The wind was tearing my hair out from under my fuzzy felt beret. I pulled it down over my ears, and shifted my weight from one skate to another as I waited for Lyall, Ogilvy, Antony and Felicia to finish lacing up their skates. Hoyt was fully skated-up, and had tucked his doughy hands beneath his armpits, trying to keep warm. Ogilvy was attempting to tighten his laces with one hand while he held a smoldering cigarette to his lips in the other.
"Oh, Lyall, you can't leave your laces so loose. You're going to fall down immediately like that," said Felicia.
"The laces are too short," he complained. "I hate these rented things."
"My skates are too small," said Ogilvy. "Be grateful you got the last pair of size eight."
"I brought my own," said Antony. "That's the only way. I'd never share a pair of shoes with anyone."
Ogilvy rolled his eyes covertly.
"Can we get a move on?" asked Hoyt.
"In a minute, darling," said Felicia.
It was Valentine's Day, and despite the chilling wind and frozen temperatures, the skating rink was filled with couples and families with children, gliding, shuffling and occasionally tripping across the ice. A small toddler in a puffy yellow snow suit fell flat on her face, and started bawling, before a tiny, graceful woman scooped her up and skated away, without pause.
I noticed Ogilvy was staring at the same woman and child, an odd expression on his face.
"Did you skate when you were little like that?" I asked him.
"No." He dropped his cigarette on the frozen earth, and ground away the embers with his skate. "I never did anything like that when I was a kid."
Lyall was still attempting to tie up his skates with the stubby ends of his too-short laces.
"Let me help you with that," offered Felicia. "I'll just–"
"It's alright, I can help," I offered, somewhat too enthusiastically. "I mean...if you want..."
"If it's not too much trouble," said Lyall.
I knelt before him, glad I had chosen to wear slacks that day. It was far too cold for tights, and in case I fell on the ice, I didn't want my pants on display for everyone to see. Particularly Lyall. He leaned forward to watch me unwrap his laces from several gold hooks so they would be long enough to tie. The cloud of his breath floated before me.
When I finished tying the laces of both skates, Lyall murmured "Thank you."
I heard a giggle from behind me, and felt my face heat up, despite the cold.
"Shall we? I'm looking forward to your humiliation and it can't start soon enough," said Ogilvy to Lyall. Lyall looked at him, and something passed between them, through eye contact held a second too long.
"Right," he said. "I suppose I must."
The rink was a huge rectangle, rounded at the corners, and ringed with benches where people could sit, sip hot cocoa, and rub their aching shins. Hoyt was helped Felicia step over a wooden barrier between the gravel and the ice. She and Hoyt linked arms and stood awkwardly on the ice, pigeon-toed, before they began to make hesitant movements against the ice. Hoyt whispered something to her, and she threw her head back and laughed. Her nose and chin were red from the cold. In that moment, I could see what had drawn him to her; her light-hearted giggles, her joy, her—well—felicity.
She was too plump to be conventionally beautiful, but she was curvaceous and I knew that men liked that. Jeannie was always trying to convince me that I needed a properly padded brassiere and the kind of elaborate shapewear that had to be ordered from special catalogues, but I never felt comfortable with it. Maybe I should have tried that, I thought, somewhat glumly.
My spirits were raised when I stepped onto the ice. Though it had been more than a few years since I skated in the Girls' League, I was good at skating. One time, my instructor had said to my mother, "Hope is as elegant as a swan on the ice." It was probably the nicest compliment I had ever received. I especially appreciated the compliment for its poetic value. In Aberystwyth, I didn't know any real artists or writers.
I began to skate, slowly but confidently, not bothering to wait for the other boys. As my leg extended behind me, I felt the familiar cramping in my shins mixed with the exhilaration of balancing on a knife's edge. I completed a full lap of the rink, only to find that Lyall was still standing outside the barrier, looking uncertain. Ahead of me, Ogilvy had skated several yards before collapsing onto the ice. He was laughing.
"Come skate with me," I said to Lyall invitingly.
"I...I don't know how to start," he said.
"Well, you have to get on the ice first," I joked.
He looked down, then to his left, and finally back at me. "I'm going to fall," he said.
"Everyone falls," I said. "It doesn't really hurt, not when you're wearing such a thick coat. Look at Ogilvy."
He had attempted to skate at a speed clearly outside of his level of ability, and fallen yet again. An attractive girl had stopped to see if he was alright, bending over to check on him.
"He does this everywhere," said Lyall. "It gets irritating."
I laughed. "Come on to the ice. It's not as hard as you think."
Lyall looked skeptical, but he stepped onto the rink with one skate, then gingerly lifted his other skate onto the ice, his arms spread apart for balance. His feet were awkwardly far apart.
"How do I go forward?" he asked.
"You just push a little bit with one foot, just like this," I said, and skated in a circle around him to demonstrate. The ice below me was rutted like a butcher block with the tracks of skaters past. "It's a little bumpier than I'd like." I covered my mouth with my gloved hands and breathed, warming my chilled face.
Lyall shifted one foot slightly forward, then the other. He wasn't skating so much as scraping. Children kept whooshing past us at what seemed like light speed. Across the rink, I saw Antony and Ogilvy, standing still on the ice and talking. Antony pulled something like a stick from his breast pocket, but Ogilvy pushed it back down into his coat. When I looked back at Lyall, he had graduated to genuinely skating about an inch at a time, an expression of effortful concentration on his face.
"I'm doing my best, but it's not very good" said Lyall. "You don't have to wait for me."
"It's alright. I thought we would skate together."
"Except I can't actually skate," he said apologetically.
"I think you're making good progress, " I assured him. "A few minutes ago, you weren't even on the ice!"
He smiled at me, and I felt a sear of painful pleasure in my stomach. "You're very encouraging," he murmured.
I skated away from him backwards, so that I could face him. We were only two yards apart. I stretched out my hands to him.
"Skate to me," I said.
Lyall pushed his right skate against the ice and drifted forward, knees quivering. He was a newly hatched chick waddling from its broken shell, still wet and half-feathered. I thought of when he had taken his glasses off, and the nakedness of his bare face struck me with its vernal softness. Awkwardly bent elbows and leather gloved hands twitched in the air.
When he was close enough, I took his hands in mine and pulled him forward. He instantly relaxed.
"Is that easier?" I asked, very quietly, as he was standing right before me.
"Yes," he said. "If I have something to hold onto."
I smiled nervously.
"Will you help me?" he asked, in a low voice.
"Of course."
I let go of his right hand and shifted to stand beside him, still holding his left hand in my right. I glanced about, but couldn't see Lyall's friends anywhere; the rink was so crowded with skaters that they had disappeared into the shuffle.
"We can go slowly," I said, nervously. "Is this alright?"
"Yes." We began to glide forward, and Lyall clutched my hand harder. For balance. It's only for balance. The blade of his skate clicked against mine, and he hastily slide it away.
We skated very slowly, still holding hands, for a full lap around the rink. It must have taken several minutes, but it felt like hours, for I had never held his hand like that for so long. It was different at the dance—everyone was holding each other. That was the way you danced. But now, we were side by side, and holding hands, like a real couple. Would it be so terrible to indulge in that fantasy? Was it deceptive to hope that the strangers surrounding us would glance our way and assume we were together? If Lyall had a complaint, he didn't voice it.
And then I saw Felicia and Antony standing outside the rink, talking. Hoyt was sitting on a bench, rubbing his shins with a pained expression. Antony whispered something to Felicia, and she looked straight at us. Before I could look away, she made eye contact with me and smiled. On instinct, I dropped Lyall's hand. He looked down at me, breath fogging up his glasses.
"Do you want me to try it by myself?" he said coolly.
"Oh—well...I just thought...maybe," I said, scrambling. I felt like I had transgressed, somehow. But was the transgression holding his hand, or dropping it?
"You can go faster, if you like," he said. "I know I'm slowing you down."
"Oh, I don't mind—"
"How's it going?" said Ogilvy in my ear. I nearly jumped. He had skated right up behind me without my noticing.
"I've made some progress," said Lyall stiffly.
"Looks like you've made more than a bit of progress," sniggered Ogilvy. He skated gracelessly, with his elbow jutting out for balance, but he was certainly more advanced than Lyall.
"I think he's doing very well," I said. "Lyall made it all the way around the ice."
"It's not very impressive," he muttered.
"I'm impressed," said Ogilvy. "Hope, you looked like a world-class figure skater!"
"Oh, no," I said, blushing. "But I've had lessons."
Lyall looked up, and I noticed a puffy snowflake drifting downward. It landed on his shoulder.
"It's snowing," he murmured.
"Isn't is lovely?" I said.
Lyall opened his mouth and began to form a silent word, but then, said nothing.
Hoyt and Felicia were ambling back towards the rink, holding hands. Their skates scraped the concrete. Antony joined them.
"We're thinking of doing another hour, and then going for coffee and hot cocoa," said Hoyt. "What do you think?"
"Sounds good to me," said Ogilvy. "I'm starved."
We agreed to meet up in an hour in front of a stone fountain filled with a frozen pool of water. A single dirty, red mitten was suspended in the ice.
"Do you...do you want to skate with me again?" said Lyall hesitantly. "It's alright if you don't."
"Of course I want to!" I exclaimed, too enthusiastically. I felt my cheeks burn, hot and cold at once. "I mean—you invited me, so..."
I followed him back to the low wooden barrier surrounding the rink. I stepped onto the ice, then held out a gloved hand for Lyall. With trepidation, he joined me, knees quivering as he lowered his second skate onto the slippery surface. He looked down at me, a question mark in his eyes, and a snowflake in his gelled hair. I answered by not releasing his hand.
An hour can be a long time. For example, staying an hour after work to re-do all the mimeographed forms ruined by a single typing error feels like several days. An hour of childbirth (as I would later learn) is an eternity spent in hell. But an hour of holding Lyall's hand, on a skating rink in 1959, when I lived in Cardiff and went weeks without touching another human being, could evaporate into the air in an instant. An hour disappeared like a snowflake on a warm palm; it was just a blur of warm and cold, the streaking electricity in my stomach, Lyall's shaven neck peeking above the collar of his overcoat, the cotton candy snow and pastel puffs of children in snowsuits all around us.
"Shall we get something to eat," said Lyall softly. "I think it's time."
As though awaking from a trance, normal sensation returned to my body. My shins were aching with exertion, and I saw Lyall's friends outside the rink, waiting for us, clearly amused by our clasped hands. I hoped none of them would say anything, for I knew it would embarrass Lyall to no end, and he might never be so affectionate with me again. He let go of my hand, and clumsily shuffled to the rink's barrier, stepping over it with undisguised glee that his ordeal on the ice was over. A heaviness settled in my throat; who knew if I would ever get an excuse to touch him again?
We reclaimed our shoes from a shared locker, and then sat side by side on the battered wooden benches to remove our skates.
"Aah," sighed Ogilvy, as he yanked off a skate and held it up, dangling by its laces. "I'm not sorry to see the last of these. Jesus." He tore hungrily at the laces of his other skate, eagerly unhooking the dirty laces from tiny white hooks.
"Taking off your skates is always the best part," said Antony.
When Lyall took off his skates and reached for his shoes, I caught a flash of navy blue socks patterned with what looked like tiny broomsticks. I couldn't help but smile. And then I felt—no, thought—no, remembered a flash of something...but it disappeared from my mind before I could recall.
The six of us headed to a small cafe on the second floor of an old stone building in downtown Cardiff. A flag with the Union Jack dangled lazily from a wrought iron hook next to the front door. Several different welcome mats had been piled around and over each other inside the vestibule to accommodate the slush of winter boots. We lined up in front of the counter, where white aproned-ladies with starched hats filled mugs from large silver canteens.
"Don't order something fancy and French," said Hoyt to Antony. "It's not that sort of place."
"I know," he retorted.
"Watch him," said Ogilvy, grinning in my direction.
Antony reached the front of the line, and called over one of the waitresses with the calm but authoritative demeanour of someone accustomed to addressing the "help." "Hello miss, I'm going to have a coffee with steamed milk—"
"There he goes," said Ogilvy, rolling his eyes. "Don't you love rich people?"
"You're making a mountain out of a molehill," said Lyall.
"Some of us lived in a molehill," retorted Ogilvy.
When Lyall reached the front of the line, he ordered a simple coffee with milk, and then asked me what I wanted.
"Oh no, you don't have to—I mean, I have money," I stammered.
"Just tell me," said Lyall. "You want hot cocoa don't you?"
He already had his wallet out, and the waitress was looking smug, glancing from his face to mine and back.
"Yes, please," I said meekly.
"We serve ours with marshmallows, is that alright?" said the waitress mechanically.
"Yes, please!"
Lyall looked at me and smiled. I couldn't help but feel my cheeks stretch into a wider smile in response.
"What?" I said.
"Nothing," he said.
"Can ye get a move on?" complained Ogilvy. "I want a bloody cider."
"Manners," scoffed Felicia, pushing an electrified lock of curly hair out of her face.
Lyall and I shuffled out of the way of the cashier. We joined Antony at a booth covered in mint vinyl. When I sat down and scooted over to the wall, the table's chrome edging drew a line of cold across my thighs.
"I've never seen Lyall skate like that before," said Antony, smirking somewhat. It was unattractive look on him; he didn't have the Felicia's chubby warmth, or Ogilvy's cheeky good looks. "Lyall, how long have you and Hope been together?"
The whole world froze. Ogilvy, who had just arrived at the table carrying a mug of steaming cider, raised both eyebrows, but said nothing. Felicia's hand paused above her coffee, her spoon frozen mid-stir. I remember the way a few spilled granules of salt on the surface of the vinyl table pressed into my fingertips, a message in illegible Braille. The table was so quiet that I could hear Lyall's lips peel apart. I was certain my face was on fire; my entire body was melting. There were probably sweat stains soaking through the blouse beneath my jumper. It felt as though the entire sun was directed at me through a giant magnifying glass and I was burning in the hottest spotlight in the world.
And then Lyall said, curtly, "We're not—we're friends."
"Anyways, aren't you seeing someone, Antony?" asked Felicia, brightly. "I've heard rumours."
"Oh, no," said Antony, "that was er, over before it began, so to speak..."
And then the world started spinning again, but the humiliation wasn't over; since Antony, Felicia and Hoyt were sitting across from us, Ogilvy wanted to sit next to Lyall and I, which meant he forced Lyall to scoot over to the end of the booth and sit much closer to me. I could feel his felt elbow patches rub against my elbows. Neither of us looked at each other, nor spoke. It was too painful to make eye contact. The blurred bit of his face I saw in my peripheral vision felt unbearable. I wanted to never have been born. The chatter continued around me, but Lyall and I remained silent. I noticed his handkerchief in his hands; he was twisting it into a tight pretzel.
"Did you get marshmallows?" drifted a gentle, male voice from somewhere outside the fishbowl of my humiliation.
I looked up. It was Hoyt, dabbing a napkin at the corners of his mouth. "I love them. Can't get enough."
"Oh, yes," I said. "My mother used to make homemade marshmallows for Easter."
"I didn't know you could do that," said Felicia.
"I've never had one," said Lyall, quietly. I peered at him out of the corner of my eye; he looked pinkish, but mostly recovered. "I wasn't allowed."
"Why ever not?" I said. Another tiny piece of Lyall's biography emerging; probably the most insignificant piece there was, but I lived for even the tiniest fragments of information about his life.
"They're poisonous to el—" he began rotely, but stopped speaking mid-word, his brow furrowed. I looked at him quizzically.
Hoyt started to laugh, but Felicia slapped his hand, and he stopped.
"I meant," Lyall clarified, "our housekeeper was allergic. Very allergic."
"But they're only gelatin and sugar," I mused.
"Just one of those odd things, eh?" said Ogilvy. He grinned too widely, exposing a gap between his two front teeth, and four crooked canines. Years, I would quietly notice that his teeth were fixed, shortly after he got engaged. Men only care about certain things when women give them reason to, I suppose. "You'd not believe the poisonings I've seen at St. Mungo's, yeah?"
"Ogilvy is training to be an, er, a doctor," said Lyall. "He's only got another—what is it—"
"Year and a half," sighed Ogilvy. "Paid practically nothin', and working three-day shifts."
"They're not three days, he's exaggerating," Felicia assured me. She picked up a croissant from her plate, and looked at it with evident enthusiasm. "And he'll be paid more than well enough once he finishes." She popped the croissant into her mouth, and bit off at least half of it, leaving a red lipstick kiss on the remainder.
"I should have become a healer," grumbled Hoyt.
"Oh, don't you start now," said Felicia, "Nobody wants to hear about your debts again, least of all me..."
Thus began another round of discussion about Hoyt's struggles in business, the postponed wedding, and several other grips voiced around the table, all of which pertained to either money, or romantic woes, or some combination of the two. Lyall said nothing, and so did I, though a secret part of me desperately wanted to complain about my own romantic tribulations.
When most of the coffee, cider and hot cocoa and disappeared, and the table was strewn with crumbs, dirty mugs and doodled-on napkins, Antony and Ogilvy decided to excuse themselves—Antony to get back to his office, and Ogilvy for a "long [expletive] nap." When Ogilvy shuffled out of the booth and grabbed his coat off the vinyl seat, I noticed Lyall didn't shuffle away from me, though we had squeezed into the booth to allow room for Ogilvy when he arrived.
"Are you going to stay much longer?" asked Hoyt. He rested his hand on Felicia's affectionately. "I wouldn't want to rush you."
Felicia leaned against him, and the fuzzy froth of her curly hair tickled his cheek. "I'm a little bit tired," she said. "Shall we?"
"Go on," said Lyall stiffly. "I think we're about to leave too."
Felicia and Hoyt exchanged knowing glances. I blushed.
"I think we'll be off now, then," said Hoyt. "Good luck with your revisions, Lyall."
"Thank you," he replied stiffly. "I'll need it."
Felicia and Hoyt engaged in the ritual application of winter clothing, complete with complains about overly tight buttons (Hoyt), itchy scarves (Felicia), and the degree to which their partner had improperly wiped boots when arriving at the café (both). Bells chimed in the doorway and a rush of cool hour swept through the café as the couple exited into the lazy, drifting snow.
When the Lyall and I were finally left alone at the table, I dipped a teaspoon into my nearly-empty saucer.
"I saved a marshmallow for you," I said. "Just so you could taste it. But it's gotten all soft and melted from the hot cocoa."
"I'd like to try it anyways, if you don't mind."
Unthinkingly, I spooned the marshmallow into his mouth and deposited it on his tongue. I immediately knew that I had done something terribly odd when I saw his brown eyes widen in surprise. I withdrew the spoon and dropped it on my saucer quickly enough to hear a "ping!" as it hit the porcelain.
"Sorry," I muttered. "I just—"
"No, I—"
We looked at one another, then looked down. Lyall swallowed, and dabbed at his mouth with his handkerchief. Then he opened his mouth, paused, and began to explain.
"Antony is—he's more of Ogilvy's friend than mine. I mean, he's my friend, but we're not, er, that close. He's just—puts his foot in his mouth sometimes, it wouldn't be the first—"
"No, no, of course. I understand. I've, er..." I felt my cheeks heat in remembrance of an awkward incident involving my school friend Eula's older cousin, Alwen, and my congratulations on a pregnancy that wasn't. "I've made those silly mistakes, just, you know..."
"Yes," he said, patting down his tie. It was charcoal grey, with subtle threads of navy and ochre silk. Lyall never wore brightly coloured or ostentatiously patterned ties. I looked into his face. Nearly invisible lines broke the still surface of his forehead. His cheeks and chin were shaven perfectly smooth.
"Plans for tonight?" he said abruptly.
"Tonight?"
"I mean—for Valentine's Day," he added.
"Oh, no," I assured him. "None. An awful man who works on the floor below me asked me out, but I said no, though that didn't really work out as I thought."
"Oh?"
"He's horrid. Can't take no for an answer." I became aware that I was speaking rather rapidly, and about an octave higher than my ordinary voice. "So I rejected him, and then he followed me all the way to the mailroom, and got the mail clerks to pester me about him—and then I had to get Mrs. Morriss, I mean the head secretary, to get him out of there—but then all the girls made fun of me for the rest of the day, so I couldn't finish my reports because they were bothering me too much, so I had to stay late—"
"Right," said Lyall. "Neither have I. Would you care to have dinner?"
"Yes. Yes, I would."
