Looking For the Possible Dance

by A. L. Kennedy

  She had fallen. It was something impossible to realise until it had already come. Now she could remember being less in love, differently in love, improperly in love and she could see an alteration. She had crossed a line. This would change, too, the way she felt would always change, but now she could only foresee a deepening, a growth. It seemed to be a matter of faith and made her very happy.

  When they made love it was better, too.

  Even the Factory seemed a little brighter, despite the weather. Folk would appear in the doorway, faces raw with the wind, needing help with their benefits, hemmed in by forms, and they would ask about the ceilidh. They would offer to cook or to help behind the bar, to sing. A woman arrived and offered her dead husband’s pipes for anyone able to play them. Just to see them in use again. Lawrence kept mainly to his office and often left early.

  The Youth Theatre were on a constant and entirely natural high. Elaine had polished ‘Fareweel Tae Tarwathie’ until you could see the whaler’s sails when you closed your eyes, tall in fields of ice. She made you feel the cold. Gus and Tammy had something unmentionable planned which they would only rehearse in secret and, in the midst of solos and harmonies and rasping throats somebody’s cousin turned up. She was called Toaty Boady and may have been three feet tall but was probably less. Nobody knew how old she was, somewhere either side of seven was the guess. Margaret first saw her sitting on Gus’s knee and singing ‘Teddy O’Neil’ like a tiny, lonely angel. Gus was crying.

  ‘She makes everyone do that, it’s something she’s got. Fucking loud for a wee yin, too, eh?’ He smiled and blew his nose.

  Toaty Boady didn’t like strong language. ‘You fucking swear in front of me and I’ll tell your auld man. I’m only a wean.’

  So Margaret went through her days quite painlessly and spent slightly more time than usual with Colin. They now had copies of each other’s keys.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’

  Margaret woke from her doze on the sofa. Colin was kneeling beside her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fuck, it’s you. Don’t creep up on me like that.’

  ‘I didn’t creep. You were sleeping. I could have tap-danced and you wouldn’t have heard.’

  ‘You could have been anyone.’

  ‘Hardly. Who else has a key?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘You’re grumpy when you first wake up, you know that? I’ll make some coffee.’

  Margaret rubbed the stiffness from the elbow she had lain on and then followed Colin into the kitchen.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No, it’s alright, I should have called first. Anyway, I thought we could go for a drive. Wee drive on a Sunday, out and about. How do you fancy that?’

  ‘Um, fine. Where are we going? Have you eaten?’

  ‘In reverse order, yes, I have eaten and I thought we should go somewhere, somewhere out west. You don’t have to come.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ssssh. That time a wee while ago, you were upset . . . The time of the year and all that. Your father. It’s like, I never met him. OK? And you don’t say that much, right? So. It’s very cold, it’s not the time of year for it, but I thought we could go to the Garden of Rest. Not if you don’t want to. Just a suggestion. You could introduce me. Hm?’

  Margaret moved out from the recess and listened to the radio, still chattering in the other room. She perched on a chair arm and wondered how she should feel. Was this a good thing to do? She’d never been back there, not since the funeral. There wasn’t a grave she could tend, even if she’d wanted to. Her daddy had been scattered somewhere, maybe already floating in the air as she’d walked back to the black undertaker’s car with the strange folding seats, designed to slip back discreetly from people unsteady with grief. She’d hated that about the whole thing – the way that misery had been anticipated, almost rehearsed.

  ‘Margaret, love? Bad idea, eh? Sorry.’

  ‘No, no, I was just in a dwam, thinking.’

  ‘We won’t go if it makes you unhappy.’

  ‘Well, it wouldn’t make me glad. Sorry, I mean, I’d like to go. It just maybe won’t be cheerful. I don’t know. You don’t mind if I cry.’

  ‘No. It might be good.’

  Colin was a great believer in tears. There were times when Margaret noticed they were never his tears. Still, he meant well.

  The Garden was brittle with frost, beds of indistinguishable shrubs, brown and furred with cold. Under the earth there might be flowers, dead or waiting. The dark, heavy trees had bleached cobwebs laced thickly under their green; a green so dark it was almost black. The grey grass seemed to break beneath their feet.

  ‘Dad. Daddy. His name was Edward. Edward Alisdair Hamilton. I never knew he had a middle name until, well, until it didn’t matter.’

  ‘I wish I’d met him. Really. I know he meant a lot to you. I mean, more than most fathers. I know you were very close. The reason I thought we could come here today, I have to take his place.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I want to be important to you.’

  ‘Colin, you can’t be my father. I’m grown up, I don’t even need a father.’

  ‘Do you need anyone?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I need you to be sure about that. I don’t want to be wasting my time. I came back for you.’

  They were walking arm in arm, hands twisted together and both in Cohn’s pocket, when Margaret stopped, they both had to. She didn’t know whether to be angry or to laugh.

  ‘I don’t want to be wasting my time. I don’t want to waste yours. I need you, that’s all, I need you.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you, too. Alright?’

  She kissed his nose and then his mouth, freed her hand to close both her arms around him. Their breath came in sheets around them and an elderly couple passed with their heads turned away. Colin and Margaret sat, looking back at their melting footprints from a wooden bench, the winter sun surprisingly piercing.

  ‘What was he called, again?’

  ‘Ted. Well, Edward. Edward Alisdair.’

  ‘OK. Edward Alisdair Hamilton, I’m taking away your daughter now and I hope that we’re both very happy.’

  ‘He would want that; for us to be happy.’

  ‘I know. If I have a daughter, I’ll be the same.’

  ‘Oh.’

  They drove back in the van, Margaret thinking of driving there that time before, when they gave her the privilege of a lonely place in the first car. For the first time, it had occurred to her that she should have tried to find her mother. If she was still alive, she should have been there. Or would Daddy have wanted that?

  The car had slid on, Margaret only aware of the stares from the pavement and other cars, of the box in the hearse ahead that held her father. The box she didn’t want to follow or think about.

  It seemed that everyone knew what to do apart from her. First her father and his box would leave their car and then she could leave hers. For a moment the bier and the undertakers wedged in the door and nobody spoke or laughed or did anything other than smooth away their mistake and slide on. Everything seemed greased, slipping down into death.

  The crematorium was full. Daddy had dug people’s gardens, had given them flowers, had somehow kept the whole street in a glow of leaves and blossoms, sweet with lavender. And here was the street again with a few lean old men Margaret remembered from the days when her Daddy worked. Men who had come with chairs to be re-upholstered, dealers and suppliers and men who had a strange interest in making wood seem to be old.

  Margaret allowed her head to fall. She walked the length of the aisle, not letting the faces catch her eye, not looking at the box, only staring at the glinting bier wheels and the carpet. Her head should be dropped from sadness, but she felt embarrassment, felt the watching faces were testing her grief, pronouncing it inadequate. When she wept it was out of anger. She couldn’t sing the hymns, wanted to stay in the rainy Garden
, not go back in the sliding car. Some of the faces talked to her and perhaps she spoke back, but she can’t remember what she said. She wanted to go home to her Daddy and tell him about it, talk to him.

  There was no wake.

  As Colin’s van moved into the city the sky across the windscreen was almost blinding. The piercing blue with thin, high smears of white made both of them blink. Margaret wiped her eyes.

  ‘You alright, love?’

  ‘Yes, fine now. I’m glad we went. It’s very bright, isn’t it?’

  ‘Mm hm. Nearly home.’

  Margaret was aware that something had changed for Colin that afternoon. He already seemed more comfortable, self-assured, managing. She didn’t feel that anything had changed for her, but perhaps it would happen slowly, perhaps it was on the way. Certainly, it was nice that Colin was happy.

  When they reached her flat, Margaret went in alone.

  ‘I understand, you want some time to be on your own.’

  ‘You can come round later.’

  ‘I’ll ring first.’

  ‘Aye, OK. You do that.’

  ‘You alright, baby?’

  ‘I’m fine. I feel tired, somehow. But I’m fine. See you later.’

  The telephone woke her and she made coffee for when he came in. They went to bed gently, Colin almost paternal, nuzzling her cheek with his day’s growth of beard, holding her. Although the room was entirely dark, her new winter curtains keeping the streetlights out, Margaret felt there were times when Colin was looking at her. They lay still and breathed on each other, face to face, and she guessed their eyes were open, reaching for something in the soft black.

  Margaret found something in her sleep, something either waiting or brought on by the day. Something not expected.

  She stood in a wide, wide room with a blue curving floor which seemed to bend away towards a distance like the surface of a globe. There was an armchair beside her, square-edged, perhaps yellow, and her father sitting in it. He faced forward stiffly into the arc of blue and Margaret was holding his hand.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m here. I’m right here.’

  ‘But you’re not here with me. I’m on my own. Margaret, I’m on my own. Stay with me.’

  ‘I can’t stay.’

  ‘Stay with me.’

  ‘I love you. I do, but I can’t stay. I can’t be here. I’m not . . . like you. I’m not dead. I would have to be dead to be here. I’m not dead yet.’

  ‘Am I dead?’

  She pressed his hand. She had expected it to fade beneath her touch, at least to be cold, but it felt warm and solid. She could feel that there were veins and bones; all the things that a body is made of. There was a pulse.

  ‘Margaret?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If you loved me, you’d be here.’

  ‘I do love you.’

  ‘But you don’t understand. You and me, we’re the same thing. We’re family. We’re more than family, we’re the same. Two parts of one thing, do you see? And I . . . I love you.’

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘We’re the same thing. When I saw you born, living, I knew. We were the same thing. You made a door in me and you got inside, but now I’m empty there. Margaret? Are you here?’

  ‘When it’s time, I’ll come. I promise. I’ll come. I haven’t forgotten you. I miss you. I want to talk to you and you’re not there. I miss you. We should be in the same place.’

  ‘We are in the same place. You’re in me. Like I’m in you.’

  ‘I can’t see you. Where are you? Margaret.’

  ‘I’m here. You’re just not looking at me. I’m here.’

  As she leaned forward to embrace him, she knew he would go away, sink into yellow and then blue.

  She woke with the feel of his skin on her neck, his voice in her mind, the softness of his kiss.

  ‘What’s the matter? Honey, what’s the matter? You’re crying.’

  Margaret let Colin hold her, knowing she would tell him nothing because he would not understand and because this had been something private. Family business. Strangely, under the sadness she felt a flicker of peace at that; she was sure she would always be family now, even if nobody else ever knew.

  WRIT TO ME

  ‘OK.’

  PLEASE

  ‘I will, I promise. OK? There’ll be a way.’

  ‘Jamie?’

  May flops her magazine down on the table-top.

  ‘Don’t annoy Miss Hamilton, now. I’m sure she’s had enough of you.’

  Irene and May had returned from the buffet car a while before, finding James safely asleep. Irene had taken the seat by the window, keeping her head turned away to the glass. There was something a little discoloured about her face, as if she had been crying or angry. As both women sank behind outstretched magazines there was an air of an argument ended, or at least a truce declared.

  ‘I’m sorry, we didn’t mean to be so long away. James kept you entertained?’

  There is a rattle from Irene as she turns a page.

  ‘Really, I’m fine. We had a nice time. James was great. Very interesting.’

  May smiles, understanding, ‘Work with them, do you?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The handicapped.’

  ‘No, no. I mean, sometimes groups came to the place where I worked. We had good access. I mean, they’re only people. No, I don’t work with them.’

  Irene speaks without dipping her magazine.

  ‘We don’t work with them, either, dear. We just have them with us, day and night.’

  May lets out a tiny breath, too small for a sigh, and then announces, ‘We don’t really want to talk about this now. We’re all a bit tired.’ Nobody knows who she means by ‘we’.

  Margaret and James continue their conversation in silence and whispers, slowly filling another sheet of sugar paper.

  WRIT?

  Yes.

  MISS YOU

  Miss you too.

  SAD

  Yes. I’m sad. Don’t worry.

  SAD

  Around their train brick terraces spin away, bridges and motorways intersect or sway off behind more houses, tangled embankments, sleeper fences and settlements of corrugated workshops. They can’t be very far from Warrington.

  IT WAS D Day, Minus One. A sign above the café said so. After lunch, Tammy and Gus arrived to see if there was anything they could do and everyone forgot to ask them why they weren’t at school. The dominoes players kept to their tables, but their minds were not on the game. Turns were missed and when the sale or return supplies arrived from the Battlefield Bar, all hands abandoned the green baize board and lifted the crates and boxes into the store.

  It became quiet, all through the Factory, with work being done. Men and women all wore the same look. The look that came when somebody said that something needed mending, or baking, or digging, or taking in, when somebody needed them: they were being useful. By closing time, everything that could be ready already was and a skittish crowd left the building, as if it had just clocked off.

  That evening it was Lesley’s turn to lock up so Margaret left the building slightly early, unconcerned by keys. She would have walked directly for the bus-stop, but she heard tentative shuffles and whispers coming from the patch of flattened brick behind the building. Something about the noises was unthreatening so she chose to step loudly round the wall and away from the streetlight, whistling a little.

  Balanced along a sunken line of brick she found Elaine, Susan and Tina; pale, their frozen hands clutching them together into a chain. They stared and then slowly crumbled with laughter.

  ‘Fuck, Maggie, we thought you were one of the boys.’

  ‘Nearly killed us. Feel my heart. Feel it.’

  Elaine declined Tina’s offer and Margaret took the chance to break in.

  ‘What are you doing here anyway? I thought you were a bunch of glue-sniffing axe murderers.’

  ‘Did ye fuck. We’re rehearsing,
what else would we be doing? And this place fucking stinks, all the old wineys come here to sleep.’

  ‘Smells like they came here to die.’

  ‘So why are you here? Elaine?’

  ‘Because we can’t go anywhere else. They won’t let us sing up at the school, we couldn’t do it in our houses and you won’t let us in here.’

  ‘The whole idea was that you took tonight off and had a rest. Your songs are fine, Gus will organise your bit of the evening, he knows the running order. What’s the problem?’

  ‘We’ll be rotten. We need to rehearse. We’ll be terrible. Tina’s new man’s coming to watch.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Well, he is.’

  ‘I’m telling him not to come.’

  ‘Are you fuck. I’m wanting a look at his brother.’

  ‘Ladies, you don’t need to rehearse. You’ll be fine. Just have a bit of confidence, for fuck’s sake. You’ll be great, steal the show. Now go home and get a rest. And you could knock off the fags for the night, Susan.’

  ‘That’ll be right.’

  Lesley appeared, one hand deep in her bag and no doubt poised above a can of mace, or something innocent but sharp. She seemed disappointed when she saw the line of girls, but managed to sustain a moderately threatening tone.

  ‘Is everything OK, Maggie?’

  ‘Aye, fine. It’s just a troupe of wandering minstrels. Lost wandering minstrels. They’re on their way home. No need for the Dobermanns.’

  ‘Have you got a Dobermann, Lesley?’

  ‘I’m allergic to dogs, actually.’

  ‘Oh, she’s allergic, actually, girls.’

  ‘Fancy.’

  Margaret could see things drifting out of control. Again.

  ‘Come on, we all need to go home. Artistes included.’

  They trailed out through the thickening dusk towards the edge of the light from the street.

  ‘Good-night then, girls. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Aye, maybe.’

  ‘Well, Lesley and I will be there, even if you’re not.’

  ‘Go on, Mags, you couldnae manage without us.’

  ‘Even if that was true, do you think I’d tell you?’

  ‘Night Mags.’

  ‘Night, night.’