Authors: Jackie Kay
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she says and grips my hand tightly. ‘A nice, nice man, Mr Moody. A nice man.’ I nod, wondering what Mrs Dalsasso would say if she saw the papers. I have a lump in my throat now. Mrs Dalsasso has made me cry. She is the first person to make me feel like an ordinary widow, to give me respect, not prurience. I’d like to weep into her pinnie. I sip my tea. I spill some on my coat and then dab it with a tissue. Tiny bits of tissue stick to my coat. She brings the scrambled egg on toast. I make myself stay seated. She gives me another look, one of those intense sorrowful Italian looks that would make the most noble of people pity themselves. ‘I’ll leave you to yourself. You won’t want to talk,’ she says, her cloth expertly wiping the bottom of my cup. ‘I bring another cup for you.’
I make an attempt at the breakfast so as not to hurt Mrs Dalsasso’s feelings. I really should eat. My body is getting thinner. My clothes are half falling off me. Just over a month ago, my life was full of certain things I was
going to do. Joss had a new tour. We were going to go to Tobago for a holiday first. Now here I am, out in the elements of this most familiar place, uncertain about everything. Even my own life. Especially my own life.
I decide to walk down to Lair and do my bit of shopping on the way back. The red phone box is on the corner near the chippie. Pass it. Turn back. Go in. Call him. Nothing to lose. Go on. Call him. I go inside the old red box, preserved like an Egyptian mummy. It should be knocked over to the side with a body in it, holding the phone. I put in my loose change and dial his number. His machine again. I start saying something, ‘Colman, if you are there can you pick up the phone?’ knowing that he won’t pick up the phone to me. There’s a wee boy putting bait on the end of his fishing line at the harbour like Colman used to. Joss taught him to fish. They both loved fishing together. Angus often took them out on his boat. Colman had his own rod from the age of three. This boy casts out his line like an expert, with a quick switch, then sits down to wait. I hang up and try again. ‘What can I say to you, Colman. I am your mother. I love you.’ I hang up again and go out into the wind. It slaps me on the face, stinging my cheeks. The weather is changing again. It is supposed to be summer. The trees sway about like drunks in the wind, cursing.
The wind is intimate with me. Running its long, strong fingers through my hair. Slapping my face, pushing me about, screaming in my ears. It is better to be out than in. I hurry on to Lair, the wind snapping at my heels. I am almost flying. The harbour at Lair is deserted.
One or two fishermen bend over their boats, bloated and swollen by the wind. One of them calls out and waves at me. The simplicity of the gesture cheers me, warms me. A stranger’s love.
I go into the first pub I see, The Old Ship, and order a pub lunch. Suddenly hungry. Haddock, chips and peas. There are a few men having a pint and a couple of couples eating lunch. A table in the corner, opposite the bar. There’s a juke box playing ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B’:
There was a trumpet man from down Chicago way. He had a boogie style that no one else could play
. I lift my knife and fork and hold them over my plate, suspended like aircraft.
My four brothers are at my wedding. I have on a pale green slinky dress. Joss and I argued about what colour of dress I should wear. I said I am not a virgin and he stared for ages and then, ‘Fair enough,’ he said, looking quite proud of himself. My nerves are high and circling the room. At the Registrar’s Office I kept thinking of that bit in
Jane Eyre
where the minister asks if anyone knows of any reason why Mr Rochester and Jane should not marry and the man from the Caribbean suddenly stands up and says, Yes. My dress shows my cleavage. I look sexy and my four brothers and Joss are all staring at me with similar expressions in their eyes. My mother is here too. My father would have loved to live to see this day. My family very nearly didn’t come. I didn’t want to believe it of them. I didn’t want to believe my own mother could
be prejudiced in that way. When I told her I was marrying Joss, she said she had nothing against them, but she didn’t want her own daughter. People should keep to their own, she said. It wasn’t prejudice, it was common sense, she said. Then she said the word, ‘Darky.’ ‘I don’t want you marrying a Darky.’ I stopped her before she shamed me further. I told her she wouldn’t be seeing me again and I left. My brother Duncan came round to Rose Street and said the whole family wanted to come to the wedding. It seems they have overcome their prejudice at least for today.
Green slinky dress. High stiletto heels, black suede. A green ribbon in my hair. I even had my make-up done in Frasers this morning, for the first time in my life. So nervous, I couldn’t properly enjoy it. My eyelashes kept blinking when she wanted me to keep them still. My cheeks started twitching when she was applying the foundation. It was excruciating. I liked best making my mouth into a kiss-me shape when she put on the three layers of lipstick.
There are seventy people here, swinging and jiving. The atmosphere is jumping. Glasses fill with King Bomba, with Koodoo, South African fortified wine, with Australian sherry. Glasses seem to fill by themselves, congratulate themselves. Sláinte mhath. The Moody Men, minus Joss, are warming up at the other end of the hall. Joss is over there talking to them. I knew he couldn’t stay out of it completely. The band starts playing ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B’. Johnnie is singing, looking straight at me, signalling to me to walk across
the dance floor. Joss walks to meet me. I cross the floor like someone walking on water. Our eyes on each other, till we get there. Joss takes me up in his arms and kisses me. Everybody claps and hoots. Then we dance. A circle of people, a human wall, swiftly forms around us. All gamblers’ eyes on us. Joss takes my hand and we spin. I twirl under his arm; swing under his legs. He lifts me high in the air. He jumps, enjoying himself now. It is the 28th of October 1955. Twenty-eight is my new lucky number. I can feel my eyes shining. Joss looks more handsome than I have ever seen him. 28th of October 1955. I have become Millicent Moody. Mrs Moody. Mrs Joss Moody.
When the band finishes everybody cheers us and makes lewd noises. Joss throws his arms in the air, dramatically and then bows. The Moody Men start up again with ‘Ain’t Misbehavin”. I spot some people singing into their partners’ shoulders.
No one to talk with, all by myself, No one to walk with but I’m happy on the shelf, Ain’t misbehavin’, I’m saving my love for you
. We dance for ages. We dance as if we are in a movie. Everyone grabs the limelight as if their dance was a solo spot. ‘Shake, Rattle ’n’ Roll’. ‘Bill Bailey’. ‘Take the A Train’, ‘Why Don’t You Do Right?’, ‘Blues in the Night’.
My momma done tol’ me when I was in knee pants
. ‘In the Mood’. ‘Tutti Frutti’. ‘Rock Around the Clock’. ‘Dancing Time’. The band won’t stop. It plays a rumba, ‘La Conga’. Maryland. The Moody Men are in their element, changing music all the time.
Well, all right, OK, you win. I’m in love with you. Well
,
all right, OK, you win, baby, what can I do?
My mother is dancing with my brother. Her eyes fill every time she looks at me. Her only daughter, married.
Bill Brady comes up and says to Joss, ‘Can I dance with the bride?’ Joss dances with Eileen, my old school friend. Joss has no old school friends here, no family, nobody from his past. Just the boys from his band and some other buddies on the jazz scene. Joss’s mother is dead. He never really knew his father. I look over Bill Brady’s shoulder to Joss; he looks over Eileen’s to me. It doesn’t look right, him dancing with Eileen; they don’t make such a nice couple. They look all wrong.
Ev’ry honey bee fills with jealousy when they see you out with me, I don’t blame them, goodness knows, honeysuckle rose
. For a split second, I feel jealous, imagining what it would be like if Joss were ever unfaithful to me. Then I remember and feel safe. We have our love and we have our secret. I smile at him dancing with pretty Eileen Murray, raise my eyebrows, blow him a kiss over big Bill Brady’s shoulder.
When I’m takin’ sips from your tasty lips, seems the honey fairly drips, you’re confection, goodness knows, honeysuckle rose
.
I walk towards Joss ready to dance with him again. ‘I’m going to ask your mother to dance,’ he says. ‘Break the ice.’ I stare at them for a second. I have to stop myself laughing. My mother dancing with Joss is quite a picture. If she only knew. The Moody Men start singing the songs that have just come in from America like new trains arriving, steaming at the station. Old Mason Dixon Line. It is not my mother’s idea of wedding music. She stands
listening, appalled. Robert Brown sweeps me off my feet. Breathless, I dash for the Ladies.
Do I look like a bride? Do I look freshly married? I stare at myself in the Ladies’ mirror for a long moment. I feel famous. Being a bride has made me feel famous. My cheeks are all flushed with marriage. I touch up my lips. Give my hair a quick going over. Where are the tell-tale signs? My eyes are the eyes of the newly wed. My heartbeat is too fast; I can feel it under my dress. I am so excited and happy I can’t eat any of the food.
I come out of the Ladies and bump into Joss about to go into the Gents. I kiss him. He is a bit edgy. ‘Is anything the matter?’ ‘No,’ he says. ‘Dancing with your mother’s a nightmare. She was holding me at arms’s length all the way through “Please don’t talk about me when I’m gone” so’s she didn’t get too close.’
Joss and I have done it. We are married. A few guests at the registry office this afternoon: my brothers, my mother, Johnnie, Brett and Ragnail from the band, Eileen. And that was it. Now this, grand finale. My mother has probably spent all her savings on this. I said Joss and I could try to pay it back, but she wouldn’t hear of it. ‘It’s not every day your only daughter gets married,’ she said.
Everybody keeps coming up to congratulate me. Some of my old school friends have come up from England. Friends of mine who Joss has not yet met come up and say, ‘Where did you find him? Quite a catch.’ Another one says, ‘I’d watch him. The handsome ones have roving
eyes.’ I laugh, ‘You are just jealous, Agatha.’ I laugh heartily to myself. Quite a catch.
At three in the morning we tumble out of the party and get driven to my flat. We don’t have the money for a honeymoon. We didn’t have the money to get a house together. My mother’s given us her old double bed; it’s time I had a single, she said. Helen my flatmate has moved out. Flatmates should all have a shelf life. We are both drunk and laughing. He starts to undo my green dress and we fall into bed, kissing. We go down into our other world, till we are both drowning in each other, coming up suddenly gasping for air and going back down again.
We are so hungover the next morning that the breakfast I’d thought of making I can’t. Bacon, sausage, eggs would turn our stomach. I get up and get some coffee, some dry toast. Thank God we’ve at least taken some days off. I take it through on a tray. Joss groans, ‘Good morning, Mrs Moody.’ ‘Good morning, Mr Moody,’ I say back and snuggle into bed with him. He puts his arm around me and holds me close. ‘My Millie,’ he says to me. ‘My Millie.’ He kisses me. ‘I just can’t believe I’ve got you. Tell me it’s real. Pinch me.’ I pinch him. ‘Not that hard,’ he says.
Tonight, I am tired out from all the walking I have done, the fresh spirited sea air, seeing Mrs Dalsasso and hearing Colman’s voice on his machine. I climb up the narrow,
creaking staircase, round the corner at the top into our small bedroom here. I have just seized
Anna Karenina
from our shelf of books in the hall. Last night I woke up and reached out for Joss. Tonight I will put the spare pillows on Joss’s side so that I need not wake up to that dizzy empty space; my legs scrambling about as if in mid air, trying to find the rung of the ladder. I stop at the first sentence: ‘All happy families resemble one another, every unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion.’ A postcard drops out of the book. It is not dated. Joss’s small writing goes right through me. It is as if he has just written it for me because I have just found it. It is his latest communication. ‘You’d have a ball here. It’s terrific. The views are colossal. Miss you like mad. If you could only just get up in the air and come and see me right now, I’d tell you a thing or two. And make you mine.’ I turn it round and there’s a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge. Despite myself, I smile.
I can hear Joss saying, ‘For Christ sake, Millie, don’t mourn me, celebrate me.’ Modest to the end. ‘Have a wee shindig.’ Shindig, the word we’ve used for every party since Angus said it that time. Shindig. Perhaps that is what I should do. Go back down to London and face them all and organize a memorial party for Joss, get all his friends to play, make Colman come. Get a Celtic band as well. Joss’s funeral wasn’t right. Maybe that’s what I will do sometime, but not now. I can’t face the people right now. I can’t stand to see the look on their faces.
I read
Anna Karenina
until I feel the book drop out of my hands. I put the postcard in as a marker and go off to
the place where I know I will find Joss. As I unlock the door of our house, I know we’ve been burgled. I can sense the presence of danger. Something is not right. The window in the kitchen is wide open and there are potted plants knocked over the floor. Joss isn’t there. I look for a note. Nothing. All our drawers are hanging open – mouths spewing clothes. The sheets have been ripped off our bed and someone has written something horrible in the mirror. But I can’t read it because it is written backwards in mirror writing. His trumpet is missing. I search frantically everywhere but his trumpet has gone. That is all I care about. The bit of money we’d saved for our marriage is gone from under the bed. Where is Joss? Has he been taken away?
A small black girl climbs in through the window. She takes my hand and we walk down the stairs, down Rose Street till we come to Renfield Street, round the corner till we come to 14 Abercromby Place. She stops. Waves goodbye to me. I go into the stranger’s house and there is Joss sitting in front of the dresser mirror in somebody’s bedroom playing his trumpet. The light in the room is beautiful, religious. Sudden last burst of late light. Joss looks like God with a trumpet. His face glows. The music makes him blush. He is playing Millie’s Song. His trumpet burbles and moans. The heat comes off the music. The heat comes off Joss. The sweat pours down his face. Suddenly, we are in a different country. Outside the window there’s a mosquito net. A table with two cold cocktails on it. The music of animals and insects in the bush. Joss turns towards me and half his face is missing.