Looking For the Possible Dance

by A. L. Kennedy

  ‘It’s my fault – I am insufficiently lubricated for you. Like an old car. I’m sorry. I want to be here for you.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, do you think I can’t do without my hole for a week or two?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, what the hell do you think. Except that you don’t want me round there.’

  This wasn’t the conversation that Margaret had wanted to have; she could feel her stomach shrinking into a cool weight, feel herself running out of words. His voice had changed. He sounded angry, but not quite.

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t feel well.’

  ‘Of course you fucking don’t. Nor do I. What did the doctor give you? Are you taking it?’

  ‘Cream. I said. It stings a lot.’

  ‘Well, don’t feel you have to do anything about that like getting it changed, or taking some paracetamol, just you suffer on your bloody own. OK? I’ll call you sometime.’

  And when Margaret said his name, his receiver was down. She sat for a while without moving, wondering who should ring whom back. Over time, she had developed a superstition that an argument was only serious if it left her with a pounding feeling in her chest. That was the sign that permanent harm had been done, because it was the way she always felt when something very bad happened. Just now, she felt fine: odd and sore and slightly angry, but not bad.

  She tried to make herself dinner, but couldn’t think of something she wanted to eat. She turned on the television and flicked through a variety of news. She walked into the hall and put on her coat. The idea of visiting Colin took her mind off the split. And if he wasn’t in, the walk would do her good. Just take it gently, small steps.

  The Underground was nearly empty. Her carriage roared and screamed its way down electric tunnels with no obvious signs of alarm. Margaret watched the blurs of brickwork and the clear, blue sparks, feeling silly because this always made her nervous. The loop ran beneath the river and she would think, sometimes, of water pressing and pounding in, or of trains colliding somewhere quite near and then lying in wait. Then crash upon crash upon crash. Because she understood how her mind could work, she ambushed herself with the thought that disasters always came when you least expected, so she must really be safe.

  She rose on the escalator, unscathed, and wondered if Colin would be there, what he would say.

  ‘God, I don’t feel frightened about this. I feel alright. Is this alright? I want this to be alright. Don’t make him upset. Don’t make him out.’

  Even walking along his close, she could smell him, his mixture of smells. His door was just at the foot of the stairs, a light showing honey through the glass. She rang the bell and watched his shadow in the hall.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘This is a surprise.’

  ‘I was passing.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t want to see me.’

  ‘Don’t be like that. Can’t I come in?’

  ‘Now you’re here. Aye. Why not.’

  They paused beside each other as they walked to the sitting-room. About now, in the doorway, they would normally have kissed. Colin turned and brushed his hand by her cheek.

  ‘Hello.’

  She paused to look at him.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘You make me very angry, you know that? You never believe I care. I went away and left you once: alright, I know that. But you never forget it, you won’t let it go, so where does that leave me? Mm?’

  ‘I do know you care. But I feel. I feel funny just now.’

  Colin noticed she was crying before she did. He ran his finger just beneath her eye and there were suddenly tears, a weakness rising from her chest and into her throat. They walked to sit on the sofa and Colin licked her eyes slowly while she tightened her arms around his waist.

  ‘JAMES? TELL ME something.’

  His face works its way round until it is pointing at Margaret in the way he would like.

  ‘What do you think of doctors? Do you go to doctors?’

  ARSOLE

  Margaret laughs too loudly for heads in the carriage not to snap round, see James and snap back again.

  ‘Funny you should say that. We must have the same doctor.’

  NO DIFFREN

  ‘Yeah, I suppose so.’

  WAN ME BE DIFFREN SHAPE I SAY NO

  ‘I don’t understand, James.’

  DIFFREN

  ‘There’s a “t” at the end of that.’

  DIFFRENT FUC

  ‘OK, take it easy.’

  MEAN THEY NOT UK ME AS I AM

  ‘I’m sure they do like you. I’m sure they do.’

  NO

  ‘I like you as you are.’

  CHEAT

  ‘I’m not playing. No games.’

  JOKE

  ‘No, serious. Very serious.’

  James held her eyes.

  ‘Anyway, about doctors. You and my father, his name was Ted. Ted. Nice name. He . . . well you and I and he, we all agree about doctors. He never went near one if he could help it. He said it wasn’t a coincidence that hospitals were full of people who had seen their doctor recently. And you could never talk him round, he was very decided.’

  It had been raining when her daddy came back from hospital; some thunder earlier when Margaret opened his flat to put things in his fridge, turn on the heating, boil the kettle perhaps twenty times, look out of the window.

  He stepped down from the ambulance in a jacket and shirt, no tie; as if he’d just got out of jail. The weight of the rain seemed to make him stoop. When she opened the door and saw him, she could think of nothing to say. Loose threads of hair had fallen down over one eye and his clothes seemed too big for him.

  ‘Hello, Princess.’

  One arm swung up, almost out of control, and flattened a hand on her shoulder. She kissed his forehead, smoothed back his hair.

  ‘Oh.’ He tried out a smile.

  ‘Hiya, come in. You’re soaking.’

  ‘Not really. Just tired. Lord, I’m tired.’

  ‘The kettle’s just boiled.’

  ‘Of course. Wouldn’t be home without tea.’

  He stopped moving into the sitting-room, just came to a halt while Margaret walked on. He swayed when he took in a breath.

  ‘Margaret?’ He’d never said it like that before. Never exactly that way. ‘Margaret?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Would you give me a hug?’

  ‘Wh – Of course.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She isn’t sure why she only knew it then, but feeling his face so tight in her hair made her realise that he was taking in her smell. He was inhaling what she was and keeping that safe. Maybe she noticed it that time, because he felt a little desperate, final.

  ‘There’s my Princess.’

  ‘Mm hm.’

  She tried not to look up at his face because her worry would worry him. And she might cry.

  ‘What are we waiting for, then? If the kettle’s boiled, tea would be nice.’

  ‘It’s your house, you don’t have to ask.’

  ‘I know that. But you’ve made it nice to come home to.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Mm hm. Oh, that’s a better chair than they have there. They want you lying down all the time so they put out chairs you can’t sit on. God. God, God, God.’

  Margaret felt very far away when she had reached the kitchen.

  ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘I am now. I’m not going back there.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t look like that. I’m not going back, that’s all. No panic.’

  ‘But if you have to.’

  ‘I’m not going back.’

  ‘Dad.’

  His shirt was damp. The rain. He should have taken it off.

  ‘Don’t worry. Look, they know I have something wrong with my heart and there’s nothing much they can do, but they would love to try feeling about, in any case. I can’t let them do that. It would kill me. Really. I won’t die. I m
ean, I won’t die because I don’t go back there. In the end, I will. I will go away.’

  ‘Sssh.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m tired and I’m miserable. Sorry.’

  ‘It’s alright.’

  ‘No, it’s not alright. These places aren’t meant for people and I’m a person and I will stay that way.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  When their tea was poured and they were both sitting, he coughed and let a sentence slip into the quiet between them.

  ‘I did my best.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I did the best I could. I didn’t know any better. Mm? I’d do it differently now.’

  ‘You’ve no need to.’

  ‘I’d be different with you.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘I would.’

  ‘Sssh. I love you. I love you.’

  This time she pressed her face into his hair. He held her away very slowly.

  ‘Your tea will go cold. Go on. Drink it up. You should dress like a woman sometimes, you know?’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘Uh huh. Go on and sit down.’

  James nudges her with his forearm.

  ?

  ‘Mm? Oh, I was just thinking about doctors, that kind of thing.’

  BOR

  ‘What?’

  YOU BORIN

  ‘Well, you’d better talk to me then, or I’ll go back to thinking and be even more boring. Cheeky bastard.’

  OOOO SHOCKED

  For the second time, Margaret laughed too loudly to go unnoticed and James joined her, applauding softly.

  MARGARET DIDN’T HAVE to visit her doctor again. She healed quite quickly and her pain went away. Her fear of the pain also faded, with a little more time. Another year will pass before Colin has his pain, a pain which will surprise them both.

  He will wake in the chill, misty morning left by a clear, clear night with Mr Webster kneeling on his arms. Webster’s face cranes over him, upside down. Colin will find himself unable to speak, but will listen to Mr Webster speaking with such a focus of attention that he will later remember everything, even the spaces where Mr Webster takes his breath.

  ‘Good morning. I like you. If I didn’t, you’d be waking up alone, something it’s always extremely unpleasant to do. And especially nasty in your position. No, don’t move, relax, just lie, just listen. Don’t move.

  ‘Let me tell you why you’re here. Why this happened. What I believe. Colin, my good friend, I believe we must learn from everything. I believe that nothing ever happens by accident.

  ‘While you’re here, you can be learning. You must. Smell the air. I’ve opened the windows for you, smell the air. It tells you about the city, Colin, everything. Smell the bricks and the sandstone, beginning to warm; smell the edge of traffic, the coming of heat. Smell last night’s piss and the pigeons and the drunk man propped in the street beside his hat. I can smell him dying while the city wakes. It’s all there for me, clear; I can breathe that in. There is nothing deeper in me than my lungs and I can breathe all of that in. Right in.’

  Colin watches Webster’s upside down mouth, the teeth clamping and opening, clamping and opening. Quite full lips.

  ‘Let me tell you a secret. It’s the biggest, easiest secret in the world. The clearest of clear things, so simple it makes me laugh. Right out loud, I’ll laugh. At any time.

  ‘What is it? I’ll tell you. We’re going to die. You and me, Colin, we’re going to die.

  ‘Ssssssssh. Not now. Even you won’t die now. Ssssssssh, my wee man. But we will all die. Everybody forgets that, you know? Listen.’

  Colin feels cool, smooth hands slid beneath his ears and cupping his neck. There is a tension in Webster’s voice, a hardness which appears as something soft, deep, hot.

  ‘You mustn’t forget. Not ever forget. You have to burn your light through, Colin, drink it all down, have it all inside you. Do every tiny thing you want to do. It’s the small things that matter, you’ll always regret the small things you left undone; the time you didn’t touch her face; the days you went walking in springtime and didn’t fucking look at where you were; the sun. Have you ever thought about the sun? The set, the rise, the curve of the sun? You don’t get a day again, Colin, it’s gone and you have to take another one, there’s no time to go back. Fill that time, feel it, you must. If you don’t, then what we’ve done here can make no sense. We might have to do it all again: waste everyone’s time. Be alive, Colin, don’t forget.’

  Mr Webster puts his thumbs on Colin’s eyelids and pulls them back.

  ‘Look at me, Colin and don’t forget. You have to find out how to live.’

  Then the thumbs are lifted off and Colin feels a kiss come on his forehead, then a flutter of breath before the weight leaves his forearms. An incomprehensible pain he has, surges again and hard shoes start to walk away from him. In the air there is a trace of aftershave. Mr Webster’s voice appears again, far away to the left, echoing off empty floorboards and bare walls.

  ‘When I leave, I will call an ambulance and then they will call the police. Feel free to tell them anything you like. After all, it’s a free country. We need only exercise our common sense. Mmm?’

  There was a smile in Webster’s voice. Colin could feel it even as it drew up and back, quite out of sight.

  ‘This was a good lesson, Colin, don’t forget it. Don’t forget.’

  THE CEILIDH WAS set now, it had a date. Graham announced it officially one early October afternoon. He stood on the café counter, tapping lightly at a mug with one of Heather’s serving spoons.

  ‘Your undivided attention please. Ladies and domino players, I have the unalloyed joy of announcing that the Grand Unstoppable Fisherman’s Ceilidh will take place on Friday the Eighth of December, from half-past eight until early the following morning, at which point a full English breakfast will be served on the croquet lawn. I would encourage you to tell your friends and relations the good news, dispatch urgent telegrams to economic refugees in distant parts and generally beat the drum. The evening will only be adjudged successful if scores of you die happy in a wild conflagration of song. I thank you.’

  Graham’s oration ended with a moment which many would find at least confusing, if not magical.

  Mr Lawrence’s door snapped open and revealed Mr Lawrence’s form. Every eye ticked round to meet him. Graham’s form snapped first upward and then down behind the counter, seeming at one point to almost float, and then descend a little faster than his hat. Mr Lawrence’s gaze raked round to the counter, pulling with it the attention of the whole, still room. Perhaps sixty eyes, in various pairs, stared at the space where Graham must surely be and found nothing, or less than a flicker of a falling hat, a passing distortion of normal sight. Lawrence almost staggered, pulled back by the hand he had left tight round the doorknob. He cleared his throat and then almost whispered, ‘Keep the noise down,’ before disappearing back into his office again.

  Slowly, from table to table, people began to applaud, in perfect silence, always keeping a little air between their hands, so the palms wouldn’t meet. There was laughter, utterly smothered, and great, shouting absences of sound. Normality only began to return when Graham had emerged from the gentlemen’s toilet and taken his bow.

  In the time it took for Graham to buy his tea and pick a seat, choices were made. Everyone knew that Graham had jumped behind the counter, not vanished at will, everyone knew he had slipped along against the wall and darted into the toilet from the kitchen door. He had not transported himself. But everyone chose to believe in magic, in transportation and vanishing.

  Margaret missed the whole thing. She was in the office, taking a call.

  ‘Hey, Graham.’

  ‘Hey, Maggie! Hiya Crazy. Got the date in your diary? Eighth December.’

  ‘Um? Oh. Yes. Yes. But what’s all this I’ve heard about you. Your disappearing act.’

  ‘Och, that wasn’t anything. Just other folk’s daftness. Igno
re them, hen.’

  ‘No really, it sounded very impressive. I wish I could disappear whenever Lawrence was after me.’

  ‘You can.’

  ‘Show me.’

  ‘Hand in your notice, quit. Nothing can happen now that’ll change him, this place is just going to die. We’ll move on when we have to. Just leave.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘We won’t thank you for it.’

  ‘I don’t expect you to; you’re not why I’m staying. I couldn’t get a job anywhere else. This is all I’m qualified to do.’

  ‘Do this somewhere else.’

  ‘It would be the same.’

  ‘Can’t help you, then. You can only disappear if you want to; if you know how. Or other folk can help you. Polismen, they’re very good at disappearing folk. Tell you the truth, hen, I’m pissed off with all this magic shite. It seems to have caught the boys’ imagination. Know what they call me now? Magician Graham. Well, if I was a fucking magician I’d really be disappeared. I’d be out of the close with the whoor above me and the junky underneath; I’d have no poll tax overdue. I’d be out there writing my novels, singing my songs, choosing not to shop in Marks & Spencer’s because their food is overpriced and shitey and the entire fucking place is completely obscene. Flying the flag across Europe with their Melton Mowbray pork pies when how many folk in this city, just in this city, needn’t bother their arses with going in. No point. What would we buy? What would be in our price range? Magician Graham? Magician nothing. Not to mention my private life.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Of course you are. What human being wouldn’t be. Doing something about it, now that would be magic.’

  ‘Graham . . .’

  ‘It’s alright, I’m just brassed off. It isn’t you. It isn’t you.’

  ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘No, well no really. Nothing out of the ordinary. Sometimes it feels worse than usual, I suppose. Nothing’s happened.’

  ‘Well, if you need to talk or anything, if you want a sit in the quiet. You know.’

  ‘I won’t hesitate to ask. But if I want to sit in the quiet, I just go home. There’s no one else there, now. If you get my meaning. Old, tired and single again. You’re a good girl, get out of here, will you.’