Looking For the Possible Dance

by A. L. Kennedy

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Perhaps you could think of a better way to put this. That might be fun. Talk to me about it, sometime.’

  ‘I’ll have a think.’

  ‘Good girl.’

  He couldn’t touch her hand that time because one of them was in her pocket and the other was still holding the sheet.

  TO ALL CENTRE ASSISTANTS

  REMEMBER the REPUTATION of the CENTRE is in your hands. Although the CENTRE is open to all, ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, POLITICAL DEBATE and agitation on behalf of DUBIOUS MINORITIES cannot be tolerated. No YOUNG CHILDREN may be left UNATTENDED, no TOOLS, FURNITURE, ELECTRICAL GOODS, PETS, CURTAINS OR LINOLEUM may be stored and under NO CIRCUMSTANCES may CREDIT be extended by the CAFE. CLIENTS are not to be encouraged to linger on the premises without CONSTRUCTIVELY OCCUPYING their time. SINGING, DANCING, FIGHTING, DOMINOES, or OTHER GAMBLING, ALCOHOL, CHIPS, FISHING MAGGOTS and CLIMBING BOOTS are forbidden. As are RELIGIOUS TRACTS of THE ALTERNATIVE kind.

  AT ALL TIMES, BE AWARE. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE.

  Margaret wondered what kind of people Assistants were meant to be: Different, or Like Us.

  Without further information, each of them did their best. They helped to run the centre, to administer and organise. They were ever alert for religious tracts and rogue minorities and when the petty cash had been counted and the toilet paper bought, each of them could contribute to the Fun.

  Lesley specialised in pursuits of the life-threatening kind: her groups abseiled and climbed, white-water canoed and were hoping to parachute. She would only countenance fishing if it took place on unsuitable seas.

  Sam was the video expert and photographer. The video had been borrowed, whoever had done the borrowing deciding to do it at night, so nobody knew who to ask to give it back. This loss and the absence of dark-room facilities had driven Sam to his other love, the guitar. He played the guitar very often and quite well, but never showed any sign of giving lessons, of starting a non-singing and non-dancing music group or even just playing free tunes in the café. Margaret considered barring him for not keeping his time constructively occupied. Lesley always wanted to let him stay.

  Margaret ran the Young People’s Theatre and the Women’s Group, until the Women said they’d rather go to College and learn about cake decoration and the maintenance of cars. There was money in that. No offence.

  Margaret was disappointed when they said goodbye. She felt useless. She had weeks and weeks of sessions, all prepared, on health and managing debts and assertiveness. It threw Margaret off balance to find that most of the group were already assertive and only in need of a chance to prove it. For a while, she felt people were looking at her in the Centre, because of her unsuccessful group, but that wasn’t the case. Only Lawrence ever mentioned it.

  ‘That Women’s Thing you used to do, Margaret. Fallen through?’

  ‘We’ve stopped it for the moment, yes.’

  ‘Exercising their right to change their mind, eh? Seriously. You have to understand that some people here do not know what they want. They say “yes” and “no”, but they don’t necessarily mean either one at the time. I’m sure you know the type. You might turn your attention to the café. I feel you could bring something to it. Something special. The right touch. You know.’

  Margaret watched him tip-tap away on his shiny segged soles and wondered why she suddenly wanted to wash. She had always tried to think of him as a person. Why did he stand so close to her? Why did he look so sad? What could somebody like Lawrence want? He must be twice her age. And he wore waistcoats.

  That morning, a cartoon reeling silently across the television screen and the rooms still cold, she felt she could sit and think about Lawrence, work things out. No one would interrupt her. Bobby The Dug was their first and only customer, so far.

  But then something fell and broke in the café kitchen. From behind the hatchway, there came a dull cry.

  When Margaret stood in the doorway she saw Heather, the café helper, standing, only moved by her rushes for breath. She was surrounded by peach slices, exploded syrup and curves of glass. Without raising her head from the syrup that streaked her legs, she said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m just . . . I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’m sorry.’

  Margaret came back from the Ladies with a sheaf of paper towels, hearing Heather’s voice long before she reached the door.

  ‘I feel like it’s my fault. It must be my fault. I mean, she’s only six, she’s just a wee lassie. “I’ll batter her cunt in,” she says. “I’ll batter her effing cunt in.” She’s six. I’ve no idea even of who she was talking about – some other wee lassie. Me. She could have been talking about me.’

  Heather gathered the glass and peaches, cutting her hands, not using the towels, now hardly seeming to breathe at all.

  ‘I don’t speak like that. Not in front of her – I try not to, any time. You have to try. It’s the kids round here. It’s everything round here – rotten ceilings, rotten windows, dog shite and needles all up your close. Rats.

  ‘Rats.

  ‘You think you’re doing right to send her to school, you’ve got to do that, you think she’ll be safe, and she comes back talking like a whore. Just sitting in the grass, out the back with her pals. I check the grass, the grass is alright. Oh God. You have to check everything. Fucking everything. Other people don’t do that. They don’t have to do that. Other people expect to live as if they’re normal.’

  She stopped and looked at Margaret as if she were an exhibit or a distant view.

  ‘You’ll live like that.

  ‘We should never have come here. We came out to be near my mother and away from him, but he knows where we are, he’s found out. My mother’s driving me demented. She says it’s my fault. Everything’s my fault, according to her, but she must be right. It couldn’t be anyone else’s fault. There’s no one else there.’

  The two women crouched beside each other, but not together, filling the dustbin with fruit and paper and thick shards of dish. When they had finished the floor was glazed with syrup and spotted a little with blood. Heather drifted into the passage to fetch the mop.

  ‘I’ll do it now. I can do it now. That’s fine. I’m sorry, I’m all in bits, it’s these bloody pills. I’ll pay for the peaches.’

  ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘Keep it out of what you pay me.’

  ‘I’ll ask Mr Lawrence.’

  ‘You know fine what he’ll say.’

  Margaret tried a jumpy laugh, but cut it short.

  ‘Your hands are bleeding. Do you want . . . ?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. They’re a mess in any case. I’m alright now.’

  Margaret hovered at the door.

  ‘Thanks for listening.’

  Margaret had seen this happen before; she would almost reach a person and then they would get that dark note in their voice, that slight difference. Their face would close with a sharp, wee look and they would push her back beyond their dignity. There would be nothing to do but go away.

  The café opened late and Bobby The Dug complained because he never got his tea. Heather just looked at him.

  ‘I CAN’T DO this any longer. It isn’t working. I’ve never felt more uncomfortable or unhappy in my life. Never.’

  He did look uncomfortable and unhappy. Unwell. She wanted to touch him. To reach. And this was happening at such a ridiculous time – when he had been so reachable, so recently. It was hardly any time since she had danced with him in the ceilidh, fitted her arms round his back and held him in, stomach to stomach, breath to breath. They had moved the way that she and her father never could and Margaret had wanted to be watched, not watching; dancing, not sitting to the side. She had been part of two people, sometimes brushing the other dancers, but always miles above them and away.

  Now they couldn’t meet each other’s eyes. Now everything seemed impossible, particularly being here and now.

  ‘We don’t deserve this. I mean, I’m fucking sure I don�
��t. I’m sorry. I’ve thought about it all night. Longer than that, on and off, but for the whole of tonight. There really isn’t a way out. Either we live together, we both commit ourselves, the whole thing, or we call it a day; we don’t see each other. Not at all. I am sorry.’

  There must be some way to solve this: if they went out and walked, if they kissed. Margaret kept both her hands tight in her lap, silently gripping each other, and it seemed it would be much better to keep them that way. Loose, who knew what your hands could be capable of.

  How he could make her so angry, she didn’t understand. This didn’t have to be a fight, a confrontation. She shouldn’t have to offer something up to make him happy, start again. He always wanted to start from scratch, all over again, as if nothing had ever happened between them before. Tiptoe together like strangers, not knowing how far to go. It was ridiculous. It felt like some kind of exam she was meant to be passing.

  But it hurt her when he wasn’t happy, it felt lonely. His eyes were so pink, straining, looking somewhere beyond her reach.

  ‘It would be nice if you even said something. Will I just go now?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t want you to go. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to say it.’

  ‘Mm hm.’

  ‘I don’t. I can’t do this. Not here.’

  ‘Here is the only chance you’ll get. Christ, I’m not asking you to do anything; just make a decision. Are we going to carry on?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to do. I love you.’

  He closed his eyes and bent his head a little. She couldn’t tell if he was even listening, so she told him again.

  ‘I love you. I do.’

  ‘Fuck, I believe you. I’ve always believed you the first time. You don’t have to say it twice. But I don’t think it helps. Margaret? Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I don’t know.’

  ‘Join the club. Join the fucking club.’

  Margaret wanted to hold his face in her hands, to slap it, to stroke his cheek. Somehow, she didn’t care enough to keep doing this, she could feel it slipping away. When she spoke, she sounded tired.

  ‘I want us to be together. I want to be with you. Nobody else. That’s all I know.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have any ideas on how we would do that? How we arrange that commitment? No?’

  He softened his voice again.

  ‘No. I don’t have any ideas, either. I’m stuck, Margaret. You have to help me. If you want this to go on, you have to help me. That’s all. Help me.’

  Their silence elongated until it was impossible to speak. It was just silly. Margaret wanted to say that it was silly. If, right now, they both realised that and smiled, things would be better. But Margaret couldn’t think of how to say it, of how not to cause offence. She had passed the point where useful thoughts could come. This was it over. No one needed to say it – everything had just suddenly passed the point where it ceased to be. Relationship Event Horizon. Zero. Zero. Zero.

  Colin crumpled his paper cup.

  ‘I knew this is what I would get. This is your fucking response to everything. Radio fucking silence.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No you’re not. If you were sorry, you would do something about it. This is no good. Do you understand me? This is no good.’

  Margaret knew there was something she should do, but she didn’t feel like doing anything. Zero. Zero. Zero. She watched Colin’s mouth as it made his words.

  ‘This is it. I don’t want you to phone me, or write or go to places where we’ll meet. I’ll do the same for you.’

  He patted her shoulder on the way out as if she were an elderly relative.

  ‘Take care, love.’

  He walked across the road from the café and turned right to cross the bookshop window and she thought how patronising he could be and how nice his hair looked when just a trace of breeze flared through it and let you guess how light it was. There was uneven wear at the heels of his shoes.

  It didn’t seem at all possible that they would never meet again. Because of this, when a man at a table behind her asked a question, she could answer quite comfortably.

  ‘Yes, that’s Colin McCoag.’

  She could say that with almost a smile.

  ‘Excuse me, miss. Is that a man by the name of McCoag? Colin, is it?’

  ‘Yes, that’s Colin McCoag.’

  ‘I thought that was him. I knew his cousin, see. Small world, eh? His mother was a lovely woman, God bless her.’

  Margaret was certain, at that moment, that she knew more about Colin McCoag and the rhythm of his name than anyone else in the world. From now on, that would alter and fade away. The thin-lipped man, who continued to speak and bob his head, could never grasp any of that; not its presence or its pouring away; he couldn’t appreciate one part of how she had felt before this and how she would feel after.

  Colin’s back became a section of a staggering crowd and then vanished altogether. He should be the one she told this to, but now he wasn’t here. That seemed unnatural.

  The man left her table to step outside, after shaking her hand and giving a farewell bob of his balding head. She couldn’t see Colin any longer and, eventually, she couldn’t see the man. It seemed everything was leaving her behind.

  Margaret stared at the quarter moon and the streetlight through the black, plate glass ahead of her and thought, for some reason, of Susan, a girl who went to school with her.

  Susan was a little odd. Margaret would see her smiling to herself from time to time; a peculiar smile, as if she had been looking for something and then found it where she’d thought she would.

  Finally, while they poured acid together in the hopes of proving natural laws incorrect, Margaret asked her what she was smiling about.

  ‘Nothing. I’m not.’

  The acid affected their fingers where it splashed. Their hands grew a soapy, dead film of skin when they rubbed at them under the tap.

  ‘Now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re doing it right now. You’re smiling. You were smiling.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘OK I’ll tell you later.’

  ‘Tell me now.’

  ‘I can’t now. I’ll tell you later. I will.’

  ‘As long as you stop smiling, just now.’

  ‘No. If I stop smiling now, then people will notice. They would suspect. I’ll tell you later. OK?’

  She didn’t see Susan again that day until the bus queue.

  ‘Right, come on, then.’

  ‘You’ve just jumped the queue.’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘Aye you have. There’s a pensioner behind you, with her umbrella at your neck. Swift and deadly. You know what they’re like.’

  ‘I haven’t jumped the queue, because I’m taking you back to stand with me.’

  ‘Oh, thanks very much.’

  ‘No problem. Why were you smiling?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re not going to get on your bus until you tell me. I’m sorry, but you’re not.’

  ‘Oh, fucksake. Alright, but you’ll need to come into Burton’s doorway – I’m no telling you here.’

  Burton’s had a useful doorway – sheltering indiscretion and groceries. Proof against both weather and prying eyes. It’s not there now.

  ‘Have you ever looked at Mr Foster?’

  ‘Is this it?’

  ‘Nearly. Shut up, will you? Have you ever looked at Mr Foster?’

  ‘That teaches chemistry?’

  ‘Aye, have you ever looked at him.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Really looked?’

  ‘I don’t stare at him, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘No, I just mean look. As if he was someone you didn’t know. Shush.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to say anything.’

  ‘Aye you were. Shut up. If you look at him, as if he was
a normal person. You know what I mean – not a chemistry teacher – if you look at him like a human being, you can imagine him. Doing it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What do you think? It.’

  ‘No, I know that. I mean, are you looking at Foster and thinking of him doing it all the time? In his class?’

  ‘Naow. Not all the time. But once you think about it, you can’t help thinking about it. I mean, you can see him, can’t you? You can imagine him in bed with somebody. It doesn’t seem impossible. Well, does it?’

  ‘Well, no. It doesn’t. I suppose.’

  ‘See, now you’re thinking about it, too. You can see it, can’t you?’

  ‘OK, OK, I can see it. So?’

  ‘So once you do that with Foster. I mean, imagine Foster doing that. You can do it with everyone.’

  ‘If you really wanted to.’

  Margaret kicked her schoolbag closer to a dirty pillar and wondered if the people in the shop could hear. If they read lips.

  ‘No, it’s brilliant. Think of . . . think of Mrs Blackhead. Right? Right? Can you see her doing it? Slipping off the surgical corsets and the army simmett? I mean you just can’t imagine it, can you? It’s the same with all the duff ones, you can’t imagine them doing it. It’s only the human beings you can see. You can only see human beings doing it. I’ll bet you. Want to try it?’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  ‘Chicken.’

  ‘If you’ve done them all before me, there’s no point in me doing it, too.’

  ‘But this is scientific research; we compare notes.’

  ‘Och, alright.’

  ‘Bags I don’t get Mrs Blackhead.’

  ‘No, you get Mr Norman.’

  ‘Cow.’

  ‘You’re only jealous.’

  Susan and Margaret spent the last three years of their schooling, looking at the staff and the pupils and smiling to themselves. Sometimes they were pleasantly surprised and sometimes they were disappointed, but they persevered. Margaret never found a boy who was a human being, but maybe that was for the best because her father didn’t seem to like boys at all. She didn’t ever mention them, because she knew it would make him hurt. They didn’t talk about it, she just knew.