Dance on My Grave Page 18

  ‘Now the dress.’

  Kari held it, bunched above his head. He entered, stooping under it and straightening up, as he might a long shirt, his arms up into the sleeves, and then, the dress released, its folds of light cotton falling about him loosely.

  He put his arms down. Kari circled him, smoothing, arranging, adjusting, assessing.

  ‘Stand properly,’ she said. ‘Look like you’re wearing the thing, instead of it wearing you.’

  Obedient, he posed himself, blotting from his mind what he was, what this made him. He was acting, he told himself, playing a part. He must pretend; that was the only way.

  ‘Let me see your hands.’

  He held them out.

  She inspected, holding them in hers.

  ‘They’re slim enough, but bony. Try not to draw attention to them. No, I know. Wait. Sit down.’ She took some unisex sandals from a cupboard and dropped them at his feet. While Henry worked his toes into them—they were a shade too tight—Kari left the room but was back quickly, before he had managed to fasten the straps.

  ‘Whose are these?’ he said. ‘They pinch my toes and ankles.’

  ‘Hobble all you like till you get there. But you must walk properly then. Suffer. You deserve to.’

  ‘You’re really kind, you know that!’

  Kari pulled the stool close to him, sat with a small box on her lap, which she opened. Henry saw inside a jumble of jewellery: bracelets, rings, bangles, necklaces, brooches. She tried first one thing, then another, holding each trinket against him. A brooch and a necklace at his throat but rejected both for a kind of medallion on a short gold chain. Various bracelets on his right wrist, settling for a jangly tangle of thin wiry silvered bangles. On the third finger of his left hand she finally slipped a ring with a mock diamond set in the gold circle.

  ‘You’re supposed to be engaged, visiting your dead boyfriend,’ she said. ‘I think that might do. Stand up again.’

  Awkward, pinched, uncomfortable, feeling manacled, he obeyed.

  Kari took the wig from the dressing-table, pulled it carefully onto his head, touched up its hair with a comb and her fingers. Stood back. Surveyed him, up and down.

  ‘You’re not quite ready yet,’ she said, ‘something is missing.’

  Henry sighed, his breath crushed between panic and dejection.

  ‘Or there is something there that shouldn’t be perhaps,’ Kari said, after further scrutiny.

  ‘Can’t I look?’ Henry said, desperate.

  ‘All right.’ Kari opened the wardrobe door hung behind with a full-length mirror, and stood back for him to see.

  And suddenly there was Henry, facing himself. But not.

  He recognized nothing that was him. Except . . .? Yes, except for one feature. His eyes. They gazed back at him from the glass. His. And pained. Even frightened at that moment behind their astonishment.

  He was gazing at a girl with fluffed, slightly frizzed blonde hair that haloed a tanned face touched with a blush of colour on high cheeks. She had a wide, generous mouth, perhaps a too prominent chin. She wore a loose white summer dress, with narrow dark blue circling stripes, that buttoned closely round her thin neck and fell away in soft folds that clung just enough to suggest the shapeliness of the body it covered. The sleeves of the dress tapered from deep loose shoulders to cuffs gathered tight at the wrists.

  As Henry gazed, Kari passed round his waist a long matching white-and-blue striped ribbon belt that she tied just enough to nip the dress in a little, emphasizing the girl’s breasts and hips without making them prominent.

  With a coldness that also surprised him, Henry found himself wondering whether this girl would attract him. Would he fancy her as he passed her in the street? Would he think, ‘Nice!’ For a thrilled moment he thought, yes, yes, he would! But then he met his own eyes staring back at him and felt again that shock of recognition behind the disguise. Saw the panic he felt. Yet still, that strange ambiguity of himself in himherself puzzled, even fascinated him, teased his memory for a long time afterwards.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Kari said. ‘Perhaps you’ll pass.’

  ‘It’s taken an hour and a half to get this far,’ Henry said with a touch of petulance as much in disguise of his feelings as his clothes were of his body.

  ‘So?’ Kari said. ‘Many women spend as long every day just so men will think well of them.’

  ‘But there is something wrong,’ Henry said, studying himself more coolly now he was getting over the shock. ‘I think the trouble is my eyes. They give me away.’

  ‘Ah!’ Kari said. ‘Of course! Here, try my dark glasses.’

  They examined the effect like painters examining the latest brush stroke on a new picture.

  ‘Better,’ Kari said.

  ‘Yes. That’s it,’ Henry said. ‘They even make me feel better.’

  Being now eyeless, Henry recognized none of himself. He relaxed inside himself. But his chest and loins still felt like they were in a straitjacket and his head like it was crammed into an itchy helmet. Worst of all were the synthetic sheaths suffocating his legs.

  Trapped. Covered head to foot. Yet vulnerable, somehow exposed to everyone, as though this flimsy dress was transparent, not clothing at all but simply decoration. He felt more naked than he had ever felt undressed. Was it like this for women too, he wondered, or did you get used to it?

  ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s get it over.’ Pushing himself into action, he bundled his shoes and socks and jeans and sweater. ‘Should we cycle there? Quicker, and people will have less time to notice me.’

  ‘Just watch out for your skirts in the wind,’ Kari said.

  Laughing, she led the way out, Henry taking a last look at himself in the mirror. He was already sweating coldly under his arms.

  Outside, he felt like an actor dressed for a part and out of his element, not disguised any more but exhibited. A freak. He had to force himself onto his bike—carefully tucking in his skirt—blanking from his mind everything except the mechanical operation of getting from Kari’s house to Leigh morgue.

  Half way there Kari, riding alongside him, said, ‘See, no one is looking. No one even notices.’

  Henry had been staring studiously ahead; now he glanced cautiously at people on the pavement. No one even looked.

  ‘And why should they?’ Kari said, smiling at him. ‘What’s odd about two girls taking a bicycle ride on a Sunday afternoon?’

  And so, encouraged, Henry arrived at the morgue.

  They parked their bikes out of sight of the side door. Kari looked Henry over, touched up his wig, adjusted his dress.

  ‘You do want to go through with this?’ she said.

  ‘Now you ask!’ Henry said, nodding, and no longer certain about anything.

  Kari said, ‘Then you must act with conviction. You must be a girl distressed. I will speak for you at first. Try not to say anything at all. Nod or suchlike if you have to answer questions. And use your handkerchief a lot, but be careful not to smudge your make-up.’

  Henry instinctively tried to put a hand into a trouser pocket.

  ‘All right, all right!’ Kari said, stopping him. ‘Have mine.’

  She dug into her shoulder bag and pressed a piece of cloth the size of a postage stamp into his hand. He grasped at it as at a straw, thankful for anything to hang onto.

  Kari said, ‘Wait here out of sight. I’ll come and get you.’

  She went. By the time she returned Henry’s stomach was full of exploding Brillo pads.

  Kari grinned. ‘It is arranged,’ she said, her accent stronger now than it had been since Henry first met her. Maybe the strain was telling that way? ‘He has agreed. But we must be quick. He will be dismissed if he is found out. All this is terribly against the rulses.’

  ‘Rules,’ Henry said. ‘Rules!’

  ‘Yes, the rulses. His name is Kelly, by the ways. Yours is Susan.’

  ‘Susan! I hate Susan!’

  ‘You should have thought of that
before here. We forgot names. I had to manufacture on the spot.’

  ‘O, God.’

  ‘You don’t believe in Him. Now, come . . . Come!’

  Kelly was waiting for them, lurking behind the half-open mortuary door. A big man in a long white lab coat, he had crinkly black hair, greying at the sides, and a heavy black moustache that drooped. Henry took a dislike to his face at once. His eyebrows were thick and bushy; bristles sprouted from inside his fleshy ears. He looked like a hispid butcher.

  ‘Now, my darlin,’ Kelly said in a voice that matched his hair. ‘Come in, girl.’ He shut the door behind them.

  They were standing in a large oblong room; shining white tiles covered every surface. The air was glazed with light and astringent disinfectant stung in the nose.

  ‘Not a nice business this, my dear,’ Kelly said.

  Henry put his hanky to his nose and shook his head. One of the walls was covered in square white doors with big stainless steel door handles. Banked three high, there were twenty or more, and Henry knew at once they were refrigerated compartments for corpses. Filing cabinets for the dead.

  His knees weakened. He slumped. Kari’s hand supported his elbow.

  ‘Been in one of these places before, have you?’ Kelly asked.

  Henry shook his head.

  ‘I shouldn’t be lettin you in at all, darlin, you know that?’

  Henry nodded, keeping his head down and the hanky over his mouth.

  ‘We’ll have to be quick I’m afraid.’

  Henry nodded.

  ‘Not very talkative, your friend,’ Kelly said to Kari.

  ‘She is rather distressed, you know,’ Kari said. ‘It has been very much a shock.’

  ‘Ever seen a dead body before, Susan, love?’

  Henry shook his head, snuffling into his hanky which was no longer a plaything.

  ‘Think you’ll be up to it, sweetheart?’

  Henry nodded.

  Kelly, his hands bulging bananas in his coat pockets, said, ‘I don’t know . . . I shouldn’t be doin this . . .’

  ‘We’re here now, Mr Kelly,’ Kari said.

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Please . . .!’ Henry said from behind his hanky and the make-up and the dark glasses and his desperation.

  Kelly studied him.

  ‘All right. This once,’ he said at last. ‘Just wait where you are for a sec.’

  He went to the wall of refrigerator-files, opened one on the bottom row, pulled out a kind of long metal tray on which lay a body completely wrapped in a white cloth that was held together along the top by safety-pins. With a delicacy and care that reminded Henry of a mother arranging the coverings on a sleeping baby, Kelly undid the pins and laid back the cloth.

  The body was dressed in a white linen gown, the hands resting one on the other across the stomach. Otherwise only the head was visible.

  From across the room Henry knew without doubt who this was. He heard himself exhale as if he had at last let go of a deep breath held painfully long.

  ACTION REPLAY

  I can’t move. My muscles seize up. My joints fuse. I cannot take my eyes off that head, his head, Barry’s head, lying flat on the metal tray, lying mysteriously silent and with an unpossessed stillness. My eyes are engraved with the sight.

  Kelly stood back a pace, like a reverend guard, waiting.

  When Henry did not move, he came, took Henry by the arm, led him with gentle pressure across the room towards the patient body. Kari, welded to the spot by the sight, stayed where she was, by the door. Henry’s steps looked to her, felt to him, like the stiff-legged gait of a paraplegic.

  Kelly stopped Henry by the body’s side, placing him so that Henry could look down into Barry’s face. Into Barry’s death.

  The eyes were closed. Of course. Why did Henry expect them to be open? The mouth also.

  The tanned skin was bathroom fresh. But without glow.

  Every feature familiar. Every slightest blemish known.

  The chart of his beauty. Everything in place.

  The nick in his right eyebrow where a stone had wounded when he was a boy. The narrower opening of the left nostril. The bevil of his nose. The mole, hardly bigger than a freckle, hidden under the right jaw. The trim neat ears set close to the skull and half covered by the shock of crow-black hair.

  And the folded hands, unmistakably Barry’s. And tied round one wrist a label. Like a label on a parcel in a lost property office. Henry forced his eyes to focus and read: a name, a description.

  Barry as Body. Barry as Object.

  Death. The truth in negative. It proves something, being nothing itself.

  ACTION REPLAY

  I am looking, staring. I am wishing. I am wishing for the body to move, the eyes to open, the mouth to speak, the hands to reach and touch. I am wishing for this body to become him again.

  My wishes battle, batter against the unyielding body.

  The last battle.

  I stare down from the cliff edge of my life at the shore of his death and feel that seductive tingling urge in the gut to plunge down through the separating space and join him. To battle Death in death. Enter that eternity with him. Become by not being. Join in Forever.

  As Henry throws himself at the corpse, Kelly grabs him. The mortician catches the neck of Henry’s dress, and pulls.

  Kari screams.

  Henry struggles against rescue, twists and turns in an agony of distress.

  Cloth rips, tears, riven by his determination to reach Barry’s body and the equal determination of the mortician that he shall not.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ Henry hears himself screeching, and gives a final brutal push against Kelly’s hefty frame. Which ends the struggle abruptly, for Henry’s summer frock can stand the strain no longer and rips from neck to hem, so that Henry is flung, reeling, out of it, tumbling headlong in bra and briefs across the slippery floor. His wig, torn from his head in the commotion, is left behind like an afterthought, dropping at Kelly’s feet. Dark glasses somersault in the air and land on Barry’s chest.

  ‘What the!’ cries Kelly, unhinged, Henry’s tattered frock now drooping from his fingers, his eyes wide and tracking Henry’s helter-skelter progress.

  ‘Hal!’ screams Kari, again, this time hand to mouth.

  ‘Hal?’ says Kelly.

  ‘O, God!’ says Henry, barking the wall.

  ‘. . . hands on you . . .!’ bellows Kelly, enraged and abandoning frock to wig and bulling towards Henry.

  ‘Hal!’ screams Kari, this time meaning it would be advisable to scarper while scarpering is still a possibility.

  Henry needs no such advice. The spectacle of an angry Kelly advancing upon him is enough, his own embarrassed shame another reason for leaving this place as fast as his stripped body can take him.

  But he is not quite fast enough. He skids on the slick tiles as he turns for the door, losing a vital stride. Kelly lunges, manages to grab the back of Henry’s bra. Again the mortician pulls, and with such furious violence that the bra’s elasticated bodice stretches to its full limit and then snaps at the fastening, thus catapulting Henry on his journey doorwards, a human missile, cottonwool dugs exploding from his sundered boob-bags as he goes.

  At this same instant Kari is opening the morgue door, intent, she later admits, on effecting her own escape, having reached the conclusion that Henry is rather done for.

  As the door swings back, supersonic Henry streaks through, pursued by mortifying execrations hurled at his back by the fulminating Kelly.

  THE END

  except that Henry went biking like the clappers through the Sunday teatime streets, flashing his bare chest and his confused blushes, his low slung knees, men’s briefs and women’s tights. No one noticed. Correction: No one who noticed did more than jeer cheerfully. Thank heavens for the resort for all sorts. When Henry came to, and realized what he was doing and had done, he stopped in Bonchurch reccy, caught his breath, subdued his shame and panic, pulled on his jeans and
jersey, and, thus better composed, slunk off home.

  25/Three days to write Bit 24! But I learned something.

  I have become my own character.

  I as I was, not I as I am now.

  Put another way: Because of writing this story, I am no longer now what I was when it all happened.

  Writing the story is what has changed me; not having lived through the story.

  Do you understand? Probably not. I’m not sure I understand myself. I think it has something to do with putting the words on paper. You become your own raw material. You have to contemplate what you were and make something of what happened to you.

  Doing this seems to make you see yourself differently.

  Also, you stop thinking about your self so much and think more and more about The Work—the Writing! Isn’t that crazy! But it is exciting too. It has kept me scribbling day after day, the way I have been. Making this Book of Bits. This Mosaic of a Me-That-Was. This Memorial to Two Dead People.

  So you see, Ms Atkins, I am no longer wallowing in the emotional sludge of reluctant confession. Not any more. Instead, I am making you this object: this story. When all the words are written out and fixed the best way I can fix them, I shall type them all out beautifully—or as beautifully as I can, being a two-finger expert only—and I shall bind all the pages with all the words on them in a stiff red cover. Red for danger, passion, socialism, blood, fire, wine, anger: Aren’t you lucky! And I will give you this version of a Me-That-Was.

  But there is something about it you don’t know that I guess you had better know now. I began writing all this stuff down not because you asked, Ms Atkins, but because Jim Osborn suggested I should. He put me up to this job, with his corkscrew eyes, and kept me going when I got fed-up and wanted to pack it in. I wonder if he knew all the time what would happen to me and the way I was—the state I was in—after B.’s death if I wrote about everything in detail? Anyway, it is nearly finished now, and I thought I should tell you The Truth about how I got started.

  26/By the way, in case you like loose ends tying up: Yes, my mother did see me when I got home from the morgue that Sunday evening. She caught me as I came through the back door.