"Throw out your right hand, dear boy," she whispered, and before he knew he had done it, Easu had seized his hand in a big, brutal, bullying grasp, and was grinding his knuckles. And then sixteen people began to spin.
The startled agony of it made a different man of him. For Ma was heavy as a log on his left side, clinging to him as if she liked to cling to his body. He never quite forgave her. And Easu had his unprotected right hand gripped in a vice and was torturing him on purpose with the weight and the grind. Jack's hands were naturally small, and Easu's were big. And to be gripped by that great malicious paw was horrible. Oh, the tension, the pain and rage of that giddy-go-rounding, first forward, then abruptly backwards. It broke some of his innocence forever.
But although paralytic with rage when released, Jack's face still looked innocent and cherubic. He had that sort of face, and that diabolic sort of stoicism. Mrs. Ellis thought: "What a nice kind boy! but late waking up to the facts of life!" She thought he had not even noticed Easu's behaviour. And again she thought to herself, her husband would be jealous if he saw her. Poor old Jacob! Aloud she said:
"The next is the last figure. You're doing very well, Jack. You go off round the ring now, handing the ladies first your right and then your left hand."
He felt no desire to hand anybody his hand. But in the middle of the ring he met Monica, and her slim grasp took his hurt right hand, and seemed to heal it for a moment.
Easu grabbed his arm, and he saw three others, suffering fools gladly, locked arm in arm, playing soldiers, as they called it. Oh, God! Easu, much taller than Jack, was twisting his arm abominably, almost pulling it out of the socket. And Jack was saving up his anger.
It was over. "That was very kind of you, my dear boy," Mrs. Ellis was saying. "I haven't enjoyed a dance so much for years."
Enjoyed! That ghastly word! Why would people insist on enjoying themselves in these awful ways! Why "enjoy" oneself at all? He didn't see it. He decided he didn't care for enjoyment, it wasn't natural to him. Too humiliating, for one thing.
Twenty steps involved in the black skirts of Mrs. Ellis, and he was politely rid of her. She was very nice. And by some mystery she had really enjoyed herself in this awful mêlée. He gave it up. She was too distant in years and experience for him to try to understand her. Did these people never have living anger, like a bright black snake with unclosing eyes, at the bottom of their souls? Apparently not.