The Stillness the Dancing

by Wendy Perriam

  He held his candle high, led her slowly, solemnly, back into the house. The rooms were all in darkness, the other candles distorted stumps of wax, the parlour grate a tomb of dying embers. They processed from parlour to kitchen, then up the stairs in silence, in and out of the second bedless bedroom, shadows leaping from the stacked and ghostly jumble, and finally into Morna’s room. There they stopped.

  The silence seemed wrong now, awkward and unintended rather than part of a solemn ritual. Morna shifted from foot to foot. This was the finish of the ceremony, the end of the feast day, yet there was no final rite to mark it, no fitting culmination. She could mutter goodnight, close the door on him, but that would ruin the whole day, make him feel she hadn’t valued it. Anyway, how could she simply settle down to sleep, switch off the excitement?

  She blew out her candle, let his light them both. ‘David …’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Thank you—for everything. It was a wonderful day. I’ll never forget it—ever.’

  He mumbled some reply, embarrassed as always when she tried to praise him. She sat on the edge of the bed, willing him to stay a little longer; wished there was a chair, a pair of chairs, so they could both relax, settle down more casually, simply talk a while. Why was it so difficult to talk now? David seemed completely tongue-tied and she herself could think of nothing to say which wasn’t either stupid or provocative. Silence seemed to clog the room, fill all the space between them. The half-light made it worse, suggesting an intimacy which simply wasn’t there. Perhaps she could praise the meal again, thank him for his trouble.

  ‘David, that … er … rabbit stew was quite …’

  He suddenly blundered towards her, blew his candle out, dropped it on the shelf, grabbed her round the waist, pressing his whole body against hers. She fell back on the bed, banging her head on the wall. He seemed not even to notice, just plumped on top of her, hugged her so fiercely she could hardly breathe. She tried to free herself, break the tight noose of his arms. She could hear him muttering something, the words indistinct, as squashed and bruised as she was.

  ‘Stop, David, you’re hurting.’

  He snapped back to his feet, let her go as abruptly as he had seized her. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ He was shouting now, stumbling to the door.

  ‘It … It’s all right. It’s just that …’

  ‘It’s not all right. I hurt you. I always get it bloody wrong.’

  She could hear him fumbling for the door handle, groped after him, laid her hand gently on his arm. ‘David, listen—let’s not spoil things.’

  ‘They’re spoilt already. My fault, sorry.’

  ‘Don’t say that. You just … took me by surprise, that’s all.’

  ‘I thought you wanted me to … Oh, forget it.’ David had his back turned, was hunched against the door, mumbling into the wood. ‘I tried to warn you, tried not to … to start things, but you kept leading me on, encouraging me …’

  ‘I … I didn’t.’ She could feel herself blushing in the darkness as she fibbed.

  ‘Of course you did. Oh, I didn’t mind. I was flattered, actually.’ His voice was muffled, indistinct. ‘Trust me to mess things up, though.’

  ‘You haven’t, David. I mean, I …’ The flush was deepening. Why were words so difficult, even one’s own language? ‘What I’m trying to say is I don’t mind your … I even quite … but you mustn’t be so sort of … violent.’

  David kicked at the door. ‘Don’t say that.’ He was shouting again. ‘Don’t use that word. I feel violent, that’s the whole damn trouble. You don’t understand. I tried to explain but …’

  ‘How can I understand if …’

  ‘Leave it, Morna. I’ve said enough—more than enough. You’ve told me I’ve as good as botched it, so we might as well …’ He was through the door now, halfway down the stairs, tripping in the dark.

  She fumbled for her torch, darted after him. ‘Wait, David. You … You don’t understand me either. I feel just as … screwed up as you do. If you really want to know, I’m a … washout in that department myself.’

  ‘Y … You?’ He stopped, swung round, blinking against the sudden beam of light.

  ‘Well, N … Neil always said so. He spent fourteen years telling me I was cold and prudish and …’

  David walked slowly up three steps, stopped again. ‘I can’t believe it. I always thought …’

  ‘Why don’t we talk? We never have, you know—not about you, not really. Always me.’ She backed into the bedroom. David followed cautiously, remained standing at the door, hands clenched, one foot jabbing at the floorboards.

  ‘Look, David, I don’t quite know how to put this, but what I fell is … we—you … don’t really trust me—not completely. It’s not just a matter of touching or … or …’ She stared down at the torch beam which was trembling with her hand. ‘I want to know you better. I’ve told you a lot about my own life, but you never seem to …’ The words gave out again, stumbled into silence.

  ‘We talk all the time,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve probably told you more than anyone else I’ve ever met in my life—name, age, address, religion, father’s occupation. What more do you want to know, for heaven’s sake?’ He was trying to make a joke of it, but she could hear the tension in his voice, arms folded tight across his chest now.

  ‘It’s only because I’m … I’m fond of you. Perhaps I shouldn’t be, but …’

  ‘I’m fond of you, too.’ David sounded uneasy with the admission, head turned half-away. ‘I’m sorry I shouted, Morna. I behaved very … stupidly—like a child in a tantrum.’

  ‘Come and sit down.’ She patted the bed beside her.

  He sat reluctantly, said nothing for a while, rubbed his eyes, crossed his legs, uncrossed them. She could feel him fidgeting and shuffling in the darkness, his nervousness infectious.

  ‘It’s funny,’ he said at last, one hand across his mouth so that the words were muffled and distorted. ‘When I was a child, I never felt like one. My brother was much older—very quiet and serious. I worshipped him—tried to model myself on him—you know, be another Dominic. It didn’t work. Everyone in my family was very … good. Stupid word.’ He laughed, more harshly this time. ‘Except me, that is. I always felt I’d let them down. I was the only one who ever lost my temper or had punch-ups or black moods or … When I was thirteen, I was sent away to school. I’d won a scholarship, in fact, but I saw it more as a punishment. Dominic was a day-boy—good enough to stay at home, but I had to be disciplined, beaten into shape.’ David was tapping his feet, picking at the blankets, a moody, restless thirteen-year-old again.

  ‘I was a great gangling thing by then, the tallest boy in the class and the first one to shave. I hated that, hated what I looked like. Dominic was smaller-boned and fair and never swore or shouted or used his fists, and although he was quiet, he wasn’t shy. I was. It was agony to meet people, especially new ones. Girls were worst of all. I blushed if a female came within ten yards of me. My form master was always going on about body and soul, sort of splitting them off as if they were quite separate—soul good, body bad. That appealed to me because I could send the bad bit packing. The body was the big feet and the blushes and the scruff of beard covering the acne, and the soul was the real me. I became a sort of disembodied spirit—all fire and air, who had a fantastic time chatting up female spirits and never sweated or got tongue-tied or cut myself shaving and then had to go around with bits of cotton-wool stuck on to bleeding pustules. I began to change—read more and argue less. I swapped beer for books and …’

  ‘Beer in a Catholic boarding school? We’d have been expelled for less.’ Morna tried to lighten the mood. David was talking too loudly and too fast, one fist hammering the palm of the other hand.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t allowed, obviously. But one of my friends brewed his own in the science lab and kept it hidden in his empty trunk in the luggage room. I broke with him as well, went back to plain Thames Valley water, started attending church
three times a day and serving Mass. My form master was thrilled. He saw the whole thing as a sort of conversion like Saul on the road to Damascus. He was always on the lookout for budding priests—replenishments for the order, you might say—and I seemed a pretty good bet. A stormy youth is often a good training for a saint—look at Augustine, or Francis of Assisi carousing with the lads. Anyway, I threw myself more and more into religion, with my form master whipping me on and lending me tracts on dangerous things like spiritual ecstasy or self-denial or vocations to the priesthood. I didn’t see it then, but I was as violent and extreme in trying to be holy as I was in everything else. I felt if I once let up, I’d be in danger of … I don’t know—but the school was always preaching hellfire and my mother was as bad.’

  She squeezed his hand. ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m not sure you do. Forgive me, Morna, but the sheer force of sex when you’re a sixteen-year-old boy …’ He pummelled the bed, as if he were still battling with that force. ‘I’m sorry, but we can’t avoid the word for ever, and at school I felt it was scrawled over everything in Satan’s red. Maybe it’s the same for girls. I doubt it. It is a sort of violence. It seems to drive you and possess you. You can think of nothing else, yet everything’s forbidden. There weren’t any girls, not even any women staff, except a matron with a fuller moustache than mine.’ He gave another bitter laugh. ‘The only way out was to be a priest, take vows which saved you from yourself. I saw those vows as sort of iron chains holding me down, stopping me exploding. Does that sound crazy?’

  Morna shook her head. She had never felt that violence, that intensity—hoped she never would—but she understood the fear, the distaste for the body. At thirteen and a half, she had stared with dismay at her own budding breasts. Mother Michael had told them that no man, not even a good Catholic, could withstand the temptation of a woman’s naked chest. ‘Never, never draw attention to it, never wear your blouses tight, never ever, under pain of mortal sin, let a member of the opposite sex …’

  David’s urgent caustic voice cut through Mother Michael’s. ‘I felt better once I’d decided on the priesthood. It seemed to solve everything at once—save me from the flames of hell, placate my mother, give me the edge on brother Dominic. He’d left school by then, and gone to be a missionary—but only a lay one, luckily. That was no real competition. I was the special one, consecrated, set apart, and a Jesuit of course. Crème de la crème. I suppose the abbot was right to suspect my motives, but I was furious and hurt when he advised me to wait a while, test my vocation, as he put it, get some other experience. I didn’t take much notice, spent the whole of Oxford fawning round the Jesuits, still avoiding women. I told myself if I was planning to take a vow of celibacy, then I might as well start as I meant to go on.’ He kicked out at the floor. ‘Or maybe I was scared.’

  ‘Scared?’ Morna felt a stab of fear herself. She had complained that David had told her nothing, yet contrarily admired him for just that restraint. Now he was pouring out a lifetime’s pent-up anger and frustration, turning into someone else, someone she wasn’t sure she even liked.

  ‘Not of women, but of my own feelings. They were still too damned strong. I was right to fear them, actually. When the Jesuits turned me down the third and final time, after I’d been begging cap in hand for five whole years and missed other decent openings and mucked up my career, I had my first affair—deliberately. Tit for tat, you might say.’

  Morna bit her lip, tried to interrupt him with hollow reassurances. ‘But that’s quite understandable. After all, you’d waited long enough. Most men …’

  He sprang up from the bed, clutching at the wall, leaning down to face her. ‘I’m not most men. I’m a bloody brute. I forced the girl—all but raped her. I didn’t even know her name. I wasn’t fucking a woman, I was fucking Holy Mother Church, getting my own back, making up for all the years and years of …’

  Morna shrank away, shocked by his language and his hectoring voice. He started pacing up and down, the torch beam throwing his shadow on the wall, an angry lurching shadow which seemed to cower the room.

  ‘The next time—oh, yes, there was a next time, but with a different girl—I tried to make amends.’ He broke off, stopped his prowling.

  ‘What … What happened?’

  ‘Nothing. Bloody nothing. I couldn’t do it at all. I’d become a priest, in fact, but without the trappings.’ He was talking to the wall, shoulders hunched, head down. ‘It’s funny, soon after that, my hair started going grey. I was only in my twenties, but I took it as a sort of … sign that life was over—that side of life, anyway. I’m sorry, Morna—’ He turned to face her. ‘I don’t know why I’m drivelling on like this. I told you I shouldn’t drink. So long as I keep control of everything, I can live my life as I want. But as soon as I break a single rule …’

  ‘There aren’t any rules, David, not now—not as such. You sound as if it’s school still. Everybody drinks too much at times, or has an off day.’

  ‘You don’t understand. It wasn’t just an off day. It happened again—several times, in fact. I began to realise I was afraid of my own body. I’d tried to split it off, but it was still there. The trouble was I’d given it such a beating, it was all but paralysed. The cure had killed it, I suppose. Or perhaps that’s just an excuse. I don’t know. Maybe I was a … duffer in that department. I loathe being bad at things—anything—tennis, women, maths. So I gave it up, decided I wouldn’t compete, took my own private vows and …’

  ‘You mean, ever since then, you haven’t …?’

  ‘There you are, you see—you’re shocked. That’s the normal reaction. I’m a freak—like you said.’

  ‘I didn’t say, David. I’d never say a thing like that.’

  ‘Well, you thought it.’

  ‘David, please don’t tell me what I think.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what I’m saying. I’ve never talked like this before to anyone, least of all a woman. Put it down to Mrs Cormack’s brew.’ He plunged towards the door again. ‘I’d better go and sleep it off. I’ll be my normal self in the morning, I promise you. Only please don’t … you know, bring the subject up again, or I’ll become the blushing shambling idiot I was at sixteen. Let’s forget the whole thing, can we?’

  ‘No, I don’t think we can.’

  ‘Oh, you’re going to throw it in my face, are you?’

  ‘David, please don’t be so touchy. I wouldn’t dream of doing that. What you still don’t seem to grasp is that I … I’ve got just as many … hang-ups myself.’

  ‘You’re only saying that to make me feel less bloody.’

  ‘I’m not, David. After Neil left, I almost took vows myself.’

  ‘And broke them, I presume?’

  ‘Only once—no, twice—and the second time I was blotto.’

  ‘Blotto?’ He sounded shocked himself now.

  She nodded. ‘I don’t know why you keep idealising me. I often drink too much. In fact, I was so far gone, I tried to turn a balding middle-aged creep of a frozen-foods salesman into you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sorry. That sounds insulting. It was actually a compliment. I was missing you, you see.’

  ‘You mean, it was … recently?’

  ‘Four weeks ago.’

  ‘So I was right, then. I imagined you making it with half America.’

  ‘David!’

  ‘I’m sorry—that was crude. But I was missing you as well, and feeling pretty jealous and …’

  ‘Jealous? But we’d hardly even …’

  ‘I know. That made it worse, though. I felt I had no right to … In fact, I made another vow—that I’d never touch you, ever. You’d confided in me, proved you’d trusted me, and I wouldn’t take advantage of it.’

  Morna said nothing. He sounded so … so old-fashioned, so out of touch with his own needs, and hers.

  He was still standing by the door, hand on the knob as if ready to escape. ‘You … You’re laughing at me, Morna.’


  ‘I’m not. Of course I’m not. It’s just that … well, I think you’ve got it wrong. You can’t base your entire life on something you decided years and years ago when you were angry and mixed-up, still an adolescent more or less, and influenced by teachers who were in a mess themselves and saw the world as a sort of … cess-pit. I know what that does to people. It ruined things for me, as well. Even when I was married, I saw the … er … physical side as doggy and dirty, something you did as a duty, not because …’ She was blushing again, relieved now that the torch-beam was so dim. ‘I never actually … refused Neil, but he picked up the vibes, called me frigid and …’

  ‘I just can’t understand that. You seem so … well—sensual to me. The first time I set eyes on you, I assumed you were very—you know—experienced. That made me shy, of course, but …’ He shambled back towards the bed, sat on the very edge of it, reached out one arm, put it on her shoulder, held it there so tentatively, she felt he was ready to snatch it away again if she made one wrong move. It wasn’t easy to stay still. It excited her to be thought experienced, described as sensual; made her feel quite differently, about herself as well as him. The pressure of his hand had switched her body on. She hadn’t been aware of it before with all that talk and tension, all the problems. She brushed her own hand down across her breast, wished he would do the same. Her dress felt too tight, confining, as if begging to be taken off. She shifted on the bed, uncrossed her legs, let her thighs fall apart a daring inch or two. David’s thigh was nudging into hers now, his dark form hunched so close she could smell bonfire on his clothes, the strong male carbolic soap he had used to wash his hands.

  She edged still closer, dared to lean her head against his chest, leave it there a moment. They sat in silence, neither moving, until suddenly he slumped back on the bed, she falling with him, her body sprawled on his. He made no move to touch it or explore it, just lay passive underneath her. She feared she was too heavy, crushing him, tried to shift her weight, shivered in the draught.

  ‘You’re cold,’ he said, extracting his left arm and rubbing it.