The Virgin Wakes

We giggled as we ran through the gothic arch of the main doors and down the stone steps to the street. The shadow of the belfry momentarily shaded our eyes from the glare of the sinking sun. The golden rings adding new weight to our freshly encircled fingers would have glinted in the light if we hadn’t been holding hands so tightly.

No confetti. No speeches. No first dance – at least not one that anyone else would watch. My dress was long and white, yes, but it had cost £30 off the rack and had barely a frill. We didn’t need frills, just each other, a helpful priest, a few solemn promises and perhaps a little tradition. . .

Old silver earrings, complete with the tarnish of the years gone by since they were last worn by my late mother – cleaning them would have been a stain on her memory. New shoes, dainty white ballet pumps with white criss-cross elastic straps, soft soles and not a single scuff on either toe. They were perfect for light-footed skipping in this light-hearted mood. Our witnesses were borrowed, like books, from the town library. We found them there a week ago in the local history section and bonded with them over images of nearby fountains. Two grey-haired, bright-eyed women who sparkled at the chance to be involved in something celebratory, so we invited them in to the most sacred moment of our lives. And finally, the elegant bracelet given to me by my sister on my 18^th birthday. Real forget-me-not flowers. Tiny blue petals preserved forever in clear resin ovals, strung together with silver links that fitted perfectly around my wrist.

That trip to the library hadn’t been our first. My lover, a stone mason of some skill, had come to live in the old town after many months of researching statues. They were here in abundance. Exquisite sculptures of perfectly proportioned men and women decorated squares and streets with their silent, unmoving poses. Even the headstones in the churchyard were formed into huge, winged angels, no two alike. They called to him, spoke to him, until he gave up his big city job and moved across the country to study them more closely. He took hundreds of photographs of them, framing his favourites and reading up on the artists who created their forms. One in particular caught his imagination, he sometimes played his violin for her, more beautifully than he ever played it for me. Dulcet tones swooned on the night air as his bow tripped smoothly over the strings in honour of that motionless maiden.

Apart from our gold rings, the only thing he carried to the church that day was his violin, sleeping safely in its black, fiberglass case. He carried it as we left, a clue as to what was to come.

On this perfect evening, following our perfect wedding, in our perfect town, as sunset approached, we were naturally drawn to our favourite works of art. We thanked them for bringing us together. They watched our bows and curtsies, as we grinned our way down street after street.

As the sun waved a final, crimson-streaked, good night from behind the silhouetted Council House, we skipped into the square where the market stood on Saturdays. She greeted us from the ornate fountain at its centre, the stock-still dancing girl. 'The Virgin Wakes' said the copper plaque affixed to her limestone pedestal; 'Henry Pale, 1805'. The reactive metal bluing and greening through exposure to the air and the cascading water.

Balanced on one leg, the other out behind her, angelic face leaning into her turn, arms arched above her head. She spun in stillness, lit from below by bright bulbs, red, yellow, blue and green. The dancer watched the town square with frozen eyes, behind ever tinkling sprays of water as they cast rainbow shadows onto the glinting stonework of her very existence.

The lights brushed her flimsy dress with a dreamy wash of colour. The delicate shadows edging over the ripples and ruches of her stone carved fabrics, accentuated her breasts and athletic curves, as if she was almost naked. At each corner of her plinth a roaring lion stood guard, teeth bared, claws unsheathed, manes ruffled in an imaginary wind, each one the pride of his pride.

“We’re here,” he said. “We did it and we’re here.”

I leaned in, reaching up to kiss his perfect lips, pressing myself against his muscled torso. He wrapped his arms around my waist, lifting me up, level with his strong, square jaw. We relished the embrace for longer than I expected. Perhaps, I thought, his anticipation of our first night together as man and wife, in fact, our first night together at all, was as piqued as mine. He placed me gently back onto the ground, my ballet pumps soft enough for tiny pebbles to register underfoot. 

"So what's the big ceremony?" I asked, eager to involve his passion for the sculpted in my passion for our young marriage.

"Oh, my sweet, you have the biggest part to play. Do you think my virgin can mimic the pose of Henry Pale's?"

My teenage ballet training had never been more valued, more lovingly remembered. The statue posed en pointe in attitude en croise derriere if my memory served. Her arms in fifth position. Yes, I could hold that pose.

"Yes, yes I can! Should I show you now?"

He untangled his protective arms from around my delicate form and placed his violin case on the wooden bench beside the ballerina. He removed his bow and violin and began to play the sweetest melody. It drifted from his hands to fill the square and fill my heart with joy and melancholy combined together with such subtlety I could not tell them apart.

"Now, my sweetheart, climb up next to our model of loveliness and take your position on her stage."

The water was inviting in the warm summer evening and, in my excitement, I chose to ignore that it would render my white dress transparent. Her hair was swept back into a long neat braid, just like mine and I ran my fingers over my plait before straightening it down the back of my elegant neck.

"Feel the music," he said. "Dance with my rhythm. Until you rest in her position."

I danced with ease through the water pooling at the base of the plinth, graceful, measured, stretches and turns, the basic positions and movements came easily and I expanded my performance from there until I had climbed up onto the statue's platform and taken her shape; en pointe in attitude en croise derriere arms in fifth position.

The violin released a swirl of shuddering notes, the change in tempo and in mood caught in my ears and tremored my limbs. I held my pose. Almost exactly the same size as the model, my body brushed up side by side with my copybook example. It became easier to maintain the position and seemingly more difficult to move out of it. I relaxed my arms to bring them down to my sides but they stayed set, like stone, in fifth. I pulled my working leg in towards my centre of gravity but it remained flexed and poised mid-air. Panic swept through my body, exacerbated when the cold left arm of the statue made contact with my ribs. She was moving.

My face held a fixed smile, which I could not remove from my expression.

The statue-girl behind me took a step. She stood straight up, feet flat on the stage where I was now a prisoner in a perfect en pointe pose. She moved carefully with aching joints, slowly creeping down into the water of the fountain base. Her skin took on colour as she moved through the lights and she was no longer a stark, white stone. Her flesh was growing pink beneath her rose-white skin.

My husband, of less than two hours, continued to play in short staccato notes. He looked on as the woman he had studied took the place of the woman he had claimed to love. When she had fully removed herself from the fountain and stood before him, dripping wet and fully human, eyes as blue as mine, he stopped his jarring music and placed his instrument back in its case.

He stepped into the fountain himself, climbed up onto the plinth and planted a single kiss on my stony lips before removing my wedding ring and bracelet.

"Thank you Sweetheart." He ran the dainty chain of sky blue flowers through his fingers and said, "I will forget you not."

. . .

Balanced on one leg, the other out behind me, angelic face leaning into my turn, arms arched above my head. I spin in stillness, lit from below by bright bulbs, red, yellow, blue and green. I watch the town square with frozen eyes, behind ever tinkling sprays of water as they cast rainbow shadows onto the glinting stonework of my very existence.