the_folly | Dec. 23rd, 2020

BA sent this out as sort of Christmas treat in his monthly newsletter. I thought I'd share it here for those who haven't subscribed. Since it's not spoilery in the least (in fact it takes place before the start of Rivers of London, I checked to make sure using

sixthlight's timeline for the series), I won't cut it.

CHRISTMAS MOMENT
Moment 4 – The Folly, 24th December 2011

It is the night before Christmas and I am dancing.

Nobody taught me to dance. It comes as naturally to me as breathing. They had to teach me to listen, to read and write. And they tried to teach me to speak, although I’ve never seen the necessity for that. They taught me etiquette and when to curtsy and to whom – but of course I never curtsy.

Walking is hard… I have to pretend I’m dancing slowly.

I twirl across the southern balcony, stepping my way through the laughing ghosts of my boys as they play cricket indoors. Those naughty boys who depend upon their skill to snatch the balls from the air before they damage the walls. Sometimes, when I’m dancing, I catch the balls as they glide down the pitch towards stumps made of occasional tables and stolen cutlery.

Naughty boys, lost boys, gone for sixty-five years.

I knew nothing but the dance when I came here, frightened silly girl, dreaming of home, dreaming of the Queen and the forest and the citadel. I remember waking up in linen sheets as dry and crisp and fragrant as autumn leaves.

And then the smell from the kitchen.

I skip around the balcony, raising up on my toes as I pass the door to the songbird’s room. I can hear him singing even in his sleep, the high melody of the young man with dreams intertwined with the constantly shifting chords of action and duty, power and control – sadness and loss.

I take the steady thump of his heart as my backbeat down the stairs past echoes of old laughter and conversation, the smell of cigarettes and cologne, brandy and wet coats. The ghosts trail behind me, taking up the steps as I parade around the lower balcony. My fat boys, my old boys, my flawed and sad and shouting and mean spirited and heroic and…

Dead boys dancing. Their song a fading murmuration like the wind in the trees.

Down into the atrium and the moonlight, bright as day and as silver as the sound of a harp. Stamping down the darkness beneath my feet and drowning out the screams and entreaties and the ancient pain.

I pirouette at the four corners and circle the bare tree the songbird has left for me to decorate. A living tree – because a dead one would be a blasphemy – in a wooden tub he made himself from barrel staves. My sad songbird still believes that if he can keep himself busy he will never have to remember.

I trip light-footed down into my kitchen, my glorious kitchen.

I remember following the smell and standing in the doorway in my pink flannel nightdress with a bunny rabbit on the breast and breathing in that smell.

They taught me to cook. Skinny Madge and fat Sally, Dolly the Scrubber and Rickard the scullery boy. Taught me to knead and cut. How to stir and taste and sprinkle. The deeper mystery of brawn and headcheese, of liver and lights, of parsley and mistletoe. What to do with a carrot and all the things you can’t do with an aubergine.

Later, when fat Sally had run off with the rag and bone man, Skinny Madge used to sit in a rocking chair by the window and smoke her pipe and let me cook. So many hungry boys, so many stomachs to fill and hearts to warm.

When we had Christmas downstairs, Dolly would hit the “leftover” brandy and sing such songs to make Rickard blush.

Now the kitchen staff dance behind me as I fetch up the gingerbread men, the spun-sugar globes and fat white candles. In the high and secret cupboards live the tinsel, the stars and fairy queen. I hug them tightly to my chest as I high-step back up the stairs with ghosts of the typing pool trailing red ribbons behind them and join hands with the grooms and the maids and valets to circle the tree as I string the globes and the gingerbread and carefully fix the candles in the candleholders.

Around me, the dead waltz amongst the leather armchairs and settees that sleep under the dust sheets as I dance up the stepladder to place the fairy queen in her place of honour. She looks nothing like the real Queen, being pink and fluffy and cheerful.

I stop before she’s placed, because suddenly I can feel the future.

This is rare and rarer still since my boys marched off to war and didn’t come back.

I feel it as a bass note so deep and loud that it makes the walls of the Folly shake.

And then a counterpoint, a shrieking, painful jumble of notes like a madman sawing at a fiddle, but not so mad that he has forgotten how to play. There is dreadful purpose in that cacophony.

But with that awful sound comes another melody, a darting, laughing tune, clever and sly. A fearless song that peers into shadows, lifts lids, sweeps the dust sheets off the muffled furniture and opens doors that have stayed shut for far too long.

And drawn behind that tune, as if dragged out from the darkness, I can feel the brilliance of the sun rising over the great mouth of the river. I want to shout and grab my pots and pans and run through the streets banging them together.

Wake up, I would sing, wake up and face the east.

Wake up, I would call, for the herald of the dawn is here.

For good or ill a new day is upon us.

I fix the fairy to her perch – she stares down at me with a fixed, unknowing smile.

There will be blood and joy.

Pain and love and all the things that come with a proper life.

And better – more mouths to feed.