I’m Jim Smellie and this is Jim Smellie’s Ceilidh Band! Would you kindly arise and take your partners for an eightsome reel!”
Mungo drew out the bellows of his piano accordion and played an inviting major chord. At the table, Todd rose quickly to his feet and gestured, almost in desperation, to Sasha. She stood up too, cutting Ramsey Dunbarton off in the middle of a sentence.
Bruce then rose, turning to Lizzie as he did so.
“Shall we?” he said.
She turned down her mouth. “I don’t see how we can do an eightsome. Has anybody told the band that there aren’t enough people for an eightsome?”
Bruce looked over at the band, the three members of which
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now seemed poised to play. This was ridiculous, he thought, but if nobody was going to do it, then he would have to go across and have a word with them.
He strode across the floor and approached Jim Smellie, who was smiling at him, his fiddle tucked under his chin.
“Look, we can’t do an eightsome,” said Bruce. “There are only six of us.”
“Six?” asked Smellie, affecting surprise. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course I am,” said Bruce, the irritation showing in his voice. “So we’ll have to start with something else. What about a Gay Gordons?”
Smellie looked at Mungo. “Anything gay?” he asked. “This young man wants something gay.”
Mungo raised an eyebrow. “Yes, I suppose so. Gay Gordons then?”
Bruce cast an angry glance at Smellie. “That’ll do,” he said.
The band struck up and the dancers went out onto the floor.
There were only three couples, of course, and the floor seemed wide and empty. Bruce stood beside Lizzie, his arm over her shoulder, as the dance required. Had she shuddered when he had touched her? He had the distinct impression that she had, which was very rude of her, he thought. If it weren’t for the fact that she was Todd’s daughter, and Todd was, after all, his boss, then he would have given her a piece of his mind well before this.
Who did she think she was?
“What do you put on your hair?” she asked suddenly. “It smells very funny. Like cloves, or pepper, or something like that.”
Bruce winked at her. “Men’s business,” he said. “But I’m glad that you like it.”
His response went home. “I didn’t say . . .” She was unable to finish. The band had started and the small line of couples began to move round the perimeter of the floor. There was no more time for conversation, although Todd seemed to be trying to whisper something to Sasha, who looked over her shoulder and then whispered something back.
The Gay Gordons went on for longer than usual, or so it seemed to the dancers. Then, when the music finally came to 156
an end, Smellie seized the microphone and announced a Dashing White Sergeant. Sasha looked anxiously at Ramsey Dunbarton
– the Gay Gordons had been energetic, and he seemed to have coloured. Was he up to another dance, she wondered.
She leaned over to Todd and whispered in his ear. “Do you think it wise . . .?” she began. “He looks exhausted.”
Todd shrugged. “He should know his limits. He seems to be all right.”
In spite of their doubts, Ramsey Dunbarton was busy organising everybody for the next dance. Todd and Bruce were to join Betty in one set, and he would be flanked by Lizzie and Sasha.
Smellie watched, bemused, while the two sets prepared themselves, and then, with a nod to Mungo, he started the music.
Off they went, dancing in opposite directions, all the way round the hall, to seemingly interminable bars before they encountered one another, bowed, and went through the motions of the dance. Mungo Brown smiled and looked away; he had never seen anything quite as amusing in thirty years of playing at ceilidhs.
“This is cruel,” he mouthed to Smellie, and Smellie nodded and smirked as the two groups of dancers went off again in their wide, lonely circling of the dance floor.
At the end of the Dashing White Sergeant the dancers returned to their table while the band embarked on
Todd looked at his watch. They might do a few more dances
– two at the most – and then they could bring the whole thing to an end. Honour would have been satisfied; they would have had their ball and nobody would be able to say that they could not muster support for one. Did the South Edinburgh Labour Party have a ball? They did not. Of course, they didn’t know how to dance, thought Todd, with satisfaction. That’s what came of having two left feet. He paused. That was really amusing, and he would have to tell Sasha about it. He might even tell it to Bruce, who liked a joke, even if his sense of humour was rather
