Part 17 (2/2)

It was a beautiful room, full of fresh Matisses and Pica.s.sos, all hugger-mugger and lit by rather decadent candelabra. And you picked a fight with Gertrude because of her recent book, in which she claimed to be individually responsible for creating Dada, surrealism, and cubism...'

I frowned.'When was this?'

'About 1935. AfterThe Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was published.'

'In my time, I mean.'

'Oh. Let me think. You had that nice girl with you, Jo. You were in a blue velvet smoking jacket and your hair had turned a shocking white. You cut quite a dash in Paris that autumn. Set tongues wagging on the Left Bank. You claimed to have just come from Spiridon, which was overrun by half-frozen Daleks...'

'Oh yes,' I said and then, suddenly, I could see it all. The thirties had rather suited Jo. She loved meeting the painters and writers of the period and I was glad to show her a place where she wasn't in continuous peril. She expected to despise Pica.s.so, but found herself maddeningly charmed by him.

'You were there,' I said to Iris.'You took Stein's side against me. You said that she had every right to rewrite cultural history and put herself at the centre, if that's what she wanted to do.'

'Exactly,' said Iris smugly.

'And we took the train together. Jo wanted to see Berlin. To catch the Cabaret.'

Iris nodded grimly. 'And we saw them all before they were famous.

Christopher Isherwood when he was living on the Nollendorfstra.s.se, with that terrible floozy who sang and kept trying to get him into bed. And poor Chris was only there in the city for the boys.'

'I've forgotten half the people I've met...' I said.

'How can you forget Isherwood? Auden shuffling about in his dressing gown and slippers? Stein with all her paintings and dogs?'

I shrugged helplessly. 'You tend to forget the quieter moments. I remember the more hair-raising sc.r.a.pes.'

'Sc.r.a.pes.' She shook her head at me. 'You should act your age more.'

'I remember meeting Greta Garbo in California,' I said.

'I don't: 'No, you weren't there, were you?' I smiled. 'It was a picnic in a dusty valley. Isherwood was there, too, with Bertrand Russell and Aldous Huxley. Garbo went up a tree for me. She s.h.i.+nned right up to pick me some figs. She was a funny thing, much more approachable and chatty than she was supposed to be.'

Iris looked piqued by this.'You met Garbo? She climbed up a tree for you?'

'You're so easily impressed, Iris,' I laughed. 'Such a name-dropper.

People are just people.'

'Yes,but... Garbo!'

'I told her I'd met the real Queen Christina in a previous life. I said she had caught something of Christina's true essence when she played her in that ridiculous, camp film.'

'You show-off.What did Garbo say? Did she think you were bananas?'

'She threw back her head and laughed at me. That sweet chuckle of hers. But she believed every word of it.'

Iris tutted and glowered at me.

That night we drove deeper into the Forest of Kestheven.

We were keeping our eyes peeled for the golden bears.

When they came to the river it was about twenty feet across. It was powerful, though, coursing thickly through the carved walls of the tunnel.

The noise was deafening as Sam and Gila stood on the wet bank and watched thick dark ropes of water churn swiftly past. ”There could be anything in there,' Sam said.

Gila could hardly restrain his pleasure at the sight.

He leapt in without a word, and didn't emerge for some time. Sam sat down to wait.

When he returned he clambered exhausted on to the bank.'It's thick with life,' he said, eyes gleaming. 'Nothing very familiar. It goes very deep, too - a dark seam right into the earth.'

'Marvellous.'

'And it seems the only way to go. We have to travel down the river.'

'I can't swim that, Gila.' The water would exhaust her in minutes, she thought. She hated to admit it to him, but Sam had learned to respect her limitations. It didn't do to just throw herself in at the deep end every time.

'We need a boat,' said Gila. 'A raft of some kind.'

So they set to work on the dead albino plants around the bank. The wood was white and brittle and snapped free quite easily. Sam foraged and brought back load after load, wearing herself out as she lugged back trunks much taller than herself. Gila worked busily, contentedly, constructing their raft. He was very skilled and chuntered on about his childhood and learning the ways of the swamps. By raft had been the only way to explore his earliest, benighted landscape. He soaked vines and tied the trunks, pulling them tight and leaving them to dry, sometimes hastening the process with a belch of lightly roasting flame.

'Build us a fire, would you?' said Sam. ”This is going to take all night.'

'Night?' Gila asked.'You mean you have some idea of what time it is?'

This brought her up short.'No, I haven't.'

They kept going till the craft was finished and it sat there, looking flimsy and unimpressive on the black sh.o.r.e.

”This is what I'm trusting my life to?'

'I'm afraid so.' Gila shrugged. 'We'll be all right.'

Then they slept beside it, to replenish their strength before the off. Sam woke, hours later, to see Gila stripping two thinnish poles of their bark and leaves. He explained they would have one each, to guide the craft, punting themselves off the low, dripping ceiling of the tunnel. Sam hauled herself to her feet and thought miserably of driving the bus, and how she had loved that endless, easy road opening up before her.

Chapter Seventeen.

Telling Tales

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