Dance on My Grave Read online

  I am a useless instrument of jangling nerves sounding in a drum-tight stomach cinched in fright. As the boat goes over I am thrown out and up, somersaulting through the air.

  As I perform the curving trajectory common to all catapulted objects, I think: The boat is capsizing. God, what a twit I must look.

  My mind refuses to acknowledge what my senses tell me.

  I am watching myself. I smile, a kind of crazy, there’s-nothing-I-can-do grin of abandon and terror.

  I am descending now, emotions shocked by shock into shock-proof numbness. Will I float? I am thinking. Will I drown? Will this be the end? Is this the start of Death?

  I am all deflating questions.

  But now comes the water. The thick, soupy, solipsistic sea. I enter feet first, a body committed into His Hands. A clean incision that hardly makes a noticeable splash. A neat dunking.

  Not unnaturally—but to me at that moment unexpectedly—the water strikes me (literally) as wet. Cold. And surprisingly (why surprisingly?) supportive. Like a large soggy mattress. A sea bed. (Sorry!)

  I am sure that if my head is engulfed beneath the surface I will surely meet The End as the sea will meet mine. My feet and hands are piston-props as soon as they feel the water.

  At which point, slow motion switches to double-speed timelapse life.

  I have not thought of it

  and before I can think

  I have done it

  or know I have done it

  I have covered

  the distance between me

  and the wallowing boat

  on its side, the turbulent waves washing sometimes right over

  the forlorn sail rippling in the water like a drenched shroud

  I grab the gunwale

  pull myself round to the dinghy’s centre-board keel

  use it as a step

  clamber on to the hull’s whale-back side.

  A shipwrecked mariner.

  Real time returns.

  I shiver violently, cannot stop this water-logged goose-pimpled trembling.

  All I can manage to do is hang on.

  For dear life.

  7/So there I am, sat like a ninny on this dying boat, dressed only in my Thames-dyed wet-look T-shirt and briefs, feeling refrigerated, not to say sorry for myself, when a shining yellow charger with the name Calypso white-lettered on its razor bow comes slicing through the waves to my rescue. An eighteen-foot racing dinghy surging to my rescue, its sails straining at their seams.

  This yellow slicker executes a neat unshowy spin into the wind—the kind I have just demonstrated how not to do—and loses way with disgustingly precise judgement, slipping quickly to a heave-ho stop beside me, a safe boat’s length away. (Nothing is as impressively humiliating as seeing someone do something well when you have just done it badly yourself.)

  Hear:

  Much cracking and smacking of now impotent sails flapping in the already (wouldn’t you know it) abating wind.

  Accompanying syncopation of sucking and splashing waves slopping against our supine hulls.

  See:

  Overcast gloom above a bellicose sea.

  Glancing splinters of metallic light shining from the still sunbright east.

  And in the cockpit of ‘Calypso’:

  A head of streaming jet-black hair above a broad and handsome face split by a teasing grin atop a tidy body, medium height, with the build and frame that can dress in worn and weather-bleached blue-jean shirt and pants as if in this year’s flashiest marine gear.

  Enter Barry Gorman, eighteen years one month. Further details throughout what follows. This is he who becomes it. The Body.

  In his yellow flasher, he was grinning, and holding up for my inspection one pair of dripping jeans.

  Mine. Like me, lost overboard during the troubles.

  8/That image is on instant replay in my head.

  It was the beginning; and the beginning of his end.

  9/‘Yours?’ Barry shouts.

  I nod, resigned to humiliation.

  ‘Need any help?’

  I look helplessly around.

  ‘Get her upright. I’ll tow you ashore.’ Upright? This collapsed jetsam?

  ‘Done it before?’

  Own up. What gains dissemblance now? ‘No.’

  ‘Do exactly as I say.’

  Instructions come with firm clarity. Not to be gainsaid, never needing repetition.

  Automaton creature of this pelagic Svengali, I meekly follow orders.

  10/Trippers crowded round us on the beach, gawping. Lined the esplanade, pointing, laughing. An unexpected spectacle, seeing an idiot ditched and then rescued. Something to add a little pep to their day out and to tell the folks at home about afterwards.

  Only when Barry with cavalier gesture handed me my jeans did I realize the real cause of the mirth.

  ‘You’d better put these on,’ he said, ‘before you’re arrested.’

  God, they were cold! Clinging, sticky, gritty from sand. Putting them on was the lowest point in the entire fiasco. At that moment all I wanted was to be home; yet the thought of getting there and of dealing with Spike’s dishevelled Tumble was more than I could bear.

  ‘You live on Manchester Drive, don’t you?’ Barry said.

  ‘Yes.’ How did he know?

  ‘I’m nearer. Cliff Road. Come on.’

  He was collecting bits and pieces of pinchable gear from the boats and stuffing them into a sail bag.

  ‘I’m okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll manage. Got to do something about the boat.’

  ‘Don’t argue. I know all about capsizing.’ He secured the dinghies. ‘We’re all set up at home for dealing with sailing accidents. What you need is a hot bath. I’ll moor both boats later. Come on.’

  JKA. Running Report: Henry Spurling ROBINSON 18th September. Interviewed Henry in my office. Case passed to me by Probation. Mrs Robinson a client. She needed help after moving to Southend from the North (nervous trouble; unhappiness with new surroundings, loss of supportive friends and neighbours, etc.). Wanted to talk to Henry before making a home visit and talking to the parents.

  School Report assesses Henry as above average intelligence, reasonably conscientious, normal health. Henry has settled down well enough, apparently. Gets along with classmates, but the Head thinks he may not have made any close friendships. The parents have been cooperative with the school, and were supportive of Henry during the events that led to his court appearance.

  Discussion began at 2.30 p.m. Henry is medium height for his age, fair-haired, slim. Pretty features, rather than handsome, and younger-looking than his sixteen years nine months. Looks more like fifteen. Neatly dressed: blue jeans, T-shirt, bomber jacket, running shoes. Clean. A healthy tan, but he looked tired and was nervously fidgety at first. Tried to cover his nerves by a forced brightness of manner.

  Throughout the conversation he avoided questions he didn’t like by giving flippant replies—sometimes genuinely funny. In general conversation off the subject of his court appearance he was talkative and open, though I did feel he is a boy whom it might be difficult to get to know. There was also something in the way he talked that made me think he is trying to emulate someone he admires. He can be slightly affected, a little selfconscious. He tries too hard now and then.

  The discussion got off to an awkward start. Apparently Henry dislikes his name and thinks Harry is even worse. He asked me to call him Hal. I gathered he had made the change only this summer, but he was cagey about telling me why.

  He talked jokily about Southend, but agreed he liked living here. He especially enjoyed seaside life, finding people on the beach entertaining. He seems to have spent a lot of time this summer sailing ‘with friends’, he said. He talked without strain about school, likes most of the teachers. He frequently mentioned his English teacher, Mr Osborn, during the interview, whom he obviously admires. (Memo: see Osborn asap.)

  When Hal was settled and more relaxed I tried broaching the subject of his activi
ties at Barry Gorman’s grave. I asked why he had done such a strange thing as jump about on a friend’s grave. At once, he tensed again and refused point-blank to discuss anything to do with Gorman. I pressed fairly hard, thinking a strong effort should be made straightaway to get Hal to open up. But the harder I pressed the more agitated he became. His hands trembled and his voice kept breaking. I thought at one point he was going to cry.

  Explained it was my job to help him face whatever had happened by talking about it. Also that the court had to know why he had behaved in what seemed a very strange way before they could decide how best to deal with him, and that it was my job to recommend the court on the action they should take.

  All the time Hal kept saying, ‘No, no. This has nothing to do with you or anybody else.’ I asked if Mrs Gorman’s accusations were true. He refused to say. I said I couldn’t understand why anyone would damage a grave, particularly the grave of a friend. Hal said tartly that it was not up to him to educate me about life! But he blurted out that he had not really damaged the grave, that this was what the police said he had done. I said that stamping about on top of someone’s grave seemed a damaging thing to do. Not to mention the fact that the headstone on the grave of Barry Gorman’s father, next to Barry’s grave, had been knocked over. At this Hal stood up and shouted that if I questioned him any more he would leave and refuse to see me again.

  I persuaded him to sit down and reminded him of what could happen to him if he went on refusing to cooperate. That he could be sent to a Detention Centre and be kept there while the police, psychiatrists and other social workers looked into his case. He might get fined. He might be thought in need of medical treatment and then a Supervision Order would be made and the treatment specified, and he would have to attend an appropriate hospital. But, I told him, none of those things might be necessary if he tried to explain himself. He might then receive a conditional discharge, or be put on a Supervision Order with perhaps myself, or some other social worker, keeping an eye on him for a while just to see that all is well.

  Whatever happened, I said, he could not escape having to be dealt with by the court and that their decision would be affected by my report to them. So it was in his own interest to help me understand what he had done.

  Hal listened to all this morosely. When I finished he said, ‘Do what you like. I won’t say anything about what happened.’

  I decided there was nothing to be gained by further discussion at this time. Asked Hal to be with his parents when I visit his home tomorrow evening.

  19th Sept. Reviewing yesterday’s notes. Didn’t handle the conversation as well as I should have done. And can’t quite put my finger on what worries me. Maybe a subject for Team Discussion on Monday. Hal’s case is unusual and outside my experience. Obviously something went on between the two boys which led to Hal’s activities at the grave. Could Gorman’s death have upset him in a strange way?

  Hal is charged with damaging a grave. Desecration. Is that the action of a person grieving over a friend’s death? Been studying the police report on the second attack on the grave, when Hal was arrested and the only time when his actions were actually witnessed. P.C. Hirsh, the arresting officer, says in his report:

  The accused approached the grave at eleven ten p.m. He waited for a moment at the foot of the grave. Then he began stamping about on the grave in a sacrilegious manner. At first he stamped slowly and deliberately. But gradually he became increasingly wild. I then made myself known to the accused and arrested him. ‘O, no!’ he said and began laughing in a hysterical manner.

  If I wanted to desecrate a grave would I be satisfied with stamping about on it? It all sounds so feeble.

  11/What Barry meant by his home being fixed up for sailing accidents, it turned out, was a large lumpy woman with blue-rinse grey hair who transmogrified into a whirling dervish as soon as she saw me standing dishevelled, damp and dejected in her front hall.

  ‘Barry,’ she piped, sounding like a fire siren going off, ‘this poor boy is drowned! What have you done to him!’

  She took me by the shoulders, cooed at me, patted my cheek, smoothed my tangled locks. I was five years old and she had just plucked me from the clutches of a baby-snatcher.

  ‘He capsized,’ Barry said, climbing the stairs.

  Don’t leave me to this octopus, I screamed to him in my head.

  ‘He capsized!’ Mrs Gorman sirened—for this was she. ‘O my God, those boats! I keep telling you, Bubby, they’re dangerous. Look at the poor innocent. He’s expiring.’

  She flipped me round and bulldozed me up the stairs.

  ‘Into the bath,’ she said. ‘A hot bath is what you need. That’s what I do with all Bubby’s boys when they turn over. Some of them, they do it just for fun, I think. And because they like my baths maybe!’ She laughed, and was instantly serious again. ‘But the shock, going into the sea like that. A wonder it wasn’t the death of you.’

  ‘I’m all right, Mrs Gorman,’ I said, panting.

  ‘You’re all right! I’m glad. Half drowned and he’s all right! What about your mother?’

  ‘My mother? She doesn’t know.’

  ‘She doesn’t know! My God, she must be worried sick. Give me the number and I’ll call her.’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t, Mrs Gorman. She doesn’t even know I went sailing.’

  ‘Doesn’t know!’

  ‘And we aren’t on the phone.’

  ‘You boys! You never think of your mothers. My Bubby, he’s just the same. You don’t deserve to have mothers.’

  She flung open the door to a huge bathroom, bigger than any bathroom I’d ever seen except in films, and shoved me inside. Our bathroom at home is not much bigger than a cupboard that’s been fixed up with plumbing instead of coat hangers. There’s so little room that if you’re sitting on the pan and anyone opens the door you either sustain a fractured kneecap or escape injury only by ejecting fast into the bathtub.

  The Gormans’ bathroom wasn’t just vast, it also glittered. Mirrors bounced concealed lighting from compromising places. Wherever you stood you saw a kaleidoscope of yourself. Glazed tiles decorated with cavorting sea-nymphs and Greek gods covered what was left of the walls. Copper fitments glowed like soft flames on a corpulent, blue-marbled bathtub and a matching hand basin itself as deep as a barrel. A shower cubicle with sliding doors of underwater glass stood in one corner. But there was no lavatory pan, just something I thought was an uncomfortable-looking foot-washing basin. Till then I hadn’t even heard of a bidet never mind seen one. My mother could never have brought herself to mention such a thing, and my father would have dismissed it as a suspect device used only by effete foreigners. What surprised me more, though, was the lush blue carpet that covered the floor. At home we would have thought this not merely extravagant but worse: unhygienic.

  Water was already tumbling into the tub. Barry’s advance-party work, I guessed. (But where was he now?) Steam, billowing up, was beginning to fog the place, sweating the mirrors, splintering the dazzle of light.

  ‘Off with your clothes and into the bath,’ Mrs Gorman said, grabbing a Greek vase from the side of the tub and flinging bath-salts out of it into the water. A smell fumed back, enough to suffocate a sewage farm. Bubbles billowed. The steam turned Florida blue. This woman had blue on the brain.

  I stood up to my ankles in the prairie of the carpet, waiting for Mrs G. to finish her ministrations and leave. Instead she stood and stared back at me.

  ‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ she said. I didn’t move. ‘Ah, the shock! It’s dazed you. Come on, off with those filthy things.’

  I still didn’t—couldn’t—move.

  Mrs G. laughed, a high C that ricocheted off the Greek gods. ‘You think I don’t know about boys!’ she said grabbing my T-shirt and heaving upwards. ‘Me, a wife and mother. You’re as bad as my Bubby. You know he locks the door when he baths now?’

  ‘Mrs Gorman . . .’ I protested, struggling against her attempt to uncover my
torso and succeeding only in tangling myself so that her violent upward pulls at my shirt all but strangled me, cutting me off in mid-sentence.

  ‘Locks the door against his own mother! Would you believe? I tell him, you think you got something special that you hide it from me, your own mother?’ She tugged again. My shirt let go of my throat and locked itself under my nose instead. ‘I brought you into this world, I tell him. You’ve got nothing now you didn’t have then. Everything is still the same, only bigger.’ She laughed again and gave a final snatch that yanked my shirt off at last. She threw it in the direction of a wickerwork basket in a corner; it looked like one of those jars they always have in Ali Baba for the thieves to hide in. Maybe Barry was in there now?

  Not pausing to draw breath, Mrs G. attacked my jeans.

  ‘Mrs Gorman,’ I said, hanging on grimly to the waistband. ‘Mrs Gorman, I am not used to this kind of attention.’

  ‘Not used!’ she said, unbuckling my belt. ‘What’s the matter? Your mother neglects you? Is that why you didn’t tell her you were going to turn over?’

  Now she had my belt unfastened and had undone my fly-zip as well. Before I could take desperate measures to protect myself, like crossing my legs and slumping on to the floor, she tugged my jeans and underpants down with one swift (and obviously practised) movement, finishing with an expert flick of the hands that slipped them under my feet. Jeans and underpants followed my shirt in the direction of Ali Baba.

  Mrs G. straightened up and stood back, appraising me as if I were a piece of sculpture she had just finished. ‘I don’t know why your mother should neglect you,’ she said, nodding approvingly. ‘She ought to be proud of you. Believe me, you’re a good-looking boy.’

  She smiled at me, patted my cheek, made for the door.

  ‘Now, into the bath before you die of exposure. I’ll make some tea. The shock you’ve had, you need it hot and sweet.’

  She was gone.

  Some sons do have ’em, and I hadn’t met one like this before.