The Stillness the Dancing

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘Want some more? Or would you rather save room for the rabbit stew?’ He saw her frown. ‘Don’t worry—even Abban ate fish and flesh on feast days, so I thought we’d relax our own rule just the once.’

  He removed the dishes, bought the same two back again, newly washed and dried. They had only three between them and two of those were chipped. He made a second trip for a handsome cast-iron casserole which was either Mrs Cormack’s or one of Abban ‘s miracles, since the cottage boasted nothing so spectacular.

  Morna tried to look eager as David lifted the lid and spooned a thick brown viscous mixture onto her plate. They had seen rabbits on their morning walk, sunning themselves in sheltered spots, their white tails beaconing as they streaked back to their burrows in fear of human feet. Had David actually killed one, skinned it with his bare hands? She prayed not. David’s hands had become important to her—the only part of his body she ever saw unclothed. They were labourer’s hands confused with scholar’s hands—long slender fingers, broad calloused palms, broken dirty nails—hands always busy, bringing things to life—books, bread, shelves, biographies. She didn’t want them smeared with blood, taking life instead. She only hoped Cormack had done the dirty work, shot the rabbit, sold it.

  She swallowed the first mouthful—salty again, but rich and gamey. ‘It really is good.’

  ‘Well, don’t sound so surprised.’ David was struggling to remove the cork from what looked like a giant-sized medicine bottle, the liquid inside the same murky brown as the glass. He poured out two half tumblerfuls, passed one across to her.

  ‘What’s this?’ Morna sniffed the sticky liquid—a tarry smell with a whiff of liquorice.

  ‘I wish I knew. All I can guarantee is that it’s highly alcoholic. It’s Mrs Cormack’s home-made tipple—but she wouldn’t tell me made of what. Best not guess, perhaps.’

  Morna sipped it. It tasted sweet and fiery at once, seemed to sting and shock the tongue, cutting through the salt, the lingering taste of fish. She was surprised to see David drinking. He lifted his glass, touched it against hers.

  ‘Happy Valentine’s,’ he said.

  ‘Happy belated birthday.’

  ‘Happy Candlemas. I’ll bring some candles over, shall I? Then we can make out what we’re eating.’

  He fetched the two largest, already half burned down, placed them one each side of the casserole. She could see his face more clearly now, his eyes reflecting back the restless orange flame, light gleaming on his cheekbones. The whole room was made of flame, shadows from the candles leaping on the walls, the red glow of the fire thawing the cold sober stiffness of the parlour. Wind and cold and night were all shut out, the booming of the sea lost in the crackle of the fire, the sudden hiss and splutter as the flames licked against a damp patch in the fuel. Morna sipped her drink, felt her own edges blurring into warmth. David was sitting at her feet, her full skirt overlapping his right knee. She longed to move closer, reach out and touch the knee. Better be careful. The drink must have affected her already. He would only flinch away, repulse her. She latched her fingers safely on her glass, forced her attention back to safer subjects.

  ‘Er … when was it that they changed the date of Candlemas?’

  ‘542 AD. The Emperor Justinian ordered it as a thanksgiving after a plague. That was in Constantinople, though. I’m not sure about Rome. In any case it doesn’t bear much resemblance to the Lupercalia.’

  Morna put her glass down, returned to her stew. ‘I wonder who we’d be worshipping now if Christianity had simply fizzled out—you know, just a flash in the pan like the flower-power thing in the sixties—whether we’d still be pagans, or offering human sacrifice to computers, or …’

  ‘I don’t think it would have fizzled out. The Church won through because it had a total system. Okay, paganism had its rituals, so did emperor-worship, but neither had a real moral or theological base. The philosophical sects gave you guidance for life, but hadn’t much to say when it came to an afterlife. Mithraism threw in initiation rites and even a bit of mysticism, but no coherent world view. Only Christianity promised the whole damn lot—a reasoned philosophy and theology, a complete moral system, a united Church offering real spiritual sustenance, salvation after death, unity, brotherhood …’ David’s plate was spilling in his lap. He mopped his jeans with his paper serviette, licked his fingers, went on talking. ‘And it appealed right across the board, you see. For the intelligentsia it blended Greek and Roman thought, so was far more acceptable than many of the woolly pagan rites, and for the peasants and the downtrodden it offered compensation for the hardship of their lives—you know, hell down here, but paradise to follow. That made the injustices more tolerable, gave them something to live for. Above all, it answered the big questions, combined certainty with hope.’

  ‘So why is it declining now?’ Morna removed a rabbit bone, put it on the side of her plate.

  ‘If I tried to answer that, we’d be sitting here all night. The world’s changed, for one thing. It’s bigger now—or smaller, if you look at it another way—and far more complex. And then there’s ritual itself. We’ve lost so much of that, or it’s become a dead-letter thing, worn out and formalised, just empty words and gestures cut off from people’s real gut-needs and feelings. They’ve tried to tinker with things a bit—give us new translations or throw us little sops, like the priest facing the people instead of turning his back, or Communion in the hand or …, but that’s just window-dressing.’ David paused to swallow a mouthful of stew. He had been eating with more eagerness than usual, had downed a brimming bowl of soup and was now halfway through his rabbit. ‘Even the sacraments have become sort of standard formulae without much charge left in them. Take Communion itself. It should be a proper meal like this—a sharing, with people sitting down at table eating real coarse grainy bread, not a prissy little wafer, and drinking rough red wine which warms them and relaxes them.’ He drained his own glass, refilled them both.

  Morna cupped hers in both hands. ‘You surprise me. I’d have thought you’d have stressed the substance, not the accidents. Weren’t those the terms they used at school?’

  He nodded. Strange how she hadn’t forgotten—all those tricky technical terms like transubstantiation or temporal punishment, which they had mugged up at their daily doctrine lessons, while other fifteen-year-olds were learning the names of pop groups or makeup ranges; Mother Annunciata fielding all awkward questions into the confessional box, labelling them pride or heresy, never the sign of intelligence or independent thought. Judging by his words, David was an original, if not an outright rebel, and both rebellion and originality were ruthlessly suppressed in Catholic schools. She watched his fingers restive on the glass.

  ‘You’re not even much of a drinker,’ she said. ‘So why all the poetry about rough red wine?’

  ‘Oh, I could be a drinker—very much so. In fact, I often fear I could turn into a full-blown alcoholic, if I didn’t watch it.’

  ‘David, that’s the first drop you’ve touched all the time I’ve been here—and knowing you, probably since September.’

  ‘Only because it interferes with my work.’

  ‘There you are, you see—work first. You’re a natural puritan.’

  ‘Yes, but puritans are the worst. Don’t you suspect they only make such a song and dance about other people’s pleasures because they’re racked with desire themselves? You can see it in Abban—all that flogging himself with thorns and sitting naked up to his neck in icy water to calm what he called his lusts. They must have been some lusts.’

  Morna said nothing. ‘Lusts’ was a word he had never used before, one which made her feel uncomfortable. Was it was only safe to desire him because he revealed no desire himself? ‘Racked with desire’ was a Catholic expression, the sort of phrase Mother Michael favoured. But David had used it with an almost relish. She glanced across at him. He had picked up a bone and was gnawing the meat off it; suddenly looked too animal, too pagan, despite the fact he was still ta
lking about the Church.

  ‘Penance became a continuous way of life. There’s a story in Bede of an Irishman called Adamnan who was living in the monastery at Coldingham and who ate and drank only two days out of seven. He’d been instructed by a priest to fast for several days a week, to atone for some sin he had committed in his youth. The priest had promised to return to review the situation, but he was recalled to his native Ireland, where he died. So his poor obedient penitent continued to eat on Sundays and Thursdays only, for the entire rest of his life, until he passed away himself.’

  Morna put her fork down. It wasn’t easy to eat with all this talk of fasting.

  David wiped his fingers, took another draught of wine. ‘Sometimes you could commute a long penance to a shorter sharper one—something like the Black Fast.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Three days without eating, drinking or sleep, plus three nights of mortification—the first immersed in water, the second naked on stinging nettles and the third naked on a bed of nutshells.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘I’m not. That’s absolutely factual. You can get all the details from the Irish Penitentials which list every sin, venial or mortal, with its corresponding penance. Just one lustful thought could mean a month of bread and water or sleeping on bare rock.’

  Morna stared down at the purple tablecloth, the colour of penance itself. Was David getting at her, aware of all the lustful thoughts she had been trying to suppress for the last three weeks? Or hinting at his own desire again? She felt suddenly uneasy, pushed her plate away.

  ‘That was … er … lovely, David. Thank you. A really special meal.’

  ‘We’re not finished yet. There’s still the sun bread. I’ve been saving that for last. I was planning to have Angel Delight for pudding—I thought Abban would get a kick out of the name, but Cormack said the grocer didn’t stock it, only Instant Whip, which didn’t sound quite in the same class.’

  Morna laughed. ‘I used to make it for Chris—Angel Delight, I mean—and I was the one who was always licking out the bowl.

  I love it. That’s what I’d have really missed if I was a seventh-century monk—the sweet things.’

  ‘They had honey sometimes. Wait a sec.’ David sprang up, returned with the sun bread and a large square honeycomb. ‘There you are—I bought you some—to eat with the bread.’

  ‘David, you’re a wonder, but I don’t think I’ve got room for it. I’m pretty full already.’

  ‘You must have just a slice. It’s the most important part of the feast. We’re eating the sun, you see, which fills us with light and warmth and fruitfulness and …’

  ‘All right, cut me just a sliver—though it seems a shame to cut it at all. It looks so pretty.’

  David had pinched and fluted the circumference of the loaf to represent the sun’s rays, brushed the top with milk so that it had turned a glossy gold. He cut two slices, passed her the smaller one along with the Cerebos. ‘You’re meant to eat your first mouthful with salt.’

  ‘No thanks! I’ve consumed enough salt from three solid weeks of seaweed to last me the whole year.’

  David shook out a few grains. ‘Please. Salt stands for friendship. It binds us together, means we trust each other.’

  Morna dipped her bread in the salt, swallowed it in silence. There were other forms of bonding besides symbolic rituals. Was David not aware of them, or leading up to them in his own subtle tortuous fashion? He had hinted at a lot of things tonight—lust and greed, wild unbridled appetites. That scared her somehow, made him someone different from the David she admired. For days and days (nights and days), she had wanted him to want her, but now that he appeared to, she had lost her nerve.

  ‘Salt for immortality, as well,’ he said, mopping up a few spilt grains. ‘And wisdom and truth. They put it on the baby’s tongue at baptism.’

  Morna sagged back on her pillows. Chris had been baptised. Another sham—the worst one—except it had been done to placate Bea, like her own white wedding.

  ‘Do you renounce Satan?’

  ‘I do renounce him.’

  ‘And all his works?’

  ‘I do renounce them.’

  ‘And all his pomps?’

  ‘I do …’

  She shivered suddenly. The room no longer looked so cheerful. The candles were guttering, some burned down completely; the fire slumping into ashes. Darkness coiled heavy in the corners of the room, pressed against beams already blackened from a hundred years of smoke. David’s features were smudged together now, his hands and feet lost in shadow. She could hear the wind again, reminding them of winter, danger.

  The nuns were right—sex was dangerous, led to sin and hell. It wasn’t sin she feared, but the hell of it not working, the shame of failure. Supposing David made advances and she couldn’t respond, stayed dry and tense, or put him off his stroke as she had with David Attwood. Why risk a second fiasco, some sordid grope or scuffle which could ruin their whole friendship? All right, so she had tried to rouse his interest, spent three whole weeks contriving to get closer to him, but she realised now it was his very distance and aloofness which kept her safe, protected her. As a simple friend and colleague he admired her; as a lover, he might not.

  Safer to renounce sex and all its works and pomps. The nuns had known best, but had got their definitions wrong. Sin wasn’t sex—not today—but just its opposite: frigidity and prudishness, lying passive, failing to respond. She was already nervous, David more so. If things went wrong, resulted in some bungling flop, she couldn’t even sneak away as she had with David Attwood, but would have to sit it out here until wind and tide and Cormack agreed to let her go. How could she and David continue with their peaceful way of life if they had let each other down, made fools of themselves in bed?

  She reached forward for the bread, cut another slice, sprinkled salt on top. They would be bound, yes, but only by the ties of friendship, and she would risk absolutely nothing which might spoil or strain that bond. She broke the bread in two, passed David half. That would be their sole Communion.

  The cold clean midnight air cut across the heavy pall of candle grease and wood smoke as David opened the front door. Morna slipped out first, groped her way to the cliff path, gazed down at the sea. It always seemed more menacing at night-time, its black swirling water refusing to lie quiet or hush its voice, even while the rest of the island slept. David was lighting the bonfire in the shelter of the cottage. She used its flame as a beacon as she picked her way back across the rocky stretch of ground. He had lit the fire to stimulate the sun, but it was the moon which was watching him thin-lipped in the sky, his tall figure tagged by a grotesque and taller shadow. Her own shadow lurched towards his, merged.

  ‘Marvellous fire,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. I saved the fish and rabbit bones to burn. That’s how bonfires got their name—from bones. They make a rather nasty smoke which drives away the demons. Are you ready to make the offering?’

  Morna stepped forward, poured out the libation—the last dregs of Mrs Cormack’s brew. The flame was quenched a moment before flickering back to life. David had banked the fire with gorse, dead and brown, but another ancient charm against evil spirits. He took her hand.

  ‘Now we dance round it. That encourages the sun.’

  Morna felt not quite real. The heavy long-fermented wine had split her head off from her body, made her legs clumsy so that she was shambling rather than dancing, steered by David, barging into him as they went round and round, round and round; their elongated shadows tripping a second unsteady circle beyond their own. Despite the rawness of the night, David was still in his shirtsleeves, she wearing just a light wool cardigan over her thin dress. Yet neither felt the cold. The fire was flushing their faces, scorching the fronts of their legs, while the wind whipped them from behind, tugged at their hair. Morna could hear the sea nagging at the rocks, a steady threatening boom beyond the crackling of the flames. The bright sun of the fire lit up o
nly one small circle of the night, an enchanted circle which haloed them with gold, but outside it sea and sky were black, merging in one huge and potent darkness. Morna’s heart was pounding, her breath coming in gasps, yet she didn’t, couldn’t stop. This was a rhythm dictated by something outside her, the orbit of the sun itself. Her hand was locked in David’s, his body part of hers, so that they were no longer separate, but had become one strange four-legged creature with one set of lungs, one heartbeat, which could spin only round and round. It was endless summer because they had devoured the sun, yet winter darkness loomed beyond the fire, encroaching now as the flames began to weaken, feeding on themselves.

  Their pace slackened, as if it were the fire itself which had been fuelling them as well. They slowed down to a walk and then a stumble, finally collapsed on the ground, dizzy and out of breath. Morna still clung to David’s hand, while the island whirled and spun.

  Gently, he freed it, struggled to his feet. ‘We’ll light our candles from the fire before it dies completely and process around the house with them. That’s the very last rite, I promise. You must be dead.’

  ‘No, I’m fine. Anyway, I’ve got to jump across the fire first.’ She paused a moment, until the ground had come to rest, then sprang to her feet, leapt across the flames, feeling their hot breath pant against her legs, landed safely on the other side. Now she had ensured fruitfulness twice over, the morning’s rites clinched by these midnight ones, the demons doubly banished.

  She turned back to David, his dark form crouching down as he held his candle to the last faint tongue of flame. He passed her a second candle, lit it from his own. Their eyes met for a second and this time he didn’t look away. If the eyes were the window of the soul, then she was embedded in his soul, a tiny flickering figure staring out.