The Dancers Dancing

by Eilis Ni Dhuibhne

  It does not mean that you can’t flirt, and Killer Jack does this as a matter of course, considering it normal and nothing short of the girls’ due. Most of the girls share his point of view, the plainer ones unfortunately with more enthusiasm than the beautiful, who become puritanical at an early age as a reflex strategy for self-protection. Pauline he does not even fancy. She is objectively good-looking but she is not his type at all – there is something hard about her that he mistrusts. She is different from most other girls. He, and everyone, can intuitively sense this, although they cannot put their finger on what precisely this difference is. It is not that she is rich and beautiful. It is that there is some part of Pauline that is never available, to anyone. Maybe it is secreted inside her and she guards it carefully. Or maybe she is simply a bit odd. Wired to the moon, that sort of thing. Maybe there is a bit of her floating in outer space, out of her reach altogether, which means that when you look at her or talk to her, she is not all there, not all there for you anyway and maybe not all there for herself.

  Still, he, Killer Jack, is pleased when she walks down the schoolroom to the corner where the on-duty teachers congregate and says, in the hearing of the other two, ‘An ndéanfaidh tú an damhsa seo liom, a mháistir, más é do thoil é?’ She says it quite well. Her accent is faultless. It is the first piece of Irish he has heard her say without stumbling.

  The dance is an old-time waltz. Every evening, since the beginning of the third week, they have had one of these at each céilí. Killer Jack instigated it, after much dispute with the headmaster. He didn’t introduce it so that he would have an opportunity to hold the more desirable girls in his arms. He didn’t need that, since every evening after the céilí he headed off to the Fairyland Ballroom, or the Texas Saloon, for more sophisticated pleasures. He argued, forcefully, that so many couples in the college had now formed, so many boys and girls were deeply infatuated with one another, yearning for love, that allowing them to waltz might prevent more serious attempts to breach the main unwritten rule of this as of all Irish colleges: ‘Thou shalt not get pregnant.’ ‘Be realistic. They need to let off a bit of steam,’ he said to Headmaster Joe. Who nodded his round head and wondered if there was an old Strauss lp somewhere in the parish (the parish priest it was who had one, and lent it after being given one small whiskey in the Texas Saloon).

  And now the bodies of the students glide around the classroom, cling to one another as tightly as they can while still transcribing the obligatory circles and shifts from one side of the floor to the other that the dance demands. It is, after all, a much less formal dance than any other they have to do. All you have to do is sway about, pulling your partner with you.

  The couples who are uninterested can be relied upon to make the more sweeping and dramatic movements, whilst the dancing lovers cluster at the end of the schoolhouse farthest away from the record-player and the master of ceremonies, and press bodies, hungrily, deliciously, to the sickly sweet tunes – ‘Danny Boy’, ‘Buachaill ón Éirne’, ‘Tabhair dom do Lámh’ (always the same three) – that egg them on.

  Pauline does not exactly seduce Killer Jack in the middle of the schoolhouse, but she comes close. She musters all her meagre store of Irish in an effort to talk to him. Translating the clichés of dancehall conversation to Irish, especially to her brand of Irish, sounds funny.

  ‘An dtéann tú anseo go minic?’

  ‘Ta an banna music go maith.’

  ‘An maith leat dansáil?’

  Funny, and charming. Especially since she wedges her long fleshy thighs firmly against his crotch, lets her breasts bob against his shoulders – she is taller than him, by about six inches. He didn’t fancy her. Until now.

  The seductress. How can a girl aged fourteen and a half know what to do? Pauline knows.

  ‘An maith leat an ceol sin, a mháistir?’ she asks, rubbing his shoulder through the thin material of his shirt. It is a turn-on to be called ‘a mháistir’ by a girl who is doing something, anything, to your body. She even knows that, injects the words with all her sexuality. He shrugs, mentally, and gives himself to the moment. The dance is halfway over anyway. Soon enough she’ll be gone, and what can he do anyway? He suspends good sense and squeezes her waist, pulling her even closer to him. She draws him down the room to where Gerry is dancing with a little drip of a girl from Dublin – Orla, actually. She does not look at Gerry at all but circles slowly, very slowly, around him. When the dance is on its last legs, she lays her head on Killer Jack’s shoulder, and when the record screeches to a halt, like a car stopping suddenly, she kisses him on the side of the neck.

  The cottage on the clifftop

  Pauline returns to the clifftop cottage, alone, the next day. The door is open and the cottage seems to be unoccupied. She steps inside. The spicy onion smell hits her nostrils and a peaceful emptiness, tangible as still water, fills the room. The light admitted by the little window is dim, but one bar of gold light lies along the stone floor, a path of promises. She breathes deeply, loving the smells, the quiet mixed with mystery. Loving being an intruder, while beginning to believe that this is her space.

  She goes to the cupboard and pulls out the packet of crisps.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asks a familiar, robust voice.

  ‘Um!’ Pauline turns.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asks, in a humorous but unfriendly tone. ‘Although you seem to be looking after yourself.’

  Pauline looks at the door. She drops the packet of crisps and makes a run for it.

  He chases her and catches her T-shirt.

  ‘There’s no need to be afraid, Pauline.’

  ‘I’m not afraid!’ she says, trying to shake away his hand.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it!’ He smiles a thin, mouth smile but does not release his grip. ‘So what are you doing here, Pauline? Indulging in a little petty burglary?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Pauline doesn’t know what to say. She wishes he would let go of her T-shirt. That is all she wishes.

  ‘Did you take anything, apart from the potato chips?’

  ‘Oh! No!’

  ‘Got you just in the nick of time.’

  ‘Will you please let go?’ Pauline asks. She begins to feel hopeless. She knows he will not let go and she does not know what should happen next.

  He looks at her appraisingly and smiles. ‘I think we should have a chat,’ he says. ‘Come back inside.’

  He propels Pauline into the cottage, which looks different now that he is in it. Once inside he lets go of her, and invites her to sit down. Pauline considers making a run for it again, but decides there’s no point. She wonders, if he will murder her, or do some worse, nameless thing to her. The air in the room vibrates with potential danger.

  Killer Jack’s mouth forms a sardonic, twisted grin. His eyes glitter like Dracula’s before a deadly bite.

  Pauline, numb with terror, awaits her fate.

  A glass of orangeade.

  A rattle of crisp packets.

  The air in the cottage settles back to normal banality. Killer Jack yawns, displays boredom.

  Pauline thaws. She is not to be a hapless victim after all. She is not to be a mangled corpse, a girl child wronged.

  She is to be a nuisance. That is all.

  ‘So this is what you do in your spare time? Have you visited other houses?’

  Pauline is not at her most talkative. She wishes she could be away from here. She wishes she could turn the clock back half an hour and simply not have come. It’s funny, how you can’t do that, is what she is thinking. You can’t undo anything that is done. You can’t bring Maureen back from Italy. You can’t make your mother and your father not have all the fights they have. You can’t tell Jacqueline she is a nitwit and really should just eat the food and stay in the Gaeltacht because if she doesn’t she’ll be classified as a loser, incorrigible loser. You can’t make yourself never have climbed the Seven Bends once you have climbed them. She strains her ears. The sounds of laughing and happy screaming r
each them, faint and unbelievably tantalising. Oh to be back down there and not up here!

  ‘How did you get here?’ he asks.

  ‘I came up from the shore,’ she said.

  ‘I see,’ he drawls. ‘Well, I could do with a visitor now and then. But hasn’t anybody told you, it’s an idea to knock first?’

  ‘I thought there was nobody here.’ She looks around. ‘It’s a nice house.’

  He doesn’t answer.

  ‘You stay here on your own?’ Pauline doesn’t believe it. In a minute someone else will walk through the door.

  ‘Alone, yeah. I’m fond of solitude. You wouldn’t think it, would you?’

  ‘Wouldn’t know now,’ says Pauline. ‘I better be gettin on home.’

  He looks at her, not smiling. ‘Don’t go,’ he says. ‘Not yet.’

  She looks at him. His skin is sallow like her own, even though his hair is fair. He has small eyes creased at the corners with many little wrinkles, and very light blue irises. There is a thin film of sweat on his cheekbones, and one of his big teeth is capped with gold.

  ‘I’ll have to, soon,’ she says, carelessly. He’s deferring to her now; she knows where she is with him. She gets up and walks to the window.

  ‘They’re all at the shore, having a swim.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Is it your afternoon off?’ she asks.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘I’ve never heard you speaking English before.’

  He smiles, but wanly, and says nothing.

  ‘I’ve got to go.’

  He nods.

  ‘You’re dead right!’ he says. ‘Go, and don’t come back. Do you hear me now? And we’ll say no more about it.’

  Neither of them says goodbye, and as she walks out she can feel his small crinkled eyes staring at her back.

  A most surprising visit

  Most of the scholars do not see their parents for the whole month of the Gaeltacht: it’s too awkward to get to. There are no trains to the Gaeltacht. The old railway lines were ripped up by some 1950s government which decided nobody would be going anywhere much in Ireland for the foreseeable future, so there was no point in wasting money on trains any more. You’re as well off staying at home. Most people don’t own cars.

  But Aisling’s parents do. Own a car. And Aisling’s parents visit her for the last weekend. They arrive at Banatee’s house at six o’clock, just as everyone is sitting down for tea. Nuala and Ciaran are several steps ahead of Elizabeth and Tom in onomastic matters: their names precede them like badges identifying the specific nature of their rung in Irish society.

  Orla and Aisling hear them exchanging some words with the Banatee. Her rapid unintelligible gunfire is punctuated with Nuala’s musical, rather whimsical tones. Then they come into the parlour.

  To the children, they look like creatures from another planet. Their fashionable summer clothes, their city hairstyles, are outlandish in the brown country parlour: it is as if Marilyn Monroe dropped into the classroom in the traditional Irish schoolhouse to take the choir practice. And by now Aisling and Orla feel they belong in the brown parlour, not anywhere else. They have been here for three weeks and already they have lost their accents, their affiliation to Dublin. Already they belong to Banatee and this country farmhouse and the valley and Headmaster Joe and the college.

  They stare at Nuala and Ciaran, clutching the edges of their wonky chairs defensively. Ciaran stands in the doorway, Nuala walks into the room and looks around, lopes around, imperiously, curiously, slightly mockingly. For a minute, neither of them say a thing. In that minute Orla sees the parlour with their eyes, fresh from Dublin. Seeing this image of it superimposed on her own makes her angry.

  They start to talk then, in their confident, bossy, adult Dublin voices. Their Irish sounds strange too. After the Donegal Irish – straggly, glottal-stopping, somehow as untidy and wild as the countryside – it sounds foreign and artificial.

  ‘Hello there!’ They are all smiles and bonhomie, of course, as they look, themselves perplexed, at the little group seated around the big dark table. ‘Sorry to butt in on you like this but we thought we might whisk you away for supper, you two!’

  Orla and Aisling look at them in some amazement. The idea of not sitting here eating tea as they have done every night now for twenty nights! The routine has become so entrenched that any disturbance of it upsets them. They smile but remain silent, not knowing what they are supposed to do.

  ‘So,’ says Nuala. ‘Wouldn’t you like that? I’ve told your bean an tí, it’s fine with her. Would you like to ... eh, maybe change your clothes?’

  They look terrible, is what she is thinking. Sunburned and freckled but scruffy, untamed, like tinkers. Their hair is matted and thick with salt, their clothes are badly matched, dirty. They look like orphans! Like children who belong to nobody: they’ve got that wildness.

  ‘Do we have to change?’ Aisling has picked up the unvoiced criticism and resents it. She looks at Orla. She realises that she is dirty and unkempt, in spite of all their best efforts in the bathroom, in the burn, in spite of their aspirations for the céilí. God knows they’ve done their best, but the result is pathetic by grown-up standards.

  ‘Yes I think you do, darling.’ Nuala is firm, and looks at Ciaran for support. He looks away.

  He is wearing light fawn trousers, a white open-necked shirt, a beige linen blazer. Nuala is dressed in a white cotton dress, snow white, with a navy blazer and golden sandals on her feet. Both of them were at the hairdresser’s yesterday, and both are goldenly tanned, the weather in Dublin having been considerably better than in Donegal. It is hard to connect these two groomed and smart people with anyone sitting at the table in Dohertys’.

  ‘Can Pauline come too?’

  ‘No,’ Pauline says quickly. ‘Thank you very much but I’m all right. I want to go to the céilí.’

  ‘Will we not be going to the céilí ?’ Aisling pouts at her parents.

  ‘Well, when is it on?’ Nuala is beginning to lose patience. They have been driving for six hours, were held up at the border post at Aughnacloy for half an hour. You’d think Aisling would express some pleasure at seeing them. You’d think she could have washed her face and changed her clothes.

  ‘Half past seven.’

  ‘I don’t think we’ll make it. It’s six already, darling. Don’t you want to come out? I thought it would be a treat.’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘We’d like to,’ says Orla politely. In a way she would. She has only eaten at a restaurant on four or five occasions in her life.

  ‘Hurry up then. Brush your hair and change into something clean.’

  They don’t have anything clean any more, so they change into something dirty. Nuala sighs when she sees them and smiles at Ciaran, but says nothing.

  Nuala asks Banatee for advice on a good restaurant. Orla squirms as she overhears their conversation. It seems so typical of Nuala to enter into a discussion of this kind with someone like Banatee. It seems typical of her not to realise that someone like Banatee probably never ate in a restaurant in her whole life and knows absolutely nothing about them.

  But she does. She knows about Mary Anne’s, over the hill in the next parish. And there they go, in Aisling’s father’s sky-blue Cortina, collecting Sandra en route: her hair is wet, a black seaweed down her back. She’s washed it for the céilí but it takes three hours to dry, she says, with pardonable pride. That’s because it is so much thicker than ordinary hair.

  Mary Anne’s is the strangest restaurant Orla has ever seen. It does not look like a restaurant at all, but more like somebody’s front room with the three-piece suite taken out and a lot of kitchen tables added. The tables are draped in sober and sobering oilcloth, the kind of oilcloth that reminds Orla of human mortality. On each table is a silver stand containing salt and pepper, red sauce, brown sauce, and mustard. The sign on the door would say mary anne’s eating house if there were a sign on the door, but there is not: you have
to ask for directions. Luckily Aisling’s father is good at asking, and he remembers what he is told.

  The surprise of Mary Anne’s is the view. The narrow, country-house windows look out on a beach just under them. Beyond is a pier, the sea, the other side of the bay, all that. You can sit at a table looking at children jumping from the end of the pier, people fishing, the odd sailboat.

  Nuala and Ciaran and Orla and Aisling and Sandra sit by the window, and Orla’s heart, which had sunk when she caught sight of the place, lifts. She senses that whoever built Mary Anne’s – Mary Anne, perhaps? – had a giddy streak in her, a sense of holiday. A boy dives into the sea from the side of the pier, and she laughs.

  The smell of the place, too, is appealing. It is the smell of frying: crispy and greasy and sweet. The smell at Banatee’s is mainly of boiling. Boiling potatoes, boiling cabbage, boiling clay. A sad and sour, a watery smell. Orla loves fries, as who does not?

  ‘Isn’t it lovely!’ Nuala sings. ‘Such a wonderful view!’

  ‘It’s a quaint little place,’ Ciaran says, reading the menu with satisfaction. Salmon, mackerel, pork chops, sausages – beans and chips with everything. ‘I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It’s amazing.’

  The girls eat chips and sausages and mushrooms and onion rings, served with tea and bread and butter. For dessert there are things like jelly and ice cream and fruit cocktail and ice cream.

  ‘You’ve certainly got good appetites,’ Nuala says, with her grown-up habit of stating the obvious. ‘Don’t they feed you at all?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ says Aisling, reluctant to be disloyal. ‘They feed us corned beef and cabbage.’