Dance on My Grave

by Aidan Chambers

  Being angry as well as sad, but not knowing why I was angry, made me even more upset. I started gasping for breath as the tears choked me. This made me worry about being heard. I switched off the torch. Didn’t know what to do. Walked this way and that beside Barry’s grave. Felt weak. Unthinking, sat down on the lid of Mr Gorman’s grave. Blocked my mouth against my knees. But this only restricted my breathing even more. Stood up, gasping, tears blinding me now. Staggered. Tripped. Found myself tumbling over Barry’s grave. Went sprawling across it.

  Scrambled to my knees astride his heap of earth. And in a frenzy began hacking, stabbing, digging, using his lollipop number-stake as a spade, flinging the soil aside in any direction. Some I heard skittering across the table top of Mr Gorman’s grave, making a hollow sound.

  32/Did I want to reach him? (Reach for him?)

  Did I want to join him? (Join in him?)

  Either/Or2. Take your choice. Squared or not. I didn’t know. Wasn’t, by then, in a fit state to think at all. As mindblind as I was tearblind.

  I don’t know how long the fit lasted. Seconds only I guess. I gave up when the metal spike of the lollipop bent so that it was useless any more for digging with. I threw it away in an exhaustion of failure and slumped onto the pitted mound.

  I was panting, sweating, shaking all over.

  One thing: My headache was gone.

  Probably washed out of me by sweat and tears.

  I calmed down. Slowly.

  I did not come here to dig holes, I thought.

  But why this? Why any of it? Why?

  Why why why why why why?

  33/I felt as though I had been asleep. A long sleep. That I had woken and was refreshed. But yet empty of energy. A tide at slack water between ebb and flow.

  I came here to dance, I told myself. I promised. So I must dance.

  I’ve seen films of foals getting to their feet soon after being born. That’s how I was, standing up now. Bendy-legged. Knees wobbling and buckling. More struggle than strength. I stuttered about, trampling on the disturbed soil of Barry’s grave. A kind of dance I suppose. I tried raising a foot to perform an improvized jig, stumbled, brought my foot down into the pit I had scooped in my frenzy, and, twisting my ankle badly, pitched forward, stifling a yowl of pain.

  I flung out a hand to save myself. Found the corner of Mr Gorman’s tilting headstone. Grabbed. And hauled myself towards it, hopping on my good foot.

  The headstone held me for a moment and then came away in my hand. With a slow grace it toppled, and with a hefty thud dropped sideways across the top of Barry’s grave, then collapsed face down upon it. Chop and splash. The ground seemed to shake, and the noise, in my ears, was thunderous.

  I leapt away from the falling slab, forgetting my hurt ankle. Only to be reminded of it again as I landed, this time not able to smother a yell of agony.

  So here I was, rending the silent night with bellows and thuds. Suddenly I was scared. Someone must have heard. I had to get away. Scarper. Now.

  I scrambled on hands and foot, wincing, back to the hedge. Thrashed a way through, regardless of spikey twigs and clawing thorns. Hobbled back round the winding paths of the gentile boneyard to my place of entry, and paused, listening hard for any sign of pursuit.

  None.

  Breath regained, I searched for a way out my gammy foot could manage. Found one at last: a hole in the bottom of the hedge big enough to crawl through into the space between hedge and outside wall. And then, a careful shuffle over the wall, and a slow, one-footed pedal home unseen.

  34/EXTRACT FROM THE DIARY OF A MADMAN

  Saturday. . . . Awful. Terrible. Lost control. Went crazy. Digging up the grave, for God’s sake! What’s happened to me? Never felt anything like that before. Like someone had taken hold of my brain and turned it back to front inside my skull.

  I’m beat this morning. Ankle swollen. Told Mother I fell down some steps in the dark. She took my clothes away because they were in such a state. Mucky, torn. ‘I’m glad you had a good game of football as well,’ she said. She can be funny sometimes. So I’m back in bed aching at both ends and not feeling too terrific in the middle.

  And still I haven’t danced. I’ll have to. Don’t know what to do. Couldn’t bear it if I went berserk again. Too scary. Really losing my mind. People say that: He’s out of his mind. I never thought of it being true; that it could be true. As ever happening. But it does. It happened to me. And another: I was beside myself. Well, I really was. Standing beside myself, watching myself in a frenzy. All the time a cold unmoving-me watching the mindgone-me going crazy.

  I wonder if mad people, the ones they lock up for being mad all the time, I wonder if they have a cold unmoving part of them who knows all the time they are mad, who watches it all happening. Watches what they do; what is done to them. That would be horrible. Because if madness is like that then the real pain for the mad person is knowing he’s mad and watching himself, feeling himself being mad every minute of every day. That would be hell. If that happened to me, I couldn’t bear it so much I’d kill myself. Maybe that’s why mad people do try to kill themselves so often? And when people stop them killing themselves, maybe they go berserk, not because they’re mad, but because they know they’re mad and can’t do anything to help themselves and can’t stand it any more.

  I’ve got to talk to somebody. I can’t sort this out by myself.

  Later. Kari’s the only one I can talk to. She’s the only one who knows everything. I’ve written, asking her to come and see me. Asked Dad to deliver the note because it was urgent. I said, ‘You told me to ask if I wanted anything. Well, I want this letter delivered. Will you take it for me?’ He looked at the envelope and grinned as if I’d given him a present. ‘A girl?’ he said. I said, ‘A friend. I promised to meet her, but I can’t when I’m stuck in bed, can I? I thought I’d ask her to pop round and see me. Is that okay?’ He looked at me a while, still grinning. ‘All right, is she?’ he said. I said, ‘How d’you mean?’ ‘You know,’ he said. ‘A smart lass, is she?’ I said, ‘I’ll put Ms Tyke onto you. You’re a male chauvinist.’ ‘Aye well,’ he said, ‘I could teach her a thing or two an’ all.’ I said, ‘She’s Norwegian.’ ‘Foreign,’ he said. ‘They usually are,’ I said, ‘except in Norway, of course, and then it’s us who’s foreign.’ His grin went. I only meant a joke but he took it as snide. Why do I always get it wrong with him? I was sorry. ‘Is it all right for her to visit?’ I said. ‘I don’t care,’ he said, retreating into his usual self again. ‘Nowt to do with me. I’ll ask your mother.’ He turned to go. ‘But you’ll deliver the letter?’ I said. He stopped. ‘Aye,’ he said, fingering the envelope. ‘Might do you some good. Doctor’s no bloody use, that’s for sure.’

  35/ACTION REPLAY

  Strange, reading my Mad Diary now. When I was writing it, I just shot the words onto the page like bullets, not thinking about them, but only wanting to get them out of myself because I had no one to say them to. But now when I read it I find it tells me things I didn’t know at the time, didn’t see. Like this conversation with Dad. Reading my diary brings that moment back vividly. I can feel the weight of the bedclothes on my legs, the heat around me inside the bed, the jangling aches in my body. And best of all I can see and hear Dad in a kind of microscopic blow up.

  And what hits me is that smile when he looked at the envelope addressed to Kari. I even wrote ‘as if I had given him a present’. His silly chat about Kari and then his parting shot about the doctor being ‘no bloody use’. More than a grumble. I can hear in the tone of his voice: he was saying, ‘What I think you need the doctor can’t do anything about’. But Kari—a girl—might? There’s hope yet, he was thinking.

  Playback.

  He knew. He knows. Somewhen or other after I took up with Barry he sussed out what was going on. That Barry was a mate in more ways than men usually mean when they use that word about a friend.

  Why should I have thought he wouldn’t? Because I’ve been assuming t
hat Dad can’t think? That he’s too thick to notice? God, if that’s right, what a condescending ape I’ve become.

  But of course he knows. I haven’t been exactly hiding it, have I? I just haven’t been talking about it.

  Maybe one day we’ll be able to talk about it, Dad and me. But not yet, Mz A., not yet. Not till I’ve sorted myself out and know for certain what I am. Which I haven’t yet.

  36/‘This is the first time I’ve had a girl in my room,’ I said to Kari while we talked when she visited on the Sunday evening.

  ‘Lucky you!’ she said.

  I’d hobbled to the bathroom before she arrived, spruced myself up, changed into a clean sweatshirt for the occasion, while Mother spring-cleaned my room, ready for royalty.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ I said, ‘this is the first time I’ve ever had anyone else in my room—except for family of course.’

  ‘I nearly didn’t come.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You abandoned me. Left me to that angry man.’

  ‘Did he catch you?’

  ‘O no! I’m much too fast.’

  ‘Well then!’

  ‘Well then nothing! He might have done.’

  ‘But he didn’t.’

  ‘With no thanks to you. You ran off and left me, after all I had done to help.’

  ‘I was nearly naked. How could I hang about?’

  ‘You had clothes in your bike.’

  ‘Yes. But I forgot about them till I was nearly home. I was in a state of shock.’

  ‘You were also in a shocking state!’

  We both laughed, even though the joke was not that funny.

  ‘I will forgive you a little bit,’ Kari said, ‘because the experience was so awful.’

  ‘I wish we hadn’t done it.’

  ‘It was you who said it had to be done.’

  ‘I know.’ I looked at her for a while. ‘Now there’s something else.’

  ‘I think I do not want to know.’

  ‘Yes, you do. You’re dying to know.’

  ‘You’re not supposed to say such things. You’re supposed to persuade me to listen till I give in.’

  ‘Let’s pretend we’ve been through all that, eh?’

  She eyed me suspiciously. ‘Just this once. I don’t like being taken advantage of. It makes me angry, which brings me out in spots.’

  I told her about going to Barry’s grave and what happened to me there. When I finished she shook her head and shrugged.

  ‘This is terrible, Hal,’ she said. ‘Worse than the morgue.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ I said. ‘I could understand the morgue, why I had to see him, even if it turned out to be the wrong thing to do. But this . . . I don’t understand. I thought you might.’

  She shook her head again. ‘I don’t know . . . Perhaps it was guilt. Feeling guilty for his death.’

  ‘I thought of that. But it didn’t feel like that.’

  ‘Then how did you feel?’

  ‘Sad. Angry. I don’t know. All mixed up.’ I thought some more. There was something I wasn’t saying and I didn’t know if I could. I had to gather myself together, force myself to say it. ‘Like I was trying to hit him.’

  We were both silent for a long time, not looking at each other. Kari kept her eyes fixed on her feet. Mine flicked here and there, taking her in now and then, watching for some kind of response.

  ‘Hit him?’ she said at last still not looking at me, and her face giving nothing away.

  ‘Yes. And trying to reach him.’

  ‘Trying to reach him so you could hit him?’

  ‘I suppose. Sounds mad, doesn’t it? Said like that. But I felt both those things. Not like you said them though.’

  ‘Now I’m confused!’

  ‘So am I! I mean, I didn’t feel I wanted to reach him in order to hit him. One thing connected to the other, see? Not that. They were separate. I wanted to reach him. And I wanted to hit him. Just like I was angry with him, and sad at the same time. Different things mixed up.’

  She was looking at me now, searching my face as if there was something to be found there that wasn’t in what I was saying.

  ‘Does any of that make sense to you?’ I said.

  ‘Yes . . . and no,’ she said.

  ‘Great!’ I said. ‘We’re certainly making progress!’

  ‘It isn’t so easy,’ she said. ‘People are too complicated for anything like this to be simple. Just one thing. Something you can explain in straightforward words. You read too many books that make it seem possible to sort life out and know about it.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Yes, you do. You think there is an answer for everything. A reason you can find and know about. You want everything to be clear cut, like some silly maths formula you can then go away and live by. You keep on looking for somebody who will—O, I don’t know—make you know how to live your life.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Yes, you do. All that childish nonsense about a bosom friend . . . If you want to know what I think . . .’

  She stopped dead in her tracks, glaring at me. And me glaring back at her.

  ‘Mrs Grey will be wondering where I’ve got to,’ she said, standing up. ‘I should go.’

  ‘Not now,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. We shouldn’t argue when you are ill.’

  ‘I’ll be a lot iller if you go now.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ she said, laughing. ‘You’re ill because you are upset at your friend’s death. That’s natural.’

  ‘It’s more than that and you know it. These headaches. They aren’t only about Barry’s death. They’re about me.’ All this was coming out without my having thought it before, as though something had just punctured a membrane and these words came spilling out through the rupture. ‘I get them when I try to think about Barry and me and what we did . . . No . . . what we were. That’s it, what we were. What happened at the grave was only part of that. I thought you might help me but all you do is—’

  Silence. Kari stood by my bed looking down at me. She was frowning. ‘You tell friends what you really think,’ she said, ‘the truth about them and—well, they resent it.’ She sat by my side on the edge of the bed, looking closely at me.

  ‘Try me,’ I said, a touch too defiantly.

  She smiled. ‘You are very nice, Hal. But you do want to eat people.’ She lifted a hand and held it over my mouth without touching. ‘Don’t speak. I might not be able to say any more if you do. It is difficult, you see. I have thought about you and Barry. About everything you told me the other day. I can see why you liked Barry, wanted to be his friend. He was exciting. I liked him too. He was full of life. Full of energy. He enjoyed himself. Had a lot to say. But with you, I think there was something more.’

  She paused, considering what she wanted to say, I guess, or maybe deciding whether to say it or not. Anyway, she was frowning again.

  ‘I said you like eating people. Perhaps that is the wrong way round. Perhaps I should have said you like being eaten. What I mean is you liked Barry because he—’ She checked my face for a reaction, judging how right she was to be saying this’—Because he made you come alive. He made you do things you wouldn’t have done on your own. You wouldn’t have dared. He decided everything for you, didn’t he? Everything important. Where you should go, what you should do, how you should do everything. He even told you what to wear, how to comb your hair, what to eat. When he wasn’t with you, you waited for him to be there again. When you were with him you did whatever he wanted.’

  She paused. I almost held my breath. I wasn’t liking what I heard, but couldn’t help wanting her to finish saying it. Like the doctor two years ago telling me I had a grumbling appendix and would have to go into hospital and have an operation. I’d tried not to think why I was being sick and had such a stomach ache. I told myself it was just wind, or nerves at moving, or something bad I’d eaten. But all the time I knew there was a worse cause. And when Mother finally called in the do
ctor and he said I had to have the op. I held my breath the same way, knowing I might as well face the truth and get it all over with as soon as possible. The same now with Kari: she was saying something I knew was true but hadn’t admitted, and I didn’t dare interrupt in case she stopped before everything was said.

  She waited in silence. I knew she wanted me to say something.

  ‘Go on,’ I managed to mutter.

  She sighed, not wanting to. ‘For a while, I’d guess, Barry enjoyed you depending on him like that. Enjoyed being your teacher, showing you about life, about yourself. I think he got a thrill out of playing your big brother, and your lover, and your boss, and your guru all at the same time. But, being Barry, he’d get tired of it after a while, because what he liked most was the beginnings of things. You know what I mean? He got pleasure out of making people like him, and give in to him. He liked to be in charge. But once people had given in to him, the challenge was over, you see, and he dropped them. Got bored with them. Like he did with you. That’s why he had no close friends. He didn’t, did he?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not that I ever met, or heard him talk about.’

  ‘He was exciting, but he liked excitement rather too much. And no one can ever be exciting all the time. Not even him. You just thought he was because for you, everything you did with him was new, different. He liked sailing and motorcycles because they were always exciting. They can always be dangerous. He could always get a new thrill out of them by pushing himself close to disaster whenever he wanted to.’

  She got up from my bed and sat down on the chair again. I felt I should say something, but didn’t know what.

  ‘If you really want to know what I think,’ she said after a silence, ‘I think you went a little wild and beat on Barry’s grave because he wouldn’t be here any more for you to lean on. For him to take care of you. You couldn’t face being on your own again, responsible for yourself, having to make your own decisions. All along it wasn’t Barry you wanted. It was your idea of Barry you wanted. Because the truth is that Barry wasn’t what you thought he was. Really he was just as scared as you are. Or as I am. Or, I think, as scared as most people are. He just pretended he wasn’t. Put on a rather good performance. As much for his own benefit as for yours. I think the truth is, Hal, that you fell for a face and a body and then put the person inside you wanted to find there.’