Learning to Dance (8 page)

‘Something’s really wrong, Judith. Would you prefer to go into Lynton and sit in a cafe for a while?’

‘No. But thanks for stopping me falling out of the bus just then!’ Judith actually managed a laugh. ‘I did feel a bit odd.’

‘You did not have any breakfast.’

‘No. I sort of … forgot.’

‘Let’s sit on this bench for a few minutes. Get our bearings.’

There was a bench just beneath the railway’s timetable. Judith managed a shadow of a smile. ‘Martin seemed worried about where we were.’

‘I think he was being ironic.’ Sybil smiled. ‘Any further and the bus would have been on the rails!’

‘Oh, I see.’ Judith felt foolish. She looked around her and drew some deep breaths. Her body settled itself, and she was conscious of the steady beat of her heart. She said, ‘This is marvellous. We’re so high up. It’s a sheer drop.’

‘Not quite. The railcars work on the weight of the water – they use the seawater, of course.’ Sybil tilted her head back, closed her eyes, took a deep breath. ‘I used to love going down the side of the cliff – we probably only came here twice – maybe three times – before we left Cardiff, but I’ve never forgotten it.’

Judith felt suddenly better. She stood up and stared out to sea. ‘Strange you should say that – about the weight of water. I was wondering how on earth a painter can paint the sheer weight of water.’

‘Quite. Even more difficult is the fact that what works for one, doesn’t for another. I mean for the viewer. Yesterday I could see quite clearly that Robert had got all the properties of water in his seascapes. But I heard Sven say to Margaret that the one thing missing in the whole exhibition was a depiction of the sea.’

‘How pompous!’

‘It’s his slightly foreign English. He was genuinely regretful, I think.’

The railcar appeared, roof first and then very slowly its full length, each seat making a flight of giant steps to match the sharp descent. The guard, green flag at the ready, ushered them in, and they moved to the front on Sybil’s advice. ‘Easier to get out at the other end,’ she said knowledgeably.

They were the only passengers. The guard took their
money and issued tickets, telling them that once the school holidays were over, passengers were few and far between. ‘We’ll stay open until half-term, but then close until the Christmas holidays. We do a lovely Santa Claus trip.’

At the bottom, the jetty was to their left. At its end was a lighthouse crowned with an open fire basket instead of a lamp. To their right was the Lantern Inn, and then the land rose abruptly, funnelling the River Lyn as it ran down the combe and gurgled over rocks and stones before lining up rebelliously alongside the jetty and flowing into the sea.

Judith stood looking at it. ‘It’s spectacular! So unexpected … so grand for such a small place … my God … it’s beautiful … thank you, Sybil … this is just right. Just absolutely right!’

Sybil was laughing. ‘I knew you’d appreciate it. Now … let’s have elevenses – coffee and a bun or sandwich or something. It’s a pull up to that hotel on the top, but so well worth it. We can work there till lunchtime. What do you say?’

‘I don’t need coffee.’

‘Yes, you do. Come on.’

Judith fell in behind her willy-nilly, wondering at the unexpected change in this woman, and only too glad that she had taken charge. They drank coffee, sitting outside on one of the two benches, chatting to the girl who served them. They were very end-of-season and therefore special. It was all somehow heart-warming. She thought suddenly: Of course he’s not dead, what a ridiculous idea!

The pull up the side of the combe was unbelievably steep. The path had been cut into a zigzag in an effort to lessen the incline, but they had to stop frequently, clutch at a bush or a rock, and look back and concentrate on breathing.

‘You see? We’re already halfway!’ Sybil encouraged.

‘It’s getting steeper!’

‘Just a bit. Nothing to worry about.’ Sybil leaned back against a copper beech. ‘Looking down like this, do you feel the sheer weight of grief – which after all is composed of a great deal of water – do you feel it left behind for a little while?’

Judith looked at her; she seemed to be projecting something. Some emotion, some force. As if, by the very strength of her will, she could lose her grief, let it fall like a stone into the water. Judith felt a fraud; a cheat. Sybil was a genuine widow, mourning her husband. But she understood exactly how Sybil felt.

She said quietly, ‘Yes. I feel it too.’

Sybil turned and smiled wryly. ‘I knew you would. That’s why I wanted you to come with me today.’ She patted her shoulder bag. ‘Come on, we have to get this recorded somehow!’

Judith fell in behind her.

The hotel, which had looked so isolated and ethereal from below, proved to be fronting the road into Lynton, with a very modern sign indicating the way to Croyde, Woolacombe and Ilfracombe. The car park was full. They booked a table for lunch and hurried back to the terrace and the riverbank. There were picnic tables beneath a grove of willows; the sound of the water masked the traffic noise. ‘I had completely forgotten all that!’ Sybil was disappointed.

Judith said, ‘That’s part of its charm, surely? The wildness of nature and man side by side?’ She grinned. ‘Martin did warn us, after all. And this is perfect – enhanced by all that …’ She jerked her head at the hotel, then leaned back in the old-fashioned steamer chair. ‘Let’s have an hour before we eat, shall we?’ She gazed down the way they had come. ‘I’ve got
a perfect frame here. The focus is the inn at the base of the jetty. It’s pillowed in the trees.’ She pulled her canvas bag on to her lap and began to unfasten it, never taking her eyes from the view below. ‘It’s the absolute opposite of the cliffs around the castle. Almost homely.’

Sybil watched her as she fumbled at the pages of her sketchbook and chose a pencil. She followed suit. They fell silent, both absorbed, almost unconscious of the other. Judith chose her defining lines carefully. In spite of the enormous view this was a domestic scene; no fiercely aggressive pencil strokes could capture the intimacy of the inn. It was made tiny by its surroundings, but still offered a homely sanctuary to a traveller. She thought of the wild sea and the snarling cliffs so near to that open beacon at the end of the jetty; she thought of her mother, Eunice, wooed with a dozen red roses day after day and then so cruelly struck down; she thought of Jack, who had whispered, ‘I can’t cope with all the housework any more, Eunice, you’ll have to come and live with us.’ Exactly the right thing to say to her mother. She thought of Jack trying to keep the family thing going: trips to Perth, meeting the boys when they came home, yet never ever trying to persuade them to return permanently, setting them free. She thought of Jack, without anger.

Tears blinded the view. What had happened? How had it happened, whatever it was? There had been no time for him to conduct some sort of clandestine affair; anyway, that wasn’t Jack. Yet … yet … even through the grief of her mother’s death, hadn’t she noted a change between them? How long since their gazes had locked, since they had reached for each other’s hands and then, once joined, had laughed at themselves? Had it started before Eunice’s death? Jack had wanted her to socialize. She did remember him saying, ‘Live
life again, my love.’ When she had taken his advice and asked Naomi for that cup of tea, had he imagined that she was moving away from him?

She was no longer seeing the view, no longer visualizing Jack with his straw hair and blue eyes, so like her own, yet not one bit like hers. She was seeing Naomi. Naomi Parsons, who had been the best friend she had had. And might – could have – become a tiny wedge between Jack and herself.

Beneath her hand the pencil head snapped against her sketchbook.

Sybil looked up. ‘I wondered what that was!’ She saw Judith’s face and said quickly, ‘Have you had enough? Let’s pack up and go for lunch. It’s almost two o’clock. We must start back in good time. Can’t imagine Martin being a minute late, can you?’

She began to tidy away her things, giving Judith plenty of time to recover. And Judith looked at her sketchbook where, already, she could see the gently shaded pillow shapes of the trees, the tiny inn standing steadfastly beneath the crazy lighthouse with its empty brazier raised to the sky. She began to close the book page by page. Four pages of the sketches she had made yesterday. Four pages of the harsh cliffs of Dove. The force of nature and – not far behind – the absurd efforts of man to tame, to subdue. She drew a trembling breath. Denman and Freeman.

They struggled back up to the terrace, and a waiter took them to their table. They were both out of breath; Judith’s silence was not obvious. They ate mussels and Sybil turned the discarded shells so that the light caught their iridescent blue. ‘What does that remind you of?’ she asked, placing a shell against the plate, then dabbling her hands in the finger bowl. ‘I suppose it’s some sort of camouflage?’

Judith made an effort and blinked at the mass of shells. ‘Just the opposite – they seem to be signalling their presence.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well – a mass of blue police cars all flashing like mad.’

Sybil threw back her head and laughed unrestrainedly. Her neck was like Naomi’s: long, terribly vulnerable.

She said, ‘You certainly know how to bring things down to earth! You remind me of my husband.’

Judith was startled. ‘I thought … he was an ideas man, surely?’ She saw the instant change in Sybil’s face and added quickly, ‘Sorry. Newspaper knowledge – always unreliable.’

‘No. It’s all right. And – in a way – the newspapers were right. But that was what he fed them.’ She turned the shells again. ‘He made sure they saw the blue flashing lights, never the blackness beneath them.’

Judith looked; the sun had gone behind a cloud, the mussel shell was indeed black. She felt a tide of sadness creeping from her feet upwards. No anger, bitterness, recriminations, excuses. Just sadness.

Sybil said slowly, ‘He was a spin doctor. He could spin a yarn. Make not very good facts into splendid ones. Or … vice versa.’

Jack had called him a manipulative liar, a wheeler-dealer, a smiling hypocrite. It was Jack’s job to unmask hypocrites.

Sybil said, ‘I was so attracted to him, I cannot tell you …’ Her voice died, and Judith reached out and covered her still-damp hand. It lay quiescent beneath hers for a moment, and then turned convulsively and gripped Judith’s fingers.

‘Sorry … sorry, Judith. I really did leave it all behind at the bottom of the combe – that’s why I can talk about it. But I know it will be there when we get down.’

Judith nodded. She wondered whether Sybil had ever seen any of Jack’s scathing series in the
Magnet
. It had never been disguised. ‘Moss Mockup alias Cockup’ had run for six months four or five years ago.

Almost telepathically, Sybil said, ‘I know lots of people saw through him – of course they did. I forced him time and time again to face up to the fact that his spin was often a form of deception. But in the end he would convince me.’ The grip on Judith’s fingers became painful. ‘I miss him so much … I didn’t know what to do. I can’t do anything without him. Anything.’

‘You came to see the Hausmann exhibition,’ Judith reminded her.

‘Yes. I did. And I came to see Robert. And I got Nattie as well. And neither of them seem to recognize me. So how much have I changed? Did Moss change me, or did I change myself? I came back to my roots – to the two people who mattered to me – and they don’t know me. So am I not me?’ Sybil’s eyes were wide and panic-stricken. ‘You feel the same, don’t you? I can tell. So who are we? Are we shades of our husbands? So does that mean we are dead, too?’

Judith looked into the dark eyes and said honestly, ‘I think perhaps I am not Judith Freeman any more; probably have not been for the last eight years. I think I have reverted to being Judith Denman.’

She held Sybil’s gaze and watched as the panic died, as Sybil thought about her words, turned them over, then nodded slowly.

‘Perhaps that is what I want. Perhaps that is why I came on this trip. To become Esmée Gould again.’

‘Esmée Gould?’

‘I lived in the same street as Nattie and Robert. I was ten
when we left Cardiff and went to live in London. And I was sixteen when I discarded Esmée and chose to use my middle name and leave behind all the bitterness of my parents’ memories. Moss said I reinvented myself. That’s one of those buzz phrases, isn’t it? Lots of people reinvent themselves. I suppose I was already half of a spin doctor. Even then. At sixteen.’

Judith stared, astounded. She said, ‘How – how absolutely marvellous! Don’t you see – you have taken control of your life again. You have seen a way forward – by going back! I mean, it makes such perfect sense—’

Sybil released her hand and laughed again. ‘Oh, Judith. How can I go forward by going backwards – where’s the sense in that?’

‘I don’t know. But it’s there. It’s as plain as a pikestaff to me.’ Judith clasped her hands. The sadness that had reached her knees subsided completely. She thought of Hausmann, caught in the net of inherited terror, and this woman who knew him and could help him and could help herself, too. She rested her chin on her clasped hands and sat back.

‘For goodness’ sake, Sybil. Don’t fight it. It’s happening – just go along with it!’

Sybil shook her head. ‘You don’t understand. They called my father “Goalposts” because he was always in goal when we played football in the street. He didn’t mind, but I did. Stupid. My great-grandfather was in Auschwitz and he told me once that the Holocaust began with name-calling. It went on to bullying, then torture. Did you know that you can go on a tour of Auschwitz? Moss took me not long ago. There were no birds. I didn’t see a spider. No life at all. Moss thought it would help me. And it did because I realized I could never
ever get rid of it. How many generations before some kind of redemption, Judith?’

‘I don’t know. But by going back to Cardiff … might there be acceptance somewhere there?’ She thought of the Hausmann ’scapes and said in a low voice, ‘Perhaps he has found it.’