seat.

  Through the broken pane she could see a different part of the grounds, fields stretching, brown-gold in the afternoon sun, and to their left, the deep green of what must be the wood. In one of the furthest fields, a long line of bent figures was snaking over the earth. Two men were out in front, both of them shirtless, their skin exposed to the sun and blue sky.

  There was a sound: voices raised above the fields. Singing. The men were singing, and the sound was proud and strong.

  It was him. She knew it. Him and Dan Riley, his friend. She could tell it by the way he moved.

  She stayed there watching them for as long as she dared, listening to their distant song, taking great, deep gulps of air.

  The next day was a Thursday and all she could think of was the broken window.

  How long had it been like that? And how long would it be before anyone else saw?

  She went to the toilet to check it as often as she could, stood staring up at it, blood pummelling in her ears.

  She should go. Today. Tonight. Wait till it was dark and go. A chance like this would not come again.

  But then she would climb up, and look out, and see him in the fields.

  And the not running was a pain all over her body. But the pain of leaving was worse. And she was caught and pulled between the two.

  It was Friday tomorrow. Perhaps he would be back in the ballroom then?

  He was there. The sight of him snatched at her breath. She felt his eyes on her as she took her place on the bench beside Clem, and as she sat, Clem’s hand grabbed hers and squeezed it tight.

  He stood as soon as the first dance was called, crossing the room towards her, and she rose to meet him, moving through patterned light streaming through stained glass. He looked different: darker, his beard a thick haze across his face and neck. Yellow dust clung to him, crusting his eyebrows, his hair.

  ‘They kept me inside.’ When he spoke, his voice was dry and dusty too. ‘And then I was in the fields …’ He held out his hands to her, as though to prove his words; they were cracked and sore, with dirt worked into the creases.

  ‘I saw,’ she said. ‘There’s an open window. I saw the fields from it – and the men there and … you. I saw you.’

  ‘An open window?’ He grasped her wrists.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And no bars on it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you think you can get through?’

  ‘I don’t know – yes, I think … Yes.’

  ‘Meet me.’ His grip tightened.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘By the oak. A great oak, at the entrance to the wood. You’ll know it when you see it. Find your way there. When the moon is at its fullest. In three days’ time. Find your way and I will wait. I’ll wait for you there.’

  He held her until she nodded, and her blood pulsed wild against his thumb.

  Later, Ella gave Clem the letter he had given her. She watched as Clem fell on it, but said nothing of what John had said to her. It bloomed inside her instead, rare and dark-bright.

  From her bed, she watched the moon rise late and large over the grounds. At its fullest, was what he had said, three days’ time.

  Each day she checked the window. Each day she saw it was still broken.

  Each night in bed she tried to lie still, but hardly slept.

  Each hour she sent up a silent prayer:

  Let it not be fixed.

  Let it not be fixed till then.

  Charles

  THE MORNING CHARLES left to visit London the mercury read ninety-five degrees in the shade.

  ‘The dog days,’ said the porter in heavy tones, as Charles passed by the front door.

  ‘What’s that?’ Charles turned to him.

  ‘T’s not natural this heat, is it?’ The man was mopping his brow with his hanky. ‘We’ll all be mad before the season’s out.’

  ‘We could well be!’ Charles tipped his boater to him and laughed.

  It was the first time he had left the asylum in over a month, a month in which the temperature had hardly dipped below ninety degrees. He was used to the seared yellow of the grounds but was astonished at what greeted him outside: even in the most sheltered lanes the leaves were sere, and the hedgerows were filled with crumbling dust. He could barely hear the sound of birdsong anywhere, but he had water in his knapsack, a pair of ripe apples and a book, and he was leaving Sharston for the day. He was sure his mood, that strange mood of curdled disappointment that had hung about him for so long, would lift. It was lifting already. It felt so wonderful to be moving, to be out. He was heading to London for the first time this year; he was going to see Major Darwin speak, and in his pocket he carried a ticket for the Wigmore Hall: four Impromptus and the Moments Musicaux. Dog days or not, nothing could dampen his spirits.

  In Leeds, though, he arrived to find that his train, the train that would have got him to King’s Cross in time for lunch and a stroll across town to the Society, had been cancelled. He wondered if it was a result of the strikes, some spilling over of the disturbances in London and Liverpool perhaps; for all he knew the railwaymen and dockers had downed tools across the land, but the harassed uniformed man in the second-class waiting room assured him that the next train to London – leaving at ten – would be running on time.

  He stepped back on to the platform, which was already full of fractious people. If what the man said was true, then he would arrive in time t
o make the meeting, but the prospect of spending the journey down surrounded by the disgruntled masses was not appealing. Perhaps he should turn tail? Walk back to Sharston? He could feel a headache coming on. But as he stood there, pondering, he heard Churchill’s voice in his ear:

  ‘Turn back, Fuller? You will do no such thing!’

  No. Quite right.

  He would take a stroll through the city, leaving the platform to those with less initiative and more luggage. Taking out his pocket watch, he saw it was not yet nine o’clock.

  Men in overalls were sluicing the streets, and market workers clustered around early coffee stands. He paid a few pennies for a small, bitter draught, drinking it straight, then carried on down Kirkgate, heading away from the market with no real thought of where he was going. As the coffee entered his blood he felt a lift, and he remembered a time, not so long ago, when he had walked these same streets with no money of his own. No sense of direction. When he had been trapped in that overbearing villa, not two miles north of here, where his father would be up already, sitting in his study or pacing the garden, his mother still asleep or pretending to be, suffering under blankets in her stuffy bedroom but too proud and too proper to sleep with fewer clothes or beneath a sheet.

  How terrible it must be to be old! To have nothing pleasant or exciting ahead, only the contemplation of a past that may or may not have been what you had wished. And yet here he was, walking, on this beautiful summer’s morning, and despite the fact that his departure was delayed and he had a long, hot journey to come, life, life was ahead.

  He looked up and stared – Spence’s read the sign above the door.

  It was the strangest thing. He had not planned to come, and yet here he was. He stepped up to the window and peered inside. The music shop was closed, the blinds pulled down. No sign of life within.

  A shadow appeared behind him in the glass. Charles turned to see the young man standing, smiling, bearing a round of keys and sheaf of papers in his arms. ‘Good morning!’ He took his hat off in salute. A few strands of hair curled damply at his temple. ‘This is a nice surprise.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charles. ‘I mean – for me too.’

  The young man looked puzzled.

  ‘My train. To London. Delayed. It’s delayed.’

  ‘Ah.’ The young man nodded. He lifted his sleeve and smoothed his hair away. Graceful as the gesture was, it made Charles’s bowels contract.

  ‘Are you come for more rags then?’ His tone was jaunty as he turned to the door, jiggling his keys in his hand. ‘I wondered if you might. How did “Alexander” go down?’

  ‘I … no.’ Charles broke off.

  But the young man didn’t seem to be listening; he was having trouble with the door. ‘Damned thing. Excuse me.’ He turned to Charles, holding out the papers he was carrying, an apologetic smile on his lips. ‘Sometimes I need two hands for the job.’ He was successful this time with the keys, using his hip to push open the door before disappearing inside, leaving Charles alone on the sunstruck pavement.

  The young man’s head appeared around the door. He looked bemused. ‘Aren’t you coming in? Terribly hot to be standing on the street.’

  That smile again. Charles took out his watch. Still half an hour until the train. The air was thick with heat, and yet it was as though he was standing in a high wind and being buffeted from all sides. The second hand moved. Life seemed infinitely slow and infinitely fast, as though he was hurtling towards something at incalculable speed, but, as in the way of terrible accidents, everything was slowed almost to nothing. He looked up. ‘Yes,’ he heard himself say. ‘I … suppose I might.’

  ‘Good!’ replied the young man, and disappeared again. ‘Just give me a moment and I’ll be with you.’

  Stepping over the threshold was like plunging into deep brown water. Already Charles could hardly see him in the gloom at the back of the shop. The young man began to whistle, and Charles recognized the tune: ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’. His stomach churned as damp sprang into his palms. He stood in the darkness, feeling the syncopated, irregular beat of his own heart. The sign on the door was still turned to CLOSED.

  Then the young man was back again, opening blinds and windows to the morning light. And there was Charles, holding the papers he had been given. He would have been happier had the blinds been left drawn. Happier had they sat in the cool, sequestered dark together, side by side at the piano as they had done before. But the light blared its insistence, and he stayed standing there, and his body felt its old awkward, puffy self.

  ‘All right?’ The young man turned to Charles.

  Charles nodded.

  ‘Shall I take those from you?’ He stepped towards him. He flowed. And Charles was eight again. Standing at the edge of the river. The other boys. Their slick wet bodies. Their open, laughing mouths. Knowing they thought him slow and dull. Wishing only that he might feel like they did. In their bodies. In their lives.

  Coming in, Fuller?

  No, no. I can’t swim.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He thrust the papers out towards him. ‘I’m afraid I do have to go after all. In fact, I never really meant to come. It was a mistake. It’s my train, you see. To London. I don’t want to miss it. I’ve a meeting this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh.’ The young man sounded disappointed. ‘I’m so sorry, how rude of me. I didn’t realize you were in such a rush.’ As he spoke, his unruly hair fell back over his eye.

  He could do it. He could touch him. He was only inches away. Close enough that he could smell him – tobacco and the sea.

  ‘But it’s a shame.’ The young man was speaking still. ‘You’ve crossed my mind, you see – more than once – and I was rather hoping we might play together again. The shop is rarely busy before ten on a Saturday—’

  ‘No!’ Charles shook his head.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I mean. I can’t. No.’

  The young man looked alarmed. ‘Gosh, I’m terribly sorry. I – well – is there anything I can do for you before you go?’ What’s your name? You could tell me your name.

  And …

  I could stay.

  The man’s teeth were gently crooked when he smiled.

  Charles turned and walked towards the door, wrenching it open. ‘I’m sorry … I … simply … have to go.’

  Outside now. Pushing his way through the thickening crowds, through the jellied, unforgiving air, to the station. The train at the platform, already packed. He found a seat beside a large woman and her husband, tins of salmon and syrupy pineapple already spread out on their laps, the sickly, pungent smell of their picnic heavy on the air.

  He closed his eyes, trying to ignore the pressure building in his skull. But the chatter and wafts of noisome food coming from his companions kept him awake and irritable, and he gave up, burying his head in his copy of The Times, reading of the dockers continuing their strike in London. Of the tomatoes and other fruit and a hundred thousand pounds of Argentinian beef putrefying on the quays. Spoiling in the heat.

  What a waste.

  What a shameful, shameful waste.

  Perhaps it was reading the news reports, but London itself seemed changed, as though it were a fruit itself, past its best and rotting in the heat. It was clear from the first few moments in King’s Cross that a pall hung over the city. It was grubby. Smelt rancid. And if Leeds had been hot, then London was an inferno.

  The station was packed with policemen, long snaking lines of them, hurriedly moving goods from trains to a line of vans parked and waiting outside. At first Charles couldn’t fathom what they were doing it for, until he overheard a fellow passenger stop one of the officers and ask him.

  ‘It’s instead of the dockers, isn’t it? We’ve got to get the food out somehow, or we’re all going to starve.’

  His headache had only increased on the journey, and so he decided to hang the expense and take a motorcab across town. On another day it might have been a treat, but it took him a long, sweaty while
to find one, by which time, should he have walked, he could have been halfway there. The streets were deathly quiet – only a small desultory trickle of traffic; it was as though a plague had come over the city. ‘Where are all the cars?’ he asked, leaning forward in his seat.

  The taxi man turned. ‘No petrol, is there? Strikes.’

  The cab moved through almost deserted streets, crawling its way through the terraces of Bloomsbury, down the Gray’s Inn Road and Chancery Lane to Fleet Street and the Strand – streets Charles knew well, and yet today they seemed unreal: a stage set waiting for the people to arrive. The cab passed the Savoy, and he was close now, turning down a side street between the Strand and the river.

  ‘Number six.’ He leant forward to the driver, pulse thrumming at his throat.

  Number 6, York Buildings turned out to be red brick, tall and rather grand, in the way of the area, but an otherwise unremarkable townhouse, with nothing to denote what or who might be inside. Charles paid the cabman the small fortune he asked for without demur and then stepped on to the street. He was late. His light flannel suit, which had felt so promising hours ago, was crumpled now and covered with smuts from the train, and his shirt was stuck to his back with sweat. He thought he might be running a temperature.

  The front door was opened by a smart, cool-looking man in late middle age.

  ‘The Society?’ Charles croaked. Something strange had happened to his voice. ‘Major Leonard Darwin?’

  ‘And you are …?’ The man raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Charles Fuller.’ A fresh outbreak of sweat on his back christened this last. ‘Doctor. My name should be on the list.’

  The man bent and checked and then, ‘Upstairs,’ he said to Charles, ‘Committee Room. First floor.’

  As Charles climbed the stairs, he was filled with a strange sensation of lightness, as though he was floating, somewhere a little above his head. The Committee Room, a large, double-windowed space overlooking the street, was packed; there were no seats remaining, and so he took his place standing at the back. He grasped his hat in his hands and smoothed out his hair, trying to control his breath.