The Ballroom (12 page)

Plenty of times he stood outside with one or other of them and felt the low, leaping pull of desire. And when they yielded and pressed themselves against him he knew he might easily do more. But he did not. Because to do more was to be caught. And he was good, in those days, at not being caught. Good at leaving. Good at walking far.

But here he was, on Friday night, getting ready with the rest of the poor eejits in the washing shed.

He cast up his eyes to meet his reflection.

It had been a long while since he had looked in a glass.

It was a wary face he had on him. As though its owner might punch you if you looked at him the wrong way.

I
N THE WASHROOM
, Ella scrubbed her face in the sink and wet her hair so it would stay in place. She avoided her gaze in the mirror though. Didn’t do anything to don herself up.

It had happened that morning: in amongst the rattle of the other names the Irish nurse read out, there it was, ‘Ella Fay’. She had spent the day framelled and clumsy, her mind far away from her work.

At half past six, all the women were made to line up, two by two like in recreation. Ella stood beside Clem, and Clem’s cheeks were red, and there was excitement in her eyes. ‘Ready to dance then?’ she said.

‘Does everyone have to dance?’ She hadn’t thought of that.

They walked in a long line through the corridors, and this time there was no locking and unlocking of doors; they had all been flung open one after the other, all the way along, so you could see right through to the end.

The noise grew as they walked, as more women came out from their wards and joined the march, till it seemed to crest ahead of them and curve back again, a great rolling wave of sound.

‘Keep to the side,’ the Irish nurse screeched, stalking up and down the line. ‘
Keep to the side!
I don’t want anyone out of the line.’

They were held waiting in the corridor while the women before them went inside. And when it was their turn, Ella’s breath caught as she passed through the double doors. The room was the size of two of the spinning floors at the mill at least – there were windows, but they were high and set with coloured glass like you might find in a church. There would be no way of reaching them. Arching above their heads, the ceiling was painted brown and gold.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ Clem touched her arm. ‘Have you seen the stage?’ She pointed to the other end of the room, where a group of musicians sat. The doctor was up there in the middle of them all, a violin tucked under his arm. As they watched, he lifted it and placed it beneath his chin, drawing his bow over the strings. The crowds cleared, and on the other side of the room the men were revealed. Hundreds of them. At first they were just a black, gawping, smoking mass, until one in the front row, a small man with red hair, stood up and shouted something across at the women, then put his hand inside his trousers and started jiggling away. An attendant came and smacked him on the arm, then carted him off. There were howls and jeers from some of the other men.

Clem rolled her eyes. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘we can sit over here,’ and she began making her way over to the benches at the front.

‘No. I … I think I’ll just … go further back.’

Ella slipped away through the crowd until she found a seat close to the very back of the room, near where a fire was lit in a huge fireplace. Odd snatches of melody floated down from the stage. Close to the front, Old Germany was already up, clapping her hands like a girl.

The nurses were dragging people to their feet now. Ella saw Clem making her way towards the middle of the floor. She was easy to spot, so much taller and straighter-backed than anyone else. Men were bunching, jostling, hustling to be picked to dance with her, but Clem seemed unaware; she kept throwing glances up at the stage. She seemed to be looking at the doctor, but the doctor wasn’t looking back; instead his eyes raked the crowd, he seemed to be searching for someone in particular – until his gaze landed on a man sitting almost opposite to Ella in the back corner of the room.

Ella leant forward. It was dark over where he sat, but she felt a jolt pass through her at the sight of him: it was the man who had been there when she ran; the one who came towards her, who had tried to help her. The one she spat at. This man had not seen her though; he was sitting, smoking, staring at the ground.

A strange sound started up, a low drumming. At first, she couldn’t light on what it was, until it grew faster, and louder, and she understood: it was the men, beating with their boots on the floor. Something stirred in the pit of her stomach. It was wild in here. Dangerous. Anything might occur.

The nurses clapped their hands for quiet, as up on the stage the doctor and the other musicians lifted their instruments to play. The music began, a slow melody, and the couples began to move, forward and back, bumping into each other, most of them mazzled by the music and the steps. Some people were moving well though: Old Germany for one, dancing with a man in a blue tie. She had her eyes closed as she moved, the lilt of the music was in her, and from this distance her body could have been that of a girl.

Ella searched for the dark man again, craning to see him through the forest of dancers. He was still there, sitting in the corner, smoking his cigarette in slow, deliberate drags.

As the music came to an end, there was a tap on her shoulder. ‘Your turn.’ She turned to see one of the nurses speaking, a young, pleasant-faced woman, someone she had not seen before. ‘Everyone must take their turn on the floor.’

‘But I … can’t dance. I don’t know how.’

‘Go on,’ the woman said with a smile. ‘Go and find yourself a partner. It’s not so bad as all that. I promise.’

And so she stood, threading her way out towards the dance floor. The first person she came to was a pale, fluthering boy.

‘Do you dance?’ he stuttered.

‘No,’ she said.

‘I don’t know how to either,’ he said, and, stricken, stared down at the floor.

The music started up, and the two of them were pushed and jostled towards each other.

‘Here.’ She reached out and took his trembling hands in hers. ‘It can’t be so hard, can it?’

But it was hard enough. Shoving each other round, trying not to bump into anyone else. As soon as the music was done, Ella pulled herself away from the lad’s clammy grip and began making her way back to the women’s seats when someone caught her wrist.

‘My
dona
! My Spanish queen!’

The man’s face was brown and creased, and his hair stuck up all around his head. ‘Done much running lately?’

She remembered then. He had been there too.

He pulled her hands up into his. ‘I loved to watch you run,’ he said, as his smell enveloped her: sweat and meat and earth.

‘Don’t worry, lass,’ he said in her ear. ‘This is a fast one, but you can just follow me.’

And when the music started, a rapid, kicking rhythm, he threw back his throat and hollered, half pulling, half dragging her around the floor.

By the time the music had finished she was breathless, limbs pulled and feet sore, but the big man didn’t let go of her hands. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Come and meet
mio Capitane
.’

The man’s grip was strong, and she had no choice but to follow in his wake, back across the hall, away from the musicians, over to the far corner of the room, where the big man put his fingers to his mouth and whistled, and the man sitting in the corner looked up.

She twisted against the big man’s arm. She didn’t want to have to dance with this other man. Didn’t want this man thinking it was she who wished to disturb him, or that she had asked for this. She wanted to go back to her seat and count the doors and think of slipping through them, down those corridors and away.

The big man loosened his grip, and she shifted but he caught her, his fingers wrapped around her wrist. ‘Now, now, my queen,’ he said, in a low, coaxing voice. ‘I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want, but we all have to dance. Even my old
chavo
over there.’

The dark man was on his feet now, making his slow way out through the lines. She saw him properly then: he was older than her but still young. A beard shadowed his chin. As he came close, his eyes searched hers and she looked away. His face. The way he had come to help her, hand outstretched. The way she had shouted at him, spat at his feet.

‘You don’t have to dance with me,’ she said to him, looking back. ‘Not if you don’t want.’

But in response he just reached for her. Taking her hands in his.

T
HE FIRE STUBBORNLY
refused to be roused, and after a while he gave up, coming to sit listlessly on his bed. His usual glad tiredness was absent.

His gaze strayed to the portraits on the mantelpiece.
Mulligan.
It was Mulligan’s fault. Something about him stung.

What was it?

The way he moved.

The way he danced.

In truth, Charles had expected him to flounder, a little, at least, at first. But so far as he had been able to tell the man hadn’t floundered at all. In fact, he had danced as well as any man faced with a paucity of decent partners might. He could see the effect the Irishman had on the women in there too. Not that Mulligan seemed to notice himself. The man had moved so well that Charles had been a little ashamed at the music they were offering. He danced, in fact, like a
superior man
. But to whom was he superior? The other inmates? That would not be hard. To Charles himself? Of course not. Where, then, did the man fit in the scale of things?

The thought of Mulligan was like juggling with something slippery and liable to sting – one of those jellyfish he used to poke with a stick as a child on the beach. He had been excited by the prospect of the Irishman in the ballroom; now he felt … what? It was the same sensation he had had when reading the man’s notes. Thwarted.

Perhaps, if he was truthful, he had wished for something more. Not much: a look, a glance, an acknowledgement. But there had been nothing. The Irishman had not looked up at the stage once. And this despite the fact that Charles himself was the reason he was there! Did he have any idea how he had intervened on his behalf?

Goffin was moving in the room next door – shuffling around, humming a few bars of the Strauss waltz that had ended the evening. Charles winced. The music had rankled with him tonight too: Strauss. Lehár. So stiff, so upright, so little room to
move.
Would they be playing these tunes for ever? It was the twentieth century, for God’s sake, something had to change. He was bandmaster. It was up to him.

He turned to the mirror, regarding himself in the half-light: the curve of his skull, the incipient double chin. He jutted his face out, pulling at his skin so it hugged the line of his jaw.
Take off your shirt.
Mulligan’s torso hovered before his mind’s eye, the finely etched musculature, the V-shaped groove where the stomach met the groin – the inguinal ligament – just the place that a thumb might fit.

‘Inguinal ligament.’ Charles spoke it out loud as he unbuttoned his own cuffs and pulled his shirt over his head, placing it on the chair and pulling off his vest, so that he was naked from the waist up.

He turned from side to side, regarding himself with a frown. His own chest tended to the concave, his shoulders rounded from hours of playing the violin, and the puppy fat of his childhood still clung to his haunches in spongy lumps. Fair tufted hairs grew in a small clump above his belt. No inguinal ligament to be seen. A chill memory slid into his mind: standing at the side of a river, eight or so, a schoolboy. Hands tucked under his armpits, teeth chattering, classmates diving, and he, unable to, standing, helpless, watching the water slide from their slick wet bodies, watching their open laughing mouths.

You coming in, Fuller?

And him, shivering. Trying not to cry. No. No. He couldn’t swim.

He faced himself in the glass, saw his hazel eyes, the softness of his frame, and pale revulsion filled him.

Here he was, determined to create a better world, eating Yorkshire pudding and steamed pies and believing himself to be on the way to becoming a superior man. It was laughable. He was a disgrace. As much as it was his duty to write a paper for this Congress, it was also his duty to change his shape, to embody the superior man in
all
his aspects
;
as Pearson had said, the finest minds must be cased in the finest bodies. There was a new body waiting, surely, beneath this blanket of flesh. He had only to carve himself free.

Charles hurried over to his notebook and scribbled:

1. Exercise.
   
2. Music. New.
   
3. Mulligan???
   

He took down the
Yorkshire Evening Post
and scanned through it. On the second page was an advert for dumbbells. He pulled out his chequebook and ordered them on the spot.

T
HE BIRDS APPEARED
. Only a couple at first, in the dark grey of the morning, the sudden flash of white at their breasts flickering and gone before you were even sure what they were, and then the sky was full of them.

John’s stomach twisted at the sight. ‘What do they call them then?’ he asked Dan; he only knew his father’s word for them, the Irish word,
fáinleog.

‘Swallows,
mio Capitane
,’ said Dan, as one swooped low above their heads. ‘A
bona
omen.’ He licked his fingertip and held it to the breeze. ‘Smell that,
chavo.
Direction’s changed. Wind’s coming from the west.’ His face creased into a smile. ‘Summer’s on its way.’

John stared up doubtfully as the birds spiralled into the sky. They were no good omen to him.

‘Here.’ Dan halted amid the calf-high grass and unbuttoned his shirt. ‘You seen this?’ He pointed to a tiny blue bird etched on his right chest. ‘For my first five thousand miles. And here.’ He pulled the other side down to reveal another, facing towards the first. ‘Sailed round the horn for that little beauty. When you’re out at sea and you see the swallows, you know you’re close to land.’