The Hope (8 page)

She had never seen so many old people in one room, but they did not scare her or revolt her as they were supposed to. The light, scattered from a shatter of diamonds suspended from the ceiling, glowed on the men’s white hair and pink scalps and shimmered on the women’s dresses. Couples pirouetted around the room, sweeping in and out of her line of vision. Their elegance was awesome. They swept by again and again, daring her, thrilling her, all for her, even though they did not know she was there.

The music came to an end and everyone clapped and knew, without having to be told, that it was time to go. A few yards from Angel a door opened and she ran and hid in the shadows, but kept watching. Of all the people leaving amongst the cloud of chattering voices one woman caught her attention, not just by her striking good looks but by the grace of her step, her limbs. She walked away alone, although she seemed to take a part of every dancer with her, and Angel slipped through the dispersing crowd and followed her. Angel did not understand the urgency she felt.

The woman let herself into a cabin and Angel saw the door close and the lights come on. She padded up to the door and found she was trembling. In fear? Excitement?

Push the door. Gently does it. A slice of light. The woman looking up (not hostile, not afraid). A flash of green cat’s-eyes.

Things collapsed around Angel. There was darkness and she learned it was not a thing to be feared nor the oblivion she longed for. She felt herself floating up into the dome of the night, which had been waiting for so long to catch her.

There were hours of waking sleep and it seemed to Angel that every time she opened her eyes the woman’s smiling face hovered over her and that her every slightest need was being attended to. A selfish part of her drew this attention into herself and suckled on it because it was a long time since she had been cared about (genuinely cared about). It was only right she should get her fair share of love. But in her more lucid moments she tried to thank the woman as humbly as possible, hoping she could pay her back in words, but the woman would hear nothing of it. She called Angel a poor child and said she would not let her move until she was much better.

Once, when the woman had gone out to buy something to eat, Angel propped herself up in bed and took a bleary look around the cabin. All the furnishings gleamed – polished mahogany and teak – and the curtains and the bedding were a rich dark blue, thick material such as she had never seen before. There was a lamp like a woman with a fish’s tail. Angel studied it for several minutes, counting the scales. A large part of one wall was taken up by a mirror, in which she could see a small child engulfed in a huge bed. Someone had taken the trouble to comb the child’s hair and wash her face and hands so that she was almost pretty. An old grey cat on one of the chairs was washing itself painstakingly, glancing up now and then at her to make sure the young human fully appreciated the efforts being made on her behalf.

Another wall was almost entirely window but the curtains were drawn across it to keep the cabin in twilight. Angel briefly wondered what the view was like from so high up and longed to see for herself, but exhaustion pulled her back down into the bed. As she fell asleep it occurred to her that there was no other bed in the cabin and that meant the woman had nowhere to sleep, but the thought lost itself in other softer thoughts.

Dawn broke brilliant and blue and the woman drew the curtains. Angel woke with it, feeling as it she had slept for a hundred years. The woman was sitting in an armchair, her back straight, reading a book perched on the back of the cat on her lap. Angel lay on her side and watched through half-closed eyelids in the hope that she could go on looking for ever, undisturbed, but the woman glanced up, shut the book and smiled a smile brighter than that morning’s sun.

“Feeling better?” she asked, and Angel remembered Gilette asking, “Are you OK?” and marvelled at how differently one question could be asked.

“Yes. Thanks. How long have I been asleep?”

“On and off, about four days.”

“Four days!” Panic reared up – parties missed, appointments blown – but it subsided quickly. So what about parties and appointments?

“Hungry?”

“Starving.”

The woman set about preparing breakfast in a small, immaculate galley kitchen and Angel followed her movements, the economy of her grace, like a dancer.

“I saw you dancing the other night, before I … came here.”

“No, you didn’t,” said the woman, trying to sound reproachful.

“Yes, I did. You and lots of others, in a big room with a big light in the ceiling. You were there, weren’t you?”

“Yes, Signor Bellini’s ballroom.”

Bellini – that was Paolo’s surname, wasn’t it? But Angel did not want to think about Paolo or Eddy or Gilette or Riot or anyone.

The woman continued: “I was there, but I wasn’t dancing. I don’t.”

“Not at all?”

“Not any more. I used to –” And she stopped, as if she had said too much. Angel wanted nothing less than to upset her saviour, so she tried a different tack.

“What’s your name?”

“Gabrielle. Call me Gabby.”

“I don’t like Gabby. I think it sounds a bit silly. Can I call you Gabrielle?”

“If you want.”

“I’m Angel.”

“Yes,” said Gabrielle. “This monster is Lucius.” She pointed at the cat, who was sitting expectantly on the counter. “He’s the last in a long line of distinguished cats.”

“How many do you have?”

“Only the one,” she said, tickling him behind the ears. “I measure my time spent on the
Hope
in cats. The first I had was Black Ferdinand. I took him on board with me, but he disappeared after a few months. Poor thing. I hope he had a happy life. Then there was Margot and Wilfred and – I do go on, don’t I? Ask me to talk about anything other than cats, because when I start there’s no stopping me.”

“Oh,” said Angel, scared to say or ask anything more in case words broke the spell and she would suddenly be sent hurtling downwards back to the lower decks and the crowds of people who knew her and cared nothing for her. She contented herself with looking out of the window at the
Hope
and the sea glistening in the sunlight. She had left a life somewhere down there in the canyons of decks built high and stifling on top of each other and she wished that life would stay there for good. Here, surely, conversation would be kindly and pleasurable and honest …
if
she was allowed to stay. She dared not ask, in case a refusal came, like a sentence of death.

Breakfast smelled wonderful and tasted better. Angel cleared her tray in five minutes while Lucius sat beside her on the bed offering to help her out should she get stuck. There was tea in a fluted bone china pot (Angel poured it gingerly, frightened it might shatter in her hands, those same hands that…) and there was bread still warm from the ship’s bakery, and there was, miracle of miracles, fresh fruit grown in one of the greenhouses. But with each heavenly mouthful Angel became more and more nervous that this was her final meal here, a parting gift.

Gabrielle removed the tray and Angel thanked her, believing she could never thank her enough. The older woman looked tired and Angel would not have been surprised if she had not slept once during the past four days, keeping vigil over a complete stranger.

“Please,” Angel said, “you must have a rest. I feel fine. I’ll get up and you have the bed. I’m fine. No really.” In the end Gabrielle relented and lay down (“Just for a little while”) and fell asleep with the cat lying fitted into the curve of her body. Angel, wrapped in a crimson silk dressing gown, paced about the cabin for a while, feeling lightheaded, then sat in the armchair and picked up the woman’s book. It was called
Jane Eyre
and Angel, having read the first few pages, decided she didn’t have a clue what was going on and nodded off.

“You must think I’m absurdly old-fashioned, enjoying the dances like that.”

“No, I don’t. I like it. It looks nice.”

“It’s terribly difficult, you know. You can’t just go out there and whoosh about with a strange man without knowing all the movements, steps and patterns. Oh! To listen to me you’d think it was maths or geometry or something, and it’s really nothing of the sort. But it needs more than knowledge alone. Any idiot can learn a few steps by rote just as any idiot can learn a times table. Well, except me perhaps!” She laughed a generous, self-deprecating laugh. “To dance well, you need much more. You need…” Her smile became apologetic.

“You need to love it?” Angel suggested.

“Yes. I can’t think of any other way to put it.”

It was afternoon, following a morning spent asleep and a lunchtime spent by Angel on tenterhooks, as she dreaded the blow that must fall eventually – “You have to go now.” It had not fallen, yet, and when it did, she was sure it would come in the kindest, gentlest manner possible.

Gabrielle and she chatted like old friends about their disparate lives, a lot about the injustice of the way of the
Hope
, a little about life on the land. This last was a bizarre fantasy to Angel and a subject Gabrielle seemed uneasy about, as did most old folk. She said she vaguely remembered embarking, but it was about thirty years ago.

“One thing I remember well. There was a ticker-tape parade, thousands of bits of paper dropped from the very top of the ship down on to the passengers and the people on the quay as they were waving goodbye. They used black paper, which was unusual, but
très chic
. I thought it looked more like a shower of ashes. The whole thing was terribly unusual. It didn’t feel like a time for celebration. I felt that the whole ceremony was for me and for me alone, private and not particularly joyful. When I’ve mentioned this to other people, they agree and say they felt the same. It’s hard to know why. Perhaps it’s best not to talk about it.”

As the day wore on, Angel relaxed slightly. Perhaps if she kept talking long enough, she might be allowed to spend just one more night.

“Why did you give up dancing?” she ventured.

Gabrielle scratched the top of Lucius’s head and looked puzzled, not as if the question was unexpected but as if she had been asking herself the same thing every day and had not reached the answer, which lay locked in that part of her that said, “You’re too old and your time has been and gone. Who are you fooling?”

“I don’t know why we make decisions like that. We just do. It might be pride, or a feeling that the old must give way to the new.”

“New! They’re all over a hundred years old in there!” Angel exclaimed, with more derision than she intended, but it was hard to break with the habits of a lifetime. Immediately she regretted it and apologised, to receive another of Gabrielle’s famous smiles.

“No need, my dear. Yes, they’re old, I’m old, and yes, there’s no new blood to take our places when we’ve gone, and I think that when we’re dead all the dances will die too, but that may not be such a bad thing. They belonged to the land, to the life which the
Hope
is meant to be leaving behind, and to return to them would be going back in a circle, getting nowhere.”

And then Angel made a request she had been meaning to make for a couple of hours now: “Teach me.”

As she said that, she considered what her friends would say if they found out, how they would think her some kind of deviant pervert, and she had a foreboding of the pains of withdrawal to come, and she glimpsed for the last time her old life like a dirty rag at the bottom of a bucket, and she remembered Push – had she blinded him? – and she understood that the desire had been there all along and had to be voiced, just as Gabrielle’s answer had to be: “Yes.”

Days come and go in pain as the hunger burrows its way out of her system and Gabrielle cradles her when she needs it and makes her laugh when she needs it. When the worst is over, she begins trying to persuade Angel that the dancing is not for her and she really should go back to her home and people her own age, but the effort is half-hearted, nobody can pretend otherwise, and only makes Angel keener to learn.

So the lessons start. Gabrielle has the knack of a good teacher, although she would never have suspected she did, and knows the right times to push or tease or coax or cajole or scold or congratulate her pupil. For her part, Angel is a good learner and, while she will never have Gabrielle’s innate grace, she finds a dignity within herself which she never believed existed, she has been keeping it under sedation for such a long time.

The lessons are long and Angel is exhausted at the end of every day. Gabrielle says this is because Angel is putting in too much effort and not enough precision. Angel complains occasionally, throws a tantrum, screams she will never get this right, and Gabrielle weathers out the storms, before drawing Angel close and telling her to behave and kissing her. Lucius follows all this with half-closed, knowing green eyes.

Angel has never been happier.

It will be in the middle of the fourth dance of the evening. A few people will see the woman of smiles entering the ballroom with a companion. The woman of smiles has not attended the dances for a while, her absence has been noted with genuine concern, and there are rumours she has died, but she will walk into the room as if she is waltzing, with a young and frightened girl on her arm. When the dance ends, more and more people will take notice of the pair of them standing in the doorway and the conversation will become hushed and excited. The girl is beautiful, a little pale perhaps, but with dark and shining hair tied up and brilliant eyes and hands gripped tightly over her stomach and a nervous tilt in her posture, a slight hunch of the shoulders. Her dress is old and ill-fitting, one of the woman’s castoffs. She does not belong here and yet she cannot be more welcome.

The handsome man with the grey temples who held the door for Gabrielle several months ago will turn to Gabrielle and Gabrielle will nod with approval and the man will lead Angel to the centre of the floor. The orchestra will strike up.

But nobody else is dancing. They will watch the couple, they will watch
her
, and Angel is both thrilled and terrified. Her shoes are pinching, a pin at the back of the dress is threatening to come loose, and she fears she will forget everything. Then they are away, the man leading, and Angel will feel dizzy and dislocated, just as she felt when she first arrived at the upper deck and she saw the ballroom. But the learning and the lessons will take over. The music will rise and swell and fall and rise again. The audience will sigh as they observe her first unsteady steps and her blossoming confidence, and something like hope will find its way into their old quick-beating hearts.