Sweet Sorrow(75)

But then we had never been anywhere remotely like this. Outside, lights on the terrace marked out a dance floor densely packed to its edges like a life raft, a speaker stand on each corner focusing the sound the way a magnifying glass focuses light. Alex whooped, took Helen’s hand and bundled into the centre of the crowd, and Fran and I shared a look and followed. Helen was one of those surprisingly brilliant dancers, very serious and intense, angry almost, eyes closed, fists clenched, muttering to herself as if daring anyone to interrupt. For Alex dance was a form of self-seduction, constantly slipping his hand into his own shirt, undoing his own buttons, squeezing his own pectoral or buttock or groin, so that I half expected Alex to slap Alex’s hand away. I took my stance – feet planted, elbows tight in, hands pumping alternately in a milking motion, the kind of dance that would disturb no one in a crowded train carriage, while Fran went wild, grinning madly, her arms above her head, her hands dug into her own hair so that I could see the dark stubble in her armpits, and she caught my eye and laughed with her mouth wide, put her hands on my shoulder and said something.

‘What?’

‘I said this is mad.’

‘It is mad.’

She spoke again.

‘Pardon?’

She pulled me close, and put her mouth to my ear. ‘I said I’m really glad you’re here,’ and we danced for a while like this, drifting away from the others to the edge of the raft, pulling each other close. It’s hard to mention someone’s smell without sounding like a psychopath, but I’d noticed her scent before, something warm and green like summer. Some years later, on a terrible, sad date, I caught this scent again, so vivid and precise that I thought Fran must be hiding in the room. ‘My God, what is that?’ I asked. ‘“Grass”, by the Gap,’ she said, and I felt slightly disappointed that such a natural smell was in fact a body mist, and that Fran no more smelt naturally of grass than I smelt of Aztecs. Still, in that moment, on the dance floor, I thought it was quite the greatest, most sophisticated scent, and I resisted the temptation to snuffle at it like a badger and instead rested my forehead against hers, her arms on either side of my neck, locked at the elbow, something I’d seen in movies.

But the music was too fast, and our foreheads kept rapping painfully against each other, and so we broke apart and pushed back through the crowd to its centre. Now Alex and Fran fell into each other’s arms, dancing closely, their legs intertwined in a corny Latin style, and I felt a little stab of envy that we hadn’t danced like that. Helen tapped me on the shoulder and rolled her eyes, and we laughed and danced together for a bit, joke-dancing until it stopped being a joke and we also put our arms around each other. The thump-thump-thump felt like a soft mallet tapping on my chest and soon I even dared to raise my hands above shoulder height, to let my feet leave the floor.

Helen said something in my ear.

‘What?’

‘I said are you feeling anything?’

‘Nothing at all,’ I said.

The pill had no effect, though it was true that time had taken on a strange quality so that I couldn’t tell if we’d been dancing for twenty minutes or two hours, and I decided that I should step out for a moment and get another drink. The dancing had made me light-headed and light-hearted so at the bar I found that I could talk to complete strangers, something I had never done before. I talked to a nice woman in her twenties who was training to be a nurse, and I said my mum used to be a nurse, and we talked about nursing for a while and mothers too and then I spoke to her boyfriend, really nice, who worked for Bruno and we talked some more about computers and for some reason I mentioned that I’d screwed up all my exams except maybe Computer Science and Art and he said, hey, well do that then, do Computer Science and Art, why not, if that’s what you’re good at, if that’s where your talent lies, everyone’s got a talent you’ve just got to find out what it is and go for it and use it and this seemed incredibly wise to me, the idea that you should do what you’re good at and enjoy, as opposed to what you’re bad at and hate, and although it hadn’t worked out for Dad, had been a catastrophe, it might for me, because it was computers not jazz after all, and I resolved to do exactly what he said, and I thought how strange it was to be having all these very frank and easy-going conversations with people when I wasn’t usually very good at these kinds of things, so that when this wise man left to find his girlfriend, the nice nurse, I found that I was even able to talk to the woman in the red PVC catsuit who looked amazing, I said, and she said thank you in a thick, low Italian voice, and we talked about the difference between north Italy and south Italy and, more interestingly, the difficulties of getting in and out of a PVC catsuit, which wasn’t PVC in fact but latex, and then the differences between latex and PVC and what happens when you want to go to the loo, which she said hardly ever happened, it’s so strange, she said, you become like an eskimo, if you can’t go, you don’t go, and besides, you sweat so much inside, you see, and she unzipped the suit a little and invited me to run my finger along the neckline, which was silky with sweat and talcum powder so that it was both wet and dry at the same time, and this, I thought, was by some way the greatest conversation I had ever had in my life, accompanied as it was by the squeak of latex, like little yelps, until it took another turn when she said have you ever been tied up? and I said no, only with my best friend Harper’s dressing-gown cord so he could fart on my head but it wasn’t sexual, and she said, no, my friend, you just think it wasn’t sexual, and while I was wrestling with that one, Helen was behind me, with her arms around my neck, saying is this man bothering you? Charlie, where the fuck have you been, remember why you’re here, this is your chance, Charles Lewis, but we were talking about the difference between PVC and latex I said, and Helen said I bet you were, you dirty sod, but come on now, you’re wasting time and when I turned to say goodbye the woman had disappeared but that was fine because Helen dragged me back to the dance floor where Fran had been all this time and she screamed and laughed when she saw me as if I’d been gone for years and held her hands out and we danced together just like she’d danced with Alex, her fingers linked behind my head, my hands on her waist, the slip of the fabric, the fabric of the slip, legs intertwined, her breasts pressing against my chest, the soft mallet thumping beneath my ribs, and over her shoulder I could see Alex talking to a guy and then kissing him and leading him from the dance floor towards the pool and when I stepped back to look at Fran her eyes closed, her damp hair sticking to her forehead, laughing and I said are you feeling anything and she opened her eyes and said no, not from the pill and I said what do you mean? and she said oh, Charlie, I don’t think I can stand this any longer, come, and she took my hand and pulled me out through the crowd and across the lawn towards the trees until we were at the edge of the light— —and then she stopped and turned and even over the music I could hear our breathing and the blood pumping in my head as she took it between her hands and said kiss me and so we kissed, gently at first, her mouth very soft and tasting of alcohol and lemon, and then more intently, her mouth opening just a little but with no teeth grinding together this time, no sense of anything being wrong at all, here or anywhere else in the world, and oh, that, that was by the book.