A Resurrected Heart! Late (I.P.)

A Resurrected Heart!

I am a woman who falls in love too easily and too often. I try not to, I really do, but one can’t deny one’s own nature. So, it seems I am destined always to be taken in by some rogue ready to toy with my affections. The last one was the worst as he not only stole my heart he stole everything else of value too.

I met him at a disco. I was standing watching him in the centre of the floor all by himself…dancing! Yes but not like anyone I had ever seen before. He didn’t just have rhythm he had soul. His style of dancing was a balletic revelation that had everyone in the place transfixed as he whirled and leaped and twisted his body in a way that I would have thought impossible had I not seen it. I stood enthralled at the edge of the circle of people who had stopped to watch him too.

He was delicious to look at as well with his Afro hair and his orange satin shirt opened almost to the waist and skin tight trousers that flared from the knee. Then when the music changed he began to look for a partner. I shrank back but he somehow managed to manoeuvre me to where I was in the full glare of the disco lights above us. I felt sick as I was about to be exposed as being in possession of two left feet but no, to my surprise, my right foot made an unexpected appearance. Unbeknown to me it had been there, clinging to the end of my leg, just waiting for the right set of feet to partner it before it made its grand entrance. I whirled and twisted and jitterbugged and writhed in time to the music as to the council flat born. I was like Margot Fonteyne high on acid or Anna Pavlova before she became a meringue or even Isadora Duncan before the scarf did for her and all thanks to him…Twinkle toes!

That dance was special and I was the happiest girl in the room that night and every night from then on for about six months. He wined me. He dined me. He loved me and he robbed me...of my senses! He seemed completely besotted with me and I him.

I couldn’t believe my luck that someone like him could fall in love with someone like me a dowdy, overweight thirty-one year old spinster of this parish. He bought me presents, not the last minute bunch of flowers from the local garage or the ostentatious box of chocolates. No every present seemed to have some special significance to me or to us. This is it I thought to myself this is the real deal. He adores me and I was convinced that I had found true love. I had found my life partner.

We started to plan our future and we spent all of our time together. It wasn’t that we didn’t like to be with our friends but we didn’t need them. We didn’t need anybody but each other. We put money down as a deposit on what was going to be our first home and we started to plan our wedding.

The money came mostly from my bank account but that was only because his bank had got his account mixed up with someone who had the same name and who also had the same initials so he couldn’t draw money out or write cheques. Perfectly plausible explanation it seemed to me at the time.

Then, slowly at first, things started to change but rapidly gained momentum as they descended into something I just could not comprehend. All of a sudden he became moody, unreliable and no longer seemed to have that all consuming passion for me that I still had for him. I was lost, bereft, and adrift. I wanted my soul mate back. I wanted my lover back. I wanted my future husband back. Then one night I wanted the object of my affections just to…come back…but he didn’t!

I would have quite liked to see my little gold watch and Mum’s silver necklace back too but life is full of bitesize disappointments although this time it seemed that I had cut myself a whopping great chunk of something unpalatable and not content with that I had buttered and spread jam on it too as I found out he had rifled what was left in my bank account before leaving.

I was distraught. I was beside myself. I was unhappiness personified. More to the point, I was broke! I was thinking of all this as I stood on the slippery parapet of the bridge preparing to fling myself into the dark waters beneath. But then some words to the song that was playing when I first clapped eyes on him that night at the disco came floating back to me on the cold night air.

‘Think about nothing now you're nice and high.
You're advocating love but you don't know why.
Now you’re getting vibrations all down to your feet.’

And sure enough as I thought about that night at the Disco I was getting vibrations right down to my feet because I started tapping my toes to that song by Ashton, Gardner and Dyke as the tune and the words came flooding back ‘Think about nothing now you’re nice and high’. Well, up on this blooming bridge with the wind whistling round my nether regions the bit about being ‘nice and high’ was certainly true although I can’t say I was thinking about nothing and if I was advocating love, with my record, then I certainly didn’t know why. But then I thought to myself …sod it, why throw your life into those dark waters it’s not as if they will appreciate it. What have they ever done for me? Nothing! And in any case it’s Friday and there’s a disco on at that new place in the high street. Now what’s the name of it? I know The Resurrection Shuffle!

End