Dancing Backwards

by Salley Vickers

  ‘Oh dear. I do hate that question.’

  ‘Sorry. I was forgetting myself, or rather I was forgetting you.’ He smiled at her and for a moment she saw the old Edwin with whom she had sat in the RAF bar. But we’ll never be quite the same again, Vi thought. Nothing ever is.

  ‘I’m afraid my plans are more than usually vague. I might go back to the ship. I might, I don’t know. I suppose I was imagining this—you and me, I mean—would take a while. But we seem to be all right.’

  ‘We’re all right, Vi. We’ll always be all right, more or less.’

  ‘Is that true, do you think?’

  ‘Well, we’ve survived. Real feeling survives. What else is there?’

  ‘I’ve been rehearsing this all the way across the Atlantic and now everything seems to have been said in five minutes.’

  ‘Everything important can be said in five minutes.’

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘I don’t know. It is said that everything real between people is established in the first five minutes.’

  She thought, That may be true. It was with him. It was with Bruno. But what she said was, ‘Do you remember us watching Columbo?’

  ‘I still watch Columbo.’

  ‘Surely you must have seen every episode at least twice by now?’

  ‘That’s what makes it so reassuring. Do you still watch Dr Kildare?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s around any more.’

  ‘Of course it is. Everything’s on DVD these days. Even Dixon of Dock Green. I saw an episode the other day. It was about a dangerous gang of juvenile delinquents robbing a phone box for cash. Those were the days!’

  ‘Ed, those witch doctors of Bruno’s. Were they real? I mean…’ but she didn’t quite know what it was that she meant.

  ‘They were, are, real enough. He certainly studied them. But then, he used them.’

  ‘How, would you say?’

  ‘The quickness of the hand deceives the eye. It was him that frightened you and his witch doctors acted as a kind of decoy.’

  ‘There was this horrid little purse thing, made of a bat’s wing.’

  ‘The creature you should feel sorry for there is the bat.’

  ‘That sounds very sane.’

  ‘It is sane,’ Edwin said. ‘But that doesn’t mean that you didn’t come a real cropper. I mean we aren’t sane, are we? I don’t mean just you and me. You know this but I am going to say it anyway. The only way someone like Bruno feels they exist is to try to control people because, essentially, they have no power. You have, though you like to deny it.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Well you did. I can’t speak for now. He wanted what you have and when he couldn’t get it he tried to get you. But of course you can’t “get” a person, or a person’s power—real power isn’t like that. And when he couldn’t get what he wanted he tried to annihilate you.’

  ‘And I let him.’

  ‘You let him try. It is, as I said long ago, a kind of spellbinding. I take it he never wrote that book?’

  ‘Not that I’ve noticed.’

  ‘He never will. Nor any poetry.’

  ‘I never liked his poetry. I should have taken notice of that.’

  ‘The trouble was you didn’t take notice of yourself. But it takes a long time to learn to take notice of one’s god-given instincts.’

  ‘It was you who insisted we publish his poems, remember?’

  ‘Remember, I was susceptible too, for a while.’

  He paused. Outside the restaurant a white cat was walking nonchalantly past as if it owned the world and she remembered her own cat with the odd eyes. Then Edwin said, ‘I think what you probably lost with Bruno, you know, was your nerve.’

  When she got back to the hotel there was a telephone message from Harry ‘breaking the news’ of Dan’s wedding, which, Harry said, they proposed to arrange once they knew what her ‘movements’ were. The soul of discretion, he refrained from giving the reason for his brother’s sudden decision.

  Vi rang her own flat and a girl answered in a mock posh voice, ‘Mrs Violet Hetherington’s residence.’

  ‘It is she.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘It’s me,’ Vi said lamely, feeling foolish.

  ‘Oh, Vi, sorry, we were just kidding about. It’s Tanya.’

  ‘Yes, I know. How are you?’

  ‘We’re fine. We like your flat.’

  ‘Better enjoy it while you can. I may be back quite soon.’

  There was a voice in the background and then Dan was on the phone. ‘Mum, how are you doing?’

  ‘Very well, thank you, darling.’

  ‘And how was the Atlantic, apart from being gigantic?’

  ‘It was lots of fun. I learned to dance, well, a bit.’

  ‘But you can dance anyway.’

  ‘No, this was ballroom.’

  ‘Strictly standard?’

  ‘Not quite. So, you are going to be a father?’

  ‘It looks like it.’

  ‘Darling Dan, that is most extremely good news.’

  ‘We’ve decided she can come to you once a week.’

  ‘She?’ asked Vi, leaving the proposed child care arrangement to be tackled another time.

  ‘It’s a girl. We’ve had the scan.’

  ‘But Dan, how pregnant is Tanya?’

  ‘Oh quite a bit. Half-way, about. We were going to get married after Blossom arrived…’

  ‘Blossom?’

  ‘You know, after Blossom Dearie, so she could be a bridesmaid, but Tan’s dad says he’ll pay for a bash if we do it before. He doesn’t want his grandchild to be a bastard and Tan wants a pretty wedding dress. I’m easy either way. You know marriage, it’s a girl’s thing.’

  ‘I see,’ Vi said, managing to swallow Blossom without comment. ‘So when is this to be?’

  ‘Well, we were kind of waiting for you to come home. When are you back? I told Hal not to pester you but I expect he will.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Vi said. ‘Can you give me twenty-four hours?’

  ‘Course. Enjoy New York. Go dancing.’

  Vi put down the phone and at once it rang. ‘Call for you.’

  ‘Ma?’

  ‘Harry, darling.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m very well.’

  ‘And the voyage, was that all right?’

  ‘Very enjoyable.’

  ‘Nice people?’

  ‘Entertaining anyway.’

  ‘Good.’ There was a pause.

  ‘It’s OK, darling. Dan’s explained.’

  ‘About the wedding?’

  ‘About the baby. I’m thrilled.’

  ‘I’m bloody furious with him, Ma. He should have told us. She’s over twenty weeks.’ When her elder son lost his habitual control she loved him especially.

  ‘But it doesn’t really matter, does it?’

  ‘It’s you I mind for,’ Harry said, indignant that she should suppose that there was any concern for himself involved.

  ‘Darling Hal, Dan’s like that. It’s fine. And I’ve promised to let them know by tomorrow what my plans are.’

  ‘I think it’s really Tanya who is keen to get everything organised.’

  ‘Well it would be, wouldn’t it?’ Vi said. ‘But that’s good. Tan and her dad might organise your brother. We’ve never managed it. How is Marion?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Marion. Your girlfriend. Or is she not any more?’

  ‘Oh Marion. Yes, she’s fine, thanks.’

  The phone rang again and this time it was Edwin. ‘I forgot to say, I’m busy tonight and I’m sorry to say also most of tomorrow. But tomorrow night we could have dinner, if that would suit you.’

  ‘Of course it would. Don’t be a fathead.’

  He laughed and rang off saying, ‘See you tomorrow evening, then.’

  And then there was only the question of what to do with the rest of her day.

  ‘I am so glad you rang.’ The
critic’s droll voice sounded genuinely pleased. ‘I have a frightful-sounding show which it is my painful duty to review this evening. If you were brave enough to have it inflicted on you I could give you dinner afterwards while we recover.’

  The show, an off-Broadway mime, enacting an unsuccessful political insurrection in an unidentifiable Socialist regime, was almost as bad as he’d threatened. In the interval, the critic bought her a large gin and tonic. He ordered a dry martini for himself and spent some time in negotiation with the barman getting the mix to his liking. ‘The show is, if anything, worse than I imagined. I can only apologise and attempt to make up for it to you with a reasonable dinner.’

  In the foyer, as they were leaving, he turned to her, his hazel eyes behind the tortoiseshell spectacles unusually intense. ‘Has anyone ever told you…’ Vi’s heart sank to her six-inch heels, in which, forgetting his height, she had towered over him all evening, ‘that New York is the best city in the world for lobster?’

  Over dinner, because he did not ask she explained that her immediate plans were undecided. ‘My younger son tells me he is having a baby, rather soon in fact, so he’s getting married.’

  ‘That seems to be the way round it is generally done these days.’

  ‘A much better way.’

  ‘I don’t know. Are any ways “better” in the end, would you say?’

  Vi said that in any case she had a return ticket to New York.

  ‘I hope you will be sure to look me up when you are back. I shall try to find something superior to tonight’s performance. Fortunately that won’t be hard.’

  They spent the rest of the evening discussing various Shakespeare productions they had seen.

  ‘Did you catch the famous Peter Brook Dream at the Roundhouse?’

  ‘You know, I was going to see it with my husband but I never did.’

  ‘First husband or second?’

  ‘The second. Actually, it was going to see the first which made me miss it with the second.’

  ‘That in itself might be grounds for divorce.’

  This reminded Vi of something. ‘You wouldn’t, by chance, know where this comes from would you? “They say that miracles are past…” and then I don’t know how it goes on.’

  ‘“And we have our philosophical persons, to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.”’ He broke off a crust from his roll and blinked, perhaps even a little impressed himself by this display.

  Vi was more than impressed. ‘Crikey!’

  ‘It is my livelihood,’ said the critic, modestly.

  ‘Even so, I’m stunned. Where is it from?’

  ‘All’s Well that Ends Well, Act II, Scene 3.’

  ‘Oh yes, one of those tricky problem plays with a forced marriage at the end.’

  ‘The title is ironic.’

  ‘Do you think Shakespeare was ever solely ironic?’

  He considered this. ‘Maybe not.’

  Not knowing quite why, she said, ‘Miss Foot, whom we were both inclined to mock a little, I think, said to me that the true sin against the Holy Ghost is the refusal of grace and mercy. We were watching the thunderstorm together.’

  The critic took off his glasses and polished them with the table napkin and for a brief moment she caught a look of an indefinable anguish in his hazel eyes. ‘That is a bolt of lightning, to be sure.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  The critic returned his glasses to his nose. ‘She left me a note.’ Vi waited, but all he said was, ‘It was remarkably sane. You are quite right. It was wrong to mock. It is my besetting sin.’ Looking at his napkin he said, ‘Such a pity that they do not bother here with the Elf ’s Boot.’

  ‘There isn’t really an Elf ’s Boot, is there?’

  ‘I assure you there is. I have the ocular proof. The instructions, which are complicated, are filed away safely at home. If you visit again I promise a personal demonstration. Now, can I persuade you to share a bowl of wild strawberries with me? They have a dessert wine here that you should taste.’

  He insisted on seeing her to the hotel in a taxi. ‘Au revoir. It has been the greatest delight meeting you. Be sure to call me up before you come again. Don’t leave it to the terrible god of chance. Incidentally, my real friends know me as Col.’

  SIXTH DAY

  Avast: a naval command meaning to stop or cease.

  30

  Vi slept fitfully, deprived of the clean salt air, the soporific of the rocking waves and the consoling chug of the engines. She woke at first light and lay on her back trying not to absorb the hooting of the New York traffic, already at full pitch, and the more insinuating drone of the hotel air-conditioning. She was thinking about Bruno. Thoughts of Bruno had run like hyenas through the night.

  She had told Edwin that she did not ‘mind’ and it was the case: she no longer minded that Bruno had been faithless, even with Tessa Carfield. Perhaps especially she didn’t mind about Tessa Carfield. Nor did she mind Edwin’s revelation. It had come as no real surprise. In her bones she had known it—or known something like it. What Bruno’s sexual proclivities were didn’t matter now. What mattered was the part she had played in the catastrophe.

  You knew all along, the voice said. You always do.

  But she hadn’t listened.

  Why not? the voice asked. Why do you not listen to me? To us?

  So there was more than one of them.

  Of course, said the voice. What do you expect? You can’t run a republic single-handed.

  She got out of bed to run a bath and lay looking at her legs covered in geranium-scented foam. She had enjoyed using them to dance.

  That’s the stuff, the voice said, song and dance, make hay while the sun shines, a little of what you fancy does you good.

  You seem to have resorted to cliché, she admonished.

  What’s wrong with clichés? Clichés are home truths. Least said soonest mended. Time and tide wait for no man. Fine words butter no parsnips.

  Oh shut up!

  Wise up, said the voice. Charity begins at home. They shout for joy, they also sing, remember…?

  She spent the day drifting contentedly: buying a novel at Three Lives & Co, where the bookseller was approving of her purchase (‘So few people read William Maxwell nowadays’), a belt for Harry, a notebook for Dan, a red silk camisole for Annie. Seeing a pair of low-heeled shoes in a window she went into the shop.

  The assistant was a tall young man whose hair flowed in a sleek waterfall well past his shoulder blades. ‘Kitten heels are so this season. I just love these on you.’

  ‘I was thinking I wanted some lower heels.’

  In the lapse of time before they met again, she and Edwin had grown more comfortable. He complimented her on the shoes.

  ‘I thought today, you’ve hardly changed. But you dress…’

  ‘Better?’

  ‘No, I was thinking more like you.’

  ‘Oh, Ed. What a very hard thing it is to be like one’s self.’

  ‘One of the hardest, I would say…’

  ‘I’d forgotten,’ she said, as they sat down at the table, ‘but today is my mother’s birthday.’

  ‘Then you must have champagne.’

  ‘I never got to like it. It makes me maudlin.’

  ‘We can’t have that!’

  ‘I’d rather have Chablis if it’s OK.’

  She described her evening with the critic.

  ‘He’s a tiger in a dinner jacket. Where did he take you for dinner?’ And, when she named the restaurant, ‘That’s rather a special place. Good food but not pretentious. I’m impressed.’

  ‘You know something,’ Vi said. ‘He isn’t a tiger at all. Or only for camouflage. He’s one of those overly tender-hearted men who cope by appearing fearsome. I like him.’

  ‘Watch out. That’s what they call here a narcissist.’
>
  ‘I think I’m fairly immune by now to narcissists.’

  ‘Are we ever really immune to our weaknesses?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  She thought of telling him about Miss Foot but decided not to. A silence fell, but not an awkward one.

  ‘That’s a beautiful ring, Vi. Is that Ted?’

  ‘It is. And it’s only just come back to me.’

  She told him about Dino. He listened attentively without interrupting and, as she spoke, she remembered how grateful she had always been for that attention, so focused but so wholly free of the dreadful pleasure people will take in finding fault.

  When she had finished he said, ‘It was very good of you to let him off so lightly. But in character.’

  ‘I didn’t really let him off. He was frightened to death, poor boy. And quite at sea as to why I wasn’t shopping him.’

  ‘Oh but I disagree with the modern habit of assuming that generous gestures are suspect and only mean ones truths. It was very kind.’

  ‘It was more,’ she paused, trying to form the thought for herself, ‘it was more that in some way we were of a kind. I had a strange sense of some affinity with him. I’m afraid it gave him the impression, poor boy, that I’d fallen for his charms.’

  ‘And had you?’

  ‘Only in his capacity as a dancing teacher. But you know,’ she paused, reluctant to rake over newly-raked ground, ‘with what had happened with you and Bruno so much on my mind, so much in my mind I should say, it seemed…’

  She halted again, unwilling to put into words the feeling that there are moment given to us in life when in sparing others we ourselves may be spared.

  ‘I understand.’

  That was why she had come.

  After dinner they walked, landing up by the slow-moving Hudson. Over on the far bank, jewelled points of light—gold, silver and rose—shone like brilliants set in the buildings against the teal-blue sky. The white face of the moon was as full as it ever gets, which is never quite.

  ‘A painting by Whistler?’

  Edwin threaded his arm through hers. ‘I’ve thought that often. I walk here when I’m stuck over a poem. There’s something in the flow of the river that unjams the words. Or maybe it’s only my belief that it will.’

  ‘Well, you know, it’s not quite true that I’ve not written a line since we last met. I wrote a poem on the ship. I think, maybe, the dancing unstuck something.’