Once Upon a Time There Was a Traveller

by Kate Pullinger

  By then the sun had disappeared behind the clouds and the mountains. It was dark though it was not yet night.

  ‘It’s tricky driving in this weather,’ the driver told him, flicking the headlights on. ‘A bus rolled into a gorge this morning.’

  ‘They were talking about it at the check-post,’ Nirmal said, scratching the taxi’s stale-smelling upholstery. He felt bereft. He wanted to scream, knock his head against a rock. He wanted a sign. Dear Lord, tell me I’m doing the right thing.

  ‘You have to be very careful on these roads,’ the driver said, but then he drove too fast, the taxi’s tyres veering towards the edge of the winding mountain road.

  Nirmal clutched the dashboard but he was swung from side to side.

  Negotiating a hairpin bend, the driver said, ‘Looks like there’s some trouble ahead.’

  Through the windshield, Nirmal saw a truck that had stopped in the middle of the road. The taxi driver pressed the brake pedal too late. The car tyres screeched as the vehicle just missed slamming into the stationary truck.

  ‘Maybe the road’s crumbling,’ the driver said, but he did not look concerned.

  ‘Let me check,’ Nirmal said and stepped out.

  Two men on a bike honked behind them, revving their vehicle and shouting at the truck and taxi drivers for blocking the narrow road.

  Nirmal walked ahead, passing a slanting sign erected on the roadside by the Forest Department: Nature has everything to meet man’s need but not his greed. The thick, yellow headlights of the truck did not reveal any cracks on the tarmac.

  ‘Get back in the car, you son of a dog,’ a cleaner who sat in the front of the truck, next to its driver, shouted.

  Nirmal felt fear gripping his shoulders but his feet would not move.

  Perhaps tired of waiting for a landslide or an apparition to materialise, the men on the bike rode ahead having somehow squeezed past the bigger vehicles on the road. They had barely gone ten feet when they whizzed around. An elephant, its shape hidden until then by the blackness of the night, came charging behind them, a speeding mass of unbearably loud, terrifying trumpets. Was this his tormentor? Had it followed him?

  The drivers pressed their horns and flicked the headlights of their vehicles on and off as if to scare the elephant away. The animal stopped running and sauntered towards Nirmal. He could feel its eyes on him; was sure its tusks would rip his chest.

  The elephant snorted as if mocking the drivers’ attempts to frighten him. Then he turned around and disappeared into the mountainside.

  On wobbly legs Nirmal walked back to the taxi, where the driver stood leaning against the bonnet.

  ‘What were you thinking?’ he asked.

  ‘Have a death wish, do you?’ the excitable cleaner shouted from the truck.

  Nirmal got into the taxi and wiped his forehead against the sleeves of his shirt. His heart was still racing.

  The driver started the car after touching a small idol of Lord Ganpati affixed to the dashboard. ‘It’s good luck to see an elephant at the start of a journey,’ he said. ‘You’re going to succeed in whatever you choose to do.’

  ‘We will see,’ Nirmal said. He stuck his head out of the window and looked at the forest above him, but it was too dark to see anything and raindrops fell on his upturned face.

  Level and Nearly Unaffected – Carol Rowntree Jones

  The second night, after you left, you didn’t miss a thing. You know how we were trying to pluck up courage to join in and were really just enjoying watching his hips? Well, the next evening I went back and it was the ugly shift. No, that’s cruel, but that guy would not have kept you awake at night. I didn’t stay late; I had to pack and get an early train to the airport.

  But I thought this salsa thing looked pretty good, and when some flyers arrived in the office about a class nearby straight after work, and I was feeling lardy around the middle, you know how it is, I thought I’d give it a try. I didn’t want to go anywhere I would know anyone, didn’t want to look a complete idiot, and it was a night no one needed lifts anywhere. It’s getting easier now, isn’t it – they’re older and you get a bit more time. Still all the washing and you just have to stop yourself worrying about what they’re eating. You make up for it other nights. It’s like another friend of mine. She got a horse, was completely besotted, and the family had never eaten so well she felt so guilty.

  So I went along. Random people – couples, other people straight from work like me. No one there for the lonely-hearts thing as far as I could tell. And I loved it from the start. You get the basic movements first – you know how the guy was showing the others at the session we saw, what we could see from the back of the bar – it’s like three steps and then you pause, and as you get better it’s what you do with the pause that counts.

  This seems ages ago now, and for me to be having to spell it all out… but I just have to tell you. So I started to pick up the rhythm and it became the best thing in the week. The tutor, a married guy – he was local but he’d learnt it all in London, so he was good. Great hips, girl!

  One, two three, tap. One, two three, kick. It was a different variation each week. Then you do clever things with the weight transfer – I know it wasn’t salsa, but you know how Fred Astaire always looked like he was floating? Well, it’s not like that, it’s very grounded, but when you get it just right and the pause is practically electric it feels weightless.

  I became the star pupil – yes, I know that’s hard to believe – and the guy would use me to demonstrate. His hands were pretty nice on me but I felt immune; the absolute best thing was the dancing. By now I was going to another of his classes as well. More new people, but they were just bodies around me. Good partner? Indifferent? Totally rubbish and I’d blank them the next time. The music, the moves, took me high as a kite.

  So how did everyone at home take it? Bit of a joke really. Nice for mum to be doing it, that kind of thing, a bit of a joke from him too. And that suited me, I guess – a bit of a laugh, a way of keeping fit.

  It becomes odd, the significance of things.

  I’d be in the supermarket trying not to three step and keep focused on the baked beans, but I’d be off to the rice, pasta and accompanying sauce; then aubergine, tuna and pulses. Even the shopping list was in time. I’d watch other people and see if they were salsa addicts – because that was what it was like, it was an obsession.

  I started to think of all my relationships in terms of who was the lead and who following. I interpreted my daughter’s tiffs with her friends as who was being open – still communicating, involving the other – and who was closed: shut down, restricted, taking no responsibility.

  I heard there were salsa nights in town so I went along with two of the girls I’d met at the second class. Every other Saturday, so our films still happened. These nights were dark, sweaty affairs. I’ve never drunk so much water. I tell you, I needed nothing else. And it’s an art, what to wear. So that you can get out of the house looking fairly normal, but survive the evening on the dance floor without being a complete ball of sweat.

  Then I danced with him. If we thought that guy we saw together had snaking hips… I hadn’t seen this one at the club before, and that night the other girls couldn’t make it so I was doing my own thing. He came up and asked if he could dance with me, and at salsa that’s fine. It’s all about the dance and you need a partner.

  Did I mention electricity before? This was like we were burning a path through the room, like no one else was there. I didn’t know how I was breathing.

  I guess we danced together for a couple of hours, then the session ended and we said, ‘next week?’ And so it went on. We would dance there together all night – all evening – sweat together, love the music together, then leave. But I’d be dreaming it. I knew the weight of his hand on my back and how his hip fitted mine. I knew we looked good together. We improvised like we read each other’s minds. Other people stood and watched.

  But it made me feel so st
range I had to stop.

  All that stuff in the first class: ‘the upper body remains level and nearly unaffected’. Okay, a get-out clause in the ‘nearly’. But I was certainly affected.

  God, I miss it.

  But putting dinner on the table, turning round the sports kit, being able to face people, clean toilets: I needed those as well.

  But that sweet tension in my belly.

  Life is calm now with no intricate foot-work. A kind of relief. It felt like a big thing that everything else might not survive.

  So all is harmony here, that’s me.

  The Magic Toyshop – Angela Carter

  Melanie swam like a blind, earless fish in a sea of sedation, where there was no time or memory but only dreams. Summer changed to autumn before she surfaced and lay palely on her bed, remembering. When she was strong enough, she went out one early morning and buried the wedding-dress decently under the apple-tree. Her breast felt hollow, as if it were her heart she had buried; but she could move and speak, still.

  ‘You must be a little mother to them,’ said Mrs Rundle. Mrs Rundle sewed black armbands to their coats, even Victoria’s. Mrs Rundle’s coat was black already; she was always prepared for mortality to strike. She was disappointed, even aggrieved, that the remains would not be brought home for a funeral. Since there were no remains to speak of. But even so.

  Melanie started wearing her hair in stiff plaits, in the manner of a squaw. She plaited her hair so tightly that it hurt her, straining hair and flesh until it felt as though the white seam down the back of her head might split and the brains gush out. It was a penance. She chewed at the spiky end of a plait and kicked at a kitchen chair-leg. Through the open door into the hall drifted the murmuring voices of the auctioneer’s men.

  Everything was to be sold. There was no money left. Daddy hadn’t saved any money because he thought he could always make more. In a vacuum, the children existed from day to day. There was still food for them to eat and Mrs Rundle was still there. She was a fixed point. Melanie stayed beside her, now, helping her about the house. She did not like to be alone. The mirror was broken and she hated the casual glimpses she got of her face as she cleaned her teeth or when she passed the hall-stand. But Mrs Rundle, the mother-hen, was looking for a new post and the house was to be sold over their heads, and the furniture, too.

  ‘A little mother,’ repeated Melanie. She must be a mother to Jonathon and Victoria. Yet Jonathon and Victoria hardly seemed to feel the lack of a mother. They had their own private worlds. Jonathon pressed on with his new model. Victoria babbled like a brook, chasing motes in the sunbeams. Neither referred to their parents or seemed to realise that their present life was coming to an end – Victoria too young, Jonathon too preoccupied. When prospective buyers came to look at the house, which happened more and more frequently, they stayed out of the way until they had gone.

  ‘The burden is all mine,’ said Melanie.

  Mrs Rundle knitted a knee-sock. For Jonathon, a parting gift. She was turning the heel.

  ‘They told me to tell you,’ she said. ‘The lawyers did. Since I am close. I have been waiting my time.’

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘You are to go to your Uncle Philip.’

  Melanie’s eyes grew wide.

  ‘Your Uncle Philip will take the three. And it is not right for a family to be separated.’ She sniffed emphatically.

  ‘But we have never known him. He was Mummy’s only brother and they drifted apart.’ She dredged the name from a chance remark in the remote past. ‘The name was Flower. Mummy was a Miss Flower.’

  ‘The lawyer says he is a perfect gentleman.’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘In London, where he has always lived.’

  ‘So we shall go to London.’

  ‘It will be nice, and you growing up. All London for you. Theatres. Dances.’ From magazines and novels she recollected: ‘Soirées.’

  ‘How does he make a living? He used to be a toymaker.’

  ‘And still is. He is married. There will be a woman’s guidance.’

  ‘I didn’t know he was married.’

  ‘These days,’ disapproved Mrs Rundle, ‘there is such a lack of contact within families! Fancy not knowing about your uncle’s wife! She is, after all, your aunt!’ Her steel needles flashed.

  ‘It will all be new and strange.’

  ‘That is life,’ said Mrs Rundle. ‘I shall miss you all and often think of the baby, growing up into a little girl. And you, into a young lady.’

  Melanie bent her head and the plaits swung over her face. ‘You have been so kind.’

  ‘I shall help with the packing, of course.’

  ‘When’ – she gulped – ‘when do we go?’

  ‘Soon.’

  October, crisp, misty, golden October, when the light is sweet and heavy. They stood on the step and waited for the taxi with black bands on their arms and suitcases in their hands, forlorn passengers from a wrecked ship, clutching a few haphazardly salvaged possessions and staring in dismay at the choppy sea to which they must commit themselves.

  ‘I may never see this house again!’ thought Melanie. It was an enormous moment, this good-bye to the old home; so enormous she could hardly grasp it, could feel only a vague regret. The rose wreath still hung in the apple tree, a little weather-beaten, already.

  Mrs Rundle kissed them wetly one after the other. She, too, was leaving the house that day. She wore her good, black, cloth coat and her neatly darned cloth gloves and her sturdy, serviceable laced-up shoes. Her cat slept in a basket beside her trunk. Her new employer would pick her up by car. Their relationship was at an end. She belonged to another house, other people.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Melanie, suddenly. ‘School.’ The sight of the trunk reminded her. She had not thought of it till now. But she and Jonathon should be back at school and Victoria starting at the village junior and mixed infants democratically this term.

  ‘Your Uncle Philip will see to all that,’ said Mrs Rundle. ‘Mind you look after them on the journey and buy them sweets and comic books for the train.’ She dug amongst the bottles of aspirin and loose hairpins and tubes of digestive mints in her whale-backed black simulated leather handbag. ‘Take this.’ A pound note for a good-bye present.

  Then the taxi came for them. Did the taxi-driver, the ticket-collector at the station, the other passengers standing on the platform – did they sense the difference about the children and, seeing the black armbands, nod sadly, knowingly, and smile in encouragement and sympathy? Melanie thought they did and froze at the first breath of pity, summoning all her resources to act coolly.

  A little mother.

  ‘I am responsible,’ she thought as they sat in the train and Victoria pulled up seat cushions to see what lay beneath them and Jonathon studied a diagram of the rigging on a schooner. ‘I am no longer a free agent.’

  A black bucket of misery tipped itself up over Melanie’s head. Part of herself, she thought, was killed, a tender, budding part; the daisy-crowned young girl who would stay behind to haunt the old house, to appear in mirrors where the new owner expected the reflection of his own face, to flash whitely on dark nights out of the prickly core of the apple tree. An amputee, she could not yet accustom herself to what was lost and gone, lost as her parents scattered in fragments over the Nevada desert. A routine internal flight. An unscheduled squall. An engine fault. Two Britons are among the dead. We regret to announce the death of a distinguished man of letters. And his wife.

  Mummy.

  No, Mother. Now she was dead, give her the honourable name, ‘Mother.’ Mother and Father are dead and we are orphans. There was, also, an honourable ring about the word ‘orphans’. Melanie had never even known an orphan before and now here she was, an orphan herself. Like Jane Eyre. But with a brother and sister whom she must look after for they had nothing left but her.

  ‘London! London!’ cried Victoria every time the train, a slow, halting, bucolic train, drew
to a standstill, either at a drowsy country station where cow parsley foamed along the line or simply nowhere, among the fields, to have a little rest.

  ‘They won’t know us at the station, in London,’ said Jonathon suddenly. ‘We have never seen one another.’

  ‘They will easily recognise three children travelling alone,’ said Melanie.

  The train was a kind of purgatory, a waiting time, between the known and completed past and the unguessable future which had not yet begun. It was a long journey. Jonathon stared from the window at a landscape which was not the one Melanie saw. Victoria, at last, went to sleep and did not see the slow beginnings of London nor wake when the train finally halted at the arched and echoing terminus. Melanie was stiff, aching and covered in smuts. She felt oddly cold and sick but bit her lip staunchly and gathered their cases together.