Dancing Backwards

by Salley Vickers

  Baz looked at her with his intelligent brown eyes. ‘You are a clever lady. And now, I think I had better go and wake Martha up with a strong cup of coffee. Thank you for keeping me company on the dawn watch.’

  He walked away and almost at once Vi began to miss him. Poor Martha. It would be a torment to be married to a man like that if you did not feel quite safe yourself. His magic was artless. In fact, she guessed that he was an unusually faithful man. But that was probably part of his appeal.

  A neat Nepalese boy, his trousers sharp as a razor, was setting up striped canvas deckchairs. Vi took possession of one. Thanks to Baz, the dream tentacles had relaxed their grip a little. She lay back, lounging in the deckchair enjoying the weak sun bathing her face.

  One of the ship’s stowaway sparrows hopped down and began to peck delicately at some crumbs of crisps at her feet and then flew up to the railing and began to utter small sweet sounds which etched her ears, gently rinsing them. She closed her eyes.

  She was on her way to meet Bruno from Cambridge.

  ‘I will meet you,’ he had announced the previous weekend, ‘at one o’clock in the entrance of the Horniman Museum.’

  The Horniman Museum is in an out-of-the-way part of south London and even if you know the geography it is not easy to find. By the time Vi had changed trains at London Bridge, caught the wrong bus and then walked after all, it was a minute or so past one o’clock when she reached her destination. It was a Friday, but she had taken a day’s leave so that she and Bruno could visit an exhibition of West African art that was showing at the museum.

  There was no sign of Bruno in the foyer. Just as well that she was there first. She had detected recently that waiting made him agitated.

  Twenty minutes later, when she was beginning to wonder where he was, Bruno appeared. ‘What kept you?’ His face was pale and glistened slightly under the unflattering museum lights.

  ‘I’ve been here, waiting.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since one o’clock.’

  Bruno said, ‘I said to meet at twelve. I waited nearly an hour for you.’

  ‘But I was here. It can’t have been more than five minutes at most I was late.’

  ‘We were meeting at twelve.’

  ‘Bruno, no, we were meeting at one.’

  Bruno took a diary from his pocket, consulted it and wordlessly held out to her the page bearing that day’s date. She read V 12 noon Horniman.

  She was sure as sure he had said one. In her mind, she could hear his voice. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Did you write it down in your diary?’

  ‘I don’t keep a diary.’

  ‘If you don’t keep a diary how can you expect to keep appointments?’

  What ever could have happened that they were standing there wrangling over the merits of diary keeping? Miserably, she said, ‘I’ve never needed one. I have all my appointments in my head.’

  ‘Not those with me, apparently.’

  ‘Especially with you, Bruno.’

  By now, Bruno holding her elbow and steering rather than guiding her, they had entered the exhibition and were standing before a case of ungainly little statuettes. The statues had strange distorted bodies, elongated or unnaturally foreshortened. Some were draped with shells and crowned with blackened thorns, or hung about with bits of bone, ropes of dried weed and in one case what might have been a shrivelled umbilicus. ‘What are they?’ she asked, as if she cared.

  ‘They’re empowerment figures, from the Bight of Benin, in West Africa. Here, have the catalogue.’

  ‘What are they empowered with?’

  But Bruno did not answer. He was moving about morosely, his shoulders hunched, inspecting the contents of the cabinets with forensic attention.

  Vi tried to keep up with him but discouraged by the cold-shouldering began to lag behind. She stopped before a single larger effigy with a wide expressionless face. From its thick neck a tiny bleached bird’s skull dangled; a wooden peg attached to a rope had been driven into the forehead between its eyes.

  There was something terrible and forlorn about the figure’s gaze. Bruno was apparently directing every ounce of his concentration at the other exhibits but braving she didn’t quite know what she asked, ‘What are they for?’

  ‘Vi, please, I am concentrating.’

  There was a photograph of the figure with the peg in its head in the catalogue. Vi read: Some ‘bo’ figures are believed to act both as protection against the malevolent effects of sorcery and to promote a Vodun sorcerer’s own malevolent purposes. With sorcery, the dominant fear is of destruction by the power of revenge. The most feared form of this is transformation.

  ‘But it is all moonshine, isn’t it?’ she enquired on the bus back to the station. ‘Isn’t it?’ she asked again, more anxiously, as he didn’t reply.

  ‘If that’s how you wish to see it.’

  She had hoped he might have recovered his humour but silence hung impenetrably between them until they reached the flat. It was clear that she was in the doghouse.

  ‘Would you like to eat something?’ She was starving. They had eaten nothing for lunch and she had started early from Cambridge.

  ‘As you wish.’

  Vi made cheese on toast with chutney. Bruno ate gloomily but devoured the toasted cheese in rapid mouthfuls. He responded to her fragments of conversation with a chilly politeness but otherwise volunteered no remark.

  Unable to bear this any longer, Vi said, ‘Bruno, look, I’m sorry if I got the time wrong. It wasn’t on purpose.’

  ‘It’s disrespectful.’

  ‘Disrespectful?’

  ‘To miss appointments.’

  She could hardly believe this. ‘I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Bruno…’

  Half an hour later, she knocked on the bedroom door. ‘Bruno, do you want me to go?’ Her real self seemed to have gone into hiding and an unfamiliar, pleading person was speaking in her place.

  After a few minutes, Bruno came out holding a small leathery thing with feathers stuck around it. ‘Did I show you this?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s from West Africa. It’s made from the wing of a bat. They say it will keep the soul of anyone who loves you.’

  ‘That’s a rather worrying idea.’

  ‘Shall I keep your soul in it?’

  ‘If you like.’ She was only pleased that they were talking again. ‘Shall we go to bed?’

  They went to bed and then things were all right again, for a while.

  17

  The sun had moved round and Vi in her deckchair felt that it must be about breakfast time. Not wanting to face Renato, or the milling crowds in the general dining area, she decided to sample breakfast in the Alexandria.

  Miss Foot, in a safari hat, and Patrick and his parents were at the table. Miss Foot was finishing a plate of scrambled egg and gave a nod but did not interrupt her eating. Patrick, his cheeks full and pink as a peony, looked Vi over carefully.

  ‘Do you like Rice Krispies?’

  ‘I quite like the noise they make,’ Vi said.

  Patrick fixed her with a steady stare to establish her as friend or foe. ‘What noise do they make?’

  ‘Eat up your cereal, darling,’ his mother interjected.

  Patrick’s parents had also passed a troubled night. Patrick, who had slept the sleep of the innocent for the first two nights, had been wakeful and recalcitrant and reason, and Calpol (rather more of the latter), had not proved effective. His parents, fearful of waking the neighbours, had suggested a story and Patrick, picking up some undisclosed advantage, had kept them hard at it half the night.

  It has not been established how many times an adult person can read Skarloey and His Friends and remain mentally stable. After four readings, Greg had declared it was bloody absurd to come on a cruise with a child and asked whose idea was it anyway, he would like to know? Heather asked that he please lower his
voice and reminded him that he’d got the idea from his bloody awful friend at the office who had more money than he knew what to do with and anyway, who was paying if it wasn’t her father? Greg suggested that perhaps her father would like to pay for a vasectomy and had finally fallen asleep wrapped in a towelling robe on the bathroom floor.

  ‘They are supposed,’ Vi said, pouring herself coffee from a chrome-plate pot, ‘to go “snap, crackle, pop”. But I don’t know about that myself.’

  Greg shot her an admiring glance. Patrick held his level gaze. His clear grey eyes fringed with black lashes brought to Vi’s mind, suddenly and acutely, the stern unwavering gaze of the infant Harry.

  ‘What don’t you know about it?’

  ‘It always seemed to me that they go more like “snicker, snicker, snicker”.’

  Patrick’s stare collapsed into a rapturous smile. ‘Knickers, knickers?’

  ‘Patrick!’ said Greg, looking across at Miss Foot who was impassively chewing toast.

  ‘No,’ said Vi. ‘Not knickers. Snicker. It’s a kind of silly laugh.’

  ‘Can I try?’ Patrick lunged at the milk jug, his father nervously tried to move it out of his range and a pool of milk began to spread rapidly over the tablecloth. Patrick burst into tears.

  Heather began dabbing at the tablecloth with her napkin. ‘Greg! That was your fault!’

  Greg said, ‘Sweet Jesus, give me a break!’ and got up and strode out of the dining room.

  ‘No use crying over spilled milk,’ Miss Foot suggested. She had finished her first slice of toast and was buttering another. The level of Patrick’s crying rose a notch.

  ‘Listen,’ said Vi, who had commandeered the Rice Krispies. ‘This is an experiment. Listen hard and tell me what you hear.’ She began to tip cereal into a clean bowl.

  ‘Can I do it?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Vi. ‘Here’s the jug. Now add the milk quick.’

  Patrick poured the milk successfully into the bowl and they waited. A satisfying sound issued from the cereal.

  ‘They do go “snicker, snicker, snicker”.’

  ‘I’m glad you agree.’

  Patrick got down from his chair and came round to stand by Vi. ‘Have you got something nice for me in your bag?’

  ‘Patrick! We don’t ask people for things.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’d call “nice”,’ Vi said. ‘I’ve this.’ She opened her bag and found a key ring, on which hung a small plastic Spider-Man and Daniel’s spare keys, which she held in case of emergencies. She hoped there had not been any. She had meant to leave the keys behind with the neighbours. ‘You can have Spider-Man but let me detach the keys first.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They belong to my son, Daniel. He might need them.’

  ‘Can I have Spider-Man?’

  ‘Say “thank you” nicely, Patrick, to Mrs…’

  ‘Violet,’ Vi said. ‘Or Vi, if you prefer, Patrick.’

  ‘There’s a girl at my nursery called Violet.’

  ‘Well, it’s my name too.’

  ‘She’s not old.’

  ‘Patrick!’

  ‘No,’ said Violet. ‘But you see, I was young once.’

  ‘OK.’ It seemed that she had passed a test satisfactorily. Perhaps even with flying colours. ‘Violet, will you read me Skarloey?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why won’t you?’

  ‘I don’t like Skarloey’.

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t much like his name.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Patrick, let Violet get on with her breakfast.’

  ‘I’m fussy about names. Patrick, for instance, is an excellent name.’

  ‘So is Violet.’

  ‘How good that we like each other’s names.’

  ‘Come with Mummy, now, Patrick and say goodbye.’

  ‘I want to stay with Violet.’

  ‘You can see Violet later, darling.’

  ‘Is Daddy still in a bloody bad mood?’

  ‘Daddy’s tired, darling. Say goodbye now.’

  ‘Will I see you later, Violet?’

  ‘I am sure you will,’ Vi said. ‘We can be thinking up all the names we don’t like to tell each other when we meet.’

  Miss Foot was spreading Nutella. ‘A bonny child. The parents should not put him under pressure.’

  ‘You felt that they were?’

  ‘No child should be made to read before the age of seven. Doctor Steiner was emphatic.’

  ‘I think Patrick wanted to be read to, not to read himself.’

  ‘There was some tension,’ Miss Foot pronounced. ‘An aura of pressure.’ She licked the Nutella from the spoon by the jar and absentmindedly pocketed it.

  ‘You see auras?’

  ‘One was taught.’ Miss Foot bent her head and leaned forward slightly across the table. ‘Yours is quite striking.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  Vi waited, not liking to ask what it was that Miss Foot saw. But Miss Foot merely continued to eat her toast in silence. When she had finished, she dabbed her mouth and rose from the table. ‘Goodbye for now,’ she said, pocketing the napkin.

  Vi finished the pot of coffee and then made her way to one of the stairways to find ‘Links’, the communications centre where, she had been advised by Renato, she could send and retrieve emails. She had been putting this off and now the necessity to do it was weighing on her mind. She had in fact no wish to be in touch with anyone.

  ‘Links’ was further down into the ship than she had so far descended. At Deck Two she was directed along a corridor, where passengers at tables placed by convenient portholes were already playing draughts, Monopoly, backgammon and dominoes, while the green Atlantic raced past the heedless players in the opposite direction.

  At the end of the corridor she found Jen and Ken, with a jigsaw between them. The section they had pieced together so far seemed to be an uninterrupted tract of dull-looking sky.

  ‘Hi there, Vi. How you doing?’

  ‘Fine, thanks. I’m off to try to fathom the email here.’

  ‘It’s a nightmare. Believe me, Vi. Ken better help you. Ken, go with Vi and help her with the email.’

  Vi said there was really no need.

  ‘You’ll need help,’ Jen said firmly. ‘Go on, Ken. He’s no use at this anyway,’ she explained. ‘I have to keep undoing the bits he’s done. Look, see here—a bit of obvious cloud just jammed into this bit of clear blue.’

  Vi, who was pessimistic about her ability to grasp an alien email system, was grateful for the loan of Ken. He escorted her along the corridor to ‘Links’ where a number of passengers, including Les Garson, were queuing up to abuse a harassed-looking girl in a tracksuit. ‘It’s no use getting annoyed with me,’ she was repeating. ‘It’s the AOL system that’s down.’

  ‘What a nuisance,’ Vi said, in truth only too glad of an excuse not to have to bother. ‘I’m on AOL.’

  ‘It isn’t down,’ said Ken. ‘She’s only saying that.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘One, I’m on AOL myself and had no trouble getting online, and two,’ he counted off on his forefingers, ‘her eyes looked to the right. That’s a sure sign of someone fibbing.’

  ‘Heavens, Ken. What terrifying information you have.’

  ‘It’s right though. I’ve studied body language. Eyes to the right, he’s not all right. It means they’re making it up, though from where you’re looking it’s the eyes moving to the left you have to watch for. Believe me, never fails. Let’s have your cabin number and your email address and we’ll get you online in no time.’

  Vi could overhear the voice of Les Garson. ‘I’m going to write in about this. It’s daylight robbery after what we’ve been charged.’

  Ken was busily typing away. ‘There you go, Vi. Bob’s your uncle.’

  In the space of two days fifty-seven emails had accumulated in Vi’s inbox. Most, it was true, were offe
ring the usual remedies for erectile dysfunction. Also on offer were visits from sociable girls, available in her neighbourhood. Along with these was a touching communication from her ‘Sister in Christ, Mary Louise Benedict’ who was dying of ovarian cancer and hoped to bestow on Vi a legacy, which, somewhat uncharitably, she had apparently not considered leaving to her own religious order. The other emails were from Harry, Dan and Annie.

  Harry wrote to say that Kristina had found her mobile and he had it locked safely in his desk. He could have it FedExed to her in New York. Dan emailed to say he had lost his keys and, unable to find the spare set in her flat, was staying there, he hoped she didn’t mind. Annie wished her Bon Voyage and asked What are they wearing on board? Are you playing poker with millionaires?

  Vi emailed Harry back, asking him to thank Kristina and to say that there might be ‘a few numbers she needed’ from the phone and she would ring him about this from New York. She emailed her apologies to Dan. Darling, my fault entirely. The keys are here with me and I’m afraid I’ve just given away your Spider-Man. Please get a locksmith and I will reimburse.

  She emailed Annie last of all. So far no poker or millionaires. I have been dancing, though, and your shoes are just the job.

  When Annie rang Bruno’s flat Vi knew it must be urgent.

  ‘What’s up, Annie?’

  ‘Vi, I’m bleeding. Can you come over.’

  ‘Of course, but shouldn’t you ring the hospital?’

  ‘How does she come to have my number?’ Bruno asked, but Vi was too busy getting herself together to think.

  ‘Can you lend me couple of quid, Bruno? Annie’s not well. I need to get to her fast.’

  Annie was still in her flat when half an hour later Vi arrived in a taxi.

  ‘I’ve lost the baby, Vi.’

  ‘Oh Annie. What happened?’

  Annie said that she had had stomach cramps and had assumed it was diarrhoea. ‘Me and Mick had mussels for dinner. I’ve had bad reactions to shellfish before now.’

  ‘Who’s Mick?’

  ‘Michelangelo of course. You’re so funny about him, Vi.’

  ‘Annie, we must get you to hospital. Is the bleeding bad?’

  But Annie refused to leave. She wanted, she said, to stay with her baby, who had slipped out in the bathroom before she got to the loo. Preparing herself for much worse, Vi found a small, bloody, almost transparent scrap of a human form, lying in a bath hat designed to resemble a cabbage rose. She carried the scrap through to Annie’s bedroom. The tiny being, enclosed in the pink plastic petals of the cap, looked like an illustration to a child’s eerie fairy tale.