Cat Step, page 13
‘I just meant… she won’t be good for much anymore.’ He put down his square of newspaper.
Eve came from the kitchen with a pint glass.
‘Where’s June?’ I said.
‘Not here,’ Eve said.
‘Does anyone know if she’s coming today?’ I hadn’t seen her since the day of the court case.
Nobody knew. Eve wasn’t worried. She slipped off her shoes and told me that June wandered off from time to time, that she often disappeared then returned, saying she’d been on a bus trip to Perth or an overnight stay to an Ayrshire caravan.
‘When did you last see her?’
‘You don’t see anyone unless they’re in the lounge on purpose.’
‘Is she all right?’
‘Who knows with June.’ Eve cleaned her glasses.
I asked them to wait five minutes while I ran along the carpeted corridors and knocked on June’s door. I could hear a television from the adjacent flat but nothing from inside June’s.
‘June! You know I charge double if you don’t attend my class.’
Nothing.
‘He got community service. Emily wants to go to the Campsies with you again.’
Nothing.
I knocked a final time.
Nothing.
‘Ruth will have a key,’ Senga said when I returned. ‘But she won’t use it yet.’
‘Perhaps she just doesn’t want to do your dance class,’ Eve said, and I couldn’t argue with that.
‘I think if you fall,’ Agnes said, ‘you can say goodbye to your life. That’s why I won’t ever go out when it’s icy. Even if the pavements are gritted.’
‘It would be the end of me, right enough,’ Eve said.
‘I have a button now,’ Charlie said, and felt inside his dressing gown, pulling on a lanyard around his neck.
‘Stop it, all of you!’ I pushed the last chair into the middle of the room to make the barre. ‘Enough. Come and dance.’
They moved quietly to the chairs and only when they were settled and I was helping Charlie with his frame did Eve say, ‘You’re awful bossy.’
‘You’re awful gloomy,’ I said.
We danced. We did our barre work and then borrowed techniques from the contact improvisation I’d learned at college. Fuck it. They couldn’t roll on the floor but they could respond to a finger’s press or a palm’s graze.
‘Use your partner’s touch to set your own body off,’ I said. ‘How do you react if someone touches your hip with their elbow, say?’
‘Give them a slap!’ Eve made them laugh.
‘Take it seriously. You’ll see. Be careful with each other.’
Senga sat her mother in a chair and although she did most of the big movements – spinning away when Agnes stretched a hand to push against her shoulder, then making her body wide in response to her mother’s outstretched arms – the two of them moved well together. I called the others over to watch. ‘Change your levels, if you can,’ I said. So Senga crouched by Agnes and responded catlike to the bending of her mother’s legs and the flexing of her toes. Then she lay her body across Agnes’s knees and her mother curved her spine to meet her daughter’s back and the two breathed and that’s where I stopped them.
‘I liked that,’ Eve said.
She partnered John and their movements were stronger. In a stranger, slower version of a couple’s jive they turned back against back, flank to flank, palm to palm, hands gripping elbows and sliding down forearms. She curled a shoulder under his armpit, he twirled her shoulders with his two hands. They were playful. I liked their flat feet and the bend of their legs.
Charlie and Alice did a delicate dance with their fingertips and they changed their facial expressions each time their fingers met. Of all of the dancers it was Charlie and Alice who most understood that to move according to how you are touched creates a spark and generates, drama, tension, interest, beauty.
‘Good dancing,’ I said.
‘It’s not really what I had in mind when I came to this class,’ Eve said when they were finished, chests heaving, mouths relaxed into smiles.
‘It wasn’t what I had in mind either.’ I passed around a box of feathers. On one of the ships I met a dancer who wanted to be a movement therapist when she settled down and she’d told me about feathers.
‘Take one,’ I said, and asked them to caress their faces, arms, necks and chests, to enjoy the feather’s softness. ‘Circle it over your foreheads, your cheeks, your chins,’ I said, and I came between them, smoothing my feather down noses and over eyelids and ears. Charlie smiled as I found patches of skin that weren’t covered by his beard.
‘I feel like a child again,’ he said.
‘Good. Don’t stop.’
I saw that John had tears that turned the feather’s edges to wet clumps. Eyes watered for many reasons. Then I saw June in the doorway, staring in. She looked fierce. She carried a plastic bag in each hand. When I beckoned her into the room she didn’t come so I went to her, carrying the box of feathers, all colours.
‘I’ve missed you,’ I said. It was true, I meant it. I held out the box of feathers for her to take one. She ignored them.
‘I was hoping you’d have a couple of new ones today,’ she said.
‘I was hoping you’d be here.’
‘You need to publicise it more. You won’t be getting enough for your petrol.’
‘Are you okay, June?’
‘It’s a bit on the pretentious side. I think that puts some people off. Maybe you need to play some old music like you did before and let us clap along.’
I turned back to the class and saw that the dancers were still working with their feathers but they were chatting now, their concentration gone.
‘He got community service and a fine,’ I whispered. ‘The judge knew he was lying. He’s done it before.’
‘Have you told your mother about the trouble you’ve been in?’
The music stopped and I returned to my dancers who stood in squares of sunlight on the pink carpet and shielded their eyes. I told them what to practise for the following week’s class.
June went to the kitchenette. I heard the sound of her filling the kettle.
‘Do you want your feathers back?’ Charlie said. ‘Or can we keep them?’
‘You can keep yours if you like,’ I said.
‘No!’ June shouted from the kitchen. ‘The girl doesn’t make enough money as it is. You can’t go taking her dancing things. All feathers back in the box.’
I noticed Eve shaking her head and Charlie smiling. They asked me to stay for tea and biscuits from a tin that Alice had won in a church tombola. John excused himself and read his paper. As we talked, Charlie held out a hand and said, ‘Excuse me for interrupting but I want to say this while I have the urge.’ We looked at him. ‘I am getting immense joy from these classes. I look forward to them. And I want to thank our lovely teacher, Elizabeth. Can I call you Elizabeth?’
Nobody scoffed or shut him up.
‘Well, I look forward to them too,’ I said. ‘I really do.’
Alice spoke then, slowly and gently. She told us she’d been on a cruise ship with her husband for their fiftieth wedding anniversary. ‘I keep thinking about those dancers we saw and then looking at you, Liz, and yes, I can see it. I can see you up there on the stage twirling away, quite the thing.’
‘That’s where I met my partner,’ I said.
‘Was he a dancer too?’
‘He worked in the gym. He did the sports.’
‘What a couple. My husband’s gone now.’
‘Mine’s gone too.’
I heard quiet gasps and saw June nod her head as if to say it is what it is.
We talked briefly about loneliness, admitting we felt it keenly from time to time. And then the conversation turned to trivia and other things. But the warmth of Charlie’s words and Alice’s words stayed with me.
June asked me to come into the kitchen to help with the next round of tea. While the kettle boiled she said quickly and matter-of-factly that she needed a quiet word with me.
‘My son’s coming to visit.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
She put four tea bags into the pot then seemed to struggle with the weight of the kettle.
‘I can do it,’ she said when I offered to help. ‘I don’t know why he wants to visit me. I haven’t seen him in seven years. But he says he’s coming and so he will.’
‘Is he coming here?’
‘No. I’ve suggested the town. Glasgow. I don’t have the details.’
‘Why haven’t you seen him?’
‘Ach, it suited us both.’ She stirred the water then put the lid on the teapot. ‘I wondered if… you remind me of my own self. I think we’re similar. We’ve both got the street smarts.’
I smiled at her words.
‘Shall I come with you? When you meet him? We’ll help each other with our trials.’
She shook her head at my joke. ‘If you would, I’d like that please.’ She took the milk from the fridge and poured it into a jug. ‘I’m sorry about your loss. I really am. I’ve been thinking about you and I think you’re brave. Standing up in court and getting grilled like that. And doing what you did with that lot in there today, shaking them up. I was watching through the doorway. I think that’s nothing short of a miracle.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Shaking them up in a good way, mind,’ she said.
‘Not so their teeth fall out.’
‘Wait till it happens to you.’
We carried the tea things through to the lounge.
‘Just don’t stay too long here, it won’t be good for you,’ she said to me as we walked, and at the time I wasn’t sure if she was referring to the lounge in the sheltered housing or Lennoxtown itself. She meant Lennoxtown of course.
4.
We ate outside. Good God. Warmth grazed my skin the way the cloud shadow passed over the hills: a delicate touch. I could smell barbecue smoke and hear our neighbours talk. I caught the clink of their cutlery and the shouts of their children. I could see into their windows from Audrey’s paved garden. Emily was like a pup, stopping to listen each time she heard a voice. And when she heard the regular sound of a child bouncing on a trampoline she stood on a paving stone and jumped. ‘This is my trampoline,’ she said. I watched her feet in her thin-soled shoes crash down onto the concrete.
‘Would you like a trampoline in the new house?’
‘What new house?’
‘I don’t know, but we’ll get you a trampoline.’
I jumped with her and she liked that. That’s how Paul found us. We were holding hands and jumping on Emily’s trampoline. He’d heard us from the front door. We waved. Emily became shy.
‘Can I use your bathroom?’
‘Go ahead.’ I threw him the keys.
I jumped some more with Emily then sat down and raised my head towards the evening sun. I could almost smell the grass from the fells, they were so close. Paul returned with a pint glass of water. He wore plaster-spattered tracksuit bottoms. The hairs on his arms were spotted with plaster too. He drank the water in one go and patted Emily’s head. I stood and we hugged and it felt good to hug him. Emily put her arms around my legs.
‘This evening’s got a lively feel to it,’ I said when we sat down. It had. There was laughter from other gardens. I had company. Emily turned circles on the paving stones on a trike I’d got her from a charity shop. I pushed a plate of oven chips towards Paul and said, ‘Finish them if you’re hungry.’
He squirted some ketchup onto the side of the plate and ate.
‘Sold your house yet?’ he said.
‘Why did you come here first, straight from work? Haven’t you got a home to go to?’
‘Not anymore.’ He put a chip in his mouth. ‘I’m starving. And full of lust.’ He put a hand through his hair and said, ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that out loud.’
He made me laugh and Emily came to see why I was laughing. I watched him eat and Emily climbed onto my lap.
‘Behave,’ I said.
‘I am behaving,’ Emily said.
‘Not you, him.’
‘I haven’t got a home to go to anyway. I’m still at my mum’s.’ I could see it now. The man was displaced. He pushed the plate away from him and rubbed his face. Then he leaned to smooth some hair behind my ear and I leaned my head into his hand.
Emily tapped my arm and showed me what was in her clenched fist. ‘I found it. Can I keep it?’
It was a pebble.
‘It’s beautiful isn’t it?’
It was beautiful, perfectly smooth. She put it in her mouth.
‘Take that out! Honestly!’
She took it out of her mouth and pretended to put it up her nose. I batted her hand away. ‘I like these bits,’ she said and touched her finger to the marbling that ran through the pebble. I noticed that her fingernails needed cutting.
Paul said, ‘She wants me to start building a wall around her front garden. A nice neat brick wall. And I don’t want to. So I came to see you.’
‘Who wants the brick wall?’
‘Georgia.’ He shrugged his shoulders.
‘Does she want you back?’
‘She says she’s seeing someone else.’
‘Do you still get to see your daughter?’
‘All the time. My mum’s only a few doors away. She’s probably round there now getting her dinner.’
I caught the guilt in his eyes.
‘Are you going to build the wall?’
He looked towards Emily then the chips. ‘Probably. I just want to keep everyone happy. You know how it is.’
I tried to work out if I minded Paul’s complexities and concluded that I might mind. I knew they’d split up. But I also knew they shared a daughter and that fact was like a stake in the ground. Georgia must have been sure of herself to leave a man like Paul, to hurt a man like Paul.
‘I’m going to put it in my special box,’ Emily said.
She got off my lap and went to the bottom of the garden.
‘What are you going to do when the house sells?’ he said.
‘You’re the third man that’s asked me that.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I thought it would take longer than this. There were two second viewings today. I don’t know. Where shall I go?’
He took my hand and we kissed suddenly and fully. We fumbled with our chairs, scraping them closer over the paving stones until our knees were touching. Emily shouted at me. ‘I can’t find it!’
‘Have another look!’
Paul smiled and we sat back in our chairs. I noticed specks of plaster on his cheek.
And then I had to ask. ‘Bam. Why would anyone call Robbie a bam?’
‘Your man?’
I told him what Emily had heard at nursery. I said it made me feel anxious. I said it was a strange thing for Emily to hear about her dad. It was a strange thing for me to hear too.
‘I’ve been called a bampot a hundred times, I wouldn’t worry,’ Paul said. ‘But I’ll ask around for you. Georgia might know. She might have known his family.’
I looked at the square paving stone where Emily had imagined her trampoline. Paul took his phone from his jacket pocket and checked the screen. He put his phone away.
‘I want to see you more,’ he said.
‘Come anytime,’ I said. I meant it.
‘I better say hello to my kid.’
He kissed me on my forehead, right at the spot behind which my thoughts jangled. ‘Come anytime,’ I said again and Paul closed the gate behind him. He was respite, that man. I felt the sun on my arms again.
Emily came back carrying a shortbread tin with thistles on the lid. After the trouble with the clock I’d let her keep anything of Audrey’s she wanted to. She called them her precious things and liked to show them to me. I’d seen them before but it was good to have Emily close to me, to marvel, as she was calm, at the tiny size of this girl whose presence was enormous, who held my very being to ransom, who made such relentless demands on my mind and body. She was so small and she was mine. I felt it, suddenly, that I loved her, a peck of love. I kissed her head.
A thimble, a pair of clip-on earrings, a coaster made of slate with a felt back.
‘Be careful with that one,’ she said.
Two photographs of Robbie and his brother, sitting side by side in school uniform, smiling at us. His mother had them so close in age. I looked for signs of Emily in Robbie and Aidan and I found them. It was nice.
Emily’s fingers scrabbled at a piece of paper at the bottom of the tin.
‘What does this say, Mummy?’
It was a newspaper cutting I hadn’t seen before, not very big, about half the size of the coaster.
‘What does it say?’
‘It says, it says, it says, “Emily, this is another ticket to the park with the swings and the slide. Please bring your mum and eat your Freddo when you get there.”’
Emily ran to her paving stone and jumped up and down, holding the newspaper to her chest. It didn’t say that, of course. It said the trial of Robert Watt and Michael McDermott had gone into a third day. There were angry scenes from relatives in the courtroom. A representative from the school refused to comment. There was no date on the newspaper cutting, not even the paper’s name. I thought perhaps Robert might have been Robbie’s father’s name, but his father’s name was Andrew. There were no uncles called Robert or Robbie. He’d rarely spoken of his childhood other than to say it was poor and boring, football was the only thing he loved, and he couldn’t wait to leave Lennoxtown.
As soon as Emily put the cutting down I picked it up and reread it to see if there was anything else to glean but the words were as I’d read them. The trial of Robert Watt and Michael McDermott had gone into a third day.
