The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy

by Rachel Joyce

  ‘William Blake? Yes, I do.’ I recited, ‘O Rose thou art sick.’

  ‘Smart,’ said David.

  The conductor emerged at the foot of the stairs and made his way towards us with the ticket machine. I asked for a ticket to Totnes, please.

  ‘Me too,’ David repeated. ‘Totnes. A child’s ticket.’ He didn’t say ‘please’.

  The conductor scanned David up and down. ‘You? A kid?’ In turn, David folded his long legs and then his long arms and stared straight back up at the conductor. Smiling. I have rarely seen an eighteen-year-old look less childlike.

  ‘I’m fifteen if I’m a day, sir.’

  ‘I could throw you off,’ said the conductor.

  ‘Is that a promise?’ said David.

  For the second time, I ended up coming to his rescue. In order to avoid a scene, I said he was with me and quickly paid for his ticket. When David followed me to the Royal, I ended up paying for him to go there too. Later I also ended up footing the bill for a can of Stella, a whisky chaser and a packet of cigarettes.

  The dance was under way when David and I arrived at the Royal. You could hear the band, though the music was muffled as if it were coming from beneath our feet.

  We stood on the opposite side of the road, watching the new arrivals climb the concrete steps. It was still light, but the illuminated sign flashed the word DANCING over the glass double doors and there were two pillars of fifties-style boxed window lights glowing on either side of the entrance. Dancers wore coats over their suits and ball dresses. All that marked them apart from other pedestrians were their silver court shoes and shiny polished lace-ups.

  ‘What’s the average age here?’ said David. ‘Sixty?’

  ‘About that.’

  ‘And they just dance, yeah?’

  ‘Ballroom dancing.’

  ‘They should watch it on the telly on Saturday nights.’

  ‘That’s not the same as doing it.’

  ‘No?’ I felt him gaze down at me with interest. I didn’t look back at him.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  David lit up a new cigarette. Shook the match and dropped it. ‘So why do you come here? Couldn’t you go dancing in Kingsbridge?’

  ‘If I went in Kingsbridge, people might know me.’

  ‘And you don’t want them to know you?’

  ‘No. I like to go by myself.’

  Sometimes people judge their happiness by the price they have to pay for it. The more they’ve spent, the happier they think they will be. I judged mine in those days by how far I had to travel. David seemed to understand. He pressed his lips into a smile and gave several slow nods. It felt strangely pleasurable to gain his approval.

  I said, ‘Look. You’re much younger than everyone else. Why don’t you do something different? I’ll meet you for the last bus home.’ I was already beginning to feel responsible for him.

  David threw out his arms and began to sing, ‘I’ve got the music in me.’ Shh, I went. People were turning to look. He pulled a serious face, but it still had a spark.

  ‘I won’t embarrass you in front of your friends,’ he said.

  ‘I told you already, I don’t have friends here. I dance.’

  David gave a shrug. ‘Whatever you do, I’ll sit quietly.’

  I explained that people might think it odd: a woman just turned forty and a boy who was soon to start Cambridge.

  ‘What does it matter what people think?’ he said.

  His voice was soft but the words were so sharp, it was like being with a you I didn’t know. I had to drop my face to hide the blush.

  David tossed his cigarette butt at the road. ‘So do you think they’ll let me in? Or is there a ban on vitality?’ He pulled his fingers through his thick hair, trying to smarten it. I opened my handbag and passed him a comb.

  ‘The Royal is only a dance hall,’ I said. ‘It’s not a club or anything. Mostly it’s just a lot of old people and me.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, you told me all that. How do I look?’

  He moved forward a little, and the flood of lights shone on his face. How did he look? Very fine. Ivory-skinned. Long chin, carved cheekbones. Eyes like blue lamps. ‘You’ll do,’ I said.

  ‘Come along, Q.’ To my surprise, David took my hand in his and steered me across the road and up the flight of steps. I don’t believe he even thought about it. I barely reached his shoulders, and I had to move fast to keep up. I paid for the two of us at the kiosk without looking at the woman behind the window and then we moved through the double doors, hand in hand again. When we reached the area of light and shadow between the foyer and the dance floor, I experienced a shiver of excitement that I had not felt before at the Royal.

  I was not yet a regular. I’d gone there only six or seven times. There were a few men I knew better than others, but I was not looking for a relationship because I had you, Harold. My love was already taken. So if a man approached me on the dance floor, I partnered him but didn’t offer my address. If he led me up the blue-carpeted stairs to the bar, I paid for my own drink. Generally I straightened my spine and shifted to one side if he reached to place a hand on my shoulder.

  ‘You have the most beautiful mouth,’ said a man once. ‘Like a rosebud.’ His hair was so slick it looked plastic. ‘I may not be able to resist kissing you.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you try very hard?’ I replied.

  He gave me his phone number in case I changed my mind and fancied dinner.

  I took up ballroom dancing after Oxford. I’d realized I had no wish to be an academic, and I’d headed for London to find work. One afternoon I passed a dance hall in Woolwich, and the sound of that rhythm – slow, slow, quick quick slow, slow – stopped me in my tracks. I had no dancing shoes then. No ballroom dress. But I paid at the kiosk and went inside, sitting in the dark where no one could see me. I stayed all afternoon. Life wasn’t so easy then. I was working in a bar to make ends meet. But when I watched the couples dancing, sequinned dresses, white frilled shirts, a swing to the right, a sashay to the left, I saw beauty again. That is how it began, my ballroom dancing. It’s a bit like asking a person how he started smoking. The habit suited my need.

  And I don’t know why Thursday was my evening at the Royal. It happened that it was a Thursday the first time I went, and so it became the way I did things. Like most people who are free-falling, I’ve always clung to routine.

  The dance floor was already crowded when David and I entered the hall. I chose a round table towards the back, away from the yellowy light of the chandeliers. At the opposite end of the hall was a stage with red plush curtains. The band played a midpaced swing. I bought David his beer.

  From the way David sat, hunched forward, his knee jigging up and down like a piston, his chin crammed in his hand, I assumed he loathed the Royal. I couldn’t help seeing the place through his eyes. It was just a dingy low-ceilinged hall with fake crystal lights and a load of old people shuffling arm in arm. Even I in my blue dress looked dumpy and made of wax. What was I doing? I wouldn’t come again.

  I reached for my clutch bag. I said we should go.

  Now? he said.

  Yes, now, David.

  But it wasn’t finished, he said.

  I was tired, I told him.

  ‘I thought we were going to dance?’

  ‘You and me?’ I laughed again. Mistake.

  ‘If you don’t want to dance with me, I’ll do it on my own.’ He stood so abruptly that the gold legs of his imitation rococo chair jerked up and the chair flew backwards, landing upturned. He strode towards the dance floor, brushing the shoulders of other onlookers and seeming not even to notice. I followed him at a small distance. I didn’t want a scene. Before I could stop him, he’d pushed his way to the centre of the floor. There he was, in the middle of all those lilac ladies and balding men, like the heart of a ghastly pastel-coloured, slow-revolving wheel. I stopped at the very edge, just in the shadows.

  I thought of the first time I saw you, swinging yo
ur body in the snow. I was so lost in the memory, so very different from the dance hall, that for a moment I forgot about David. I thought only of you.

  Then someone said, ‘What’s that kid doing?’

  David stood absolutely still. He seemed to have forgotten where he was. A pair of older ladies in matching taffeta dresses shuffled into him and bounced off again. Then something happened.

  David stretched out his arms and pointed his right foot. He started an elaborate tango up and down the length of the dance floor. He glided, he swooped, he twirled. People paused to look and frowned before returning to their more conventional steps. Within moments, David seemed to grow tired of his dance, and he drew his elbows tight at his sides. He began to rumba. And when he’d had enough of that, he started a mock waltz with an invisible partner. He was practically galloping the circumference of the dance floor, dodging other couples. The sides of his greatcoat – he was still wearing it – flapped like giant wings.

  Of course people became irritated. How could they not? They stopped, they broke apart, and one by one they peeled away so that there were only David and a few brave couples left. I still didn’t move.

  ‘Who’s the wally in the coat?’ said the bandleader into his microphone. There was a flutter of laughter.

  But David didn’t seem to notice. He had abandoned his ballroom steps altogether. He was pogo-jumping. I was on the verge of leaving. That’s the truth. If he was capable of bringing a dance to a halt, he was more than capable of getting the last bus. And then I looked again and there was something so unrestrained about him, so singled out and joyful, I couldn’t quite move. It was not the way I’d seen you dance, it was not the way I danced, but it was something all the same. Your son was inside it.

  A bouncer stopped beside me and flexed his shoulders as if he intended to hit David. Your son seemed to have that effect on people.

  So I marched to the centre of the floor. David’s eyes were closed. His hair and face shone with sweat. But I took my place beside him and I jumped.

  ‘This is fucking great!’ he laughed.

  Yes, I said. So is the foxtrot, David. How about trying that instead?

  On the bus home David was quiet. In the end he said, ‘You won’t tell Father that I came with you tonight?’

  ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Mother would get upset. I promised, you know. I promised to stay in while they were on holiday. It’s best not to mention stuff. She gets headaches.’

  I felt a small jolt, as if I had briefly lost my balance. I don’t know if it was unease, or something else. Guilt? Why had I not tried harder to get rid of him? He was your son. He wasn’t you.

  ‘But I’ll see you next Thursday, yeah?’ said David. ‘I’ll come with you again.’

  As it turned out, the following week was even worse at the brewery. There were several difficult meetings with landlords. There were complaints to Napier that I was interfering. Meanwhile Nibbs drove so fast I was constantly slamming my feet on invisible pedals. I missed you terribly. I needed to dance.

  But I didn’t go back to the Royal that Thursday.

  The maker of chairs

  SLOW, SLOW, quick quick slow, slow. Two backwards steps followed by two smaller chassé steps to the side. Feet together, like the pause for a new breath, then you start again.

  My father taught me to dance. My mother sat astride a kitchen chair and sang the tune. She was too big for dancing, she told us; she’d only break something. I never understood that, because she must have danced when they first met. In my memory my mother is also shelling peas as I dance, though she can’t have been doing that throughout my childhood. My father placed my small feet on his big boots so that I could get the hang of the steps. Everything has beauty, he said, on a dance floor. Don’t laugh, Queenie. Ask your mother. This is a serious matter.

  He was a carpenter. Did I say? He made wooden chairs. Garden seats. He spent his adult life creating places for people to sit, and then he died before he was able to enjoy a rest himself.

  My father liked a game. Maybe because my mother was so practical and because language was a problem, he often played the games with me. The ones he liked most were those of his own invention. When I was very little, he’d stand in the sitting room in his overalls, apparently unable to see me. I was smaller than my parents, of course, but I was never thimble-size.

  ‘Where is that girl?’ he would say, lifting the plastic mats from the table, the antimacassars from the sofa.

  ‘Here I am! Here! Here!’

  He never seemed concerned, never angry, just extremely sure of finding me. I’d be the opposite. Wheeling my arms, pulling at his overalls, sticky and screaming and laughing so hard my insides felt screwed up.

  ‘Where is that girl?’

  The game was hilarious because it was safe. I was there and my father was there and even though he appeared to have lost the ability to see – or was it me? Had I acquired the ability to not be seen? – I knew that the game wouldn’t end until my father’s eyes swooped down to meet mine and he exclaimed, ‘Well, there you are,’ and lifted me on to his shoulders.

  ‘You two,’ my mother would say, as if my father and I were strangers from a place she’d never visited. She would go back to shelling peas or dropping things.

  When I was older, my father invented a new game. It began with ‘I have a serious question.’ This became my mother’s cue to stand up, although my father was a mild-tempered man and he never took offence. He’d describe a journey on an aeroplane. Suddenly you’re told the plane is about to crash. What do you most regret not doing with your life? (Here I’d answer, ‘I wish I could play the piano.’ ‘I wish I had bosoms like Wendy Tiller.’ That sort of thing. My mother’s answer – if she could be persuaded to play, and unless it was Christmas or my birthday she couldn’t – my mother’s answer was more pragmatic. She’d roll her eyes and begin to stack plates. Clash, clash. We winced. ‘I wish a person would make a cup of tea.’)

  ‘Good news!’ my father would say. ‘Your plane has been saved!’ He’d look jubilant, as if he were directly responsible. ‘But what are you going to do, Queenie, about learning to play the piano?’

  All this from a man who had never been on an aeroplane, let alone played a musical instrument. It moved him every time.

  As I grew older, I grew less tolerant. I regret this, but I began to follow my mother’s line.

  Your plane is about to crash. What do you most regret, Queenie?

  What do I most regret? Going on holiday.

  What do I most regret? Not booking a train ticket.

  My mother found these answers disproportionately hilarious. In fact they made her snort.

  When I left for Oxford, my father abandoned his games as if they were foolish. I’d come home for holidays, but there was a coldness in the house. My father lined up broken items in his workshop. My mother dropped them and threw them away in the house. I’m not saying it was an unhappy marriage, only that it had become a well-worn one, like an old coat you stop looking after. There were holes during that time. There were thin patches. My mother would have thrown it away, and my father hoped he would one day get round to mending it. Neither thing happened. They just kept wearing it. My presence, when I deigned to visit, seemed to pin the marriage back together. My mother would fetch out what was left of the best glasses. She would try to entice me with pan-fried liver. (‘You look pale,’ she’d say. ‘She looks pale.’) My father would watch me with glittering eyes. I think my parents could never quite believe they had a daughter at Oxford. They treated me as a prize, a thing above them, and I, in turn, behaved like someone a little apart. I wrote letters, but they were not regular. I rarely telephoned. After Oxford, I found reasons – good ones, all of them – for not visiting.

  I regret now that I did not see my parents more frequently. But I got caught up in my own life. My own mistakes. The last time I saw my father he was pruning an old apple tree. He said he wanted it to see another
spring, but from the way he was going at it I’d have been surprised if it made another week. I fetched the ladder and did it for him, though I had no idea in those days about trees. The rest of the weekend we spent mostly in the sun. My father talked about his retirement. He said he would like to take my mother to Austria for a holiday, and she held his hand. It was a happy time, and I remember wondering why I had kept away so long. In my absence they had clearly resolved their differences – or at least they had grown to treasure the kind of love that they had. My father was sixty-two when he died. My mother died only months later. And the rented house? That, of course, went with them. They never made it to Austria.

  But it is a noble profession, the making of chairs. I wish I’d shown my parents I could dance. It is what they gave me, after all.

  What shall we sing of when we die?

  ‘DEAR QUEENIE,’ read Sister Catherine. ‘Visited the Roman Baths and had spa experience. Also met a very famous actor whom I did not recognize and had cream tea with a surgeon. It has been a difficult day. Best wishes, Harold Fry.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound that difficult to me,’ laughed Barbara.

  Today we were promised a visit from the counselling unit at the hospital. Owing to staff illness and recent cuts, the counselling unit was a single woman in her early thirties who spent a long time trying to negotiate her Fiat into a parking space. From the dayroom we watched her reversing first over the Well-being Garden and then into the sign that says DO NOT PARK HERE. She was dressed head to toe in purple. Purple headscarf, purple dress, purple cardigan, purple shoes. The woman looks like a giant bruise, said Mr Henderson. She ran through the rain with her head bowed. The wind lashed the windows and flattened the plants.