The Stillness the Dancing

by Wendy Perriam

  She turned away. Cute was Bunny’s word and did he have to laugh so loudly? She didn’t even look at the approaching tableau, scared she would yell abuse at an enigma of an ex-husband rather than simper out her praises of Snow White. A week ago, she had contemplated shooting him, struggled with a mixture of angry resentment and aching loss. Now she felt simple irritation. Stupid things had set it off—the way he had bounced up that morning at the crack of dawn and started giving them their orders, masterminding a pleasure trip as if it were a business project, a time-and-motion study; the casual jaunty way he drove his silver Jag—only one hand on the steering wheel, the other tapping out the rhythm of the radio; the fact that he had switched on the radio at all, without checking first that anyone objected to that tumpty-tumpty music, those breathless commercials.

  Bunny was right—it was good for exes to meet—not as she thought to heal the scars by grafting new love, but to lance the old wound, drain off any festering love which remained. It was easy to pant for Neil, foment jealousy and passion, when he was completely out of reach and not actually offending her by wearing lemon-tartan trews, or saying ‘garbage’ and ‘bullshit’ when he meant ‘nonsense’ and ‘not true’. She realised now she had made her ex-husband increasingly desirable the longer he stayed away, fabricated a subtly different model from the one who actually existed.

  She forced her attention back to Mickey Mouse. The procession was almost over now, the last float rumbling down the street, the last tangle of Pied Piper children running and cheering after it, gathering up the streamers, joining in the song.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Neil, already consulting his guide book for the next attraction. He had been marshalling them all day, following his master-plan, keeping strict control. ‘Right, we’ve done everything but Fantasyland. This way, kids.’ He frisked ahead with Dean and Chris, Morna and Bunny bringing up the rear.

  ‘Isn’t this the greatest?’ Bunny exclaimed, gazing round at the gold and silver turrets, purple flowers. ‘I’ve been here at least twenty times, but I never get tired of it.’

  ‘Yes, it’s … fantastic.’

  Too fantastic, Morna thought—too much of everything, like the banana splits Neil had bought them all—four scoops each of different coloured ice cream, two whole bananas apiece, hot fudge sauce, swirls of sickly cream. She had closed her eyes a moment, seen David sitting in her Weybridge kitchen, toying with his strawberries, refusing cream and sugar. He would be working now, elbow-deep in books while they stopped to fondle Goofy or have their photos taken between the Mad Hatter and Pooh Bear. She longed to join him, swap this world of candyfloss and sunshine for the bracing cold and spartan regime of his island. Was she just a spoilsport? The others were laughing and joking, trying on each other’s hats, acting out the Seven Dwarfs with gestures, jokey voices—Dopey, Sneezy, Sleepy, each in turn. She had larked herself yesterday, but only with the help of Harvey Wallbangers. Walt Disney banned the hard stuff in his dreamland. Just as well, perhaps. She had been drinking far too much since she arrived in California, criticising Neil for his recourse to the bottle while following his lead. Bunny could fizz without the bubbly, get high on hot fudge sauce or soda pop.

  She was fizzing still as they passed through a fairy castle into Fantasyland, exclaiming at everything she saw, as excited as her four-year-old. She and Dean were even dressed the same, both in expensive-looking blue jeans and shirts with tiny hearts on. Bunny had added her usual treasure-trove of rings and chains, dramatictinted sunglasses, and a heart-shaped scarlet badge shouting ‘LOVE’. They all bore Bunny’s stamp, Morna realised, as she glanced around the group. She herself was wearing Bunny’s sneakers and had borrowed both a sweat shirt and some socks. Chris was dressed completely à la Bunny, in the Harvard tee shirt she had more or less appropriated and a pair of navy clam-diggers cut off beneath the knee; while Neil was draped with Bunny’s jacket and loaded down with her cache of souvenirs.

  ‘I can’t see, Daddy! I can’t see.’ Dean was tugging at his father’s arm.

  Neil returned the jacket, dumped the souvenirs on Chris, swung Dean up on his shoulders, denimed legs clinging round his neck.

  ‘I’m the king of the castle!’ crowed Dean, jigging up and down. ‘I’m taller than you now, Chris.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ grinned Chris, leaping up on a bench and standing on tiptoe.

  Morna yanked miserably at her Pluto hat. Neil had never carried Chris like that, complained she was too heavy when she was a tiny tot of two or three, half the size of Dean at nearly five. He was more indulgent to Dean in every way. Was it because he was a boy, or simply because he was Bunny’s child? Both hurt.

  ‘Race you to that flowerbed!’ Chris shouted to her father, sprinting off before he could refuse.

  ‘Faster, Daddy, faster!’ yelled Dean, drumming his heels against Neil’s chest and pretending to ride him like a jockey.

  ‘We won!’ he lied, as his father sank panting on to a bench beyond the flowerbed.

  ‘You little pig, you didn’t.’ Chris was jogging still, round and round the bench, as if working off an excess of energy. She seemed to have become a child again, full of bounce and zip.

  ‘Did,’ insisted Dean.

  ‘Dead heat,’ Neil adjudicated, fanning himself with his map. ‘Sit down, Chrissie. We’d better wait for Mummy.’

  Which one, wondered Morna, who had caught the remark as she drew level with the bench. Bunny was still chatting to her, explaining how Fantasyland was her number one favourite, except perhaps for Bear Country, and that reminded her—did Morna like zoos, and if so, perhaps they’d take a trip next week to Griffith Park which was the largest municipal park in the whole damn country and had two thousand different animals, not to mention golf and horseback riding and bars and restaurants and an Olympic-sized pool and a real Greek theatre and …

  Morna mumbled something noncommittal. There was enough to look at here, without a zoo and Aeschylus thrown in as well. The animals in Fantasyland were more the plush or plastic variety—a huge green Dumbo with aerodynamic ears, the Three Little Pigs dressed in caps and britches. Morna glanced around her—comic-hatted grown-ups spinning round in giant-sized cups and saucers, the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party brought to crazy life. Above them towered the Matterhorn, fourteen storeys of concrete, five hundred tons of steel, yet looking like another enchanted castle. You could bob-sled through its icy caverns, the brochure promised, race past glaciers and waterfalls, meet the Abominable Snowman.

  ‘I’ll sit this one out, I think,’ said Morna.

  ‘Chicken!’ Chris accused.

  Morna found a bench while the others joined the queue. It was true that she was scared. She had already lost her nerve in hair-raising Tomorrowland, found herself gripping the edge of the rocket ship or submarine, praying for deliverance, while everyone around her revelled in the thrills, Chris shouting louder than them all. She had never seen her daughter so relaxed before. She envied her, envied Bunny, envied the whole happy carefree crowd. Was she the only one among the hundred thousand visitors who was locked in her head instead of joining in the fun, checking her watch rather than letting time fly by as Peter Pan was flying over Disney’s version of romantic moonlit London? There were queues for everything (including Peter Pan)—slow and shuffling queues which seemed to move as slowly as the prehistoric monsters they had seen in another part of the park. Yet no one else appeared to mind. Queues were part of the excitement, building expectation in their inch-by-inch approach to some new wonder or sensation. Only Morna Gordon found them tedious.

  Was that why Neil had left her—not just the sex, but her poker face, her endless analysing, her refusal to unbend in bed and out? She tried to push the thought away. Disneyland was the Happiest Place on Earth—she had seen it written on a poster in huge official letters—so how could she be anything but happy? The trouble was they had tried too hard, laid on too many goodies and distractions. The guide book was full of figures—boasting firsts, five-star superlatives. A th
ousand candles in the Christmas Day procession, three thousand lights on the sixty-foot Christmas tree, over three hundred thousand vinyl leaves and blossoms on the Swiss Family Robinson Tree-House, twenty million dollars to construct the two-hundred foot Space Mountain.

  David had one sleeping-bag, one rusty paraffin lamp, one staling loaf, two pairs of jeans, and a stretched-to-the-limit research grant. She shut her eyes against the three-billion watt sun. She would spend the next half hour with him in a cooler, quieter place.

  ‘Did you see us? Did you see us?’ Dean came racing, shouting back. ‘We went right inside the mountain. Look! I’m all wet from the waterfall.’

  ‘It was great,’ said Chris, still shadowing her father. ‘Really fast and scary. You’d have hated it. Right, Mum, your turn now. What d’you want to go on?’

  ‘Something quiet and gentle, please.’

  Chris consulted the guide. ‘How about Storybookland? ‘‘Wish upon a star,’’ it says, ‘‘and your wish comes true.’’ Yuk! Or how do you fancy Sleeping Beauty’s Castle? ‘‘Wake the princess with a kiss.’’’

  Morna made a face.

  ‘Wait—I’ve found something really gungy. ‘‘It’s a Small World’’, it’s called. Listen and I’ll read it out. ‘‘Join the world’s enchanting children on the happiest cruise that ever sailed. All the wonder, excitement and happiness of youth overflows in a musical fantasy trip around the globe, as these gay and carefree youngsters bring a smile into your …’’’

  ‘Oh, it’s absolutely darling,’ Bunny interrupted. ‘I went on it last summer. You ride in a boat, and hundreds of little puppets dressed in national costume sing this real cute song in all the different languages. You’ll love it, Morna. Quick—let’s get in line.’

  The queue was the longest yet. They snailed towards the white and golden castle, its gleaming turrets banked with flowers, its hedges and bushes cut in the shapes of animals and birds—waltzing hippos, waddling ducks. Morna checked her book again. More statistics. Three hundred handmade toys decorated with a hundred and ninety-five pounds of glitter, fifty-seven gross of jewels, three hundred and seventy yards of braid; every costume authentic; every detail researched. Neil was explaining the wonders of the clock which flanked the entrance. It almost deserved a guide book to itself with its parade of toys, its pulsating springs and cogs, its drum tattoo and trumpet fanfare.

  ‘After this,’ he said, ‘we’ll see if we can get in for Fantasy Follies. Right?’

  ‘Right’ was another of his catchwords. Everything was right so long as he decided it. Dean was still sitting on his shoulders, cock of the walk.

  ‘Quick! Put me down,’ he shouted. ‘It’s our turn now.’

  They had reached the entrance and the string of boats, clambered into the first one, were swept along a winding riverway which washed through the castle itself. They had entered a new world—a world of greenish light and turquoise water, flanked by fantastic coloured vistas of lakes and mountains, flowers and fiords. Shrill and piping voices rose from every side where smiling puppets twirled and pirouetted, jerking to Walt Disney’s string as the boat meandered through the Seven Seaways, cruising first to Europe, then on to all the other continents and countries.

  ‘It’s a small world,’ they warbled,

  ‘A world of laughter, a world of tears

  A world of hopes and a world of fears.’

  A pity, Morna reflected, that they hadn’t spent less on the glitter and the braid, and more on a decent lyricist. The song sounded better in Norwegian, when she couldn’t understand the words. Not that they needed a translator, the sentiments were obvious—cosy joy, universal brotherhood, hands joined across Berlin Walls and barbed-wire boundaries, a smile on every face, be it black or brown or yellow. Piccaninnies beamed among woolly lions and papier-mâché tigers; bewitching Russians in brilliant national costume banged nothing more dangerous than drums; Chilean tots in ponchos sang of peace and plenty as they bobbed and curtseyed; Pole and Russian, Jew and Arab breathed concord and fraternity.

  She had heard on the news that morning of fresh fighting in Beirut, more deaths in Afghanistan, an international squabble over the administration of famine relief while famine itself increased. The enchanting children of Chad and Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Brazil, were squalling with hunger in mosquito-infested slums, not singing and dancing in universal harmony. Disneyland had cost two hundred million dollars to set up, enough to feed those gaping mouths. Over two hundred million people had already visited it, but that still left the other four thousand million of the world’s groaning population, who might find more pressing uses for the fifteen-dollar entrance fee. And what about America’s own poor, the ones queuing now outside a soup kitchen for a plate of cabbage and a hunk of bread, rather than waiting in line for a magic castle ride?

  ‘Oh, look!’ cried Bunny. ‘Isn’t that just darling?’

  A cluster of crocodiles were snapping their lethal jaws in winning smiles, a man-eating tiger in spats and fez strumming a banjo. Morna tried to force a smile herself. Couldn’t she just enjoy the ride, for heaven’s sake? She was becoming a bore, a prig, if not a downright hypocrite. She was one of those two hundred million visitors herself, so what right had she to pontificate or criticise? She let the sugar-plum world slip past—flowers which never faded, years with no winters and no droughts; a small world where only children lived, only pretty happy tots. Up and down they glided, round and round, the song near-hypnotic now as it was repeated over and over.

  ‘There’s so much that we share

  That it’s time we’re aware

  It’s a small world after all.’

  Morna winced at the limp scansion, began to recompose the words herself, was interrupted by the second verse.

  ‘There’s just one moon and one golden sun …’

  That at least she couldn’t dispute. She let her hand trail in the water. Why did she keep mocking? Dean was revelling in the ride, jumping up and down on his seat, shrieking with laughter at duck-billed platypuses or purple kangaroos. Couldn’t she follow his example, become a child again? Yesterday she had wept for her lost and loveless childhood. Here was a chance to savour an enchanted one, if only for ten minutes—all the wonder, excitement and happiness of youth as promised in the brochure, without sin or rules or devils; a united singing world free of poverty and war. Disney had created an ideal, one which she could share if she left her carping mind behind. At the opening ceremony, real-life children from around the world had each brought a jug of water from the seas and rivers of their native lands to pour into his symbolic Seven Seaways. Her hand might be floating now in water from the Nile or the South Pacific, a Venetian lagoon or the ice-bound Arctic Ocean, even from the straits near David’s island.

  ‘Though the mountains divide

  And the oceans are wide

  It’s a Small World after all.’

  She shut her eyes as the song began again, warbled now by the children of Japan. All the waters of the world were merging into one another, tropical rivers thawing northern seas, tiny streams swelling into huge and boundless oceans. God (or Walt) was rubbing out the boundaries between all the different countries, as if they were mere pencil marks in a child’s school jotter instead of gun-defended battle lines.

  Dean submerged her hand with his own, splashed her face with water. ‘Wake up, Dozy! We’re almost at the end.’

  Morna looked up, saw all the world’s children coming together in a final curtain call, no longer divided by colour, race or creed. She watched cowboy dance with Indian, Turk line up with Greek, Iraqi woo Iranian. Dean was humming the tune—Neil ‘s and Bunny’s son, her son, joined with every other child on earth.

  ‘Know what?’ he said, breaking off.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Daddy’s going to buy me the record. If you stay at my house, I’ll play it for you every single day.’

  ‘Gee, thanks,’ said Morna, as they emerged from the green glow of the water to the blazing sun outside—from Utop
ia back to Anaheim.

  ‘Where next?’ Chris asked, before she was barely out of the boat.

  ‘The Fantasy Follies,’ Neil reminded, consulting his map so that he could frog-march them towards it. ‘There’s a show beginning in just about ten minutes.’

  ‘No!’ yelled Dean. ‘Not yet. I want to go to the Tinkerbell Toy Shop first. You can buy Pluto suits there and …’

  ‘I need the ladies’ room,’ said Morna.

  ‘It must be all that water,’ Bunny giggled. ‘We’ll meet you in the store, okay? I don’t mind waiting in line for rides, but not for calls of nature.’

  A whole hour later Morna was still standing in the toyshop, on her own. Bunny and Co. had vanished. She had searched every inch of the store for them, scoured the other shops in Fantasyland, returned to the Matterhorn, scanned the queues of people, wandered round the Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, checked the canal boats, motorboats, every ride and stall.

  Once again, she retraced her steps to the rest room in case they had gone to find her there. The usual press of people, but only strangers. She pushed forlornly through the milling crowds. How could you believe in one small united world when you were lost in a huge and alien one? The barbed-wire barriers were up in place again, not only between countries, but between individual groups. ‘Keep off! You don’t belong.’ Disneyland was built for happy families, not for jaundiced singles. No one else appeared to be alone, no one anxious, fretting, traipsing back and forth. She remembered an actress friend remarking once that every individual was only an extra or a walk-on in everyone else’s play. She was no more than just a blur, a splash of colour, to all these passing faces, a minuscule fraction of one of the tiny noughts in that tramping two hundred million.

  She spotted a blonde head, raced after it shouting ‘Bunny!’ It turned round. A wrinkled face of fifty-odd, bleeding fuchsia-coloured lipstick on to a vanilla ice-cream cone. Morna muttered an apology, stumbled on again. Anger began to jab between the worry and fatigue. Were they making any effort to search for her, or too busy making whoopee, buying trinkets? She turned on her heel, walked the other way, checked Main Street once again, clambering up on a bench so that she could get a better view of all the faces. Every type of hat, every colour of skin and cast of feature except the ones she sought. She glanced down at Disney’s own face grinning on the cover of the brochure. He was shown amongst a group of kids, hugging the smallest and cutest, smiling on the rest, the universal uncle dispensing human happiness. The reality was darker. Walt had been something of a tyrant, his successors more so—benevolent dictators who insisted on rewriting history. All biographies of their chief were censored, the slightest breath of criticism expunged. When one irreverent writer dared to reveal that Disney couldn’t draw his own Mickey Mouse, or reproduce the famous signature, his book was refused the imprimatur. Even the Disney ‘villains’ were sweetened and sanitised. Bad-tempered ducks or buck-toothed hounds posed no problems, but to suggest that the Queen in Snow White might be sadistic or castrating would be blatant heresy. Both sex and sadism were forbidden entry here. It was like Bunny’s group—all saccharine and silver linings. She had let herself be taken in by them in a storm of self-indulgent tears. Their whole religion was self-indulgent—self-growth, personal development, the well-fed God inside. It was too narrow, too excluding, like Disneyland itself.