Too Beautiful to Dance

by Diana Appleyard

  Yesterday she’d wandered along the lane and picked some greenery and flowers, to brighten the rooms. As yet there were no curtains up at either of the windows in the front rooms – what was the point, when she planned to alter the windows? At night, not having any curtains gave them a blank, austere feel, and she hated to look out into the blackness, terrified by the irrational fear of seeing a face peering back in. But during the day both rooms were flooded with light.

  She made another cup of coffee and decided to wait for Lottie outside. Having washed herself as best she could in the old bath – you had to sit almost bolt upright, it seemed to have been designed for an exceptionally small person – she’d dressed in cropped beige cargo trousers and a white T-shirt, noting with pleasure how tanned her arms had become. There was a deep tan mark around her forearms – builder’s tan, Matt used to call it. Stop it, she thought to herself. I must stop making Matt a point of reference, as if I can only see the world through his eyes. But I have looked at the world through his eyes, she realized. I tried to see everything from his point of view so I could filter out the things he did not like, or would annoy him, so his life would be less hassled. How many women, she wondered, experienced this? As if everything around you had to be scanned to prevent potential arguments and create harmony, dirty plates picked up, car keys put back in the appropriate place, television-programme details studied to select ones he might like. It was, she thought with a smile, as if she had viewed the world through Matt-glasses. And now she had to use her own eyes, and rediscover what she liked. From the food she wanted to eat, to the way she set out the furniture, the music she listened to, what she wanted to watch on television, even how long she stayed in the bath – all these decisions were hers, and hers alone. It was a kind of freedom, she thought. A compensation for failure?

  Sitting on the wall, gazing at the cottage, she realized how excited she was about showing it to Lottie. This was the first time she had had anything that was so completely her own.

  She heard the little Polo car before the red bonnet appeared around the last bend. They had bought Lottie the car last year – Matt had insisted on giving her a brand-new one because he said it would hold its value much better, and added he held out little hope of Lottie ever earning enough money to buy herself a new one. He had bought Emily a new Golf two years previously, a top-of-the-range model in black. He said Lottie was better with something less powerful, while Emily smirked as she knew her car had been more expensive.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’ For a moment, Sara just held her. With her arms tight around her younger daughter, time stood still. It felt just the same, the instant connection and complete sense of unadulterated love and protectiveness.

  ‘Come in. Don’t expect much,’ she warned. ‘It’s still quite a jumble.’

  Lottie’s eyes had been wide as she tried to shut the gate – ‘It won’t, the hinges are broken,’ Sara interjected – and as she walked towards the front door she turned, to take in the view. ‘Wow,’ Lottie exclaimed, looking out over the sea, her eyes moving over the water, to the peninsula, around the high cliffs, the sea breaking on the rocks beneath and then up, at the cloudless sky, the gulls and the rooks wheeling and calling high overhead. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, simply.

  Sara reached out to take her hand, pleased beyond belief. ‘I know,’ she said.

  Inside, Lottie pottered about while Sara boiled the kettle, picking up familiar objects, wandering in and out of the front rooms, smoothing her hand over the back of the sofa which dwarfed the right-hand sitting room, remembering.

  ‘You haven’t put any photographs or paintings up yet,’ she called, and Sara called back that there was no point because there were so many changes to make. Hector had nearly turned himself inside out with joy at seeing Lottie, prancing about, rubbing against her legs, thrusting his wet nose into her hand. As soon as she’d walked in through the front door she had sunk down, her arms tight around his neck, pressing her face into his fur, breathing in his familiar smell. Sara, who knew she was crying, walked on ahead into the kitchen, leaving them together. Hector and Lottie had always been a team, ever since he was a puppy. She had let him sleep on her bed, which had no doubt contributed to the fact that he had become so soppy. To Emily he was quite useful as a reason to get out of the apartment for some fresh air and exercise – she liked the idea of having of a dog, but she hated the muddy paws and hairs on her lovely clothes. And sometimes he was just too much in her face, and she pushed him away. Lottie, however, loved him as an essential part of the geography of her life.

  Sara handed Lottie a mug of tea. ‘Let’s sit outside. I’m afraid we’ll have to sit on the wall – I must buy some garden chairs and a table.’

  ‘I’ll help you,’ Lottie said. Sara smiled, as they walked out into the sunlit garden.

  ‘Thanks. How was the journey?’ She pushed a patch of moss aside to sit down.

  ‘So long.’ Lottie put down her mug on top of the wall and picked at her bitten nails, before putting her thumbnail in her mouth, tearing off a tiny splinter. Her hair, blonde like Sara’s, was caught up, loosely, in a bun at the back of her head, secured with a glittery bulldog clip. It suited her, drawing the fine, slightly wispy hair away from her face, pale-skinned and delicately chiselled. Matt used to say she looked like the illustrations in Charles Kingsley’s novel, The Water Babies. She was more classically beautiful than Emily, but she lacked her animation – Emily’s face was so mobile, her dark eyes flashing, so that even though her features were less perfect than Lottie’s, she made you feel she was beautiful because she was so vital.

  Lottie’s eyes looked haunted, especially in repose, the skin beneath shaded a delicate blue, like a bruise. When she was very young, Sara had had awful dreams about losing her, that she was too small, she disappeared into the crowd of a busy shop, or fell from her hands down gaping holes in the floor. Silly dreams, but the fear was there – that somehow Lottie might be taken away from her. As a child she had been much smaller than her peers, and was teased about it at school, sometimes cruelly – she ate almost nothing, no matter how Sara tried to tempt her, and she was so thin, like a little twig. Lifting her was like lifting a feather, she floated above the ground. We must toughen Lottie up, Matt would say impatiently, if she told him Lottie had trailed home from school, yet again, in tears, and how well Sara knew the look which passed over Lottie’s face whenever her father criticized her lack of confidence – the sadness that she was not the kind of daughter he wanted, not tough and confident enough, like Emily. She was, she felt, second best.

  When Sara had asked her mother how Lottie was, she had said, simply, ‘sad’. And that was it. Too often Lottie was sad, even when there was no concrete reason to be so. Sara’s heart would go out to her whenever she saw her pale, tear-stained face looking up at her as they walked together away from school as she murmured, ‘They were mean to me again,’ and Sara would sink to her knees to wrap her arms around Lottie and say, ‘They are wrong, not you.’ But then Matt would say, in response to Sara’s concerns that perhaps they should move her from that school, that she had to learn to take it on the chin, she had to get used to people being unpleasant, that life was not fair, but a battle to be won. Sara wondered if they had been right in making her stay. The bullying hadn’t ceased, and it was only at secondary school that Lottie seemed to gather a close group of friends around her and begin to find the little self-confidence she had. She’d always been a wonderful artist – as a child, her bedroom floor was littered with drawings – but she hadn’t shone academically. Matt had been so inexpertly parented Sara made exceptions for him as a father, but now she could see that he had not been sufficiently understanding of Lottie, nor praised her talents. And now, perhaps, this attitude was coming home to roost.

  ‘How was Gran’s?’

  Lottie smiled, pulling the sleeves of an old grey V-necked cashmere jumper of Matt’s down over her hands, the cuffs, as usual, in holes. ‘You know, Gran’s. Lots of
stodgy food I couldn’t eat, long, cold walks with the dogs, ancient women popping round for incomprehensible chats about bobbins and cake tins and very urgent trips to take library books back. Is Granny the only person in the world who still uses the library?’

  ‘Quite possibly.’ Sara smiled. ‘Sadly.’

  ‘What I didn’t like –’ the thumbnail was back in her mouth ‘– was the way that all Granny’s friends looked at me, as if I was ill. Even Granny seemed to be a bit careful with me, as if she mustn’t upset me. It was pretty awful, really – I felt like an exhibit in a zoo. Will it go on being like this for ages? I’m bored of the weirdness.’

  Sara looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly. ‘I’m not sure I’m far enough down the line to know when things will feel like normal. I feel a bit like that, too. A bit like I’m recuperating from a long illness.’

  ‘I didn’t use to think I liked routine,’ Lottie said. ‘I used to think that fantasy was much better than real life. But now I’m not so sure I do. This is all a bit too much change. It’s awfully tiring,’ she added, sighing, scuffing her feet in frayed turquoise silk ballet pumps backwards and forwards against the crumbling base of the wall. ‘I have to think what I’m going to say before I say it, to everyone.’

  ‘Do you feel,’ Sara said, carefully, ‘that life doesn’t seem quite real?’

  ‘God, yes!’ Lottie looked about her. ‘It’s all completely bonkers. You’ve left Dad and we’re selling our home, and you’ve moved down to this mad place and Dad’s looking at other smaller flats and it’s like our lives has just gone flump. I don’t know where I am, anymore.’ She hit the top of the wall with the palm of her hand and then took a sip of tea from the mug held in her other hand. ‘Does that sound normal to you?’

  ‘Obviously not.’ Sara laughed. ‘It’s a pretty good assessment, really. Are you cross with me?’

  ‘Why?’ Lottie regarded her mother, cautiously.

  ‘For leaving Dad.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘I don’t honestly know. Yeah, a bit. There are moments, I have times, when I’m like really, really angry with both of you. Dad for having the affair – I mean, what was the point, he’s so old for God’s sake? – and then you for refusing to talk to him and then deciding to leave us and come down here when you don’t know anyone and there’s no earthly reason to actually be here, apart from trying to make some kind of insane statement, I suppose.’

  ‘I never planned to leave you, Lottie. This will be your home too, I hope. And Emily’s, when she wants to come.’

  ‘She doesn’t. I don’t know anyone here, Mum, all my friends are in London. Why should I move here? I mean, that’s not to say I won’t, but it’s very hard just to give everything up at home, all my schoolfriends, my social life. Kind of a weird prospect, you have to accept.’

  ‘Oh? Does Emily definitely not want to come? Not even for a holiday?’

  ‘No, she doesn’t. Not yet. She’s got work, anyway, and she says it’s a really stupid thing to have done and Dad’s gone mental. She sees his side. You know. She’s still living with him most of the time, even though she’s got her flat. I think she should move out, but she says Dad “needs me so much”.’ She put on a falsely intense voice, and grinned. ‘You know, Emily, the drama queen.’

  ‘He probably does need her.’

  ‘Yeah. But he should have thought of that first, shouldn’t he? Before he started shagging some bimbo. He can’t have everything.’ She glanced apologetically at her mother. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Do you think I should have stayed? In London? That this won’t work?’

  Lottie looked out over the sea. ‘I can see why you wanted to leave, but I do think this is maybe a bit too far. You’ve made us feel as if everything, absolutely everything has changed. It’s a lot to deal with. You, here. Dad, in the apartment but kind of camping there and about to move out. Bits of furniture missing at home. It doesn’t feel the same at all, like there are all these gaps. He’s different, too.’

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘Yup.’ Lottie finished her tea, and stared into the bottom of the mug. ‘Kind of muted. Careful. Quieter. He doesn’t shout way so much. I mean, I only saw him twice before I went off to Gran’s, but he seemed to have changed quite a bit.’

  ‘Really? In what way?’

  ‘It was as if he had to handle me with kid gloves and be mega nice to me, and that was so freaky. He kept asking me if I was OK for money and could he buy me anything, like clothes or a new phone? Of course I took him up on it.’ Sara flashed a smile at her daughter, who shrugged. ‘Hey, I reckoned he owed me. I got the new Razorlight phone, really cool. And he took me shopping in Fenwick’s and I bought a Ghost dress. Ghost! Emily was like, really green, because she was at work. But I bet she’s got a lot of stuff out of him as well.’

  ‘Sadly I have no money for clothes, so I can’t offer you any bribes. The most you’ll get here is lots of fresh air and healthy walks. You know I don’t want you to feel you have to take sides, it shouldn’t be like that. He’ll always be your dad, I want you to see him.’

  Lottie smiled at her. ‘I know. But I want to be with you. Even if it means, like no social life. There’s a lot to sort out, here, isn’t there? I can help. You know me, I’m good at buying stuff. I have an impeccable eye. Cornwall has great light for painting, too. Can I have my own studio?’

  ‘There is a huge amount to do,’ Sara agreed. ‘I suppose you could, if you want. There’s not much room, though, it would have to be a very small one. Maybe in the attic?’

  ‘Do you miss Dad?’ Lottie examined her mother’s face carefully.

  Sara’s smile flickered. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course I do. I loved him.’

  ‘Loved him?’

  ‘Love him. I suppose. It’s hard to say.’

  ‘What a pair of idiots you both are.’ She put the mug on the grass, and wrapped her arms around Sara, as if she were the mother.

  ‘What about in the future? Will you see him? He really wants to see you – he told me to tell you.’ Lottie screwed up her face apologetically. ‘Sorry, but I promised I’d relay the message.’

  ‘I’m sure he does. But I need to get settled here, first, before I can even think of that. Now, are you feeling strong? I want you to help me unpack the last of the boxes before we go shopping. Let’s do that, then have lunch out and go to the garden centre in Liskeard and splash out on some chairs and a table for the garden.’

  ‘Neat plan. I’m starving. I’ve been driving since seven this morning.’

  ‘I’m so happy to have you here.’ Sara stared into Lottie’s eyes, their faces only inches apart, overwhelmed with relief.

  ‘I know. Don’t go all morbid on me, old woman. Where did you think I would go? Stay with Dad? I don’t think so – he’s always out at work and there’s nothing in the fridge. And I can’t afford anywhere of my own. So here I am.’

  ‘I love you.’

  Lottie made a small retching noise. She looked at Sara and then replied, as she always did.

  ‘I love you more.’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Is that your newspaper?’

  Sara lifted it from the counter by the till, and put it back into her wire basket. ‘Yes, sorry.’

  ‘Damn and blast. I must have left mine at the end of the shop. Buggeration.’

  Sara, looking at the speaker more closely, realized it was the woman who lived in the yellow house two miles from the cottage, with the hens, the hens she’d nearly run over numerous times as they pecked about the road.

  She was about Sara’s age, possibly a little older, with light brown hair, cut short. She had a handsome, weather-beaten face, and a mannish, capable air, enhanced by the thick grey fisherman’s sweater she was wearing over navy blue trousers, tucked into wellingtons.

  ‘I always get this one. Not very intellectual, is it? But I can’t be arsed with the broadsheets and all those supplements – I just end up
chucking the whole lot in the bin. Who’s got time to read all that stuff? Terribly unenvironmentally friendly, I’m sure.’ She smiled at Sara. ‘I’m Helen, by the way. I’ve seen you driving about – you have a white Volvo, don’t you?’

  ‘That’s right. I’m sorry, I nearly caught one of your hens the other day.’

  ‘Don’t worry. They’ve no road sense and an apparent death wish, but I can’t bear to see them shut up in a hutch all day. I keep filling in the holes in the fence, but I suppose the grass is always greener.’ She spoke in a clear, Home Counties accent.

  ‘Look at all that money!’ The teenage boy behind the till, his face an unfortunate panoply of acne, interrupted them by pointing at a large picture on the front page of the tabloid newspaper Sara was buying. ‘You’d never think they’d hand over the money like that when you win the lottery. I thought you’d get just, like, a cheque. Fancy that,’ he said in his Cornish accent, thick as clotted cream, shaking his head. Sara looked at him disbelievingly.

  ‘I think that’s just a publicity stunt,’ Sara said, carefully. ‘To show how big the jackpot will be this week. They don’t give the winners the money in actual cash. It would be quite a lot to carry, wouldn’t it, if you think about it?’

  ‘I never! A publicity stunt?’

  Helen caught Sara’s eye and they both stifled a smile.

  ‘You’ve bought Tremain Cottage?’ Helen said.

  ‘I have.’

  ‘You’re brave. It must need a hell of a lot of work.’

  ‘It certainly does. I don’t really know where to start,’ Sara admitted. ‘I’m still in a mess, haven’t even unpacked everything yet. I’m camping, really, cooking on an ancient Baby Belling stove and a microwave. It’s rather hard to think straight when you know everything’s going to be replastered and whatnot. I really need to find a good builder.’