by Angela Huth
Meantime, she skipped well. Glancing critically about her, she realised this was no small talent. Although she herself found it easy, there were plainly others who didn’t: those to whom music, rhythm, beat, had no meaning, couldn’t take you up and down with them like bossy waves. Also, some of her friends didn’t seem to realise they were dancing on their heels instead of on their toes. Joanna, for instance, so good at maths, would never be more than a hopeless skipper, heavy and out of time. No wonder Miss Neal was forced to keep on and on with the sing-song chant … ‘And up with those heads. Up with those knees. And stop a moment… .’
A heavy silence. The girls unclasped their sweaty hands and Miss Neal gave a small pat to her hairnet. She looked pained. She could look pained very quickly in rehearsals. Considering the torment they caused her, it was noble of her to struggle on, really, trying to keep the reputation flying. Sometimes she almost despaired, squeezing performances from the mostly untalented lumps she was faced with year after year. But she had to go on trying, of course, for the sake of the school. Gently, now: ‘Girls, what have I been telling you ever since rehearsals began? Anybody?’
Silence. A few guilty wriggles. Girl with plaits raised her arm: anything to alleviate Miss Neal’s pain quickly.
‘To point our toes, Miss Neal.’
‘To point our toes, Belinda. Exactly.’ More silence: scathing, uncomfortable. ‘And have we been pointing our toes?’
‘No, Miss Neal.’ The dancers in unison, with far greater alacrity than they ever managed to begin a carol. Emily stifled a smile. Papa would think all this funny if he was a fly on the wall. He’d think it quite funny, even, on the day, when they’d all learnt to skip quite well. He’d be bound to ask a lot of question: he always did. ‘Who was that fat girl opposite you? Why did they leave out verse three?’
Oh, she’d have to explain it all. Not many weeks, now. They’d laugh about it going home in the car (snow, perhaps). Mama saying it was marvellous because she always liked all school plays, you could be sure of that. Maybe Wolf d come too, if she warned him it wasn’t going to be too soppy. Tonight she’d tell Papa about how she couldn’t get the ‘your path’ bit right, with Sandra giggling away behind her like that. It was all Sandra’s fault. It was difficult enough to concentrate, knowing all those eyes were behind you, seeing your knee tremble, without anyone giggling as well. Very unfair, really, she’d tell Papa. He’d understand. Except he was in Africa. What a nuisance. She wished, suddenly, he would come home. Tonight.
‘One more try, then, girls? Garlands up. Miss Curtis? Are you ready?’
Emily pointed her toe.
Arriving back home a couple of hours later, Emily found the gloom of the November afternoon had eaten into the kitchen. No lights, just a smouldering fire. Fen was curled up in the armchair smoking, a full ashtray by her side, a fat paperback – Lytton Strachey, a Biography -on her knee. She didn’t stir when Emily came into the room. Her heavy eyes moved slowly.
‘Hello, Em. How did it go?’
‘Oh, all right.’ Emily flung off her satchel. It wasn’t the moment to tell. Besides, now the danger had passed, it didn’t seem so important. Often, by the time Emily got back from school, events she had meant to recount had lost all their zest. Suddenly they weren’t even worth telling.
‘Why’s it so dark in here?’ she asked. The dark oppressed her.
‘I was just sitting reading. Couldn’t be bothered to get up.’
‘I’ll do it for you.’ Emily went round the room lighting the lamps. From the record player next door came the sound of Dory Previn. Fen and Emily listened to her melancholy voice.
Whatever you give me
I’ll take it as it comes
Discarding self-pity
I’ll manage with crumbs…
The room was pooled with light and shadows now. Better. Fen bent down to throw a log on the fire.
‘I’ve brought you an invitation to the play, Mama.’ Emily searched in her satchel for the stiff white card. Mr and Mrs Harris, it said at the top, in her own neatest hand writing. They’d spent the whole of English Language doing the invitations this morning. Emily had embellished hers with two holly leaves and three scarlet berries in the top left-hand corner. Each berry was chipped into with a small highlight, as Fen had shown her how to do years ago. Highlights brought things like apples, and balloons, and berries to life.
Emily handed her mother the card. Fen looked at the date.
‘I don’t absolutely guarantee Papa will be back in time,’ she said.
‘Oh, Mama. Why ever not?’
‘You know what he’s like. He has to work so hard. They always keep him so long.’
‘That’s not fair.’ Emily’s voice was tight.
‘I know. Still, he might make it. Just don’t hope too much. – Come on, cheer up! Here.’ She patted the broad arm of her chair. Emily went and sat down. ‘Don’t look like that. It’s a smashing invitation. Your best writing. Let’s pin it up somewhere, shall we?’
‘All right.’
‘I’ll get a drawing pin in a minute. Guess what?’
‘What?’
‘I’ve made you banana pudding for supper.’ Fen’s voice was light and cheerful.
‘Thank you.’ Subdued answer. Emily turned on the arm of the chair. ‘Do you sometimes miss Papa?’
‘Of course. Always. But being gloomy won’t bring him back any faster.’
‘I’ve made a chart of the days. I’m going to cross them off every evening till he comes back.’
‘Well, why don’t we pin up your chart, too? Then we can see how we’re getting on.’
‘All right.’ Pause. ‘Can Wolf come round for supper tonight?’
‘Not tonight, I don’t think.’
‘Why? He hasn’t been for two days.’
‘Because Kevin’s coming.’
‘Who’s Kevin?’
‘You know, that tall man who came here with Uncle Tom the other day.’
‘Oh yes. He kept wanting to tell me a story about a hippopotamus who was a photographer. I didn’t want to hear it, actually.’ Emily sniffed. ‘Why’s he coming?’
‘Because he’s in Oxford. On his way back to London. He rang to ask if he could drop in for a drink. I felt I had to ask him for supper, really. It would have been mean not to, wouldn’t it?’
‘Suppose so. But why does it mean Wolf can’t come?’
‘I just think it would be better if he came tomorrow instead. Why don’t you go and ring him up right now and ask him if he can come tomorrow ?’
Fen rose from the chair. She stood in front of the fire, warming her hands and her back, stretching. A muddle of long strings of pale beads hung round her neck to below her waist. She sighed, patient.
‘Go on,’ she said.
‘I wanted him to come today,’ said Emily. ‘Why should grown-ups’ plans always work if children’s don’t?’
Fen laughed.
‘Grown-ups’ plans don’t work out just as often as children’s,’ she said. ‘They go wrong even more often, perhaps.’
‘Doesn’t seem like it.’
‘Oh, stop sulking, Em.’
‘It’s all very well for you.’
‘Emily!’ Fen’s voice rose, sharp. Emily held her mother’s eye.
‘You don’t seem to mind about Papa being away!’ A shout of defiance. A silence.
‘Of course I do, darling. Don’t be ridiculous.’ Fen’s voice soft and low, now.
‘Oh, Mama.’ Emily was by the fire too, in her mother’s arms, head against the warm silk of Fen’s breasts, the beads biting into her cheeks. ‘I wanted him to come to the play.’
‘I expect he will. We’ll write and tell him he must, shall we?’ Fen rocked, moving Emily with her. ‘Look, stop crying. You’re wetting my shirt!’
‘Sorry.’ Emily moved back. Fen’s face was liquid through the tears, distorted like a reflection in a fairground funny mirror. They looked at each other. Both laughed at once.
&n
bsp; ‘Go and wash your face, Em, before Kevin comes. You can have supper with us if you like.’
Emily shook her head, sniffing.
‘I must do my homework.’
‘Whatever you like. Go on, now. Cold water’s best.’
Smiling like that, all the earlier bleakness had fled from Fen’s eyes. Emily left the room. The short burst of tears had left her strangely weak. But already, as she climbed the stairs, she felt the strength return. By the time the cold tap was running, hope and calm were fully restored.
Kevin’s presence, anywhere, was dominating. This was partly to do with his physical size and magnificence – a huge man with wide stooping shoulders, large hands, long legs. His fine head was wild with black untidy hair: accipitral eyes pranced under thick black brows. When he smiled his face would halt for a moment before laughter, but his usual expression was one of constant, restless curiosity. His face was never at peace. He exuded energy. His limbs were springs that he moved with a strange, swift coordination, so that even the most domestic gesture – reaching for something on a high shelf, perhaps-had a style so powerful that unconsciously he drew attention to himself. It was this grace, this dominating presence on the stage that had brought him remarkable success as an actor very quickly. But his histrionic career was short lived. The life hadn’t appealed to him. Nervous tension made him physically sick, and an uncomfortable feeling that it had all been too easy dulled the flame within him that fed off challenge. After two years in the theatre he left to buy his electronics factory in the north.
That first evening Kevin came to dinner with Fen he seemed tired, but unrelaxed. In a vast, much-darned jersey he lay back in the armchair, one leg jogging up and down, immensely long fingers drumming the arms of the chair.
His eyes scoured Fen who stirred something over the stove. She was tense, alert, smiling occasionally as Kevin described some play he had seen the night before. He spoke so fast, in his enthusiasm, she had to listen with extraordinary care.
Upstairs, on the floor of her mother’s room, Emily could hear their voices. She was struggling with an essay on the Sahara Desert which, due to her instinctive lack of concentration in Geography, for several weeks she had been quite positive was in Australia. The fact that today she had realised her mistake, and had been most firmly assured by her teacher that it was in Africa, made the essay doubly hard. She had a very clear picture of Australia in her mind: that she could have written about for at least two pages-easy. Africa was more elusive. Sun, there was, of course, and copper mines and diamonds. But its general shape was hazy. What on earth could she say about the silly old Sahara? I want half a page, at least, Mrs Prism had said, her teeth skittering about her mouth in an unruly fashion because they hadn’t been fitted very well. Emily chewed her yellow pencil. In half an hour all she had done was to draw a huge sun, and they hadn’t even been told to do a picture. If she ever had to have false teeth she’d get the dentist to try out all sorts of different shapes and sizes till she found which ones suited her best, and she most certainly wouldn’t take them out at night.
Once, going into her grandmother’s bedroom early in the morning, she had found a smile of plastic teeth sprouting from their beds of bright pink gums and clenched together in a glass of water. She had screamed (she was only very young at the time). Her grandmother, waking up, had screamed too, a blathery sound coming from her own naked beige gums. She had reached out for the glass, but in her confusion knocked it over. The water spilt like urine down the sheets. The teeth slipped out on to the table, falling into a terrible grimace. Aware of her own cowardice in face of her grandmother’s dilemma, Emily had run from the room. She had several nightmares about teeth with independent lives after that, and later she wrote a story about a ghost smile that ran clacking up the stairs of a haunted house and gave people terrible frights. The Sahara Desert, she wrote, is definitely in Africa.
Half an hour later she screwed a full stop into the page. She had written eighty-three words, big writing, not too many facts, but some original thoughts on how it might feel if you were lost in all that sand. She stood up, feeling hungry. Four fish fingers and some chocolate biscuits she’d like, now. She went downstairs.
Kevin sprang up from his chair as soon as he saw her, an electric reaction, pouncing upon her with a great welcome. Emily remained cool, noticing the mud on his boots, and two bottles of red wine on the table. Kevin set about uncorking them, questioning her all the while.
‘Finished your homework?’
‘Yes.’
‘What was it?’
‘An essay on the Sahara Desert.’
‘Never been there myself.’
Emily paused.
‘Papa has,’ she said. Fen glanced at her. ‘Except it was when I was so young I don’t really remember what he told me about it.’
‘There are some photographs of camels in one of his drawers in the study, if they’d help,’ said Fen. She was very calm.
‘It’s all right, thanks. I’ve finished.’
‘And what else are you learning about?’ Kevin was pouring the wine into glass beer mugs from the dresser. He filled them. Emily shrugged.
‘Oh, about Felix Mendelssohn.’
‘Felix Mendelssohn?’ Kevin sounded as if he’d never heard the composer’s Christian name before. He took a deep gulp of the wine and ran a hand through his riotous hair. ‘Wasn’t he the one who had a sister called Fanny who was so impressed by her brother’s compositions that she learnt every one of them by heart?’
Emily paused. She had no idea. If it was true she’d be able to surprise Mr Losse with her extra piece of knowledge next lesson.
‘That’s right,’ she said.
‘Thought so. I used to like Mendelssohn. Got quite a few of his records. I could let you have one, if you like.’ Emily watched his fingers fidgeting about with cigarettes and a steel lighter. She said nothing.
‘That would be nice, Em, wouldn’t it?’ Fen turned from the frying pan of fish fingers to her daughter. Her eyes sparkled like they did sometimes when Idle came up with a good idea.
‘Yes,’ said Emily, quietly. And to Kevin: ‘Thank you.’
They couldn’t persuade her to eat with them. She took her supper on a tray into the room with the television, asking if she could stay up till nine o’clock. She had some strange feeling that tonight her mother would grant almost any request, and indeed Fen agreed at once, adding that Emily could read in bed for ten minutes.
But when the time came Emily didn’t feel like reading. She lay in the dark looking at the clouded moon outside her window. She thought of her mother at dinner, beautiful head cupped in her hands, laughing uproariously at some story Kevin was telling very fast – plate pushed back, forgetting to eat. She had looked up when Emily came in to say goodnight, and hugged her, and said Kevin was giving her too much wine. Kevin had kissed Emily too, ruffling her hair, making it all wild like his. She supposed he was quite nice, really. If he came again, perhaps she’d let him tell the story about the hippopotamus, if it would please him. All the same, it hadn’t been the kind of evening she had hoped for: just her and Mama making sealing wax things for Christmas. She wondered if tomorrow there’d be a postcard from Papa-a picture of the Sahara Desert, even. That would be a squish on Miss Old Clicketty Teeth Prism all right. That would be funny. Emily pulled the two Patricks towards her. Somewhere miles up in the sky someone had turned out the moon.
Next morning at breakfast Fen was still in ebullient spirits. By nature she functioned lethargically in the mornings if she had slept well, but after a late or bad night a perverse energy came to her at dawn. She told Emily she had slept little and so had come down early to wash up. She had also baked a huge apple tart. The smell of warm pastry and apples, a lunchtime smell, made the kitchen a secure fortress against the frost outside.
‘When on earth are just you and me going to eat all that?’ asked Emily.
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Fen was marvellously careless. ‘I just felt lik
e making something.’ She cupped her head in her hands again, as she had last night: smiled gaily at Emily as she had at Kevin. ‘Surprise for you,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Three guesses.’
‘Postcard from Papa?’
‘Shut your eyes.’
When Emily opened them the card was on her plate. Mauve mountains in a blue sky. An elephant nearly as tall as a tree. Went on a one-day safari in Kenya, it said. Nearly shot a lion. Made friends with a monkey who reminded me of Wolf. Showed your picture of the bonfire to a big-game hunter who wanted to keep it for his daughter. Of course I wouldn’t let him. Much love, Papa. Emily pouted.
‘He’s not working at all.”
‘Oh, he is. Very hard. I had a letter.’
‘When’s he coming back?’
‘Didn’t say. Hurry up. You’ll be late.’
Emily put the card in her satchel.
‘Come with me to the end of the drive,’ she said. This morning the short time with her mother had gone too fast. It sometimes did that, for no apparent reason. She needed a few more moments.
‘Not this morning.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s too frosty.’
Emily followed her mother’s glance out of the window to the silvered garden.
‘You could put on your coat. Please.’
‘No.’ Fen was unusually firm. ‘Go on, Em. You’ll keep them waiting. There they are – hooting.’ For a second, no more, her eyes were troubled. But she smiled as she dumped Emily’s hat on her head, and kissed her.
