Dance on My Grave Read online

  When I arrived, Hal was upstairs in his room. Mr Robinson did all the talking at first. He told me that neither he nor his wife could understand what had happened. They had hoped the court appearance might jolt Hal out of his present state and ‘bring him to his senses’. ‘He goes round like a zombie,’ Mr Robinson said. He was not angry, but puzzled and tired, I think. Neither parent can get anything out of Hal, who seems to spend most of his time in his room or roaming the sea-front. Naturally, his parents are beginning to worry seriously about him, his health and his future.

  At one point Mr Robinson did burst out with the opinion that it was time Hal was given a sharp shock. Maybe we are all being too kind to him, too soft: etc. I tried to persuade him that perhaps Hal had had enough shocks already, and that what we need to do is gain his confidence so that he can begin to talk to us.

  I went through the events leading to Hal’s arrest as they knew them, but they could add nothing to what is already on record.

  After this, Mrs Robinson began talking. She said that Hal was kind and considerate, not like many teenagers today. He was clever, and she thought this was the trouble. She and her husband couldn’t keep up with him because they couldn’t understand what he was talking about half the time. Besides that, she said with some emotion, she and her husband did the best they could for their son whom they loved very much, and that whatever had happened she was sure there was a reasonable explanation, and they were determined to stand by him.

  By this time, Mrs Robinson was very distressed and began to weep. Mr Robinson comforted her, though clearly embarrassed by the situation. When she had recovered herself a little, Mrs Robinson said that in her opinion Hal—whom both parents call Henry, I noted—was still very upset by his friend’s death, and that even though it seemed strange, this must be the reason why he behaved as he did in the cemetery. ‘Henry changed a lot after he took up with Barry Gorman,’ she said. I asked what she meant exactly. She said she didn’t know, but just felt this explained everything if only Hal would tell us about it.

  All the time she spoke, Mrs Robinson twisted the edge of her dress between her fingers, and sighed heavily as though it were hard for her to get her words out. I tried to change the subject so as to give her some relief, and asked what they thought Hal should do now. Mr Robinson said that one thing was certain: Hal could not go on hanging about the house for much longer. It wasn’t doing Hal any good or his mother. He thought Hal should be made to get a job.

  Mrs Robinson said she didn’t know what should be done now, but that Mr Osborn had said Hal should go back to school. Mr Robinson was against this plan. I asked about Mr Osborn. Mrs Robinson said he had been very helpful during the summer and since Hal’s arrest. They relied on him now whenever they needed to do anything about the school because, she said, ‘The Headmaster is always too busy and we don’t like to take up his time’. This reinforces my previous impression that a meeting with Mr Osborn might be necessary and useful. I have arranged one for 22nd at 10.15 a.m.

  I felt enough had been said for now, and that Mrs Robinson would be too much upset by further discussion. So I asked if they would mind if I saw Hal on his own. Mrs Robinson called upstairs and asked Hal if I should come up to his room. He agreed.

  Hal has turned the very small spare bedroom into a kind of study. He had made a desk and bookcase from oddments. He has an old portable typewriter and a good but well-used stereo set and a considerable collection of discs and tapes. He was playing music to himself, but he switched this off when I came in. A copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slapstick lay on his desk.

  To try and ease the conversation, I asked him why he liked Vonnegut so much. He said, because of the way Vonnegut looks at life and because of his humour. He read out some of the jokes from Slapstick. I said I had not read the book. He said it was the only book of Vonnegut’s so far that he found hard to understand. He couldn’t quite see what Vonnegut was trying to do.

  I encouraged him to talk some more about this because he was chatting without any apparent reserve. He is an articulate boy and his enthusiasms show when he talks uninhibitedly. (I was also enjoying myself. This was not the sort of interview I am used to!)

  Suddenly, Hal said he must read me a passage from the beginning of the book that summed everything up. It explained a lot, he said. He read this passage (I borrowed the book from him before I left, feeling this might establish a friendly link, and that I ought to look more closely at the passage, as it obviously meant so much to him). Vonnegut is writing about the films of Laurel and Hardy, which apparently Hal likes watching on TV:

  There was very little love in their films. Love was never at issue. And perhaps because I was so perpetually intoxicated and instructed by Laurel and Hardy during my childhood in the Great Depression, I find it natural to discuss life without ever mentioning love.

  It does not seem important to me.

  What does seem important? Bargaining in good faith with destiny.

  I have had some experiences with love, or think I have, anyway, although the ones I have liked best could easily be described as ‘common decency’. I treated someone well for a little while, or maybe even for a tremendously long time, and that person treated me well in turn. Love need not have had anything to do with it.

  ‘That says it exactly,’ Hal said. ‘That’s what it is all about.’ I asked if he meant it was what life in general was all about, or what his present predicament was all about.

  Hal drew back at this and looked sharply at me for a while. I knew I had made a mistake in putting the question. His flippant front returned. ‘Who’s the clever social worker then!’ he said. He very coldly told me again that he would not discuss his arrest. I argued with him for some time, trying to get him to see that his parents were very worried about him, that he was not helping himself with the court by keeping silent. But he stubbornly refused to say anything more.

  I left feeling very angry with myself for making another mistake in dealing with Hal. But he is so different from any other case I’ve handled that I find myself puzzled about how best to tackle him. I think I must discuss him at the Team Discussion next week.

  Arranged to see Hal at my office at 2.30 p.m. on 22nd.

  1/‘Bubby, it’s the boy who turned over this morning,’ Mrs Gorman carolled when she opened the door that evening. A fog horn on bennies.

  ‘Fetch him in then.’

  His voice came from the kitchen along with a whiff of curry.

  Leading the way, Mrs Gorman said, ‘He’s been a bad boy, my Bubby. He came to the shop this afternoon. On his day off. I tell him he shouldn’t. Week in week out I tell him. All work and no play . . .’

  ‘Hi,’ I said. He was at the table, finishing a meal.

  ‘Thanks for the clothes.’ I put the bundle down on a spare chair.

  ‘But still he does it,’ Mrs Gorman said. ‘On his day off!’

  ‘Smells good,’ I said.

  ‘Want some?’

  ‘Just eaten, thanks.’

  ‘What good is a day off if he goes to work?’ Mrs Gorman started clearing dishes from the table, clattering them under a tap before stowing them in the dishwasher. ‘He’s worse than his poor father, who was a slave to that shop. For twenty years a slave. And look what it did to him. Dead.’ She rounded on me. ‘And I thought you were his friend!’ She flicked her fingers at my nose. ‘Ha!’

  I looked at Barry for help, not knowing whether to treat what was happening as a joke.

  ‘Well,’ he said, comedian to fall-guy, ‘answer the lady. Are you my friend?’

  Routining the patter, ‘Am I your friend?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, exaggeratedly puzzled, ‘I think you’re my friend. But are you my friend?’

  ‘If you think I’m your friend . . .’

  ‘. . . then you must be my friend. In which case I think we can safely say . . .’

  ‘. . . that I am your friend.’

  ‘There you are, Mother,’ he said, holding o
ut his arms. ‘He thinks we’re friends. I think we’re friends. So we must be friends.’

  Mrs Gorman sniffed with polythened disdain. ‘Some friend! He lets you go to work on your day off when you should be enjoying yourselves together. Having fun. Relaxing.’

  ‘He didn’t know I was coming to the shop, Mother. He had an appointment to keep. It wasn’t Hal’s fault.’

  ‘Hal . . .?’ Mrs Gorman turned her full measure at me. It was like being turned on by a brontosaurus. ‘Hal! What kind of a name is that? Is it short for something? Hal . . . Halibut? I didn’t know people were named after fish.’

  ‘It comes from Shakespeare, Mother.’

  ‘Shakespeare? I thought he was a William. Halibut was also his name?’

  ‘You’re being deliberately cussed.’

  ‘Henry the Fourth, Mrs Gorman.’

  ‘Shakespeare had four first names! What extravagance! What was his third?’

  ‘No, no, Mother,’ Barry said with heavy patience. ‘Hal is short for Henry.’

  ‘Well I’m glad it’s not short for a fish. He doesn’t look a bit like a fish.’ She took my head between her damp hands and smacked a suction-cushion kiss firmly on my brow. ‘Even though he is good enough to eat.’

  ‘You’ve already had your supper, Mother dearest,’ Barry said, getting up from the table. ‘And aren’t you missing Take a Card?’

  ‘It’s time? My God, and I haven’t finished the dishes!’

  ‘We’ll do that. Then I’m taking Hal to a film, okay?’

  ‘All right, my darlings. Have lots of fun.’ She left the room, which suddenly seemed twice the size. ‘But Bubby,’ she fog-horned from the stairs, ‘don’t stay out all night, you hear?’

  Barry winked, shrugged, called back, ‘I hear.’

  ‘And Hal . . .’

  I went to the kitchen door. Her face mooned at me over the banister. ‘Yes, Mrs Gorman?’

  ‘You see he keeps his word,’ she whispered at ten megahertz. ‘You’re his friend. And you’re a nice boy, I can tell. Straightaway this morning I could tell. I can trust you. He needs a friend, my Bubby. Some of these other boys he knows, well . . . they lead him astray—’

  Barry came up behind me, putting an arm over my shoulder, leaning. For the first time I smelt him, his clean bodywarmth.

  ‘You’ll miss your programme if you stand there gabbing, Mother,’ he said mocking.

  Mrs Gorman peered at us, mouth pursed. ‘He’s all I’ve got now, you know, Hal,’ she said. ‘Since his father—’ Barry’s hand pressed down on my shoulder, a warning for silence.

  A pause. Glass threatened by a brick. Then suddenly Mrs Gorman smiled. The brick a feather duster.

  ‘But you’re a sight for sore eyes, the pair of you,’ she said and clumped away upstairs.

  2/What was all that about?

  ‘Forget it,’ Barry said, the question unasked. ‘She thinks I work too hard. That’s because the shop is work to her.’

  ‘Not you?’

  ‘I told you. I love it. I like music. Like people. Like selling.’ He grinned, aping greed. ‘Like money.’

  ‘Who doesn’t.’

  He was stacking the dishwasher, reloading it after his mother’s attempt. He was one of those people whose movements are as natty as a conjuror’s. I handed him odds and ends so as to feel helpful.

  ‘And what about the ineffable Oz?’ he said. ‘Had he a master plan for your brilliant future?’

  ‘Only wants me to join his English Sixth, doesn’t he!’

  A melodrama of dishes. I’d tapped a nerve seemingly.

  ‘Never!’

  ‘Split my tongue and hope to cry! He also told me in the same breath that Eng. lit. would be useless to a genius like me.’

  ‘He said that?’

  ‘Words to that effect, yes.’

  ‘The crafty pillock!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Obvious. He asks you to join his Sixth. You feel chuffed at the rare honour, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Then he tells you what he has to offer won’t be any use. And you think, “How honest! This is a man I can believe.” Right?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘But telling you that is like putting up a “No Trespassing” sign. Anybody with any gump thinks there must be something worth trespassing for and wants his bit of the action. Besides, if you tell anybody who’s worth anything not to do something, they go and do it right off, don’t they?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So he’s testing you. If you take the bait against all opposition, even from him, he’ll know you’re really keen.’

  ‘Isn’t that good?’

  ‘Marvellous. Wonderful. One more disciple in his ranks.’

  ‘And now comes the coup de butt.’

  ‘The boy’s a giggle in every bite. But—what he’s telling you is still true, idiot!’

  ‘There’s no future in Eng. lit.?’

  ‘You said it.’

  ‘No. He said it. I haven’t made up my mind yet.’

  ‘Oo, you Fierce Northern Tribes! You’re so strong! So independent!’

  I slung a teatowel at him.

  ‘One long laugh, you Southerners,’ I said.

  He snatched the teatowel from his face and came round the table stalking me with it. ‘You should have called yourself Hotspur,’ he said, flicking the towel at my thighs.

  I dodged round the table, grabbing up a chair as a shield.

  We both started giggling, like kids in a playground.

  ‘Careful what you’re doing with that thing,’ I said. ‘I’ve need of my vitals yet.’

  ‘Maybe my need is greater than yours,’ he said.

  ‘You trying to tell me something?’ I said, fending off a torrent of damp cloth with the chair.

  ‘Not a lot,’ he said. ‘But I thought you and me was going to be chinas.’

  ‘Whatever gave you that idea!’ I said.

  He suddenly stopped trying to flense me and tossed the cloth over my head. When I’d put down the chair and unveiled he was eyeing me frankly.

  ‘Right though?’ he said.

  I might have run a mile. ‘You talk in riddles,’ I said.

  He turned away, switched on the dishwasher.

  ‘We could stay in if you like. Instead of going to a movie, I mean.’

  I was glad his back was to me. It was getting harder to look honest.

  I said, ‘I think I’d like a movie.’

  ‘Have a butcher’s at the local rag,’ he said, making for the door, ‘see what’s on while I have a jimmy.’

  He dashed out, like he was needing to escape.

  3/Know what I made of that? A can of magic beans offered on sale or return is what I made of that. Hence the sudden symptoms synonymous with sprinting the five thousand metres.

  I could hardly read the newsprint announcing this week’s filmatic attractions because my eyes were palpitating to the rhythm of hard rock in my head led by the drummer, high on C9H13 NO3 in my chest. No surprise. The rhythm stick was forcing.

  And I might have been wrong. Which added to the excitement, as the possibility of being wrong always does.

  But was I to proceed to the cinema through Southend’s crowds with my hands held before me like a defrocked choir boy? I could hardly stand up straight even now. Which wouldn’t do at all.

  So three deep breaths, a no-nonsense juggle with my pudenda, a readjustment of my round me’s, and the newspaper came into focus at last.

  ‘Porno or sci-fi epic,’ I said when he came back, by which time I had recovered some calm again. ‘That’s the choice.’

  ‘Sci-fi for me,’ he said, checking the kitchen was safe to leave. ‘There’s enough porn in my head without needing more.’

  4/He stopped on the pavement outside his house.

  ‘We could ride if you like. I run a Suzuki.’

  ‘Whichever, I don’t mind.’

  ‘Better walk. I haven’t a spare helmet and the old Bill i
s heavy handed in town. Every biker a Hell’s Angel. But we’ll have to buy you one.’

  ‘We?’ I said. ‘And are we going somewhere?’

  ‘Why not?’ he said.

  We strolled to town along the esplanade, the tide in and the bathers mostly gone. But plenty of sea-watchers. And the weather was cool and gentle now after the storm.

  ‘So you’re chucking your lot in with Ozzy,’ Barry said after a while.

  ‘I told you,’ I said, ‘I haven’t made up my mind yet.’

  ‘You will.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘You’ve got that lean aesthetic look.’

  ‘I’m not sure if that’s a compliment.’

  ‘Anyway, you’ll be a gentleman of leisure till September.’

  ‘Not if my dad gets his way.’

  ‘Wants you earning, does he?’

  ‘Part-time at least.’

  ‘Quite right too. Schoolboy layabouts!’

  ‘Yes, grandad!’

  ‘I was thinking about that after you went this afternoon.’

  ‘You’re keen. I haven’t even started thinking about being a dad yet.’

  ‘Har har,’ he said. ‘You’d slay them at the Palace. About you being a layabout, I mean, knucklehead. What sort of thing are you looking for?’

  ‘I’ll do anything except anything.’

  He stopped and leaned on the railing at the edge of the pavement, looking out to sea.

  ‘How about Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, four till six, and all day Saturdays?’

  I’m so thick I really didn’t know what he was playing at.

  ‘Where?’ I said.

  ‘Gorman Records.’

  And he really did take me by surprise.

  ‘Are you having me on?’

  ‘Serve in the shop, help keep the stock in shape, chat up the customers, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Why?’ I was watching him carefully, but he wouldn’t look at me, just kept his eyes on the view.

  ‘Because we need somebody. Mother’s a genius with the accounts. But she’s hopeless in the shop. We get busiest in the late afternoons. Mostly kids wanting to hear the new discs. They drive Mother crazy. And Saturday is the worst time of all. More than I can manage on my own.’