The Ice is Singing. Jane Rogers

at Newcastle General doing her nursing training – broken off by the homecoming of her wounded brother. She had never thought she would still be feeding off those memories, thirty and forty years later. That nothing else at all would have happened. The memories, like old and retouched film, became oddly coloured, unreally bright. She was losing the sense that they had been her own life. As if it has happened to someone else. Another girl with chubby cheeks and long fair hair and a giggly, dimpling laugh. The most important memory, Jacko, had been subjected to so many viewings, so many touchings up, that she hardly knew it now. He was handsome. Kind. Funny. American. A hero; he had joined the British Army before the other Americans came into the war. It didn’t last long – he was nearly better, and was going back to France. But they went for walks when she was off duty, and he kissed her in the fields. The afternoon before he left they lay down in the long grass; it was hot, he tried to – she was trembling, she nearly –

      The poor film was so scratched and faded that she was no longer quite sure what had happened. What lingered like a smell was a nauseating sense of physical loss. Her fears had made her reject what her whole body craved.

      She had been afraid of getting pregnant. Also afraid of seeming cheap, of losing Jacko. And perhaps she had been right there, because Jacko did care for her. He sent her five letters. And when the war was over he wrote to her from London, saying he was awaiting passage to the US. Could they meet? Tom was bedridden, the pain in his shattered leg still making him delirious from time to time. Alice braved her mother.

      ‘I have to go to London.’

      ‘To London? To London? What for?’

      ‘I want to see – I need to talk to an American friend of mine – before he goes home.’

      ‘An American?’ Ellen said quietly. ‘My God.’

      ‘What?’ cried Alice quickly. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

      Ellen shook her head.

      ‘Why shouldn’t I go and see him? I love him. We might get married.’

      Ellen snorted. ‘That’s what they all say.’

      ‘It’s true. Why shouldn’t I go? I’m an adult, aren’t I?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Well?’

      ‘Go. Go on. Go.’

      ‘I – I was going to go and ask Mrs Munroe if she could give you a hand with Tom – while I’m away.’

      ‘You needn’t bother.’

      ‘Look – you can’t manage on your own, you know that.’

      ‘We’ll manage. If it’s more important to you to go gallivanting off with a Yank than to look after your own flesh and blood that’s nearly died fighting for your freedom, then we can manage, my girl. I’ve got some pride left, I hope. And I’ll tell you something else, madam. If you go, you go for good. I’m not having you back here, after you’ve been off whoring down in London. You go – go on and enjoy yourself – never mind about your brother lying here sweating in pain. Never mind us. I just hope you can sleep nights, in years to come.’

      Alice in her innocence saw time as elastic, able to stretch to encompass all good things. She wrote and explained to Jacko. She would see him when her brother was better. Perhaps Tom would come with her and visit him in the States! She would see him soon, and sent him kisses.

      There was never time for her to go. And when she became old enough to realize that she should go even though there wasn’t time, it was too late. She looked grey and haggard. Jacko had probably forgotten her, married someone else. Besides, he never had, had he? Asked her to marry him. Only to see him. If she had gone then, she knew – she felt sure. But now it was too late.