A Song for Ella Grey Page 3

  Sam Hinds came to sit beside me. He had a bottle of red wine in his hand. He asked if he could read and I shut the notebook and said no.

  “I’m squiffy,” he said. “I’ve always meant to tell you this. I think you’re great.”

  I laughed out loud and swigged his wine.

  “I mean it,” he said. “You’re strange and beautiful.”

  “Sing me a song, then.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what songs are for, to celebrate strange beauty, and to entrance the one you think is beautiful.”

  He laughed and started on a made-up song.

  “O Claire you are lovely

  O Claire you’re so sweet

  O Claire lalalalalalaa

  You’re good enough to eat.”

  I told him that was worth a kiss and so we put our arms around each other and kissed.

  I pulled back.

  “Don’t really eat me, Sam!” I said.

  Then I jumped up and ran to the jetsam that lay in the space between the wet sand and the dry sand. There were great dried-out stalks of kelp, lengths of rope, bits of fishing net, shells, dead crabs, plastic bottles, pebbles, chunks of smoothed glass and smoothed brick. I started pulling fragments out, laying them on the sand where it curved up into the dunes. I made the outline of a body. And of course others came to help me make it beautiful. We made a long figure with sticks for limbs, pebbles and stones for flesh, trails of seaweed laced with crab shells, sea shells and limpets for his hair.

  “Woman or man?” said Angeline.

  Michael put a stretch of bulbous kelp for a penis and we cheered and laughed.

  We dropped bright green seaweed on him for pubic hair. We gave him two round pebbles for his balls.

  We gave him one green eye and one blue, and made his pupils from seacoal. He lay gazing into the afternoon sky. We sat around him and sang and drank. Some of us swam again and this time the water seemed even colder, but I stayed in long enough to float hand in hand with Sam Hinds for a while. The swell lifted us and let us fall, lifted us and let us fall. He sang his song for me in time with the swell through chattering teeth.

  Back at the fire we danced to warm ourselves. We thumped rocks together as drums. We whirled dry seaweed through the air. We played guitars, whistles, tambourines. We put strands of grass between our thumbs and blew to make screeching sounds. We cupped our hands and blew into them to sound like owls. We screamed like the gulls above and we hooted like the seals. The sea splashed and rolled and the sand and pebbles seethed. We held hands and we danced around the fire and the man. We laughed to see families with their children and their dogs slowing, stopping, heading back to where they’d come from.

  “We are wild things!” we yelled. “But we will not harm you!”

  The sun shone down.

  “Thank you, sun!” we yelled. “Oh, you’re so damn hot!”

  “This is not the North!” we yelled. “This sea is the Mediterranean. This land is Italy! This land is Greece!”

  We played and danced through the afternoon and into the gathering dusk.

  Then became still again, which seemed so right when the earth became so beautiful. Rose-red sky above the dunes, the fire smoke rising in gentle clouds, birds heading homeward over rocks and sea, a single dark ship far out with its brilliant light. Darkening sea blending with darkening sky. The islands darkening, the light of Longstone beginning to flash and turn. A sickle moon, thin as a fingernail paring. The first stars. The deepening dark and the constellations beginning to be visible. We all knew the simplest ones—the Great Bear and the Small Bear—and we named them quickly. Carlo traced and named the others for us.

  “Orion,” he said. “The Hunter. Corona Borealis, Northern Crown. And oh, the Great Dog. See it there and there and there.”

  “You could see bliddy anything, couldn’t you?” I said.

  “Yes. And the stars that look connected are really nothing to do with each other, except on our minds, in the old stories. There’s the Swan. See? Cygnus, flying through the heavens as it has for a billion years!”

  We stared into the universe and tried to turn the stars into these shapes. We said yes we could and no we couldn’t.

  “And The Harp, look. Lyra. Its bright star is called Vega. The strings lead down to Sulafat and Sheliak. You see?”

  Angeline played the strings of her guitar.

  “No,” she said. “But I can hear it. Hear?”

  “Yes,” we said.

  We sat in silence and gazed up in wonder, as if the constellation really was giving its music to us. The flames leapt and the embers glowed. Our faces shone and when we met each others’ eyes we widened them and could say nothing. It was like we were one single thing, all of us together making one being.

  I thought of my friend in her narrow home.

  Ella, you should be here.

  I let Sam Hinds put his arm around me but I thought of her.

  Ella, you should be here.

  We drank our beer and wine.

  When night gathered all around us, when the dark was truly dark and the stars were truly bright, we sang and danced again, and we did these things wildly. We yelled our youth and our freedom and our joy and they rose with the flames into the Northern night.

  We sang again, as we had last night.

  “Devil, devil, we defy thee!

  Devil, devil, we defy thee…”

  We sang boldly, bravely, then softly and more softly.

  Sam came with me into my tent that night. Even then I thought of her.

  Ella, you should be here.

  When he slept, I texted her.

  You should be here. It’s very beautiful. We made a man. We danced beneath the stars.

  It’s three a.m. I think I’m asleep.

  Sleep on. Dream of me here. Dream of when you’ll be here too.

  xxxxxxx

  xxxxxxx

  SIX

  It was soon after dawn when I heard the music close by the tent. I looked at my watch: 6:00 a.m. Too early. Another almost-sleepless night. My head was sore, my mouth was dry. I pulled the sleeping bag over my head, closed my eyes, searched for sleep. Sam shifted and snored beside me. The music went on.

  “Stop it,” I wanted to yell. “It’s far too bliddy early.”

  Then a voice was singing with the strings, breathy and lovely, halfway between a woman’s and a man’s.

  Not a tune I knew, not words I knew, not a voice I knew.

  I nudged Sam, whispered his name. He stirred, didn’t wake.

  There was no sound from the sea, no breeze against the tent.

  I shuffled from my sleeping bag, pulled some clothes on, crawled to the door. The sea’s horizon burned, and the air above it shimmered, ready for the sun to show itself. I crawled out. I shuddered. There were the marks of a snake in the sand just outside the door. I stood up and saw him. He sat on the slope of sand just above the jetsam man. He didn’t turn to look at me. Just went on playing, singing, face turned towards the sea.

  “Hi,” I said.

  No answer.

  He went on singing, playing. I slithered down the dune to him. Others were coming. Carlo, Angeline, Michael, Maria.

  “Hell’s teeth,” breathed Maria at my side.

  “Who’s that?” said Michael.

  “And what the hell is that song?”

  We didn’t go close. It was like we were all scared. We just stood there, crouched there, knelt there, listening. He wore the shabby purple coat, the ancient blue Doc Martens, the thin red scarf. That long black hair, held back with ribbon or string. The down of dark beard on his face. Dark blue eyes, edged jet-black. Hard to tell how old he was. Like us, maybe a bit older than us.

  He glanced at us, that was all. He played on, and the song sweetened, intensified.

  The sun rose and his face turned golden in its light. The song sweetened, intensified.

  The others came out of their tents, came down from the dunes to the beach. His song sweetened, i
ntensified.

  We cursed in amazement at what we were hearing.

  “Oh, Christ,” breathed Maria. “Oh, listen.”

  Then all we could do was gasp and sigh.

  Like something from dreams, like something from the soul’s depths, like something from somewhere none of us believed in, none of us had ever been.

  It felt clumsy and wrong, but I fumbled in my pocket for my phone. I rang her number.

  “Just listen,” I whispered.

  I held the phone out towards him.

  “Oh, God,” I gasped, as I saw the birds coming down from the sky to the beach, as I saw the seals lift their heads from the sea, as I saw from the corner of my eyes the adders slithering down the sand to us.

  “Ella,” I breathed. “Even the snakes are listening.”

  SEVEN

  He wouldn’t look at anyone, not properly. Eyes shifted away just before they met another’s. He put the guitar down after a while. Guitar? Not really. It was a clumsy-looking, homemade-looking kind of thing. A block of wood, the neck, the strings, some keys for tightening. Seemed made of driftwood, waste wood, any wood. But when he played, it sang so sweet, so deep. Even the clunks of the thickest strings were right. They held the music down to earth even as it seemed to float away to nothingness. The crudeness and the sweetness rang together, like the body and the soul, the earth and sky. And his voice. Like something from a billion miles away and somewhere very close. Like something ancient, something very new. How can I say this? Wouldn’t have known to say such things just a few short months ago.

  Anyway, he put the instrument down on the sand beside him.

  I held the phone to my ear but the battery had gone. Ella had gone.

  “I heard the noise ye made,” he said.

  His voice was like ours, a Northern voice, but he licked his lips each time he spoke as if they weren’t used to having spoken words on them.

  “Heard ye in the night,” he said. “So I came.”

  “Who are you?” said Angeline.

  His face clouded, as if the question troubled him. He didn’t answer.

  The birds that had gathered flew away. The seals dipped out of sight. I looked back and saw nothing but the marks of slithers on the sand.

  He reached down and touched the jetsam man.

  “That’s good,” he said.

  “Would you like something to eat?” said Carlo. “None of us have eaten yet.”

  “Aye.”

  He watched Carlo reviving the fire, then opening a pack of bacon.

  “Not that,” he said. He pointed. “Some bread. And that as well.”

  “Apple.”

  “Aye.”

  “Banana?”

  “Aye.”

  He stared at us like we were ghosts, like he wasn’t certain he was seeing us at all.

  “Who are ye?” he said.

  We told him our names.

  “Where did you come from?” I said.

  He turned around, towards the dunes, and the distant Cheviots beyond the dunes.

  “Over there,” he said.

  We named some towns: Alnwick, Rothbury, Wooler, Ford.

  “No,” he said. “I wander. I play music and wander. Where’s this?”

  “Bamburgh Beach,” I said.

  He bit into the bread. He looked towards the sea, the islands.

  “Oh aye,” he said. “I remember it.”

  “Will you play again?” said Angeline.

  “Yeah.”

  “Will you teach me how to play?”

  He shrugged.

  “Why not?”

  He picked up the instrument again and plucked the strings, played some delicious notes.

  He looked at it, as if he himself was amazed by it.

  “Me name’s Orpheus,” he said. “Aye. It’s Orpheus.”

  And he played and sang again.

  EIGHT

  Maybe we were mad that day. Maybe some of the things that seemed to happen didn’t really happen at all. Maybe many of the things that seemed to happen in the days and weeks that followed didn’t really happen. Maybe it was all because we were young, and because being young is like being mad. Maybe just being human, at any age, is a bit like being mad.

  But maybe the best things that we do, and the best things that we are, come from madness.

  He played and sang and the beasts came back. The birds and the seals, the snakes in the dunes. And this time when Michael gasped, “Dolphins!” we really did see dolphins, and we saw them come back again, and back again. We saw them close to shore, the beautiful arcs of them breaking the surface and curving through air. The tide came in and as it came it seemed so calm. No crashing of waves onto the beach, just a gentle turning of the water as it rose, as if the sea itself had ears and had come to listen. And when the pebbles and sand seethed with the water’s coming, they seethed in time with Orpheus’ song.

  Ballocks? Maybe. Who knows? Maybe it’s all distorted by memory, but I know what we saw that day. I know what we felt. It was like being blessed. Like truly becoming ourselves. Like being loved.

  I saw the burning of desire in Angeline and Maria as they gazed at him. I saw James entranced, already falling, falling. I saw the wakening of new desires in Michael and Sam.

  We sang with Orpheus, but our voices were just a pulse beneath his weird lovely melodies. Angelina played along with him. We tapped our sticks and rocks and drums to give percussion. We swayed our bodies. We danced on as the water rose towards us. And we forgot ourselves. We were not there. We weren’t these people with these names on this beach. We were lost in the music. We were gone.

  We spent the whole morning like that.

  When Orpheus stopped, he shook his head and laughed, like he was as amazed as we were. He held the instrument before his eyes.

  “Hell’s teeth!” he said.

  “What is that?” said Angelina.

  “This?” he said. He shrugged. “It’s a lyre.”

  His brow furrowed as he gazed at it.

  “Aye, that’s it,” he said. “It’s my lyre.”

  Angelina had moved so that she was right at his side.

  She reached out and touched its strings. They clunked.

  “Did you make it yourself?” she said.

  “Wouldn’t know how. It was give to us, ages back.”

  He handed it to her.

  “What do I do?” she asked.

  He shrugged.

  “Just sort of pluck it,” he said.

  She tried again.

  Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.

  “Use that,” he said, pointing to her guitar.

  “But it’s nothing,” she said.

  “Neither’s this.”

  He laughed at a seal that had come right out of the water and was now flopping its way back towards it again.

  “Daft thing,” he said.

  And he hooted like a seal, properly like a seal. The seal hooted back and flopped on into the sea.

  “Don’t try too hard,” he said to Angeline as she started the guitar. “You know how to do it so just do it.”

  She strummed a few notes.

  “Go on,” he said. “Just let it play.”

  He leaned over her, touched her hands.

  “Gentler,” he said. “That’s better. Aye. Hear it?”

  Yes. It was better, better than we’d heard her play before.

  “That’s right,” he said. “It’s just like breathing. You’re off now.”

  He ignored, or didn’t even notice, the eyes she gave him as she played. He didn’t see Carlo’s stare. He didn’t hear Maria sighing. He laughed at the disappearing seal.

  “I forgot all this,” he said as if to himself. “But it’s been here all the time.”

  He stood up and went to the water’s edge, took his boots off, waded, ankle-deep, spread his arms wide as if at the joy of it.

  Michael opened some white wine, passed it round and we swigged it down. It tasted sour, salty. Maria said she was desperate for water
, but we knew that nobody wanted to find some, not right now. We swigged the wine and passed it on. Angeline continued playing. Her playing grew sweeter, more intense. She stared towards Orpheus as if she was playing just for him.

  “Cut it out!” said Carlo suddenly.

  “What?” she said

  “That! You’re just copying him.”

  “I’m not. It’s nothing like him. It couldn’t be anything like him.”

  “Oh no. Course it couldn’t.”

  He spat into the sand.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you all?” he said.

  Orpheus came back, his feet all sand.

  “I’ll be off, then,” he said.

  “What?” I said. “Where to?”

  He shrugged.

  “Just wandering,” he said. “Here and there and somewhere else.”

  “You can’t just…” said Angeline.

  “Can’t just what?” he said.

  He sat down and dusted the sand off and pulled on his boots again. He looked at their soles and smiled.

  “These’ve done a fair few miles,” he said.

  He picked up his instrument.

  “Play for us again,” said Maria.

  “Eh?”

  “Just a bit. We’ve never heard anything like it, Orpheus.”

  “Have ye not?”

  “No,” I said.

  He looked into the distance, to the north towards the castle, across the sea to the islands, to the south along the broad white beach, to the west beyond the dunes to the Cheviots.

  “I dunno,” he said. “I wanna…”

  But he sighed again and relented. He plucked the strings, and his impatience left him. The sea grew still. We grew still. He sang, he sang, he sang and if there was a way to put music into words I’d do it. If there was a way to fill the spaces between words with the sound of him, the sound of the sea, the sound of the birds, the sound of the breeze in the grass of the dunes, the sound of the rolling pebbles and the turning sand, I’d do it. He played, and it felt as if we were filled with life as we listened, and as if we almost died. Somehow I managed to think of Ella and I took out my phone. Somehow there was some power in it again. I dialled her number and held the phone out so that she could hear him.

  “Just listen,” I whispered before she could speak.