Dancing Backwards

The band had started up again but Des paused for a moment to look out through the tall plate glass windows at the sea.

It had been something of a surprise to him how fascinated he had become with the constantly shifting colours and patterns made in the water. It soothed something in him to which he could not have put a name. As he stood, absorbed, two white birds wheeled down out of the sky. Mrs Hetherington, the woman he had danced with earlier, must have stayed on to watch the waltz because at that moment he saw her leaving the room and wondered if she had also seen the birds.

Vi, who had found dancing the foxtrot surprisingly agreeable, had lingered to watch the rumba. Perhaps worn out by the unaccustomed exercise, she went back to her cabin and fell asleep on the gold counterpane.

She dreamed that she was helping Harry climb to a high platform in a children’s playground. Harry’s feet, in his Clarks sandals, kept slipping and she was trying to place them securely on the rungs. She could feel his slender ankles and see the pale crepe of the sole which, dream-like, was visible on the palm of her hand. The rungs were wet and slimy and Harry began to slip and slide down through them. And suddenly the ladder was frighteningly high off the ground and swaying. And where had she left Daniel? He was a baby still and, wrapped in a jacket but nothing more, was sleeping, oh help, was it under the pile of rubbish they had made for a bonfire? She cried out and woke not knowing where in the world she was.

There was knocking at the door. Someone outside had been calling her. ‘Mrs Hetherington. Coo-ee. Coo-ee, Mrs Hetherington. Are you there?’

It was Renato wanting to know did she need anything.

‘No, thank you, Renato, I am dressing for dinner.’

‘How was the dancing, Mrs Hetherington?’

‘Very nice, thank you, Renato.’

‘I said you enjoy it, Mrs Hetherington. Have a nice dinner now.’

She drifted off again but Harry and Dan had walked on without her, through the valley of sleep—where those we have been close to, for good or ill, mingle—and had gone out into the adult world where things are done differently and her children no longer needed her.

5 (#ulink_55c8a91c-c3ba-5124-b914-37a5118125f7)

Vi woke to the chugging engines and saw it was time to go down for dinner. The information in her cruise folder warned that it was ‘formal’ tonight. Well, she had her black evening dress. That looked OK with Ted’s pearls.

She pulled the dress over her head, caught a thread in an earring, took it off again to untangle the earring, decided to take off her knickers which were spoiling the line, brushed her hair into shape, extracted Ted’s grey pearls from the suitcase and added a silver belt and the silver slippers that Annie had given her for the voyage. Good old Annie. She still had that eye.

For all her hurry, Vi was late for dinner and when she arrived there were ten already at the table. One of the newcomers, an elderly woman in a long beaded navy suit, had collared Captain Ryle, who looked across regretfully at Vi. The woman introduced herself as Miss Foot and apologised for not joining them the evening before but explained that she had felt the need to acclimatise.

The other pair missing from the previous evening turned out to be part of the programme of entertainment laid on for the passengers: a New York theatre critic and a writer of popular historical fiction called Kimberley Crane. Minor celebrities were invited to travel on the ship, all expenses paid, in return for a session of book signing in the ship’s bookshop.

Vi had heard of the theatre critic who was known by his pen name ‘The Critic at the Hearth’ and was famed for his savage reviews which closed down Broadway shows overnight. He was a little, bird-like man with round tortoiseshell glasses and mild hazel eyes. Kimberley Crane, the novelist, was a statuesque woman wearing a white fishtail dress which showed off impressive breasts. She was explaining, when Vi arrived, how the evening before she and the critic had been summoned to the Captain’s bridge for cocktails and had subsequently been unable to find their way to the Alexandria.

‘You should have seen us. We were like babes lost in the wood.’

‘What did you do for food?’ Valerie Garson asked.

‘We made do,’ said the critic, with a benign-seeming smile. (There was a widespread fear among his New York acquaintances that he might one day publish his reminiscences.) ‘We amused ourselves with some crumbs of pizza dropped by the woodland birds.’

‘He did,’ said Kimberley. ‘I can’t touch gluten.’

Martha asked Vi how her day had been and the captain gave her a conspiratorial look and passed her the basket of bread rolls.

Les said, ‘I spotted you dancing with that handsome young man. Don’t you worry, Val here’ll tell you not much gets past me.’

The captain looked crestfallen and to spare his feelings Vi explained. ‘My steward is a ballroom dance fan. He was keen for me to try it out so I went to the tea dance to please him.’

‘My wife was a wonderful ballroom dancer.’ The captain spoke wistfully.

Vi, seeing where this was heading, said hastily, ‘I’m really no good at dancing. I only went to please Renato.’

‘Extraordinary,’ said the critic. ‘I do hope my steward won’t insist.’

The sommelier, who introduced himself as Pedro, came to take her order and recommended the Rioja. Vi ordered a large glass. ‘My steward’s very keen on the Titanic,’ she said to the critic. ‘The show, I mean, not the ship.’ She remembered that this had been the target of one of his most scathing pieces.

Conversation drifted generally to other topics. The critic and Martha took up the recent changes of foreign policy in the US, Kimberley and Valerie begin to debate the pros and cons of breast reduction and Les said that he preferred his women natural and what was wrong with a bit of tit? Greg and Heather, in the absence of any outside interest, spoke among themselves of their son’s latest accomplishments and Miss Foot asked the captain if he was acquainted with the work of Rudolph Steiner, of whose philosophy, she confided, she had been a life-long disciple. The captain was patently out of his depth but he was too far away for Vi to rescue him. She turned, rather thankfully, to Baz.

‘What was it you were doing at the LSE if that isn’t too nosy?’

‘I’m an anthropologist.’

‘Not economics, then?’

‘Not at all. African religion is my field. My speciality is traditional healers, “witch doctors” to you. The LSE happens to be rather good on witch doctors.’

‘How funny,’ she said. ‘Someone I knew is, or was, interested in witch doctors, sorry, traditional healers, I should say.’

‘No?’

‘Yes. He was at the LSE too.’

‘I admit to being surprised. Rather big-headedly, I get to thinking I am the only witch-doctor doctor. We tend to be kind of thin on the ground.’

‘I should imagine. What is it you study especially?’

‘My healers are the Sangomas, the traditional healers of southern Africa. I guess you could say they work as psychiatrists. But they practise as physicians too. Herbs, mostly, but also, for example, they prescribe lion’s fat to give courage.’

‘The person I knew was interested in Voodoo, sorry, I mean Vodun, but I was never quite sure whether he was telling tall stories,’ Vi said, thinking she wouldn’t mind some lion’s fat.

‘These esoteric religions generate tall stories. After all, who can check them? The Catholic missionaries of course exploited this like crazy. But I’m intrigued. Who was your friend?’

‘No one you would know,’ Vi said. ‘It was ages ago.’

After dinner, Greg and Heather hurried away to monitor the peacefully slumbering Patrick. Kimberley Crane announced that if that was what having kids did to you she was glad she hadn’t any and she didn’t know about anyone else but she for one was heading for the bar.

Vi went up on deck but it was chilly and the boards were wet with sea spray and slippery. Not quite knowing what to do with herself, she looked in at the Golden Hinde where she found Ken and Jen.

Jen grabbed her arm. ‘Did you know Kimberley Crane was on board?’

‘As a matter of fact she’s at my dinner table.’

‘Oh my God, she’s my hero!’

‘Heroine,’ Ken corrected. He was holding a pint of lager and, swaying slightly with the motion of the ship, looked a little tipsy.

‘No, Ken. Hero. Vi, can you get me to talk to her?’

Vi said, ‘I can try. But I only met her myself this evening.’