After the Dance

by Alan Warner

  Murdo and Calvin

  One day Murdo went into the police station.

  ‘I wish,’ he said, ‘to report something.’

  ‘And what is that, sir?’ said the sergeant, who was large, polite, and red-faced.

  ‘I wish to report,’ said Murdo feverishly, ‘a sighting of Calvin.’

  He paused impressively.

  ‘And which Calvin is that, sir?’ said the sergeant quietly. ‘And why should you report him?’

  ‘Calvin, Sergeant, is a dangerous lunatic. He is responsible for the Free Church, for the state of Scottish literature, and for many other atrocities too numerous to mention. And especially the Kailyard,’ he added in a low voice.

  ‘Kailyard, sir?’

  ‘That’s right, Sergeant. One of his grossest inventions. I want him arrested.’

  ‘But, sir,’ said the sergeant, ‘I can’t . . . ’

  ‘I haven’t finished yet,’ said Murdo in a penetrating voice. ‘I believe him also to have committed the greatest sin of all. I can only tell you in a whisper. I believe him to have invented the Bible.’

  ‘Invented the Bible, sir?’

  ‘That’s right, sergeant. I have always suspected that the Bible was the invention of one man, a man with a colossal ego and a criminal mind. Let me ask you this. If the Bible had been invented by God would it contain all the mistakes that it contains. For instance,’ he said rapidly, ‘how is it that God is supposed to have created light before making the sun or the moon? You can read of that error in Genesis. That is only one example. Another example is this. What woman was supposed to have married Cain when there was no other woman alive on the face of the deep but his own mother Eve? They suggest to me the inventions of a man who was not naturally creative and, as we know, Calvin – like Francis Bacon, another treacherous man – was a lawyer.

  ‘Listen, in the Bible there’s a man called Amraphel, one called Ashteroth, and another one called Chedorlaomer. There are the names invented by a tired mind. Also, he made other slips in this gigantic enterprise. He said that Reu lived after he begat Serug two hundred and seven years. All this suggests a man engaged in the creation of a stupendous best-seller whose mind flickered at the typewriter. Have you any idea, Sergeant, how many copies of this vast book have been sold in the last thousand years? It is the most bizarre plot in human history.’

  ‘But, sir, I . . . ’ the sergeant tried to intervene.

  ‘And that is not all by any means,’ said Murdo, his eyes assuming a supernatural sharpness and directness. ‘If you will allow me to continue. There is also this fact which I think is almost conclusive. A book of such magnitude must have taxed even the greatest brain. And so we find whole chapters which are feverish outpourings making no sense at all, either that or these are space fillers pure and simple. How else can one explain whole chapters which run as follows?

  ‘And Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and Arphaxad lived three and thirty years and begat Salah, and Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years. And this, mark you, Sergeant, is the lowest limit of some of the ages. Think, Sergeant, of the huge amounts of money that would have to be paid in old age pensions if that were true. Think of the drain on the Health Service, the hospitals required, the Social Security, the guide dogs, the food, the drink, the white sticks, the geriatric wards. How could any economy have sustained such a vast number of the ancient, especially before television was invented. Look, sergeant, it cannot be denied that there is at least here a basis for investigation.’

  The sergeant’s round reddish eyes gazed at him.

  ‘All the oxen and the asses,’ continued Murdo relentlessly, ‘that one could covet. Is there not something there too? Crimes unimaginable. A fiction of such remarkable cunning that it is difficult for us to understand the ramifications of its plot. The sex, the murders, the casual examples of incest, sodomy, black magic and theft. The silences on important matters like justice and religion. It has been clear to me for many years that at the back of all this was Calvin. Tell me this,’ said Murdo earnestly, ‘if you were going to investigate a criminal would you not ask yourself certain questions? Ah, I see that you would. Who, you ask, gains by such an immense crime. And you must answer if you look around your country today that the only person to gain must be Calvin. Wasn’t it he and his church who became triumphant? Who therefore would be more likely to bring such a result about? Ah, you are now going to ask me the most penetrating question. Opportunity. Did Calvin in fact have the opportunity? You may say reasonably enough that Calvin lived centuries ago but was not so old as the Bible. That puzzled me for a while too, till eventually I saw the solution to it. And I found the solution, as commonly happens, in his own work. You remember that he mentioned a number of people who lived to the age of eight hundred. I believe that Calvin lived to the almost unimaginable age of 22,000 years five months and two days. He waited and waited, keeping his manuscript intact, till one day the printing press was invented and he pounced (is it a coincidence by the way that Calvin differs from Caxton by only three letters?).

  ‘I can tell you, sergeant, that on that day Calvin was in his element. Imagine what it must have been like for him to know that his book, once a scroll, would be read all over the world, that boats would ferry his best-seller to the ignorant Africans, Asians and the Scots. Imagine the size of the royalties.

  ‘And now he is here and I have seen him. He will hardly leave his house (for his cunning is supernatural) and I only saw him briefly while he was completing his toilet on the moor. He will speak to no women and if any come near him he will shake his stick at them and mutter words like, “Impudent whores, prostitutes of the deepest dye.” And that is another thing,’ said Murdo vigorously, boring his eyes towards the crab-red eyes of the sergeant. ‘A writer can be told by his convictions, by his mannerisms. Calvin hated women and this appears in the Bible. In nearly every case the women are either treacherous or boring. He hated sheep as well: think of the number that he sacrificed. Who is this man then, this woman-hater, this sheep-hater-genius who has deceived so many million people, ambitious inventor of strange names? What other evidence do you need?’

  He stopped and the silence lasted for a long time.

  ‘But I have not,’ Murdo continued, ‘reached the highest point of my deductions yet. It came to me as a bolt from the blue as bolts often do. The beauty of it is breathtaking. Let me list those things again: a man who hates women, who deceives men, who lives thousands of years, who will stop at nothing for gain, who has come out of hiding at this present disturbed time, who wears a bowler hat, whose sense of humour is so impenetrable that no one can understand it, who imposes such colossal boredom on the world that no one can stay awake in his presence, a man who uses boredom as a weapon. Who, I repeat, is this man? I will tell you,’ and he lowered his voice again. ‘I believe that this man is the Devil.’ He leaned back in triumph. ‘There, I have said it. Think how many problems that solves at a stroke. Think how the knots untie themselves, if we once understand that Calvin is the Devil. Everything that was opaque to us before is now crystal clear. All the questions that we need to ask are answered. You must,’ he said decisively, ‘send a Black Maria for him at once, or a green one or even a blue one, before he can start on more books of such length. Is he planning to come out of hiding to demand his royalties? Think of our country. How could it withstand such a demand? Surely you of all people can see that . . . Ah, I understand, you aren’t going to do anything. I was afraid of that. Well, don’t say that I didn’t warn you when the consequences of his arrival here become clear.’ He backed towards the door, the sergeant leaning across the desk towards him. ‘Remember that I warned you. You have my phone number, my fingerprints. I have nothing to gain. We know who has something to gain.’ He screamed as he went round the door. ‘Put him in a cell or he’ll destroy us all. Bring him in on suspicion of loitering, of parking on a double yellow line, of singing at the Mod.’

  The sergeant str
ode towards the door and locked and bolted it. He was breathing heavily. And even yet he thought that he could hear that voice shouting, ‘ . . . for being a hit man for the Educational Institute of Scotland.’

  After the Dance

  I had met her at a dance and we went to her house at about eleven o’clock at night. It was in a tenement and the steps up to her door were wide and large and clean as if they had been newly washed. The road, I remember, was very slippery as it was winter and, walking along in her red leather coat and red gloves, she looked like an ageing heroine out of a fairy story.

  When we opened the door and went in she said in a whisper, ‘You’ll have to be quiet. My father is asleep.’ The room blossomed into largeness in the light and one’s first impression was of whiteness, white wallpaper and white paint. Above the mantelpiece there was a rectangular mirror with a flowery border. There were rooms leading off the one we were in and the whole flat seemed much more spacious than one might have expected.

  She took off her coat and gloves and laid them on the table and sat down. The fire had gone out but there were still a few bits of charred wood remaining in it. A large dog got up and greeted her and then lay down in a corner munching a bone. A white-faced clock ticked on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Would you like some tea?’ she asked.

  I said ‘Yes,’ and she went to the blue cooker and put the kettle on. She got out a tin of biscuits.

  ‘My father will be trying to listen,’ she said. ‘But he’s in the far end room. He doesn’t sleep very well. There’s no one to look after him but me. No one else. I have four sisters and they’re all married and they won’t look at him. Does one abandon him?’ She looked at me wearily and now that she had removed her red coat her face appeared more haggard and her throat more lined. ‘Or does one sacrifice oneself? He says to me, “Why did you never marry like your sisters and your brothers?” He taunts me with not marrying and yet he knows that if I married he would be left alone. Isn’t that queer? You’d think he wouldn’t say things like that, I mean in his own defence. You’d think he’d have more sense. But he doesn’t have any sense. He spends a lot of his time doing jigsaws. They never come out right of course. A bit of a castle or a boat, something like that, but most of the time he can’t be bothered finishing them. And another thing he does; he puts ships in bottles. He spends hours trying to get the sails inside with bits of string. He used to be a sailor you see. He’s been all over the world. But most of the time he cuts wood. He goes down to the shore and gathers wood and chops it up in the woodshed. He makes all sorts of useless ornaments. He’s got an axe. And lots of tools. In the summer he spends all his time in the shed chopping up wood. There’s a woodshed down below on the back lawn and in the summer there are leaves all round it. He sits there. But he’s always hacking away with that axe. Day after day. But what can one do with the old?’

  She poured the hot water into the tea-pot and took it over to the table. She poured the tea into two large blue mugs and milked it.

  ‘It’s a problem, isn’t it, what to do with the old? If one wasn’t so good-hearted – some people aren’t like that at all. Do you take sugar? One? Some people can go away and forget. My sisters always make excuses for not having him. They say they haven’t got enough space with the children. Or they say they haven’t got enough money. Or they say he wouldn’t be good for the children. It’s funny how they can be so forgetful and yet he wasn’t any better to me than he was to them. In fact he treated me worse.’

  She looked at me as if she expected me to say something. I murmured something unintelligible through the biscuit I was chewing, thinking that it all did sound really like a fairy tale. I wondered why she wore red. I had been reading something in one of the Sunday colour supplements about colour being a betrayal of one’s personality but then everything was a betrayal of one’s personality. Even conversation. I myself preferred blue but she wore red gloves, a red coat and she even had a red ribbon in her hair.

  She was an odd mixture. At the dance she had danced very freely as they do in Top of the Pops, swaying like an unconscious flower, in a hypnotic trance of complete surrender to the body.

  The dog crunched his bone in the corner and the clock ticked on.

  ‘I don’t understand why I’m so soft-hearted,’ she said, crushing a biscuit in her hand.

  I looked at the TV set. ‘Is there anything on TV?’ I said, ‘or would that disturb your father?’

  ‘There’s a Radio Times there,’ she said carelessly. ‘If we shut the door he won’t hear it. I don’t watch it much.’ The set was of white wood and I had a vision of her father hacking it up for firewood with his trusty axe.

  I found the Radio Times among a pile of romantic magazines, some of which lay open with rings of black ink round horoscopes.

  ‘There’s a series about Henry VIII,’ I said. ‘It’s been going on for a week or two. Have you seen any of it?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘but if you want it. So long as it isn’t too loud.’

  I switched on the TV and waited for the picture to declare itself. How did people exist before TV? What did they talk about? She rested her elbow on the table and drank her tea.

  The picture clarified itself. It showed Anne Boleyn going to the scaffold. She was being prepared by her maids in attendance in the prison while the sunlight shone in straight shafts through the barred window. She told them that she wasn’t frightened though some of them were crying and their hands shaking as they tied the ribbon in her hair.

  The scene shifted to the execution block and showed a large man in black who was wearing a black mask: he was carrying a huge axe in his hand. The wooden block lay below. She came forward and lay down as if she were a swimmer, her hair neatly tied. Her motion had an eerie aesthetic quality as if she were taking part in a ballet dance, swanning forward, the axe falling. As the axe cut the head from the neck there was a roar of applause from the people.

  I turned towards her. She was looking very pale. ‘I don’t like these TV programmes,’ she said, and I switched it off. ‘They’re all so violent.’

  ‘I’d better be going,’ I said looking at the clock. ‘It’s getting late.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you’d better,’ she said. ‘I enjoyed the dance.’

  I went out into the darkness, at first unable to see, and closing the main door of the tenement behind me. Then as my eyes focused and the sky came into view and defined itself, I saw the white stars. They were like the bones the dog had been crunching.

  I walked very carefully along the glassy road almost slithering at times.

  Funny about the tall man with the mask and the axe. It had reminded me of something in its extraordinary blatant brutality. The axe and the wood. But the picture I remembered most clearly was that of Anne Boleyn in the sunlight looking out of the narrow barred window on to the lawn. I really hoped that she had meant it when she said that she wasn’t afraid. But she had certainly acted as if she meant it. And I was sure she did. For that particular moment in time she had meant it and that was something. One could not be expected to mean it for all moments, even on TV.

  Mother and Son

  His clothes were dripping as he came in. The water was streaming down his cheeks, a little reddened by the wind and the rain. He shook back his long hair and threw his jacket on the bed post, then abruptly remembering, he looked through the pockets for a box of matches. The house was in partial darkness, for, though the evening was not dark, the daylight was hooded by thick yellow curtains which were drawn across the width of the window. He shivered slightly as he lit the match : it had been a cold, dismal afternoon in the fields. The weather was extraordinarily bad for the time of year and gathering the sheaves into stacks was both monotonous and uncomfortable. He held the match cupped within his hands to warm them and to light his way to the box where he kept the peats. The flickering light showed a handsome face. The forehead was smooth and tanned, the nose thin though not incisive, the mouth curved and petulant, and the chin small
and round. It was a good-looking face, though it was a face which had something childish about it. The childishness could be seen by a closer look, a look into the wide blue eyes which were rather stolid and netted by little red lines which divided them up like a graph. These eyes were deep and unquestioning as a child’s, but they gave an unaccountable impression that they could be as dangerous and irresponsible as a child’s. As the match flickered and went out with an apologetic cough, he cursed weakly and searched his pockets. Then he remembered he had left the box on the table, reached out for it impatiently, and lit another match. This he carried over to the lamp which lay on the table. The light clung to the wick, and he put the clean globe gently inside the brackets. When the lamp was lit, it showed a moderately sized kitchen, the walls of which were painted a dull yellow. The dresser was surmounted by numerous shelves which held numerous dishes, some whole, some broken. A little china dog looked over the edge as if searching for crumbs: but the floor was clean and spotless, though the green linoleum looked a bit worn. Along one wall of the room was a four-poster bed with soiled pillows and a coverlet of some dark, rough material. In the bed was a woman. She was sleeping, her mouth tightly shut and prim and anaemic. There was a bitter smile on her lips as if fixed there; just as you sometimes see the insurance man coming to the door with the same smile each day, the same brilliant smile which never falls away till he’s gone into the anonymity of the streets. The forehead was not very high and not low, though its wrinkles gave it an expression of concentration as if the woman were wrestling with some terrible witch’s idea in dreams. The man looked at her for a moment, then fumbled for his matches again and began to light a fire. The sticks fell out of place and he cursed vindictively and helplessly. For a moment he sat squatting on his haunches staring into the fire, as if he were thinking of some state of innocence, some state to which he could not return : a reminiscent smile dimpled his cheeks and showed in eyes which immediately became still and dangerous again. The clock struck five wheezingly and, at the first chime, the woman woke up. She started as she saw the figure crouched over the fire and then subsided: ‘It’s only you.’ There was relief in the voice, but there was a curious hint of contempt or acceptance. He still sat staring into the fire and answered dully: ‘Yes, it’s only me!’ He couldn’t be said to speak the words: they fell away from him as sometimes happens when one is in a deep reverie where every question is met by its answer almost instinctively.