Little Hands Clapping (26 page)

Everything seemed so clear now. She had let him go, and it had been the right thing to do, and though it had been difficult she had got through it. She had survived. For so many years she hadn’t been able to imagine life without him, but now she was living that life, and she was going to be fine. Like a teenage girl taking down an old poster of a pop star, she was moving her life forward, and growing up. She was being realistic, understanding that happiness, true happiness, lay elsewhere. She had a sense that she was finding her place in the world, and it felt good.

She had slept for hours, first in a cheap hotel in the city and then in short bursts on train after train as she made her way home. Only ghosts of feelings remained, and it seemed as if the whole episode had happened to somebody else, that she had only been an observer. She would be able to recount what she had done, action by action, but she would never be able to articulate the unbearable feelings that had been inside her all that time. Language had let her down again, but this time it didn’t matter.

They left the road behind, and the train carried on through farmland. She put her hand in her pocket and pulled out the note she had written. She unfolded it, and as she read it her new-found calm drained away and she was frightened of herself. It no longer felt as if it had been somebody else’s experience: this was
her
handwriting, and these were
her
words. She could see how sincere she had been, and how ready, and how blind. She had truly believed that her mother and father would have found comfort in this letter, that they would have accepted her assurance that she had been beyond help. She had really thought that they would be glad to know she was
at peace,
whatever that was supposed to mean. She hadn’t been able to see that the rest of their lives would have been ruined, blighted by the thought that they had let her down. She could see that she had been out of her mind, and had been convinced that there was no possibility of ever finding a way through the darkness. If she hadn’t been interrupted by the old man, if he hadn’t stirred her fears and doubts and cleared the way for a spark of hope to reach her through the chaos, then she would have gone through with it.

She folded the letter. She would keep it, for a while at least, to remind herself of just how wrong it was possible to be.

The train slowed as it entered the city, and she got her bag down from the rack. She took the bus back to her room, where she changed her clothes, and showered, and once again packed clean things for a night or two away. She lay down on her bed, and as she closed her eyes she saw the little boy and the little girl from her daydreams. They were the same as they had ever been. They were smiling, and loving her, and trusting her.

In the morning she would go to the bus station, and by the following evening she will have finished her journey.

It is already dark by the time her bus gets in. As a huddle of old people stand in the shadows and watch, she gets off and walks in the direction of the shops. Her eyes are fixed on the pavement, and whenever she sees a piece of gravel in the light of a streetlamp she reaches down and picks it up. She doesn’t worry for a moment that he will have done as she had asked, and found somebody else to love. He will be there.

She stands outside the bakery, and looks up. She knows which window is his. Everybody knows his window. It is dark, and closed against the cold air, and the curtain is pulled across, but this is what she has been expecting. The next day is market-day, and he will have gone to bed in anticipation of an early start. She takes a piece of gravel between her fingers, and throws it at the glass. She has a good aim. It bounces off, and the window remains dark. She throws another piece, and nothing happens. She throws another, and another, and she begins to worry, but then a hand appears, and the curtain opens. A face looks down at her, and her confidence drains away. She feels shy, and nervous, in ways she has never felt before, and she wonders if she is making a mistake by standing in the street with a handful of gravel.

Moving from shadow to shadow, the old people had followed her as she walked through the town. From a dark spot along the street they look on as the window opens, and the bare-footed young baker climbs down the drainpipe. For a moment it looks as if neither the boy nor the girl knows what to do, but then they start to talk. Their voices are quiet, little more than whispers, and the old people are too far away and too hard of hearing to make out any of the words, but they can see that they have a lot to say to one another, and that their conversation is a serious one. The young baker and the girl move underneath a streetlamp, and they don’t know why but she takes off her scarf and he gently runs his fingers across her throat. He reaches down and takes her hand. They talk for a while longer, then he takes her other hand and pulls her close, and wraps his arms around her as she rests her head on his shoulder.

The old people look on as he places his hands on either side of her face, and they can see that she is smiling. He kisses her lips, not with the awkwardness that they would have expected, but as if it is the most natural thing in the world. One by one they drift away, back to their families to tell them the news. In kitchens and parlours across the town, sticks are waved in the air, and the announcement made that the sun will no longer be setting to the mournful sound of a dented euphonium.

By the same author

The Little White Car
(as Danuta de Rhodes)