Dance On My Grave (22 page)

After a long soak in this sort of candied vinegar I got fed up. Slept an hour or two. Woke. Shoved on the cans and played a tape of Britten’s Quartet No. 3, which offers cauterizing passages of unsentimental sadness. A couple of times through and I was asleep again. Woke at dawn when one of the cans got pushed off my ear and trapped my nose as I turned over in bed. (Audiosphyxiation might, come to think of it, be a novel and amusing means of expiration.)

Sometimes you go to sleep grated, like me that night, and wake up in the morning spun-dried, but all of a piece again. I did that morning. Didn’t have to think about it, just do it, thus:

I folded the note, wrote her name on it, slipped it into the window of a cassette box, with a tape of the Beatles’
Let it be
inside. Then I sneaked out of the house before my parents were up—Sundays they lie in till about 10.30—cycled to Kari’s house and dropped the package through the letterbox.

23/What happened next I can’t quite believe happened to me. If anyone had told me beforehand I could do such things I would have clocked them one for being so cheeky. No, I wouldn’t; I forgot, I’m a pacifist. No, I’m not; I’m just not very good at fighting so I don’t go around laying them on people in case they lay a few back on me. But you know what I mean. Which is that the following events are so astonishing to me, are so unlike my imaginings, so out of character, that I can only assume they were aberrant. (It is a relief that Mr Oz agrees: in fact he suggested this in the first place.) Still, I can’t write it all down as me, as ‘I’. I’d feel too uncomfortable.

All yesterday I chewed over this problem; wrote nothing. (Usual stunt: cans on; tape after tape; doodle on a note pad waiting for a thought that wants to be written down. Odd, I’m always certain which few thoughts want to be written down out of all the chaff blowing in the cerebral wind. And all the time, feeling physically weak,
heavy, lethargic. Mute too: there is nothing sayable to anyone. Never thought, starting this lark, writing down what has happened to myself would be so difficult. It isn’t what happened that causes the sweat, but how to tell what happened. Like jokes—some people can tell them, some people can’t. [Barry couldn’t.] I guess the same is true about telling terrible tragedies like mine. Anyway, this next Bit was one of the hardest to decide about.)

Only very late last night did the idea I needed turn up, and then I was so whacked I had to leave off till this morning. Solution: If what happened feels like it happened to someone else, then tell it like I was someone else. Simple? Seems like the simple answers always take the longest to sort out.

24/

A DAY AT THE MORGUE

Starring Henry S. and Kari Norway

Here is how Henry S. Robinson got to see the dead body of his mate Barry Gorman with the assistance of his new friend Kari Norway.

When Kari suggested the plan that Sunday afternoon, Henry thought she had gone mad.

‘You’ve gone mad,’ he said to Kari.

‘I am not mad,’ she said. ‘You are, otherwise you would not be wanting to do this thing. Well, maybe I am a little mad for helping you.’

‘But,’ said Henry, ‘I can’t dress as a girl and walk up to the door of a mortuary and calmly ask to see one of the corpses.’

‘That is the only way,’ Kari said.

They had argued the ins and outs of this plan for hours. Kari had found out by telephoning the morgue that only
official visitors were ever allowed to view a body, and then only by appointment.

‘So the only way in is by deception,’ she said to Henry and Henry thought to himself how cold and calculating Kari could be. ‘There is bound to be a man in charge of a place like that,’ she said. ‘On Sunday he is likely to be a relief person, just to keep an eye on things and deal with emergencies. That means he won’t know the regular details so he’ll be easier to bluff. And a man will not resist a distressed girl who only wants to view her dead boyfriend but isn’t allowed to because her boyfriend’s mother is being against her. Which is half true anyway. Still, you will have to play-act well.’

‘I can’t do it,’ Henry said many times, but he knew all the time he would have to try.

‘Let’s get on with it,’ Kari said. ‘I have had enough of you pussypawing about.’

‘Pussyfooting.’

‘Don’t quibble.’

‘You said to correct your English.’

‘You are just trying to put off. Strip to the waist. We’ll start with your hair.’

All this was going on in Kari’s room in the Greys’ house, which was deserted because the family had gone to visit Mrs Grey’s mother in London for the day, leaving Kari in charge.

First she clipped at the longer ends of Henry’s hair with sewing scissors. Then she pulled on a curly blonde wig, which, she said, came from Mrs Grey’s store of clothes. She tucked and fitted till she decided it was right.

‘The damn thing feels like a hairy crash helmet,’ Henry said.

‘Good enough for now,’ Kari said, removing the wig. ‘Your face next.’

She sat Henry on a stool in front of her built-in washbasin and dressing-table, part of the wardrobe unit that occupied all one wall opposite her single bed (which sported a coverlet blazoned with a large NO ENTRY road sign. Did she plan, Henry wondered, to be single for ever? Though the sign seemed often violated.)

‘You must shave,’ Kari said, rubbing a hand down Henry’s cheek.

‘Why?’ Henry said, peering round her hips to look into the mirror.

‘Your fluff will give you away.’ She left Henry exploring his fluff and came back with a disposable razor. ‘Use this.’

Henry stood at the washbasin. Kari watched from behind his shoulder. He tried a tentative stroke of the blade down his cheek.

‘Yeow!’
he whimpered.

‘Stop fussing,’ Kari said.

‘Hurts!’ Henry said, trying a second swathe.

‘Nonsense. All men are babies.’

‘All women are bullies.’

‘That’s a sexist remark.’

‘No it isn’t. No more than yours.’

‘All men were babies once,’ Kari said, ‘and most of them stay that way. Ask any woman.’

‘I’ll not bandy words when I’ve a razor in my hand,’ Henry said. ‘This is my first time, you know.’

‘Then it is past time you started. Put some soap and water on . . . Here, let me.’ Kari reached over, rubbed soapy water briskly onto his face. ‘Your beard is softer than the hairs on my legs.’

‘You don’t have to shave your legs though,’ Henry said through puckered features.

‘Of course I do!’ Kari stood behind him again, watching in the mirror.

‘What?’

‘What what?’

‘You shave your legs?’

‘You don’t know? Men want women with soft hairless legs, so we give them soft hairless legs.’

‘By shaving them?’

‘That’s the easiest way. You really didn’t know?’

‘No.’

Kari laughed. ‘You are rather innocent after all, dear Hal, aren’t you!’

She bent towards him, kissed him on the ball of his shoulder.

Henry nicked his chin and yelped.

Kari, laughing again, said, ‘First blood to me!’

Henry finished shaving himself. ‘What now?’

Kari said, ‘A very little make-up to emphasize your prettiness. But nothing that might call attention to you. Discreet.’ She considered his face, sitting him on the end of the bed and herself on the dressing stool between Henry and the mirror. ‘A little foundation, a touch of lipstick, a hint of mascara to sharpen your eyes. That will be enough.’

‘I don’t like this,’ Henry said.

‘You are not asked to like it,’ Kari said, getting busy.

Henry endured being worked on. Had the purpose not been so daunting, he would have enjoyed such pampering. He liked being handled.
Correction
: By some people he liked being handled. Kari’s fingers were soft, precise, firm. Pencils drawing sensational sketches. But she was working quickly, anxious to be done. Was she, Henry wondered, already regretting her crazy notion?

Reminding himself of why Kari was drawing on his face put a silence on him which Kari heard through the fingers. Her eyes carefully avoided his till she finished.

‘Yes,’ she said when it was over. ‘Stand up.’

Henry tried looking in the mirror; Kari blocked his view.

‘Not until you’re dressed, then you’ll see the proper effect.’ She handed him a pair of honey-coloured tights. ‘Put these on.’

‘No,’ Henry said.

‘Yes,’ Kari said. ‘You can’t wear jeans. They show you are a man. The only suitable dress I have will show some of your legs. They must be properly covered. Men always look at women’s legs. At their breasts and their legs. You must be right.’

‘This is awful,’ Henry said.

‘Do you want to change your mind?’

He thought about this, vacantly, finding no answer.

‘Did you—what is the word?—dither like this with Barry?’ Kari said briskly. ‘He was not a person who dithered. No wonder he was losing interest.’

‘Shut up!’ Henry said, stung.

‘Then get on with it. Perhaps it is a mistake. Perhaps you can’t do it after all. You haven’t the courage.’

Henry scowled at her.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘Are you going to stand there and watch me?’ Henry said.

‘O, for heaven’s sake! What are you afraid of? Is there something special about your body? You are a prim! I’ll turn my back, but I am not leaving the room. It would be ridiculous.’

Henry was so angry by now he tore off his shoes and socks, his jeans and underpants, throwing them on the floor.

‘And,’ Kari said, arms akimbo and her back to him, ‘be rather careful with those tights or you’ll ladder them. They’re expensive and I do not have another new pair.’

Henry huffled, concertina-ed the nylon hose, sat on the
bed, slipped his feet into the legs, pulled them up, wriggled his thighs and bottom into the tights, smoothed them, hated the feel of the stuff against his skin.

For fear the tights would slip and fall about his ankles, he pulled his underpants on over them. Besides, wearing his underpants helped him retain some sense of still being himself.

He said, subdued, ‘What next?’

Kari turned. ‘A bra.’

‘O, God!’ Henry said, drooping.

She helped him into the straps, adjusted them to fit, fastened the hooks, stuffed wads of cottonwool into the cups.

Henry watched Kari fiddling to get the bra looking natural. The strange sensation of entrapment round his chest brought back a memory of childhood: his mother strapping a halter round him so that he could play safely in a kind of bouncing swing. He remembered giggling with excitement and anticipated pleasure, his mother smiling and trying to restrain his exuberance while she fastened the clips. How old would he have been then? Three? Younger? Was this his first memory?

Kari tugged gently to snug the bra firmly to his chest.

Now it was the two boy children on the beach the day before who came to Henry’s mind, with the woman slowly, patiently dressing them after their play while they babbled to each other, taking no notice of her while submitting to her attentions, like princes attended by a body slave.

‘Now the dress.’

Kari held it, bunched above his head. He entered, stooping under it and straightening up, as he might a long shirt, his arms up into the sleeves, and then, the dress released, its folds of light cotton falling about him loosely.

He put his arms down. Kari circled him, smoothing, arranging, adjusting, assessing.

‘Stand properly,’ she said. ‘Look like you’re wearing the thing, instead of it wearing you.’

Obedient, he posed himself, blotting from his mind what he was, what this made him. He was acting, he told himself, playing a part. He must pretend; that was the only way.

‘Let me see your hands.’

He held them out.

She inspected, holding them in hers.

‘They’re slim enough, but bony. Try not to draw attention to them. No, I know. Wait. Sit down.’ She took some unisex sandals from a cupboard and dropped them at his feet. While Henry worked his toes into them—they were a shade too tight—Kari left the room but was back quickly, before he had managed to fasten the straps.

‘Whose are these?’ he said. ‘They pinch my toes and ankles.’

‘Hobble all you like till you get there. But you must walk properly then. Suffer. You deserve to.’

‘You’re really kind, you know that!’

Kari pulled the stool close to him, sat with a small box on her lap, which she opened. Henry saw inside a jumble of jewellery: bracelets, rings, bangles, necklaces, brooches. She tried first one thing, then another, holding each trinket against him. A brooch and a necklace at his throat but rejected both for a kind of medallion on a short gold chain. Various bracelets on his right wrist, settling for a jangly tangle of thin wiry silvered bangles. On the third finger of his left hand she finally slipped a ring with a mock diamond set in the gold circle.

‘You’re supposed to be engaged, visiting your dead boyfriend,’ she said. ‘I think that might do. Stand up again.’

Awkward, pinched, uncomfortable, feeling manacled, he obeyed.

Kari took the wig from the dressing-table, pulled it carefully onto his head, touched up its hair with a comb and her fingers. Stood back. Surveyed him, up and down.

‘You’re not quite ready yet,’ she said, ‘something is missing.’

Henry sighed, his breath crushed between panic and dejection.

‘Or there is something there that shouldn’t be perhaps,’ Kari said, after further scrutiny.

‘Can’t I look?’ Henry said, desperate.

‘All right.’ Kari opened the wardrobe door hung behind with a full-length mirror, and stood back for him to see.

And suddenly there was Henry, facing himself. But not.

He recognized nothing that was him. Except . . .? Yes, except for one feature. His eyes. They gazed back at him from the glass. His. And pained. Even frightened at that moment behind their astonishment.