Davy consulted the torn-out page of a phone book. He didn’t really need to look again, he knew the number. Nineteen. But he was feeling unexpectedly jumpy about this detour and it gave him something to do. Mentally he added Vandalizing a phone book in a public box to their ever-growing list of crimes. Judging from the book’s plucked state, it was a common misdemeanour.
‘I’m nervous,’ said Miss Flint. ‘Who would ever think you could be nervous when you’re almost dead? I hope you’re taking notes, Mr David. You ought to write a book afterwards. It would have to be fiction, of course. No one would credit this as fact.’
‘It’s just there, up on the right.’
The moment Davy finished speaking, the door of number nineteen opened and a tall, white-haired man emerged. Shutting the door behind him, he hurried down the block with everyone else. He wore a tail suit and bow tie, like Fred Astaire. He had a leather folder tucked underneath his arm. His step was strong. His back was straight. He strode along, exchanging greetings with those he passed.
‘Is that him?’ said Davy.
‘I can’t tell from behind.’ Miss Flint was craning her neck. ‘He did have good posture, he was in the army for a while.’
The man disappeared into the rear door of the building on the corner. As they came up, they saw it was marked Stage Door. The audience bustled in through the front in an excited hubbub. Davy nosed the bike crookedly into the kerb, killed the engine and hopped off.
He leaned into the sidecar, picking up George and the briefcase. Miss Flint had huddled herself into the corner. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said.
‘I was so certain,’ she said. ‘So sure I had to see him one last time. Now I’m here, I just don’t know. What if it isn’t him? What if it is? What do I do?’
‘Don’t ask me, this was your idea. We’re doing the why, like you said.’
Miss Flint didn’t budge.
‘You won’t find out sitting here,’ said Davy.
She still didn’t move.
‘We’ll see you inside,’ he said. ‘Come on, George.’
The theatre lobby was crowded and buzzing. Its worn carpet and patched paint and framed posters of past shows reminded Davy sharply of the Bellevue. It even smelt like it, of dampness and stale shoes and the dust of old dreamings. Maybe all theatres smelt the same.
A waistcoated usher began to ring a handbell, calling out, ‘Take your seats! Three minutes, ladies and gents. Three minutes to curtain.’
Davy squirmed through to the box office and said to the woman behind the grille, ‘Excuse me, ma’am, what’s going on?’
‘Annual Christmas show, dear,’ she said. ‘For Poor Relief.’ She shook George’s paw. ‘Just the two of you?’
‘Is, uh . . . Mr Robert Craig in the show?’
She threw up her hands, exclaiming with high drama, ‘Is he in it? the boy asks! Only every year for the past forty years. That’s why they all come, dear. Mr Craig’s our star turn.’ Davy paid, telling her to keep the change. ‘The poor thank you, dear, as do I. Dogs go free.’ She pushed him a ticket. ‘Enjoy the show.’
The lobby was rapidly emptying. The last few people rushed through the doors, but no Miss Flint. The usher took Davy’s ticket, gave him a handbill and pointed him to the only free seat on the end of the last row. He slipped into it, settling George on his lap and the briefcase at his feet. As the lights dimmed, he glanced over the handbill, which was a running order for the show. There were ten acts in all, with Mr Robert Craig last to appear. He would sing a song called ‘Silent Worship’ by G. F. Handel.
A scratchy orchestra began to play from the pit in front of the stage, the red velvet curtain rattled up and the show began. In front of dog-eared panels painted with a jungle scene, a succession of performers entertained them. A pair of small girls dressed as fairies skipped about to general delight. A determined boy wheezed his accordion through a polka, the audience clapping along to encourage him. An elderly lady, warbling a folk song while plucking a harp, came to a puzzled halt halfway through, announced she’d forgotten the words and started all over again. A man wearing a fez performed comic magic tricks.
Davy didn’t know what to expect, having never been to a theatre show before. They shouldn’t be here, they should be on their way, but here he was so he might as well enjoy it. Of Miss Flint, however, there was no sign.
Outside, the beat officer paused by the motorbike. He walked around it, peered into the sidecar and wrote down the number plate. Then he went into Goessen’s Drugs down the block to ask the boy serving there whether he had seen the driver.
The boy said he’d been swamped by folk at the last minute wanting cones of candy for the show at the old Rivoli and, Mr Goessen having gone to the show, he was on his own and had been that busy somebody could have parked a tank outside and he wouldn’t have noticed.
The cop ordered a bromo for his indigestion and, while the boy mixed it, used the store’s phone booth to call the station.
The curtain was dropped just before Robert Craig came on. Through the chatter of excitement Davy could hear sounds backstage, the rumble of things being moved about. The audience all seemed to know what was going on and welcomed the closed curtain as a thrilling build to the climax of the show. His neighbour, recognizing a stranger, told him how the stage was being cleared. He said how every year Mr Craig brought in a conductor specially for the occasion, a professional from a city orchestra, his fee paid for by Mr Craig. To Davy, it seemed a lot of fuss for one song by one old man.
Then, by some signal he must have missed, it all went quiet. The city conductor appeared in the orchestra pit and bowed to the audience. Davy was expecting applause, they’d clapped all the other acts from start to finish, but they were quiet. It was as if some spell had been cast, binding them to silence. After a moment, the curtain was raised again.
There stood Robert Craig. The man from number nineteen stood alone in a spotlight in the darkness on the empty stage. With his mane of white hair and a rose in his lapel, he was as fine an old man as ever was. Davy looked, but Miss Flint was still not there.
The conductor lifted his hands and the music began and Davy understood why he’d been brought from the city. He made that scratchy orchestra sigh like a breeze on a summer’s day. Then Robert Craig began to sing and Davy was spellbound with the rest.
‘Did you not hear My Lady
Go down the garden singing?
Blackbird and thrush were silent
To hear the alleys ringing.’
His voice was clear and high and beautiful. It was a young man’s voice, fresh and full of hope. It was so entirely unexpected, so impossible, that the first sound of that voice brought tears to Davy’s eyes. He couldn’t help it. The tears just came, unbidden.
And, at last, Davy saw Miss Flint. He watched as she walked slowly up the middle aisle of the Rivoli. Her gaze was fixed on the singer as she moved towards the stage. She, too, had been enchanted.
‘Though I am nothing to her
Though she must rarely look at me
And though I could never woo her
I love her till I die.’
She stopped just before the pit and stood there, pressing her hands to her heart, as if it hurt.
‘But surely you see My Lady
Out in the garden there
Rivalling the glittering sunshine
With a glory of golden hair.’
The orchestra’s last note faded to silence. Silence. Then the audience, as one, rose in a swell of cheering that raised the roof of the glad old Rivoli. Robert Craig bowed and bowed. Though they knew better than to ask for more – he’d not obliged them for twenty years – they called ‘Encore!’ He opened his hands as if to feel the fall of long-desired rain. But they must be satisfied with one song, as he had to be. For his voice was now rare as ancient glass.
Miss Flint stood in the aisle with her hands clasped to her heart. Robert Craig was smiling and smiling, slipping the rose from his lapel, touching it to h
is lips. He was smiling at her.
He could see her.
Davy scrambled on to his chair to get a better view. Miss Flint took a step as the old man leaned forward and tossed the rose. She reached for it – she reached but didn’t catch it. Of course. She could not.
And Davy saw from his vantage point. He saw. The white-haired woman standing in the aisle behind Miss Flint, applauding. He saw that Robert Craig looked at her and not Miss Flint. He saw him smile at her, throw the rose to her. Davy saw her catch it.
‘His wife,’ said the man next to Davy. ‘He always does that. Fifty years they’ve been married.’
And Davy saw Miss Flint’s face as she turned, as she saw his wife. Davy saw the understanding and the regret and the pain come to her all at once.
And he thought that surely she was mistaken about the why. For it couldn’t be right, how could it be meant for her heart to be broken just as she left the world?
The audience filed out, chattering, and Davy swam against the tide to the front row, where Miss Flint sat staring into space. In the pit, the orchestra packed away their instruments. He and George sat beside her. ‘I knew we shouldn’t have come,’ he said. ‘I wish we hadn’t.’
Miss Flint turned her head to Davy. Tears trembled like a fall of stars upon her cheeks. ‘I had to see him before I go. I had to know he’s all right. That his life turned out well. That he’s happy. And he is.’
‘But you’re crying,’ Davy said.
‘Yes. Yes, I am,’ she replied. ‘I’d die a hundred times over to feel this way.’
Davy didn’t understand. But he tried to memorize how she looked, so he could draw her face later on. At last he said, ‘We’d better go.’
As they stood, Davy saw the policeman. He’d stationed himself by the doors so he could see everyone who filed past. The moment Davy spotted him, he spotted Davy. He began to move towards them.
‘Police. Come on,’ Davy said.
They ran up the stairs at the side of the stage, dodging through a door into a corridor full of people. There were dressing rooms either side, overflowing with performers and well-wishers. Miss Flint’s proximity set all the lights fizzing as Davy squeezed through with George in his arms.
Robert Craig said jovially, ‘What’s the hurry, young fellow?’
Miss Flint paused in front of him. She went on tiptoe. ‘Goodbye, Robert.’ She gently kissed him on the lips and his head jerked back, as if he’d had a shock.
The heavy-set policeman appeared at the door to the stage, wincing as he clutched at his side. ‘Hurry,’ said Davy.
They dashed out the stage door, over the road, on to the motorbike. Davy gunned it to life and they were gone.
The night had bedded in when the motorbike began to kick and judder. Then the engine cut out completely and they coasted to a halt. Davy knew they had enough fuel. He attempted to restart it, but the bike was dead.
‘Don’t waste your time, it’s only good for scrap,’ said Miss Flint. As George leaped from the hated sidecar, she climbed out nimbly and Davy stared.
She must have been shedding years by the hour as they travelled. She was in her twenties now, her skin blooming with freshness. Her hair gleamed. Her eyes glowed. She was lovely.
She could tell by his face that she’d changed again. Davy tipped the bike mirror and she took a long look at herself. ‘Well, I’ll be,’ she said softly. ‘Lizzie Flint. It’s been a very long time since I saw you.’
Her buoyant spirit from earlier was gone though. Since seeing Robert Craig, she’d been silent with her thoughts.
There was a crossroads just ahead. From the storage compartment, Davy took her briefcase and his cloth bag, now empty but for his drugstore items. He gave the bike a disgusted kick in passing as they walked the few yards to take a view. They were on high ground. The land had been climbing gently the last mile or so before the bike gave up.
It was a lonely place. There were no lights of human habitation, near or distant. The sky was clear, with a bright round moon. The air was light and cool. What looked to Davy like flat grassland spread out in every direction, punctuated by clusters of low growing brush.
‘They call this place The Grass,’ Lizzie said.
The crossroads signpost sprouted a cluster of wooden fingers pointing in the four directions. Davy couldn’t make out the place names and distances painted on them, they’d faded so badly. Lizzie came to take a look.
‘Are we near?’ Davy asked her.
‘It’s that way,’ she replied, pointing. ‘But across The Grass, it’s only a few miles as the crow flies. The road takes the long way around.’
Davy glanced at the sky. ‘There’s the Pole Star. All we have to do is keep it on our right shoulder.’
‘Let’s wait,’ she said. ‘There’ll surely be a car passing soon. We can get a lift.’
Chilled through from being on the bike, Davy stomped his feet and blew on his hands. He scooped up George and warmed himself by hugging the dog’s strong little body. Lizzie walked a few paces along each road and back again.
The earth underfoot gave off a different feel than that of Brownvale. It seemed to have a restless, seeking energy. He could smell the winterkill of the stubby grass.
There was a worn rectangular stone fallen on its side. He went to sit on it with George and listen for any sound of a vehicle.
Lizzie stood with her arms crossed, looking around. ‘My mother liked to walk here. I never did.’
Davy thought of the boy in the photograph. Had he come too? Had he liked walking here, he and their little dog? He hesitated, then asked her something that was on his mind. ‘What do you think’s happening to your body?’
‘I imagine it’s in cold store in some mortuary,’ Lizzie said. ‘They’ll probably have to keep it there until after the holidays. The old tend to die around Christmas. Perhaps spring just seems too far away. Wherever it is, it’s beginning to decay.’
‘They buried my mother in Potter’s Field back in Brownvale. Where will you go?’ he said.
‘Nowhere. Everywhere. Ashes to ashes. If my paperwork catches up with my body in time, they’ll know to cremate me.’ She sat down next to him.
‘I planted a rose for her. I’d plant one for you,’ Davy said.
‘An apple tree.’ She smiled. ‘A tart apple. More fitting, don’t you think?’
‘Can I ask you something else?’
‘You may,’ she said.
He hesitated, then said, ‘How does it feel?’
She didn’t have to ask what he meant. She knew. ‘Our atomic composition is mainly hydrogen, water,’ she said. ‘If you calculate by mass, we’re made of oxygen, sixty-five per cent.’ She turned her head to look at him. ‘Either way, I’m evaporating. Thinning to the air, body and soul. I feel lighter and lighter all the time.’
‘I better hang on to you, then.’ Davy took her hand.
She was right. She was like a feather, insubstantial.
A slight uneasiness prowled in Davy’s bones. It probably wasn’t the place, more the time pressing on his mind. He tipped George from his lap and stood up. ‘It’s got to be midnight. We need to keep moving.’
‘Crossing The Grass at night is just foolhardy,’ she said. ‘It’s not safe. For you, I mean, not me. The ground’s rough, you could easily fall.’
‘We don’t know how much time you have left.’
‘You have to be prepared for the conditions. You need the right equipment, the right clothing. The weather here can be unpredictable.’
‘It’s grass. It’s a clear night.’
‘You’ll need a walking stick. The conditions . . . What are you doing?’
He emptied the contents of the briefcase into his bag – her little painting, the photograph, the banded stacks of money – and slung it across his chest. ‘Do you want that?’ He indicated the briefcase. She shook her head.
He searched about and found a good-sized sturdy stick. He tested its strength, swiping it through the air. ‘OK,’ h
e said. ‘I’m prepared for the conditions.’
He whistled for George. He took Lizzie by the hand. He led them out on to The Grass.
The air had been calm at the crossroads. Out on The Grass, it was blowing a strong westerly. The ground was rough and uneven, like she’d said, dipping and rising underfoot without warning. Davy used his stick as they went along. With no large landmarks to plot their path, it all looked much the same. It seemed endlessly open. He kept a careful watch on the Pole Star.
George played scout, running ahead and returning to them. They came upon a standing circle of stones, worked with symbols like the one they’d sat on at the crossroads. The wind was so loud in Davy’s ears that he had to lean in close to hear Lizzie. Even though she was right next to him and he held her hand.
‘They think this was a ritual landscape,’ she said. ‘Thousands of years ago. Ancient beliefs. Ceremonies. The whole place. The land, the sky, the spirit. All connected through the stones.’
It was a far cry from the preachings of Parson Fall. ‘Like in a church?’ said Davy.
Lizzie shook her head. ‘Older. Wilder. Unknown.’
The wind buffeted them strongly. Davy soon found he was having to lean into it to make progress. He was unpleasantly aware of his body’s flimsiness. He feared that Lizzie, with her terrible lightness, might blow away. He stopped to tuck himself closely in behind her. ‘Let it push you against me,’ he told her.
They moved forward step by step. His legs were having to dig in to keep them upright. He was thankful to have the stick for support. The wind was a constant whine in his ears. George was choosing to stay close to them.