Dance on My Grave

by Aidan Chambers

  But it isn’t part of my nature to seek out people who I think I might like, and try to win them. I wouldn’t trust the result, not after Harvey and Buster. Besides, I don’t like rejection; it hurts. I also get some of this caution from my mother who has an old-fashioned, doomsday view of life. She says that what you have to ask for you don’t deserve and shouldn’t get. What’s more, she says if you do get it, retribution is bound to strike, like a kind of spiteful lightning. Ask and it shall be taken from you, and great shall be the pain thereof. My mother believes all this superstitious gunk. I don’t, of course, but sometimes I catch myself acting as if I did, like the people who don’t believe it is bad luck to walk under ladders but don’t take the chance anyhow.

  So I never make a pass at passing attractions, whatever the sex. But when Barry appears alongside, though I am cold and wet and miserable and expect to die, I take one look and I know he is the latest contender for the role of the boy with the can of magic beans. My death is imminent in this watery waste and there I am sitting on a wrecked dinghy thinking of acquiring a Jonathan for my David, and wondering how long you need to find out exactly what it is that passes the love of women.

  The irony of this does not escape me. (Isn’t he a clever boy.) But I do not laugh aloud. O no. Instead I slip into a lost-and-hopeless-kid routine. Not deliberately, not by scheming design, you understand. I really am being freeze-dried in the angry Thames, after all; and anyway I am not that scheming even at the best of times. It all happens instinctively. As if there is something about Barry that triggers off this reaction. But all the same, I can feel myself acting the part. I almost watch myself perform.

  What is more, I enjoy it. I put myself into his hands and love it. He tells me what to do be saved. I do what he tells me neatly, straightaway, as if he is working me by remote control. And how do I explain that feeling to anyone who hasn’t had it? Well, in the days when I was watching Buster play rugger, I remember seeing those hearty athletes revel in some moment when everything went just right between them. They said they felt like they were one man. They go flip afterwards in their amusingly bullish fashion. I used to wonder about it, and envy it too, secretly. Maybe this inter-being I am feeling at this moment of rescue is the same kind of experience? I don’t know, not just then. What I do know is that I glow inside.

  Barry gets me ashore. I protest about going home with him, but this is all show. Of course I want to go home with him. I really do feel miserable, foolish, shocked. (Especially on the beach; that bloody gawking crowd!) But I don’t feel as bad as I put on just to keep the calamity alive and the mutual interest going. I’ve noticed before: there is nothing like a catastrophe that leaves you helpless for stoking up other people’s interest in you.

  So we get to Barry’s house and there is all that fandango with his mother. But I enjoy my bath. Mrs Gorman is right about it as a cure for capsizing. Afterwards I know Barry is sizing me up while I dress in his room. I know I am sizing him up too. And the more I see the more I like him. Which is one of the great conundrums: how do you know that you like someone in just a few minutes? How does it happen with this person so quickly and not with hundreds, thousands of other people who cross your path every year? I’ve thought about that a lot and still haven’t a clue. Because it isn’t just that you like the look of a face or the shape of a body or even how someone lives that makes them attractive. It’s something else, something you can’t ever quite put your finger on. You just know it has happened, that’s all. And it happened that morning.

  And then we are guzzling at his kitchen table, and I am pretending now to be cool, calm, collected, and O so mature. When actually I am coming apart at the seams with the blood-tingling thrill of it all. Hey-nonny-no.

  19/‘Finished?’ Barry asked. ‘Want anything more?’

  ‘Great, thanks. I’d better be going . . .’

  We cleared the table, loaded the dishwasher. Our dishwasher is my mother, hindered by my dad on Sunday afternoons, if he isn’t working.

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I’ll see to the boats while you attend the wizard of Oz. Why not drop in this evening? You could tell me what Ozzy says, and maybe we could go to a film or something?’

  ‘Okay, sure.’

  ‘See you about half six then?’

  Hey, Nono: nonny-no.

  20/When I found Oz that afternoon he took me into an empty classroom and handed me an essay I had written just before the exams started.

  ‘Your work, I think, Robinson,’ he said.

  Ozzy is tall, wirily thin, balding. When he gets you at close quarters and peers at you through his glasses with their lenses like the bottoms of bottles you feel like you are trapped by an inquisitive shark afflicted by myopia and possessed of an over-active thyroid. Not a pretty sight. It took me weeks to realize that when he is putting you through the mill of his attention, he isn’t trying to pulverize you with the force of his superior intellect, but only trying to sharpen your powers of thought. ‘He could have fooled me,’ other kids say when I try to explain this. ‘It is a well-known fact,’ they say, ‘that even the Head is afraid of him. And that he eats new boys for breakfast.’

  He sat me down and drew a chair up beside me.

  ‘Be good enough to read out what you have written.’

  21/H. Robinson, 5th (Eng. set B). J.O.

  English homework. Own Choice Essay.

  TIME SLIP

  I was thirteen at the time. We had been visiting relatives for the day, my parents and I. My uncle – my father’s brother – insisted on showing us the family grave in the little churchyard lost among fields near his farm. The family plot was big enough for five graves laid side by side. There was a low marble wall all round, and a big tombstone at one end with all the names of the dead carved on it.

  The names went back to the last century, and each one was followed by a date of birth and a date of death. For people like me, who cannot do arithmetic, there was also the age of the person. Charles Robinson. Born 5th March 1898. Died 10th May 1962. Aged 64 yrs. Fifteen names, one on top of another. A death list.

  As I stood looking at this bed of dead bodies I suddenly thought: There are people lying under there. People who are connected to me. I saw a picture in my head of a long row of dead bodies stretching back away from me in time. And beyond them, others; people I did not know about but who belonged to this queue of Robinsons.

  I giggled. Everyone was being very solemn and my mother glared at me. She thought I was going to show her up. But I wasn’t giggling because I thought there was anything funny. I was giggling because I had suddenly been struck by the foreverness of time.

  This forever time was not filled with minutes and hours and days and years, but with people, people’s lives, one after the other in every direction. Hundreds and thousands and millions of them. They stretched not only backwards in time, but across time as well, and away into future time. Time in all directions, all over the world, for ever and ever, measured by people.

  I started giggling because it was all too much: all that time; all those people. I couldn’t grasp it with my mind. But I knew it was there. That they were there. That it was true. I could feel it.

  I went wandering about among the graves because I could not stand still any more. And I couldn’t keep my eyes off the gravestones. Some of them leaned over at clownish angles as if they were performing a slow-motion collapse, which of course they were. Some were so old and eroded I couldn’t read the names and dates carved on them. Some were new and smart and somehow smug in their well-kept neatness.

  I read the names and ages and kept thinking: Every one of these people must have been alive and must have felt like me once. They were inside themselves, like I am inside myself now, looking out of themselves seeing other people looking out of theirselves at them. But then one day they weren’t inside themselves any more. They were dead.

  Is that what dead means? Not being in your body? Died aged 64 yrs. Died aged 80 yrs. Died aged 36 yrs. One said: Died aged 2
yrs 3 mths. They only put the months on babies, as though months matter then but don’t matter any longer when you are grown up.

  Some things you know, but you don’t know them. They don’t mean anything real. Before that day I knew people died. But for the first time that day I knew all of a sudden, so that I felt it, that not being inside me would happen to me as well one day, and could happen at any moment.

  When this thought hit me, I nearly fainted. I had to sit down on a tombstone and put my hand under my sweater, feeling for my heart. I wanted to be sure it was beating. And I listened for my next breath. Each time my heart beat I felt relief and immediately then was anxious again, waiting for the next one. And the same with each breath I took.

  But you cannot go on all the time, and all through time, feeling relieved and then anxious and then relieved again seventy times a minute. You would die of exhaustion. My own attempt lasted about two minutes and seemed like an hour.

  Gradually I calmed down and returned to normal. I went back to my parents. They were talking, laughing at memories of relatives buried in the family grave. And I started to wonder when we would be given something to drink and when it would be time to go home. And I forgot about the startling foreverness of time.

  Since then, though, Death has always been something real to me, something present, and not just a subject people talk about. And every day I wonder what time will be like when I am dead.

  22/‘Does it please you?’ Ozzy asked, typically deadpan, nothing in those laser eyes or the crisp voice betraying his own opinion.

  ‘When I wrote it, sir.’

  ‘And now?’

  Caution.

  ‘Don’t dither.’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You worked at it?’

  ‘About five drafts. Rough versions, I mean. This neat one made six.’

  ‘You changed a lot each time?’

  ‘Mostly it was cutting things out, sir, trying to get it clearer, more exactly what I wanted to say. Trying to get it tighter. Like you told us to, sir.’

  ‘I’d prefer “as” to “like”, but I regard that as a losing battle. “They were inside themselves, like I am inside myself . . .”’

  ‘I guess it is, sir.’ I chanced a smile. ‘A losing battle, I mean.’

  The smile was returned; he must be pleased!

  ‘You bring the language tumbling round our ears, Robinson. Is it ignorance or preference?’

  ‘Preference in that case, sir.’

  ‘No bliss then. I grow old . . . Tell me, what are you reading?’

  ‘I’m on a patch of Vonnegut, sir.’

  ‘From which comes the Americanism, no doubt. Ah well, you could do worse, I suppose. Slaughterhouse-Five?’

  ‘I started with that, sir.’

  ‘Hence this interest in death?’

  ‘No, sir. I caught that a few years ago.’

  ‘Then would you say this modest piece of prose is fiction or non-fiction?’

  I hadn’t thought about it. I shrugged, ‘It’s about things I’ve felt, sir. But I invented the incidents.’

  ‘You might safely call that fiction. And, Robinson, I’ll be frank with you.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘This is quite a promising essay.’

  Surprise, surprise. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Do not mistake me. I am not saying you are a literary genius. Far from it. Ridley, Wilson and Carter are all in your year and produce consistently more impressive work than you.’

  He picked up my pages again and flicked his eyes over them.

  ‘But you have learned a lot since you joined us.’

  He slipped a pencil from his pocket and began underlining phrases. (He always seems to have the same pencil and it’s always a stump of a thing with a sharp point. It is never new and never blunt. Yet no one ever sees him sharpen it; and when does he ever begin a new one and wear out the stump?)

  ‘“Lost among fields” must be rejected as cliché by now, I think. The “long row of bodies” suggests corpses laid out head to foot, but “a queue of Robinsons” suggests bodies standing up in packed lines. The images clash, you see, which reduces their effect. . . .’

  He went on, devastating, paragraph by paragraph.

  ‘. . . The last sentence makes a well-judged end but it stands too starkly separate from the sentence before. Maybe the uncommitted conjunction is the fault. You’re fond of a conjunction as a sentence opener, but it must be wisely handled. The connection between your last sentence and what precedes it needs firmer statement, in my view.’

  I was feeling crushed by now and combative.

  ‘Could you show me what you mean, sir?’

  ‘Well, let’s see . . . Try this: “Since then, Death has been something real to me, something present that forces me to wonder what time will be like when I am dead.”’

  ‘That flows better, sir, but isn’t as interesting.’

  Ozzy smiled. ‘At least I’ve got rid of “though” and “always”, which are redundant, as well as “not just a subject people talk about”, which is weak. But I’ll grant you the case could be argued. However . . .’ he looked at his wristwatch, ‘I’ve a class in five minutes and there is something else I want to discuss with you.’ He slipped his pencil back into his pocket. ‘Tell me, have you decided what you’ll do with yourself from September?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not a clue, sir.’

  ‘Your parents?’

  ‘I think my father would like me to get a job.’

  ‘He hasn’t said so?’

  ‘Not in so many words, no.’

  ‘Your mother wants you to do what you think is best?’

  I smiled. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does your father offer any suggestions about work?’

  ‘He’s hinted he could get me something at the airport. He’s a baggage handler there.’

  ‘Does the idea appeal?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘What does?’

  ‘That’s the trouble. Nothing specially.’

  ‘What about staying on at school?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind. I quite like it here. But there’s something of the same problem. What to take. And what to do with it afterwards.’

  Ozzy stood up. ‘This is my two pennorth, Robinson, and then I’ll say no more. Should you decide you would like to stay on I would be happy to have you in my English Sixth. You have an aptitude for the subject and I think you are developing a taste for it. You would certainly, in my view, be an asset to the school. So I would support your staying on. I also think, for what it is worth, that you need time to mature and sort yourself out before deciding on a career. In your case you would do that better at school than in some stop-gap job.’

  I managed to mumble, ‘Thanks for telling me, sir.’

  He gave me one of his predatory shark grins. ‘I think I should add that specializing in English literature is a very foolish thing to do.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Because it qualifies you for little else than teaching English literature. Do you want to teach?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’ve thought about journalism though.’

  ‘I should have thought even you could see from one glance at any newspaper that most journalists know little if anything about English and nothing at all about literature. The best of them are specialists in some other subject. Politics—the twentieth-century fag end of religion—or industry, for instance. No, if you have any sense, you’ll enjoy the delights of the science labs or indulge yourself in the intricacies of computer technology. Are you good at such matters?’

  ‘I enjoy some science. But I wouldn’t say I was any good at it.’

  He led the way into the corridor.

  ‘Well, be sure to think carefully before you take my advice. Come in and talk again if you feel the need.’

  He swept off with the kind of confident stride that always makes me feel tired. Today I felt punch-drunk as well. A capsize, Mrs Gorman, Barry, and now Osborn. Maybe I should have
looked at my horoscope before I got up this morning.

  I say that, but really I was zinging with excitement. Apart from anything else, it isn’t every day that Osborn invites—actually invites—someone to join his Sixth. Usually he tells people he wouldn’t have them if they were the last students left on earth. Not that you’re safe once you’re in. He usually starts with about ten and weeds those down to half that in the first term, either from intellectual and emotional exhaustion or by summary banishment. When Nicky Blake dropped out last year he said he would rather go through a term of torture by the KGB than a week of Ozzy’s English seminars.

  The idea of staying on and taking English hadn’t occurred to me for a minute. I thought about it as I strolled home. Sure, I was flattered to be asked. But I didn’t get any closer to making a decision. Except that I’d try the idea on Barry that evening.

  PART TWO

  Once, and but once found in thy company

  All thy supposed escapes are laid on me.

  John Donne

  JKA. RUNNING REPORT: Henry Spurling ROBINSON 19th Sept. Home Visit.

  The Robinsons live in one of the smaller, older houses on Manchester Drive. I visited just after they arrived in Southend when Mrs Robinson experienced some difficulties as a result of the move from her home area. She felt lonely and distressed by the loss of her friends and relatives, on whom she had obviously always relied a, lot for company and support.

  The house was just as I last saw it. Neat and tidy, well cared for. The sort of home that always puts me slightly to shame because I feel it must be spring-cleaned every week and repainted inside and out twice a year.

  Mrs Robinson, a little woman, thin and now disturbed by her son’s trouble, was as nervous as when I first met her eighteen months ago. The doctor has recently increased her dosage of Valium to try and help her through the court case.

  Mr Robinson is medium height with a slim frame but going to fat, and his hair balding. He is a blustery man. His speech still retains his northern intonations especially when he gets worked up. He let me in. Both parents were polite and welcoming, anxious to do all they could to help.