Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by A.L. Kennedy
Dedication
Title Page
Everything else is . . .
Margaret is sleeping . . .
Late in his . . .
Nobody liked him . . .
‘I can’t do . . .
‘There are few . . .
Colin liked to . . .
Watch this . . .
The next morning . . .
The youth theatre . . .
In his future . . .
The first time . . .
Margaret found it . . .
As if someone . . .
‘James? tell me . . .
Margaret didn’t have . . .
The ceilidh was . . .
‘Don’t move stand . . .
Writ to me . . .
It was D . . .
It’s time for . . .
The fisherman’s ceilidh . . .
Outside, the bridge . . .
Margaret saw Colin . . .
It’s odd in . . .
As Margaret and . . .
Going home slow . . .
It was an . . .
If this had . . .
One morning, Margaret . . .
Colin was frightening . . .
Margaret has put . . .
Copyright
About the Book
Mary Margaret Hamilton was educated in Scotland. She was born there too. These may not have been the best possible options, but they were the only ones on offer at the time. Although her father did his best, her knowledge of life is perhaps a little incomplete. Margaret knows the best way to look at the moon, how to wake on time and how to breathe fire. Now she must learn how to live. A. L. Kennedy’s absorbing, moving and gently political first novel dissects the intricate difficulties of human relationships, from Margaret’s passionate attachment to her father and her more problematic involvement with Colin, her lover, to the wider social relations between pupil and teacher, employer and employee, individual and state.
About the Author
A.L. Kennedy has published four novels, most recently Paradise, two books of non-fiction, and four collections of short stories. She has twice been selected as one of Granta’s twenty Best of Young British Novelists and has won a number of prizes including the Somerset Maugham Award, the Encore Award and the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award. She lives in Glasgow.
ALSO BY A.L. KENNEDY
Fiction
Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains
Now That You’re Back
So I am Glad
Original Bliss
Everything You Need
Indelible Acts
Paradise
Non-Fiction
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
On Bullfighting
For M. Price, J. H. Price, E. M. Kennedy
and my friends who rarely fail,
with my love
Looking for the Possible Dance
A.L. Kennedy
‘EVERYTHING ELSE IS a waste of time. Do you hear me? Everything else is a waste of time. You hear me, Margaret? You understand?’
Margaret was outside in the night, standing behind the Methodist Church Hall. Her ears, numbed after hours of music, were rushing with the sudden quiet, as if she had just dipped her head inside a sea-shell, or a big tin box. Margaret’s father was sitting on two empty beer crates, breathing in and out enormously, his legs extended flat ahead of him and both his hands folded, hotly, round one of her wrists.
‘See, there’s the moon, Princess. Do you see?’
‘Yes.’
His swaying finger seemed to nudge at the fat, white circle; leave a little mark.
‘And there is The Plough – one, two, three, four and a little tail, and there’s . . . there’s . . . Orion is up there, too. Stars and stars and stars, more stars behind these stars and, if you could see all the stars, the sky would be white. All of that, up there. Mi-rac-u-lous. And they see us, Margaret. Princess. They see us. The moon looks down at us and we look up at her and it’s wonderful. She’s telling us, “Everything else is a waste of time.” That’s what she says. You hear her? That’s what she says.’
Margaret watched her daddy, smiling with his eyes closed against the moonlight as he squeezed her hand. She stepped up and kissed his ear and was a little worried about him in case he took cold from sitting out with no coat on. She also wondered what he meant.
Beginning with her wondering, or the cold, or the beautiful plume of her father’s breath which clouded up to make small rainbows around the moon, Margaret often remembers that night. It was the only time that she and her father went out together like that. Formally. Why he wanted to dance with Methodists, in that hall, on that night, she does not know, but it was wonderful, all the same.
Resting her weight down carefully on to his feet, her daddy walked and span her through the two-step and into the waltz, round and round. She closed her eyes and rested in against his stomach, the bright shirt, the smell of his soap and himself and a new aftershave.
Even better was to sit with a glass of orange juice in a place where she could watch her father dance away without her. He drew her eye; surely, everyone’s eye. And they all knew where to look for the blue of his suit. The suit she had never seen before and would not see again until after her father was dead.
The sets formed up and separated in and out of rings and lines, her father somehow always at their heart. Margaret had never seen him so graceful, stepping and sliding as if it were all that he ever did or could ever want to do. Among the swirl of unimportant heads, she would see her father’s face, perhaps smiling at her, his eyes glowing blue with the dance. Or maybe she would glimpse the back of his head with its fine, grey hair which reminded her of the soft fur on a cat.
Whenever a ceilidh is mentioned now, or any kind of dance, somewhere in her mind, Margaret will compare it with the never repeated Anniversary Ceilidh at the Methodist Church Hall and the blue light it called to her father’s eyes.
She only once asked why they didn’t go dancing again. She was out with her father, one afternoon, cleaning up the allotment for the summer to come in.
‘Och, I never liked dancing, honey. It makes my feet hurt.’
That was a lie. He could never have danced the way that he did with sore feet. And he’d enjoyed himself, she could tell.
‘You’ll be old enough soon to go on your own. You’ll like that.’
‘I wanted to go with you.’
‘Would you want me to have sore feet.’
‘Were your feet really sore?’
‘I was really sore. I wouldn’t like to be that sore again.’
A blackbird chuck-chucked away over the fence for a reason they couldn’t see.
‘What did you mean about it being a waste of time?’
‘Sorry, love?’
‘What did you mean about it being a waste of time? You said when we were looking at the moon that everything else was a waste of time.’
‘I don’t remember that.’
She waited to see if he would notice he had lied again. He coughed and then looked at her.
‘The moon makes me say silly things. It does that to folk. Sometimes.’
‘What did you mean, but?’
‘Och, I don’t know. I can’t even think what I said.’
Such lies.
Margaret’s father stared at the lavender bushes and grubbed his hoe along the clean, black soil between them. There weren’t any weeds. The earth was never left long enough to grow them. He smiled down at the strange, ashy plants.
‘Your mother planted t
hose when you were three.’
Margaret brushed her hand through the flowers, breathing in their grey and purple smell; not knowing why her father told such lies. Things that weren’t all that important, but still were not true. The lavender bushes, for example, had come in the springtime, last year. Margaret remembered her father had brought home the seedlings and planted them. Carefully, in the evening, with water before and after, so they wouldn’t die. Margaret’s mother hadn’t been there. Margaret hadn’t even seen her mother in years: couldn’t remember her ever being anywhere at all, although she must have had a mother, naturally. Everyone did.
Her daddy blinked into the sun.
‘You can make lavender bags in the autumn; you can sew them. You can sew? Margaret?’
At school, if anyone told her lies, Margaret wouldn’t speak to them, but Daddy was different. He was always more convinced by his stories than anyone else. And because she wanted to please her father, to oblige, Margaret tried to believe him as much as she could. This seemed to make him happy, which meant she could be happy too.
Margaret smelled the lavender smell along her fingers.
‘I suppose I could practise sewing. We don’t really do that much. We knit. You can’t knit lavender bags?’
‘Naah. All the lavender would fall out.’
‘So I could just knit empty bags, then, and save time.’
He stroked his hand down over her head and she looked up at the shine of his big, white face. He was smiling a little bit and his nose was starting to redden from the sun.
‘You know when we looked at the moon.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘I said that everything else was a waste of time.’
‘Yes, I know that.’
‘Aye, but, what I mean is, you’ll grow up, you see, and do things and run about and you’ll think that what you’re doing is important, but it’s not.
‘Being alive is important. Everything else is a waste of time.
‘Sometimes I’ll look at the moon and I’ll know that she’s seen it all before and she’ll make me remember what this is about: I’ll just be alive for a while and not need to do anything else. You’ll be more alive than me, though. Won’t you?’
She nodded while he kneeled down into the earth and held her shoulders.
‘You’ll remember to do that for me. You’ll not waste it all, like me.’
‘No, I’ll not.’
‘I’ve made you sad now.’
‘No. No. I’m not sad. I’m thinking.’
She smiled to make him sure that she was happy, with him holding her, looking into her face, just brushing her cheek.
‘You ready for your tea now?’
‘Aye.’
‘What would you like?’
Sometimes even now, when Margaret sees the moon as she goes to sleep, or takes a bath and feels that slipping, comfortable feeling after the first almost pain of relaxation, she is thinking of her father. Without even knowing it, she is stretching her arms up and round him; his sweater is tight against her face, the dip in his ribs is underneath her chin and his heart is beating. There is an atmosphere of Lifebuoy soap, of pruned leaves and of varnish. In the moment it takes for her eyes to blink as she settles into pillows or warm water, this atmosphere turns through her head and vanishes. Her father and her pleasure have always been close. As if one could not be there without the other.
MARGARET IS SLEEPING now.
It is three o’clock in the morning and the sparrows and dunnocks are trying out their songs. Windows along the street have full dawn against them and Margaret Hamilton lies behind the dark of her curtains, asleep.
A week ago, Margaret was still employed and today she is not. Because she was prepared for this, she had her railway ticket ready and this morning she will travel away from here. Probably, she will come back, but this is not certain. She is going away to think about things like that.
Asleep, she is surrounded by waiting. In her kitchen, her half-packed holdall is waiting to be filled, the kettle waits to be boiled and the curtains are waiting to be drawn. In a street a mile away, the sleepy taxi driver who will take Margaret to the station is waiting by a hamburger van with his radio turned off. And away in the city the railway station is expecting her.
At almost exactly seven, Margaret wakes up.
Without an alarm clock or other assistance, this is quite hard to arrange, unless you know the trick of it. Margaret’s father taught her how. Just before you fall asleep, when the lights are out and everything else is done, you must hit your head off the pillow, once for each hour of the time when you wish to wake. Margaret hasn’t done this since she was a girl. When she was ten, her father bought her an alarm clock to use instead.
But yesterday evening, alarm clock broken, her preparations for sleep sounded quite like this:
PFFUPH, PFFUPH, PFFUPH, PFFUPH, PFFUPH, PFFUPH, . . . PFFUPH.
Or this:
Alright then, seven, it could even be half past, but you can’t do halves. At least, I don’t think so.
ONE.
And I want to sleep tonight.
TWO.
Please.
THREE.
Train tomorrow. London.
FOUR.
God, I’m too tired to sleep.
FIVE.
South. Do I really like the English.
SIX.
Who cares? Nobody cares. The English don’t bloody care. Sleep, fuckit.
SEVEN.
The English don’t know, so of course they don’t care. I didn’t tell them I was coming. I’ll have to ask someone to watch the flat. I should have thought of that. No point in just watching, they’d have to come in. I couldn’t ask Colin, not now. No nonono no no. Sleep. Everything’s fine. Sleep.
Seven o’clock, I’ll wake.
Clever Daddy. I wonder how he knew
And Margaret does sleep and doesn’t stir once until almost exactly seven the following morning.
Usually, for a journey, she will dress in something practical like a sweater and maybe jeans. Today, she will put on a suit, as if she were travelling to London for an interview. This is because, in the job she has lost, she was almost always dressed in jeans and sweaters and now she wants a change. Margaret is making a new start and intends to feel different and formal when she and England’s capital meet. Also she knows it isn’t good to let yourself go when you don’t have a job; she’s seen what can happen when people do that.
Margaret is wearing perfume; one made new by lack of use. It surrounds her every time she moves and has given her wrists a slightly bitter taste. As the day progresses it will change and fade.
Her taxi arrives a little early and she darts out to sit in the back, feeling odd and not wanting to speak. She is still waking up and the city which passes by her is curiously unconvincing. Buildings like tall, heavy ships swing round about her, shining with glass and blasted sandstone; scaffolding and sails of plastic sheet.
A very few people are out walking, their faces lit by a sky which is the strident blue of plates. Inside the cab, music is playing and Margaret feels; as she sometimes does; that she has inadvertently started to be a film.
As soon as she reaches Central Station, this feeling intensifies. Margaret pays the driver quickly, lifts her bag and leaves the taxi with the kind of smooth and purposeful speed that cameras might expect. Her impetus carries her far into the body of the building before she can recover herself.
The station is nice, she likes it. The period wood-panelling and glass, ripped out several years ago, is slowly being replaced by imitation wood-panelling and glass. The pale, hard floor, beefsteak tomato seats and the more or less garish shop-fronts combine peculiarly as amplified music washes down and a high, black indicator board rolls and pulses hugely. This could be a place of worship.
Over by the photographic booth, two drunks are quietly cutting each other’s hair in the mirror provided. People with an air of going to work are running and striding and straggling as
Margaret simply walks, but the majority of figures here are still. They are standing like an operatic chorus awaiting revelations from above. Their positioning is beautifully regular, their postures both relaxed and alert, as they gaze at the platform numbers, destinations and arrival times, all crossing the board from nowhere into nowhere, constructed out of tiny yellow squares. The crowd seems very much at peace, very focused, just a little unnerving.
Margaret peers up just enough to see her platform number and is careful not to pause. The train is snug by the platform and while Margaret searches for the carriage labelled H, four policemen take away the barber drunks.
Although there is no one sitting near her, Margaret settles herself quickly and then pretends to fall asleep. No one will talk to her if she’s sleeping. Only a ticket inspector will even try.
Margaret hears feet and a distant child and luggage, the traditional whistle blast, and then the tug of movement begins. In a way she does not understand, a murderous electric current pulls her and the carriage out of the station and away.
If she opened her eyes to look out and down the river, Margaret would see a layering of bridges, stretching east before and then beside and then behind her as her own bridge is crossed. Everything is blue, the sunlight and the water, the sky behind the dark blue bridges and their shiny blue buses and cars. The river always turns its mornings blue.
Margaret settles her head more firmly between the window and her hand and when the horrifying speed of her progress has ceased to alarm her she begins to fall asleep. Before she passes Motherwell, she is dreaming.
From one sleep to another, there she goes.
LATE IN HIS life, Margaret’s father forgot how to sleep and of all the people who knew this, he was the least concerned.
‘It isn’t as if I’m still working. It isn’t as if I can’t nap. I can nap if I want to, any time. If I needed to sleep, I’d be tired, wouldn’t I?’
Because no one was with him all of the time, no one knew if he napped. Nobody could be certain, when they saw him, still and with his eyes closed in the easy chair, if he was thinking, or napping, or simply humouring them.
Looking For the Possible Dance Page 1