The Ballroom (25 page)

He gathered a few stalks from the last sheaf he cut and tucked them into his belt.

The men were led to the farmyard, where a meal was laid out in the shade: long tables covered with food and jugs of ale. The farmers stood back, motioning for the men to sit.

‘
Bona mangarie!
’ Dan clapped his hands together and rubbed them. ‘About time they showed us some thanks.’

John took his seat at the heaving table, where meat lay in the centre, not mutton in pies and stews, but a whole pig that had been killed and roasted on a spit and carved. Plates were piled high, and the men fell on them, eating with their hands, chins running greasy with the juice. The meat was sweet and tender; there was salty crackling, roast potatoes, bread. When the jugs of ale were empty, they were taken away and filled again.

John did not eat much. His blood was too high for that. He wove the corn stalks beneath the table instead, leaving the ears long and trailing, the way he had seen his father do it for his mother: a gift at the end of the harvest – after the
meitheal –
which his mother would put up above the hearth. He watched as the other men grew addled with beer and food, and he thought of Ella.

One of the farmers had a fiddle, and Dan jumped up, red and roaring with drink, hollering at him to play, clapping his hands and rousing the men to dance.

‘Wake up the women!’ he roared. ‘Go on. Wake the women up!’

The farmers laughed – as merry as the men now, faces blurry, all differences dissolved by meat and drink and music.

‘Not dancing then?’

John turned to see Brandt standing a little way behind his head.

The attendant stepped up towards him. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, waving his arm at the table, the food, the drink, the dancing men, ‘all this will be finished. They won’t need you in the fields any more. Tomorrow you’ll be back to digging graves with me.’ He lifted his pint pot, bashed it against John’s shoulder, sloshed the yellow liquid into his mouth, then wiped his hand over his lips and belched as he wandered off.

John knew he was right. Tomorrow, when the meat and the drink were cleared away and the men’s heads were thick, when the crop was safe in the barns and the gleaning begun, things would be just as they were before. He had to take the night and stretch it, live inside it, make it his own.

As the evening passed, the attendants grew slow and sleepy. Everyone was heavy with food and drink, but John’s own tiredness had left him. Everything was clear: the evening air, cooler now, the deep, rich smell of the meat, the hoppy ale, the ripeness of the men, all of it seasoned with the salt of anticipation on his tongue. When the fiddle was sawing and the music was at its height, Dan pulled out of the fray and came to lean over the table towards John.

‘Here,
mio Capitane
.’ His breath was dense with ale. He reached out and placed something in John’s palm. ‘You might need these tonight.’

John opened his hand to reveal a full box of matches. He looked up to thank him, but Dan was already off, boot stamping on the ground, fingers in his mouth to whistle the music on.

Now.

He stood, edging his way over to the place where the cobbled yard met the fields beyond. No one watched him go.

Now he turned and ran, keeping to the borders of the fields, making for the line of trees that was the wood, the evening air whistling around his ears, arriving, lungs raked. He climbed over the metal fence, and he was amongst the trees, where everything was quiet and cool and dim.

Far behind him, he could hear the distant skitter of the fiddle. The whoops of the men. He walked slowly, now feeling his heart grow calm, as he threaded his way through the trunks, making for the edge where the old oak stood. There was no one visible in the small patch of open ground, and he crossed it swiftly. When he arrived at the great trunk, he was filled with the impulse to put his hand on its wood, as Dan might, and when he did so, he was glad of the feel of the warm, rough bark beneath his palm. ‘Now, lad,’ he said. ‘I hope you’re after keeping me hidden tonight.’

Up ahead was a limb thick enough to hold him, and he pulled himself up towards it. The tree shivered and rustled around him and then grew still.

He was hidden now, but from up here could see the asylum buildings stretching ahead, the path she would take when she came, the clock tower, the buildings almost beautiful in this hazy evening light. The men approached, on their way back to the wards, and he held his breath as they passed beneath him, their chatter lower now, punctured by the earthy roar of Dan’s laughter, the grey cloud of their cigarette smoke drifting lazily up to where he sat. They were drunk. All of them, ale-sodden and slow, and they would not bother to count heads tonight. He leant back against the solidity of the trunk.

His heart was thudding. His throat was dry. He wished he had brought some water with him. There was a long time yet to wait.

Small insects filled the air, and swallows swooped to catch them as they flew. He took out his tobacco and rolled a quick cigarette, then scraped a match against the hot bark of his seat, sending the smoke up through the leaves. The wood creaked. Small birds returned to the branches above.

Behind him, the sun cracked and spilt itself over the moor, and the light fell in pools of gold that turned to red, then purple and dark blue, and though the covering of the leaves was thick, he had a sense of the land beneath him: the buildings ahead, and then behind him the rest of the grounds, the farms with the animals put away for the night, the train tracks that led to Leeds and beyond and all the dark hills in between.

The dusk came, and the moon rose, golden, above the buildings ahead. Different shapes filled the sky – the whirling dance of bats – and when the edges of things were soft and the shadows began to merge he watched the path. He fingered the stalks in his pocket, his eyes on the trampled grass. The thought of her was like touching something hot.

He smoked cigarette after cigarette, and was grateful for the gift of Dan’s matches. Now the space below seemed traitorous. Shadows flickered and blurred. He saw her twenty times and it was never her. Time passed and the night thickened and he was sure she would not come and he could hardly think above the pandemonium of his heart.

B
REATHING OUT INTO
the dark, she was sick and slippery with fear and wanting. If she twisted her head, she could see the moon, full-bellied and high. Her heart thudded at her chest, in her throat, and the beat of it was strange, fast but halting, as though it might give up altogether.

You have to gamble to get what you want.

She peeled back her cover and swung down her legs, bare feet touching cool tile. The light was strong enough for her to see the beds ranged around, each with its humped shape of a sleeping woman on top. If anyone were watching they would see her clearly. A moan came from the opposite side of the room, and she fell to her knees, almost knocking her chamberpot over, catching it before it rocked and spilt.

She bunched her cumbersome nightgown around her and began to crawl over the floor as quietly as she could. When she reached the top of the room, she had the strange thought she might cry out and betray herself, and bit down hard on her lip as she crawled past the sleeping nurses and on towards the toilet block, and only when she reached it did she stand, running to the last of the stalls, arriving drenched in sweat. She didn’t dare run the tap, so knelt and reached into the bowl instead, bringing out a handful of water, dashing it against her underarms and the back of her neck, until the smell of her fear was gone.

When she climbed up on to the seat, the window was in front of her, but the hole was much smaller than she had remembered, far too small for her to crawl through. She would have to break it further. She flailed in the darkness, grabbing the flush; on its end was a wooden handle, but it was trapped in a bracket on the wall and impossible to lift out. She wrapped the material of her nightgown around her fist, and the glass smashed with a high, traitorous sound. She stopped, arm half raised, blood pummelling in her ears, but no one came, and she could hear nothing from the wards.

She pushed the splinters out with her elbow, clearing the frame and then the ledge on the other side of the glass, then scrambled through the hole, felt cloth tearing, shards of pain. She landed on the grass and rolled.

For a long moment she stayed there, hunched in a small, tight ball, then slowly uncurled herself. She placed her palms flat against the earth. The grass was scarce, and the ground felt crumbly and dry, but beneath the smell of hard-packed earth she could sense the rich, dark tang of the soil. No light shone from the toilet block. They had not come after her.

As the thrum of her blood retreated, she could hear a small breeze in the leaves of the trees at the edge of the field, the close scratch of animals, the rustling night-sounds of nature all around. The light was that of twilight, and it was possible to see well and far: to the fields the men had sung in, to the dark outline of the wood, and beyond it all, the low rise of the moor. The air was sweet, and she gulped it down.

Free. She let the word fill her.

If she ran now, she would be miles away before anyone woke. If she ran now, she would never have to go back in there.

But then she thought of him waiting for her.

Would he come with her?

Would he run too?

She made her way along the narrow path that skirted the back of the buildings, and the earth was warm beneath the skin of her feet, the sweat cooling on her back. The air was thick, the temperature of blood.

She reached the edge of the wood, saw the single tree, standing apart, huge in the darkness, throwing its branches to the sky, and as she stepped beneath its spreading leaves, there was a rustling, and he was there, landing quietly on the ground beside her. The bulk of him. He seemed bigger here, with nothing else around him, only the trees and the sky. And her heart slipped as she thought that perhaps she did not know him at all.

‘Ella.’

The sound of her name in his mouth made the skin on her arms lift and pucker. He reached for her hands, but she pulled against him.

‘We are free,’ she said. ‘We can leave this place.’

And the words seemed to beat and churn in the air between them.

‘Wait,’ he said. His voice was low, like a drum covered by cloth. ‘Wait a moment. Let me show you.’

He led her to where a small, broken gate marked the edge of the wood. He went first, helping her through it, and then they were beneath the trees. She felt fear – she had been outside where she was free, where she could see far and wide for the first time in her life, and this wood was dark and close – but when they stepped forward, she saw that the wood was not truly dark, but made of silver and blue, and was not thick, but full of wide clearings, where moonlight filtered through the trees and pooled against the ground. And as they walked, the grasses were long and cool. There was no dryness here. It seemed a space apart. She thought she saw eyes, quick animal eyes in the darkness, thought she heard the beat of small wings in the air.

They emerged before a rolling, stubbled field where corn stooks cast blue shadows on the ground and the moor rose gently behind. The moon swung high and ripe above it all, the air was heavy with the hot, sweet smell of the fields, and it felt to Ella, standing at its edge, like a new world and that she and the man beside her were the only people in it.

‘Please.’ He turned to her, spoke softly. ‘Stay this night with me.’

And she was empty suddenly, and light, and the freedom was in her, was part of her, and the need to run had gone.

‘Here.’ He lifted her hand, placed something in it. In the moonlight she saw cornstalks twisted together, their ears fanning below. ‘At home,’ he said, ‘at the end of harvest-time, the loveliest of all the women walks across the fields. It is her task to find a grain.’

Now, beneath this moon, nothing seemed strange to her at all. She stepped out over the field and the stubble was sharp beneath her feet, but the sharpness did not bother her. When she reached the centre, she knelt to the shaved earth, feeling with her fingers until she had lifted a fallen grain into her palm. She turned to see him come towards her. He dropped down beside her, put his thumb to the grain and closed his hand around hers, making a double fist. He put his lips to it, and she shivered, but not from any cold. Then he opened it again.

‘Blow,’ he said.

And she bent and blew the grain from her palm.

Then he dipped his face and kissed her. A long, sweet kiss. He touched the skin on her neck, brushed her lips, passed his hands over her hair.

And she did the same, reaching up and touching his mouth. Tracing the line of it. She put her palms against his cheeks, felt the scratch of his beard. He closed his eyes, and she put her thumbs against his lids, feeling the light, living pulse of him there. She felt the creases in his forehead, the groove of his temples, put her hands in his hair, felt it rough with the blown dust of the fields.

She was learning him, out here in this blue night. Clem had her poetry, but she had this. She was learning him by heart.

‘Your hair,’ he said to her. ‘Would you take it down?’

She undid her braid, letting her hair fall, and he kissed her again, and again, every kiss an unwinding, as though he were lifting off her, layer by layer, everything she had carried, revealing someone new.

He put his jacket on the ground, unbuttoned his waistcoat, his shirt, passed his hands beneath her nightgown, lifting it off. She was naked now but felt no shame. The warm air her only covering. The hot living breath of the earth all around.

They turned to each other, and when they moved together she cried out, colouring the night air with her sound.

W
HEN SHE CAME
, she was kind. And clean. She lifted his head. She changed his sheets.

She was an angel, and she had come to cleanse.

I am sorry
, he whispered to her.
Forgive me.