Echoes of the Dance (8 page)

Father seems to find the question a difficult one: he frowns, putting the journal to one side and reaching for his pipe.

‘It's all a question of balance,' he says after a moment's thought.

Roly immediately imagines himself balancing: standing on one leg like the heron or doing a handstand and trying to remain upside down, quite still, while his legs are in the air. He can imagine his mother dancing and singing but not doing handstands.

‘When you grow up,' his father is saying, ‘it's important to balance your life so that your mind as well as your body is . . . happy.'

Roly frowns, still stroking Claude who now rolls onto his back so that his tummy can be rubbed. His front paws flop on his chest and he stretches luxuriously.

‘The point is –' his father is trying to make it clearer – ‘that your mother had a very different life before we got married and you and Mim came along. She was an actress and she had lots of friends who shared that life with her.'

He pauses. Roly nods encouragingly. He knows all ‘the chums' and has listened to their conversations about theatres and things called ‘digs', which make him think of badgers, and people who were landladies but didn't seem to have anything to do with the kind of land that they have here in Cornwall.

‘Well, she gave all that up to come down here to be with me, you see, and sometimes she misses it, just as I should miss Cornwall terribly if I had to go and live in London.'

‘But she'd rather be here with us than in London with the chums?' he asks rather anxiously.

‘Of course she would! But that's what I mean about a balance. Happy though she is with us here your mother is still interested in the theatre, and what is happening in that world, and it is important for her to keep in touch with it. Depending on who we are and what we do, everyone needs a different kind of balance in their lives. That's why it is essential that when you grow up you choose the right career. I'm lucky to be able to live here and do the job I love.'

‘What shall I do when I grow up?' asks Roly, interested now in this question of balance. ‘How shall I know about the balance?'

‘We shall have to wait and see,' says his father. ‘You're rather young yet to take that decision.'

A door opens on the galleried landing and Aunt Mary appears, carrying Mim who has been having her nappy changed. She screams with delight as Aunt Mary leans with her over the banisters.

‘Down!' she shouts at once. ‘Go down!'

Roly and his father watch as Mim, beaming triumphantly, is carried down the stairs.

‘I wonder what Mim will be when she grows up,' says Roly.

His father grins. ‘I can answer that one,' he replies confidently. ‘Mim will be a proper little madame.'

CHAPTER NINE

The drive back from Camelford, where Daisy had been to stock up her larder, took much longer than was necessary because of the stops. The first of these was so that a tractor could manoeuvre itself across the narrow lane and into a field. The aged driver raised a fraying straw hat in courteous thanks and, as he climbed down to open the gate, she was rather struck by the incongruity of his braces – a bright, smart City red – worn over a faded plaid shirt. Once the tractor had passed into the field she remained to watch a rabbit, which lolloped to and fro amongst the tall buttercups in the ditch beneath the hawthorn hedge. He was clearly enjoying himself: pausing to sit upright in the afternoon sunshine between dashes amongst the campion and mouse-ear that flowered in the grass. His long, delicate, almost transparent ears, twitching to catch the least sound, reminded Daisy of the glistening pink colour of the inside of sea shells.

She drove on slowly, passing up out of the deep, rain-scoured lanes to higher ground. No hedges grew here but the high dry banks were laced through with the knuckly bony roots of ash and oak. Moss as bright as lettuce, soft as tiny cushions, inhabited these roots alongside ferns, whose tender green frondy fingers thrust themselves out from rough brown curled fists. Daisy stopped the car and climbed out to peer into a deep hole: at its entrance a pile of fresh earth indicated recent excavation. A very strong rank smell – one that Uncle Bernard would have recognized at once – made her draw back, wrinkling her nose. As she stood, stretching a little to ease her back, she grew aware of another smell carried towards her on a light warm breeze: a very different, deliciously heady kind of scent.

She walked a little further on and, rounding a curve in the lane, she gasped aloud with delight. Here, beneath the shelter of a sycamore tree, a fall of bluebells flooded down the bank and into the ditch in a glorious wash of hyacinthine colour. Beyond a field gate several cows lay placidly, taking their ease, their jaws revolving slowly. Daisy leaned on the top bar of the gate and watched them contentedly. Her body felt at ease and her mind refused to dwell on those anxieties and fears that fretted at the edges of her consciousness and kept her awake in the early hours of the morning.

She spoke to the matrons in the field, telling them that she thought that they were very handsome and onto a good thing; they regarded her tolerantly but felt no requirement to return the compliment by getting up to inspect her more closely. Daisy watched them for a little longer, experiencing a satisfying wholeness in the scene and a deep connection with the pulse of the earth. She saw in her mind's eye a series of movements that described the shapes of the cows and the pattern of this green curving meadow that was intersected by thorn hedges and overarched by the shining blue sky.

She repeated the steps in her head, knowing that from henceforward that particular
enchaînement
would describe this pastoral landscape. As she continued her journey she found herself wondering idly – ‘Not
that
idly,' she told herself sternly, ‘be honest!' – whether to send Paul a postcard. She'd bought several in Camelford, rather good ones of Tintagel and the coast, and she sketched out a few casual sentences in her head.

Back home again she saw that Roly's car and the dogs were missing and she carried her shopping up to the flat, still composing some friendly lines.

‘So beautiful here. Feeling lots better, back on Monday.' Or: ‘Wish you could see the countryside here. Feeling very relaxed. Looking forward to the ballet.'

She made a face: both sounded very trite – and how was she to sign herself? Best wishes? A bit formal. Love? Much too pushy. Daisy finished stowing away her shopping and paused. A car was coming into the yard; the engine cut, a door slammed. She went into her sitting-room and looked down. A tall, elegant figure was stepping from the passenger's door and looking up at the window as if expecting someone to be waiting. Daisy's heart leaped up with joy.

‘Mim!' she cried – and went hurrying out and down the little stone staircase to meet her.

‘Darling Daisy!' Mim hugged her warmly, kissed her lightly on each cheek and then held her away so as to study her properly. ‘Dark shadows under the eyes and you've lost weight.'

Daisy chuckled. ‘Hardly surprising under the circumstances,' she pointed out.

‘Typical dancer,' observed Roly, letting the dogs out of the back of the car. ‘Eats like ten strong men and stays thin as a reed.'

Mim stooped to embrace the dogs, her long damson-coloured silk jersey coat dragging in the dust, laughing as she suffered the enthusiastic licks of Bevis's greeting.

‘Hello, my darlings,' she murmured. ‘Hello, Floss. What nice manners you have. Give me your paw. That's right.' She shook hands with Floss and stood up. ‘So Kate liked Floss.'

‘She did,' agreed Roly. ‘And Floss liked Kate. They got on very well together.'

Just for a moment Mim stood still, her eyes closed so as to imagine Kate and Floss together. Daisy and Roly watched her: both of them recognized this characteristic. It was as if Mim were seeing something important that would bring some insight, some special wisdom that guided her thoughts and decisions. It might be to do with a pupil, a relationship, or some creative process in class.

Roly and Daisy waited slightly anxiously until Mim opened her eyes and beamed at them.

‘The difficulty is,' she admitted, ‘trying to see Kate
without
a dog.'

‘Well, I couldn't agree more,' said Roly, ‘but she is utterly wumbled at present.'

‘Wumbled?' Puzzled, Daisy followed them into the house.

‘It means worried and jumbled,' explained Roly. ‘It's a word our mother used rather a lot.' He grinned at her. ‘So do you like my surprise?'

‘I do indeed but you might have told me.'

‘I wouldn't let him,' said Mim. ‘I was so afraid that something else might go wrong that I decided we wouldn't say a word to you until I was safely home. Oh, what a time it's been. I can stay for only two days. Come and talk to me, Daisy, while I unpack and wash my hands.'

Roly fed the dogs and went out into the yard to fetch some logs, thinking ahead to supper: a rack of lamb with purple sprouting broccoli and leeks in a white sauce. Tomorrow Mim would probably want to go to Padstow and buy fresh fish; she liked to cook when she had the time to think about it. Whistling to the dogs he opened the gate and wandered across the lane onto the path that led along the river bank. Uncle Bernard took his time, investigating a rabbit hole beneath the furze bushes with interest, but the other two barged ahead following a track through the alder and willow trees.

Disturbed from his fishing, the heron rose slowly from the middle of the stream; his great wings spanned the narrow stretch of water, lifting him high above the excited barking of the dogs, who had now plunged into the river. Roly watched him go, delighted as always by the languid grace, remembering how he had seen him for the first time in this very place.

His first impression is not of grace but of his father's old umbrella: it is something to do with the way those long legs hang down like broken spokes and the mackintosh quality of the flapping leathery wings. He sees the long, murderously stabbing beak and the watchful eye and is filled with wonder.

‘What is it?' he asks his mother almost fearfully.

‘It's a heron,' she answers. Her voice is light with pleasure. ‘I've never seen him so far upstream before. Perhaps the heronry is growing and he needs to come further afield to find food for his babies. That's what he was doing: catching fish for his babies.'

Mim has fallen over in her haste to see the heron and she has to be dusted down and comforted.

‘It was huge,' Roly tells her importantly. He stretches his arms wide to indicate its wing span. ‘It was grey and white with very long legs and a yellow beak.'

Her face is solemn, her eyes round with disbelief, and Roly begins to feel an odd sense of possession over the heron; as if, in describing it to Mim, he has entered into a relationship with it that she cannot share. From now on, he watches eagerly for it when they walk along the stream and, oddly, it is Roly who always sees it first. Gradually it becomes a symbol of the dichotomy of life itself: the rapid swing between delight and gut-twisting fear: the co-existence of beauty alongside violence.

‘Balance,' says his father, when the heron arrives in the garden for the first time. ‘We have to think about the balance of nature. The heron catches fish and frogs. They are a natural part of its diet.'

‘But we put some of the fish in the ponds,' says Roly. He now sees them as trapped in a larder for the heron to raid at will. ‘The goldies aren't wild fish.'

‘Some of the fish arrived as eggs on the feet of birds,' explains his father. ‘And the goldies have had so many babies that the ponds are crammed with fish. The heron will take the slowest, weakest ones and the ponds will keep a balance of healthy fish. That is how nature works. The fish eat frogspawn so as to survive but, even so, there are always plenty of tadpoles. If there were no fish or frogs then soon there would be no herons.'

Roly is confused. The heron gives him pleasure – but so do some of the fish. He realizes – rather ashamed of himself – he might be prepared to sacrifice a few of the smaller specimens but not Old Black and Big Blue. He says as much to his father – who laughs at him.

‘Nature doesn't have favourites,' he tells him. ‘It's a question of survival. Luckily, the choice is not yours to make. Don't worry too much. The ponds are very big ones and there is plenty of weed to give the fish cover. They'll soon be on the lookout for him. They have to learn to cope with danger just as we all do. There is a fine balance between protecting the weak and teaching them to fend for themselves. I explained to Mim that she couldn't walk on water but she discovered it for herself the hard way and now she is very careful. The heron is part of this landscape, he has a rightful place here, and the fish will adjust to him in time.'

Roly understands what he means about Mim: despite many warnings she tries to walk across the pond, imagining that the dense weed is some kind of carpet, and is rescued, dripping wet and rather cross.

‘If only the fish could talk,' he says wistfully. ‘We could at least warn them.'

‘We'll take a few precautions,' his father promises. ‘Herons like to land a little way off and then advance cautiously on foot.