Gabriella

[The soldier/he] remembers how strong and secure he felt then: his mother and father providing him with everything in the comfort of their sturdy village home, and he was young and healthy, with all the possibilities of his life still open before him: the village, the market town, the more distant city and, from the port there, the great river to the sea. And then across the whole world, carried by the imperial ships that commanded all of the known oceans and seas.

When he remembers that kitchen on that summer day, and the soft wash of sunshine through the ivy-shrouded window, he sees the cottage set in a green, sunlit garden, partly shaded by broad, leafy trees, as if at the centre of a net laid over the countryside, over the map of the map of the nation, over the blue seas and distant lands, deserts, hill stations, passes and rivers, jungles and snow-topped imperial mountains. And he knows that each strand of the net was a tightrope that he could have walked, each [node? Net-strand junctions…] a point of decision, a place to pause, feet balanced on the ridged knots of the junctions, and consider the options that are open to him, the results of all of the choices he’d made and all the accidents he’d adapted to in his life so far.

And yet, in spite of all the informed choices that he had made, all the fine calculations of odds and return, he finds himself here in the moonlight, in the service of the empire in a war it is struggling to win, with the net strained and torn behind him, and limited choices before him. Now it seems that retreat is the only choice, a return to the past across a changed landscape that he has already traversed once, when the net seemed whole and unbreakable.

Gabriella, half-awake in the gloom, thinks the soldier is sad and brave and vulnerable, and she wants to be his friend and to comfort him. She thinks about his bright, clear eyes and his thick, dark moustache until she falls asleep, assembling in her mind a fresh, clean, deep blue uniform for him, and placing him, smiling, in a succession of sunlit spring parks and gardens, and in plush but tasteful townhouse interiors, drinking tea with young ladies to whom he is politely attentive, but whom Gabriella knows he secretly finds deadly dull. He is waiting for someone else, she knows: his perfect love and sweetheart. She holds that warm thought tight as she falls asleep.

[Anna continues]
“The little girl was a little afraid of the woods”, my grandmother had gone on. “She knows that it’s bad luck to cross a moon shadow, but the moon above the hill is throwing black-striped tree shadows across the road in the sunken lane. But she’s a brave little girl, just like her mummy told her to be, so she keeps her eyes on the clear moonlit patch of grass at the end of the sunken lane [it’s a bit like a tunnel…], and she steps into the shadow of the trees, and is never seen by anyone on earth again. A darker shadow has swept into the dark after her. [NB - All of this has been in the dream of the young girl in Nanny Anna’s story {the little girl and her story are derived from Anna’s own childhood experience in that village…} …Imply this by making the language of the dream within the story more coloured/descriptive, less like the simple ‘story speech’ of the rest of Anna’s tales…making it sound less like my normal narrative voice…]

“The little girl awoke, confused, under the creaking oak tree. Just as in her dream, she was cold, her thin cotton dress chilled by the falling night. She could see a few stars through the tree branches, very glittery and hard looking in the darkness, and the silvery-blue light of the moon was creeping up into the sky from behind the hills. It was as if, while dreaming, she’d been watching the evening with her ears and eyes wide open, seeing the colours change from blue to orange to pink to grey to blue-black, watching the trees drain the colour out of their silhouettes, and hearing the birds settling down, their songs and calls thinning out gradually to a single cheep, to a furtive ruffle of wings, to silence.

“The little girl’s mummy, exhausted by her day’s toil, is startled awake as her daughter rattles the door latch and bursts into the firelit room. The little girl, breathless, snivelling, gulps for air between spasmodic sobs. The woman puts her arms around her daughter, squeezing, stroking, rocking her until the upset subsides, and then coaxes her, despite her own tiredness, into telling her what’s wrong. And so it all comes tumbling out, lubricated with fresh tears and paroxysms of [crying/sobs/breaths]; the fear-ridden journey from the river, the dark lanes beset by animal sounds from the fields and undergrowth, the shivers of cold and anxiety.

When the deluge of words and fear has abated the mother is stroking the girl’s forehead and shushing away the last ebb of the [upset], the fire is flickering down, almost to extinction, and there’s a cold, blue-white wash of moonlight on the windowsill and the bare wooden floor. Gathering the child in closer to her on her lap, the mother says, ‘Shh, shh. It’s all done now. You’re safe with me. We’re safe together here.’

“The little girl says, ‘Mm,’ still wide awake, and calm now.

“The mother says, ‘I’ll tell you a story before bed, shall I?’, and feels her daughter’s head nodding agreement against her shoulder, the little girl’s hair brushing against her mother’s throat.”