Dancing to the End of Love

by White, Adrian

  I try using the wall and the corner for support in adopting a yoga position. I have to take myself out of this room. If I tell my mind that I’m no longer in this room, I will no longer be in this room. I concentrate on a mental image of the prom in Brighton – how much I love to walk along the prom. How I love the sunlight in Brighton. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I love this town. Who would ever have thought? This is my chance to stop fucking around. It’s time to make Brighton my home. I can be better than what I’ve become. I can’t change the past but I don’t have to live with it. I have to get over my daughter; it all comes back to her. She’s better off without me and what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her. If she’s happy with her mother, surely that’s something? Everything comes back to Ciara, but I have to let her go.

  I wake up to hear the sound of a baby crying.

  “That baby’s hungry,” I say out loud.

  They must have let me sleep, because I’m slumped awkwardly on the floor. Is this still the same day? How long have I been in this room? The baby continues to cry. The sound doesn’t seem to be coming from anywhere – up above, or from outside the room. The crying is in my head, like the music from a pair of headphones. I shake my head but the crying doesn’t go away.

  “Feed the baby,” I say. I must still be dreaming of Ciara. It’s the cry of a very young baby; the hungry cry of an infant that doesn’t understand anything but its hunger. The crying won’t stop. I listen and try to locate where it is in my head and it increases in urgency, just like when Ciara’s food wasn’t coming soon enough for her.

  “Just one more minute, darling,” I say, but when I test the milk, it’s way too hot and I have to wait for it to cool. I put her bottle in a jug of cold running water and pick her up, but she’s inconsolable. She thrashes around in my arms and arches her back. She wants her mother; she’d make do with her bottle, but she’s fast approaching the point where nothing at all will do – where she’ll be past caring about the hunger and will make herself ill with the crying.

  “Come on, come on,” I say to the bottle, testing the milk on my wrist. I put the bottle to her mouth but she snatches her head away. She’s impossible to hold in the crook of my arm when she’s like this. She kicks out with her tiny legs at the bottle and I struggle to control my temper. I put the bottle back down in the jug of cold water and place Ciara down in her cot. I walk away across the room to calm myself but, if anything, her crying becomes louder and I can’t leave her like this. I pick her up again and try to comfort her, walking around the room, putting her head across my shoulder, which is normally her favourite position, but of course she’s still hungry.

  “Please, Ciara,” I say. “Please.”

  I hear my own voice above the sound of the crying in my head. This isn’t a dream – they’re putting the sound of a baby crying into my head. This isn’t Ciara – just the sound of a baby crying in my head. How can they do that? Why would they do that?

  I slap my face to create a sensation other than the crying.

  This is a stage set, I tell myself, a black box with added props.

  I have to re-orientate myself. I have to find my own corner.

  I stand up.

  Think.

  The crying.

  This is my corner. I was trying to meditate, trying to stay awake; I wasn’t very good at it. I must have fallen asleep. I was hungry and I was thinking of Ciara, so I had a dream about trying to feed her. But how would they know that?

  The crying – the crying is still there in my head.

  They put the sound of a baby crying in my head, so of course I dreamt of Ciara. It’s okay to think of her, just as it was okay to find it hard to care for her on my own. Everybody finds it hard with a baby at some point or other.

  They’re fucking with my head. They allowed me to fall asleep and they played the noise in my head.

  How could they do that?

  Never mind that – maybe it’s not in my head. This is an enclosed room; they can do things with this room. They can do things to me in this room. This is not Ciara crying – it’s the sound of a baby crying being played to fuck with my head.

  But it doesn’t stop, even though I’ve figured it out – that perfectly pitched cry. I put my hands over my ears but the sound is still in my head. It finds me, holds me and won’t let me go. I know I have to find a place to escape the crying, somewhere in my head, but I can’t do it. Just like trying to leave Ciara alone to cry – I just can’t do it.

  And then the crying stops. I crumple in a heap to the floor and curl up into a ball. I’m back alone with my own silence. There’s nothing but the sound of my own thoughts – and they make no sound at all.

  I can smell food of some sort. This must be their next trick. Am I really worth all this trouble to them?

  Jesus, just let me be, can’t you?

  It’s porridge. Of all the things to choose, they choose porridge? It still does the trick, though. My hunger rises up from my stomach and into my mouth and I swallow my saliva. Unlike the noise of the baby crying, the smell of the porridge seems to come from elsewhere – not from inside my head. I follow the smell across the room, treading carefully and slowly in case I walk into the bucket by mistake. I take four steps across to the next corner and then five down to my bucket corner. I feel the bucket there at my feet. The smell of the porridge is stronger here, but so too is the smell of the bucket. I walk on around the wall – the wall with the door – and I can definitely smell porridge. My left foot kicks and spills something on to the floor – water, is it? I quickly reach down to the ground and fumble in the dark. My left hand goes into the porridge and I pull it out for fear of being scalded, but I needn’t have worried – the porridge is warm at best. The floor is wet and I find a tipped-over beaker rolling around on its side. It’s made of light plastic, like a baby’s drinking cup. I lift it to my mouth. Yes – it was water, but there’s barely a drop left to drink. I curse myself, but how was I to know?

  Did this happen while I was asleep, while I was dreaming/not dreaming of Ciara crying? Does this mean it’s morning? Have I been here a whole day?

  “My water’s spilt,” I shout out, forgetting my resolution not to speak.

  “My water’s spilt,” I say again, quietly and to myself. My water’s spilt.

  I throw the plastic beaker across the room. It hits the far wall and rattles to the floor. I sniff the hand that landed in the porridge; it’s sticky, and I lick my fingers. It seems to be porridge all right. I reach down hesitantly to find the bowl, not wanting to dip my hand in porridge again. Like the beaker, the bowl is made of the same thick plastic as a baby’s dish and it fits into my cupped hands. There’s no spoon with which to eat. I do a sweep of the surrounding floor, but I feel nothing but wet concrete. I carry the bowl of porridge back to my own corner, and use my hand to scoop the food into my mouth. It tastes just as you’d expect cold porridge to taste and goes straight through my system. I have to rush around the room to the bucket, peel away my overalls and let them drop around my ankles. Squatting over my bucket, I dread making a mess in the dark. When I’m finished, there’s nothing to clean myself with. I have a little cry, but no real tears come. The bucket smells, but not too bad.

  I walk back around to my corner. If this is a new day, I’m not having a good one.

  The porridge bowl and beaker are out on the floor somewhere. I do a sweep with my arms and find them. If they ever give me another beaker of water, I must remember to wash my hands before eating.

  I’m feeling pretty low. I lie down along the wall and make like I need to sleep. I want to see if this activates the alarm again but it doesn’t. The darkness is relentless. The silence in my head leaves me alone with my thoughts, and they’re no comfort at all.

  I count out the seconds for a while, but what are three thousand, six hundred seconds really worth? Another hour has gone by – but so what?

  I count for another hour, but nothing happens.

  I try exercising,
a variety of stretching positions that are a combination of football training and yoga. It’s not easy though, and when I stand free of the wall, the falling sensation returns and I have to reach out for support. I swing my arms around; these are pathetic exercises but at least they’re something and they act as a temporary distraction.

  People are held indefinitely, I think.

  Thoughts like that, I tell myself, thoughts like that aren’t going to do me any good.

  I’m hungry again and I sit back down. The alarms and the lights come on and I shelter the best I can. It goes on for a long time, but I still can’t bring myself to look into the lights. I don’t know what their rules are; I can’t figure out the rules.

  I’m crying again by the time the alarms are switched off – real tears this time. I’m probably begging for them to be turned off – I don’t know. I stay lying in the foetal position while the silence and the darkness return to my cell.

  “What?” I shout. “What do you want from me?”

  But I think I know the answer – they don’t want anything. They just want to do this to me.

  I try to meditate again, this time in a sitting position with my back to the wall. I’m not really meditating – it’s more a case of forcing my mind not to think. I try to use the darkness, the nothingness; if I can focus on nothing, surely I can think of nothing? I forget about taking myself – thinking myself – out of this room, and concentrate instead on nothingness.

  “Stand up,” a voice says in the dark. It’s over by the door but there’s no one in the room. “Stand up and face away from the door.”

  I do so. Behind me the seal on the door is released and the door opens. A dull light spreads across the floor and somebody comes into the room.

  “Where’s your hood?” he asks.

  “I put it in the bucket by mistake.”

  “You what?” he says and laughs.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re going to be, when you have to take it out and put it on.”

  I turn around to look at him. He’s dressed as a security guard.

  “Never mind,” he says. “Pick up your bucket and follow me.”

  I do so. He leads me along a corridor and shows me where to empty the bucket. I throw the sacking in with my own mess.

  “Now take the bucket back to your cell and come back here.”

  The corridor looks pretty much like any other, only there’s very little natural light – possibly to protect my eyes, I don’t know. There’s another guard at the door where I believe I came into the building. There are other doors along the left-hand side of the corridor, similar to mine, and I wonder if they’re occupied. It all seems very relaxed and quiet, like I’m heading into a job interview and not in some prison. I put the bucket inside my door and return to where the guard is waiting. The rooms on the other side of the corridor are like offices, sparsely furnished with desks and chairs. It’s very strange, like they’re making do with a building not fit for its purpose.

  “This way,” the guard says, and he leads me into one of the offices. A window looks out on to an industrial estate of warehouses and workshops. There’s a guy in a suit waiting to talk to me.

  “Sit down,” he says.

  The guard shuts the door and takes up a position behind me where I can’t see him. I sit down on a chair in front of a desk.

  “What did you intend to do in Brighton?” the guy in the suit asks, standing above me. “What were you doing at the Grand Hotel?”

  I don’t say anything. The daylight is disorientating after the darkness and silence of my cell.

  Suit man nods his head and the guard hits me hard in the kidneys with his fist. I double up in pain.

  “Think hard about this, son,” the suit says, even though he can’t be any older than I am. “I want to know what you intended to do in Brighton. I want to know why you were in the Grand Hotel. I want names, I want details and I want concrete information. You have a few days to think about it.”

  He walks out.

  “Come on,” the guard says. I pick myself up and follow him back to my cell. A second guard hits me across the back of my legs with a baton or a club, and I fall to the ground. They kick me and I roll up into a ball to protect my head and my balls. It’s a lazy beating, but it hurts anyway. They leave me be and shut and seal the door. I’m back to my darkness and my silence, presumably to think about what the suit man wants me to say.

  Only they don’t leave me be. Just as I’m getting my bearings again in the dark, they switch on the alarms and the lights. I crawl around, looking for my corner and waiting for it to end, but it’s the longest session yet. I try to block out the noise but it takes over everything, my whole being.

  Is that why I’m here? Because they thought I was about to do something in Brighton?

  What?

  That’s what the suit man wants to know – what?

  The alarms and the lights are switched off. I’m moaning out loud and rocking my body to and fro, curled up again in the foetal position.

  What was I doing in Brighton? Or what did I intend to do? What was I doing in the Grand Hotel?

  I have nothing to tell them.

  “Stand up,” a voice says in the dark. It’s the same guard – I recognise his voice. “Stand up and turn your face away from the door.”

  I do so and the door opens. The two of them come in and hit me again, repeating the blow to the back of the legs that has me crumpling to the ground. When they leave, it’s back to the alarms and the whole thing starts again. They do this again and again, without any real joy, as though it’s a tedious chore. Each time, my legs collapse in anticipation of the blows and I fall to the floor in a heap. This makes the guard laugh when he next brings me food.

  “Supper time,” he says and leaves me alone to find the food tray in the dark.

  I can hardly bring myself to make it over to the door, but I have to eat and drink. It’s some sort of a stew in the bowl. I rinse my hands with some of the water and eat as slowly and carefully as I can; anything to avoid the food racing through my stomach like the porridge. I take a drink and crawl back to my corner.

  They stop me sleeping with the alarm a couple of times, but there are no more beatings and eventually I’m allowed to sleep. They wake me with the baby crying and there’s porridge again for breakfast. They come up with something new: they play the song Kim by Eminem on a continuous loop for what I reckon to be about twelve hours – from porridge to stew time. The screaming is as loud as the alarm, but there are no lights – just the song to listen to while I think about Siobhan and what she did to me. The porridge and the stew help me keep track of the days.

  I’m taken to see the suit man again but I have nothing to say. He wants to know what I was doing in North Africa. Why did I check in my bag at Stanstead but not travel on the flight to Dublin?

  I want to please him – to give him an answer and avoid being hit in the kidneys again – but I’m not sure he’d appreciate what I’d have to say. I think back to Stanstead, to what seems like a lifetime ago – though, of course, it’s really only a matter of a few weeks. I remember liking that they might think my bag was a bomb. This, after all, is the world they’ve made for themselves.

  Suit man wants to know why I gave a false address in Manchester when I checked into the Grand Hotel.

  As ever, the thought of sleep takes over – whatever they do to me, all I ever want to do is to sleep. My chin drops on to my chest, and I’m woken by water being thrown in my face.

  He wants to know what I was doing with Laura Roberts.

  What does he think I was doing?

  Why did I follow her from Stanstead? Was she a cover for being in Brighton?

  Oh Christ, what can I say to him? How do you fight that kind of stupidity? Would he understand that I was messing with Laura to get at her sister? That I wanted to fuck up their whole family? That I hated them and everything they stood for?

  But suit man just looks bored. I’m nothing t
o these people.

  “Take him away,” he says to the guard. “He doesn’t know anything. We’re wasting our time here.”

  Yes, I think, take me away. Lock the door and throw away the key – you’ll be doing us all a huge favour. Only please – just let me sleep.

  II

  I do sleep for a while. I thought I might never be able to sleep properly again, but here I am. And when I wake up, I know where I am; it’s not as though I feel lost and confused. I’m back in Ireland. I’m out of England. I’m safe, for now.

  Quite where I am in Ireland, I’m not sure. I know we travelled north from the airport in Dublin but not on the Belfast road. If I had to guess, I’d say I’m somewhere in the region of Enniskillen, somewhere in that land of lakes and hills that are not quite mountains. I stopped watching for road signs or clues to my destination and gave in to my tiredness and the motion of the car. It was dark, but there were stars in the sky. I asked the driver his name but I don’t remember it now – John, was it? Does it matter? I have a feeling now I might not see him again.

  I reach out from my bed – I have a bed – and my hand touches the flex of a lamp. I trace the wire with my fingers and find the switch. A soft light comes on, easy on my eyes but not sufficient to read by. I swear to God this is what occurs to me; after the many unwelcome lights that have been shone in my eyes, or the brightness that they flooded into my cell to keep me awake, or to make me lose track of time, or for whatever effect they thought they might achieve – and let’s not pretend here, Brendan, they succeeded – I’m worried that this bedside lamp might not be strong enough to read by, and that if I try, I might damage my eyes. Like I’m thinking of doing some reading.

  But as I look around me, I notice that the room is full of books; old books mainly, and I feel the familiar instinct of curiosity kick in. I know that before long I’ll have to look through those shelves, just to check them out – you never know what might be there. For now, though, I keep my head on the pillow – pillows, I see, two deep pillows – and I take in the room.