Before and After the Fall

Marilyn looked out at the pavements and the road, carpeted in morning snow. It had not come overnight, and had not yet been rutted and trampled on by car tyres and feet. In her little front garden, there was no green anymore. It had not been a heavy snowfall, but it was the ground was dry, and it had stuck. She smiled a little as she realised that though humans had not yet made their mark on the snow, birds had already hopped across the frosted lawn, and the frozen air had crystallised their light, fleeting impressions. As her eyes accustomed to the half-light of the breaking dawn outside she began to see colours other than white – the red of the berries, the black filigree of branches and twigs still waiting for the first shoots of spring leaves. It was not some spectacular snowscape, but it was a quiet, lovely scene. Yet as she looked, she remembered a phrase her mother had used about snow. “It’s fine on Christmas cards”. For years, for decades, she had gently teased her about that. Or was it always so gently? She felt a pang of conscience about that now. She had never been malicious, but she had been frustrated or sardonic on occasion, and only now, when it was too late to tell her mother, did she realise that there had been real fear and sadness behind the stock phrase. Sadness at the passage of time. And fear of falling.

I am younger than Mum was when she first started saying that, thought Marilyn, and when she first started really meaning it, and it wasn’t just a turn of phrase. And now some see me as old, though most of the time I don’t really feel it. And it’s just a point of principle when I object to being asked my age when it’s not relevant. Isn’t it?

The world was beginning to stir. A parcel delivery van made its way along the road. I wonder who is having something delivered so early, mused Marilyn, and what they will think about it. She did notice that the van slithered and slewed across the road. No harm was done. There was no oncoming traffic, and the driver soon had it under control. But what happened to a van could also happen to a person.

At the thought of that slither Marilyn felt vaguely sick, and turned away from the snowy scene as if she could turn away from her thoughts. It was a year now since she had felt that slither on the snow, with treacherous ice beneath it, as she walked into town from her little suburban street. She had been wearing sensible boots, and had not been walking too quickly. The slither seemed to last for an eternity, as she hung in the air like some cartoon cat, flailing and in suspended animation. But then she fell, and what she felt as she fell was not soft snow but the hardness and sharpness of ice and the inobduracy of the pavement beneath. Someone rushed across the road to help her, risking a fall himself. Someone came out of the house by where she fell, shivering as she hadn’t paused to put a coat on. “I’m fine,” Marilyn said, her automatic reflex. I have to be fine, she thought. There is no alternative. But there was. Something could be broken. And since her mother’s last illness Marilyn had a total hospital phobia. Though she could feel through her trousers, thick and sensible like her boots, that her knees were bleeding, she didn’t think anything was broken. She could move them. But she feared getting up. It was as if she herself were frozen, paralysed by fear. The kind strangers hauled her to her feet, offered her support, asked if she needed a doctor. The thought horrified her so much she forget her manners, even though they were being so good to her, and snapped, “No,” and when they asked if she were sure and she began to fear that they might take matters into their own hands, she said, “No!” even more vehemently, but did add “Thank you,” and repeated that she would be fine. Reluctantly they agreed not to summon help, but insisted on walking her home. Each step was painful, but she could cope with the pain. The fear was worse. When she was in the safety of her own lounge and her own armchair, she thanked them properly and said really, her knees were just scraped, a lot of it had been the shock, and she had always been clumsy. Finally at least partly reassured they left her to her own devices.

Her knees weren’t just scraped, they were quite badly cut, and she didn’t like the sight of blood though it didn’t actually turn her faint (people didn’t seem to understand that a hospital phobia didn’t necessarily mean a blood phobia or a needle phobia) but she attended to them herself, bathing them and putting on antiseptic and dressings. She could walk well enough. Some of it had been shock and the worst of the immediate shock was wearing off but it was being replaced by something deeper and more permanent.

But she hadn’t always been clumsy. That wasn’t true. And she particularly hadn’t always been clumsy on the ice and snow. Anything but.

That memory of her fall last year was suffused and fragmented by another memory. By memories of long ago, of when she was a child. Not really a little girl, but nine, ten, eleven years old. Her Mum and Dad had owned a shop then, in a seaside town where they had an ice rink. Like many of the local children, for Marilyn going to the ice rink was a treat. She was already losing some interest in her ballet class, but somehow ice skating was different. And she seemed to have a knack for it. Oh, she was no aspiring future winter Olympian, and never likely to star in Holiday on Ice (maybe not even in the town’s own imitation of it!) but after the initial slides and slithers that all those new on the ice have (and she didn’t fear falling then) she found her feet, so to speak, quite quickly and her parents didn’t need much persuading when she asked them if they would buy her her own ice skates instead of hiring out the ones available at the rink. She learnt to twirl, and to do turns, and even to do little jumps. And the proudest day of her young life was when she was invited to be in the Ice Show. Oh, only in the children’s chorus (they called it the chorus, even though there was no singing) but in one of her two appearances (the other one was dressed as a Christmas pudding, but she could put up with that as there were compensations) she got to wear a proper skating outfit! Like the ones that the skaters on the telly in the Winter Olympics and Holiday on Ice wore. Well, okay, maybe not quite the same. But it had a little flared skirt and was a lovely shade of cherry red, and red tights to match. She never did make it to a soloist, but the next year she was one of the snowflakes who skated apart from the rest of the chorus and skated round the Snow Queen.

Even when she was eleven years old, Marilyn could tell that the ice rink in the seaside town was getting shabbier, and the town’s resources were being put into the new Entertainment Centre on the seafront. Its days were numbered. She was genuinely sorry but also knew (for now she was of an age when she was told such things) that her parents might be selling up the business anyway and moving to another town. And anyway, she told herself, she was getting too old (and in purely practical terms she had had a grown spurt and they did like the chorus to be symmetrical) to be a snowflake or a Christmas pudding though she did hanker to wear a proper skating dress again.

The move happened, the new town didn’t have an ice rink, and Marilyn was disappointed at first, but not heart-broken. She never stopped liking watching the skating on the telly, but in her own life, other interests took over.

But it was a lovely feeling, all the same, thought Marilyn, wistfully. Even if she had never had a part in the ice show, and never worn a proper skating dress, it was still wonderful to glide over the ice and to turn and jump and twirl. And look at me now. Tears pricked her eyes. What had happened to that little girl in the cherry red skating dress? She had turned into a woman on the brink of old age, or not so far from it, who was scared of falling. It was almost as if her whole life was summed up in that. Her marriage had failed, though she and Edward said they were still friends. She’d taken early redundancy from her teaching job when the school merged with another. She wished now she’d tried to get another post straight away, but also knew in her heart that though she enjoyed teaching and had been a reasonably good teacher, it was something she had drifted into and she didn’t truly have a vocation. Yes, she did suppose that she and Eddy had done a good job with their children, Sarah and Solomon, both grown up now. She adored them and was proud of them. But she also wondered if they would have turned out perfectly fine anyway.

Somehow the day passed. She had plenty of food in the house, and forced herself to eat though she had no appetite. She tried reading, watching TV, but somehow could not get interested. She had an early night. Though she was no atheist, she wasn’t in the habit of saying nightly prayers, but that night found herself muttering, “Please God, make the snow go away overnight.” She chided herself for selfishness, knowing that the local children loved it, delighted to have a chance to make snowmen and drag sleds and dads out onto the snow and frost.

Her prayer was answered. The weather turned noticeably warmer overnight and though there were some little ambushes of slush, it was broadly speaking safe again. That morning she had a phone call from her daughter Sarah. Both her children phoned regularly, but she was still always happy to hear from them. Solomon and his partner had moved further away, but Sarah lived in a nearby cathedral town. “I’m not in work today, Mum,” she said, “Problem with the electrics at the office. Shall I pick you up and we’ll have a girls’ day out shopping in the Arcade?” Though Marilyn was not the world’s most enthusiastic advocate of retail therapy she agreed readily enough. A day out with Sarah was always lovely. It was the oldest cliché in the book, but she really was her friend as well as her daughter. And it would be safe. Sarah would bring the car onto the drive and park it in the car park at the Victoria Arcade, and even if there was any residual snow she would never have to encounter it.

She supposed that she should be a little ashamed she was going to a town with an ancient cathedral and a quaint old town and only be thinking of a safe modern shopping centre with bright lights and fake trees. But she had seen them before and would see them again.

As they stepped out of the parking area into the arcade, Marilyn felt a sudden wave of panic and disbelief. On the ground floor of the concourse there was a square, shining, sheet of ice. Suddenly it flooded back to her. Yes. There was a temporary ice rink at the Victoria Centre. She had known about it, but deliberately not paid any attention to it. Oh, this was so mean of Sarah and she’d never had her daughter down as mean. Hurriedly she corrected herself. No, Sarah was not mean. Though she confided in her daughter about most things, she had intentionally downplayed her fall. Or more to the point downplayed how it had unsettled her and made her fear the whiteness of winter days. And I won’t have to go onto the thing she thought. It’s okay.

But what was Sarah getting out of her bag? “Mum, believe it or not, I do sometimes listen when you’re reminiscing, and I do know that you loved being in the Ice Show when you were a kid.” Normally Marilyn would have automatically corrected her use of the word “kid”, which she disliked unless it were about young goats. But this time she had far more on her mind. Sarah was getting out a pair of ice skates. “They’re your size – I presume it goes on your shoe size. I expect it’s like swimming and you never forget.” Marilyn knew that she could refuse and knew that her daughter would never hold it against her. But even as that thought crossed her mind she realised that, as if by muscle-memory, her hands were lacing up the skates. “You’ll have to help me,” admitted Sarah, lacing up her own with considerably less expertise.

“You’ll fall over a couple of times and have a sore backside,” Marilyn said. “But at least you have sensible trousers on.”

And anyone looking on would have seen nothing out of the ordinary. Two women, hand in hand, on the ice. The older one was clearly a good skater, though out of practise, the younger one a rookie. But both of them were smiling.