23
Flares had been lit on the floodbank, throwing a guttering light across the crowd that had gathered for the races. Dryden, still struggling with the innocent collision of the past and present, left Ed Bardolph with the rest of the volunteers at the boathouse making final preparations for the long-distance skate to Cambridge. He’d found Humph still parked up on the riverbank, the cab resounding to the ritual intonation of the football results being repeated on the local news. He’d rifled half a dozen miniatures from Humph’s glove compartment, grabbed Boudicca’s lead, his skates, and set out for the ice fair.
Railway sleepers had been piled into a makeshift grandstand for the traditional start of the championships: the Flying Mile, four circuits of the oval course Bardolph’s men had earlier marked out. Other spectators were already crowding along the high floodbank, between the flares. Sparklers, sold at the gate, cascaded silver where children stood. Skaters zigzagged between the fairground stalls and the tea bars, one with a hand-held flaming torch which left a wake across Dryden’s eye.
The night sky, clear and crowded, was crushing. Dryden drank one of the bottles from his overcoat pocket, the aroma of the malt sharpened by the frost. Ice was forming in his hair and he took a black woollen hat from his pocket and drew it down over his brow. After buying a ticket, he took a seat on the sleepers at the top. There was a breeze here and he could feel the moisture turning to ice in his eyelashes. The malt made his blood rush, so he had another.
Looking out over the winter scene he tried, once again, to conjure up the heat of that lost summer. He’d met the others on the first day, let loose by his uncle and aunt to wander the camp and find new friends. Taking a book, he’d gone down to the beach and watched the three strange children, the siblings – Dex and the sister – and the brooding presence of the older Smith, with his bleached white hair. And he envied them the familiarity of the triangular world they shared. They’d dammed a stream which crossed the sands, creating a wide deep pool on which Dex sailed a paper boat. Smith had dragged logs from the dunes to reinforce the sand, while Marcie had stood, almost motionless, in the centre of the pool, waiting for the water to rise, as insubstantial as her rippling reflection.
He’d been sitting on a log that Smith wanted. So he’d stuffed the paperback he’d been reading inside the belt of his shorts and helped him haul it down to the sand. Wordlessly he’d followed him up to the dunes to find more. When they’d finished Dex had sailed the boat to him across the newly formed lake, a thrilling act of friendship. After tea in the clattering canteen, in the hour of dusk before bedtime, they’d toured the camp. The boys’ chalet was opposite Philip’s while the sister had one to herself down by the pool, next to the one where the woman she called Grace slept beside a double cot for the baby boys. There was a man, too, Grace’s husband, but he seemed disengaged and never spoke to any of the children, immersed – whenever Philip saw him – in a newspaper, putting red circles round names in the close, dense print of the sports pages. And they’d seen him once, glimpsed through the club door, under the strip-light of a snooker table. Grace was always outside, her florid, intelligent face blighted by anxiety. Philip had never understood, never understood how this disparate family fitted together.
At breakfast on the second day Philip had watched them all, eating at one of the Formica-topped tables in the canteen. He’d told Uncle Roger that he had found some friends to play with, pointed them out, and could still recall the way the man’s cheerful smile had faded. ‘OK, Philip,’ he’d said. ‘That’s fine.’ Fine, nothing more.
They met again in the dunes above the beach, and the intoxicating excitement of belonging had overwhelmed him. Once, he’d seen his uncle by the coastguard’s hut, watching them play. He’d waved, then stepped back beyond the horizon.
Dryden closed his eyes and tried to squeeze meaning out of the idyllic memories he had: the Gothic sandcastles, the tide sweeping in the paper boats, Smith and his kite. And the game after dark – Smith’s brilliant idea. Of course it had been easy for them, the boys in their chalet, and the sister too. But for Philip the game held an edge, for he alone was taking a real risk of discovery and punishment.
A bell rang, breaking the trance. A man skated across the ice below, ringing a bell and clearing the ice for the race. Four men slowly traversed the course pushing a home-made wooden snow plough which brushed clear the loose snow and ice, flattening out the stipples left by the frozen rain. At the start a dozen skaters straddled the line, then a klaxon set them free, the crowd cheering as they wheeled past, completing a circuit before they were able to break from their prescribed lanes. Boudicca stood, barking at the unnatural sight of men sweeping past, arms like metronomes. The biting cold had reduced the crowd, but perhaps 400 had come, the steam of their collective breath drifting across the track. The floodlights were harsh, the scene entirely coloured in white, silver and the chilliest of blues.
He watched three races, then, tiring of the people around him, he climbed down and through the tunnel under the railway line back to the riverside. A makeshift set of halogen floodlights lit the frozen surface where a line had
