Rupert Thomson - Air and Fire

The rose, complete with petals, stem and leaves, had almost dried when they heard the grating of carriage-wheels in the street. From the shadows of the veranda they watched Montoya leave his carriage and climb the steps to the de Romblays’ house. At this distance they could not see his face, only the scarlet of his tunic and the epaulettes that clung, like huge glinting spiders, to his shoulders.

‘My God.’ Suzanne had only breathed the words.

‘What is it?’ Wilson asked her.

She shook her head. ‘I’ve just remembered something.’

Last night she had dreamed that she was standing in a house. It was late. No lamps or torches had been lit. There was not even a candle to see by. Only the moonlight falling through a high window, pooling on anything that had a shine to it.

She was standing at the foot of a stone staircase. She could look up and watch the stairs come sweeping down into the hall, almost like a river or a tide, each stair gifted with a silver edge. She could see details; the smooth wooden rail of the banister and how it curved towards her, curled into a snail-shell. She reached one hand out, let her fingers trace the curve and final circle of the wood.

She heard a shuffling close by. She had been expecting something to happen on the staircase — someone to descend, perhaps; but the sound had come from behind her. She looked round.

Two women were dancing with each other on the flagstone floor. They were Indian women, with oval faces and splayed toes. One wore a scarlet tunic. The other wore pale breeches with silver buttons. Otherwise they were naked. It was a slow dance; they scarcely lifted their feet from the ground. Round and round they shuffled, on their big square feet. Round and round. There was no music.

She had woken that morning believing the house to be Montoya’s.

‘Sounds like the uniform was his,’ Wilson said.

‘You know something, Wilson? He has invited me to tea.’

‘Montoya?’

She nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Then you’ll be able to find out, won’t you?’

‘Find out what?’

‘Whether it was his house that you dreamed about.’

They watched as Montoya emerged from the house up the street and climbed back into his waiting carriage.

‘There are men like him in Paris,’ she said, ‘but I did not expect to find them here, in Santa Sofía.’

Wilson squinted after the carriage. ‘He’s not a typical inhabitant, certainly.’

She began to laugh, and found she could not stop. It was the thought he had given to his judgement, and the gravity with which he had delivered it. He, too, began to laugh.

‘Though I don’t know how I can talk,’ he added, a few moments later, ‘with a red rose painted on my foot.’

After Wilson had left, her smile faded and she sat on the veranda for a long time without moving. She was more shaken than she had realised. It was not the dream that had disturbed her, as she had let him believe. It was not the dream itself, but the nature of the dream.

There had been this, when she was young.

She had dreamed about her china doll. She had watched the doll come tumbling down a slope. Head over heels over head over heels. That tall blue summer sky above. And a faint breeze across the grass. And quiet. Just the china doll all folded up at the foot of the smooth green hill.

It did not happen quite like that, of course.

When she left her house the next morning she was not frightened in the slightest. There was no reason to be: no tall blue sky, no smooth green hill. It was the first time, and she had not yet learned to recognise the pathways, how they bend round without you noticing, how they bring you out in some new, remembered place.

She met her friend Claire at the edge of the woods, as agreed.

‘What’s the time?’ Claire whispered.

Suzanne shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Early.’

It was a secret, this crime that they were about to commit, and yet they must have looked so obvious, two girls threading their way through the trees in clean white dresses. They might almost have been daring the world to catch them in the act, but the world had been asleep that morning; the world saw nothing.

The tip of Claire’s nose was red and every time they hid behind a tree, thinking they had heard something, Claire sniffed.

‘Be quiet,’ Suzanne whispered.

‘I am quiet.’

‘You’re not. You keep sniffing.’

‘I can’t help it,’ Claire whispered back. ‘I’ve got a cold.’

‘Just don’t sniff, that’s all. Do something else.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. Wipe it on leaves.’

The canal lay to the east of the town, beyond the woods. It would be a warm day later but, at that hour, the grass was sticky with mist; it licked at their brown boots, stained the toes and heels black. Suzanne listened to the birds sending their long calls looping through the trees. She could smell the bitter sap in the stalks of plants.

It was still early when they reached the canal. The apple lighters were tied up, two abreast, along the towpath. Here was the threat: the huge dark hulls coarse with rust and sloping steeply into water that was coated with a thick green scum. They were not yet full of fruit. That would take a few more days. Then they would be setting off for Paris. Paris was where the canal ended. Paris was where the apples went.

The two girls crouched in the bracken at the edge of the towpath. They had to be careful. Sometimes there were men.

Insects hovered on the slime below. No one came.

When Suzanne decided it was safe, they ran across the gravel and clambered on to the nearest lighter. Breathing fast, they crouched again. The silence held. They climbed down a vertical metal ladder, and then they were standing in the hold. It was darker down there, though still open to the sky. The sweet smell of peel rose into Suzanne’s nose. She began to fill her bag.

‘Look at me.’

Suzanne looked up.

Claire was balanced on the hill of apples, her toes pointed, her arms held out sideways. She must have climbed back up the ladder and out along the walkway. It was strange. Claire was usually the more cautious of the two, but now she seemed to have fallen into a kind of trance. Perhaps she thought she was the girl who walked the tightrope when the circus came to town.

‘We’re supposed to be stealing,’ Suzanne whispered, ‘not doing tricks.’

Claire did not take any notice.

Before Suzanne could speak again, a noise began. A murmuring and then a drumming. Then a rumbling. She saw Claire’s face tilt. As if the power of the trance were being tipped out of her. The apples jumped from under her feet, and one of her legs swung up into the air. She came tumbling backwards down the slope, and when she reached the floor she did not move.

‘Claire?’ Suzanne was still whispering. If she shouted, men might hear.

Claire was folded up against the side wall of the lighter. The apples had almost buried her completely. There was even an apple resting in the socket of her left eye. Her head looked funny on her neck, like a flower when the stalk has snapped. The tip of her nose was still red, and a clear liquid slid towards her upper lip.

It was then, in the silence that followed the avalanche, in that sudden silence, that Suzanne remembered the dream — the tumbling doll, the smooth green hill — and she dropped her bag and ran for the ladder. She cut her finger as she snatched at the first rung, but she did not look back, not once, not even when she was safe behind her bedroom door.

She filled her wet boots with newspaper and hid them in the cupboard; she would clean them with polish as soon as they were dry so nobody would know. She sucked her finger until the blood slowed down, then she undressed and put her nightgown on. She climbed between the sheets. They were cool against her feet, as if whole days had passed.