Rose led the way from the path, where the frozen earth on each side was frilled up into little stiff waves, over crisp frozen grass which appeared beneath their footsteps, round the edge of the ‘rink’ to where, a little above the level of the ice, a lopped tree trunk, perhaps put there long ago for that purpose, served as a seat. She was carrying, with her skates, a cassette player, in case, as she put it, anyone wanted to dance. (Dance!! thought Gulliver.) The skaters sat down and began to take off their walking footwear and put on their skating boots, while Jenkin and Tamar wandered on, upon the higher ground, in the direction of the river. Gulliver felt, and felt that they all felt, a kind of trembling excitement, a shudder of anticipation almost like sexual desire, as they thus transformed themselves, as in some physical change of being, from slow walking animals into fast sliding ones. It was three o’clock, the sun would set soon after four, and the sky, its dome contracting, was becoming red and glowing darkly. The snow was pink, the figures of the few skaters upon the ice, black. Voices sounded oddly, subdued, ringing yet enclosed.
‘Who’s the old lady in black skating over there?’ asked Lily, who seemed in no hurry for the metamorphosis. ‘She must be crazy to skate in that long skirt.’
‘That’s no lady, that’s the parson!’ said Gerard, in whom the cold and the light and the prospect of speed had inspired an unusual jollity.
‘That’s our local vicar,’ said Rose, ‘Angus McAlister, or Father McAlister as he likes to be called. He’s fairly new
here. He always wears his cassock! Remember last year, Gerard?’
‘He’s showing off!’ said Gerard. ‘Look how gracefully he controls his skirt! And now he’s put his hands behind his back like in that picture by Raeburn!’
‘He’s a bit dotty,’ said Rose. ‘He uses the old prayer book and wants to be “Father”, he even hears confessions! – but he’s very evangelical too. If you come to church tomorrow you’ll hear him preach.’
‘That’ll be nice,’ said Lily dubiously, struggling at her laces with clumsy cold gloved hands.
Rose was first upon the ice. She skipped down the little slope and sped off gracefully and very fast, tracing swift arcs in the snowy surface, circled for a bit, then came back calling to Gerard and holding out her hand. Gerard, more awkwardly, descended the slope, then leapt onto the ice and raced towards her. They held hands for a moment, whirling each other round, then shot apart in different directions, Gerard flying off toward the far end of the meadow, Rose to talk to the skirted priest who, increasing his pace, skated easily beside her.
It’s just as I feared, thought Gulliver, they’re blooming experts! If I can stay upright I’ll be lucky. The best plan is for Lily and me to mess about at this end for a short time, just for appearances, while they’re flashing around in the distance, and then quickly get this gear off and go and look for Jenkin and Tamar at the river. I can save my face if I can be just
seen
to be
skating
! They’re so pleased with themselves actually they won’t bother to watch my performance. Or will they? When it gets darker I’ll be invisible anyway. If only dear old Lily doesn’t pull me over!
The afternoon was darkening but the reddish light was more intense, making the scene for the moment more vivid. The dark figures of the skaters were
working
, it seemed, upon the hidden ice, making it, by their quick weavings, more visible, instinctively cutting the still unmarked snow with their sharp feet. Most of the villagers, who had a longer walk home, had gone now, the whizzing priest had disappeared. Gull was trying to get his cramped foot into one of his skating
boots. His foot, immobilised with cold and locked into an impossible position, dabbed miserably at the space, which was blocked now by the tongue of the boot. He had taken off his gloves and his hands were frozen.
‘Gerard and I walked to the village this morning,’ said Jenkin to Tamar, ‘and the village pond was frozen – well, of course it was frozen – and the ducks and geese were walking about on the ice. They looked so touching, so awkward and puzzled and indignant! You could see how heavy those geese were, planting their feet so carefully, they were quite aggressive too, they wouldn’t get out of the way, the skaters had to avoid them. They must have felt it was the last straw, their pond gone solid and humans rushing about! We went to the Pike. They’ve got the Christmas decorations up. I always love this time before Christmas, don’t you, when people start setting up Christmas trees and hanging holly wreaths on their doors. When do you put up your decorations?’
‘We don’t put up decorations.’
‘Well, neither do I much – just a few old baubles. The Pike is nice and friendly, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t like pubs.’
‘You should give them a try. You needn’t be nervous.’
‘I’m not nervous.’
‘See how red the sky has become, and everything’s so motionless and so quiet, like an enchantment. Now we’ve left the others we might be in Siberia! Do you know, we haven’t seen a single bird since we left the house? I suppose they’re all hiding in the thickest bushes with their feathers fluffed up. I can’t think how they survive in this weather.’
‘They don’t, lots of them die.’
They had been tramping across the grass whose longer blades appeared here and there above the snow, outstretched like little green ribbons hatched over with crosses made by the frost.
Jenkin had been busily making conversation, trying to stir Tamar’s attention, pointing things out to her, the tracks of
animals, the perfect shape of a leafless oak, a small holly bush covered with red berries in the hedge that bordered the meadow. Now they had reached the river and looked down in silence at the stiff frozen shapes of broken water plants which rose out of the quite thick fringe of ice which bordered either bank. In the centre the river rushed, fierce, silent, fast, fed by other snows, and black, black in between its edges of ice and snow.
Tamar looked down, lowering her head and fumbling at the knot of her scarf, then pulling the scarf more closely forward over her brow.
Jenkin had been watching Tamar since their arrival at Boyars. He shared the common knowledge of her troubles, he so acutely felt, now, her sadness, her unapproachable remoteness, he wished he could ‘do something’ for her. He had known her all her life, but never well, had never figured as ‘jolly uncle Jenkin’, or as someone in whom she might confide or trust. Jenkin, for all his schoolmasterly talents, had never achieved with Tamar, as child or adult, the easy and authoritative relationship which Gerard enjoyed with her.
While Jenkin was wondering what topic of conversation to try next, Tamar suddenly said, ‘Do you think Jean will come back to Duncan?’
He said at once, ‘Yes, of course. Don’t let
that
make you sad!’
‘Has he heard from her just lately?’
‘Well – he had a solicitor’s letter, but he wrote saying he loved her and expected her back, and there’s been nothing since, which must be a good sign. That other thing
can’t
last – it didn’t before and it won’t now. She’ll be back!’ Jenkin was not sure whether he really felt this confidence, but he wanted to reassure Tamar.
‘It’s such a pity they never had children,’ she said, still looking down at the river, ‘but perhaps they never wanted any, not everyone does.’
‘Duncan certainly did, he was longing for a child. I’m not sure about Jean.’
‘Oh look – isn’t that a dead cat?’
Something humpy and streaky and dark was tumbled by in the fierce rush of the river. It was a dead cat. ‘No, no,’ said Jenkin, ‘it’s a bundle of reeds. Come on, let’s go back. Why, I think it’s starting to snow again.’
Lily had finished lacing her boots, but was sitting paralysed, watching the distant gyrations of Rose and Gerard. ‘Come on,’ said Gulliver, ‘or are you funking it? Never mind, I’ll have a try. Pray for me.’
He rose to his feet, balanced upon the ridiculously thin edges of the skates, which at once sunk into the snowy grass. Stretching both arms out to balance himself and lifting up each foot carefully he made his way down the slope. Unfortunately there was nothing to hold onto, no friendly tree extending a sturdy branch. Near to the brink, he thrust one foot forward onto the ice. The foot rejected the hard slippery alien surface, declining to plant itself firmly as a foot ought to, but moving uneasily, slipping away, turning feebly over on its side. Gulliver withdrew the foot. If only he could
stand
on the ice for a moment or two he might manage to move cautiously forward in some reasonably skaterly manner. After all, he
could
skate, that is he had proceeded on skates in an upright position for short distances on ice rinks of his youth. He edged carefully forward a little so that both his skates were embedded at the verge of the ice, which was not at all clean-cut, but a messy area where humpy earth and grass were covered with a brittle mix of ice and snow. Here he again got one foot forward onto the smoother ice. But the other foot, taking his weight for a moment, had sunk a centimetre or two deeper into the earthy perimeter. The problem of removing it while balancing on the forward foot seemed insoluble. In calm despair, with arms outstretched, Gulliver gazed ahead of him into the red dusk. He thought, I can’t go forward, I can’t get back, I shall have to sit down. Thank God Rose and Gerard are somewhere else, I can’t even see them. At that moment a hand appeared and took hold of his outstretched hand. Lily had evidently ventured down to the edge behind him.
Gulliver gripped the supportive hand and by some miraculous manoeuvre managed to get his other foot onto the ice, while resting quite a lot of weight upon Lily’s hand, and now upon her arm which had also appeared beside him. He was standing! He let go of Lily and began to walk upon the ice, not sliding but walking, balancing as on stilts. Now, how did one get going? His legs resisted the desire of his ankles to turn quietly over, his expensive boots bore him stiffly up, his stomach, his diaphragm, his shoulders, his pendant arms, sought intently for a certain rhythmical movement, a leaning and a swaying, a distribution of the weight, so that the feet, used after all to taking turns on
terra firma
, could in this weird and artificial predicament, proceed to a harmonious cooperation. Gulliver inclined himself forward, advancing one skate, then as it slid a little and took his weight, with an instinctively remembered motion bringing on its fellow. He was still upright! He could do it! He was skating!
At that moment somebody appeared beside him and said, ‘Well done!’ It was Lily. She moved past him. She was skating too. What was more, and Gulliver somehow took this in instantly, not only could she skate, but she could skate
very well indeed.
Lily was now in front of him, moving backwards. He saw in the crimson twilight her face under her black fur hat, with reddened cheeks and nose, bright with triumphant joy. She made a little circle, then a larger one, then with a wave set off across the ice at an astonishing speed. Gulliver sat down abruptly.
Rose and Gerard, who had been skating together holding hands at the farther end of the meadow where a few villagers, mainly young boys, still lingered, were returning toward the centre when they met Lily. They heard her before they saw her, since Lily as she was released into an element which suited her perfectly, uttered, as her speed increased, a loud cry, like a savage bird’s cry, or the aggressive scream uttered by Japanese masters of the martial arts. Lily, with a group from her school, had learnt to skate as a child at the rink at
Queensway. The others gave up, she stayed, she had, a teacher told her, a natural talent, she learnt to dance, she learnt to leap, she won a competition. For a short time skating seemed a means of dominating the world; but somehow she never really believed in it, the glamorous enclosure of the ice rink was a dream palace which she always left with a sense of doom, a secret artificial place which made the squalor of her real place more awful by contrast. It brought her no social life, and she lacked the will and confidence to take up the challenge of becoming even better. So the pursuit lost its charm amid the miseries and muddles of her student life, and when the money came and she had so many gratifications and so little sense of the value of anything it did not occur to her to return to what now seemed like a phase of her girlhood. Her paralysis in the scene at the water meadow arose from a sudden painful memory, as her hands touched the laces of the boots, of her younger unspoilt self; also, like Gull, she was not at all sure she would be able to do it. Of course she would still be able to skate, but would she still be able to skate
very well
? The wild scream expressed her instant discovery that her talent had not abandoned her.
Just before Lily appeared, swift as an arrow or an announcing angel in the middle of the ice, Rose had suggested to Gerard that they might now, since almost everyone had gone, put on some waltz music on their side of the meadow and dance, as they always did, had done for years and years in winters when the ice was hard. The both danced well, but were tactfully anxious not to impose their display upon other enjoyers of the ice. Now when they had the meadow almost to themselves they might evoke the sudden magic of the music in the winter picture. Gerard and Rose had also, with tact, kept well away from Gull and Lily so as not to risk being witnesses of their perhaps more modest performance. Now, suddenly, here was Lily Boyne, flashing past them, returning from a distance at express speed, waving one leg while spinning on one foot, leaping high into the air and landing on the tips of her skates, seeming to move not on the surface of the ice but above it. Gerard cried out, ‘Lily, Lily, you’re a
star
!’
Rose watched the acrobatics, then decided quickly. She said to Gerard, ‘You dance with Lily.’ Then she sped away at her own fastest pace in the direction of the base camp. A few moments later the music of Strauss transformed the scene.
Gulliver had not arisen after his sudden descent, he had no wish now to explore his recovered ability any further. Shameless and unwitnessed he crawled on the ice back to his starting point, crawled up the slope and hoisted himself onto the log. With relief he undid his boots and released his crushed feet and his aching ankles. His front was covered with mud and snow, and his pale brown corduroy trousers stained and soaking wet. He found he had lost one of his gloves. It had probably come offwhen Lily grabbed his hand. He thought he could see it lying a little distance away on the ice. He sat watching Lily’s distant gyrations. Then Rose suddenly materialised, sprang up the bank on her skates like a goat, and turned on the cassette. At that same moment Jenkin and Tamar appeared out of the dusk.