Jim is waiting for her. Seeing her hesitate has been enough for him. Perhaps he has understood after all. Perhaps he knows. She drives her cigarette into the ashtray.
‘Just the one, then.’ She stands up, but almost collapses. ‘Oops,’ she says, and laughs it off. ‘I’ve been sitting for so long my legs have gone to sleep.’ She leans her hands on the table a moment while her shakes die down. ‘I’ll be hopeless, by the way. I haven’t danced for ten years.’
‘Ach, you’ll be fine. It’s like riding a bike.’
He walks ahead of her down the length of the tables. His back is thick, his waist about three times the width of her own. They meet at the end and he leads her into the group with the lightest touch on her elbow.
‘Return of the Mac!’ Tommy punches the air, laughs at his own joke and almost falls over.
‘Good for you, love,’ Pauline murmurs into her ear. She means well, but the words are terrifying. Before Carol can bolt, though, the group has closed her in its embrace.
Jim is already organising everyone into doing something called an eightsome reel to ‘Baby Love’. He grabs Carol’s crossed hands, whirls her round so fast she fears she might fall over but for his strong and steady grip. It’s a mess, a riot. It’s funny, funnier than anything she can remember. After the song has finished, men rest their hands on their knees, panting. Carol wipes her eyes and shakes her head at the other women. For a moment, she feels like one of them, if only for as long as it takes her to catch the thought, to remember that she is not. She cranes her neck to check her table, but there is no sign of Ted, no commotion.
‘Thanks, Jim,’ she says as the next song – ‘Lola’ by the Kinks – starts up.
But Jim grabs her hand. ‘One more, come on.’
‘I can’t.’ Her chest tightens. The saliva dries up in her mouth. She looks back towards her table, sees only her drink, Ted’s empty pint glass.
Jim pulls her towards him and puts his hand on her waist. ‘Who is he? I’ll beat him up for you.’
How little he knows. ‘I can’t.’
‘You can. It’s OK’
It isn’t OK. She lets Jim push her away and pull her back – a gentle slow jive. She glances back to her table. Nothing. She checks the bar. Ted isn’t there.
Jim bends to speak into her ear. ‘Your hair’s so shiny and dark.’ His breath tickles. ‘It’s like Chinese hair.’
‘Is it now?’
‘Is there any Chinese in you, like?’
She stands on tiptoe and replies into his ear. ‘No, and there never has been.’
He throws back his head and laughs. A thrill passes through her. She has made a man laugh, a man like him. His hand on her hip has warmed its own place. She doesn’t want him to move it away. But he does, to send her spinning, holding on to the ends of her fingers. She closes her eyes, refusing to see the table, hoping this will be enough to push what lies beneath it out of her mind. It isn’t of course. Oh, if Ted could only die, slip into oblivion there, now, on the sticky floor. It would be painless. And she would be free.
The first few notes of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ clear the floor by half to reveal Tommy and Pauline necking in the middle of the dance floor. Some of the guests are cheering them on. Carol steps back, unsure where to rest her gaze. Jim is looking straight at her. His eyes are blue. She thinks of Wedgwood pottery and a satin dress she loved as a teenager.
‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘That was really—’
‘Oh no you don’t.’ He reaches for her, but she dodges his hand and waves awkwardly.
‘I can’t. Really. I’m sorry.’ She turns away.
Her half-empty Coke is still on the table, watery with melted ice. Against her foot, Ted’s ribs open out and close, open and close. Thoughts of smothering him come to her. She pushes them aside, but they insist: herself, ducking under this table. Her hands on his neck. Quiet, no fuss. She could go to the ladies and come back and say, Has anyone seen Ted?
On the dance floor, Jim holds out his arms to her, cocks his head to one side.
‘Come on,’ he mouths.
Hand to her chest, she mimes a puff of tiredness. She has never felt less tired in her life. She sits down, but still she watches. Jim disappears in the crowd. A second later, he’s jumping up and down and waving his hand above his head. She realises he’s holding a small dagger. Curious, she stands up and moves closer, close enough to see, through heads, shoulders and arms, Jim making lassos in the air with the knife. What on earth is he doing? As if he’s heard her, he looks her way and grins. She shakes her head at him and returns his smile.
The crowd thins. Jim is wiping the sweat from his face with both shirtsleeves. To more shrieks of delight, he does a comedy stagger, feigning a heart attack.
Against her foot, Ted twitches, then stills.
‘OK, folks.’ The DJ’s voice is muffled through the microphone. ‘Time for some old-school rock ’n’ roll.’
Someone thumps into her back. She almost falls. It’s Tommy – he’s running towards the dance floor.
‘Jimmy!’ he yells, pointing wildly. ‘Jim, mate. You’re bleeding.’
Shouts. The music dips. Chatter fills its place. The main lights flicker on, throwing whiteness into the hall. Carol follows the line of Tommy’s finger down to where everyone is looking, to Jim, to his sock, to a great red stain spreading in the cream wool.
Jim is bleeding.
His eyes find hers.
‘I’ve sheathed the bloody skean-dhu in my leg,’ he says, as if she’s the only one who’ll understand what he means. But she has no idea what he’s on about. ‘The wee dagger,’ he adds, only to her. ‘I’ve sheathed the dagger in my leg. Bloody thing was so sharp I didna notice.’
‘Nothing to do with the six pints of lager, I suppose?’ Tommy crouches in front of Jim and gingerly peels the sock away. At the sight of the wound, there is a collective gasp. Carol wants to hold back the crowd but does not, cannot move. Tommy presses a cotton handkerchief to the gash, then lifts it. A red sliver appears, thin, then oozing, like a strange red blossoming flower. ‘Right, who’s going to give this pillock a lift to casualty?’
‘I will,’ she hears herself say. ‘I think there’s only me sober.’
Six
Nicola
2019
I return Tommy’s old handkerchief to the drawer and think of my mother taking that terrible chance with a man she had only that moment met but who, she told me later, she felt she knew straight away.
‘Outside it was that fine rain,’ I hear her say. ‘You know, when you don’t think it’s raining at all but next minute you’re soaked through.’
I can hear her say it, the exact turn of phrase, as if she were here. I can feel that drizzle, the air cold after the heat of the party. Which is the point, I suppose. I want her. That’s what, that’s all grief is: wanting someone who is no longer there. It isn’t that I have anything important to say. I’d only say Hello, how’s tricks? Shall I put the kettle on? The last time I saw her, I told her about an armed robbery case. I told her about having my kitchen done, showed her the colour samples for my units. Enough to bore anyone to tears, but still, despite the oxygen tube up her nose, her body little more than a bag of bones, her once shiny black hair now thin and bleached with age, still she listened as if every word from my lips were gold.