The Child Garden

woman simply bent over the table top and worked her legs back and forth, her old crooked hands trying to hold. She finally succeeded in getting one knee onto the table and then clung to it desperately, as if to the wreckage of a ship.

‘Give her a hand!’ roared Old Tone, suddenly furious. Milena shrank back from his voice, shrank back from touching the old woman. Rolfa pushed the old woman’s skinny behind.

‘Whoo-hooo! Ooops!’ cried Lucy. Old Tone helped her to her feet. As she stood, Milena realized that she had smelly knees. How, wondered Milena, do you get smelly knees?

Someone passed Rolfa a squeeze box. A few testing notes announced that a song would begin, and the pub fell quiet, and the skinny purple men turned in anticipation.

An old, worn, squeaky melody began, a homely tune, and the men chuckled in recognition. The old woman gave them a wink and a toothless cackle and began to raise her skirts teasingly over slightly scaly thighs. Oh don’t, winced Milena. Then Lucy began to sing, in a wheedling, bird-like voice.

’It’s a Dog of a Song,’ she began, her voice straining.

‘Just a Dog of a Song

Ambling gently along’

She mimed an amble with her knees. Her fingers, all lumps and shiny patches, tried to trace sprightly patterns through the air. Her old wrinkled face pursed its lips and opened its eyes wide in a caricature of youthful naughtiness.

‘With no ill feelings, no ill will.

Just a Dog of a Song — the voice rose and quavered.

‘But it doesn’t know how to end

And it’s so hard

When you lose a friend — for just a note the voice held the clear tone it must once have had.

‘Just a Dog of a Song

But…’

Her head did a funny sideways jump, as if something mechanical had caught in her neck.

’We all sing along. But…’

Jump.

‘We all sing along. But…’

She did it over and over like a wind-up doll gone wrong. The rest of the song consisted of only that for over three minutes. The men joined in. Part of the fun was trying to make her stop. The men howled like coyotes, they shouted at her, they pounded tables with their mugs. Did they like it? Why were they smiling?

Finally Lucy stopped, and Rolfa took her hand and held it up, and there were derisive cheers. ‘No more. No more.’

‘Where’s my pint? Where’s my pint?’ Lucy challenged and pretended to make a fist.

Rolfa stood back and lifted up her hands and clapped lightly. But somehow, in her mouth, by sucking air through spittle, Rolfa was able to reproduce, exactly, the sound of massed applause. It rose and fell in waves. Milena could almost hear the cheering.

Later, walking back, Milena suddenly understood what the song meant.

Lucy had been imitating a broken record played on a wind-up gramophone. It must have been a shock when the tinny horns replaced the smoothly sliding tapes.

‘They were alive before the Blackout,’ Milena said.

‘Yup,’ said Rolfa.

They were the incandescent people of the electronic age. That was what had become of them. They had seen cities spangled with light, they had laughed in unison, millions all at once watching the same entertainments all together in an electronic net. They had had to learn how to sing songs and play squeeze boxes during the Blackout and they were now — how old? At least 120, maybe 140, years old.

But it doesn’t know how to end, and it’s so hard when you lose a friend…’

‘They were singing about themselves,’ Milena murmured.

‘Yup,’ said Rolfa, her back towards her. Milena noticed that she was abrupt and walking ahead of her.

‘We’ll go again,’ said Milena, to make amends.

‘If they’ll have you,’ said Rolfa. ‘Tuh!’ The chuckle, her chuckle that always died and became a shudder. ‘You looked most of the time like you’d swallowed your bloody parasol.’

That’s when Milena remembered that she’d left it behind.

‘Yup,’ she said, looking away from the river. She had begun, without realising it, to imitate Rolfa.

CHAPTER THREE Love Sickness (Holding a Ghost)

Love’s Labour’s Lost had grown so listless that the director had actually called for a rehearsal that afternoon. Actors did not normally need to rehearse; the viruses told them what to do.

The practice rooms were normally reserved for musicians, and were too small for a full cast. Summer sun streamed in through the windows. It was hot and airless.

‘Me, an’t shall please you,’ said Milena in her own fiercely exact voice. ‘I am Anthony Dull.’

‘No, no, no!’ wailed the director. His only job was to recreate the great production that the viruses remembered. ‘Milena, you know how that line is supposed to sound.’

‘Yes, thought Milena, flat, stupid, dull. She had no interest in it. She felt restless and worried and she did not know why. She did know that she wanted to talk to Rolfa, as if there were some unfinished business between them.

So in the late summer evening, still dressed as Constable Dull, she went to Rolfa’s chamber. A new aisle had been cleared through the racks. It was easier for her to find her way. As Milena walked through the archways of brick, she heard Rolfa begin to sing, alone in the dark.

She’ll stop in a moment, thought Milena. Rolfa didn’t. The song rose and fell wordlessly. It was embarrassing. How could she go up to Rolfa and say, hello, do you always sing to yourself in the dark?

Milena was about to creep away, when the music snagged her attention. A lowering note seemed to seize something in her chest and drag it down. Milena felt a great weight of something like sadness.

But it wasn’t sadness. It was as if someone were walking deliberately, sombre perhaps, but with high purpose. It had the sound of noble music.

What was it? Milena rifled through her viruses, but there was no answer. It wasn’t Wagner or Puccini. What the hell could it be? Milena sat down between the racks.

Milena’s viruses were told to keep track of the themes. They wove a structure in her head. The music kept unfolding out of itself, like a flower blooming. Then there was a slight catch, not in Rolfa’s voice, but in the notes, a slight wavering of uncertainty.

Rolfa stopped. She sang the passage in a new form. Yes! said the viruses. They showed Milena how the three new bars referred to the first notes she had heard.

By all the stars, Milena’s mind seemed to whisper. This is Rolfa’s. This is Rolfa’s music. She’s imagining it, here in the dark. Rolfa began to sing again, from the beginning. Rolfa can do this? This wasn’t bathtub singing or a drunken wallow. I’ve got her wrong, thought Milena. This is someone I don’t know. Why is she singing here? Why don’t people know about her?

Milena tried to remember the music. She told her viruses to remember, but even they got tangled up. The viruses were not used to listening to new music. New music was too alive, it wouldn’t sit still, the themes got tangled up like snakes. Very suddenly, almost with a perceptible click, the viruses gave up.

Milena was not used to listening to unfamiliar music either. It made her feel strange, as if she were in a dream where everything is scrambled but weighted with meaning. Rolfa’s voice suddenly rose to peaks, like a mountain, and Milena felt her eyes bulge. She felt tears start in her eyes. It was as if some great winged thing had