Looking For the Possible Dance

by A. L. Kennedy

  ‘But my time walked on ahead of me then stopped, the eight years gone, and I passed beyond my release; everything changed. I was free. Free in capital letters. Effaredoubleee. FREE. Nobody will ever understand that.

  ‘Nobody knew, when I walked across the square in the peace before lunchtime, the wet earth in the flowerbeds turned an hour before, smelling live and restless, and in front of me, a pigeon lifted, nobody knew why I cried. I sat on one of the benches and I cried. Because of the joy. And the fear, too; at first it can scare you, to know how alive you can be.’

  Margaret smiled without noticing it. The man stood up and walked across to the fish tank. He tapped the glass, pushing a space into the water and between the fish.

  ‘Anyway, I’ll leave you to it. I can’t hang about any longer. Busy life.’

  He turned and smiled his white smile which Margaret returned as best she could.

  He smoothed his tie into the waistband of his trousers, began to button his overcoat. ‘You know the stupid thing? All the time I served my sentence, I fitted in. I seemed to be like everyone I met, I saw what I needed to see and nothing other. Now I can’t be comfortable any more, I’m too different. People can’t understand the way I see things. That isn’t right. That must diminish the pleasure in my life. That must offend against my sense of natural justice. Mustn’t it?’

  When she had taken her filling and spat out the rinse, Margaret asked her dentist about the man.

  ‘I don’t know. It could be Mr Scott. He sometimes waits around when he’s had his appointment; he likes to watch the fish. Everyone else ignores them, they’re too much of a cliché, I suppose.’

  The man is not called Scott and Margaret doesn’t meet him again. His name is Webster and in a few months’ time he does meet Colin and tells him, among other things, that he has nice teeth.

  After the dentist, Margaret walked up the hill. Up and along, up and along, working between the blocks, feeling the city neat around her. She sat on an empty bench in a pedestrian precinct with pigeons beginning to gather about her feet, eyeing for crumbs. She remembered the man in the waiting-room and his flat, blue eyes, wondering if he’d been telling her the truth.

  She took a note out of her pocket and read it again. Perhaps for the fifth or the seventh time.

  DARLING,

  It’s a letter from Colin McCoag, who calls her darling. Now and then.

  I WANT YOU. RIGHT NOW, I WANT YOU. RIGHT NOW. I WANT TO PUT MY TONGUE IN YOUR MOUTH AND LICK YOUR EARS AND KISS YOUR EYES. I FUCKING WANT YOU.

  I WANT MY HAND ON YOUR CUNT. IN YOUR CUNT. I WANT MY ARM IN YOUR CUNT. I WANT ME THERE.

  Margaret found this letter at 07:40 today. It was taped across the alarm clock and she had to peel it off to see the time. Now it’s almost six – 18:00 – and Colin might be in her house when she gets back because he has a key.

  YOU’RE GOING TO GO TO WORK THIS MORNING AND SO AM I. I WON’T BE THERE TO SEE YOU, BECAUSE THIS IS YESTERDAY NIGHT AND I’M GOING AWAY. I DON’T WANT TO GO. I WANT TO WALK BACK TO YOUR BEDROOM AND PULL OFF THE SHEETS AND LOOK. YOU’D WAKE UP WITH MY PRICK IN YOU. YOU WOULDN’T HAVE TIME TO WAKE UP ANY OTHER WAY. BUT I DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH YOU WOULD LIKE THAT SO I’LL ONLY LEAVE THIS NOTE.

  WOULD YOU LIKE THAT? ME IN YOU. WOULD YOU LIKE THAT?

  I WANT TO HAVE WOKEN UP WITH YOU TODAY. ONCE, EARLY, ROUND ABOUT NOW, AND ONCE BEFORE WE WENT OUT TO WORK.

  BUT I’LL SEE YOU TONIGHT. SEE WHAT YOU THINK.

  ALSO, I LOVE YOU.

  REGARDS, MCCOAG.

  She rubs her hand across her cheek. Still numb. Her lips and tongue are thick with anaesthetic and she feels like someone else. Her hand can be impartial, brushing skin that could be a stranger’s, because it gives no response. Does she feel like this to Colin? She imagines her fingers are his as she runs them over her lips.

  For a while she considers that things can be very unfair. When she sees him she’ll want to kiss him, but her mouth won’t be working yet. She could end up sucking his nose and know nothing about it. Her mouth will taste of blood and the dust of her teeth.

  Not that Colin wouldn’t forgive her that, might not even like it, in a way. But for now she remembers how ugly a kiss can feel and that the only kind of kiss she will be making for at least an hour or two will be ugly like that. Her father’s kisses became ugly all the time, once his teeth were gone.

  Home for Christmas, in her second year at Uni, Margaret met her daddy at the railway station and saw his new face. His mouth was too pink and too white, his cheeks slackened, his lips very cold and a little too wet. Daddy hadn’t told her they were going to take his teeth away. He’d never even mentioned deciding to grow old so carelessly.

  That night, they hugged a little, before her daddy went to bed. Margaret held on tight, smelling his pullover and soap. She closed her eyes and snuggled in, but they didn’t kiss. It seemed they almost never kissed after that. And they never talked about what had happened to his teeth, if it had hurt, or the habit he had of leaving the top set out because they made him gag. There was just less of him now and they had to get used to that.

  They got used to most things; for example, the way that Margaret’s kisses had also changed. She had grown accustomed to kissing Colin, and, although she didn’t often kiss anyone else, she always felt slightly cautious, strange, as if she might do something inappropriate. With aunts and friends and her daddy, she was frightened she might close her eyes and not be sure who she was holding, do something wrong.

  When she came back to her father’s house, she was frightened somehow. Of what she might say, of what she might shout while she was dreaming, of giving things away at any time. Because, naturally, she kept her news about Colin to herself. This made it her secret, made him belong to her, and if Colin ever left her, she wouldn’t have to tell her daddy she’d made a mistake. She wouldn’t have the weight of him being angry on her behalf. That was the plan.

  As it happened, when Colin did leave her, her father already knew about him and kept any anger to himself.

  Margaret did not. She spent long weeks in England, looking for signs; perhaps of him, or perhaps of herself; and being very slowly angry. Hurt. Friends down south were sympathetic, but the final term was over and they were mostly going away, or preparing to go. They were obsessed by the jobs they had or the jobs they couldn’t get, or the jobs they were doing instead of jobs: their compromise, their defeat.

  Margaret ate her own little defeat. She ran out of money, left England and came home to her daddy again, away from any chance of even seeing Colin by accident; away from London, which was all anybody could tell her when she asked where he had gone.

  Back in Scotland, she was angry for months. Then she grew bewildered and lost some weight. People sometimes mistook the confusion in her eyes for stupidity. This also made her angry.

  Margaret would walk through hours in the city, to wear out her anger and tire herself enough to sleep. She would pass couples, perhaps kissing or walking hand in hand in the daylight, embracing, tight, and as the streets darkened, things would begin to let go. There were shapes in cars and doorways, short skirts and pale legs outside the nightclubs in town, inside the cafés. Margaret felt herself surrounded by a movement she could not take part in, she was slipping through.

  She was a single person when people were always expected in pairs, like eyebrows or like gloves. That was how it seemed to her. She was a single woman when a woman should never be single, but looking for a man, or for the right man, or marrying a man, or living with a man, or thinking about living with or marrying a man, or leading several men a merry dance, or seducing a man, or deserting a man, or trying to understand, reform, divorce, encourage, murder, castrate or like a man. Margaret was single. In the mirror every morning, she looked single.

  When Colin came back, he said that he knew what she meant.

  ‘It’ll change, though. You’ve changed since university, so have I. And we were only playing at it then. I know I was, anyway. We have to get u
sed to each other. Then we won’t be single. We’ll be double – two halfs – I don’t know.’

  ‘I’m not going to settle and be a housewife.’

  ‘You mean someone who can dust and iron and cook nice meals.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘Well, miracles we don’t expect.’

  ‘Did I ever mention they always called you McCoag Nae Pals? McCoag the sarcastic pig?’

  ‘You’re beautiful when you’re abusive.’

  ‘Pervert.’

  Sitting within the city, between buildings, on her bench, it was still strange for Margaret to think that Colin was here. She didn’t know why he came back and she would have liked to know that. Although it was very nice, just to have him here, she didn’t know what would happen, if things would stay this way. She wanted to take him out tonight, right into town where the pubs were, where there were crowds and shouts and men to sell you tomorrow’s papers. They could practise being a couple, while everyone else was too busy to notice them.

  When she got home she would mention it.

  On the way from her bus-stop, almost in sight of the flat, she watched a lime seed falling from its tree, the sunlight caught inside it, making it shine and spin and shine, dropping with unimaginable slowness, so that she had to hold her breath, not blink until it was there on the pavement and ordinary again.

  Colin was already there when she got in, her door not locked and the kettle boiling. She told him about the seed and enjoyed it a second time, because he enjoyed it, because people in pairs can reflect each other’s joy. It is one of the advantages pairs have.

  When Margaret wakes, she is not surprised to find herself still moving. The train has carried Margaret impeccably, never deviating from the track. She reintroduces sunlight to her eyes.

  Hers is the final carriage, the one another train would hit if it came up too fast from behind. Margaret doesn’t like the very front or the very back of anywhere, they always seem a little dangerous, but here is where her reservation is and long-distance reservations are serious things.

  Carlisle Station slips up backwards beside her, grey, almost deserted, under a greyer sky. Rain finally reaches her slowing window. She watches it collide with the glass and imagines the quality of its wetness; most rains, after all, are wet in a similar way.

  The train seems to hang by the platform for longer than it should.

  Spinning fields of various grain and leaf are again pounding by Margaret’s head and speed is obviously being gathered somewhere when the reason for their delay presents itself. Lifted waist high by a staggering guard, a boy appears. A boy or perhaps a man, his face seems older than his body. His hands wave gently and his head rests at a slightly peculiar angle. His face looks anxious, strange.

  The guard pauses, briefly checks the reservation and looks across at Margaret as he lowers the man-boy into the seat beside her. Two women, walking behind, close in with an assortment of cushions and belts, packing them round a body which remains patient, not entirely still. He is arranged like a basket of flowers, a limb display.

  ‘This is James. I hope you don’t mind. We have a reservation. We’re all going to Warrington, aren’t we James?’

  James makes a noise which could be ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ or ‘Maybe’ or, ‘I hate Warrington and wish never to see it again.’ A hand takes hold of Margaret’s elbow, its thumb bent round impossibly.

  ‘Don’t annoy the lady. It’s a long journey, we mustn’t annoy each other on the way.’ And then to Margaret, ‘You won’t know we’re here. Not really. Hardly at all.’

  ‘It’s alright. It’s nice to have company.’ Margaret wonders if they know she’s lying, how long she can wait before going back to sleep. The anxious face turns towards her, ‘It’s alright.’ Two hands are put together, thumbs arching away symmetrically. ‘He’s saying sorry, aren’t you James?’ The hands nod and Margaret has to say again, ‘It’s alright.’

  The older of the women, broad-faced, blonde, explores a wicker bag. Four fat marker pens and a notebook emerge with a fold of blank paper. ‘There you are, Jamie. You can write about the journey, or draw us a picture. What do you think?’ The hands are pushed across the table and return with what they find, the head turns to Margaret, checks her again, mouth working without sound.

  ‘Hello, James.’

  ‘Answer the lady, don’t be rude. James can’t speak to you, but he can write some things. He has a machine, too, that speaks, but it’s awfully noisy. Don’t be silly, James, it’s far too noisy for the train.’

  It takes a long time for James to position the paper just as he wants. The pen top is hard to hold and hard to pull off, the pen is hard to fit inside a fist. To bring the pen to the paper seems to take minutes, Margaret watching, not knowing if she should help.

  ‘James?’

  The letters shiver away from his hand.

  FUC OF

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Said hello, have you, Jamie?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Well, just ignore him if he gives you any nonsense. He wants attention.’

  The smaller, darker woman dips out into the corridor. ‘I’m going to get some tea. That thermos is tainted.’ James follows her laboriously with

  FUC OF TO

  ‘James?’ Margaret waits for the head to turn, ‘Anything else to say to me?’

  NO

  ‘Uh huh.’

  YET

  ‘Uh huh.’

  HO

  ‘Uh huh.’

  HOOOOOOO

  ‘Oh, Margaret. Sorry. Margaret.’

  JAMS OK

  ‘Yes.’

  ?

  ‘OK.’

  OK

  COLIN LIKED TO talk most on the move. He liked to do things moving. This hadn’t been the case before he went away. When they first met it took Margaret several months to get used to Colin’s kind of stillness. He could sit sometimes, not blinking, not breathing, muffling his pulse, and she would be frightened that he was dead. Afterwards, she asked him what it felt like and he couldn’t tell her, didn’t know.

  Perhaps the drugs altered his pace. Certainly, you could imagine him throwing something and seeing it curve and fall at half the speed, maybe slower, still under the influence of his hand. His conversations seemed to hover and lose themselves as the spaces between the words ran into silence. Questions could take days to answer, so she didn’t ask them. All she could do in the end was interpret his range of quietnesses. To be honest, she couldn’t say if they meant a thing.

  At least she couldn’t complain he annoyed her with snoring. She often woke in the night to find his chest neither rising nor falling, exhaling an absence of breath. But if she touched him, he might speak.

  ‘Hands off McCoag. It’s sleeping.’

  Whether he woke at these times was uncertain. In the mornings, he never mentioned being disturbed.

  Now, he had changed his speed. He was certainly still thin, but now it looked intentional. He trained. There were tracksuits and sweatshirts, plain black, or freckled grey, which might be worn at any time. There were shorts for his running, or working in the gym, and she got used to his smell being altered with the sharpness of frosty grass, of new sweat and swimming pools. Undressed, his muscle pressed beneath his skin, like an anatomist’s drawing, or maybe a butcher’s chart. He was hard to the touch; soft skin but hardness beneath it.

  Outside and dressed he strode along beside her like a very tall dog, conversing on the run, talking down the pavements, discussing through shops. Even indoors, he could be restless, like a child.

  ‘Sit down.’

  ‘What, love?’

  ‘Why don’t you sit down.’

  ‘Aye, I was just thinking.’

  ‘Well, take the weight off your brain for a while, you’re making me dizzy.’

  He walked to the sofa, letting one arm slip behind her as he sat and resting his chin quite gently on her head.

  Margaret likes that; that’s why it happened.


  ‘Are you comfy now?’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘So what were you thinking about?’

  ‘Och, I was just out this morning, having my wee run, and this auld fella’s down by the bridge. He quite often is. I don’t think he’s a drunk, you know, he doesn’t seem like that, he just looks as though he’s off his head.

  ‘Sometimes he’s curled up sleeping and I wake him when I pass, but usually he’s sorting through the papers and the leaves, making them neat. I thought he was saving them up until I watched him throwing a load in the river one time – I think that’s what he always does. He stacks everything neatly, then throws it away.

  ‘Anyway, he was there again this morning and his face was covered in blood – fucking big lump out his head, blood in his hair, still running over his eyes. I mean, he didn’t seem upset. I stopped in case he was dying or something, but he was just rubbing his shirt sleeve over the blood, then sucking it clean. Over and over. He was speaking. He was saying, “It’s me. I can’t waste it. It’s me. I can’t waste it.” Out of his mind. Completely.’

  ‘Poor man.’

  ‘I came back from London to get away from that – dafties and weans and beggars all over the street. Lepers and plague carts on the way. And guess what I find up here.’

  ‘Is that really why you came back.’

  ‘No. I wanted to come back. I’d wanted to for months. I knew you were here.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Somebody told me. I mean, I asked folk and one of them told me. I wanted to be here, I didn’t like the atmosphere down there and I did think I might see you. Well, more than that, I hoped, but at least to see you. I did that the first week I got here.’

  ‘I know, you came to the Centre.’