Suspended Sentences. Mark McWatt

it was the first thing he noticed when he looked at the photograph. He visited the office of the tour company, spoke to the proprietor’s son and then the proprietor himself, found out who had taken the photograph and, with some difficulty and expense, managed to locate the negative and have a large blow-up made. This confirmed his belief that the face behind the veil of water was that of Basil Raatgever – the face of his classmate of 1957: the large forehead, the eyes, the wide mouth, the shadow of a moustache. Raatgever, Ross saw, was smiling.

      No one else could see the face, though some agreed that there was a suggestion, in the pattern of water falling over rock, of eyes and a mouth – but only after Ross had pointed these out to them. The fact that no one else saw what he saw did not surprise or discourage him. He saw the face quite clearly and had no trouble recognizing it. He had the enlarged photograph framed and hung on the wall of his bedroom and a smaller version stood on his desk at work. He became convinced that the face of his lost friend had been made visible to him to free him from his years of guilt and sorrow, and he felt truly liberated. Basil Raatgever was there after all – had been there all along, there in the falls. He had reappeared in the place where he had made himself disappear in response to his (Ross’s) angry wish.

      At the office they noticed that Mr. Ross was more relaxed and approachable. He smiled with uncharacteristic frequency and seemed more inclined to stop and chat with his fellow workers. Some surmised that he was mellowing with age and perhaps looking forward to his retirement in a few years.

      One day, Basil Ross stopped before the desk of his faithful secretary. ‘Miss Morgan, I don’t quite know how to say this, but... Well... The fact is that I find myself in possession of two tickets for something called an “Old Time Dance”. I understand that there will be music that was popular in the fifties and sixties and refreshments of some sort. I was wondering if you...’

      ‘Oh, yes, OK, Mr. Ross, I’ll take them off you – you know I can’t pass up a good dance. I’ll get one of the friends in my little group to go with me. You’re giving me the tickets, or do I have to pay?’

      ‘Well... You see, Miss Morgan...’

      But Miss Morgan didn’t see... She couldn’t see why Mr. Ross was making such a fuss and seemed so awkward. He had passed on many such tickets to her over the years. She couldn’t help thinking that by now people should have realized that Mr. Ross didn’t go to public events of that kind.

      ‘Well, the truth is, Miss Morgan,’ Basil Ross continued, ‘I thought I would rather like to go myself – for a change, you know... to remind me of my youth, so to speak... Oh, I don’t know, but I was wondering if you would do me the honour of allowing me to escort you.’

      Miss Morgan opened her mouth, but no sound came from it. She was stunned. The honour of allowing me to escort you... The words rang in her head for a long time before she worked out that Mr. Ross was in fact asking her out to a dance, and it took her still longer to recover the power of speech and respond.

      * * *

      The evening at the dance was a revelation to Miss Morgan. She had never associated Mr. Ross with any social skills or with activities engaged in simply for pleasure. She had thought that she would have to humour him and be embarrassed on his behalf for his awkwardness, but would cheerfully endure this while savouring the novelty of the situation. But Mr. Ross danced like a man possessed. He was lively and fluent in the quicker numbers; he twirled her around and pulled her towards him with the utmost grace and perfect timing, but it was the slow, soulful hits of the sixties he seemed to like best. As the music sobbed rhythmically, Mr. Ross swayed and glided, his hips and shoulders drifting effortlessly with the waves of sound, and his feet hardly seemed to touch the floor. It took all of Miss Morgan’s considerable skills to keep up with him and she noticed, with genuine pleasure, that they had begun to attract quite a lot of attention. Several couples, indeed, had stopped dancing to watch them. Mr. Basil Ross was entirely oblivious – he was floating, he was free. It was as if a long lost dimension of self had reawakened within him and was asserting its presence and its hunger for pleasures long denied. One or two of the older folk at the dance thought they remembered seeing someone dance like that before – a youngster, long, long ago.