Dancing Backwards (7 page)

The critic, with Kimberley Crane hard on his heels, wandered into the King Edward Lounge as George was announcing, ‘Are we all ready, ladies and gentlemen? Remember the man leads. No women’s lib on the dance floor…’

‘Delicious.’ The critic looked about with mild approving eyes. ‘It makes one feel that civilisation has not entirely died.’

Kimberley Crane was overtaken by a thought. ‘Would you like to dance?’

‘So charming of you but, alas, my heart…But let me not stand in your way.’

‘No, no,’ said Kimberley hastily. ‘I didn’t want to be a spoil-sport.’

‘How could you be?’ asked the critic. ‘Shall we order? While I may be denied the pleasures of dancing there are still cakes and ale.’ He snapped his fingers at Boris who, recognising a fellow whim of iron, stepped over smartly. ‘Some of those exquisite sandwiches and a pot of Ceylon for me, please.’

Boris turned the blue enquiring gaze on Kimberley Crane. ‘None for me, thanks. Tea gives me a headache. And no sandwiches or cake either. I’m strictly gluten-free.’

‘Anything else I could fetch for you, madam?’ Boris made a respectful-seeming bow.

‘A brandy.’

‘Any special brandy that madam would like?’

‘A double, with a dry ginger.’

‘And not so much of the ginger?’ murmured the critic, apparently to himself.

‘Pardon?’

‘A quote,’ said the critic. ‘They drop two a penny from my lips.’

The band had begun to play ‘Moonlight Becomes You’ when Vi entered and was spotted by the critic who waved at her across the room.

‘Come and join us. We are but auditors at the spectacle but you perhaps are an actor if you see cause…?’

Boris arriving with a tray of tea, two plates of assorted sandwiches, a bottle of ginger ale and a balloon of brandy, set them with exaggerated deference on the table. He bowed to Vi and turned on her the interrogating blue.

‘Tea, madam? Darjeeling, Assam, Ceylon, Orange Pekoe, Oolong, Lapsang, Earl Grey, Lady Grey, Russian Caravan or herbal?’

‘Thank you. Just ordinary Builder’s, please.’

‘Builder’s?’ Boris frowned.

‘English Breakfast,’ said Vi, relenting.

The dancers stumbled, strode or glided by as the critic made delighted little interjections. ‘See that divine green sequinned frock. My maternal aunt had one just like it. And do look, flowers in the hair. I may be mistaken but I think they might be pansies…’

‘I’m going to be a bad girl and break my diet,’ Kimberley Crane said. ‘Can you pass the sandwiches?’

‘Certainly,’ said the critic, handing her an almost empty plate.

‘So sorry, the other, with the cucumber.’

Her sorrow was misapplied. ‘I’m afraid I have eaten all the cucumber. I cannot recommend the egg.’

Boris, arriving with Vi’s tea, reported that due to unexpected demand the cucumber sandwiches had run out.

‘Not even for ready money,’ sighed the critic. ‘Forgive me, I must be away. I am told that there is a napkin-folding class on Deck Six and I am anxious not to miss a second of it.’ He made off with a surprising turn of speed through the tea-tables.

‘D’you think he wanted to get away from us?’ Kimberley was lifting the bread lids of the relics of the sandwiches, inspecting the fillings.

‘I am sure not,’ Vi said, untruthfully.

‘His trouble is he thinks he’s somebody.’

‘I suppose we all are, in a way.’

‘I wanted to talk to him about an idea I have for a play but he felt threatened, I could tell. People are threatened by creativity.’

‘You think so?’

‘God, this egg mayo is disgusting. My nutritionist will murder me.’

‘Perhaps you needn’t mention it.’

‘Oh, I tell Karen everything. She’s very spiritual. She was a priestess in another life.’

‘Egyptian?’

‘How did you know?’

‘A shot in the dark.’

‘Are you psychic?’

‘Heavens, I hope not,’ Vi said.

‘Lots of people are without knowing it. I must get going. I’m booked for a massage. The masseur walks on you with bare feet. It’s divine. You have fun, now.’

Vi, left to herself, did have fun. She was enjoying watching the down-at-heels band and the hesitant, elderly dancers in their
unaccustomed high heels and spangled frocks and hoped that they were also enjoying themselves.

To Mrs Viney’s disappointment, Vi did not embark on a thesis on Sterne. As editing
Ariel
could hardly support her financially, she took a job as a gallery attendant at the Fitzwilliam Museum. This allowed plenty of time for reflection, since, as Vi reported to Edwin after the first day, the work involved nothing more demanding than keeping an eye open for unsupervised children, art thieves and lunatics with penknives (with only the first posing any real threat to the peace and quiet of the museum).

She struck lucky and after a few weeks was posted to Samuel Palmer’s watercolour
The Magic Apple Tree
. Her working days were spent sitting in the Palmer Room, shrouded for conser-vation purposes from the everyday sun, with the six black-faced sheep, drowsing under the heavily-laden boughs of the prodigal tree, for company. With little to occupy her outer sight, her eyes, in the dimness, drank in the painting’s astonishing light and hallucinatory colours: pale gold, gold, marigold, green, vermillion, crimson, russet, indigo…

The strange anomalous spire, which lent to the painting its air of another world dramatically impinging on this one, became, as she narrowed her eyes, a pathway leading through the fields filled with stooks of ripened corn, over the hills and far beyond.

One evening she and Edwin looked up the psalm that Palmer in his diary suggested had inspired the painting:
The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are covered over with corn; they shout for joy, they also sing.

It was, as Edwin remarked, an atmosphere which led natur-ally to wool-gathering.

‘Mrs Hetherington, oh, please forgive me!’

She had started and almost spilt her tea. ‘I’m so sorry, Dino. I was in another world.’

‘Happy thoughts, I hope.’

‘Maybe.’

‘You must only think of happy things, Mrs Hetherington.’

‘I’m afraid that is hardly possible, Dino.’

‘Will you dance? That will make me very happy. It’s the waltz next.’

‘That’s probably the only dance I can manage.’

‘No, no, Mrs Hetherington. I will teach you. Oh, look at your silver shoes.’

‘You like them? A friend gave them to me.’ Annie would be pleased at her shoes’ success.

‘They are shoes to dance to the moon in.’

‘Dino, really!’ But she was laughing.

When Vi got back to her cabin she flopped down on top of the polythene-wrapped dry cleaning which had been laid out on the bed. Renato would have been piqued. If he called by again she must have been oblivious, for by the time she came to, it was too late for dinner at the Alexandria.

She went down, dressed as she was in her jersey and skirt and Annie’s silver shoes, to the Bistro, the most unassuming of the ship’s restaurants, and ate an omelette and a green salad and drank a glass of white wine, reflecting.

After that first encouragement of Edwin’s, other poems, like migratory birds, began to arrive. They alighted in her mind, as she walked to work across Sheep’s Green, by the Fen Causeway, or sat, in a daze, by Samuel Palmer’s visionary sheep. Often, very early in the morning, between sleep and waking, she became aware of some unformed presence hovering at the edges of her mind and got out of bed to catch a word or phrase.

Sometimes she used to fancy that it was her mother sending the poems from whatever region she had departed to.

‘Why not?’ Edwin asked, when she confided this. ‘Alph the sacred river runs through caverns measureless to man.’

But rivers dry up, or you lose the way to them.

On the way out of the Bistro, she met the critic. ‘Taking an evening off? I’ve been playing hooky too. The food here’s not bad.’ He sounded almost human.

‘How was the napkin-folding class?’

‘Have you any idea what can be done with a table napkin? The Buffet Fold, the Bishop’s Hat, the Tuxedo and the Elf ’s Boot are but a few examples of the art. I am particularly taken with the Elf’s Boot. I shall never be able to look without guilt at an unfolded napkin again. How was the dancing?’

‘Not bad either.’

‘Did you take to the floor?’

‘Amazingly I did.’

He nodded approvingly. Vi noticed that behind his glasses his eyes looked tired. ‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may…’

‘Not very proficiently gathered.’

‘If a thing’s worth doing it’s worth doing badly. Do you feel like a stroll?’

‘If you like.’

Up on deck, the critic linked his arm companionably through hers and they set off around the ship, which was almost unpeopled since most of the passengers were busily feeding inside. The moon was sculling behind a racing cloud and had flung around its margin a sinister yellow glow. The critic on Vi’s arm was so small and light that he felt like a child. Other than ‘Do call me Colin’ he said nothing and seemed content to walk in silence.

At the bows of the ship, however, he stopped and stood
looking out over the darkly reflecting water. ‘Have you ever considered drowning?’

‘Considered what about it?’

‘Drowning yourself.’

Vi thought. ‘Not drowning, no.’

‘I have.’

‘Yes?’ The admission seemed to demand some form of intimacy in return but it seemed impossible to call him Colin.

‘The sea is here. It is, to all intents and purposes, bottomless. Why not immerse oneself in it for eternity and have done?’ It was evident that his apparent calm masked a far stormier temperament.

‘I’ve thought about death,’ Vi said. Privately, she believed that anyone sensible had. ‘But not by drowning. I’ve heard it’s supposed to be very painful.’ She had once read an account by a sailor, who had all but drowned but was saved at the eleventh hour, of the excruciating pain he had felt in his windpipe as he went under. She began to recount this but the critic interrupted.

‘Oh, pain. Everything is pain.’

Vi understood that conversation was superfluous. It was best during encounters of this kind to say as little as possible.

‘No,’ said the critic, as if contradicting her, though in deference to his mood she had remained silent. ‘I am not a melancholic.’

Vi nodded, hoping that the gesture in the dark would be sufficient.

‘In fact, I am a sanguine soul at heart.’

Recalling his vicious reviews Vi doubted that this was the whole case. She stood beside him, looking out into the obliterating dark.

After some minutes, the fit of melancholy seemed to leave
him and they carried on walking, Annie’s shoes gleaming like phosphorescent fishes under the ship’s few lights. It was growing chilly. Vi shivered as a faint whining hum set up along the ship’s cables.

‘Do you have family?’ the critic asked suddenly.

‘I have two sons.’

‘And you like them?’

‘Very much.’

‘Any husband?’

For a wild moment, Vi wondered if he was about to propose to her. She had heard of such anomalies occurring at sea.

‘My second husband, the boys’ father, died last year.’

‘And the first? Is he still with us?’

‘I don’t know,’ Vi said. It wasn’t quite true. She was sure that if Bruno had died she would have heard.

‘I am also estranged from my first wife.’

‘Yes?’

‘My own fault. I made an unwise marriage. My third wife was jealous of the other two, who had become great friends. It has created a distance between the three of us. My third wife is a professional hater of men.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I am too,’ said the critic. ‘But we live and learn.’

Vi, who doubted this was the case, held her tongue.

‘You see,’ the critic began, ‘when I was a younger man I…’

A rogue wave smacked against the side of the ship, which rocked violently under the impact, almost toppling the pair of them over on top of each other.

The critic, hanging on to Vi’s arm righted himself, took off his glasses and polished the lenses with a handkerchief. ‘Shall we go back inside?’

‘It might be best.’

They dragged themselves, with some effort through a stubborn door into the warmth and noise.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ He looked younger with his hair damp and disarrayed.

Vi from force of habit was about to accept but she hardened her heart. ‘I won’t, if you don’t mind, Colin. I’ve things to do.’

‘You are lucky,’ said the critic. ‘It is good to be occupied. There are times when I wonder where my occupation’s gone. But thank you for our walk. I enjoyed it.’

The bed had been turned down, the dry cleaning stripped of its polythene and hung neatly in the wardrobe and the two squares of chocolate placed on the bed with military precision when Vi returned to her cabin. After her late nap, she was not at all sleepy but she changed into her nightdress and put on socks to warm her chilled feet. She wanted to go on reading the notebooks.

‘You know what,’ Edwin said one evening, after she had given him a poem to read over a curry, ‘you’ll soon have enough poems for a collection.’

Vi had made friends with Mr Jarvis, a taciturn stallholder in the market, who, at the end of the day, donated any vegetables that would be past selling the next. On the days when Mr Jarvis’s discards included chillies and peppers, Vi cooked curry.

‘They aren’t nearly good enough.’

‘I disagree. This curry is excellent, by the way. If all else fails, you could always start a take-away. But against that day, would you let me put the poems together for you?’

‘If you like.’

‘I do like.’

Ariel
was selling surprisingly well and Edwin’s morale had
been given a further boost by a contract with Faber for his own poetry. He went through Vi’s poems making detailed suggestions, most of which she followed.

One evening, when she arrived home from work with a tray of aging haricot beans, courtesy of Mr Jarvis, Edwin met her in triumph. ‘They are going to publish you in a collection of new poets. Welcome to a life of drunkenness and penury.’

‘Hardly “welcome”. I’ve been living that life for the past few years.’

‘Don’t be a kill-joy. Aren’t you pleased?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, don’t go overboard.’

‘I’m just taking it in.’

‘Take it in with this.’

He handed her a glass of whisky. It struck Vi that there had been rather more glasses of whisky lately.

‘What name will you use?’ he asked that same evening, opening a second bottle of wine.

‘Ed, do we really need any more to drink?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Violet!’

‘Sorry. I just thought.’

‘“Oh reason not the need…”’

‘OK, I’m sorry.’

There was a pause during which they both tried to think of conversation.

‘So what name will you write under?’

‘What’s wrong with my own name?’

‘Don’t be obtuse. Your name is capable of several variations. You could be, for example, Violet St John, Honour St John, Violet Honour St John.’

‘Honour Violet.’

‘You cannot have Violet as a surname. It sounds sub-Christina Rossetti.’

‘No, I mean I’m Honour Violet St John, not Violet Honour.’

Edwin poured them both more wine. Vi could see that it was going to be a Persian evening. ‘How about H.V. St John?’ he suggested.

So it was as H.V. St John that she wrote.

‘Mrs Hetherington! Coo-ee, Mrs Hetherington!’

‘Renato. I’m in bed.’

‘I have a kettle for you, Mrs Hetherington.’

‘OK, Renato, I’m coming.’

Renato was outside proudly bearing a laden tray.

‘A kettle, Mrs Hetherington. I also find you teapot, tea bags and some fresh milk, skimmed in this jug, and in here full fat.’

Renato sped across the room, laid the tea things out on the desk and stowed the jugs of milk in the fridge.

‘Now! Here is the kettle so you have tea when you want.’

‘Thank you so much, Renato.’ She felt him not quite liking to look at her socks. They were Ted’s socks and too big for her. But they were new when he died and warm and she had not wanted to throw them out.

‘I have brought you an adaptor, too.’

‘Renato, you are an angel.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Hetherington.’

When Vi was quite sure there would be no more angelic recurrences she locked the door, put on the kettle and made tea in the chrome-plated teapot. The tea tasted good. Builder’s tea. Somehow Renato had divined what kind she liked. In its way, it was a kind of genius.