Read Online Ice Diaries by Lexi Revellian - Free Book Online Page B

With eight players there are generally early
bankruptcies and the game doesn’t string out too long. Greg
won. People got to their feet, stretched, helped themselves to drinks
and chatted. The room had warmed with people and candles, and I took
off my sweater.
    Archie topped up my glass. “I
hear you’re going to be little Toby’s godmother. I
thought we’d have the baptism Sunday week. Claire will be more
rested by then and with any luck Toby will sleep through it. Always a
good idea to get it over with before they get to the wide-awake
wriggly stage. A pleasing choice of name – did you know Tobias
means ‘God is good’?”
    Charlie produced several sheets of
paper, which I hoped was a short story. I prefer these to her poems,
as I only like poetry which rhymes and scans. We all settled
comfortably on sofas and chairs. A respectful silence fell, and
Charlie glanced round the room.
    “This poem is called Consummation . It’s one I’ve been working on for
some time, but it only really came right yesterday.” She
cleared her throat and began, in a droning, emphatic monotone.
    “ Take me
    To the snow
    The virgin snow
    The sure, pure, candid snow
    The snow that cures, kills, fills
the planet and my mind … ”
    Frankly, I’ve had enough of snow
to last a lifetime; I don’t need to hear odes to the darned
stuff. Charlie’s delivery, waving a hand in the air for
emphasis, intermittently closing her eyes, her voice rising to a
shriek and falling again, embarrasses me; to her this is art, and she
has no worries about looking or sounding ridiculous. She is in deadly
earnest about her poetry. This seemed to be one of her longer pieces.
I glanced around the room. Archie and Paul were gazing at their
knees. Nina was picking with her nail at a mark on her sleeve. Claire
wore an encouraging smile, the sort she has when watching Gemma try
to juggle or do magic tricks. Sam fiddled with her hair, but then
she’d probably heard it before. Gemma lay on the floor, walking
her tooth over her stomach. Greg had his eyes shut tight,
concentrating.
    A bang on the door; Morgan had arrived,
and Paul tiptoed to let him in. They stood by the doorway, waiting
for Charlie to finish. Morgan took off his jacket and slouched
broodily against the jamb, hair in his eyes, eclipsing Paul, making
him look tame and domesticated. I noticed Sam sit up, glance at him
and slip off her cardigan, revealing a low-cut top. Maybe he made her
nostalgic for one of the disastrous boyfriends in her past. Several
more long minutes elapsed, and Charlie’s voice slowed for the
final lines.
    “ Take me to
    The earth
    The dark earth
    The cold, black, waiting earth
    That lies forever coupled with the
snow. ”
    She halted, head bowed. A brief silence
to be certain that was the end, then an appreciative murmur ran round
the room. “Well done, Charlie, one of your best, I think,”
Archie said. He could not possibly mean this. He poured her a drink
while she talked earnestly to him, no doubt about Consummation ’s
subtext.
    Paul wound up the gramophone and put
needle to shellac; the Ink Spots crooning Do I Worry . Morgan
strolled across the room, sat briefly next to Sam eyeing her cleavage
and flirting with her until Charlie noticed and stood over him to
reclaim her place. He settled beside me on the sofa holding a bottle
of Beck’s Claire had given him. He turned my way and his eyes
flicked over my new look, lingering here and there.
    “I kind of assumed you had a
figure somewhere under all those layers, but it’s nice to know
for sure.”
    “Did you have a good day?”
    “So so. You didn’t warn me
there’d be poetry.”
    “Only Charlie’s. Don’t
be worried you’ll be called on to recite a limerick of your own
composition. She used to be big in a sort of alternative writer group
– she actually had her first novel published by a small press,
quite an achievement.” I added sotto voce, “What did you
think of the poem?”
    “Crap. And lengthy