Authors: Aidan Chambers
Dance On My Grave (25 page)
And I might as well have been guided by radar—controlled by whom? Barry’s ghost?—because I have no memory of the weather or the kind of night it was. Not a memory I could swear was accurate. No rain, because I would remember being wet. But how dark? I close my eyes, try to recall. I see the wall, grey, shadowed deeply but catching a glim of light from a street lamp some distance down the road. (Subconsciously I must have chosen this spot because it is in a darker patch of road.)
When I drop onto the ground on the other side I am among graves. Older ones. Stately and aged. Their headstones stand like old folk parading in an ordered silent crowd. The night is even darker here; gloomier, even more shadowed. Now, remembering, I am afraid. This is, after all, a burial place. But then, all I worried about was the living. Me being caught.
I waited, listening. A car purred by on the road, its headlights flooding the trees. After it, no footfall, no cough, no voice, no husp of breath. Rustlings among fallen leaves. Mice?
I’d brought a small flashlight. Shading its face with my hand, I switched it on. Let a beam find the ground at my feet. Guide me through the graves to find the path, a warm sandy glow in the night. Switched off.
The Jewish burial ground lies at the back of the main cemetery, separated by a hedge. The path, worming through the lines of graves, would take me to it. I set off, keeping to the grass at the path’s edge so that my feet would not give me away on the crunchy gravel.
Pain thumped in my head at every step. But there was relief in knowing I was doing what I had promised. Somehow it was easier to breathe; and the cool night air on my forehead was soothing too.
30/Looking across the dark line of hedge, the Jewish part was a ruckled white sheet laid over the centre of a square field of cropped grass. I had no difficulty pushing through the loose bushiness of the privet, and did not pause for thought. I was urgent, spelled. Wasn’t even wondering any more how I would know Barry’s grave; I felt I would when I saw it.
Began searching along the first line of graves, walking down the row. Inspecting the troops. Stand by your graves. Most were decked out with white headstones and surrounds, black-lettered epitaphs in English and Hebrew scored into the faces. Some were topped by a plain slab of stone, like a lid on a box. A few were marked by shiny black memorials, lettered in gold. One or two leaned precariously, as if the body beneath had turned over in its bed and tipped the stone askew. Singles, doubles; here and there gaps between, waiting no doubt for relatives to join them. And every so often a mound of soil, mostly unmarked except for a little metal stake at the foot with a number printed on a disk. They looked like big lollipops, and marked the new graves occupied during the last year.
Barry’s had to be one of these. In the first three or four rows none was new enough to be his. Their soil was dry, crusted. But then came one that was fresh. I switched on my torch. Played it over the hump of dark earth. Barry’s. But how to be sure?
The grave was at the end of a line, on an aisle that
separated the square patch of burial ground into two blocks, like seats in a theatre. The lollipop stake was no use. I pulled it out, inspecting it closely back and front. But nothing; only the number. And what’s in a number?
I walked round the grave, hoping to find some sign, as though Barry, before they stowed him away for eternity, might have dropped some clue, telling me he was there. Ridiculous. Nothing, of course.
The headstone on the grave next door was larger than most, and one of those that leaned on its side. As I edged past along the narrow strip of grass separating it from Barry’s grave, the light from my torch spilled across its white face.
The black letters of the name DAVID GORMAN spoke out at me. I had found Barry; this man next to him had to be his father. The dates on the headstone fitted. And on the other side was a grassy gap, space for two more graves before the next memorial staring ghostly into the night.
31/I don’t much like telling what happened next.
I started crying. Stood there between Mr Gorman’s grave and Barry’s, staring at the pile of earth spotlit at my feet, tears began streaming down my face. At first I thought they were beads of sweat caused by the exertion of getting here. But my eyes filled, my nose ran, my breath erupted in my throat, and I knew in the numb core of myself that I was weeping.
The thing is, I didn’t know what I was weeping about. That probably sounds crackers. (But I am—I told you so at the start of this.) What I mean is, I wasn’t crying
only
because of sadness. I was also crying because of anger. In fact, I felt angry more than I felt sad. I didn’t know
why—not then. (I do now, I think. But if I am to keep everything in its right order so that you’ll understand properly, I can’t tell you why here; it comes later.)
Being angry as well as sad, but not knowing why I was angry, made me even more upset. I started gasping for breath as the tears choked me. This made me worry about being heard. I switched off the torch. Didn’t know what to do. Walked this way and that beside Barry’s grave. Felt weak. Unthinking, sat down on the lid of Mr Gorman’s grave. Blocked my mouth against my knees. But this only restricted my breathing even more. Stood up, gasping, tears blinding me now. Staggered. Tripped. Found myself tumbling over Barry’s grave. Went sprawling across it.
Scrambled to my knees astride his heap of earth. And in a frenzy began hacking, stabbing, digging, using his lollipop number-stake as a spade, flinging the soil aside in any direction. Some I heard skittering across the table top of Mr Gorman’s grave, making a hollow sound.
32/Did I want to reach him? (Reach for him?)
Did I want to join him? (Join in him?)
Either/Or
2
. Take your choice. Squared or not. I didn’t know. Wasn’t, by then, in a fit state to think at all. As mindblind as I was tearblind.
I don’t know how long the fit lasted. Seconds only I guess. I gave up when the metal spike of the lollipop bent so that it was useless any more for digging with. I threw it away in an exhaustion of failure and slumped onto the pitted mound.
I was panting, sweating, shaking all over.
One thing: My headache was gone.
Probably washed out of me by sweat and tears.
I calmed down. Slowly.
I did not come here to dig holes, I thought.
But why this? Why any of it? Why?
Why why why why why why?
33/I felt as though I had been asleep. A long sleep. That I had woken and was refreshed. But yet empty of energy. A tide at slack water between ebb and flow.
I came here to dance, I told myself. I promised. So I must dance.
I’ve seen films of foals getting to their feet soon after being born. That’s how I was, standing up now. Bendy-legged. Knees wobbling and buckling. More struggle than strength. I stuttered about, trampling on the disturbed soil of Barry’s grave. A kind of dance I suppose. I tried raising a foot to perform an improvized jig, stumbled, brought my foot down into the pit I had scooped in my frenzy, and, twisting my ankle badly, pitched forward, stifling a yowl of pain.
I flung out a hand to save myself. Found the corner of Mr Gorman’s tilting headstone. Grabbed. And hauled myself towards it, hopping on my good foot.
The headstone held me for a moment and then came away in my hand. With a slow grace it toppled, and with a hefty thud dropped sideways across the top of Barry’s grave, then collapsed face down upon it. Chop and splash. The ground seemed to shake, and the noise, in my ears, was thunderous.
I leapt away from the falling slab, forgetting my hurt ankle. Only to be reminded of it again as I landed, this time not able to smother a yell of agony.
So here I was, rending the silent night with bellows and thuds. Suddenly I was scared. Someone must have heard. I had to get away. Scarper.
Now
.
I scrambled on hands and foot, wincing, back to the hedge. Thrashed a way through, regardless of spikey twigs and clawing thorns. Hobbled back round the winding paths of the gentile boneyard to my place of entry, and paused, listening hard for any sign of pursuit.
None.
Breath regained, I searched for a way out my gammy foot could manage. Found one at last: a hole in the bottom of the hedge big enough to crawl through into the space between hedge and outside wall. And then, a careful shuffle over the wall, and a slow, one-footed pedal home unseen.
34/
EXTRACT FROM THE DIARY OF A MADMAN
Saturday. . . . Awful. Terrible. Lost control. Went crazy. Digging up the grave, for God’s sake! What’s happened to me? Never felt anything like that before. Like someone had taken hold of my brain and turned it back to front inside my skull.
I’m beat this morning. Ankle swollen. Told Mother I fell down some steps in the dark. She took my clothes away because they were in such a state. Mucky, torn. ‘I’m glad you had a good game of football as well,’ she said. She can be funny sometimes. So I’m back in bed aching at both ends and not feeling too terrific in the middle.
And still I haven’t danced. I’ll have to. Don’t know what to do. Couldn’t bear it if I went berserk again. Too scary. Really losing my mind. People say that: He’s out of his mind. I never thought of it being true; that it could be true. As
ever happening. But it does. It happened to me. And another: I was beside myself. Well, I really was. Standing beside myself, watching myself in a frenzy. All the time a cold unmoving-me watching the mindgone-me going crazy.
I wonder if mad people, the ones they lock up for being mad all the time, I wonder if they have a cold unmoving part of them who knows all the time they are mad, who watches it all happening. Watches what they do; what is done to them. That would be horrible. Because if madness is like that then the real pain for the mad person is knowing he’s mad and watching himself, feeling himself being mad every minute of every day. That would be hell. If that happened to me, I couldn’t bear it so much I’d kill myself. Maybe that’s why mad people do try to kill themselves so often? And when people stop them killing themselves, maybe they go berserk, not because they’re mad, but because they know they’re mad and can’t do anything to help themselves and can’t stand it any more.
I’ve got to talk to somebody. I can’t sort this out by myself.
Later. Kari’s the only one I can talk to. She’s the only one who knows everything. I’ve written, asking her to come and see me. Asked Dad to deliver the note because it was urgent. I said, ‘You told me to ask if I wanted anything. Well, I want this letter delivered. Will you take it for me?’ He looked at the envelope and grinned as if I’d given him a present. ‘A girl?’ he said. I said, ‘A friend. I promised to meet her, but I can’t when I’m stuck in bed, can I? I thought I’d ask
her to pop round and see me. Is that okay?’ He looked at me a while, still grinning. ‘All right, is she?’ he said. I said, ‘How d’you mean?’ ‘You know,’ he said. ‘A smart lass, is she?’ I said, ‘I’ll put Ms Tyke onto you. You’re a male chauvinist.’ ‘Aye well,’ he said, ‘I could teach her a thing or two an’ all.’ I said, ‘She’s Norwegian.’ ‘Foreign,’ he said. ‘They usually are,’ I said, ‘except in Norway, of course, and then it’s us who’s foreign.’ His grin went. I only meant a joke but he took it as snide. Why do I always get it wrong with him? I was sorry. ‘Is it all right for her to visit?’ I said. ‘I don’t care,’ he said, retreating into his usual self again. ‘Nowt to do with me. I’ll ask your mother.’ He turned to go. ‘But you’ll deliver the letter?’ I said. He stopped. ‘Aye,’ he said, fingering the envelope. ‘Might do you some good. Doctor’s no bloody use, that’s for sure.’
35/
ACTION REPLAY
Strange, reading my Mad Diary now. When I was writing it, I just shot the words onto the page like bullets, not thinking about them, but only wanting to get them out of myself because I had no one to say them to. But now when I read it I find it tells me things I didn’t know at the time, didn’t
see
. Like this conversation with Dad. Reading my diary brings that moment back vividly. I can feel the weight of the bedclothes on my legs, the heat around me inside the bed, the jangling aches in my body. And best of all I can see and hear Dad in a kind of microscopic blow up.
And what hits me is that smile when he looked at the envelope addressed to Kari. I even wrote
‘as if I had given
him a present’. His silly chat about Kari and then his parting shot about the doctor being
‘no bloody use’
. More than a grumble. I can hear in the tone of his voice: he was saying, ‘What I think you need the doctor can’t do anything about’. But Kari—a girl—might? There’s hope yet, he was thinking.
Playback.
He knew. He knows. Somewhen or other after I took up with Barry he sussed out what was going on. That Barry was a mate in more ways than men usually mean when they use that word about a friend.
Why should I have thought he wouldn’t? Because I’ve been
assuming
that Dad can’t think? That he’s too thick to notice? God, if that’s right, what a condescending ape I’ve become.
But of course he knows. I haven’t been exactly hiding it, have I? I just haven’t been talking about it.
Maybe one day we’ll be able to talk about it, Dad and me. But not yet, Mz A., not yet. Not till I’ve sorted myself out and know for certain what I am. Which I haven’t yet.
36/‘This is the first time I’ve had a girl in my room,’ I said to Kari while we talked when she visited on the Sunday evening.
‘Lucky you!’ she said.
I’d hobbled to the bathroom before she arrived, spruced myself up, changed into a clean sweatshirt for the occasion, while Mother spring-cleaned my room, ready for royalty.
‘As a matter of fact,’ I said, ‘this is the first time I’ve ever had anyone else in my room—except for family of course.’
‘I nearly didn’t come.’
‘Why?’
‘You abandoned me. Left me to that angry man.’
‘Did he catch you?’
‘O no! I’m much too fast.’
‘Well then!’
‘Well then nothing! He might have done.’
