Dancing Backwards

by Salley Vickers

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Vi, who had never thought about it. ‘This is nice.’ She sipped the white wine.

  ‘It’s a Chablis.’ He ordered one for himself. ‘Quite a good one for a pub. It won’t make you too drunk.’

  Vi, who thought it might be fun to get drunk, asked, ‘What do you do when you’re not teaching?’

  She had meant to ask what his thesis was on but he surprised her. ‘I write poetry.’

  ‘Goodness.’

  ‘I shall finish my thesis, which is not very sensational—an examination of the use of Ovid’s similes in Renaissance verse, very dull—and then try for a teaching post.’

  ‘In a university?’

  ‘A school. It’s harder work in term time but the holidays are longer and there’s nothing to do in them but write. What about you?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘What do you plan to do when you leave here?’

  ‘Oh goodness,’ Vi said. ‘I don’t know. Survive. If I get through Part I that will be enough to be going on with.’

  ‘Of course you’ll get through. You’ll get a first.’

  ‘Oh no, I couldn’t.’

  ‘I’ll show you how,’ Edwin said. ‘It’s not hard once you know the tricks. It’s just a matter of practice and keeping your nerve.’

  ‘I don’t seem to have much nerve.’

  He looked up at the ceiling commemorating the English and American youths, stationed in nearby Debden, Duxford or Fowlmere, who had sat night after nerveless night, ready to take their lives in their hands, and their Whitleys or Wellingtons into the air, against the superior machine-gun power of the German pilots in Messerschmitts and Junkers.

  ‘My father was a fighter pilot in the war,’ Edwin said. ‘He was nearly shot down twice before the Nazis finally nailed him. Nerve is practice, too.’

  Des, standing by the table, coughed and repeated, ‘May I get you anything to drink with your lunch?’

  Immersed in her notebook, Vi did not immediately recognise the dark young man who had invited her to dance.

  ‘Sorry, I was miles away.’ She was thinking how she had never asked what that loss of a father had meant to Edwin. ‘A white wine, maybe.’

  ‘May I recommend the Chablis, Mrs Hetherington?’

  It was not much of a coincidence. But it pleased her. ‘Thank you, Dino. Chablis is exactly what was in my mind.’

  Edwin was wrong. Vi did not get a first in Part I. She got an upper second and was perfectly content with it. With no money to join those of her fellow-students who were off abroad, she spent the summer working for a firm which specialised in the cleaning of seedy London bedsits, employing students for sub-trades-union wages. It was a grim job, involving disagreeable smells, soiled sheets, filthy lavatories and wastepaper bins containing used condoms, sanitary towels and occasionally empty syringes. On the brighter side, most of the bedsits serviced by ‘Blitz’ were located in the Earls Court area, so she got to see Annie and the Australians.

  The Australians, Annie assured her, were very good value. They were dedicated party-goers and easy flatmates, clean and, best of all, generous with the booze. Annie had no complaints and was thinking of visiting Perth, which, one of her flatmates told her, was a paradise for surfers.

  ‘But you don’t surf,’ Vi objected.

  ‘They say it’s full of gorgeous men who teach you in no time.’

  Annie was now assistant buyer in Marshall and Snelgrove’s shoe department and had many words of sartorial advice. ‘Courrèges-style white boots are in next season, Vi. I can get you a pair at cost, or better still some of the damaged stock we’re meant to send back.’

  ‘Is there much damaged stock?’

  ‘There is by the time I’ve finished with it,’ Annie said darkly. ‘What size are you?’

  Towards the end of the summer, Vi received a postcard of a Greek temple sent from Sicily. Sun, wine and ruins (alongside me). Am renting a house round the corner from Newnham next year. Will you share? E.

  The university rules permitted students in their final year to lodge not only with registered landladies but with Cambridge MAs. This implied an unreasonable faith in the moral qualities required for receiving the Master’s degree, which involved nothing more testing than waiting five years after gaining a BA. Luckily for Vi, Edwin’s thesis on Ovid had taken him well over the five-year requirement so that when she went to clear her new address with her tutor all Miss Greyling said was, ‘Be sure to see that there is a functioning bolt on your door. Not that I am suggesting that Mr Chadwick would of course…’

  There was no fear of Miss Greyling’s politely unstated apprehensions being realised. Occasionally, usually very early in the morning, Vi met a young man making his way discreetly out of the green front door of the small house in Church Rate Walk. Since Edwin never referred to his guests, she didn’t either. It was, she imagined, why he had moved from his comfortable rooms in college, so as not to be commented or spied on.

  Vi entertained a few young men herself. But more because sexual experience, if not expertise, was, she felt, a requirement of her age and position than because of any special liking for any one in particular. Her happiest times were spent with Edwin, either at the late-night pictures, where they saw every foreign film on view, or watching TV.

  Edwin was a fan of anything that dealt with murder. His special favourite was Columbo, mainly because he had become expert at second-guessing the murderer. They had a weekly prize of a bottle of wine for whoever was the quickest to spot the villain. Edwin usually won.

  ‘The trick is to spot the person most unlikely to have committed the crime. They got the idea from Agatha Christie.’

  ‘In that case,’ Vi pointed out, ‘surely Columbo should commit at least one murder.’ She herself preferred Dr Kildare.

  The bottle of wine was often drunk over discussions of poetry. One evening, Edwin said, ‘I am thinking of starting a poetry magazine. Will you help?’

  ‘How?’ Vi was clearing away spaghetti, one of their supper staples.

  ‘Write to people, help with the typesetting, advise the editor…’

  ‘That’s you, I take it?’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘How will you fund it? Neither of us has a bean.’

  ‘The Persians debated everything twice,’ Edwin said. ‘Once sober, once drunk. There’s another bottle of Valpol in the kitchen. Fetch it here and we can debate.’

  The next morning, hungover from the unaccustomed alcohol, Vi asked, ‘Did the Persians really debate everything drunk?’

  ‘Sober as well.’

  ‘How do you know? How is it known, I should say?’

  ‘It’s in Herodotus.’

  ‘You’ve always said Herodotus was fanciful!’

  ‘No more than any other historian.’

  Vi had finished her salad and drunk the glass of Chablis and was looking out at the sea which in a mood of gracious gaiety was spangling with light.

  ‘Another glass, Mrs Hetherington? Or can I get you something else?’ It was the dancing waiter again.

  ‘Thanks, no. Although, have you any Valpolicella?’

  ‘I believe there is a good one. I’ll fetch the list.’

  ‘No, no. I trust your judgement. Just bring me a glass, if you would.’

  How funny that Valpol, the very cheapest plonk around when she and Edwin were being Persians, nowadays appeared on grand wine lists.

  ‘Shall I send the cheese board over, Mrs Hetherington?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘And will I see you later, for the dancing?’

  ‘You do this as well as dance?’

  ‘The sommelier is sick. I am filling in.’

  ‘You do it very well. The wine was lovely.’

  ‘I am glad. I shall see you later, then, Mrs Hetherington?’

  ‘I don’t know, Dino. Perhaps.’

  10

  The recent presence of Renato was noticeable. The doors to the balcony in Vi’s cabin had been
shut fast and bolted, top and bottom, and there was an aggressive smell of synthetic lemon. A leaflet, offering as a ‘taster’ a free private dance lesson with Marie or George, had been propped ostentatiously against the pile of books on the desk.

  Maybe, Vi thought, I should take this as a form of spiritual exercise. She forced back the bolts and opened the doors to the cleansing sea air. What a pity no similar cleanser existed for the heart. Outside, she leaned on the balcony watching the water and letting Ted’s rings slip up and down on her fingers, the way he used always to warn her not to lest she lose them. She was remembering the poetry magazine.

  Edwin revealed an unexpected talent for acquiring money for his proposed publication. Whereas he was generally lackadaisical over money, over the magazine he became ruthless. He mounted a fierce campaign for donations, haunting the rooms of colleagues and bombarding their pigeonholes with written appeals until they gave in and coughed up. Retired dons, and their wives, were targeted at their own parties where an apparently indefatigable Edwin stayed on late, till to get rid of him they pledged their financial support. Under his direction, Vi typed letters to charitable trusts pleading the cause of poetry. The strategy produced enough funds for an estimated print run of two hundred for the first edition of Ariel.

  How to fill the magazine exercised Edwin more. His own poems, some running to several pages, took up much of the space. He had contacts on the poetry circuit to whom, in her capacity as assistant editor, Vi wrote asking for contributions. Many of those appealed to were happy to offer poems which had been turned down by more established magazines. An ad in the university newspaper produced further efforts from aspiring student poets, not all of them bad. Ralph, the sculptor who owned the house and worked in the basement, where he was engaged on a long-term project of casting the Seven Deadly Sins in bronze, supplied some line drawings, and with these and the poetry submissions they got together almost twenty pages.

  ‘We need one, maybe two more poems,’ Edwin decided one evening.

  They were eating risotto. The peppers and mushrooms were from the market, where fruit and vegetables were sold on weekdays and at weekends varieties of tatty junk were passed off on the tourists as antiques. At the end of the day’s trading any produce past its saleable life was sold off at rock bottom prices. Vi and Edwin were well-established ‘rock bottom’ customers.

  One bottle of wine had already been polished off and Edwin had opened a second.

  ‘This is a Persian debate. Anything promising left in the slush pile?’

  Vi went to her room and came back with some sheets of paper.

  ‘There are these. I’m not sure what to make of them.’

  ‘Let’s have a look.’

  Edwin read the papers on which were typed two poems of several short stanzas. ‘These are rather good,’ he said. ‘Here, give me some more of the Valpol. Emily Dickinson-ish but distinctively their own voice. Who are they from?’

  Vi began to clear away the plates. The tiny freezing kitchen ran off the room, which acted as their sitting and dining room and also held a sofa bed for guests. Rinsing the plates under the tap, she called out, ‘Would you like some fruit? I got a job lot of tangerines at the market.’

  She came back into the room with a blue glazed pottery dish piled with the orange fruit. The dish had been her gift to her mother, part of a matching set bought on the holiday in Brittany, where Vi had learned to swim in the biting cold green sea. She could still feel her mother’s hand in the water under her stomach, and the feeling it evoked, half comfort, half apprehension, as her mother promised not to let her go until Vi gave the word.

  The jug and the plate were almost the only relics of her mother—her father, either through grief, incomprehension or plain meanness, she had never quite decided which, had given almost everything else away. Only these and a small, worn, garnet cross, which she believed her mother had been given at her christening, survived.

  Edwin was re-reading the poems. He put down the paper. ‘Violet St John, tell me the truth, did you write these?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s a smudge on the “m” like on your typewriter. But anyway, I can hear you.’

  ‘I didn’t think about the “m”. They’re probably no good.’

  He was quiet for a moment. Far off she heard the tuneless sound of a night bird. Then Edwin spoke.

  ‘They’re marvellous.’ She looked into his odd eyes and saw that he was serious. ‘Here,’ he said, and he was smiling as only Edwin could smile. ‘Have another drink, Miss St John. You’re a poet, and you don’t know it.’

  Vi, out on the balcony, opened the notebook but the breeze coming in off the sea blew the pages so it was impossible to read and she went inside. Back in the cabin, she read again the poems which, her heart in her mouth, she had shown to Edwin long ago that November evening.

  ‘Will you stay on and help with the magazine after you graduate?’ Edwin asked.

  Vi had sat her finals for which Edwin had drilled her. ‘Forget any nonsense about developing ideas. That’s balls. Summarise as many ideas as you can in advance. It’s like doing a jigsaw. You need to put all the pieces of sky together in advance and on no account waste time attempting to form new thoughts. Forget thought. This is about being organised.’

  It was always easiest with Edwin, perhaps the least organised person she would ever meet, to do as he said. He was far more thrilled than she was when she was awarded a first.

  Miss Arnold, who was also delighted with the news, came up for the graduation ceremony. She had long since instructed Vi to call her ‘Theodora’, but while Vi was careful to use the name in her old teacher’s presence she remained in Vi’s mind inalienably ‘Miss Arnold’.

  Miss Arnold arrived on a motorbike, in leathers, riding pillion behind a much younger man whom she introduced as ‘Al, a colleague in the art department’. Vi complimented her teacher on her leather jacket.

  ‘Do you like it? I got it from Annie Packer. She gets samples from her store which she sells off cut-price at her flat. I get all my clothes from Annie. I must say, my pupils have turned out well.’

  Edwin was charming to Miss Arnold, to whom he deferred over her dislike of Milton (‘Milton is ponderous’) and gave her all the credit for her former pupil’s success. Miss Arnold accepted the praise as no more than her due. It turned out that Al had been at art school with Ralph downstairs, so all five of them celebrated Vi’s success and Miss Arnold and Al spent the night in the basement sleeping between Pride and Envy.

  The following day the four of them went punting. It was that rare thing in England, a summer of constant heat. The sky blazed with an almost Italian light. Against the fierce blue, the leaves on the tall poplars fluttered, semi-rotating in the warm air. Edwin poled them expertly along the Cambridge Backs while Vi lay under a sunhat, trailing her hand in the sedate water of the Cam, grateful that it was all over and she could begin her life at last.

  Miss Arnold and Al sat fore while Miss Arnold pointed out the sights. ‘Queens’, over there, is the redbrick one, named for the two queens, King’s, you’ll recognise, Al, from the twin pinnacles, Clare, small but very well-regarded, that’s St John’s, the next we come to is Magdalene.’

  ‘Were you at university here?’ Al in innocence asked.

  Miss Arnold pursed her lips. ‘I was at Birmingham. The Shakespeare department is considered the best in the country.’

  They returned the punt and sat outside the Granta drinking Pimm’s. ‘Over there,’ Edwin pointed, ‘is the notorious Garden House Hotel.’

  Earlier that year a ‘Greek Week’ had been organised at the Garden House, with support from the Colonels’ fascist regime. There was a student demonstration and violence broke out when protestors invaded a dinner and did some minor damage. Six students had been arrested, one of them Edwin’s and Edwin had stood bail.

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Miss Arnold, who was a Marxist and was pleased to have some political colour introduced. ‘I had forgotten abo
ut the riots.’

  During the course of the afternoon, it emerged that Miss Arnold was living with Al.

  ‘I am not marrying him, Violet. Of course he is very keen.’ They had repaired to Vi’s bedroom where Miss Arnold was repacking her body tightly into Annie’s leathers.

  ‘You don’t want to marry him?’

  ‘I don’t want to marry. Quite another matter. I hope you will never make the mistake of marrying, Violet.’

  Mrs Viney, when Vi went to say goodbye to her Director of Studies, offered calmer congratulations. She suggested that with a first—‘a very decent one, I am told, Viola’—Vi would be considered favourably for a postgraduate research grant. ‘I always knew you had it in you when you made those clever observations about Sterne in your entrance paper. Sterne would make an excellent topic for a thesis. So few women seem to grasp the humour of Sterne.’

  ‘You need a Bunbury,’ Edwin suggested when Vi recounted this conversation.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘As in The Importance of being Earnest.’

  ‘Yes, I do know where Bunbury comes from.’

  ‘So, then. You need an alibi, though as a matter of fact I don’t see why you should have any need to explain yourself to a woman who after three years doesn’t even know your name.’

  ‘It’s my fault,’ Vi said. ‘I never corrected her at the start. It’s because of Honour. People call me Honour, get confused and then no one gets Violet right.’

  ‘Where did “Honour” come from?’

  ‘She was my mother’s mother. Her father called all his chil-dren after the virtues.’

  ‘Whatever they are!’

  ‘My great-aunts were Mercy, Charity and Prudence.’

  ‘Lucky there wasn’t another girl or she might have been Chastity.’

  ‘I think there was but she died.’

  ‘I hope you are making that up!’

  Vi said she thought not.

  ‘Poor child probably died of prospective shame. People underestimate the power of names. Anyway, do a Bunbury on Viney. Tell her that you have an important editing job.’