After the Dance

by Alan Warner

  ‘Well, what’s the matter with you!’ she snapped pettishly, ‘sitting there moping with the tea to be made. I sometimes don’t know why we christened you John’ – with a sigh. ‘My father was never like you. He was a man who knew his business.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ he said despairingly. ‘Can’t you get a new record for your gramophone. I’ve heard all that before,’ as if he were conscious of the inadequacy of this familiar retort – he added: ‘hundreds of times.’ But she wasn’t to be stopped.

  ‘I can’t understand what has come over you lately. You keep mooning about the house, pacing up and down with your hands in your pockets. Do you know what’s going to happen to you, you’ll be taken to the asylum. That’s where you’ll go. Your father’s people had something wrong with their heads, it was in your family but not in ours.’ (She had always looked upon him as her husband’s son, not as her own: and all his faults she attributed to hereditary weaknesses on his father’s side.)

  He pottered about, putting water in the kettle, waiting desperately for the sibilant noise to stop. But no, it took a long time to stop. He moved about inside this sea of sound trying to keep detached, trying to force himself from listening. Sometimes, at rarer and rarer intervals, he could halt and watch her out of a clear, cold mind as if she didn’t matter, as if her chatter which eddied round and round, then burst venomously towards him, had no meaning for him, could not touch him. At these times her little bitter barbs passed over him or through him to come out on the other side. Most often however they stung him and stood quivering in his flesh, and he would say something angrily with the reflex of the wound. But she always cornered him. She had so much patience, and then again she enjoyed pricking him with her subtle arrows. He had now become so sensitive that he usually read some devilish meaning into her smallest utterance.

  ‘Have you stacked all the sheaves now?’ she was asking. He swung round on his eddying island as if he had seen that the seas were relenting, drawing back. At such moments he became deferential.

  ‘Yes,’ he said joyously. ‘I’ve stacked them all. And I’ve done it all alone too. I did think Roddy Mason would help. But he doesn’t seem to have much use for me now. He’s gone the way the rest of the boys go. They all take a job. Then they get together and laugh at me.’ His weakness was pitiful: his childish blue eyes brimmed with tears. Into the grimace by which he sought to tauten his face, he put a murderous determination: but though the lines of his face were hard, the eyes had no steadiness: the last dominance had long faded and lost itself in the little red lines which crossed and recrossed like a graph.

  ‘Of course Roddy doesn’t want to help you. He’s got enough to do as it is. Anyway he’s got his day’s work to do and you haven’t.’

  ‘It isn’t my fault I haven’t.’ He spoke wearily. The old interminable argument was beginning again: he always made fresh attacks but as often retired defeated. He stood up suddenly and paced about the room as if he wanted to overawe her with his untidy hair, his thick jersey, and long wellingtons.

  ‘You know well enough,’ he shouted, ‘why I haven’t my day’s work. It’s because you’ve been in bed there for ten years now. Do you want me to take a job? I’ll take a job tomorrow . . . if you’ll only say!’ He was making the same eternal argument and the same eternal concession: ‘If you’ll only say.’ And all the time he knew she would never say, and she knew that he would never take any action.

  ‘Why, you’d be no good in a job. The manager would always be coming to show you what you had done wrong, and you’d get confused with all those strange faces and they’d laugh at you.’ Every time she spoke these words the same brutal pain stabbed him. His babyish eyes would be smitten by a hellish despair, would lose all their hope, and cloud over with the pain of the mute, suffering animal. Time and time again he would say to her when she was feeling better and in a relatively humane mood: ‘I’m going to get a job where the other fellows are!’ and time and time again, with the unfathomable and unknowable cunning of the woman, she would strike his confidence dead with her hateful words. Yes, he was timid. He admitted it to himself, he hated himself for it, but his cowardice still lay there waiting for him, particularly in the dark nights of his mind when the shadow lay as if by a road, watching him, tripping behind him, changing its shape, till the sun came to shine on it and bring its plausible explanations. He spoke again, passing his hand wearily over his brow as if he were asking for her pity.

  ‘Why should anybody laugh at me? They don’t laugh at the other chaps. Everybody makes mistakes. I could learn as quickly as any of them. Why, I used to do his lessons for Norman Slater.’ He looked up eagerly at her as if he wanted her to corroborate. But she only looked at him impatiently, that bitter smile still upon her face.

  ‘Lessons aren’t everything. You aren’t a mechanic. You can’t do anything with your hands. Why don’t you hurry up with that tea? Look at you. Fat good you’d be at a job.’

  He still sat despairingly leaning near the fire, his head on his hands. He didn’t even hear the last part of her words. True, he wasn’t a mechanic. He never could understand how things worked. This ignorance and inaptitude of his puzzled himself. It was not that he wasn’t intelligent: it was as if something had gone wrong in his childhood, some lack of interest in lorries and aeroplanes and mechanisms, which hardened into a wall beyond which he could not go through – paradise lay yonder.

  He reached up for the tea absent-mindedly and poured hot water into the tea-pot. He watched it for a while with a sad look on his face, watched the fire leaping about it as if it were a soul in hell. The cups were white and undistinguished and he felt a faint nausea as he poured the tea into them. He reached out for the tray, put the tea-cup and a plate with bread and jam on it, and took it over to the bed. His mother sat up and took the tray from him, settling herself laboriously back against the pillows. She looked at it and said:

  ‘Why didn’t you wash this tray? Can’t you see it’s all dirty round the edges?’ He stood there stolidly for a moment, not listening, watching her frail, white-clad body, and her spiteful, bitter face. He ate little but drank three cups of tea. Then he took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one nervously and self-consciously.

  ‘Cigarettes again? Don’t you know that there’s very little money coming into the house. If it weren’t for your father’s pension where would you be . . . you who’s never done a day’s work in your life? Answer me!’ she screamed. ‘Why are you sitting there like a dummy, you silly fool!’ He took no notice, but puffed at his cigarette. There was a terrible weariness in his eyes. Nowadays he seldom felt his body tired: it was always his mind. This voice of hers, these pettinesses of hers, were always attacking his mind, burrowing beneath it, till he felt himself in a dark cave from which there was never to be any escape. Sometimes words came to him to silence her, but between the words leaving his mind and leaving his lips they had changed: they had lost their import, their impact, and their usefulness.

  His mind now seemed gradually to be clearing up, and he was beginning to judge his own actions and hers. Everything was clearing up: it was one of his moments. He turned round on his chair from a sudden impulse and looked at her intensely. He had done this very often before, had tried to cow her into submission: but she had always laughed at him. Now however he was looking at her as if he had never seen her before. Her mouth was open and there were little crumbs upon her lower lip. Her face had sharpened itself into a birdlike quickness: she seemed to be pecking at the bread with a sharp beak in the same way as she pecked cruelly at his defences. He found himself considering her as if she were some kind of animal. Detachedly he thought: how can this thing make my life a hell for me? What is she anyway? She’s been ill for ten years: that doesn’t excuse her. She’s breaking me up so that even if she dies I won’t be any good for anyone. But what if she’s pretending? What if there is nothing wrong with her? At this a rage shook him so great that he flung his half-consumed cigarette in the direction of the fire
in an abrupt, savage gesture. Out of the silence he heard a bus roaring past the window, splashing over the puddles. That would be the boys going to the town to enjoy themselves. He shivered inside his loneliness and then rage took hold of him again. How he hated her! This time his gaze concentrated itself on her scraggy neck, rising like a hen’s out of her plain white nightgown. He watched her chin wagging up and down: it was stained with jam and flecked with one or two crumbs. His sense of loneliness closed round him, so that he felt as if he were on a boat on the limitless ocean, just as his house was on a limitless moorland. There was a calm, unspeaking silence, while the rain beat like a benediction on the roof. He walked over to the bed, took the tray from her as she held it out to him. He had gone in answer to words which he hadn’t heard, so hedged was he in his own thoughts.

  ‘Remember to clean the tray tomorrow,’ she said. He walked back with the tray fighting back the anger that swept over him carrying the rubbish and debris of his mind in its wake. He turned back to the bed. His mind was in a turmoil of hate, so that he wanted to smash the cup, smash the furniture, smash the house. He kept his hands clenched, he the puny and unimaginative. He would show her, avenge her insults with his unintelligent hands. There was the bed, there was his mother. He walked over.

  She was asleep, curled up in the warmth with the bitter, bitter smile upon her face. He stood there for a long moment while an equally bitter smile curled up the edge of his lips. Then he walked to the door, opened it, and stood listening to the rain.

  An American Sky

  He stood on the deck of the ship looking towards the approaching island. He was a tall man who wore brownish clothes: and beside him were two matching brown cases. As he stood on the deck he could hear Gaelic singing coming from the saloon which wasn’t all that crowded but had a few people in it, mostly coming home for a holiday from Glasgow. The large ship moved steadily through the water and when he looked over the side he could see thin spitlike foam travelling alongside. The island presented itself as long and green and bare with villages scattered along the coast. Ahead of him was the westering sun which cast long red rays across the water.

  He felt both excited and nervous as if he were returning to a wife or sweetheart whom he had not seen for a long time and was wondering whether she had changed much in the interval, whether she had left him for someone else or whether she had remained obstinately true. It was strange, he thought, that though he was sixty years old he should feel like this. The journey from America had been a nostalgic one, first the plane, then the train, then the ship. It was almost a perfect circle, a return to the womb. A womb with a view, he thought and smiled.

  He hadn’t spoken to many people on the ship. Most of the time he had been on deck watching the large areas of sea streaming past, now and again passing large islands with mountain peaks, at other times out in the middle of an empty sea where the restless gulls scavenged, turning their yellow gaunt beaks towards the ship.

  The harbour was now approaching and people were beginning to come up on deck with their cases. A woman beside him was buttoning up her small son’s coat. Already he could see red buses and a knot of people waiting at the pier. It had always been like that, people meeting the ship when it arrived at about eight, some not even welcoming anyone in particular but just standing there watching. He noticed a squat man in fisherman’s clothes doing something to a rope. Behind him there was a boat under green canvas.

  The ship swung in towards the harbour. Now he could see the people more clearly and behind them the harbour buildings. When he looked over the side he noticed that the water was dirty with bits of wooden boxes floating about in an oily rainbowed scum.

  After some manoeuvring the gangway was eventually laid. He picked up his cases and walked down it behind a girl in yellow slacks whose transistor was playing in her left hand. Ahead of her was a man in glasses who had a BEA case with, stamped on it, the names of various foreign cities. There were some oldish women in dark clothes among the crowd and also some girls and boys in brightly coloured clothes. A large fat slow man stood to the side of the gangway where it touched the quay, legs spread apart, as if he had something to do with the ship, though he wasn’t actually doing anything. Now and again he scratched a red nose.

  He reached the shore and felt as if the contact with land was an emotionally charged moment. He didn’t quite know how he felt, slightly empty, slightly excited. He walked away from the ship with his two cases and made his way along the main street. It had changed, no doubt about it. There seemed to be a lot of cafés, from one of which he heard the blare of a jukebox. In a bookseller’s window he saw From Russia with Love side by side with a book about the Highlands called The Misty Hebrides. Nevertheless the place appeared smaller, though it was much more modern than he could remember, with large windows of plate glass, a jeweller’s with Iona stone, a very fashionable-looking ladies’ hairdressers. He also passed a supermarket and another bookseller’s. Red lights from one of the cafés streamed into the bay. At the back of the jeweller’s shop he saw a church spire rising into the sky. He came to a cinema which advertised Bingo on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Dispirited trailers for a Western filled the panels.

  He came to a Chinese restaurant and climbed the steps, carrying his two cases. The place was nearly empty and seemed mostly purplish with, near the ceiling, a frieze showing red dragons. Vague music – he thought it might be Chinese – leaked from the walls. He sat down and, drawing the huge menu towards him, began to read it. In one corner of the large room an unsmiling Chinaman with a moustache was standing by an old-fashioned black telephone and at another table a young Chinese girl was reading what might have been a Chinese newspaper. A little bare-bottomed Chinese boy ran out of the kitchen, was briefly chased back with much giggling, and the silence descended again.

  For a moment he thought that the music was Gaelic, and was lost in his dreams. The Chinese girl seemed to turn into Mary who was doing her homework in the small thatched house years and years before. She was asking their father about some arithmetic but he, stroking his beard, was not able to answer. At another table an old couple were solidly munching rice, their heads bowed.

  The music swirled about him. The Chinese girl read on. Why was it that these people never laughed? He had noticed that. Also that Chinese restaurants were hushed like churches. A crowd of young people came in laughing and talking, their Highland accents quite distinct though they were speaking English. He felt suddenly afraid and alone and slightly disorientated as if he had come to the wrong place at the wrong time. The telephone rang harshly and the Chinaman answered it in guttural English. Perhaps he was the only one who could speak English. Perhaps that was his job, just to answer the phone. He had another look at the menu, suddenly put it down and walked out just as a Chinese waitress came across with a notebook and pencil in her hand. He hurried downstairs and walked along the street.

  Eventually he found a hotel and stood at the reception desk. A young blonde girl was painting her nails and reading a book. She said to the girl behind her, ‘What does “impunity” mean?’ The other girl stopped chewing and said, ‘Where does it say that?’ The first girl looked at him coolly and said, ‘Yes, Sir?’ Her voice also was Highland.

  ‘I should like a room,’ he said. ‘A single room.’

  She leafed rapidly through a book and said at last, ‘We can give you 101, Sir. Shall I get the porter to carry your bags?’

  ‘It’s not necessary.’

  ‘That will be all right then, Sir.’

  He waited for a moment and then remembered what he was waiting for. ‘Could I please have my key?’ he asked.

  She looked at him in amazement and said, ‘You don’t need a key here, Sir. Nobody steals anything. Room 101 is on the first floor. You can’t miss it.’ He took his cases and walked up the stairs. He heard them discussing a dance as he left.

  He opened the door and put the cases down and went to the window. In front of him he could see the ship and the bay
with the red lights on it and the fishing boats and the large clock with the greenish face.

  As he turned away from the window he saw the Gideon Bible, picked it up, half smiling, and then put it down again. He took off his clothes slowly, feeling very tired, and went to bed. He fell asleep very quickly while in front of his eyes he could see Bingo signs, advertisements for Russian watches, and seagulls flying about with open gluttonous beaks. The last thought he had was that he had forgotten to ask when breakfast was in the morning.

  2

  The following day at two o’clock in the afternoon he took the bus to the village that he had left so many years before. There were few people on the bus which had a conductress as well as a driver, both dressed in uniform. He thought wryly of the gig in which he had been driven to the town the night he had left; the horse was dead long ago and so was his own father, the driver.

  On the seat opposite him there was sitting a large fat tourist who had a camera and field-glasses slung over his shoulder and was wearing dark glasses and a light greyish hat.