A Time to Dance
“. . . all glorious within . . .”
Ps. 45.4
Robert, his date Candy, and a group of friends were waiting for the hired limousine
to take them to the Roseville High School graduation ball.
“Don’t go and embarrass Robert by quoting scriptures at him,” said Anne. “You know
how sensitive he is in front of his friends.”
“I’ll try not to. But last time I quoted a verse from Ezekiel, Candy said it was
really cool. She thought it had been written by Jim Morrison, whoever he is.”
The limo pulled up in the drive outside.
“OK folks, it’s time,” said Robert.
“A time to dance,” I said.
It just slipped out, the line from Ecclesiastes. It’s a difficult habit for a clergyman
to break — after all, “a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a frame of silver”.
Anne looked hard at me but Robert didn’t notice.
“Bye mom, ’bye dad.”
“Have a great time, guys,” I said.
Sometimes, despite my Scottish accent, I manage to sound quite American, I think.
“Candy looks gorgeous in that dress,” said Anne when they’d gone. “There’s something
very special about a girl going to her first ball.”
“I hope they enjoy themselves. I have some frightful memories of balls.”
“Knowing the way you dance, your partners must have some frightful memories too,”
said Anne. “Do you remember the ball we went to in New York with the Grainges? Denny
Grainge told me that you . . . ”
“I’d rather forget about that occasion. Did I ever tell you about the first ball
I went to?”
“Not that I remember.”
“Then I shall relate it to you as it happened, my beloved, for my tongue is the pen
of a ready writer.”
I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life when I matriculated from St. Bardolph’s
at the age of eighteen. My friends all seemed to have their futures mapped out. Bulstrode
returned to Australia to mine for opals, Compton went to the West Indies to coach
cricket, Anstruther went to New Guinea to live with a tribe of headhunters, Rees-Jones
went to the Paris Conservatoire to study musical composition.
I went to Glasgow and got a job as a clerk in an insurance company. The tedium was
frightful. I’d sit at my desk in the ledgers section while the head clerk, old Mr
McPherson, would painstakingly explain the workings of the accounting system.
“Debit in the left-hand column, credit in the right-hand column,” he’d say. “Try
to remember, laddie.”
But I found it hard to concentrate on ledgers when my real interest was in a bonny
lassie who worked in the typing pool — Jenny Campbell. We’d begun walking out together
— or dating as you call it now. I was smitten. “Rapt” I think the expression is.
I didn’t give it much thought when our company announced its annual ball at the Railton
Hotel in a couple of months’ time. The girls in the typing pool could talk of nothing
else. But Jenny began to make excuses for not going, saying that she didn’t like
big crowds, that the orchestra was no good, and that she had to baby-sit for her
sister.
I soon found out the reason. Jenny didn’t have a dress good enough for the occasion.
She wasn’t going to be a laughing stock by wearing rags to the ball when all the
other girls had expensive gowns.
“Maggie Mackay’s dress cost twenty pounds,” she said. “Stuck up little snob. But
her father can afford it.”
We were waiting for the last bus on a drizzling Saturday evening after going to the
pictures.
“That seems a lot of money.”
“Only when you’re in a crummy job earning five pounds a week. Haven’t you got any
ambition?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I’ll get promotion when I pass my first exam.”
Jenny snorted.
“Insurance is a mug’s game. There’s no future in it. You’ll end up an old stick in
the mud like Mr McPherson.”
I tried to take her hand but she shoved it in her coat pocket and sulked. The movie
had been absolutely dismal and even the cartoons hadn’t been funny.
“What about that green dress you’ve got,” I said hopefully. “That would do for the
ball, wouldn’t it?”
Jenny gave me a look of withering scorn.
“That rag! Is that what you think people wear to balls? How stupid can you get!”
“Here’s the bus,” I said, hoping she’d change the subject.
“I’m sick of going everywhere in buses. Why don’t you buy a motor car?”
I didn’t like to remind her that on my salary I could barely afford a push bike,
let alone a car.
As the ball drew nearer, Jenny became steadily more discontented, and there was nothing
I could say to mollify her. What made matters worse was that my fellow clerks were
beginning to comment on this new state of affairs. I found myself in an inner turmoil,
cursing the day balls were ever invented.
One afternoon, when I was sneaking back to work after an extended lunch break, I
noticed someone waiting in the corridor outside the ledgers section.
“Excuse me. Unless I’m very much mistaken, you’re just the person I’ve come to see.”
I found myself looking into the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. They belonged to a spritely
elderly lady with a tam- o-shanter perched on her head.
“Am I?” I said in surprise.
“I’m sure of it. You’re very like the young man Nettie described. It’s Donald McIntosh
isn’t it?”
The name Nettie rang a few bells. She was a maiden great-aunt of mine, and I remembered
her writing to me about an old friend of hers who’d been a missionary in China.
“You must be Miss Dewar,” I said, feeling rather guilty at not having looked her
up as I’d promised my aunt.
“I am,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “And I was hoping to meet your young lady too.
Nettie told me about her as well.”
Miss Dewar had the lilting accent of a Highlander, and a warm gay smile that seemed
to express a deep delight in life. It was, I thought later, in sharp contrast to
the self-satisfied smirks that most women seemed to wear round the office — at least
whenever I was about.
Miss Dewar invited Jenny and me to her house for dinner on the following Saturday.
Jenny decided Miss Dewar must be eccentric but agreed to come.
“She could be filthy rich. She might leave you all her money in her will.”
Miss Dewar’s home was quite modest, which must have been disappointing to Jenny.
But it was beautifully furnished with hand-painted silk screens, lacquered furniture
and porcelain vases. Miss Dewar told us she had lived in China for nearly forty years.
Later that evening, the conversation got round to the firm’s ball. Miss Dewar told
us how much she’d enjoyed balls when she was young, and asked whether and Jenny I
would be attending. Jenny told her she couldn’t go without a dress to wear.
“I can well remember the dress I wore to my first ball,” Miss Dewar said. “It was
made of white muslin with rosebuds embroidered round the neckline. I felt so grand.
But I have something to show you, my dear.”
She brought out a lacquered box, and removing layers of tissue, held up a length
of ivory-coloured silk.
“This was given to me in China some years ago. I’ve no use for it myself but it would
make a lovely gown for you. Indeed, I know the very dressmaker to do it — I’ll take
you to see her next week. And I know you’ll have a wonderful time, my dear.”
So we went to the ball. Jenny looked stunning in the silk gown. She wore her hair
piled up, with pearl earrings and a pearl necklace borrowed from her sister. I was
quite overawed at the transformation.
In my hired dinner suit, which was too short in the leg and too long in the sleeve,
I did not exactly feel like Prince Charming. I spend most of my time dodging about
in case one of the ugly sister brigade from the office asked me to dance. I began
to think the evening would never end.
Jenny had no shortage of male admirers.
“How about the next dance?” I asked, when I finally managed to catch her alone.
“Don’t be daft, you can’t foxtrot. Besides I’m already engaged for the next dance.”
Slipping out her compact, she checked her lipstick in the mirror but I had the impression
she was looking for someone in the crowd.
“Would you go to the bar for me?”
I agreed reluctantly. When I returned, the music had started again, and I couldn’t
see her, so I had to finish her drink as well as my own. After that, I felt decidedly
peculiar and stepped outside onto the hotel balcony for some fresh air.
It was a clear, frosty night and the stars shone with a pitiless brilliance. I had
the sense of something coming to an end.
I went in search of Jenny. She was still dancing and it wasn’t easy to attract her
attention. Eventually the music stopped and she came over.
“We’d better go soon,” I said. “It’s a long walk home.”
“Callum has offered me a lift in his motor car,” said Jenny. “We were just about
to leave. Have you met Callum before?
“No,” I said, swallowing.
I recognised Callum McLean: he was the son of one of the partners in the firm. Blonde,
blue-eyed and handsome, he came from a moneyed Glasgow family, spoke with a public
school accent and wore a Saville Row dinner suit.
“Pleased to meet you, Donald.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr McLean.”
Jenny gave me a quick peck on the cheek.
“I’ve had a lovely evening.”
“Me too.”
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Donald,” said Callum, and something in his tone told me that as far as
Jenny was concerned, I henceforth ceased to exist.
Within two weeks, the news of their engagement was all over the office. I handed
in my resignation to Mr McPherson.
“I canna say I’m surprised, Donald,” he said. “I dinna ken what the management was
thinking of when they took you on. You’ve no got the heid for a clerk.”
Belatedly, I had to agree with Jennifer that there was no future for me in insurance.
“Well,” said Anne, “you could hardly blame Jenny, could you?. You must have been
quite insufferable when you were eighteen.”
“A bit gauche, perhaps. But I’ve improved greatly with age. Like a good malt whisky.”
“I’m not sure about that sometimes.”
“Speaking of malt, do you fancy a wee dram?”
“Not for me, thanks. You go ahead.”
“I will.”
I went to London and found a job as a shoe salesman — the first of many jobs I was
try before settling on my vocation. A few years later, my Aunt Nettie wrote to tell
me Miss Dewar was ill in hospital. She said Miss Dewar had been asking after me,
so I caught the train to Glasgow and visited her one afternoon.
Miss Dewar was sitting up in bed with a shawl round her shoulders, and despite her
failing health, her manner was as spritely as ever.
She asked after Jenny. I told her about the ball and the silk dress that had been
my undoing.
“I didn’t know that. I’m so sorry, Donald. Something tells me there’s a lovely lassie
waiting for you, who’ll not break your heart. You’ll recognise her when the time
comes.”
I noticed a photograph in a silver frame by Miss Dewar’s bed. It was of a young man
in an academic gown, holding a scroll — his university degree, I assumed. His gaze,
as he faced the camera in the photographer’s studio, had that steadfast intensity
of purpose you often see in the portraits of young men of that era. Curiously, there
were what looked like faded Chinese characters running down the right-hand side of
the photograph.
“That’s Duncan,” said Miss Dewar. “The young man I was engaged to. It was the night
of his graduation ball when he asked me to marry him. I remember it so well, the
great hall at the university, the lights, the music, the dancing, the famous professors
in their robes . . . but I’ll not bore you with an old lady’s reminiscences.”
“Please tell me about him,” I said.
So, as I sat by her hospital bed, with the afternoon sun streaming in through the
tall windows, Miss Dewar told me her story.
She had been working as a nurse in Glasgow when she met Duncan, a young medical student.
Duncan had received a call to go to China as a missionary. Every spare minute not
spent on his medical studies, he spent in learning Chinese.
“He was translating the Analects of Confucius into English to help him understand
Chinese spirituality,” said Miss Dewar.
“I knew in my heart, the day he invited me to the ball, he would ask me to marry
him. And I knew what my answer would be.”
Before they could marry, Duncan had to serve a probationary year with the mission
in China. Meanwhile, it was necessary for Miss Dewar to remain in Scotland and begin
her own study of Chinese in preparation for a life on the mission field.
“I still have all the letters he wrote during that year,” Miss Dewar said. “It was
a blessed day whenever a letter arrived. He always wrote in Chinese. I’d sit at the
kitchen table with my dictionary of Chinese characters and translate them as fast
as I could. He wrote such wonderful letters.”
Finally, a letter came with the news that Duncan had been accepted by the mission.
Enclosed with the letter was a bank draft to cover the cost of her passage to China.
Her trunks had been packed and she was given the presents to be unwrapped on the
day of her wedding. Her friend Nettie, my great-aunt, had given her a turquoise brooch
— as “something blue”.
On the morning before she was to catch the train to Southhampton, a cable was delivered
to her home. It was from the Chinese mission. It advised there had been an outbreak
of cholera in the province where Duncan was stationed. While treating the victims,
Duncan himself had contracted the disease and died. He had been “called to higher
service”.
“My mother and father wanted me to stay in Scotland,” Miss Dewar said “But I’d received
the calling to China. Duncan and I had made vows, and I was determined to keep them.
“That was fifty-two years ago. I don’t think a day has gone by without my thinking
of Duncan. Last night I dreamed of him. We were dancing together at the ball.”
She looked at the photograph by the bed and smiled. It was an almost childlike smile,
touched with wistfulness and hopeful acceptance.
Miss Dewar asked if I would read her a psalm from the Bible by her bed. The psalm
she chose was Psalm 45 — a psalm of loves. “The king’s daughter is all glorious within,
her clothing is of wrought gold.”
Those were the lines that stuck in my mind. It was the first time I’d encountered
the majesty of the language in the King James Bible.
“Thank you Donald,” she said, when I’d finished. “You read that beautifully. I believe
you could have a fine career in the ministry. You have a lovely bedside manner too.
”
We said goodbye. Miss Dewar died peacefully a week later. My Aunt Nettie saw to it
that the photograph and letters from Duncan were placed in her coffin, as Miss Dewar
had asked.
Miss Dewar left a small sum of money in trust for me and I decided to apply for a
place at Oxford. I fancied reading philosophy, but if you’d asked me the name of
a philosopher I doubt I could have told you a single one.
At the time in my life, nothing could have been further from my mind than a career
in the ministry. But I did begin to wonder what could have inspired a talented young
doctor to sacrifice his career and his life in the service of others. And what had
inspired a young Scottish lass to dedicate forty years of her life to serving in
a country where foreigners were far from welcome.
While I was at Oxford, I discovered part of the answer. I met an American post-graduate
student and Vietnam veteran, Atherton Grainge, who had a remarkable story to tell.
I remember him preaching once, in a little South London church, on the power of love.
He took his text from the Song of Solomon: “Love is stronger than death . . . Many
waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all
the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.”
I had finished my story. Anne wiped a tear from her eye. This time, she had nothing
to say but put her arms round my neck and kissed me many times, which was very pleasant.
“O let her kiss me with the kisses of her mouth, for her love is sweeter than wine
. . .”
It was nearly 2.00 a.m. The front door banged. Robert and Candy had returned. I heard
them in the kitchen, opening and closing the refrigerator.
“The old folks are having a cuddle in the living room,” Robert said. “We’ll leave
them to it. Can I have the mustard sauce when you’ve finished, please. It’s yummy
on roast beef. Dad always says there’s nothing better for a man than that he should
eat and drink and let his soul enjoy the good of his labour.”
“I think your dad’s really cool,” said Candy. “And I love the way he quotes poetry
in that cute Scottish accent of his.”
“So do I,” whispered Anne.
