Looking For the Possible Dance

by A. L. Kennedy

  ‘What?’

  ‘You were wanting to talk about the ceilidh. See how things were gaun?’

  ‘Well, yes, but really I wanted to tell you about some participants. If that’s alright.’

  ‘You can sing anything you like. As long as it’s passed by the Supreme Folkie Soviet. I’m the Secretary General, so you should be fine.’

  ‘No, I can’t sing. I can never remember enough of the words. It’s the Youth Theatre. Some of them want to do something.’

  ‘Slip some acid in the stovies, no doubt.’

  ‘They want to sing. They’ll do a good job. Elaine’s got a lovely voice.’

  ‘OK, OK. I know she does, she’s my niece. That’s where she gets it from. The weans can sing if they want to. Lawrence’ll not like it, though.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Dear me.’

  ‘I may even be glad he doesn’t like it.’

  ‘Just the sort of attitude I’d expect from a bourgeois-artistic parasite. Give them a job and they won’t thank you. You’d be different if you’d been through the war.’

  ‘Graham.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Aye, hen, I’ll probably do that. There’s a tupperware box full of maggots I put to cool off in the fridge. Make them sleepy. I’ll need to fetch the little buggers. We don’t want Heather to find them. She’ll only scream and wake them up. Ta ta.’

  ‘Graham? Graham!’

  The back of Graham’s bunnet progressed serenely away.

  Margaret walked outside and sat on the car-park wall, her feet on the pavement. It was cold, her breath ruffed out and vanished, reaching into the road. You never thought how far your breath might travel. You must walk through other people’s breathing all the time, everyone really much closer than they thought.

  It was November today. Last week had been October, now this was November and on it would go, right through, you couldn’t stop a month once it was started.

  Every year, in November, her father died. In March, her daddy had his birthday; June was hers; Hallowe’en and Bonfire Night and then he would die.

  He did it at home without telling anyone, some time on the eleventh or the twelfth. Margaret wanted to be more exact than that, she wanted to have felt it when he died, to have noticed the time a cold came to her soul. She should have noticed.

  All that his neighbours could tell her was that his lights had gone on in the evening and were never turned off. His curtains were drawn and not opened, he didn’t walk out for his paper and fresh rolls. That night, in the flat below him, Mrs Mitchell didn’t hear him pace.

  The ambulance men found him in his reclining easy chair, the footrest up and his dressing-gown worn over shirt and trousers, dark red slippers and black socks. His hands were resting across At Swim Two Birds – a book he read again every two or three years. His eyes were closed.

  She missed him.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hiya, it’s me.’

  ‘Hello me. What’s wrong?’

  Colin could usually tell if something was wrong. Maybe he guessed from the way she made his phone ring,

  ‘I’m fed up.’

  ‘Is Lawrence being naughty again?’

  ‘No, no, he’s not even in. No, I just feel duff. Why are you home?’

  ‘Decided I’d finish up early. Sold enough. I was nearly in your home.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I was going to raid your laundry – take home some underwear.’

  ‘How about coming out here. If you want to.’

  ‘What is wrong.’

  ‘It’s a bad time of year.’

  ‘Fuck. I’m sorry, love, I forgot. I’ll see you in a bit. I’ve got the van. OK?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Thanks.’

  ‘OK. Ta ta.’

  ‘OK. Colin?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I . . . thanks. See you.’

  He arrived with two lemon doughnuts in separate paper bags, two coffees in polystyrene cups and a pizza with mushrooms and ham.

  ‘Keep your strength up.’

  They drove out in the van, then stopped to eat lunch within sight of the long, grey river that filled up the empty docks. The van was parked across brown, metal tracks that slid underneath chained gates, then disappeared.

  ‘He died tomorrow.’

  ‘I know, I remember now. I should have thought before.’

  ‘It’s alright. I’m glad you’re here.’

  Colin brought out tissues and they wiped their hands before they held each other. Colin’s mouth tasted of lemon and sugar. The heater and their breath steamed the windows up.

  ‘Do you want to go home?’ He spoke very quietly and after a long time.

  ‘No, I have to go back. I’ll be fine now.’

  ‘I’ll stay until closing time.’

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘I know that.’

  Margaret left him in the Centre café, watching TV, somebody’s toddler amusing itself with his feet.

  His tea drunk, and reading the paper, Colin overheard a conversation.

  ‘I understand your problem, hen. Dear Lord, we’ve all been there, but there is a solution and this is it. All we need is enough people to put their names down and we can start a credit union. Think about it – one pound isn’t much, but if you’ve got a hundred people, all chipping in their quid . . . What have you got?’

  ‘A hundred pounds. But I couldn’t ever afford to borrow. I couldn’t pay it back.’

  ‘Not with a bank, you couldn’t, but with this, the union helps you save your money, keeps it out the way of your man, you know. You get a wee bit of interest and if you want to borrow, it’s only a wee bit of interest you pay. It’s not like a bank – it’s run by folk like me and you. They understand about bills and the wean’s birthday, the way the wee ones go through clothes. They understand.’

  Colin sold people satellite television; he knew when he heard another salesman sell.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  Colin stood up and turned around to see a woman at one of the tables, with a jerking pushchair parked close by. A thin-lipped man in a dark blue suit was sitting tight beside her. While he spoke, he bobbed his head like a walking pigeon, or a pecking hen.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘Yes.’ BOB.

  ‘I couldn’t help but overhear. You were talking about a credit union.’

  BOB, BOB. ‘I was friend, to this lady. If you would like more information,’ BOB, ‘I’d be glad to take your name and address when we’ve finished here.’ BOB.

  ‘No, that’s alright. I just thought you must know a friend of mine – Bobby Sinclair – he told me all about this, last time we met.’

  ‘Aye,’ BOB, ‘aye, Bobby.’ BOB. ‘Good man, he is.’

  ‘Still mad for the Munro bagging, is he, up those hills?’

  ‘Oh yes, yes, indeed.’ BOB.

  ‘Still racing whores and fucking pigeons? Come on, you can tell me, you’re his pal.’

  ‘He’s doing fine.’ BOB. ‘I’ll say you were asking for him.’

  ‘Please do. You know, he was telling me that loan sharks put out agents where they hear a credit union’s trying to start. These agents pretend they’re from the union, they find out who needs money round the place, then they make them offers they can’t refuse. The loan sharks don’t like credit unions. I don’t think I caught your name.’

  ‘No,’ BOB, ‘no. I don’t think you did.’ BOB, TURN, BOB. ‘Mrs Muir, I’m afraid that I’ve run,’ BOB, ‘out of time, just now, but I’ll be back in touch, I’ve got your address.’ BOB, BOB.

  He picked up his case to leave as Colin cleared his throat and began.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, could I have your attention, please? That little bastard leaving the building, just now, works for a loan shark. I don’t know which one and I don’t care. He may have told you he works for a credit union. That was a fib. If he worked for a credit union, he would know Bobby Sinc
lair, who gets about by wheelchair because he has MS. He doesn’t climb too many hills, our Bobby.

  ‘I think, before he goes, this man had better leave his address book with us, just to save things getting nasty outside . . . Thank you. I don’t think you ought to come back here now, we’ll remember your face.’

  The man bobbed out into the doorway, silence thick behind him now. For a moment he turned and looked at Colin.

  ‘Now I know your face, cunt. I know you, too.’

  A few men made to follow him, one reaching his car with a brick, as he pulled away. Colin stayed inside with the pushchair and Mrs Muir. He bought her a mug of sweet tea, but her hands were shaking too much for her to hold it.

  IN HIS FUTURE, Colin has this memory. Mr Webster leans in close above him and speaks.

  ‘To prove I have nothing against you as a person, I will tell you something nice: you have good teeth.’

  Sometimes Colin almost dreams this now, but it always stays a little out of sight. Although he wakes with the taste of another man’s breath in his mouth, he doesn’t understand this and so is not afraid.

  Colin dreamed tonight, this time something sunny, the air in his room turning hot and sandy.

  In another bed, four miles away, hardly any distance for Colin when he jogs, Margaret is stirring. She turns on her side and shuts her eyes, holding in the sleep, the nice pictures.

  This is summer. A big, honey light is falling from the kitchen window and on to the wooden table that Margaret remembers standing at the centre of the room. She watches herself, her mind in a little girl’s body, sitting on the edge of the table, legs hanging down, the feet heavy. Her skin is that light, child brown it never turns now and both her knees are bloody.

  There was a jump she took. Running by a wall and then jumping, a fall on to her knees. That hurt.

  One knee is in the sunshine and one is not which makes the warm one feel nicer than the other. They both sting enough to make her cry from time to time.

  And quickly Margaret feels happy, because she can hear her father humming. Looking down at the top of her own head and also out through three-year-old eyes, she hears his sounds. He is snipping and clattering somewhere and humming the way he does when he is busy.

  Then he comes, living and moving with thick, dark hair and the sleeves of his blue shirt rolled up high on muscular, pink arms. He looks at her, leaning down and forward, so that she sees mainly the top edge of his eyes.

  ‘Now. I’ll put all this next to you. The plasters and things. No, don’t look. No need to look.’

  He breathes in a little, makes his eyes smile.

  ‘Are you brave, then? I’m not brave. I hate the sight of blood.’

  Margaret hears a laugh then, coming towards the table, is a woman she knows must be her mother, although she has never seemed to know what her mother looked like. The laugh is one that Margaret uses now and comes from a slightly familiar mouth. Eyebrows lift and seem very like her own. Margaret realises how little she has ever resembled her father. She only has his habits, not his looks, which seems ungrateful somehow.

  Margaret’s mother speaks.

  ‘I’m not doing it, Ted. That’s your job. You do that, not me.’

  She laughs again, fades back and away, while little Margaret turns to her father and his bottle of iodine, his small smile.

  ‘Well, that’s decided, then. We won’t like this. This will hurt. But only a bit, only for a minute and it will make things get all well. You’ll be better after. You hold tight. Maybe you . . . hold on.’

  He puts the bottle down and just holds a little dab of cloth, stained with iodine. His free hand reaches out.

  ‘You hold my hand. Mm hm? If you hold my hand I won’t be scared.’

  Margaret sees her father’s head bend over hers and kiss her hair and feels something spread, a thing she sees like fire around her legs.

  The beginnings of a predicted gale is bumping up the street, singing along the telephone wires, just pleasantly melancholy and our time is 01:23. Beyond Margaret’s window, parked cars are blinking as fine rain flattens on their windscreens, beads and runs. There is a slide of tyres, not far away. Colin lies on his back in the dark and hears two women laugh and then gently swear.

  Margaret wakes a little, feeling one tear fall, surely from her daddy and not from her, and make a warm place on her arm. Daddy squeezes her up against him and presses her into somewhere without pain, but with fire.

  Her mind dips down into another summer’s day. Last year? The year before? Near there.

  Some of the Youth Theatre are belly down on the grass, listening to Talking Heads. Gus and Tam and Susan are playing with fire. They’ve done it before. They like it.

  A good, still day like this and they drink their milk, line their stomachs and out with the torches, the spirits, the flame. Probably they need no practice and are doing this more for the fun. For whatever reason, they are practising anyway. Carefully. They were trained with care and far away from Lawrence by an odd-looking man with no hair which apparently helped the fire no end.

  ‘It’s easier like this, man. You’ve got to be smooth. Smooth, man. And careful.’

  He stared that into Gus’s smile one chilly, pale morning.

  ‘Fuck with this, it’ll fuck you right back. It won’t care. And you are going to have to concentrate on that more than anyone here. Your kind of attitude kills. But don’t worry, it normally only kills you.’

  They were all good at concentrating now. And good at fire. When Lawrence was out for the day, they would let it out of its bottle to fly away. This sometimes worried Margaret.

  ‘One day, girls and boys, he will come back and classify you all as offensive weapons. And I will lose my job.’

  ‘Och, lighten up, Maggie. It’s too hot.’

  Gus sucked a long pull from the bottle and let it out in an acrid roar of smoky orange. And again.

  ‘Come on, finish up; it’s nearly closing time.’

  ‘So close up. We’re outside.’

  Susan’s voice appeared by Margaret’s ear.

  ‘Why don’t you try it. It’s dead easy.’

  ‘Fuck, aye. Gonny try it, eh?’

  ‘Aye, go on.’

  The sun seemed to fall sharper, to glare the gravel flat.

  ‘No.’

  ‘S’easy. You just spit.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have a practice. If you can do it with water. You can do it with anything.’

  ‘Like fire.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘No. Do I look crazy?’

  ‘Would you do it, if we said you did?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Yeees! Brilliant, Maggie.’

  ‘No! That was a no. That was no.’

  ‘She looks dead crazy to me. What do you say, Tam?’

  ‘Crazy Maggie. Crazy as fuck.’

  There was something about that. Being called ‘Crazy Maggie’. Little bastards, they knew that would work. Being Crazy Maggie.

  ‘You shower of bastards.’

  ‘That’s us. Come on.’

  It was good. At first she closed her eyes, but the fourth time, she just watched what her breath could produce. It was like her soul coming out. She’d always known her soul would be that colour.

  But she hadn’t been there when what she dreamed now happened. She had gone inside to wash her face and rinse out her mouth which tasted truly revolting. She had smiled at the applause when she finished, even stood to catch some of it, before going inside. Her mind stays out in the sun, watching.

  Gus decided to finish off the bottle of spirits. All but a few of the folk still on the grass had left and he stood with his head tipped back, sun burning along the brown glass as he swung it to his mouth. Then Lawrence’s car parked down in the street and Lawrence got out. Gus spat heavily.

  ‘You there. You. What are you doing? Are you drinking. If you’re drinking, I shall call the police and you’re barr –’

  ‘I’m not dr
inking. If you don’t swallow, it isn’t drinking.’

  Lawrence was closer now. For the people who could see Gus’s face, he was coming too close.

  ‘What are you doing, then? Explain.’

  When Gus didn’t answer, Lawrence threw the question wider. As his head turned, he started to sweat.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Gus spoke over his shoulder to Susan.

  ‘Turn up the music and we’ll show him what we’re rehearsing, eh?’

  ‘Oh, so this is a rehearsal. I’m expected to believe –’

  ‘Shame it isn’t “Burning Down the House”. That would have made it perfect.’

  ‘Next track, maybe. Maybe.’

  ‘Well, let’s go then. Let’s go.’

  Gus began to walk a slow curve, forcing Lawrence into another while the music ran on, sounding oddly unpredictable in the heat and the open air. Tam passed a fresh torch to Gus who watched it thicken away from the breeze, testing the breeze. As Gus lifted the bottle, Susan moved to touch Lawrence’s arm.

  ‘I’d get out of the way, Mr Lawrence. You don’t want burned, do you?’

  Margaret dreams the leap and flutter of fire reflected across windows, shivering heat over walls, putting strange colour into eyes.

  She dreams Gus, arched like a bird. He lets his feet dance, just a touch, careful of sudden turns in the air, the flame. He makes it safe, but lets his face show something wild; finishing the spirits in one final, exploding breath.

  Lawrence may have flinched a little when Gus lifted an arm to wipe his mouth.

  ‘What do you think, then? Mr Lawrence? Good for the kiddies’ parties, pensioners’ outings. What do you think.’

  Lawrence seemed to come to a decision. Nobody could have said what, but he nodded his head a few times in agreement with it before he spoke.

  ‘I think that’s an interesting skill. Not useful, but interesting. The staff are inside?’

  ‘I think so, haven’t seen them since we got here. Outside isn’t their territory, is it?’

  ‘What’s your name? You don’t mind my asking?’

  ‘I don’t mind, I just wonder why you’d want to know.’