The Devil's Music (27 page)

    ‘Music?’ Sarah deflects Denise’s question by turning up the music full volume. ‘What do you think, everyone?’

    I smile at her, but she doesn’t seem to notice my gratitude. Now that I listen to the music, I think it sounds old-fashioned, almost music hall. Lots of accordion.

    Tom and Denise, it turns out, are two of Sarah’s tango ‘pupils’. They have brought a bag full of tango gear and they take it into the studio to prepare themselves.

    ‘Now,’ Sarah says, standing behind me and running her fingers through my hair. ‘Can we tie this back? Do you have anything?’

    I hand her a length of string from the front pocket of my jeans. The brush strokes are firm as she smooths my hair back into a ponytail. Only my mother has ever brushed my hair before. I lean my head back against her groin, but she moves away saying, ‘Now, shoes.’ From the hallway she fetches a pair of smart black shoes with a slightly stacked heel.

    ‘Haven’t worn stacks since the seventies,’ I joke, as she crouches down to put them on me. She’s fed me, brushed my hair, now she’s putting on my shoes. I look down on her bent head, the fluid curve of her swan-like neck and the intricate weaving of her hair into its neat pleat. I run a forefinger slowly down the side of her neck, seeing her head flung back, her breathing hoarse in her throat. She gets up from her knees.

    In the studio, Sarah has made floor-space. The other two are already gliding around, concentrating on each other. Sarah stands in the centre of the cleared space and beckons me over to stand close to her. She’s looking to the left, into the middle distance. I look in the same direction.

    ‘It’s important,’ she articulates slowly, ‘that you understand that the improvisational nature of tango requests the complete attention of both of us, each to the other.’

    She’s speaking differently, with a sort of serious politeness.

    Complete attention. Her eyes are green-blue glass, sea glass. I won’t ask her to say it again.

    ‘OK.’ She straightens her spine.

    I do the same.

    The posture has lifted her breasts, making them prominent, tilting towards my chest and I find I’m mimicking her stature, lifting my rib cage. She puts a hand on her belly to indicate I should hold my stomach muscles taut. I look down at the top of her head, waiting for eye contact.

    ‘Now, I’m going to lead, and it’s my body movements you need to be listening to.’ Her eyes are focused at some point over my shoulder, her face serene. ‘I’ll not be giving clues with my eyes. On a crowded dance floor, as the male dancer, I would be looking for spaces to move into.’ She takes my right hand in her left, and then opens her hand. ‘Palms flat: a light pressure.’

    Her right hand is light at the small of my back. ‘To begin with, I would suggest you close your eyes so that your other senses will be more acute.’

    ‘Other senses?’

    ‘Mainly touch. Close your eyes. We’ll just stand and listen to the music.’

    I close my eyes. I smell her hair, think of sex, my head between her thighs, the arch of her body, and my erection is growing. Then she’s backed away, creating a space between us that I move to fill, a few hesitant paces forwards, as she steps back. I’m terrified of treading on her toes, so I open my eyes briefly and see our feet, the dusty floor. I stumble. She stops.

    ‘Wait,’ she says in my ear.

    I close my eyes again. I find I can judge the size of her steps through the dip of her back beneath my palm. She’s turning us in another direction, a slight pressure of one hip towards me and we’re moving sideways, slow paces, a twist of her hips and it’s a swift turn I don’t quite keep up with. Another turn and her upper body moves beneath my fingertips, a slight pull of her raised hand tells me I must step backwards.

    ‘Don’t think,’ she whispers, ‘let your body listen to my body.’

    The track ends and she stops, but it’s a pause in motion, she’s going to dance on to the next track. She’s waiting, soaking up the new pulse.

    We stop dancing before I want to, my mind and body so absorbed by the dance that I haven’t been aware of anything else.

    ‘It’s like a trance,’ I say, without thinking, and check her expression in case this is a crass thing to say.

    ‘Better, because it’s a shared experience.’

    I’m keen to start dancing again; no more talk.

    ‘It’s a wonderfully de-stressing activity, wouldn’t you say?’ She moves away from me to the sink in the corner of the studio and fills a blue wine glass with water. ‘I’m trying to advertise tango as something that anyone can do, maybe if life is getting too much, if their jobs are stressful. For example, I visit offices in London, where I teach, and encourage businessmen to come along. I go into hospitals and speak to the doctors. I send letters to headmistresses and headmasters.’

    ‘You sound like a missionary.’

    ‘It is a sort of mission, I suppose.’

    ‘I could dance all night with you. Let’s do some more.’

    ‘We should take a breather. Come up to a class with me sometime. Let’s make some coffee now.’

    Everyone declines coffee in favour of the Jack Daniels that Tom has brought. Sarah lights little candles in glass cups and switches off the electric lights. Denise falls asleep, her head on Tom’s lap as he talks on. He’s a born storyteller, demanding nothing but an audience of listeners, and I wonder where he gets that confidence from, the knowledge that people will want to listen to him.

    By the time they leave we’re all wilting. Tom has extracted a promise from me that I’ll look at an old seaman’s chest of his. He wants some beckets made for it. Denise, predictably, wants a doormat like the one I made Sarah last week.

    Sarah and I fall into her bed and I’m asleep instantly.

Last night, it was so cold you were worried it would snow. Then what? Even though today is the day you’re going to tell Ian it’s over, all you could think was,
then what?
Michael eventually got up and went to sleep in the spare room, complaining you were keeping him awake.

    You stop at the postbox on the corner of Sutton Road and there he is, his Lambretta parked just up the road. Just the sight of his face, the way he stands looking into the middle distance because he hasn’t seen you yet, brings a leap of joy. He nods a greeting as he squeezes into the passenger seat, wrapping his sheepskin jacket more closely and sinking his beard into his scarf. No Jamie today; another reason to feel guilty.

    He won’t kiss you until you’re at least as far as Maidenhead – because it’s not safe, because you might be seen.

    This is part of what you can’t cope with, the pretence. When you’re not with him you are stripped, brutally, turned inside out like a sleeve – you become both the empty sleeve, soft lining exposed, and the arm left cold.

    ‘We’d manage,’ Ian has said, over and over again. He wants you and the children with him in the houseboat.

    He phoned the house last week, breaking an unspoken rule, and Michael answered. Ian made some excuse about a friend, or someone wanting a painting job done, with a similar telephone number, and Michael came off the phone chuckling, but it gave you a scare.

    Then he’d written to you – another risk – because he was desperate to tell you about a small house he’d seen that you could renovate together, perhaps if you went back to nursing, and he worked in the evenings. The letter was filled with drawings, of the house, of ideas for the house, of you standing in the doorway, together.

    ‘But then, when would we have time to renovate the house?’ you’d asked him later. ‘We’d either be working or looking after the children.’

    It’s just make-believe. Michael would never allow it, would never tolerate the loss of face. Michael would make life impossible.

    You shake your head, trying to clear your thoughts.

    Ian winds down the window and rests his chin on his hand, elbow propped on the car window, looking out. There is frost on the grass.

    ‘Ian, could you—?’

    ‘Sorry,’ he winds up the glass again. ‘I’m sorry ...’ He twists round to face you.

    ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ You fiddle with the heater control. The fan is rattling but there’s no heat. ‘Has something happened?’

    ‘Ay.’ He pulls off his scarf. ‘A job.’

    The traffic lights are green but the car sputters and almost stalls. It doesn’t like the cold. A few flakes of snow are falling like clumps of feathers.

    ‘But that’s wonderful! A job? A decorating job? Another commission?’

    ‘Teaching.’

    ‘Ian—’ You’re wondering at his bleak tone, then it hits you – where around here would he teach art? Your voice comes out as a croak: ‘Where?’

    He leans close, a hand on your thigh, and he’s talking, fast and soft, about being together, about the rarity of love, about not living a life that’s a lie. You can tell he’s rehearsed this speech – the reasonable phrases, the believable possibilities. Perhaps if the two of you took on Jamie as well as your three children, his parents might help financially.

    His optimism is young, naive. It would be a scandal. You would be the scarlet woman, labelled unfit to care for your children. You keep your eyes on the road, saying nothing.

    ‘I’ll be needing tae let them know.’

    ‘Where?’

    A lady steps out on to the zebra crossing but it’s too late to stop the car. She waves her walking stick and scowls her disapproval from the kerb.

    ‘Pull over.’

    You glance in the rear mirror and swerve into a bus lay-by. The engine stalls. You pull the choke further out and try to start it up again, wanting to keep the heater going, for what it’s worth. The starter motor coughs and splutters.

    Try again. Don’t look at his face.

    Try a third time. The starter motor is fainter.

    This day is not right.

    ‘It’s flooded, the engine.’ He puts a hand on your arm, takes your hand in both of his. ‘Paris.’

    You’ve been struck, the breath knocked from you.

    ‘Come with me.’

    You shake your head, wordless.

‘Thing is, Andy,’ Susie tugs her flapping coat across her body, shouting over the roar of the tumbling shingle and the slap of the canvas above us, ‘we should probably think about a prospective buyer.’ She lifts her hands to her ears and, again, the wind wrenches her coat open. She looks like a starvation victim – jumper stretched over distended belly, legs spindly in leggings that bag round the knee. I look away.

    ‘The tatty old canvas ... I’m just not sure.’ She winces and pulls her collar up. ‘This
wind
! Please can we go inside now?’

    I’ve brought Susie straight round to the seaward side of the house to show her the work I’ve done on the veranda, hoping she’ll be OK with it. Maybe even pleased. We’re on the new decking area. A shipload of two-by-four was washed up during the last storm. Planks scattered breakwater after breakwater for miles along on the beach. Sarah and I hefted more than fifty up the beach and piled them in a satisfying stack between our two houses. Good, broad planks for decking. Susie just looks miserable huddled in her coat. She hasn’t even glanced at the star-shaped sinnet that sways, thick and heavy, in the wind. I’ve hung the sinnet around three sides of the decking area, suspended from three-foot-high steel needles at intervals along the rope’s length.