On the morning of her birthday, Lars served Bea her favourite breakfast in bed – fruit and creamy yoghurt, crispy bacon and berries. For the first time since that first day, he made the air sing for her – ‘Happy Birthday’. There was a cake. When they were done he set her to do the washing-up while he went to the barn to prepare for the evening’s event.
First he drove the vehicles he kept there out onto the greening tarmac forecourt – his motorbike, the car, the mobile home. He took a power hose to the floor and blasted the flags until they were spotless. Then he was up and down the walls on a ladder with an industrial hoover, sucking away the cobwebs and the dust of decades. He carried in bales of straw which he set around the walls as seats, put up trestle tables along both sides of the long barn walls and a platform made of square wooden boxes at one end where he claimed the band would play. He spread a white cloth along the trestles and made Bea go out into the summer garden and pick huge bunches of flowers and leaves to put in vases – as many as she could, great floral tributes to herself set up in nooks in the walls and at intervals on the floor.
‘But who’s coming, Lars? Who’s it for?’ Bea demanded.
‘Surprise!’ said Lars. She roared at him in frustration, but he wouldn’t say.
He produced a huge silver bowl, as long as a small child, which he filled up with vodka, fruit juice, dark rum, sliced apples and oranges stuck with cloves, sticks of cinnamon, slices of ginger. He lined up bottles of beer and cider and row upon row of dully shining stoneware mugs and glasses.
‘But who’s coming?’ cried Bea.
‘You’ll see!’ cried Lars.
‘Will I know them? I won’t know them, will I?’ bawled Bea.
‘They’ll know you,’ said Lars cheerfully. He climbed high up into the barn among the great wooden roof beams to set up the lights. He put up a projector to cast light shows and cartoons on the walls, hung a great silver disco ball in the middle of the roof space and fired narrow beams of lights at it, which shattered and cast mini beams all over, an explosion of light.
‘Is it my mum?’ she begged.
‘No mums allowed at this dance!’ said Lars.
He climbed down and began to tidy up – carried the ladders out, tidied up the electric cables, put away the hoover, the power hose, all the equipment for cleaning. Then at last, he turned on the lights.
‘What do you think?’ he said. The space, which had been dark and dusty that morning, was filled with light. Daffy Duck was dancing on the walls and shards of colour shot everywhere.
But Bea had no eyes for decoration.
‘There’s no one here!’ she said.
‘Bea, I’ve worked all day for you. What do you think?’
‘But what for?’ she howled. ‘Just me? On my own. I don’t want a party on my own. I want my friends. I want my family.’ Bea wept. She looked wildly around from side to side, in the half-hope that her family was still there, still alive, still surviving somehow, even though Lars had told her a hundred times that only she could rescue them. She’d had enough. She had lost everything, and now this idiot wanted her to dance.
Lars stood still a moment, regarding her gravely.
‘Call them,’ he commanded.
‘Call who? There’s no one left I ever knew, except you . . .’
Lars turned and flung out his arm at his handiwork. The barn did look amazing. Dusk was falling and the lights were brightening moment by moment. The small spirits of flowers and shrubs were beginning to emerge around them, mingling in with the coloured lights and projections on the walls, a strange mix of medieval feast and modern nightclub. It was a magical sight; but not to Bea. People, people were what she craved. Where were the people?
‘This place was used as a dance hall for hundreds of years,’ said Lars. ‘Villagers for miles around used to come. Everyone piled in and they’d dance and drink and sing and kiss, and sneak out for a fumble and make love in the hay loft. Call them, Bea! They’re all dead now. Call them up! Fill the place up with laughing spirits. Go on – do it!’
‘But they’re dead,’ wailed Bea. ‘What’s the point of them? They don’t last.’ Was that it – his idea of fun? Dancing with the dead? She didn’t want illusion and spirits – she wanted real flesh and real blood – real laughter, real boys and girls, real kisses.
‘Bea, please? – do it for me, if not for you. Don’t you know that this life drives me crazy too? I’m not that much older than you. I should be out with my friends too – but there’s none of them left either. They’re all gone. We only have each other. Bea, don’t turn away from me. Look, Bea – look. Look at me!’
Bea had been on the edge of running out, but she turned towards him. He was lifting his hands over his head like a ballet dancer. Lights began to sparkle above his head – Lars seemed to have a weakness for Disney when it came to magic. The sparkles began to revolve one way and Lars the other.
He began to change – his clothes, his hair, his look. At the Green House he always dressed in camouflage, but now the green and grey began to fade away. The short hair he wore stretched and reshaped, his clothes grew loose and colourful. He did a couple of twirls for her – and there he was, long-haired and beautiful, just like when she had first met him.
Bea gawped. She’d forgotten how gorgeous he was. He stood in his pose for a while, waiting for her to react. When she didn’t, he shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and scowled.
‘I’d say let’s have a dance if there was any music,’ he mumbled, embarrassed himself.
Bea relented – or perhaps she had no choice. Either way, the words came into her throat . . .
‘COME, YOU FALLEN DANCERS, PLAYERS, LOVERS, FRIENDS. I SUMMON AND COMMAND. PLAY AS YOU USED TO DO. FILL THIS HALL . . .’
There was a brief pause – then a creak of wood. The door opened and in they came – the girls and the boys, families, grandfathers, grandmothers, mums and dads, a chattering, excited throng. The farmers who had once ruled here, the children laughing and jumping, some sulking, some sighing, some love-struck; the fun-loving, the sad, the young, the old, all come to dance, to forget their troubles, to dance and drink and fall over and dance some more and joke and sing and make love.
Laughter and voices filled the air. Bea knew they were just guests in this world – no one knew that better than she did. But while they were here, weren’t they as real as she was herself?
At the end of the barn where Lars had built his make-do stage, a collection of musicians began to tune up. Still the throng was growing. The band started up – one on a fiddle, one on the pipes, someone on a tambourine, an accordion, a bass fiddle. The band leader counted time and the dance began.
The first brave ones ran out to make their shapes on the floor. Lars lifted up his arm and smiled his sly smile. Bea took his hand and together they walked out to dance. Neither of them knew the moves of the old time, so they jiggled awkwardly about in front of one another, until the caller began shouting out instructions and couples started to whirl about the barn floor. They joined in, clumsily at first but soon getting the hang of it.
Great plates of food appeared up and down the tables, sandwiches and hams, loaves of freshly baked bread, vast hunks of cheese, roasted birds and potatoes and salads and boiled cabbage with bacon, salad, beans and baked potatoes by the hundredweight. Bea and Lars took their fill and dipped their cups in that huge bowl of punch that never seemed to empty, even though everyone there was pulling draughts out of it like elephants at the water hole.
. . . and they danced. They danced with the spirits, they danced with each other – danced and danced and danced. They stole outside to steal a puff of weed, secretly, as if anyone might actually catch them. Lars stole a kiss; they danced some more. They drank some more. As the night turned and the punch flowed, Lars swirled her out of the barn and pushed her up against the wall and kissed her again, harder this time. Bea kissed him back. They kissed until they were drunk with it. Then they drank some more and danced some more and kissed some more . . . And then at last, when the crowds began to thin, they crept up in secret to the hay loft where other lovers hid among the bales.
And oh, how tenderly did he kiss her lips, her neck, her breasts, bared to the flickering candlelight. And how sweetly did he run his hands over her as if she was his one true treasure, all his, only his, always to be only his.
Bea pushed his hand away, but he whispered with his sweet low voice in her ear, how they were two who had lost everything in this war. How they must seize their chances in times like these, take their pleasures as they could. Who would deny them this, at such a time, in such a place?
In Bea’s ear other voices were whispering . . . her mum crying – Oh no, Bea! Oh no – not here, not now – not with him! And Odi and Silvis and her father and Tyra and Frey, and her own voice too, in among the din, warning her, begging her. Again Bea pushed his hand away as it crept lower. So soon? – too soon! But Lars whispered some more, and more and more. And at last she relented.
How tenderly did he pluck the clothes off her, that sweet little chick; and how tenderly did he touch her and make her squirm, and how sweetly he made love to her, whispering in her ear all the words she longed to hear, words of passion, of friendship, of togetherness . . . of love. Him and her against the world. It was true, wasn’t it?
And oh, how lovingly he held her in his arms while she wept for all the things she had lost. How patiently did he wait for her emotion to cool, while he soothed her and hugged her. That made her weep some more. When he asked why, she said, ‘Because in all these months you never touched me once till now.’
He held her still then, understanding, giving room for her grief. Downstairs, the dance had wound down. Someone played alone on a violin – so, so softly – while Bea drifted off to sleep in his arms.
In the morning when she woke up she was alone in the hay loft. Lars’s door, she knew, would be locked – he always slept unseen. Later again when they were at breakfast together, he was back in his fatigues. Neither of them mentioned what had happened the night before. He ate, complained about his hangover, chatted about their next sally to war, nodded when Bea had to go back to bed.
During that day she shed some tears, but they were the last tears she was to shed in a long while. She put that night aside in a box in her mind, only to be taken out when permission was given.
Finally, Lars had made himself all things to her. She loved him, she hated him, she lived for him, she risked her life for him, she adored and feared and despised him. She was powerful; all her power was his. She no longer cared to feel – it was too complicated, too difficult, too hurtful. Her heart was ready to turn into cold stone.
What a good little solider Bea was now. She stole the spirits of young and old; man, woman and child without compulsion or compassion. She no longer considered; she obeyed. She was a soldier at last.
Once a month or so after that, Lars would casually ask if she fancied going to a dance, and Bea would look down and nod. Then there would be another beautiful, tearful, damaging night, from which Bea would emerge a little more hurt, a little more in love, a little more desperate – a little more his. She grew strong and cold. She took her pleasures when she could, as a soldier does. She did not think of others much, because to think is to pity, to understand is to forgive and no solider can afford such luxuries.
But despite all that, it could not end there. Inside Bea there beat a loving heart, and although Lars could blind her and fool her and use her, he would never be able to fully corrupt her.