Memoirs of a Dance Hall Romeo Page 11

  Jake and I lurked around at the rear, waiting to see what would happen. Aunt Alice started things off by welcoming everyone.

  ‘And I would just like to say on behalf of all here,’ she added, turning to the chief guest, ‘how lucky we are to have the Swami here tonight, all the way from London. I’m sure he will reveal many wonderful things to us.’

  The ladies murmured their appreciation and the Swami placed the palms of his hands together and made a formal gesture of obeisance.

  ‘And now, I believe the Swami would like to say a few words before we begin.’

  The gentleman in question spoke quite excellent English, but with almost a Welsh intonation, as I have frequently noted with Indians. He seemed to be under some kind of stress, his fingers tightly interlaced as he glanced from one face to another.

  ‘I must ask,’ he said suddenly, grinding his teeth together, ‘all unbelievers to leave the room.’

  There followed what may only be described as a pregnant pause, during which most of the ladies stirred uneasily. I glanced at Jake, who stood, hands folded, poker-faced. Herr Nagel nodded benignly as if to reassure me.

  ‘Yes, leave the room!’ The Swami’s voice cracked and he flung out one arm, finger pointing at the door. ‘For my life, my very existence, will be in the gravest danger if a single mocker remains.’

  Which as far as my presence was concerned screwed his coffin lid down tight, but I wouldn’t have missed the rest of the proceedings for anything. He closed his eyes tightly, clasped his hands together, muttered what I could only conclude to be a prayer and motioned us to the table, where I found myself on Olive’s right. Jake was on the other side of her.

  One or two of the ladies held hands and the Swami shook his head. ‘No, palms flat on the table in front of you, please. If there is any contact tonight, the spirits will speak to us through the trumpet. Perhaps in one corner of the room, perhaps another.’

  ‘You mean the trumpet’s going to float through the air?’ asked Jake in some amazement.

  ‘But of course,’ the Swami said calmly. ‘Do not be alarmed. There is nothing to fear. But no one must move while I am in trance, I cannot stress that too much. Any untoward movement could have tragic effects for me.’

  Which seemed a trifle illogical if one considered how much happier things were on the other side, according to him and his friends. Herr Nagel got up and stood by the light switch at the door, that benign smile still on his face. The Swami nodded, the light went out. There was a slight pause for Herr Nagel to reach his seat and then the proceedings got under way.

  The trumpet had obviously been painted in some sort of luminous paint and glowed faintly, so that the surrounding darkness seemed blacker than ever. I really couldn’t see a thing and sat there, waiting, palms flat against the table, listening to the Swami’s stertorous breathing.

  It finally faded away in a dying fall, leaving only the silence. A moment or so later, the trumpet rose slowly into the air.

  At the same time, a hand was placed upon my left knee, which anchored me to earth, so to speak, considerably reducing the shock I might normally have been expected to feel at the more mystical turn events had taken.

  Not that there was anything of the spirit about that hand, which crawled purposefully up my thigh. It could only be Olive, and I sat there, petrified in the darkness, palms flat on the table, eyes glued to the trumpet, now moving away towards the other end of the parlour about six or seven feet above the floor.

  Invisible fingers were busying themselves, found what they were searching for a moment later, and then fate intervened as dramatically as possible. There was one hell of a clatter out there in the darkness, the trumpet waved wildly, then nose-dived to the ground.

  ‘Jesus Christ Almighty!’ someone cried in ripest Cockney.

  The hand was withdrawn at once, I pushed my chair back, and as I stood, the lights were turned on by Herr Nagel who was at the door.

  The Swami was sprawled across a fallen chair, a chair which I had last seen standing beside the door when Herr Nagel had switched off the lights. I could only conclude that my Teutonic friend was faster on his feet than he looked.

  ‘Who put the bleeding chair ’ere?’ the Swami demanded, trying to sit up.

  Jake and I went to his assistance and put him on his feet again. As I brushed him down, he tried to retrieve the situation.

  ‘An unfortunate occurrence, my friends,’ he began, back in character again.

  But he was wasting his time, he knew that, and faltered into silence under the collective stares of the ladies, who gazed at him in dismay, disgust or anger, according to temperament and inclination.

  ‘How could I have been so deceived?’ Aunt Alice demanded, bitterly, an awe-inspiring sight with the rage on her, Hecuba, Jael and the great Goddess Kali rolled into one.

  ‘Dear lady.’ Herr Nagel moved in front of her rapidly. ‘Calm yourself, I beg of you.’

  He kissed her hand passionately then turned and advanced on the Swami, who immediately backed towards the door in alarm, reverting to his true self on the instant.

  ‘All right, I’m going,’ he said hastily. ‘No need for the heavy brigade.’

  There was some sort of scuffle out in the hall, then the front door banged. Herr Nagel reappeared a moment later. Aunt Alice tucked a hand in his arm and turned to address the rest of the party.

  ‘If you’ll all come into the dining room, I think a little sherry might be in order. I can’t tell you how sorry I am at the way things turned out.’

  She went through the door on Herr Nagel’s arm and the others followed. I had been watching Olive closely but she made not the slightest sign, staring past me in a bored sort of way, and I began to wonder whether the whole thing might not have been an hallucination. Jake picked up the trumpet, which the Swami had forgotten due to the hurried nature of his departure, and put it on the table. He seemed strangely preoccupied.

  ‘Souvenir of an interesting evening,’ I said and added, ‘You’ve got a couple of fly buttons undone.’

  ‘So have you, if it comes to that,’ he told me.

  In the act of adjusting ourselves, we paused and stared at each other. ‘My God!’ Jake said. ‘You too?’

  Through the open door Olive’s voice rose above the noise in the next room as they started to pass the sherry round. ‘But surely it is the spiritual in all things that must be searched for, in every area of existence,’ she said clearly. ‘I mean, we’re all agreed on that, aren’t we?’

  ‘A drink,’ Jake whispered. ‘A very large one. That’s what I need.’

  We crept into the hall, let ourselves out of the front door and left them to it.

  The morning run in the park was a habit I had only developed during the weeks since finishing the novel, probably as some sort of release, a way of using up surplus energy. It was certainly not part of any deliberate physical fitness programme.

  The truth is I liked the early morning smell to things, mist on the lake, a drift of rain through the trees, the feeling that somehow I had the whole day to myself. The morning after the seance, I awoke just before seven with a bad taste in my mouth and a slight headache, thanks to an extended pub crawl with Jake the night before.

  Rain drummed against the turret windows relentlessly. It was Sunday. I could stay in bed as long as I wanted. Perhaps for that very reason, perhaps because I had a choice, I got up, pulled on my old tracksuit and a pair of basketball boots, crept downstairs and let myself out of the back door.

  The rain was really quite torrential, not that I minded that, and I cut down the hill from the playing fields and followed the path round the lake to the woods on the far side.

  The rain brought out the best in me, as it always did, and I jogged along cheerfully, thinking about the book and wondering how things were going. It had already been rejected by two publishers, although the agent had assured me that this was part of the general pattern of things and only to be expected. He had followed this by quoting, to
comfort me, the names of several best-sellers, all rejected by someone or other in their time. All right, two I could accept, but three…

  The rain so obscured my glasses that it wasn’t worth wearing them, and I slipped them into my pocket. The result was that the figure up ahead of me, as I rounded the far end of the lake, was just a blur that didn’t turn into a woman until I was ten or fifteen yards away. I was virtually on top of her before I realized it was Olive.

  She wore Wellington boots, a black oilskin raincoat with matching sou’wester and carried, rather incongruously, a large, multi-coloured golfing umbrella. A small black poodle trailed after her at the end of a chain lead, looking thoroughly miserable.

  ‘Hello there,’ I said brightly.

  She stared at me, frowning slightly. ‘Alice Shaw’s nephew,’ I said helpfully. Oliver. The seance last night. Surely you remember?’

  She seemed vaguely surprised. ‘I thought you had fair hair?’

  ‘That was my friend.’

  She made no further comment, but started to walk again, following the lakeside path to where it branched to climb the hill. I walked beside her, wondering whether I ought to clear off, for I was uncertain of my ground here although it seemed more than a coincidence that she should appear like this so soon after our conversation.

  She paused in the shelter of a large beech tree and closed the umbrella. ‘Do you do this often?’ she said calmly. ‘This running?’

  I was conscious of a momentary irritation at this new ploy and wondered what on earth she was playing at. It was so childish to pretend she didn’t know. Still, if she wanted to play the game this way…

  ‘Most mornings,’ I said patiently. ‘It’s good for me.’

  She made no answer, but produced a silver, case and lighter from one of her pockets and offered me a cigarette. We smoked in silence for a few moments. The rain thundered into the lake, a continuous rushing sound that filled the morning.

  I was so close to making my excuses and clearing off, having had enough of the whole weird business, but turning, I found her watching me, a strange, intent look on her face.

  ‘You really are wet, aren’t you?’ She bunched the front of my tracksuit in one hand, squeezed, and water ran out. ‘Have you much further to go?’

  ‘Another couple of miles should do it,’ I said. ‘Across the golf course and back home along Shire End.’

  ‘I live at number three,’ she said. The detached house with the black and white gables.’ Until that moment I felt nicely in command, and to be frank, was more interested in the mechanics of the thing than the eventual outcome. She fingered my tracksuit again. ‘Yes, absolutely soaking. What you need is a nice hot drink.’

  She gazed past me into space, a slight, abstracted frown on her face, her fingers still experimenting with the moisture content of the tracksuit, working their way steadily downwards. For a moment, time stood still, and I was sixteen again, alternating between the twin delights of tobacco and sexual pleasure at Wilma’s gentle hands.

  Olive brought me back to the present by kissing me suddenly. And what a kiss. The mouth opened wide, her hand hooked painfully into the hair at the back of my head. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles, I’d read that somewhere, and then she pulled away from me and put her umbrella up briskly.

  ‘I’ll have it waiting for you,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget.’

  By which she meant, I presumed, the hot drink. I watched her go, the multi-coloured umbrella bobbing through the trees, and remembered what Jake had predicted. That she looked like the kind of woman who would want to swallow you whole.

  On the other hand, it was certainly a much more stimulating way of spending Sunday morning than lying in bed working one’s way through the newspapers. I took to my heels and ran up through the wood towards the golf course, in a mood of what I can only describe as cheerful anticipation.

  It was just coming up to eight o’clock when I reached the house in Shire End, crack o’dawn for Ladywood Park on a Sunday morning. I didn’t see a soul, not even a paper boy, although they usually delivered a lot later than that at weekends.

  I went in through the back gate to keep things reasonably private, and approached the rear of the house, which was an excellent specimen of what we call in Yorkshire woolbrokers’ Tudor, the gables being painted, as she had indicated, in black and white. I went across a little patio and rang the bell at the kitchen door.

  After a while, a window opened above my head and Olive peered out. I stepped back from the door to reveal myself. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. ‘Go round to the front and let yourself in. And don’t forget to take those filthy boots off.’

  I removed my basketball boots in the porch and went into the house barefoot, the iron-bound oak door opening at a touch. I found myself in a large, gloomy hall, with a polished woodblock floor, a staircase to the left, a stained-glass window to one side, against which the rain tapped ceaselessly for admission.

  I stood there, water dripping into a pool about my feet, and Olive said, ‘My goodness, you are wet, aren’t you?’

  She was standing on the landing at the turn of the stairs, looking down at me, dressed exactly as she had been the previous night, in the crepe dress with the plunging neckline, black stockings and patent-leather shoes. It was a hair-raising sight for the time of day and I couldn’t think of a thing to say. Simply stood there, staring up at her.

  ‘Come on up!’ she said. ‘I’ll get you a towel.’

  I followed with alacrity, but she had disappeared when I reached the top landing. I hesitated, called her name and moved forward, and in the same moment realized that the door on my left stood open.

  It was a beautiful bedroom. Wall-to-wall carpet in palest green to match the walls, mahogany furniture, rich-looking, well polished, and the largest bed I’d ever seen in my life with a couple of white Turkish towels draped over the end.

  Olive stood in front of the wardrobe mirror, tightening a suspender, the dress pulled up.

  It was consciously posed, of course, and entirely for my benefit, being reminiscent of the photos to be found in a certain kind of pin-up magazine, although I had no intention of holding that against her. She glanced up and watched me for a moment, the skirt still bunched, that strangely intent look on her face again as if curious to see what my reaction would be.

  ‘Oh, there you are,’ she said after a moment and smoothed down her dress. ‘I’ve got some towels here. You’d better get that wet tracksuit off.’

  To be honest, I was interested to see how this curious game of hers was to develop and only she knew that. So for the present I did as I was told, unzipped the top half of my tracksuit and pulled it off.

  As I picked up one of the towels and started to dry my hair, she said with a slight touch of exasperation, ‘You silly boy, what good’s half a loaf?’

  My head was buried in the towel at the time, and before I could disentangle it she had hauled my pants down. There was a kind of gasp, and when I got rid of the towel, I found her sitting on the edge of the bed, staring mesmerized at what she had revealed. I was not surprised, for in spite of the fact that I was wearing a jock strap, it hardly proved equal to the occasion for, to use another grand old Yorkshire saying, I was standing up like a chapel hat peg.

  ‘Oh, my God, how awful,’ she said and reached out, her hand shaking slightly.

  By this time I’d had enough of the preliminaries and grabbed for her, but she pulled away so that I lost my balance and fell on one knee. To my amazement, she crossed her knees, pulling the skirt up high and presented one shining patent-leather shoe.

  ‘Kiss it!’ she commanded me imperiously.

  The idea didn’t appeal to me in the slightest, a healthy sign, I hope, and I told her so.

  ‘Do as I say,’ she said angrily, ‘or I’ll never buy my newspapers from you again.’

  Which pretty definitely confirmed my suspicions that our Olive was a very peculiar lady indeed.

  ‘I’m afraid you’ve go
t the wrong boy,’ I said. ‘Maybe he comes Saturdays.’

  She sprawled back on the bed, a hand to her forehead. ‘You’re all the same. Brutes, all of you. I suppose you’ll be wanting to tie me up next and beat me.’

  ‘With meat rationing the way it is? You’ve got to be kidding,’ I said, gay and jocular to the end, and reached for my tracksuit.

  She had an arm around my neck before I knew what was happening, her mouth fastening on mine greedily and she pulled me back across the bed on top of her. For a moment I thought it was going to be all right after all, and then she groaned and writhed like a mad thing for a few seconds and that was very much that.

  I started to get up and she held me close, her eyes wide. ‘You can have one now,’ she said.

  But by then all I wanted to do was get out. ‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘I must be off. My breakfast will be getting cold.’

  She lay on the bed glaring at me as I pulled on my tracksuit, and I left her without a second glance and padded downstairs.

  As I crossed the hall, she called from the landing, ‘All the same, beasts, all of you! Don’t you ever come here again.’

  But that I could have promised her, hand on heart.

  I pulled on my basketball boots and went down the drive. As I reached the front gate, the newspaper lad appeared, a tall, gangling, pimply youth of seventeen or so in an anorak. I glanced back and saw Olive standing in the porch watching, and waved cheerfully.

  ‘I’d hurry up if I were you,’ I told the astonished lad. ‘She can’t wait to get her hands on your papers this morning.’

  His jaw, as they say, dropped, but I was already running away into the rain before he could reply.

  7

  HARRIET

  Girls like to be played with and rumpled a little, too, sometimes.

  OLIVER GOLDSMITH

  FOR A WHILE THINGS seemed to be pretty much at a standstill and this was certainly true as far as the book front was concerned. I moved, or drifted through life like a sleepwalker and nothing had any reality to it at all. Jake had been transferred by his firm to the London office, which left an enormous gap. I felt more than usually at a loss, waiting, I suppose, for it all to happen, or not to happen.