Muriel Spark - The Ballad of Peckham Rye

‘Whose friend?’

The crown of Trevor’s head briefly indicated the bandleader.

Beauty shrugged in her jive and expressed her reply, both in the same movement.

Dougal was dancing with Elaine. He leapt into the air, he let go of her hands and dangled his arms in front of his hunched body. He placed his left hand on his hip and raised his right while his feet performed the rapid movements of the Highland Fling, heel to instep, then to knee. Elaine bowed her body and straightened it again and again in her laughter. The jiving couples slowed down like an unwound toy roundabout, and gathered beside Dougal. A tall stout man in evening dress walked over to the band; he said something to the band-leader who looked over his shoulder, observed the crowd round Dougal, and stopped the band.

‘Hooch?’ cried Dougal as the band stopped.

Everyone was talking or laughing. Those who were talking were all saying the same thing. They either said, ‘Tell him to take more water in it,’ or ‘Shouldn’t be allowed,’ or ‘He’s all right. Leave him alone.’ Some clapped their hands and said, “Core.’ The tall stout manager came over to Dougal and said with a beaming face, ‘It’s all right, son, but no more, please.’

‘Don’t you like Highland dancing?’ Dougal said.

The manager beamed and walked away. The band started up. Dougal left the hall followed by Elaine. He reappeared shortly with Elaine tugging his arm in the opposite direction. However, he pressed into the midst of the dancers, bearing before him the lid of a dust-bin, which he had obtained from the back premises. Then he placed the lid upside down on the floor, sat cross-legged inside it, and was a man in a rocking boat rowing for his life. The band stopped, but nobody noticed the fact, owing to the many different sounds of mirth, protest, encouragement, and rage. The dancers circled slowly around him while he performed a Zulu dance with the lid for a shield.

Two West Indians among the crowd started to object.

‘No, man.’

‘We don’t take no insults, man.’

But two other tall, black, and shining dancers cheered him on, bending at the knees and clapping. These were supported by their woolly-cropped girls who laughed loud above the noise, rolling their bodies from the waist, rolling their shoulders, heads, and eyes.

Dougal bowed to the black girls.

Next, Dougal sat on his haunches and banged a message out on a tom-tom. He sprang up and with the lid on his head was a Chinese coolie eating melancholy rice. He was an ardent cyclist, crouched over handlebars and pedalling uphill with the lid between his knees. He was an old woman with an umbrella; he stood on the up. turned edges of the lid and speared fish from his rocking canoe; he was the man at the wheel of a racing car; he did many things with the lid before he finally propped the dust-bin lid up on his high shoulder, beating this cymbal rhythmically with his hand while with the other hand he limply conducted an invisible band, being, with long blank face, the band-leader.

The manager pushed through the crowd, still beaming. And, still beaming, he pointed out that the lid was scratching and spoiling the dance floor, and that Dougal had better leave the premises. He took Dougal, who still bore the dust-bin lid, by the elbow.

‘Don’t you get rough with him,’ Elaine shouted. ‘Can’t you see he’s deformed?’

Dougal disengaged his elbow from the manager’s grasp and himself took the manager by the elbow.

‘Tell me,’ Dougal said, as he propelled the manager through the door, ‘have you got a fatal flaw?’

‘It’s the best hall in south London and we don’t want it mucked up, see? If we put on a cabaret we do it properly.’

‘Be kind enough,’ Dougal said, ‘to replace this lid on the dust-bin out yonder while I return to the scene within.’

Elaine was standing behind him. ‘Come and leap, leopard,’ Dougal said, and soon they were moving with the rest.

They were passed by Trevor and Beauty. Trevor regarded Dougal from under his lids, letting the corners of his mouth droop meaningfully.

‘Got a pain, panda?’ Dougal said.

‘Now, don’t start,’ Elaine said.

Beauty laughed up and down the scale as she wriggled. When Trevor passed again he said to Dougal, ‘Got your lace hanky on you?’

Dougal put out his foot. Trevor stumbled. The band started playing the National Anthem. Trevor said, ‘You ought to get a surgical boot and lift your shoulder up to line.’

‘Have respect for the National Anthem,’ Beauty said. Her eyes were on the band-leader who, as he turned to face the floor, raised his eyebrows slightly in her direction.

‘See you up on the Rye,’ Dougal said.

Elaine said, ‘Oh, no, you don’t. You’re seeing me home.’

Trevor said, ‘You girls got to go home together. I’ve got a date with a rat on the Rye.’

Several of the dancers, as they left the hall, called out to Dougal various words of gratitude, such as, ‘Thanks a lot for the show’ and ‘You was swell, boy.’

Dougal bowed.

Beauty, on her way to the girls’ cloakroom, loitered a little behind the queue. The band-leader passed by her and moved his solemn lips very slightly. Trevor, close by, heard him say, ‘Come and frolic, lamb.’

Beauty moved her eyes to indicate the presence of Trevor, who observed the gesture.

‘She’s going straight home,’ Trevor said through his nose, putting his face dose to that of the band-leader. He gave Beauty a shove in the direction of the queue.

Beauty immediately turned back to the band-leader.

‘No man,’ she said to Trevor, ‘lays hands on me.’

The band-leader raised his eyebrows and dropped them sadly.

‘You’re coming home with me,’ Trevor told her.

‘Thought you got a date on the Rye.’

‘Hell keep,’ Trevor said.

Beauty took a mirror from her bag and carefully applied her lipstick, turning her bronze head from side to side as she did so. Meanwhile her eyes traced the bandleader’s departure from the hall.

‘Elaine and I’s going home together,’ she said.

‘No, you don’t,’ Trevor said. He peered out to the crowded entrance and there saw Elaine hanging on to Dougal. He caught her attention and beckoned to her by moving his forefinger twice very slowly. Elaine disengaged her arm from Dougal’s, opened her bag, took out a cigarette, lit it, puffed slowly, then ambled over to Trevor.

‘If you know what’s good for your friend you’ll take him home,’ Trevor said.

Elaine blew a puff of smoke in his face and turned away.

‘The fight’s off,’ she said to Dougal when she rejoined him. ‘He wants to keep an eye on his girl, he don’t trust her. She got no morals.’

As Trevor and Beauty emerged from the hall, Dougal, on the pavement, said to him, ‘Feeling frail, nightingale?’

Trevor shook off Beauty’s arm and approached Dougal. ‘Now don’t start with him,’ Elaine shrieked at Dougal, ‘he’s ignorant.’

Beauty walked off on her own, with her high determined heels and her model-girl sway, placing her feet confidently and as on a chalk line.

Trevor looked round after her, then ran and caught her up.

Dougal walked with Elaine to Camberwell Green where, standing under the orange lights, he searched his pockets. When he had found a folded sheet of paper he opened it and read, “‘I walked with her to Camberwell Green, and we said good-bye rather sorrowfully at the corner of New Road; and that possibility of meek happiness vanished for ever.” This is John Ruskin and his girl Charlotte Wilkes,’ Dougal said, ‘my human research. But you and I will not say good-bye here and now. No. I’m taking you the rest of the way home in a taxi, because you’re the nicest wee process-controller I’ve ever met.’