Too Beautiful to Dance

by Diana Appleyard

  ‘Are you absolutely sure you want to bother seeing this one?’ asked the estate agent, battling to hold on to the flapping property brochure, as he tried to close the door of the car. Sara turned up the collar of her raincoat, and stared through the mist at the distant little house.

  ‘Quite sure,’ she said.

  ‘OK. It’s your call.’

  They’d stopped at a junction to check the map, because the last sign to Lanteglos had fallen down, pointing, rather hopelessly, into a field of miserable-looking sheep, who stared defiantly back at them as if to say, do we look like a village? It was a quite dreadful day, and Sara wished she’d put on a warmer coat. On the train, the heating had been turned up like a furnace, and the wind cut her like a knife as she stepped on to the platform to change trains at Plymouth, to take the smaller branch line to Liskeard. From the station she had walked up the hill to the estate agents, noting the preponderance of electrical appliance and pet shops, for some bizarre reason, on the High Street. Peering into the shop windows while trying to mentally establish the geography of the town – this might, after all, be her nearest place to shop – she thought how very little there was she actually wanted to buy, unless, of course, she suddenly felt the need for rabbit nail clippers or a flat screen TV.

  The agents had lined up three suitable properties for her to view that afternoon.

  ‘Why on earth Cornwall?’ Emily had said, as they sat around the kitchen table in the tiny service flat Sara was renting, just off Kensington High Street. It was a shabby, depressing two-bedroom apartment, with paint peeling off the walls, decorated in an inoffensive but soulless hospital cream. It reeked of temporary habitation, which suited Sara just fine – you could neither care nor attach any emotions to such a place. It was, she realized, a place of limbo, which suited her mood exactly: living, and yet not actually alive in any recognizable sense of the word. She woke, she washed herself, she dressed, she made coffee, she walked Hector, she cooked rudimentary meals like poached egg on toast, tasting nothing, all with little or no conscious thought or emotion. Catherine said that she was still in shock, but it wasn’t quite that – she felt rather as if she was waiting. Waiting for someone to pull back the curtain and reveal it had all been a grotesque joke, and that normal life was about to resume. Matt too appeared to be waiting – waiting for her to come to her senses and return home, according to Emily, who had appointed herself their go-between. Lottie wanted no contact with Matt, but Emily had been to see him the day after the party, at his office.

  Most of her waking day was spent two steps away from reality, watching but not participating, as if there was a time delay between herself and the rest of the world. She’d never taken pills for anything, and shrugged off Catherine’s suggestion that she should see her GP and perhaps ask for tranquillizers or anti-depressants. Sara did not want her senses muffled further – she already felt a little like the living dead. Her calm thoroughly unnerved Emily, who appeared to want drama and rows, although Lottie seemed to understand why she had absolutely no desire to talk about anything but the most boring mundanities. She felt that if she simply trod water for a while, the world might tip back on to an even keel and her path forward might come clear. Yet every morning she woke, looked at the blank walls and realized afresh that what had been done could not be undone, and her future lay entirely in her own hands. This was a quite overwhelming prospect for a person who had played the supporting role to her husband and then family for twenty-six years. Taking the initiative was a highly daunting prospect.

  When Matt failed to reappear the morning after the party, she had packed a small overnight bag and asked the girls if they would come and stay in a hotel with her for a day or so. She could not bear to stay at home, surrounded by his things, the very walls bearing the imprint of those words. Hector could sleep in the car. She knew that it was perhaps not the most rational thing to do, but she refused to sit in the apartment, waiting for Matt to come home and try to explain.

  Her days of passivity – that was one thing she had decided – were over. She was not going to sail, swanlike, over this, and forgive Matt, and smooth life back to normal. If the children had been younger, possibly, yes. But not now. Not now she and Matt were about to face a future on their own, a chance to rediscover their lives together before they had had children. Even knowing nothing of the circumstances of his – whatever it was – she recognized the need to take action on her own terms, as a way of regaining at least a little of her shredded dignity.

  For how long, she wondered, had she been passive, unknowing Sara, welcoming Matt home when he was late, cooking for him, running his bath, when all the time he was late home because he had been having sex with someone else? Had he rejoiced in his duplicity, congratulated himself on running two such disparate lives? Had he needed the thrill of deceit? Did she bore him, when all the time she had congratulated herself on the strength of their relationship, the longevity of their marriage, their tender love-making? The thought made her feel physically sick. Did he think she was overweight, sexually unattractive? Had he made love to her out of pity, all the time thinking of her, whoever she was? No, she would not wait for him to choose to come home. When he came back, she would be gone, and not contactable, at least for a while, until she could think clearly and decide what action to take. Above all, she did not want to hear him say he was sorry. The truth was far too complicated for that one, small, inadequate word.

  Matt had apparently returned home towards the end of the second day – Sara had no idea where he had been, and had no desire to know. Shocked to the core at finding the apartment empty, he rang her mobile and begged her to come home. Sara listened, said nothing, and then switched off her phone. Lottie was refusing to talk to or see him, and only Emily had seen him. She now flitted between the two of them, and Sara resolutely refused to ask her any questions about how he was, and whether they had discussed the future.

  After a week of staying in a hotel, she made the decision to rent a flat for a month, at first. Catherine and several other girlfriends tried to persuade her to come and stay with them, but she did not want to stay with anyone. Above all, she did not want to talk. She could not bear the inquisition that staying with a friend would bring. But she could not hang around in limbo for ever. There were practicalities. Life went on. Emily was starting her job after Christmas, Lottie needed to submit her entry to university for the following year and she, Sara, needed to— That was where the logic broke down. What did she need to do? The only phrase that came to mind when she challenged herself with this salient point, was ‘get away’. It was neither a sophisticated nor a thought-out response – simply a compelling need to be somewhere where no one knew what had happened and she could breathe and think clearly. And try, desperately, to make some sense of what had happened and decide if she and Matt had any kind of future together.

  Christmas was a grisly affair – her mother had invited them up to Yorkshire but Sara could not bear the thought of being clucked over by her mother and her friends, some of whom, according to her mother, were now saying they had always thought that Matt was rather ‘fast’ and not to be trusted. Emily spent the day with Matt at home, and she and Lottie had gone to Catherine’s. For the first time in many years, Sara had got drunk. It hadn’t helped.

  Emily had found a flat to rent with two girlfriends, near to her new job, and was in the process of moving some of her things there from the apartment. Lottie didn’t have to be anywhere until next October, and as for Sara, there was no pressing need for her to be anywhere, or do anything. Her road map had vanished overnight. If she was not to be Matt’s wife, who exactly was she to be?

  The decision to move to Cornwall had come in the midst of a sleepless night as she tossed and turned, wondering if the stance she had taken made her more, or less, ridiculous, and whether she really had the courage to leave him for good. Even now, no concrete details had emerged, but it was clear from the snippets that Emily let fall that Matt, infuriated by Sara’s decisio
n not to see or speak to him, was spending a lot of time with this woman, although Emily said there was no sign of her at home. Catherine had set herself on to a mission to uncover the truth – she said if anyone was going to find out every minute detail from whatever source, it was she, and Sara realized, without bitterness, that under all the concern her friend was having the time of her life. She had told Catherine not to embark on her detective work – there was no point. She would far rather be told by Matt, eventually, once the dust had settled, than be fed gossip and rumour. Catherine grimaced at this and asked, ‘But how do you know he will be telling you the truth? It’s much better to be armed with the facts,’ and Sara realized, with a jolt, that Matt might lie to her – after all, he had been lying to her for who knows how long. The truth she had felt was the bedrock of their relationship had crumbled into ashes.

  They had holidayed in Cornwall as a family when the girls were in their teens – Matt hated it, with all the queuing on single-track roads and forcibly cheerful days on a chilly beach – but something in the landscape and the coastline had touched her. I could live here, she had thought at the time of the holiday, and then forgotten all about it. But the mind has a way of storing such connections. It was, anyway, no madder than any other ideas she had had, and she had to go somewhere. Staying in London was not an option. She was terrified of bumping into Matt, and Emily had told her that on several occasions he had waited in his car for hours outside her rented flat, to try to ambush her into communication.

  Emily announced that taking sides was pathetic, and it was causing a rift between the two sisters. Lottie said she could not understand how Emily could bear to even talk to Matt. Sara told them she did not want either of them to be forced into the position of having to choose between two parents, and encouraged Lottie to call Matt, but at the same time she could not help being hurt by Emily’s decision to spend the majority of her time with her father. Emily said, point blank, she thought it was ridiculously childish of Sara to refuse to at least talk to him, to which Sara replied, keeping her voice carefully controlled, that it was not Emily’s decision and she would not be bullied one way or the other. Matt had chosen to leave them that night – a decision Sara regarded as unforgivable. To leave them with the turmoil that Richard’s words had created, and not even try to give an explanation? How could she sit down calmly and discuss the situation with him?

  The Formica table in the kitchen of the service flat was littered with details of properties, which Emily had been flicking through with increasing dismay. Lottie sat huddled on the sofa, her hands wrapped around a polystyrene cup of coffee, the sleeves of her jumper pulled down over her fingers. Hector lay sprawled across her lap, his fat paws twitching against his pink stomach in a puppy dream.

  ‘I don’t quite know why Cornwall,’ Sara said, in response to Emily’s question. She ran her hand through her lank hair. She must wash it, but looking after herself seemed quite irrelevant. ‘I just feel a need to be by the sea – we had a holiday there once, do you remember, when you were about fourteen?’ Emily nodded. She remembered it: a holiday of struggling to a stony beach down a long, damp path, with towels, buckets and spades, a cool box and a bag which held books on the way down, plus Lottie’s carefully collected stones and shells on the way back. Emily had moaned constantly, saying it was the least enjoyable holiday she’d ever been on, and she was way too old for beaches. Lottie, meanwhile, was in seventh heaven, pottering about with a fishing net, dropping shells and little shiny stones into a bucket while Emily sulkily read novels and shivered under a towel. Matt had only been able to join them for three days, because he was negotiating an important deal, and he had made it clear, as only Matt could, that he was not enjoying himself. He said it reminded him too much of the holidays in his youth, sitting miserably on a beach in Blackpool while his father drank in the pub. Besides, he liked the sun, and was growing used to the five-star luxury of business trips.

  That morning Emily had marched into the apartment, dumped her bag on the kitchen table and told Sara that Matt was threatening to sell the apartment if Sara did not come home. She was, Emily added, sick of their inability to communicate, and it was ‘doing her head in’. She then followed up this bombshell by announcing that Matt could not believe Sara was considering leaving London before they had even had a chance to talk and allow him to explain what had happened. The clear insinuation – from Matt, via Emily – was that Sara was being a very silly and irrational woman indeed.

  Over the past three weeks she hadn’t taken any money out of their joint account – she was paying for what she needed, such as food and the rent and deposit for the flat, from a building society account in which she’d stored a small legacy inherited from an aunt who had died several years before.

  There was enough in the account for a deposit on a very cheap house, but Sara was very worried about how she would pay the mortgage with no income, and still have enough money to live on. Unless she took money from Matt, she would have to get a job. Catherine thought she was insane not to take him for every penny she could, if she was determined to leave her home – which, she implied, was impetuous and risky in the extreme. Catherine’s theory was that she should have stayed put, to get the best chance of having the apartment awarded to her, if it did eventually come to divorce.

  Sara, however, was determined to manage without handouts from Matt. The thought was repulsive. How could she leave him with her head held high, and then run back to him for cash? If she had any chance of a new independent life, she must not be beholden to him. She was very clear on that point. The girls, yes, of course, but not her. Her mother could bail her out if she got desperate, although this was an admittedly unattractive option. Even if in the distant future – well, at present there was no suggestion of an ‘even if’ – she returned to Matt, she would still have the house she was planning to buy. A bolt hole, something quite of her own. Independence, she could now see, was vital for survival. She had been too trusting and dependent, and she did not ever want to be so vulnerable again. What a position he had put her in, she thought. To have her loyalty and love rewarded in this way. She was trying not to be bitter and angry, but it was so very hard to be noble, especially when there was the risk of bumping into him at any moment. In Cornwall, it would be so much easier to be noble from a distance.

  Her friends desperately wanted to do something to help, but Sara refused to either stay with them or have long gossipy lunches picking over the details. Her friends, especially Catherine, wanted to know how she felt – and the honest answer, that she had no idea, puzzled and irritated them. How could they help, if she would not let them understand? Of course it was the very public nature of the revelation which riveted the imagination: so dreadful. Their separation was, naturally enough, the hot topic of the moment at many dinner parties among their friends. The general consensus of opinion was that Matt had been an idiot, and that Sara ought to take him to the cleaners – not only could she get half the money from the sale of the company, she was also due half his pension, and with one daughter still in full-time education, she had every chance of getting their home. For a man who had riled many in business, there was more than a hint of delighted come-uppance.

  Sara understood her friends’ vicarious interest and their need for regular bulletins on her mental and emotional wellbeing (or not) and any decisions she was planning to make, but fuelling the fascination was more than she could bear. She could take no pleasure in being in the eye of the storm. The only solution, she felt, was to flee and leave all this mess behind.

  So now she was sitting in the cramped front seat of a small Ford, driving along single-track country roads bounded by high, grassy banks, in the pouring rain. Periodically they had to stop in a lay-by to let a tractor or car pass, and each mile seemed to last an eternity. The last cottage they’d seen had been far more suitable than the one they were heading for, the estate agent claimed. That cottage was neat, and recently renovated, with new double glazing and a gas fire with
‘real’ living flames in the small, immaculate living room. A mile from the sea, it had an easily managed garden, spaces all ready for bedding plants. Ideal for a retired person. But I’m not retired, Sara thought. I’m just beginning.

  ‘Nearly there,’ the estate agent said, with a nervous smile. He found Sara a difficult woman to fathom; she didn’t volunteer any information about herself and her circumstances, and although she was well dressed, well spoken and clearly middle class, she hadn’t shown any interest in the big expensive properties they currently had on their books. In the office, he’d tried to steer her towards a spacious Georgian rectory, which had wonderful views, an acre of garden and a price to match, but instead she’d tapped the glass in front of the cheapest house they were selling, a little, falling-down cottage they thought would take years to shift, because it was in such a decrepit state. Most people didn’t even want to look at it, when they realized how remote it was, and how much work needed doing simply to make it habitable. It didn’t even have central heating.

  Eventually he stopped the car in front of a five-barred gate. Leading to the little cottage was a grassy track, about twenty yards long, not firm enough to risk parking the car.

  ‘It’s a bit muddy,’ he remarked, reaching down to unfasten his seat belt.

  ‘That’s fine,’ Sara replied cheerfully, and opened the car door, hanging on as the wind threatened to wrench it from her grasp. Stepping out and stretching, the view made her catch her breath. There was almost nothing between the cottage and the sea, just a small front garden, a low stone wall and then, fifty or so yards beyond some tall fir trees to the right of the garden, the edge of the cliff. Beyond that the sea, steely grey, stretched away to the distant horizon, the tips of the waves flecked by crescents of white foam. It was like standing on the edge of the world. The nearest house she could see stood on the next peninsula, at least five miles away. Above her a seagull wheeled, catching the rising currents of the air and then hanging, as if suspended in space, before dropping like a stone towards the sea. Away in the distance a ship’s bell rang – an eerie sound, with no sight of the ship through an impenetrable grey mist. The agent glanced sideways at her. ‘Are you sure you want to live quite so far away from civilization?’ He smiled.