Too Beautiful to Dance

by Diana Appleyard

  ‘Quite sure,’ she replied, her voice rising above the wind. ‘Can we go in?’

  He led her around the front of the cottage, and opened the gate, with difficulty, as it was hanging off on one hinge. He walked towards the front door, and, as he struggled with the key, she paused, one hand on the gate. This could be my home, she thought. The idea had come out of nowhere.

  Inside, the air was musty and stale. The cottage felt as if there had been no life within the walls for a long time. Piled up in the corner of the corridor, in front of the kitchen, were stacks of old newspapers, and, on the floor in the kitchen, lay discarded, rusty tin cans. Sara looked at them in surprise. Had no one thought to tidy up? The two front rooms were still furnished, but with the kind of very old cheap furniture you might find at a car boot or jumble sale, varnish peeling, threadbare armchairs with dusty antimacassars over the backs. It looked as if someone had simply walked out of the door one morning, and never come back.

  ‘The old man died,’ the estate agent said, noting her expression, his face apologetic. ‘I’m sorry it’s such a mess. He had no family, so I’m afraid it’s just been left as it was. He didn’t even make a will, so the profits from the sale will go to the state.’

  ‘How sad. He must have had some interests, surely? A charity he’d rather the money went to? People around here must have known him.’

  ‘Not really. It’s that old cliché, he kept himself to himself. Just pottered around here, didn’t even have a car, walking into the village a couple of times a week for newspapers and essential food. The locals say he didn’t talk to anyone. Bit of a mystery, really. The villagers say he had a daughter, but she disappeared, apparently. I don’t know about his wife – she must have died young, too, or he was divorced.’

  ‘Poor man,’ Sara said, picking up one of the newspapers. The date was 1987. ‘How long had he lived here?’

  ‘Oh, fifty or so years. Almost a lifetime. Odd to make no mark, in such a long time, isn’t it?’

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t want to be found,’ Sara said.

  ‘Or was hiding from someone.’

  ‘How romantic,’ Sara smiled.

  ‘Not much romance about this place, though, is there? It’s a bit of a dump. Sorry, I’m not selling it very well, am I? But I can’t see you in a place like this.’

  ‘I can,’ Sara said.

  Chapter Five

  She woke to feel Hector’s breath warm against her face. Reaching out, she stroked the soft hair on the top of his head as he arched up against her hand like a cat. His eyes, from the edge of the bed, peered enquiringly into hers, clearly informing her that she had overslept, and breakfast time was long overdue. He then laid his head dramatically on the bed next to her arm, and she heard the sound of his tail thumping on the bedroom floor. She must get up to let him out, he’d need to pee.

  The duvet and bedspread lay heavy on her legs, the weight pinning her down. She had been glad of them in the night, as the air in the room was chilly. Turning her head, she saw the inside of the window was covered with condensation, and the top of her head felt painfully cold. It was early spring, and by the time the sun reached its full height at lunchtime it was so warm you could walk outside in just a T-shirt, but the nights remained cold. By contrast with the top of her head, her body was drenched in sweat, not just from the heat of the bedclothes, but from the hours she had lain awake, tossing and turning, trying to find escape in sleep from the thoughts chasing themselves endlessly around her mind without resolution.

  During that night there had been moments in time when a great void seemed to open up and she felt a terrifying loss of self, as if she was falling into a sea of nothingness, her identity gone, and she had to grasp at thoughts, names, places, as she fell. Help me, she thought, giving up on sleep and staring out at the black night through the thin curtains. Help me. I don’t quite know who I am, here. Will I be able to stick at this, and be alone, or will the loneliness drive me to a kind of madness? She had always thought of herself as a calm, practical person, who did not flap and had little sympathy with neuroses. But so much of her security had disappeared – she was beginning to realize just how much she relied on Matt, how much she needed his physical presence. It wasn’t simply that nebulous concept, ‘love’, it was his companionship, his friendship. The warmth of his body beside her at night, the reassuring unspectacular routine of their lives together, the unthinking confidence with which she had planned ahead, holidays, social events, visits to the theatre, Christmases. All taken for granted, all, now, gone. Without any of this certainty, there was an endless void. Thank God for the girls. And dear, beloved Hector who gave, at least, a basic structure to her day with his simple needs of food and exercise. She must sleep, she had told herself. Close your eyes. What can harm you? Fear is a purely negative emotion, it leads nowhere. There was so much to do in the morning, and she’d be exhausted. But it was only as the sky began to lighten outside the window that she fell asleep, just an hour before Hector’s face appeared inches from her own.

  As she opened her eyes, he whined, and she smiled at him, feeling the nagging fears beginning to slide away. ‘I would go mad without you,’ she said, out loud. Excited and encouraged by her voice, a fat blonde paw slid up on to the bedspread, followed by another, and then, as subtly as he could, he levered his bulk on to the bed and flopped down next to her, squirming his body against hers and thrusting the back of his head against her neck, front paws bicycling as she reached out from under the duvet to rub his tummy. Then he rolled over, sighed, and heartily licked the side of her face.

  ‘You just live, don’t you?’ she said, looking into his eyes, just inches from her own, filled with the purest of love and anticipation of the pleasures of the day ahead. He wagged his tail, his mouth curving into his Labrador grin.

  ‘Enough,’ she said, laughing. ‘I’m getting up.’ Through the window the sun cast a languorous trail of light upon the bedroom floor, full of the promise of the day.

  ‘Fifty years I’ve been walking these cliffs.’

  ‘Really,’ Sara said. ‘Every day?’

  ‘Aye, rain or shine. See this?’ He plucked at an incongruously bright yellow fleece, the kind of modern windproof garment she’d only ever seen previously being sported by the bike riders in the Tour de France. ‘I’ve put this on today and I’m glad of it. You’re not wearing enough clothing. That wind today, on the tops, it’s like ice, spring or no spring. It’ll go right through you, in a thin little jumper like that.’ He looked at her appreciatively.

  ‘I’m quite warm enough,’ she said, folding her arms across her chest.

  ‘You see,’ he said, not really listening to her, happy simply to have an audience, leaning on his long walking stick, breathing heavily, ‘If I wear too many layers but no fleece, I get a sweat on, and then when I’m on the top of the hill that sweat freezes. Then I get a chill.’ He looked at her triumphantly. ‘I can’t afford a chill, not at my age. I’m eighty, you know,’ he added proudly. Sara shook her head in amazement, which was clearly the reaction he sought. She tried not to smile.

  ‘It’s all right for a young person like you. Muddy today, isn’t it? Not as good as yesterday, I went further then, the path was dry. Made good time. But then I had my walking boots on.’ He looked down, approvingly, at Sara’s new walking boots. ‘I’ve these on today, for the wet.’ He lifted up a foot, all the better to demonstrate a curious pair of cheap green wellington boots, which he had cut off, just above the ankle. ‘They’re a bit more slippery, but they keep my feet dry.’

  ‘How marvellous. They look just the thing.’ Sara cast about for another topic of conversation. ‘How much further are you going?’

  ‘Another mile and a half, all the way to Polruan,’ he added. ‘Went to Polperro and back, yesterday. That’s quite a walk.’ Sara nodded in admiration, although she had no idea how far that was.

  ‘You here on holiday?’

  ‘I live there,’ she said, gesturing at the cottage, half a mi
le down from the headland, upon which they were standing. It looked tiny, from the distance, like a doll’s house. ‘I’ve just moved in.’

  His face lit up. ‘No!’ he said. ‘Not old Mick’s cottage?’ She nodded, smiling at his obvious pleasure. This was clearly going to be big news in the area. ‘It’s falling down, that is. He never did nothing to it. Stuck there, day after day, hardly ever came out, never even said as much as a “how d’you do”. But then, with his daughter . . .’ He shook his head.

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘No, no idea.’

  ‘Not for me to tell you, not with you living there. Where’ve you come from, then?’

  ‘London.’

  ‘Lunnun!’ He said the name with a mixture of relish and disdain, as if she’d said, ‘Timbuctoo.’ ‘Never been there, never wanted to. What brings you here?’

  Sara was very tempted to reply, ‘My husband has been having an affair with a woman who is apparently much younger than me and I felt it was prudent to leave for the sake of my sanity,’ but chose instead to say – perhaps lamely, by comparison – ‘I felt like a change.’

  ‘Big change. Must be a bit lonely, if you’re all on your own,’ he said. There was something definitely leering in his expression, and Sara decided this prospective friendship needed either nipping in the bud or the establishment of clear boundaries, despite the fact he was eighty.

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ she said firmly. ‘My daughters are coming to stay and I aim to come and go, quite a bit.’

  ‘Ah. Been into Liskeard yet?’

  ‘Yes, I went shopping there, yesterday.’

  ‘Bit of a dump, isn’t it?’ He laughed, his breath wheezing. He wiped a dewdrop off the end of his nose. ‘You’ll like Fowey better, everyone does. Awful in the summer, though, can’t move. All the tourists, still they spend the money. I’m a widower,’ he added.

  ‘Are you? I’m sorry. I’m . . .’

  ‘Oh, I’m all right,’ he said. ‘I walk every day, fit as a flea. Can’t let life get you down, can you? As long as I’ve got my health.’ He looked down at his skinny legs, encased in strange loose black leggings, which ended several inches above the cut-off wellingtons.

  ‘You certainly look very fit,’ Sara said.

  He smiled, delighted, straightening himself up on his stick. ‘That your dog? Bit timid, isn’t he?’

  ‘Er, yes,’ Sara said, as Hector hovered behind her legs. ‘He’s not normally like this,’ she added, as she tried to shove him out from behind her.

  ‘He looks a bit puffed. Not like me.’ He slapped his thigh. ‘Right, I must be off now,’ he said, as if Sara had been holding him up with unnecessary conversation. ‘I’ll see you again, then. Now you’re local.’ He headed off swiftly, his bony knees moving at sharp right angles away down the narrow muddy track.

  ‘I’m sure,’ Sara called, to his yellow back. ‘Goodbye.’ Without turning, he waved his stick high in the air, as farewell.

  ‘Come on, you useless dog,’ she said. ‘If I can climb this hill, so can you.’

  Hector trailed along behind her as she climbed the last few yards towards the summit of the headland. Just below the top she stopped, her lungs bursting, her thighs on fire. She had thought she was reasonably fit, but walking in this high, thin air was exhausting. She would get fit and lose weight, if she walked the coastal paths every day.

  Hector’s head hung down as he tried to keep up with Sara, his whole body aching. If he had to climb another hill he might well sit down and refuse to move at all. It was all very well looking forward to walks, but walks in the past had their parameters; he knew how far he was going to go, in a nice flat park, but here he was being made to march well out of his comfort zone. And then there was the sea. On the day after they had moved in, Sara had taken him to the beach. He had thought he liked water, but this did not taste or act like normal water. It moved, often quite vigorously, and when Sara had thrown a stick into the sea he’d bounded in after it, expecting it to float, but it had been caught by a wave and disappeared, which meant he had to swim around in circles looking for it. Instead of the water staying the same it swirled about and got deeper, and when he attempted to swim back to shore it seemed to be physically trying to stop him. He was paddling away like crazy, but nothing was happening, in fact – and, correct him if he was mistaken – he appeared to be going backwards. Sara then had a very unkind fit of laughing when he tried to drink the water, because he was naturally rather tired and thirsty after so much exertion. Instead of tasting as normal, it tasted most peculiar, and Sara had to sit down she was laughing so much as he snapped his jaws open and closed, wrinkling his nose in disgust, sneezing at the saltiness.

  Today Sara thought she would try to walk to the second headland beyond the cottage, but, after reaching the summit of the first, she could see how very far that might be. Beneath her was a steep path, then a stile, a long meadow full of sheep – she wasn’t quite sure how much she trusted Hector with sheep – and then the path ascended via what looked like hundreds of stone steps, cut into the hillside. She decided enough was enough. Instead, she turned round and took the path back to her cottage. But then, as a compromise for not having walked as far as she’d planned, she carried on and took the stony path down the side of the cottage, which led to the little grey-pebbled cove she had begun to think of as her own.

  As she reached the tiny beach, the path became a series of stone steps, worn into grooves not simply by human footsteps, but by the ebb and flow of the tide. The sea was about twenty or thirty yards out, and before her lay a tideline of muddy brown seaweed, mixed with detritus, old ropes, plastic bottles, drift-wood. To her right ran a wide stream of clear river water, the rivulets cutting swathes of different depths through the sand and tiny grey stones as it flowed home to the sea. She splashed through the stream, deciding to investigate as she hadn’t been this far yesterday, glad she was wearing her new boots. As she walked further towards the waterfall which poured down over a small rocky cliff from the headland, something caught her eye, in a narrow inlet by the mouth of the stream.

  It was a dead baby dolphin. Hector saw it too, at the same moment, and ran barking towards it. Sara, her heart sinking, moved closer. The dolphin must have lain there for days, its sleek, formerly grey skin a discoloured dark brown, and, as she came nearer she could see its belly was grotesquely distended, yellowing. She wanted to touch it, but drew back in horror when she saw the dolphin’s eyes had been pecked out by seabirds.

  ‘How did you die?’ she said, aloud. The dolphin’s mouth was open, agape, as if in surprise, and Sara could see the line of tiny jagged white teeth. Even in death and decay it was quite, quite beautiful, the smooth, curving symmetry of its body incongruously perfect amongst the flotsam and jetsam of the beach. Leaning forward, she saw a tag around its tail. ‘Do not touch,’ the label read. ‘South West Wildlife Trust Aware.’

  She had bent the tag over, so she could read it, and, as she did so, she realized how the little thing had died. Twisted around the dolphin’s tail was an ugly tangle of green nylon fishing line, attached to a short length of rope. More knotted fishing line lay around its body, and on its dried-out skin lay deep gashes, presumably caused by the dolphin thrashing about trying to rid itself of its deadly encumbrance.

  Sara put her hand to her mouth. ‘You poor, poor thing,’ she breathed. Hector looked down at the dolphin, and then back at her. ‘Just a smelly dead fish,’ his expression seemed to be saying. ‘Can we go home? I’m hungry.’

  For reasons she could not quite fathom, Sara could not bear to walk away. The contrast between the graceful, natural curve of the dolphin’s body and the grotesquely ugly man-made tangle of nylon line made her suddenly, unaccountably, furious. How stupid, how thoughtless, we are, she thought. How little we understand or care about this extraordinary world around us.

  She walked slowly, thoughtfully, back to the cottage. Obviously fishing line was a danger to many
creatures, not just dolphins, but how could you stop the fishermen trawling the coast? It was their livelihood, after all. Perhaps not many dolphins died in that way. Perhaps the death of this little dolphin was just a freak accident. She had no idea such a thing as the South West Wildlife Trust existed. It must be relatively efficient to have found and tagged the dolphin so quickly. She presumed that people must report deaths like this to the organization, when they were walking along the beach.

  At the cottage, the red light of the new answerphone she had only just installed that morning was flashing with a message. She used to like finding messages when she came home, but now she found herself frowning, and mentally shook herself. She must stop dreading contact with the outside world. She pressed the ‘play’ button, and then turned to hang Hector’s lead over the back of a chair.

  ‘It’s me,’ Lottie’s voice was subdued. ‘Can you call me? Soon?’

  Chapter Six

  ‘She needs to be with you. I know you wanted time to settle in, but I think she should come down sooner than Monday. She’s just sad, darling, and I don’t think it is helping, being up here with me, so far away from you and . . .’

  The name was left unspoken.

  The phone had rung just as Sara was picking up the receiver herself to ring Lottie back.

  Lottie had taken Sara by surprise by saying she would rather stay with her grandmother in Yorkshire, than move with her into the cottage. Emily, meanwhile, had said she was far too busy with her new job to ‘possibly think of schlepping halfway across the country to the arse end of nowhere’, to quote her precise words. It was, Sara realized, perhaps just a little too much reality for either of them to witness her moving the few items of furniture she had taken from their home to Cornwall. Besides, they both had strong reservations as to the potential of the cottage as their new home. Emily, having looked at the details with disdain, said it looked little more than a hovel, and was her mother trying to make some kind of point in being such a martyr? Sara said, simply, that it was all that she could afford.