The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy (14 page)

David took up residence at my side. ‘Never you mind? That sounds fun.’ He lit a cigarette and wagged the match without looking. ‘I’ll come too.’ He blew out the first plume of smoke.

Wherever I went, wherever I travelled, I found a dance hall. I went alone, even if I didn’t always leave that way. When you’re alone in a dance hall it’s a different kind of loneliness. It’s not like sitting in a bedsit and no one knowing a thing about you. In a dance hall you can be defined by your separateness. You can be both a part of something and not a part. Also, my parents loved it. The dancing. It was how I’d first met the Shit in Corby. He asked me to foxtrot and things followed from there.

I said to David, ‘You don’t want to come with me. It will be full of old people. Go home. Your parents might be worried.’

He laughed. ‘It’s only half past six. And anyway, they’re still on holiday.’

Despite myself, I felt my shoulders slump. ‘And you’re not with them?’

‘You’ve got to be joking.’

David began scouring the oncoming traffic. He stepped out into the road, and I had to yank him back. ‘You can buy me that beer you owe me,’ he said.

I refused to sit beside him on the bus. If he wanted to go to Totnes then of course I couldn’t stop him, but he wasn’t travelling with me and neither was I paying his fare.

‘I don’t know why you’re so touchy, Queenie,’ said David, resting his big boots on the seat near mine. I kept trying to read my library book, but I might as well have been holding it upside down. All I was aware of was this slim dark-haired young man staring at me with your eyes. There were no other passengers and the conductor was upstairs. I felt very much on my own with David.

‘What are you reading?’ Before I could reply, he had got up and slipped the book out of my hands. ‘Proust? Nice.’

He recited the opening sentences:
‘For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say “I’m going to sleep.”
’ As he spoke, he too closed his eyes so that the words came softly like a song already inside him. Then he returned the copy to my lap. ‘I prefer the existentialists myself. Also Blake. Do you know him?’

‘William Blake? Yes, I do.’ I recited, ‘
O Rose thou art sick
.’

‘Smart,’ said David.

The conductor emerged at the foot of the stairs and made his way towards us with the ticket machine. I asked for a ticket to Totnes, please.

‘Me too,’ David repeated. ‘Totnes. A child’s ticket.’ He didn’t say ‘please’.

The conductor scanned David up and down. ‘You? A kid?’ In turn, David folded his long legs and then his long arms and stared straight back up at the conductor. Smiling. I have rarely seen an eighteen-year-old look less childlike.

‘I’m fifteen if I’m a day, sir.’

‘I could throw you off,’ said the conductor.

‘Is that a promise?’ said David.

For the second time, I ended up coming to his rescue. In order to avoid a scene, I said he was with me and quickly paid for his ticket. When David followed me to the Royal, I ended up paying for him to go there too. Later I also ended up footing the bill for a can of Stella, a whisky chaser and a packet of cigarettes.

The dance was under way when David and I arrived at the Royal. You could hear the band, though the music was muffled as if it were coming from beneath our feet.

We stood on the opposite side of the road, watching the new arrivals climb the concrete steps. It was still light, but the illuminated sign flashed the word
DANCING
over the glass double doors and there were two pillars of fifties-style boxed window lights glowing on either side of the entrance. Dancers wore coats over their suits and ball dresses. All that marked them apart from other pedestrians were their silver court shoes and shiny polished lace-ups.

‘What’s the average age here?’ said David. ‘Sixty?’

‘About that.’

‘And they just dance, yeah?’

‘Ballroom dancing.’

‘They should watch it on the telly on Saturday nights.’

‘That’s not the same as doing it.’

‘No?’ I felt him gaze down at me with interest. I didn’t look back at him.

‘No,’ I said.

David lit up a new cigarette. Shook the match and dropped it. ‘So why do you come here? Couldn’t you go dancing in Kingsbridge?’

‘If I went in Kingsbridge, people might know me.’

‘And you don’t want them to know you?’

‘No. I like to go by myself.’

Sometimes people judge their happiness by the price they have to pay for it. The more they’ve spent, the happier they think they will be. I judged mine in those days by how far I had to travel. David seemed to understand. He pressed his lips into a smile and gave several slow nods. It felt strangely pleasurable to gain his approval.

I said, ‘Look. You’re much younger than everyone else. Why don’t you do something different? I’ll meet you for the last bus home.’ I was already beginning to feel responsible for him.

David threw out his arms and began to sing, ‘I’ve got the music in me.’
Shh
, I went. People were turning to look. He pulled a serious face, but it still had a spark.

‘I won’t embarrass you in front of your friends,’ he said.

‘I told you already, I don’t have friends here. I dance.’

David gave a shrug. ‘Whatever you do, I’ll sit quietly.’

I explained that people might think it odd: a woman just turned forty and a boy who was soon to start Cambridge.

‘What does it matter what people think?’ he said.

His voice was soft but the words were so sharp, it was like being
with a you I didn’t know. I had to drop my face to hide the blush.

David tossed his cigarette butt at the road. ‘So do you think they’ll let me in? Or is there a ban on vitality?’ He pulled his fingers through his thick hair, trying to smarten it. I opened my handbag and passed him a comb.

‘The Royal is only a dance hall,’ I said. ‘It’s not a club or anything. Mostly it’s just a lot of old people and me.’

‘Yeah, yeah, you told me all that. How do I look?’

He moved forward a little, and the flood of lights shone on his face. How did he look? Very fine. Ivory-skinned. Long chin, carved cheekbones. Eyes like blue lamps. ‘You’ll do,’ I said.

‘Come along, Q.’ To my surprise, David took my hand in his and steered me across the road and up the flight of steps. I don’t believe he even thought about it. I barely reached his shoulders, and I had to move fast to keep up. I paid for the two of us at the kiosk without looking at the woman behind the window and then we moved through the double doors, hand in hand again. When we reached the area of light and shadow between the foyer and the dance floor, I experienced a shiver of excitement that I had not felt before at the Royal.

I was not yet a regular. I’d gone there only six or seven times. There were a few men I knew better than others, but I was not looking for a relationship because I had you, Harold. My love was already taken. So if a man approached me on the dance floor, I partnered him but didn’t offer my address. If he led me up the blue-carpeted stairs to the bar, I paid for my own drink. Generally I straightened my spine and shifted to one side if he reached to place a hand on my shoulder.

‘You have the most beautiful mouth,’ said a man once. ‘Like a
rosebud.’ His hair was so slick it looked plastic. ‘I may not be able to resist kissing you.’

‘Well, why don’t you try very hard?’ I replied.

He gave me his phone number in case I changed my mind and fancied dinner.

I took up ballroom dancing after Oxford. I’d realized I had no wish to be an academic, and I’d headed for London to find work. One afternoon I passed a dance hall in Woolwich, and the sound of that rhythm – slow, slow, quick quick slow, slow – stopped me in my tracks. I had no dancing shoes then. No ballroom dress. But I paid at the kiosk and went inside, sitting in the dark where no one could see me. I stayed all afternoon. Life wasn’t so easy then. I was working in a bar to make ends meet. But when I watched the couples dancing, sequinned dresses, white frilled shirts, a swing to the right, a sashay to the left, I saw beauty again. That is how it began, my ballroom dancing. It’s a bit like asking a person how he started smoking. The habit suited my need.

And I don’t know why Thursday was my evening at the Royal. It happened that it was a Thursday the first time I went, and so it became the way I did things. Like most people who are free-falling, I’ve always clung to routine.

The dance floor was already crowded when David and I entered the hall. I chose a round table towards the back, away from the yellowy light of the chandeliers. At the opposite end of the hall was a stage with red plush curtains. The band played a midpaced swing. I bought David his beer.

From the way David sat, hunched forward, his knee jigging up and down like a piston, his chin crammed in his hand, I assumed he
loathed the Royal. I couldn’t help seeing the place through his eyes. It was just a dingy low-ceilinged hall with fake crystal lights and a load of old people shuffling arm in arm. Even I in my blue dress looked dumpy and made of wax. What was I doing? I wouldn’t come again.

I reached for my clutch bag. I said we should go.

Now? he said.

Yes, now, David.

But it wasn’t finished, he said.

I was tired, I told him.

‘I thought we were going to dance?’

‘You and me?’ I laughed again. Mistake.

‘If you don’t want to dance with me, I’ll do it on my own.’ He stood so abruptly that the gold legs of his imitation rococo chair jerked up and the chair flew backwards, landing upturned. He strode towards the dance floor, brushing the shoulders of other onlookers and seeming not even to notice. I followed him at a small distance. I didn’t want a scene. Before I could stop him, he’d pushed his way to the centre of the floor. There he was, in the middle of all those lilac ladies and balding men, like the heart of a ghastly pastel-coloured, slow-revolving wheel. I stopped at the very edge, just in the shadows.

I thought of the first time I saw you, swinging your body in the snow. I was so lost in the memory, so very different from the dance hall, that for a moment I forgot about David. I thought only of you.

Then someone said, ‘What’s that kid doing?’

David stood absolutely still. He seemed to have forgotten where he was. A pair of older ladies in matching taffeta dresses shuffled into him and bounced off again. Then something happened.

David stretched out his arms and pointed his right foot. He started an elaborate tango up and down the length of the dance floor. He glided, he swooped, he twirled. People paused to look and frowned before returning to their more conventional steps. Within moments, David seemed to grow tired of his dance, and he drew his elbows tight at his sides. He began to rumba. And when he’d had enough of that, he started a mock waltz with an invisible partner. He was practically galloping the circumference of the dance floor, dodging other couples. The sides of his greatcoat – he was still wearing it – flapped like giant wings.

Of course people became irritated. How could they not? They stopped, they broke apart, and one by one they peeled away so that there were only David and a few brave couples left. I still didn’t move.

‘Who’s the wally in the coat?’ said the bandleader into his microphone. There was a flutter of laughter.

But David didn’t seem to notice. He had abandoned his ballroom steps altogether. He was pogo-jumping. I was on the verge of leaving. That’s the truth. If he was capable of bringing a dance to a halt, he was more than capable of getting the last bus. And then I looked again and there was something so unrestrained about him, so singled out and joyful, I couldn’t quite move. It was not the way I’d seen you dance, it was not the way I danced, but it was something all the same. Your son was inside it.

A bouncer stopped beside me and flexed his shoulders as if he intended to hit David. Your son seemed to have that effect on people.

So I marched to the centre of the floor. David’s eyes were closed. His hair and face shone with sweat. But I took my place beside him and I jumped.

‘This is fucking great!’ he laughed.

Yes, I said. So is the foxtrot, David. How about trying that instead?

On the bus home David was quiet. In the end he said, ‘You won’t tell Father that I came with you tonight?’

‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why shouldn’t I?’

‘Mother would get upset. I promised, you know. I promised to stay in while they were on holiday. It’s best not to mention stuff. She gets headaches.’

I felt a small jolt, as if I had briefly lost my balance. I don’t know if it was unease, or something else. Guilt? Why had I not tried harder to get rid of him? He was your son. He wasn’t you.

‘But I’ll see you next Thursday, yeah?’ said David. ‘I’ll come with you again.’

As it turned out, the following week was even worse at the brewery. There were several difficult meetings with landlords. There were complaints to Napier that I was interfering. Meanwhile Nibbs drove so fast I was constantly slamming my feet on invisible pedals. I missed you terribly. I needed to dance.

But I didn’t go back to the Royal that Thursday.

The maker of chairs

S
LOW
,
SLOW
, quick quick slow, slow. Two backwards steps followed by two smaller chassé steps to the side. Feet together, like the pause for a new breath, then you start again.

My father taught me to dance. My mother sat astride a kitchen chair and sang the tune. She was too big for dancing, she told us; she’d only break something. I never understood that, because she must have danced when they first met. In my memory my mother is also shelling peas as I dance, though she can’t have been doing that throughout my childhood. My father placed my small feet on his big boots so that I could get the hang of the steps. Everything has beauty, he said, on a dance floor. Don’t laugh, Queenie. Ask your mother. This is a serious matter.

He was a carpenter. Did I say? He made wooden chairs. Garden seats. He spent his adult life creating places for people to sit, and then he died before he was able to enjoy a rest himself.