Came Back to Show You I Could Fly Read online

  ‘You look just like Morris Carpenter,’ she teased.

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘This freaky kid when I was in primary school. Heavens, I’d nearly forgotten all about old Morris Carpenter! You should have seen him, he was the most miserable gloomy kid in the whole world. I reckon when he was born the first thing he would have done was throw a punch at the nurse. Middle of summer, on days just like this one, there he’d be all bundled up in a duffel coat, no kidding. And if you ever felt sorry for him and asked him to join in things, he’d just sort of glare at you and then he’d croak, “Why should I?” ’

  Angie gave such a good imitation of a surly voice growling, ‘Why should I?’ that the passenger in the seat in front turned around to stare, but Angie didn’t seem troubled at attracting attention. She went on scowling at Seymour, the contours of her face yanked down into gloom and doom. Still being Morris Carpenter, she rattled the thin silver bangles on her wrist contemptuously. ‘Look at this rubbish,’ she sneered. ‘A person can probably get lumpy old eczema from wearing metal. Not that that matters, seeing we’re all going to die of skin cancer from the ozone layer being what it is. That hole in the sky over Antarctica’s getting bigger and bigger, you know, all the time. Grrr, I hate sun! Rain’s nicer. Rain’s lovely, all wet and cold and if you’re lucky enough you can go out and catch pneumonia in it. Acid rain’s best of all.’

  ‘Angie!’ Seymour protested in a whisper, because several more passengers were looking, but Angie, enjoying herself enormously, kept on being Morris Carpenter even after the bus stopped at East Merken and they got off. Now she even looked as he imagined Morris Carpenter to be, stomping along with shoulders hunched to her ears. You could almost have sworn she was huddled up in a duffel coat. ‘You’re a dill, Angie!’ he said.

  ‘My name ain’t Angie, it’s Morris. Morris Mervyn Reginald Carpenter.’

  ‘Get out, no one’s called that.’

  ‘Well, he’s probably changed his name by deed poll now. What would you know about it, pal? You just watch it. Or watch the pavement, that’s more interesting, it’s nice and grey and concretey and that way you don’t have to look at people, either. People stink. You want to know what really narks me? It’s how people say “Have a nice day!” Why should I have a nice day if I don’t want to? Next time a taxi driver tells me to have a nice day, I’ll slam the door on his fingers.’

  ‘Morris Carpenter wouldn’t spend his money on taxis,’ Seymour said. ‘He’d save it all up and buy cough lollies or books about nuclear war.’ Experimentally, he had a stab at being Morris Carpenter. ‘Just look at those rotten flowers in the park over there,’ he said grouchily. ‘Hurts your eyes, doesn’t it? I reckon parks should be all asphalt, it looks tidier. Flowers only attract bees and bees sting you.’

  ‘Yeah, let’s get out of here,’ Angie said. ‘Though one place is just as crummy as another. No point in going anywhere, really, might as well stay home all day and pull our duffel coats over our heads.’

  But then she came to a halt outside a cream brick building on the edge of the shopping centre and stopped being Morris Carpenter. She stood underneath a pavement tree and tenderly drew out the gift-wrapped china ballet slippers.

  ‘Just who did you buy those nutty things for?’ Seymour asked. ‘Glad it wasn’t me.’

  ‘Cheeky!’

  ‘What on earth would anyone use them for? You couldn’t dance in them, you’d get sore feet and glass splinters.’

  ‘They’re ornaments, smarty. They’re meant to hang up on a dressing-table to stick flowers in, or just to look pretty. I know Lynne’s going to love them, even if you’re being so rude. That’s who we’re meeting for lunch. She doesn’t even know we’re coming, I wanted it to be a terrific surprise. I used to pick her up from ballet class when I lived at home, so it’s just like old times…’

  Three girls came out of the building and stood on the top step, chatting to each other.

  ‘Yoo-hoo, Lynne, surprise!’ Angela shouted, darting out from behind the tree and running up the steps to hug her sister. ‘Oh, it’s just great to see you! My itty bitty baby sister…’

  Lynne said quickly over her shoulder to the other girls, ‘I have to go, see you both on Thursday,’ and came down the steps. She glanced at Seymour briefly when Angie introduced him, but he knew that if she’d walked away then, she would never have recognised him if they’d ever met again. She didn’t look much like Angie, apart from having the same large, greenish-blue eyes. Her long brown hair was drawn smoothly back to the nape of her neck and everything about her was controlled and graceful and reserved. She seemed, Seymour thought, a good deal older than fourteen.

  ‘I’m shouting us all out to lunch,’ Angie said happily, slipping one arm through Lynne’s and the other through Seymour’s and setting off jauntily down the footpath, but Lynne removed her arm after a few paces, as though to adjust the shoulder strap of her bag.

  ‘Thanks, Angie, but I can’t today,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go home and get stuck into loads of things. We have all this extra school work to do over the holidays, assignments and pre-reading, and I haven’t even touched it yet. I’ve set aside this afternoon specially…

  ‘Rats,’ said Angie. ‘That can wait. You always carry on about homework, you’ll have a nervous breakdown if you don’t watch out. Come on, I made the effort to trail all the way out here…East Merken, what a place to have a ballet school…and I haven’t seen you for ages and you’re coming to lunch with Seymour and me at that Italian place near the station. No excuses.’

  ‘Angie, don’t be so bossy. Mum will be expecting me home for lunch.’

  ‘No she won’t. Don’t you remember, she goes to her ladies tennis thing on Mondays? Come on, Lynne, you need a good feed, anyhow. You’re getting that skinny you’ll disappear altogether soon.’

  Lynne, with a marked lack of enthusiasm, allowed herself to be ushered back to the shopping centre and into the restaurant. Angie wanted to order the most expensive things on the menu, but Lynne protested that she wanted only a glass of lemon squash and a small pizza. While they waited for the food to be brought, Angie produced her gift with a flourish.

  ‘Ta ra!’ she cried. ‘And wait till you see what’s inside! I just happened to notice it in this shop we passed today and I knew you’d love it. So go on, open it up, what are you holding back for! You’re getting as prissy as Mum, the way you open parcels.’

  Lynne’s face didn’t register anything very apparent when she unwrapped the little china shoes. Seymour had a suspicion that he detected fleeting exasperation in her eyes, a distaste for the gift, but if that were true, it was immediately masked.

  ‘Thanks, it’s great, Angie,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t have spent your money, though. It’s not even as though it’s my birthday or anything.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I? I like buying you presents, especially ballet things. Just think, when you’re famous, you can take those little glass shoes all round the world with you on tours, like a good luck charm. And when I come backstage bursting with pride, I’ll tell people it was me who gave them to you.’

  ‘Well, I just hope you won’t be wearing those earrings when you come to visit me backstage,’ Lynne said lightly.

  ‘Why, what’s wrong? I spent ages picking them out and Seymour helped me. Really, don’t you like them? What’s up with them?’

  On display with other sparkling trinkets in the shop, the parrot earrings had seemed cheerfully zany, but now Seymour glanced at the neat little silver studs in Lynne’s ears and thought dubiously that perhaps Angela should have chosen something simpler. They were rather too big, rather too gaudy, bobbing about on either side of her face.

  ‘Well, they’re not something I would have bought, that’s all,’ Lynne said. ‘But I guess they go with your dress, the colours and everything.’

  The food was served, but Lynne ate hardly anything at all. The ice in her lemon squash clinked gently as she stirred it with a plastic straw, and Seymour t
hought that if a sound could express someone’s personality, that would be the sound of Lynne’s, the neat, crisp chime of ice cubes against glass.

  ‘Well now,’ said Angie. ‘What did you learn in class today? Can you do the splits yet?’

  ‘Angie, we certainly don’t do the splits in ballet. People always ask that, but you should know better. That, and if it hurts to dance on the tips of your toes. It’s so predictable…and annoying.’

  ‘Well, I can’t remember the proper names of all those steps, even though I learned ballet once, too. Did you know, Seymour, that I learned dancing when I was little? Only for a couple of months, though. I wasn’t brilliant at it, like Lynne. She’s going to be a famous ballerina one of these days.’

  ‘Angie, shush,’ Lynne said, glancing at the nearby tables, but Angie prattled artlessly on, only marginally lowering her voice.

  ‘But you are, you needn’t be so modest. Now with me, I was dead hopeless right from the word go. Guess what I did at the first lesson—wet my pants, right there in front of all the other kids! The teacher was so tactful, Miss Bromley or something, did you ever have her, Lynne?’

  ‘No, I already told you before, she wasn’t there by the time…’

  ‘Anyhow, Miss Bromley just went on demonstrating stuff to the class as though nothing had happened, even with all these little kids staring goggle-eyed at this big puddle in the middle of the floor. Or if they didn’t see it in time, they danced right through it and got their little pink slippers soaked. I was so embarrassed, God, I wanted to die! But then a nice kind lady, one of the other kids’ mums, came over and mopped it up and took me out to the loo. I never wanted to go back to that class, but Dad made me because of the fees being paid in advance. I had to be in the end of term concert, too, on a proper stage. You should have seen it, talk about a laugh! Do you remember it, Lynne?’

  ‘Angie, how could I? I was only a few months old.’

  ‘Oh yeah, that’s right, you would have been. Well, anyway, we had to dance these sort of patterns in lines, being little birds flying or something daggy like that. But I haven’t got much sense of direction at the best of times. I blundered right off the stage and got stuck behind some curtains and couldn’t find the way out. I’ve always had a thing about the dark, it was scary, that, sort of smothery and pitch black, like being trapped in a coal mine…I didn’t go back next term. Different ball game with Lynne, though. She took to it like a duck to water, or maybe I should say a swan to a lake, right from her first lesson. And the way she’s going now, we’re all so proud of her! She’s always being trotted out to the front of the class to show how to do the hard steps, and she gets the jammy parts in concerts…’

  ‘Not always,’ Lynne said tersely. ‘I’m not all that good.’

  ‘Oh, yes you are! Only mind you, Seymour, she nearly didn’t make it past her first lesson and it was all my fault…’

  ‘Not that old Olga Kozzymunsky story again,’ said Lynne. ‘Angie, eat your lunch, for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘Hang on, Seymour hasn’t heard it yet. Well, Lynne was just about killing herself to start ballet when she was five. She used to be always dancing around the living room, even before she had her first lesson. Gee, she used to look cute! So Mum enrolled her, but I did a crummy thing. I was kind of jealous because I’d been so hopeless at ballet, so I used to get Lynne aside and I made up this name and told her that was the name of her new ballet teacher. I’d bung on this threatening accent and say, ‘Leedle gurl, I am Madama Olga Kozzymunsky and I am goink to turn you into a beeyootivull dancer! You vill practeese eight hours a day, no excuse, blood blisters vill pop up on your toes, ze cramps, ze womiting…ach, never mind, it is nuzzing. I, Madame Olga Tatiana Kozzymunsky, vill turn you into ze most beeyootivull dancer in ze whole vide vorld!’

  ‘Angie…’

  ‘And so when poor Lynne turned up for her first lesson after weeks of listening to that, she took one look at the teacher and burst into tears! And that teacher was a really sweet kind little lady, like a sultana bun.’

  ‘Where do you go to school?’ Lynne asked Seymour, obviously not wanting to talk about ballet any longer, but also just as clearly not interested in his answer. Seymour murmured something about his proposed new school, knowing that she was only pretending to listen behind her immaculate oval face. His voice stumbled awkwardly. Lynne made him feel all fingers and thumbs, sweatiness and tousled hair.

  ‘Lynne can play the clarinet and flute, too, did you know?’ Angie boasted proudly. ‘Talk about musical! Oh, it’s not fair, here’s me always wanted to be musical and I can’t even sing in tune.’

  ‘But you can sing okay, Angie,’ Seymour said, and she smiled at him over the table, eyes crinkling into happy crescents.

  ‘You reckon? Go on, you’re only sucking up!’

  ‘Well, that song you sang the other day was pretty good.’

  Angie beamed, then struck a pose and began to sing:

  ‘Like a star in the morning sky,

  Your love was there to guide me.

  I was weak, too weak to fly,

  But you were there, right there beside me…

  Urging me on, and making me strong…

  Could hear you saying…’

  ‘Angie!’ Lynne said crossly, ‘People are staring.’

  But Angie went on singing, chin propped up on her hands.

  ‘Came back to show you I could fly,

  But you had gone without a warning…’

  ‘If you don’t shut up, that’s exactly what I’ll do!’ Lynne hissed. She picked up her bag and shoved the little china shoes inside, almost roughly, although they were so fragile.

  ‘Oops, sorry,’ said Angie contritely. ‘I forgot you care about what other people think. I know, you can’t take me anywhere, always doing embarrassing things in public. Seymour has the same problem, only he’s usually too much of a gent to yell at me. Okay, I won’t do it again, promise. So, how are the kids at school, Katie, and what’s your other mate’s name, Teresa?’

  ‘They’re all right.’

  ‘And Gillian?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Well…I know, anyone want some dessert? How about cheesecake, they have beautiful cheesecake here, not like that horrible yucky stuff you get at supermarkets…’

  ‘Nothing more for me, I’ve definitely got to be going,’ Lynne said. ‘There’s a whole bunch of things to do. I have to wash my hair for tonight for a start.’

  ‘Why, where are you off to tonight?’

  ‘Oh, just family stuff. We’re all going out to dinner and then a show,’ said Lynne, preoccupied with a mirror and comb, even though not one hair was out of place.

  ‘Oh…?’ said Angie and there was a short, questioning silence in which Lynne suddenly looked confused and ill-at-ease. She became very busy with the zipper on her bag, which wasn’t really stuck and didn’t merit all the attention she was giving it.

  ‘It’s nothing special, Angie,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Just something about Dad’s work, he got a promotion or something, didn’t he tell you? Tonight’s do is just a spur of the moment sort of thing. I expect Mum couldn’t reach you, seeing you don’t have the phone on at your new place.’

  ‘Yes, I guess that’s it,’ said Angie. ‘But I can still come, luckily I haven’t got anything else on tonight. Wow, fancy Dad getting another promotion, the Mr Big of the electronics world…Listen, where are you all going for dinner? I could meet you there, and I promise I won’t wear these earrings. It doesn’t matter if you all have seats together at the theatre, either. Maybe they’ve still got ones on sale at the door. I could…’

  ‘I don’t know which restaurant,’ said Lynne, getting up. ‘Dad’s boss fixed all that, and I expect they’ve already booked the table and they can’t go mucking it up now with extra people. You won’t be missing much, you know how boring it will be, all that computer shop talk. And I don’t really know which theatre, though I heard Mum say we were lucky to get the last seats. So there’s
not much point…Oh, look at the time, I’ve really got to dash now, Angie.’

  Seymour noticed that no one, really, had eaten very much. They headed back towards the bus station, but he sensed that Lynne didn’t particularly want them to accompany her. She walked ahead very quickly, making no allowance for Angie in her silly shoes.

  ‘I have to take a short cut down National Street,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Got to see a schoolfriend on the way, borrow one of her books. So I’ll see you around sometime, Angie, thanks for the lunch. Goodbye, Seymour.’ She ran across the road with an amber traffic light and waved briefly from the far pavement, then hurried away down a side street, not looking back.

  ‘Isn’t she pretty?’ Angie said, watching her go. ‘You should see her all dressed up in ballet gear, she looks like a princess. I missed her last concert, I could have cried…Bet she’ll look gorgeous all togged up to go out to dinner tonight, too. It’s great having a little kid sister. We’ve always been so close, you know, right from when she was born. I used to nag Mum to let me babysit, I liked it so much…’

  She gazed after Lynne, and Seymour looked carefully in the same direction. It was easier to watch Lynne’s trim figure disappearing down the side street, much easier than having to meet Angie’s eyes, which he now saw were full of sadness. A terrible yearning sadness, like someone who had lost something they’d treasured.

  ‘Come on, what are we hanging round here for?’ he said in a Morris Carpenter voice, to divert her. ‘Something real nasty might happen and we might miss out on it. Like those dirty big clouds banking up over there, cool change on the way, maybe a thunderstorm. Let’s go and stand under shelter and watch all the people get wet! Psst, Angie…Carmen Miranda—hey, are you listening?’

  ‘It’s just as well they never actually had Morris Carpenter in charge of the weather,’ Angie said at last. ‘He’d have fixed it up so it rained on purpose for people’s weddings and sports days. There’s something else I remember about old Morris—he used to have this calendar at school, right, and he’d cross off every day with a big black pencil soon as the last bell went. And he’d mutter, “There, that’s one less day to get through!” Cheerful little bloke, wasn’t he? One less day to get through…’