Read Online The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore by Paul Burman - Free Book Online Page A

off her clogs and holds her hand out to me. “Come on, Tom.”
    â€œI might step on your toes,” I say.
    â€œThen I’ll forgive you.”
    The dance-floor is a dark, empty expanse. It’s early in the evening. She’s right: usually I won’t dance until the place is heaving and I’m pissed or stoned or both, but tonight – with her – we’ll be the first.
    I take her hand and she leads me into the music. Sober.
    â€œHello, Kate,” I say.
    â€œHello, Tom.”
    And we light the place up with a dance that’ll last all night and for months to come. For one of many evenings, we’ll find the rhythm that draws everyone else to dance. Together, we’ll bring in spring and summer.
    She lives on the other side of the county, in Abetsby, a town I’ve never visited. Our worlds are separated by the epidemic sprawl of Northampton’s suburbs and industrial estates and by the remaining patchwork of villages and fields, hedgerows and fences and spinneys, by the winding of the Nene and its many streams, and by a tired public transport system. She only has a few months before her end-of-school exams and starting university; I’ve got another year to go. We move in different circles of friends, beyond the forecast of too many freak tides. Yet, she’s gripping my hand a week later and smiling.
    â€œThere are buses,” she says. “We got here tonight okay, didn’t we? You don’t mind catching the bus to see me?”
    â€œNo, course not.”
    We’re inside The Royal Oak, at a table by the door of its crowded bar, amid tobacco and beer fumes, the clatter of a skittles game.
    â€œWe can meet midway.”
    â€œDefinitely,” I say. “If that’s okay with you.”
    â€œAnd the telephone. You’re on the telephone?”
    â€œYep.”
    â€œSo am I.”
    â€œI know, Kate. I looked your number up.”
    â€œDid you now?” And she slips an arm round my waist. “Good. I’m glad you did that.”
    There’s a flurry of people at the door. They’re laughing and flushed and bring a cold blast of night air with them. No more seats to be had. Standing room only. From behind the bar comes the sound of a glass breaking and a loud cheer rings through the pub.
    â€œYou can always stay over at mine, you know, if there’s something on in Northampton and you can’t get home,” I tell her. “There’s a camp bed somewhere.”
    â€œThere you go, then. No problems. I want to see you again, Tom.”
    â€œMe too.”
    â€œYou do?”
    â€œYeah, I do. Of course I do.”
    The door from the street swings open again, someone peers in out of the night, then it slams shut once more. Too loud. The draft slaps us with its icy chill, and the light in the room appears to dull for a moment, but Kate smiles.
    I’m a provincial boy hemmed in by short horizons, but Kate the beautiful introduces me to Mozart, Duke Ellington, Artemisia Gentileschi; she recites Leopardi’s poems and Alain-Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes to me; makes lasagna, ravioli and minestrone, and I eat it up and hunger for more and more… and more than I can give in return. We dance. She pinches me, makes me yawn and stretch beyond my meat and two-veg provincialism, to reach out for something cosmopolitan, to crave other places, other worlds and question my own. We dance. She dazzles me with her brightness, wakes me up with her exuberance, breathes life into me with her vivaciousness.
    Breathe in.
    Breathe out.
    She has long, chestnut brown hair, and the widest eyes of glistening burnt umber that ever smiled. When she kisses me, her lips are fuller and glossier than polished olives, warmer than sun-baked terracotta at the end of day. And when she recites Leopardi’s poem to Silvia, I wish I could create such sounds for her.
    Silvia, rimembri ancora
    Quel tempo della tua vita mortale,
    Quando