Dancing Backwards

‘Don’t worry. I won’t have any trouble.’

‘Are you gay? We have trouble with men too.’ His interlocutor turned an appraising, skilfully made-up eye on Des.

‘I don’t sleep with people I don’t like.’

Disbelief registered in the perfect scimitar eyebrows. ‘Like them or not, we throw you off.’

‘I understand.’

‘And tips. They will offer you tips. You take tips only if they add it to their account so it goes through our books officially. No cash tips or you are off the ship before yesterday. Understand?’

‘I understand.’

‘Good. Report on Monday week, please. Here is the list of things you must get for yourself. Underwear is not provided.’

Des, no longer sure how he should address his family, wrote a postcard: Dear All, Glad to say have got a berth on a round the world cruise liner, Queen Caroline, as a dance host. Should be fun! Will keep you posted. Cheers, Des.

By now, Trisha had been married and divorced and was back living at home. She read the card and tossed it across the kitchen table to her mother.

‘Looks like our Des’s fallen on his feet.’ Her frankness, the day Des shared his plans for leaving home, had been her sole effort towards maternity.

Her mother read the postcard and then turned it over to inspect the picture of the liner, like a child’s white toy on an improbably blue sea.

‘D’you think he’ll be safe?’ She was frightened he might drown but dared not let her only daughter see how badly she missed the boy she had raised as her own.

‘Oh, Des’ll be all right. I don’t expect we’ll hear much of him from now on.’

Trisha, taking revenge on her mother for her preoccupation with her lost daughter, had given nothing to her own son other than her knack of sensing what mattered to people, and thus where they were most vulnerable.

4 (#ulink_98ad600f-aa02-5cfd-991c-af0da297bfd7)

Vi would never have set foot in the King Edward Lounge if it hadn’t been for Renato. She had wandered back to her room before lunch and found him busily spraying the TV screen. When she wiped her eyes and blew her nose he had turned sulky.

It is foolhardy to quarrel with someone in a position to make one’s daily life uncomfortable. Vi, taking stock, asked, ‘Where was it you said there was dancing, Renato? I might take a look after lunch.’

Renato brightened and made a token wipe over the TV screen with a damp cloth. ‘Deck Seven, same one as the spa. You come back doing the cha-cha-cha. You see, the cha-cha-cha not difficult for a lady like you.’

Of the many tyrannies which constrain us, Vi thought, it is extraordinary how pervasive are those that persuade us to follow other people’s notions of what we want rather than our own desires. It was easier to give in to Renato than to resist. But that had been her life’s strategy; it was no one’s fault but her own.

She settled herself in an out-of-the-way table by a window in the King Edward Lounge. A waiter with unnaturally blue eyes came over and rapidly recited the repertoire of available teas. She ordered a pot of Darjeeling and rejected the offer of sandwiches and pastries.

At the other end of the room, the band was assembling and she watched as a man with thinning hair extracted a trumpet from its case. Stooped over, his back straining the seams of his jacket, he looked a discouraged figure. Once, she thought, he had probably had musical ambitions and now he was reduced to playing in a third-rate band.

The waiter, whose badge disclosed that he was called Boris, brought her tea and asked her name.

‘Do you need it for the bill?’ His eyes were such an extraordinary blue that she wondered if they could be contact lenses.

‘I ask to be polite, madam. There is no charge, of course.’

Vi decided they were not lenses and, rather unwillingly, gave her name. Not that it was hers anyway. When all was said and done it belonged to Ted.

Ted. How he would have enjoyed drinking tea in the King Edward Lounge. All the years they were married she had been aware, even when she pushed it to the back of her mind, that he longed for her to say something like ‘Let’s go on a cruise together’—or ‘Let’s sell up and go and live in Corfu’. Anything to show that she saw their life together as that of a couple.

But you cannot make yourself a couple, or anything real, by willing it.

Other members of the band had arrived and were unpacking their instruments. The sax player, a young man with a shaved head and a wealth of necklaces, was joshing the trumpeter and she could hear from his tone that the trumpeter was answering back with good-tempered banter. Maybe she was quite wrong and he was perfectly content with his lot. How could you ever know what it was to be another person? We are all such solipsists, she thought, trapped in the mesh of our own desires. And even these we hardly know and rarely understand.

A slight, dark-skinned man, whose name she saw was Dino, now came across the floor and addressed her by name. He must have learned it from the waiter with the dangerous eyes. Well, she supposed they were only doing their job. This man’s eyes were a gentle brown. And there was something in his face, a trace of what…? A melancholy quality, not cruel anyway.

‘One two three, one two three, it’s the all-time favourite’s all-time favourite, you’ve got it, ye-es the waltz! One two three, nice an’ easy now…’

George’s voice, furred with an adult lifetime of Players untipped, propelled the would-be dancers round the floor. ‘Gentleman, steer those lovely legs before you, don’t trip over them for thinking what you’d like her to do with them! One two three, one two three, ladies, don’t forget what Ginger Rogers said, now, you have to do it backwards and on high heels! One two three, one two three, nice an’ easy, that’s the way…’

‘You’re called Dino then? Is that Italian?’ The woman Des was dancing with had an angrily curious face.

‘Nice an’ easy there, gentlemen, there we go.’

Des produced his amiable smile. ‘That’s me, Mrs Rotherhyde.’

‘And one two three, ladies you’re doing swell, knocking those gentlemen into a cocked hat, if Marie will forgive me expressing my prejudice in favour of the fairer sex…’

‘Arsehole!’ Marie breathed into George’s ear as he danced by with a woman in red patent heels.

Seeing they were reaching the edge of the area that passed for a dance-floor, Des whirled his partner expertly round and executed a neat double chassis.

‘Nice and easy does it, Mrs Rotherhyde. There you are, not many ladies could’ve followed me so well. There we go now.’ He couldn’t wait to get rid of her.

‘And bringing it on now to an end, ladies and gentlemen, thank your partners, please as we get ready for the next number the all-time favourite, ye-es, it’s the foxtrot.’

‘So you’re Italian?’ Mrs Rotherhyde, catching her breath, suggested again. She was trying to delay his passage to a new partner. Usually he felt sorry for them when they tried this on, but not this one. This one, he could tell, was dangerous.

‘You do look kind of dark.’

Thanks, Mrs Rotherhyde. Slightly desperate now Des looked about for another partner. A woman came across the floor towards them.

‘Excuse me, were you wanting to dance…?’

‘I’m afraid I’m just leaving.’ It was the thin woman by the window apparently on her way out.

‘And taking your partners now for the foxtrot,’ George’s voice commanded.

‘Can I tempt you to a foxtrot, Mrs Hetherington?’

‘Oh he’s foxy, he is, that one!’ Mrs Rotherhyde’s mulberry lips glistened ominously.

The other woman looked at him. Expecting her to turn him down, Des was taken aback when she said, ‘All right, if you like I’ll have a bash.’

He could tell she had never danced a foxtrot in her life. But she moved well. Her body followed his easily and when the dance was over she smiled at him nicely and he felt able to go across to the little woman with the bad perm, whom he privately called ‘Miss Muffet’ on account of her height and her baby-doll clothes, and Miss Muffet had been surprisingly gracious, and did not try to hang on to him when the dance ended. Instead, she said quite cheerfully, ‘There’s others looking for a partner. I’ll sit here, my dear, and rest my old feet and watch you twinkle your toes.’