Short story · 4 min read ·
The Ice Rink Under the Viaduct
A winter ice rink opens in the arches under the Calder viaduct, and the skaters who come every night find that the ice holds the outline of one skater who never came back from the first season.
The rink under the Calder viaduct opened in the second week of December, in the old brick arches where the coal merchants used to store their barrows. The council had let the space to a man named Ivo Strand for six weeks, on the understanding that he would clear the rubble, lay the pipes, and make a rink fit for beginners and children. He did all three in ten days. He ran the compressors himself. By the first Friday the ice was smooth and grey-white under the bare light bulbs, and a row of plastic chairs had been set out along the side wall for parents.
The skaters came each night after work. Office girls in tights and woollen hats, a retired railway signalman who did figure eights with great dignity, a pair of teenagers who held hands and fell over together. Ivo's daughter skated backwards with her arms out. The viaduct thundered overhead every quarter hour, and the brick arches rang with the sound, and the ice shivered very slightly under the skaters' blades, as though it were listening.
In the third week, a young woman named Fenella Holt noticed the shape.
It was in the centre of the rink, under the bulbs, just beneath the surface. A faint darker grey, the outline of a body lying on its back with the arms flung wide. It was the outline of a skater: the curve of a long coat, the sharp angle of a knee, a scarf trailing from the neck in a loose arc. Fenella skated over it three times before she was sure. Each time the shape was a little clearer.
She asked Ivo about it. He said the ice had been laid over the old floor of the arches, and that the old floor had been stained by coal dust, and that the stain was probably showing through. He said it was nothing to worry about. He did not look at the centre of the rink when he said it.
The shape became more distinct each night. By the end of the month the outline of the coat had a button at the collar, a row of stitches along the cuff, a faint dark mark at the throat where a scarf had been knotted. Fenella found a photograph of a girl named Dora Lusk in the local paper's archive, a skater who had trained under the viaduct in the winter of 1958 and had gone missing on the last night of the season, when the rink was flooded for the final time. The photograph showed a young woman in a long coat and a white scarf, smiling at the camera.
Fenella did not tell anyone else. But on the night before the rink was due to close, she went down early, when the arches were empty and the bulbs were dim, and she stood at the edge of the ice and looked at the shape. It was complete now. It lay on its back with its arms out, and its face was turned up toward the viaduct, the features soft and blurred, but a face nonetheless, and very young.
She stepped onto the ice and skated slowly across to the centre, and when she reached the shape the ice beneath her feet went very still and very cold, and a soft sound came up from under the surface. It was not a voice. It was the sound of a skate blade running a long clean curve across fresh ice, the same curve Fenella was making, a beat behind her.
She stopped. The sound stopped with her. Then, faintly, under the sound of the trains overhead, she heard a girl's voice humming a tune, a song Fenella's grandmother used to sing at the kitchen sink.
The rink closed on schedule. Ivo drained the pipes and sold the compressors and left the arches empty. The council sent a letter of thanks. But the following December, when the viaduct's lights came on again over the old coal yard, a new rink opened under the arches, and on the first evening there was a shape in the middle of the ice, lying on its back, arms out, face to the sky. The office girls skate around it. The signalman does his figure eights. And at a quarter past nine every night, when the last train crosses the viaduct, Fenella Holt comes down the steps with her skates over her shoulder and steps out onto the ice, and the song begins, very softly, and they skate it together, one beat apart.