Echoes of the Dance (17 page)

As she reached the furthest gate, well out of earshot, the telephone began to ring.

CHAPTER TWENTY

‘This is really cool.' Sitting high up in the pick-up truck, the shawl flung over her shoulders, Janna beamed at Nat. ‘'Tis like being on the road again. I loved the travelling. I get it from Mum. Her favourite song was “Trains and Boats and Planes”. Remember it?' She hummed a bar. ‘Always going on somewhere else. It's the freedom, isn't it?'

‘“Here today – in next week tomorrow! . . . Always somebody else's horizon! Oh bliss! Oh, poop-poop!”' quoted Nat idly as he drove out of Horrabridge, passing the school and crossing the cattle-grid on the road over Knowle Down. ‘You sound like Mr Toad.'

Janna smiled tolerantly, knowing from experience his habit to recite bits from books.

The dear of him, she thought affectionately. I sing pop songs and he spouts yards of stuff from books. Isn't that just typical of us? We're so different.

This reminder of the gulf between them had the unexpected power to extinguish her happiness, rousing the old familiar terrors that lurked in the shadows and filling her throat with a choking miasma of fear.

She looked at him for reassurance, fighting off her demons, summoning up Little Miss Sunshine so as to chase away the shadows. As if he understood her need he reached out and touched her knee.

‘Look out there,' he said. ‘Can you see the church tower amongst the trees? On days like these I think I'd top myself if I worked in an office. Hear the buzzard?'

‘We could stop and have an ice cream,' she suggested. ‘There's bound to be a van in the car park at Cadover Bridge. And after you've seen your client we could pick up some fish and chips in Ivybridge and eat them on the way home.'

‘We could,' he agreed placidly. ‘Did you put the flask in?'

Janna nodded, happier now. She had a passion for picnics, impromptu meals and informal celebrations, always ready to make a sandwich or rustle up a ‘smackerel', Nat's word for these junkets. She smoothed the shawl, seeing the threadbare patches as evidence of love that rendered it even more valuable in her sight, and dwelled pleasurably on the treats ahead. Humming to herself so as to raise her spirits further, she leaned from the open window to smile down upon an elderly lady with her dog who was standing against a wall to make room for them to pass into the small village of Walkhampton.

‘I feel bad about Kate,' she said suddenly. ‘She was feeling lonely, Nat. We should've insisted that she came with us.'

‘There's only room for two in the pick-up,' he pointed out, ‘and I don't think it would be quite her thing but I'll phone her when we get home.'

Janna was silent, thinking about her conversation with Kate.

‘Funny,' she observed. ‘Moniker going off like that. D'you think 'twas me?'

‘No, I don't.' Nat braked at the crossroads by the Burrator Hotel and then drove on through Dousland. ‘She'd probably forgotten the dinner party and it was Jonathan's clients. Something like that. Don't give it a thought.'

As they passed over Marchant's Bridge at Meavy, and up onto the open moorland, Janna took his advice and gave herself up to the wild beauty of the landscape: flowing and rolling away to distant folded heaps of rock, it shimmered dense and hazy in the thick, powdery golden light. At Cadover Bridge children and dogs splashed in the shallow waters of the Plym whilst mothers and babies sat on rugs spread along its sandy banks. Nat parked the pick-up alongside the other cars and reached into his pocket. Janna was out of her seat at once, standing in the sunshine and surveying the scene with delight.

‘Look at the little one,' she said. ‘He'll be in if his mum doesn't hurry up. There he goes.'

She laughed out loud as the staggering child was whisked from the very edge of the bank by his breathless parent, who swung him high into the air. Drawn like a magnet towards the happy family groups, she wandered away and Nat went to buy the ice creams.

As he waited in the queue he watched her. He'd sensed the plunge into depression that had threatened to darken her day, admiring her courage whilst fearing her growing dependency on him. Janna was a mass of contradictions: a free, wild spirit who yet craved the security of the domestic scene. Her character was defined by her belongings: the tote bag showed that she travelled light yet it contained the images of her childhood. Nat knew that she was beginning to believe that the commitment of motherhood would tame the wild spirit within her and bring her peace and contentment. He was not convinced.

As she wandered lightly amongst the children he was reminded of the English folksong ‘She Passed Through the Fair'. She'd changed her shorts for a skirt that wrapped like a sarong around her slight frame and, with her silken shawl and wild-lion hair, she looked as foreign amongst the harassed young women with their offspring as a bird of paradise in a fowl yard.

By the time he'd been served she'd slipped off her sandals and was paddling in the water with the children. He gave her a cone with a Flake stuck in it – her favourite – and moved away, back to the pick-up, where he sat with the door open. She was crouching now, taking the Flake from the ice-cream and offering the end of it to a small boy. He took a bite, catching the chocolate crumbs and sucking his fingers, and now his bigger sister arrived and was immediately offered the Flake. She seemed to hesitate, staring curiously at Janna, before suddenly accepting her share. She drew attention to the now melting ice-cream and Janna hastened to lick up the dribbles, laughing with delight, and the children joined in readily.

The small boy was now showing a toy – a boat? A car? Nat couldn't quite see – and Janna was taking it into her own hands so that she could admire it properly whilst his big sister leaned, pointing importantly, to demonstrate the toy's qualities. When the children's mother arrived on the scene, appearing casual but clearly checking out this stranger, Janna's expression was an odd mixture of friendly humility that touched Nat's heart. She seemed to be asking for some kind of acceptance into this woman's world of happy domestic stability, quite unaware of the exotic impression she was creating. They exchanged a few words but clearly it was time for their picnic tea and the children were ushered firmly away, the older girl talking and gesturing whilst the small boy looked back rather wistfully to where Janna stood alone eating the remains of her cone. She wiggled her fingers at him and he copied her gesture before being hauled on more firmly by his mother.

Quite unexpectedly Nat had an image of himself being tugged along in just that same way but twisting to look back at Roly who'd wiggled his fingers and called, ‘Write to me, Nat. Send me a picture.' And he'd shouted ‘Yes, I will,' and tried to wiggle his fingers too.

His mother's face had been pinched in, mouth tucked down, eyes small, and he'd wanted to ask why they weren't all together any longer because he knew now that the man she'd called ‘your father' was so kind and funny and he, Nat, loved him terribly.

He'd forgotten him, this father: the tall person in whom he'd once put his trust had faded and merged into someone called ‘your father', who had done bad things and couldn't be with them. Then, suddenly one day, his mother said that they were going to visit him and Nat felt a little cold fist of fear all balled up inside his heart at the thought of it. They travelled on the tube and walked along a street and all the time his throat was dry and his heart banged up and down as if the fist of fear were trying to punch its way right out of his chest. His mother paused for a moment by some iron railings, staring up at a tall, flat-faced house, and then up the steps they went and she reached out and rang at the bell. By the time the door opened Nat could barely breathe and he stared fearfully up at the man who stood there.

‘This is “your father”, Nat.' The tone in his mother's voice made him feel anxious because it usually meant ‘Please be on your best behaviour' or ‘You're doing something I don't like' but when the tall man crouched down, so that he was at Nat's level, all Nat could see on his face was love and delight.

‘Nat,' he said, with a great sigh, as if Nat were some kind of treat for which he'd been waiting longingly but feared might never happen.

‘Hello, Roly,' his mother said, but not as if she were pleased at all to see him, and Roly stood up again and said, ‘Hello, Monica.'

Then Nat knew that the man wasn't just ‘your father' but also Roly and he didn't have to worry about it any more. He was given a cushion on a chair at a table in a big warm kitchen and after some discussion his mother went away to do some shopping and Roly gave him a picture book with crayons. They had such a lovely time that he hadn't wanted his mother to come back so quickly and when they were out in the street again and Roly said, ‘Come again soon, won't you, Nat?' he'd cried, ‘Yes, please. May I come tomorrow?'

That's when his mother had taken his hand and hauled him off and he'd twisted round to look back at Roly just the same way the little boy was turning to wave to Janna.

Janna was looking for Nat now, licking her fingers, as she walked back to the pick-up. Looking at her pensive face, Nat felt anxiety rise inside him: he knew what she was thinking. She climbed up into her seat and he started up the engine and drove out of the car park.

‘Did you see that little boy?' she asked at last. ‘He was an absolute honey.'

He smiled without answering and she stared out of the window broodingly at the man-made cliffs and grass-grown hills of china clay.

‘I was thinking about us, Nat,' she said presently. ‘You and me. Supposing we had a baby.' She looked at him now, and though he kept his eyes on the winding moorland road he could feel her beseeching him. ‘It could solve all sorts of problems, couldn't it?'

He changed gear, pausing at the junction before turning left on to the road to Wotter, seeking for a reply that wouldn't sound as if he were rejecting her. He appealed to her sense of integrity.

‘Is it fair to a baby to see it in terms of something to answer our problems?' He spoke gently, as if he were considering the whole aspect of her request rather than dismissing it out of hand. ‘It's possible that it might do quite the reverse. We'd need to be utterly committed to one another to risk it and we both know that neither of us is . . . ready for that.'

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her pull the shawl around her, her face down-turned as she mused upon his reply.

‘I love kids,' she murmured – but her voice was resigned, as if she accepted his reservation, and he sought for some kind of distraction.

‘Did I tell you that I'm working over near Bude tomorrow? Like a day on the coast?'

‘Oh, yes, I would.'

She was cheerful at once, Little Miss Sunshine again, but when he glanced quickly at her he saw that her eyes were bright with tears.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

At the same moment, Daisy and Paul were sitting at one of the wooden picnic benches outside the Tea House in the grounds of the Holburne Museum of Art, having visited the Nureyev exhibition.

‘I found it fascinating,' Paul was saying, ‘to be so close to his belongings. That costume in the glass case, for instance. Did you say that it's the one he's wearing in the photograph you've got?'

Daisy nodded: she couldn't ever remember being so happy. Her sudden tumble into love had the effect of reducing everything else to insignificance; even the physiotherapist's gloomy reports on the damage to the torn muscle in her back no longer had the power to depress her. Just at present Paul was filling her whole world. She'd never felt like this before. She'd been too busy, too obsessed with work, but now, quite suddenly, she'd been translated into a special sphere: the same world, of course, but one seen through a bubble whose protective thin shiny membrane glossed it to an abnormally brilliant clarity.

Paul was talking on. He'd been surprised by the shortness of the jacket Nureyev had worn as Albrecht – he'd expected him to be taller – and wasn't it amazing that his peasant stock could be traced back to Genghis Khan and the Mongols?

She sipped her tea, smiling radiantly, still nodding happily.

‘I liked the recreation of his dressing-room best,' she said, getting a grip on herself. She wanted to take and hold on to one of his hands that gesticulated as he spoke but was just managing to control herself. ‘Those false ears from
L'Aprèsmidi
d'un faune
, and his tights on the make-up table. You expected him to wander in at any minute and start putting on his make-up, didn't you? I'm glad you liked it.'

‘Oh, I did.' He was looking with interest at the little single-storey building, with its shuttered windows and latticed porch, and now he took a postcard from his pocket. ‘Look at this. I bought it earlier. It's a rather romantic version of the Tea House painted in 1991.' He chuckled. ‘It doesn't matter what the artist has done to give it that Regency atmosphere, it still looks like an air-raid warden's hut to me.'

‘I hadn't realized that it
was
an air-raid warden's hut,' Daisy admitted, studying the picture. ‘I've never been here before. But once you go inside it's like a stepping back in time, isn't it? I love the way they cut all the crusts off the sandwiches, and the flapjacks are delicious.'