Riiiight acroooss the nay-ay-ation
It’s the in-out one-two-three Grand Time Copulation.’
There were soaring violins and a military band, and after the chorus a march in exultant two-time with trombones, snare drums and a glockenspiel. Jasmin came down the aisle towards the stage.
‘That’s your fucking-music, boys and girls.’ He undid the top button of his shirt. He wrote this one himself.
‘Where’s Dale? I want Dale.’ Out of the dark came the choreographer. She had a stylish trenchcoat on, tied in the middle with a wide belt. She had a small waist, sunglasses and a sticky-bun hairdo. She walked like a pair of scissors. Without turning round Jasmin called out to the man who was leaving by a door at the back of the auditorium.
‘I want those wigs, Harry dear. I want those wigs. No wigs, no Harry.’ Jasmin sat down in the front row. He made a steeple under his nose with his hands and crossed his legs. Dale climbed on the stage. She stood in the middle of the large carpet spread across the boards, one hand on her hip. She said, ‘I want the girls squatting in a V shape, five on each side.’ She stood where the apex was to be, moving her arms. They sat at her feet and she clipped up and down the middle leaving a trail of musk. She made the V deeper, then shallow again, she made it a horseshoe and a crescent and then a shallow V once more.
‘Very nice, Dale,’ said Jasmin. The V pointed backstage. Dale moved a girl from the middle and replaced her with a girl from the edge. She did not speak to them, she took them by the elbow, leading them from this place to that place. They could not see her eyes through her glasses and they did not always know what she wanted. She guided a man across to each woman and pressed on his shoulders to make him sit down opposite. She fitted the legs together of each couple, she straightened their backs, she put their heads in position and made the partners clasp forearms. Jasmin lit a cigarette. There were ten couples in the V shape on the carpet, which really belonged in the foyer.
At last Dale said, ‘I am clapping my hands, you are rocking backwards and forwards in time.’
They began to rock like children playing at ships. The director walked to the back of the auditorium.
‘I think closer together, darling, it looks like nothing at all from here.’ Dale pressed the couples closer together. When they began to move again their pubic hair rasped. It was hard to keep time. It was very much a matter of practice. One couple fell sideways and the girl banged her head on the floor. She rubbed her head and Dale came over and rubbed it too and reassembled them. Jasmin skipped down the aisle.
‘We’ll try it with the music. Jack, please. And remember, boys and girls, after the singing you go into two-time.’
‘Well, you’ve heard about the privacy of the sex-uu-aal act …’
The boys and girls began to rock while Dale clapped her hands. One, two, three, four. Jasmin stood half way up the aisle, his arms crossed. He uncrossed them, and screamed,
‘Stop. Enough.’ It was suddenly very quiet. The couples stared into the blackness beyond the lights and waited. Jasmin came down the steps slowly, and when he reached the stage he spoke softly.
‘I know it’s hard, but you have to look as if you are enjoying this thing.’ (His voice rose.) ‘Some people do, you know. It’s a fuck, you understand, not a funeral.’ (His voice sank.) ‘Let’s have it again, with some enthusiasm this time. Jack, please.’ Dale realigned those units rocked out of position and the director climbed the stairs again. It was better, there was no doubt that this time it was better. Dale stood by Jasmin and watched. He put his hand on her shoulder and smiled at her glasses.
‘Darling, it’s good, it’s going to be good.’
Dale said, ‘The two on the end are moving well. If they were all like that I would be out of a job.’
‘It’s the in-out one-two-three Grand Time Copulation.’
Dale clapped to help them with the new rhythm. Jasmin sat down in the front row and lit a cigarette. He called back to Dale,
‘Them on the end …’ She put her finger to her ear to show him she could not hear, and walked down the steps towards him.
‘Them on the end, they’re going too fast, what do you think?’ They watched together. It was true, the two who had been moving well, they were a little out of time. Jasmin made another steeple under his nose and Dale scissored on to the stage. She stood over them and clapped.
‘One two, one two,’ she shouted. They did not seem to hear Dale, or the trombones, snare drums and glockenspiel.
‘One fucking two,’ screamed Dale. She appealed to Jasmin. ‘I expect them to have some sense of rhythm.’
But Jasmin did not hear because he was screaming too.
‘Cut! Stop! Turn that thing off, Jack.’ All the couples creaked to a standstill except the couple on the end. Everyone watched the couple on the end, who were rocking faster now. They had their own sinuous rhythm.
‘My God,’ said Jasmin, ‘they’re fucking.’ He shouted at the A.S.M.s. ‘Get them apart, will you, and get those grins off your faces or you won’t work in London again.’ He shouted at the other couples. ‘Clear off, back in half an hour. No, no, stay here.’ He turned to Dale, his voice was hoarse. ‘I’m sorry about this, darling. I know just how you feel. It’s disgusting and obscene, and it’s all my fault. I should have checked them all first. It won’t happen again.’ And while he was talking Dale snipped up the aisle and disappeared. Meanwhile the couple rocked on without music. There was only the creaking of boards beneath the carpet and the woman’s low moans. The A.S.M.s stood about, not sure what to do.
‘Pull them apart,’ Jasmin shouted again. One of the A.S.M.s tugged at the man’s shoulders, but they were sweaty and there was nowhere to hold on. Jasmin turned away, tears in his eyes. It was hard to believe. The others were glad of the break, they stood around and watched. The A.S.M. who had tugged at the shoulders brought on a bucket of water. Jasmin blew his nose.
‘Don’t be pathetic,’ he croaked, ‘they might as well finish it now.’ They juddered to an end as he was speaking. They pushed apart and the girl ran off to the dressing-room, leaving the man standing alone. Jasmin climbed on stage, trembling with sarcasm.
‘Well, well, Portnoy, did you get your little poke?
Feeling better now?’ The man stood with his hands behind his back. His prick was angry and gluey, it let itself down in little throbs.
‘Yes, thank you, Mr Cleaver,’ the man said.
‘What’s your name, dear?’
‘Cocker.’ Jack snorted in his pit, the closest he ever came to laughing. The rest sucked their lips. Jasmin took a deep breath.
‘Well, Cocker, you and the little man stuck on the end of you can crawl off this stage, and take shagging Nellie with you. I hope you find a gutter big enough for two.’
‘I’m sure we will, Mr Cleaver, thank you.’ Jasmin climbed down into the auditorium.
‘Positions, the rest of you,’ he said. He sat down. There were days when he could weep, really weep. But he did not, he lit a cigarette.
Butterflies
I saw my first corpse on Thursday. Today it was Sunday and there was nothing to do. And it was hot. I have never known it so hot in England. Towards midday I decided on a walk. I stood outside the house, hesitating. I was not sure whether to go left or right. Charlie was on the other side of the street, underneath a car. He must have seen my legs for he called out,
‘How’s tricks?’ I never have ready answers to questions like that. I fumbled in my mind for several seconds, and said,
‘How are you, Charlie?’ He crawled out. The sun was on my side of the street, straight into his eyes. He shielded them with his hand, and said,
‘Where you off to now?’ Again I did not know. It was Sunday, there was nothing to do, it was too hot …
‘Out,’ I said. ‘A walk …’I crossed over and looked at the car’s engine, although it meant nothing to me. Charlie is an old man who knows about machines. He repairs cars for the people in the street and their friends
. He came round the side of the car carrying a heavy tool kit in two hands.
‘She died, then?’ He stood there wiping a spanner with cotton waste for something to do. He knew it already, of course, but he wanted to hear my story.
‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘She’s dead.’ He waited for me to go on. I leaned against the side of the car. Its roof was too hot to touch. Charlie prompted me.
‘You saw her last …’
‘I was on the bridge. I saw her running by the canal.’
‘You saw her …’
‘I didn’t see her fall in.’ Charlie put the spanner back in the box. He was getting ready to crawl back under the car, his way of telling me the conversation was over. I was still deciding which way to walk. Before Charlie disappeared he said,
‘Shame, great shame.’
I walked off to the left because that was the way I was facing. I walked down several streets, between privet hedges and hot, parked cars. Down each street there was the same smell of lunch cooking. I heard the same radio programme through open windows. I saw cats and dogs but very few people, and only from a distance. I took off my jacket and carried it over my arm. I wanted to be near trees and water. There are no parks in this part of London, only car parks. And there is the canal, the brown canal which goes between factories and past a scrap heap, the canal little Jane drowned in. I walked to the public library. I knew in advance it would be closed but I prefer to sit on the steps outside. I sat there now, in a shrinking patch of shade. A hot wind was blowing down the street. It stirred the litter round my feet. I watched a sheet of newspaper blown along the centre of the road, a piece out of the Daily Mirror. It stopped and I could read a part of a headline … ‘MAN WHO’ … There was nobody about. Round the corner I heard the tinkle of an ice-cream van and I realized I was thirsty. It was playing something out of a Mozart piano sonata. It stopped abruptly, in the middle of a note, as if someone had kicked the machine. I walked quickly up the street but when I got to the corner it had gone. A moment later I heard it again, and it sounded a long way off.
I saw no one on the way back. Charlie had gone inside and the car he had been working on was no longer there. I drank water from the kitchen tap. I read somewhere that a glass of water from a London tap has been drunk five times before. It tasted metallic. It reminded me of the stainless steel table they put the little girl on, her corpse. They probably use tap water to clean the mortuary table tops. I was due to meet the girl’s parents at 7 p.m. It was not my idea, it was the idea of one of the police sergeants, the one who took my statement. I should have been firm, but he got round me, he frightened me. When he spoke he held me by the elbow. It could be a trick they learn at police school to give them the power they need. He caught me as I was leaving the building and steered me into a corner. I could not shake him off without wrestling with him. He spoke kindly, urgently, in a cracked whisper.
‘You were the last one to see the little girl before she died …’ He lingered over this last word. ‘…And the parents, you know, of course they’d like to meet you.’ He frightened me with his implications, whatever they were, and while he touched me he had the power. He tightened his hold a little. ‘So I said you’d be along. You’re almost next door to them, aren’t you?’ I think I looked away and nodded. He smiled, and it was fixed. Still, it was something, a meeting, an event to make sense of the day. In the late afternoon I decided to take a bath and dress up. I had time to kill. I found a bottle of cologne I had never opened before, and a clean shirt. While the bath ran I took off my clothes and stared at my body in the mirror. I am a suspicious-looking person, I know, because I have no chin. Although they could not say why, they suspected me at the police station before I even made a statement. I told them I was standing on the bridge and that I saw her from the bridge, running along the canal. The police sergeant said,
‘That was quite a coincidence, then, wasn’t it? I mean, her living in the same street as you.’ My chin and my neck are the same thing, and it breeds distrust. My mother’s was like that, too. Only after I had left home did I find her grotesque. She died last year. Women do not like my chin, they won’t come near me. It was the same for my mother, she never had friends. She went everywhere alone, even on holidays. Each year she went to Littlehampton and sat in a deck-chair by herself, facing out to sea. Towards the end of her life she became vicious and thin, like a whippet.
Until last Thursday when I saw Jane’s corpse I never had special thoughts about death. I saw a dog run over once. I saw the wheel go over its neck and its eyeballs burst. It meant nothing to me at the time. And when my mother died I stayed away, from indifference, mainly, and a distaste for my relatives. I had no curiosity either about seeing her dead, thin and grey among the flowers. I imagine my own death to be something like hers. But at that time I had not seen a corpse. A corpse makes you compare living with dead. They led me down a stone staircase and along a corridor. I thought the mortuary would stand by itself, but it was in an office building, seven storeys high. We were in the basement. I heard typewriters from the foot of the stairs. The sergeant was there, and a couple of others in suits. He held the swing doors open for me. I did not really think she was going to be there. I forget now what I was expecting, a photograph, perhaps, and some documents to sign. I had not thought the matter out. But she was there. There were five high stainless-steel tables in a row. And there were fluorescent lights in green tin hoods hanging on long chains from the ceiling. She was on the table nearest the door. She was on her back, palms turned upwards, legs together, mouth wide open, eyes wide open, very pale, very quiet. Her hair was still a little damp. Her red dress looked newly washed. She smelled faintly of the canal. I suppose it was nothing exceptional if you had seen enough corpses, like the police sergeant. There was a small bruise over her right eye. I wanted to touch her but I had the feeling they were watching me closely. Like a secondhand-car salesman, the man in the white coat said briskly,
‘Only nine years old.’ No one responded, we all looked at her face. The sergeant came round my side of the table with some papers in his hand.
‘O.K.?’ he said. We went back down the long corridor. Upstairs I signed the papers which said that I had been walking across the footbridge by the railway lines and that I had seen a girl, identified as the one downstairs, running along the canal towpath. I looked away and a little later I saw something red in the water which sank out of sight. Since I cannot swim I fetched a policeman, who peered into the water and said he could see nothing. I gave my name and address and went home. An hour and a half later they pulled her up from the bottom with a dragline. I signed three copies of the statement. After that I did not leave the building for a long time. In one of the corridors I found a moulded plastic chair and sat in it. Opposite me, through an open doorway, I could see two girls typing in their office. They saw me watching them and spoke to each other and laughed. One of them came out smiling and asked me if I was being seen to. I told her I was just sitting and thinking. The girl went back into her office, leaned across her desk and told her friend. They glanced at me uneasily. They suspected me of something, they always do. I was not really thinking about the dead girl downstairs. I had confused images of her, alive and dead, but I tried not to reconcile them. I sat there all afternoon because I did not feel like going anywhere else. The girls closed their office door. I finally left because everyone had gone home and they wanted to lock up. I was the last to leave the building.
I took a long time getting dressed. I ironed my black suit, I thought black was appropriate. I chose a blue tie because I did not want to go too far with the black. Then, as I was about to leave the house, I changed my mind. I went back upstairs and took off the suit, shirt and tie. I was suddenly annoyed at myself for my preparations. Why was I so anxious to have their approval? I put on the old trousers and sweater I was wearing before. I regretted taking a bath and I tried to wash the cologne off the back of my neck. But there was another smell, that of the scented soap I had used in the b
ath. I used the same soap on Thursday, and that was the first thing the little girl said to me,
‘You smell like flowers.’ I was walking past her small front garden, setting off on a walk. I ignored her. I avoid talking to children, I find it hard to get the right tone with them. And their directness bothers me, it cramps me. I had seen this one many times before playing in the street, usually by herself, or watching Charlie. She came out of her garden and followed me.
‘Where are you going?’ she said. Again I ignored her, hoping she would lose interest in me. Furthermore, I had no clear idea where I was walking to. She asked me again, ‘Where are you going?’
After a pause I said, ‘Never you mind.’ She walked right behind me where I could not see her. I had the feeling she was imitating my walk but I did not turn round to look.
‘Are you going to Mr Watson’s shop?’
‘Yes I’m going to Mr Watson’s shop.’
She came up level with me. ‘Because it’s closed today,’ she said, ‘it’s Wednesday.’ I had no reply to this. When we came to the corner at the end of the street she said,
‘Where are you going really?’ I looked at her closely for the first time. She had a long delicate face and large mournful eyes. Her fine brown hair was tied in bunches in red ribbon to match her red cotton dress. She was beautiful in a strange almost sinister way, like a girl in a Modigliani painting. I said,
‘I don’t know, I’m just going for a walk.’
‘I want to come.’ I said nothing, and we walked together towards the shopping centre. She was silent too, and walked a little behind me as if she was waiting for me to tell her to turn back. She brought out a game which all the children have round here. They have two hard balls on the ends of pieces of string which they knock together rapidly by some motion of their hand. It makes a clacking sound like a football rattle. I think she was doing it to please me. It made it harder to send her away. And I had spoken to no one in several days.